“And died shortly thereafter?”
“From the date on the rock, you’d gather that, but no, what I think is that his family helped him get away, said he’d died and was buried here. Chiseled in his initials and the date, put the stone where it’s likely no one else was buried.” She pointed to the back fence. “Apparently, he and Younger Tilley were lifelong friends, so Tilley may have taken part in the deception.”
“Which is why he’d have said, ‘Not his grave, just his marker.’ ”
“Exactly.”
Eben stretched his leg, rubbed his knee. “Tilley really was trying to tell me something that was of great importance to him. I guess we’ll soon know whether there’s a body in that grave.”
“If there is, it’s not John Thomas Quarry.”
“No?”
“Quarry was reported as participating in the protests in Durham in the 1940s, when he’d have been well into his eighties. According to a story in the Durham paper, the report was bogus, given that Quarry was buried in Charlotte in 1926.”
“My word, was all this in the papers in the library?”
“Good Lord, no. But I took what was there and ferreted out other facts, connected the dots.”
“You must be good at research.”
“How else would a colored girl get into law school in the 1930s?”
Eben laughed. “I tell you, I am impressed. All these years, when I’ve seen Quarry’s stone, I’ve wondered.”
“We’ve connected most of the graves to those still living in Brooklyn,” Georgeanne said. “The register—or what remained of it, after the water damage—gave us that. But I wish we could have linked families of Negroes here to the founding fathers. For instance, Brooklyn has many Alexanders, and I’d wager they go back to Hezekiah himself, the glorious patriarch of Mecklenburg.”
“No doubt. In fact, one of my favorites at St. Tim’s is Loraylee Alexander Hawkins,” Eben said.
“Of course, her boy is a perfect example of how white genes can skip generations.”
Eben rubbed his chin. “Hmm, perhaps.” He wished he could tell Georgeanne what he suspected about Hawk’s genes, after he met Loraylee’s boss at the S&W. He said, “A while back you mentioned a husband, but I don’t see a wedding band.”
She smiled. “He’s no longer in the picture. A long story. But I’ll ask you a variation on the same theme. Why, after six years, are you wearing one?”
* * *
The next day the crew arrived on schedule, eleven Negro men with shovels and pickaxes against their shoulders as if they were marching to war. No sign of the dreaded backhoe. A white woman with a clipboard accompanied the workers. Her sole task seemed to involve sitting on the brick wall that ran around three sides of the graveyard, writing on a legal pad, recording names from gravestones as they were removed.
Marion Lipscomb was there before the work began, promising Eben, “I won’t interfere, haven’t that right, but I do want to be sure the dig is conducted properly. I hope we can further connect the history of St. Tim’s for those still living.”
True to his word, Marion helped discriminate between dirt and artifacts as the graves were unearthed. During the first afternoon, a shovel brought up what Eben saw as a large clump of dirt; it turned out to be a small oval box, wrapped in a woman’s housedress in the style of the 1890s, flower print still distinct. Inside the box were the bones of a tiny infant who must have been born prematurely. After this discovery, and with careful direction from Marion, the gravediggers proceeded with great caution, moving slowly. In the second week a supervisor from the city showed up to ask why there wasn’t greater progress. At that point Eben stepped aside, let Marion speak for St. Tim’s.
“If you’d like, sir, I can halt the removal completely, given that several statutes have been violated or ignored,” Marion said to the city official.
Eben didn’t know or care whether that was true.
Marion continued, “Or we can proceed with the caution necessary to honor the remains we’re disturbing.”
“Okay,” said the supervisor. “But get on with it. The city has a schedule to keep.” He left, shaking his head.
Marion had spread a piece of canvas in the lawn behind the manse where relics unearthed could be examined and cataloged: pieces of pottery, handles from coffins, buttons, dresses, hats, long bones and skulls, an entire upper plate, teeth intact. A cook pot. A glass without a chip, which Marion explained, “May have been filled with water, placed in the grave in case the deceased should wake up thirsty.”
“Are you joking?” Eben asked.
“I’ve seen stranger things.”
