Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1) (3 page)

“You can get your car later, Frank. I want to show you the construction.”

“Those butterflies,” Frank said, “remind me of the monks in Vietnam. The same orange colors.”

Jake smiled, “This is a chance for some people to get their causes in my face. Don’t you pay any attention to it.”

They were in the car moving up the street. Frank looked out at the harbor. Jake motioned towards the pile of rocks and the great yacht. “Later I’ll take you out to my boat for a drink.”

“Sounds nice,” said Frank.

“I had my captain anchor her near the monument.”

“That’s what you call the pile of stones?”

“It’s a memorial to June 7, 1864.”

“What happened then?”

“The Maryland State Convention voted to free the local slaves.”

“Something else I guess you all learned when you were kids,” Frank joked. “Who built it?”

“My family,” said Jake. Frank realized how serious Jake had become by the tone of his words.

“I’m afraid I’ve never heard about it before,” said Frank.

Jake’s face showed a slight disappointment. “I’m surprised. It’s famous. The slave memorial. Brings a lot of tourists to River Sunday.”

“Nature, slaves, war, and religion. A real southern story,” Frank could not help grinning. Jake did not hear. He continued looking at the monument with pride. Then, as though suddenly awoken from a dream, Jake turned his head to stare ahead of the car.

“Spyder,” he said, “Let’s move it. I want to get the doctor started.”

Water mirages and waves of heat danced on the blacktop as they drove towards the site. Then the road narrowed leaving less room for an oncoming car to pass. Adding to the danger were treacherous roadside ditches with edges steep enough to turn an entrapped car or tractor on its side. Frank saw water in the ditches, the water half hidden with high grass, but deep and dark.

Frank observed Spyder from where he sat in the back seat. The older man was across from him at an angle. His continuous grin bothered Frank, bringing back memories of constantly smiling Vietnamese during the war, men who appeared friendly yet who turned out in many cases to be his enemy. Spyder was subservient to Jake and acted like a perfect butler, yet his clothes were fashionable, tailored with the same cut as Jake’s expensive suit. There was also the repetition of Jake’s promise during the speech, that the bridge would be built on time, a comment that Jake had seemed to direct to Spyder.

“One call and I can get some of your company men down here,” Spyder reminded Jake. Frank surmised that they feared potential trouble from the white haired bird woman, that she was still in their thoughts.

“No,” Jake answered Spyder. “Not yet anyway. We won’t get along with local people if we bring in outsiders. Besides, we don’t want to do anything that might draw more attention to her butterflies. Bringing in our people might just get her more support.”

“What are ‘company men?’” asked Frank.

“Sometimes we need special guards for our construction equipment,” explained Jake. “Company men are the security forces that we bring to sites.” After that, neither Spyder nor Jake said any more about the woman he had called Birdey.

Spyder began to slow the car. He started to turn left at a small white gate nestled in a huge honeysuckle hedge. Jake raised his hand. “No, go straight. We’ll give our expert a little tour over the bridge before we go to the site.”

Spyder drove ahead and within a few moments they were close to the river and the bridge. “Here we are at the Nanticoke River, Frank,” said Jake, excitement in his voice, shifting slightly forward to see better out of the front window. Frank looked ahead also and saw with a little nervousness that the old bridge was constructed as a single lane, only wide enough for one car, built obviously for the old days of horses and carriages. He had a sudden vision of an overloaded farm truck coming fast from the opposite direction, tomato boxes toppling from its sides, and of Spyder driving the three of them into the truck without a change in his grin.

The car halted as the light turned red.

“You can see why this bridge has to be replaced,” said Jake.

“People around here are probably afraid they’re going to get killed on it,” said Frank.

Jake wasn’t amused. “No, nothing like that. It’s safe enough. I was thinking more of the inconvenience. We need a wide fast bridge with no stoplights, a bridge people can cross quickly. People who spend big money for houses want convenience.”

On the right a three story house sat well back from the road across a long lawn, its estate grounds decorated with small hedged gardens and multiple bird feeders attached to trees and hanging on wires or set on poles. Large trees obscured the house, but Frank could see some ancient roof lines, brick sections and multi-paned windows.

