“She told me that they went for a walk about the property. The brick walk through the garden and down to the river was pretty at that time of evening. There was a small breeze blowing in from the Bay and so the mosquitoes were not bad. They walked all the way down to the water.
“The brick walk became a wide path. He told me that it was an old road that the Terments used in the colonial days. The slaves would roll the great tobacco hogsheads on this road down to the riverbank to load into the cargo ships for the convoys to England. By the river, she and his father looked at the old foundations where the warehouses had stood.
“‘Your father,’ she said, ‘told me that the Terments had to change the loading place for their tobacco. They had to build this great landing right on the Bay even though the waters were not as sheltered. I asked him why and he did not reply, just kept walking.’
“‘Then we walked down near the butterfly trees. They were large, old. The butterflies loved them. The Monarchs came to those trees every year. I told your father about the insects, how they live and fight and love and die, in a smaller version of our world. He was very interested in all this. I told him while the two of us stood there looking up at those trees, that the butterflies had been coming to this spot for hundreds of years on their flight south and that we had no real idea why they did this. He was very subdued, I remember, thinking, he said, about the effect that we humans had on this tiny creature’s existence. I think your father was impressed that he had the power to change the future for the better for that animal.’
“‘A butterfly flew up when we were there. Your father watched it until it flew away. Then he said that when you were a kid, you used to bring him bags full of mashed butterflies. It was a game you played every fall when they flew over the farm. He looked at me then and he said he knew that you had no interest, that you hated the creatures. I remember him saying that the colors of the Monarch were orange and black, the Maryland colors he told me, same as in the state flag.’
Jake sipped from the flask. “What she didn’t say, Frank, was that my daddy paid me for cleaning up the bugs. He didn’t like them dying all over the lawn.”
“Then she went on with the lies, ‘We walked back toward the manor house in the twilight. ‘Birdey,’ your father said, ‘I’m going to do something different this time, this generation.’
“‘What do you mean, Richard?’ she asked him.
“‘Jake,’ he said, ‘Jake only wants to develop this place for the money in it. He’s talked to me for hours about his plans. He wants to dig up the land, change it, build houses.’
“Well, Frank,” said Jake, “I told her right then and there. I said, ‘Birdey, that is not true, my father didn’t say all that to you. Why did he even talk to you? I find it all ridiculous. You’re not family, you’re not a Terment.’
“Frank, she looked at me and tried to claim, in her high pitched voice, ‘Well, Jake, he tried to talk to you about it but you just went on and on about your business plans, so he talked to me.’
“I said to her, ‘Birdey, I mean he used to try to figure out ways to aggravate you, to get you to leave him alone, all your talk about the animals and your criticizing him for the duck hunting he did up at Wilderness Swamp. He hated you.’
“Well, Frank, she goes on then, ‘He talked to me because he knew that I care about the land and the creatures and that I had always been this way, that I was honest and he knew he could rely on me.’
“So I said, ‘My father didn’t think you were honest, Birdey. He used to call you every name in the book and none of them were honest.’
“So then she went on, ‘He said that he would give you the Terment Company, his shares and that you would make a lot of money. He told me that you could “torment gold” Those were his exact words. He said that he didn’t want you to have Peachblossom because the land should go back to the animals. He said the Terments had taken it by force from the animals and from the Nanticokes. Peachblossom belonged to the animals above all.’”
“Frank, she was right about one thing. That was a favorite expression of my father. He always talked among family members about ‘tormenting gold.’ I don’t know where she heard him say that phrase. Probably heard it in the gossip from one of our servants.”
Jake smiled. “My father always respected me for making money.”
“‘Your father wanted to free you,’ Birdey continued telling me there on the terrace. ‘He told me that he never wanted a son, a new generation of Terments. When you came along he had tried to help you. He said that you would die young if you stayed on the land, if you owned Peachblossom. He said you didn’t have the strength that he did, that you didn’t have the ability to scare people away like he did. He said that returning the island to its original state where only animals lived there would mean a fresh start for you, for the whole family.’
Jake looked at Frank, “Why would he say a thing like that, about scaring people? He had respect for me. I tell you she was lying.”
“‘Birdey,’ I said to her, ‘This whole thing is a lie. I want you off the island.’”