Where caskets had disintegrated, new boxes were provided, the remains identified with great care.
On Wednesday of the second week Marion knocked on Eben’s back door. “Eben, we’ll be disinterring the grave of Nonette Polk this afternoon.”
He believed he’d been prepared for this, but he was not. “Thank you for telling me, Marion. I’ll be there.”
He went back inside, sat on the sofa in the living room, thinking that he should call someone, feeling Nettie knew, that her spirit was in the wingback chair where she’d sat many evenings by the fireplace. “My goodness, Nettie girl, what am I going to do? They’re taking you away.” He felt as alone as he ever had. As if she had spoken to reassure him, he realized that he didn’t want anyone besides Marion, with his professional detachment, during this awful duty. He told her, “You’ll be with me and that’s all I need.” He stood, touched his collar, brushed the front of his black coat.
Marion nodded to him as he arrived at the cemetery, then stood a respectful distance from Nettie’s grave.
Her tombstone was propped against the wall. “Where’s my bench?” Eben asked Eli Patterson, who stood nearby, shovel at the ready.
“We set it by the back door to St. Tim’s, Preacher,” Eli pointed.
He saw it and felt an almost foolish relief. “Okay. Well, I guess we should get started.” He touched the man’s shoulder. “Glad to see you’ve got work, Eli.”
“Yeah, been tough on me, getting fired after all those years at the Liberty Life.”
“Is it permanent, as a gravedigger, I mean?”
“General laborer for the city, doing what needs doing. This week it’s here.” Eli hoisted his shovel.
Eben sat on the cemetery wall as the digging started, looking anywhere but at the grave. Nettie would be moved to Pinewood, where her parents bought plots before the last graves were sold in 1947. He almost couldn’t bear to think that he wouldn’t be buried next to her, and had decided on cremation, for his ashes to be scattered on her grave. He’d added a codicil to his will, hoping that someone would carry out his wishes. Oscar, if he could stay out of jail.
He caught the gentle scent of the honeysuckle Nettie had planted at the back of the cemetery along the fence. Her efforts were so successful that the thick green vines had become a wall of flowers all through the summer.
The crew dug down into the grave with a steady rhythm. First the pickax, then the shovel. Pickax, shovel. He remembered when Nettie’s coffin was lowered into her grave, the finality of that, wanting to touch her once more, how reluctant he was to toss dirt in after her as Brother Westmoreland intoned, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
The muffled thump of metal on wood brought him back, a sound he’d heard over and over in the past week. As the top of Nettie’s coffin appeared he wanted to tell them to stop, that they had no right to disturb her. The men lifted it out of the grave and set it on the broken ground. He focused on a scratch that ran down the side, showing dull yellow wood under the mahogany finish. The phrase, mahogany finish, came back to him in a way he hadn’t understood when he’d arranged her burial. He wanted to go to the kitchen, scrabble through the cans and jars under the sink, find the brown scratch cover that Nettie had used on their furniture. The shining coffin he’d buried her in was nothing more than a painted pine box. And she was inside, in the blue dress she
’d worn to Noah’s christening. “Easy, now,” he called out as the men tipped the coffin to get it up onto the truck bed. “Easy.”
He turned away. What was left was only the husk of his Nettie. He lifted his hand to Marion and walked back to the manse, head down.
* * *
In the seventeen days it took to remove, catalog, and transfer the remains from sixty-three plots that ultimately gave up seventy-seven corpses, Eben made certain that the relocation of every grave—dispersed to five cemeteries around the city and county—was duly recorded. He did what must be done, continuing the century-old register in his own hand, not caring that he might be duplicating the city woman’s work.
The old book had helped put names to all but three shrouded corpses, and Eben had finally accepted the futility of trying to identify those. The unmarked remains would be reinterred in a common grave with a single marker: THREE SLAVES OF MECKLENBURG COUNTY, CA. 1845, REST IN PEACE. The year chosen was the earliest date found on the stones in the cemetery.