Jake grimaced when he saw Frank looking at the house. “That’s where that butterfly lady lives.”

“Birdey?”

“Birdey Pond. You could see what an old bitch she is. She hounded my father before me, too, always looking out for the butterflies as if they were more important than people.”

“I like butterflies,” ventured Frank.

The two men looked at him instantly and sternly. “I’m counting on you to understand these things, Frank. Don’t let me down,” said Jake, with a quick smile.

The light finally changed. At the same time a second stoplight on the other side of the bridge went to red to stop traffic if there had been any coming from the island side. Then the car was on the bridge, its tires bouncing through the broken macadam surface to the iron grate supports. The bridge joined a jetty or point of land with a similar surge of hard ground from the island side. Each point went into the river about forty feet. The bridge had been built out on these points. Its span crossed open water for several hundred yards.

“That’s the island?” asked Frank, pointing to land extending beyond a row of trees on the other side of the bridge.

“Yes,” said Jake, slowly, his words affectionate in tone. “That’s the beginning of Allingham Island. I ‘ll show my house up there sometime.”

The car bottomed with a jolt as it hit a pothole.

Jake grabbed the dashboard. “Town won’t maintain the bridge anymore,” he said. “The structure was quite an engineering feat when my family built it a hundred years ago.” He shook his head.

Across the bridge, Frank could see large areas of cleared land. On this land the access road had been almost completed. Two small cranes and several dump trucks were parked. A green steel barge with great streaks of brown rust and the word TERMENT on its side in large white letters was anchored to Frank’s left, beside the bridge. On its deck were various large engines and generators, concrete mixers, pumps and hoses.

Also on the barge and rising up over the river, like a great sword, was a third construction crane, a very large green unit with a massive pile driver attachment. The system of pulleys on the equipment raised and dropped the tremendous weight of the hammer to drive the pilings deep into the river bed. Beneath the crane, in the water at the side of the barge, was an unfinished cofferdam, steel pilings arranged in a circle to keep out the river water.

“We build the bridge piers on these cofferdams,” said Jake. “Pile drivers sink the cofferdams and then we pump out the water and fill them with concrete. You come back next spring you’ll see great new white piers going high into the air, looking real nice against the green of the trees along the river. “

He paused. “Unfortunately, everything is on hold while we wait for your research to be finished.” Jake bounced in his seat as the car continued on the rough road. They were passing through the old draw machinery section with its rusted ironwork.

“For years now,” Jake explained, “Every time a yacht with a tall mast comes up this river, its skipper has stop and to go all the way into River Sunday to get a man to raise the bridge. Even then no one is sure whether she’s going to go up or not.”

Frank noticed how the concrete railings of the old bridge were cracked from age. Looking down at the road, he saw in places that the river water below the bridge showed through surface holes in the road. He wondered if the car he was in would be the first car to break through the road and fall into the water. Jake talked on, unconcerned.

“When the town found out my company was going to develop the island and build a new bridge, the county commissioners in the River Sunday Courthouse stopped the allocation of funds to keep the old bridge fixed. They just let it rust. Of course, I don’t complain because it’s just my tenant farmers going up to their farms on the island. Safe enough for them. They run a few trucks and cars across the old bridge every day.” He chuckled. “Some of them go drinking in River Sunday at night and I might even hear from Billy about a car smacking into the railing one night or another. “

He confided in Frank, his voice low, “I can remember one day when we kids fixed the stoplight on the bridge to stay red. We held up traffic all day until they come out and reset the light. We sat back in the grass in that same old marsh where you are going to work, Frank. Horns were honking, people yelling, and it was a lot of fun.” He got serious. “When my father found out about it, I got whipped good with his shaving belt.”

The station wagon stopped bouncing when it reached the other side of the bridge. Off to the right Frank could see a ruined church.