“‘Jake,’ she said to me, ‘your father said that this place would kill you. He said it made him drink hard all his life but surviving was different during his lifetime. He knew life would be harder for you.’
“Then she left. I heard from her lawyer for a while but the case went nowhere. They didn’t have a will to disprove my ownership. From that day, however, she has tried to hurt me here in River Sunday. This butterfly costume gimmick of hers is a nasty way to try to hurt my project and my friends and me.”
“I heard you had a step-mother,” asked Frank. “What was she doing while Birdey was coming up on her visits. What happened to her?”
“I see Jefferson has been telling his lies. That woman never meant much to me or my father. She lived in one of the old cottages. She was a housekeeper, that’s all she was. She certainly wasn’t my mother in any way. My mother was a very beautiful woman.”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
“That’s all right, Frank.” Jake smiled. “You and I, we have to get this cleaned up. I’ve got some of my business associates coming out here pretty soon. I told you about that.”
“We haven’t finished with the research yet, Jake. I don’t want to mislead you,” said Frank, opening the car door and climbing out into the heat. Jake followed him outside and they stood together beside the car.
Jake was suddenly impatient. “I guess you don’t understand anything I’ve told you.” He motioned towards the site. “Maybe these bones could have been planted here by someone who wants to hold up the construction.”
“That’s not likely, Jake. They are very old. We will excavate what we can and make our recommendations about the site. That’s all,” said Frank.
“This is not a very attractive display for my friends,” he said.
“Well, I can’t disregard all these, Jake. This is a very unusual find. Especially the giant man.”
“I don’t really care about what may or may not have happened in ancient history. I just want to get this place cleaned up.”
Jake motioned to Spyder who was standing by the gate. The two men followed Frank as he returned to the site. When they reached the excavations, Jake jumped down into the pit where the Pastor was working on the new skeletons. Before anyone could stop him, he had picked one of the skulls out of the soil and placed it up on the edge of the pit. As he reached for another, Frank jumped down into the pit beside the Pastor and put his hand on Jake’s arm.
Jake stopped and turned to Frank, smiling again. “What are you doing, Frank?”
“You can’t do that, Jake,” said the Pastor.
“What do you say, Frank?” Jake stood straight in the pit, looking directly at Frank. Spyder was towering over Frank at the edge of the pit, his highly polished shoes outstanding on the edge of the pit, while below him Frank’s feet were muck covered and bare.
“He’s cleaning up his place for the aftern
oon reception,” said Spyder, his words like bullets.
“You heard my friend,” said Jake.
Frank stared at him, dropping his hand from Jake’s arm.
“This is my land, my place, to do with as I wish,” said Jake.
“We should handle our disagreement professionally, Jake.” said Frank, motioning to the Pastor to stand back. Maggie had come over to the pit and was standing near Jake and Spyder.
“I think that’s a great idea,” said Jake. “I knew I could reason with you, Frank. You just continue to be an archaeologist.”
“I am being an archaeologist.”
The cat reappeared and perched on the edge of the pit near the Pastor, The Pastor picked him up and held him in his arms as he watched Jake bend over and pry at another of the bones in the floor of the pit.
“Past catching up to you, Jake? Worried about what we are finding?” the Pastor said. Then the Pastor let the cat drop. The cat landed near Jake with a snarl.
“God damn you,” shouted Jake as he jumped back from the cat which then hissed, leaped up on the edge of the pit and then ran away from the site into the hedge.
Jake tottered then lost his balance and dropped into a sitting position, ungracefully on his backside, his feet in front of him. He raised himself, his face furious. He brushed at the wet soil on his trouser seat.
Frank said, “We all have to be careful around the pits. The walls are so soft. Anyone can have a pretty bad fall, maybe hurt themselves.”
Jake ignored him. “What are you going to do next, Jefferson? You going to pull a razor on me?” Then, composing himself, Jake smiled at Frank and Maggie and said, “I hate cats.”
“He just jumped out of my arms,” said the Pastor.
“No, Jefferson, no, I’m not worried about what you folks find up here. I just want you out of here.”
“Then we see this as equals, Jake,” said the Pastor.
“What do you mean?”
“We both just want the truth,” said the Pastor.
“I want a bridge and I want to put a lot of your friends and mine to work building it,” said Jake.