Marion said, “We’ll never know who those three were, whether man, woman, or child, but they were of your community. They lived and died here, and the marker honors them, even if anonymously.” As he often did, Eben wondered whether those unknown souls were living again in God’s heaven. And truly, it didn’t matter to him what the headstone said, as long as the remains of those three were given the proper respect.
Gideon Rhyne showed up on the last day of the destruction of St. Tim’s Cemetery, as Eben and Marion surveyed the barren ground. In his usual way, Rhyne spoke as if for the community, clapping Eben on the back. “We can’t know the ways of the Lord, of course, but we’ve learned that acceptance is the only way to a calm mind.” His habit of speaking in the plural had long bothered Eben, but he’d chosen to ignore it. Rhyne pulled out a paper from an inside pocket of his coat. “We trust this will give you consolation.” He read aloud a quote from Ezekiel: “And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it, says the Lord.” A gold ring on Rhyne’s pinkie gleamed as he waved toward heaven, folded the paper, and put it in his pocket. “We think it’s a fine job you’re doing here, Pastor Polk.” Rhyne left the cemetery, a whiff of bay rum trailing him.
Marion watched Rhyne drive away. “That’s one pompous son of a bitch.”
Eben laughed. “Agreed. At least he’s solidly ensconced at the House of Prayer. I feared he might join St. Tim’s.”
They stood by the wall that embraced the remains of the cemetery. Piles of dirt beside ragged holes, pieces of brick, a crumbling headstone, a distressing odor that made him think of rust, blood, mud. The upturned earth was dotted with the pinks and purples of dying periwinkle, bits of seashell. The city had promised to leave a smooth field when the graves were all relocated, but Eben had come to doubt anything the city said.
He bent, picked up a piece of brick that bore the impression CMBW, 1875. He brushed dirt from it, showed it to Marion. “Charlotte Mecklenburg Brickworks. Every single one of these was made by hand.” He ran his finger over the letters. “They shut down before the turn of the century. I’ll keep it as a paper weight.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“I’m talking with a church north of Graham Street, near Smith. If we can combine the two congregations, it might work out. There’s a house for sale that could serve as the manse. I’m optimistic.”
“Will your flock move with you?”
“Some will. The AMEs are staying in Brooklyn, so there’s that.”
Within a week, the graveyard was a smooth field of red clay. Seashells retrieved from the graves dotted the top of the brick wall. Eben had the wrought-iron bench returned to approximately where it had been, beside Nettie’s grave, where it stood alone in the barren ground, purposeless. He sat on it, missing Nettie more than ever, realizing how much consolation he’d gotten talking to her over the years. He’d gone over to Pinewood only once since her reinterment and had no desire to return. His connection to her had been at St. Tim’s, and when he’d tried to talk with her at Pinewood he’d had the strange sensation that her parents were listening. He pounded the arm of the bench with his fist, as if it could explain things. Nettie was gone. Gone from this ground, from the earth. Even his memories of her were fading. He decided to have the bench moved to the front yard of the church, where people could sit on it after services. He stroked the iron seat.
Until grass began to sprout, he didn’t realize that the city had scattered seed in the empty field where the cemetery had been. Why had they done that, knowing that the whole block of McDowell would be leveled? The manse and the church itself were slated for demolition in the spring of 1966, giving him eleven months to relocate. What was coming was another funeral, though without services, no raging at the dying of the light of what had been Brooklyn. Rather, he suspected that one by one his followers and their neighbors would find new homes. New churches. Lifelong members of St. Tim’s would be replaced by strangers. He felt a softening of his grief for Nettie, and a connection to the bench where he’d sat talking with her. No matter what, he would take it with him to the new St. Timothy’s Second Presbyterian, wherever that might be.
CHAPTER 28
“Them!” Hawk shouts, listening to a football game on the radio.
“Watch your language, boy.” Uncle Ray’s voice is sharp.
“He said ‘them,’” I call from the kitchen. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Thought he said ‘damn,’” Uncle Ray mumbles. “Sorry.”
I push Bibi out of my way and put a plate in the cabinet. Uncle Ray does his best to correct Hawk’s speech, makes the boy toe the line, he tells me more than once. “Got to put his best foot forward, the way things are today.” He never corrects me.