“The Nanticoke Chapel of Ease,” said Jake. “Years ago lightning struck the building’s roof,” he continued, looking quickly at the church. Frank’s educated eye studied the old building. He could see where the fire had reduced the structure to jagged up thrust walls and piles of neglected brick and stone rubble. A path outlined by years of young explorers trickled through the front arch. There was an inner void open to the sky that was filled with wild vines. The lush growth maintained an appearance of natural sanctity, yet in the midst of this green he saw remnants of abandoned campfires with piles of beer cans and broken wine bottles scattered on the ruined brick floor.

Jake noticed Frank’s interest in the ruined building. “The kids still come out here with their girlfriends,” he said. “I’ve taken my share of girls there too. It’s a local tradition.”

Frank smiled, thinking of the irony of those charcoal pyres, left by generations of River Sunday teens, memorializing more the fiery rites of first sex than the scorching words of some long dead preacher.

Spyder pulled off the road and turned the car around until it pointed towards the river again. The car air conditioning protected them from the intense heat outside, as they sat looking out at the construction.

“We got pretty far along with the access road on this side,” said Jake, proudly. Frank saw how the area for the new bridge had been ripped out of the land. Beside the old bridge, the ramp for the access road raised up, its massive structure of poured concrete and soil fill dwarfing the old structure. It was leveled to a certain incline, ending at a point near the edge of the river where the barge and the pile driver were positioned with the first of the cofferdams. This new road was poised to connect with the future bridge spans when Jake’s bridge project was completed.

Frank got out of the car and stood in the heat. He saw piles of brush stacked at the edges of the construction, the piles of broken saplings and brush and vines testament to the tremendous power of the machines. He noticed too the dead plants, bloated fish, and stained water. Along the shoreline a slick of diesel oil moved out into the river. The oil washed back and forth in the weak tide lap against the few remaining cattails and marsh grasses. Above the purr of the station wagon engine, he heard the clank of a loose cable slapping against the steel sides of the barge as it moved in a slight breeze. The steel resounded like a cry of a person, a child. As Frank looked again at the pile driver and the laddered shaft of the great crane, Jake, restless with excitement, called Frank to get back inside the car. Spyder drove back to the bridge. The car chattered slowly back across to the mainland.

This time, Spyder turned in at the small gate in the honeysuckle. The entry road was more a path for farm tractors than automobiles. There was a cornfield growing high on the left and on the right Frank were tall cattails. He realized this was the beginning of the marsh which would eventually reach the riverbank. Flowering vines and corn plants brushed and scraped against the station wagon as Spyder drove hard towards a small farmhouse a few hundred feet ahead.

Now, as the vegetation thinned, Frank saw more. To the right, past the thinning number of cattails, was a large yellow bulldozer, deserted, its engine quiet. It was parked at the edge of a several acre section of rough and desolate brown soil.

“That’s the site?” asked Frank.

“Yes, that’s it.”

Frank caught a glimpse through the brush and vines of two people near the riverbank, several hundred yards in the distance, leaning over a small machine. In the center of the clearing were a few broken timbers.

“That must be where that tractor ran into the frame of the old ship yesterday.”

Jake chuckled. “That’s the spot.”

The car stopped in front of the farmhouse. The house was once white with red trim but now the paint hung off the boards. Great trees surrounded it, giving shade in the bright sunlight and making the house still a viable refuge to find cooler air. Jake got out and stood, looking around and checking his watch.

“It’s a hot time of day. I guess the archaeologist from the State has taken off for a few hours. She was here this morning before I left for the luncheon.”

Frank started to mention the two figures he had glimpsed but Jake had already walked ahead towards the farmhouse.

“Not much of a house,” said Jake, pushing on one of the porch pillars. “One of my great aunts took up with a retired Yankee general after the Confederate War. Neither one of them lived to a very old age.”

Frank smiled and shook his head. “The Terments were very considerate building monuments to former slaves and giving houses to former enemies.”

Jake didn’t hear him. “I expect they wore each other out. She was a lot younger than he was. Then, for years the family had tenant farmers in here, one after the other, none of them making it very long. There’s still a telephone inside and running water. Nobody lives here now. It’s a firetrap. I’ll never be able to rent it out any more.”