“Tell you what, Hawk,” he say, “how’d you like to see real football?”
“Yay! When we going?”
“When are we going. How about next Saturday, the Queen City Classic?”
I say, “I want to go!”
Bibi’s at the sink. “Me too. What’s a classic?”
We all laugh.
The next evening Uncle Ray say he got four tickets. “We can walk to the parade on McDowell and catch a ride to Memorial Stadium, somebody’ll take us.”
“Walk to McDowell, even Bibi?” I ask him.
“You can walk four or five blocks, can’t you, Livvie?”
“Sure I can. I get tired, there’ll be somebody stoop to set on.”
By two on Saturday Hawk is dressed to go. He climbs into the rocking chair on the front porch, sits a minute, runs back into the house. “I’m ready, Mama.”
“The parade doesn’t start till five. I’m gon take a bath.”
“A bath takes too long.”
Uncle Ray say, “Tell you what, boy, let’s walk down to the creek, see what’s happening there.”
“Be back soon, Mama.”
The screen door bangs behind them, giving me peace for things I like doing on my almost-never Saturday off. Washing my Sunday stockings in the kitchen sink, then Shushu’s white gloves, putting them on a stretcher to hang in the sun. My favorite thing is a soaking bath. I shake Ivory Flakes in a tub of hot water, ease myself into it, settle down with the whole of an hour in front of me, turning the hot faucet with my toe when the water gets too cool, lying back to think about Mr. Griffin, how little time we have together. The book he gave me—Stranger in a Strange Land—I’ve been reading every night before bed. It starts out, “Once upon a time . . .” making me think it’s a fairy tale, but by the second paragraph I know that’s not so: “. . . the greatest danger to man was man himself.” This is no fairy tale. I read that and go off in my mind thinking about how people are mean to each other, and dangerous, making some folks homeless.
Mr. Griffin say the book is scien
ce fiction. “It’s maybe going to be confusing at first, but if you stick with it . . .” He often does that, starts telling me something then stops in the middle.
I scrub my feet with the brush that’s got bristles on one side and pumice on the other, especially my heels, which get cracked in winter. This doesn’t bother me except for Mr. Griffin seeing them. I pumice away. Every night I put Vaseline on them, socks over that. Helps. When I wash the socks, I have to scrub the Vaseline out. Stubborn stuff.
The bath calms more than rough skin. I start feeling like not a problem in the world can’t be fixed with a warm tub on a Saturday afternoon. But too soon a pounding on the door brings me back to what’s going on today. “Mama!” Hawk shouts. “Get outta the tub and get ready!”
“I’m about done. Go look in the closet and see what I should wear.”
Silence. “Me?”
“Yeah, you. Pull out something you like.”
“I like the sparkly one.” He’s talking about a blue dress with sequins on it that I wore once, to a school dance all those years ago.
“Not for a football game. Something else. And remember it’s cool today.”
When I walk into our bedroom, wrapped in a towel, I see my plaid wool skirt on the bed. Hawk’s put out my black high heels and the Keds I wear walking to work, changing to my S&W shoes when I get there. I hear a noise and turn to see his hand sticking out from behind the open closet door, holding a blouse on a hanger. “This?” There’s a sigh in his voice. He’s not too fond of our game.
“The skirt is fine, and the Keds. I’ll get me a top. You did real good.” He gives me the wide grin that reminds me of his daddy, races out the door hollering, “She’s getting dressed. Mama’s getting ready!”
Late afternoon on a fall day, the four of us head up to McDowell. Bibi has on a dress she favors, a beige corduroy button-up, with her orange sweater that makes her skin glow. She’s got her straggly white hair in a bun, curly wisps framing her face, a sparkle in her eyes. She doesn’t get out enough on fun stuff like this and I’m tickled she’s with us. Uncle Ray walks a step or two ahead in his eagerness, Hawk’s hand in his, both of them almost skipping they’re so excited. Hawk looks over his shoulder. “Y’all c’mon, don’t lollygag.” Lollygag, a Bibi word.
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