“Those friends, are they all white?” asked the Pastor.
“There are many black people involved with the project,” said Jake.
“Who?”
Jake did not answer him. At this moment, three green station wagons, one after the other entered the small lane going to the farmhouse and moved up the road, bouncing with much noise as they did so.
“Caterers are here,” said Spyder.
“Frank, can I talk to you privately for a minute?” Maggie said, pulling at his arm. When they were a few feet away from Jake and Spyder, she looked at him. “You’re not going to compromise with him? This field is important. You can’t allow this to be wrecked. You are going to have a tough time explaining this to other archaeologists. You and I know people who would give anything to work on a field like this.”
“Maybe there is a solution,” said Frank, scratching the back of his neck.
“Jake,” Frank turned and walked toward him. Jake was handing some more of the bones to Spyder.
“What is it, Frank?”
“I have an idea.”
“Hurry up. I haven’t much time.”
“I think it will be a liability for your company to have folks walking around these open pits, with the possibility that they could trip on the surveyors twine. Maybe some of them might have a little too much to drink, you know what I mean.”
“What do you suggest, Frank?”
“Well, when we’ve had this before at other sites I have worked on, we just roped off the area. You don’t want people out seeing the bones anyway so that will solve your problem without your having to pick up all the skeletons. Besides, it would take a long time to find all of the bones especially the small ones. We’ll just cordon off the area. I’ll personally stand by the rope and tell the folks what they want to know about the archaeology. You can say something about what we are doing too, how we hope to be finished soon. Your investors don’t have to see any of it.”
Jake looked at the rest of the bones at his feet. He looked at the soil on his hands and trousers. “All right. I want this pit covered up though. It looks like a massacre up here. That’s not good for business.”
Maggie turned to Frank as Jake walked off with Spyder to see the caterers.
He said, looking at her, “You think that I didn’t stand up to Jake, that I’m quitting on you and the Pastor. I’m not. I’m just trying to figure all this out, figure out what is best to do with the time we have left.”
“You should understand what is best to do. There’s a lot to be found and we have to find it. Our purpose here is being lost in all your figuring. That’s your problem. You think too much,” said Maggie, turning away from him and walking back to her dig, her bare feet leaving small puddles in the muck.
“You got to have it in your heart to do the right thing without thinking. There’s just not enough time to do it any other way,” she called back over her shoulder.
Chapter 14
The grid stakes cast shadows, daubing the field with black smears. Frank and Maggie rigged a barrier rope. The rope was suspended from pine posts quickly struck into the soft ground. At the center of each rope span Frank hung a small sign on which he printed, with Jake’s approval, the words “Restricted Area. State of Maryland Archaeology Site.” Jake had made him add the additional words “Do Not Enter.”
Frank had managed to keep most of the discoveries out of sight in deference to Jake. A large piece of canvas taken from the cover of one of the farm implements was stretched over the Q location to hide the crew skeletons. However, he could not disguise the large cannon which was still off to the side of the excavated area. Also, the sword parts were still embedded in the spot where they had been found, waiting on additional careful and patient work to fully uncover them.
Meanwhile, Jake and Spyder were busy supervising the catering staff near the farmhouse where the tables were being set up. Two young women in white dresses were occupied arranging flowers and food trays on white tablecloths. A small folding table had been set up with rows of name tags arranged alphabetically for the attendees. Two refrigerated trucks from the Chesapeake Hotel arrived and disgorged great quantities of liquor and cooked food.
The Pastor had gone home and returned, attired in the dark clothes of his ministry. Frank kidded him that this was the first time he had seen him dressed up; he did not recognize him standing on the porch in his black suit. Frank and Maggie remained in their work clothes, such as they were. They planned to stay behind the rope barrier, away from most of the guests, and to return to archeological work the instant the visitors left. Maggie did brush out her long blonde hair.
Several waiters and serving persons were bustling also with the setup work. Men dressed in white coats were assembling the beer kegs. Along the back of one table were neatly arranged bottles of various whiskeys, gins, and mixers. One of the black waiters waved to the Pastor.
“Terment pays pretty good, doesn’t he?” observed the Pastor.
“Yes, Pastor,” the man said, almost in a whisper. “It’s not like the General Store days though, is it?”
“No,” said the Pastor.
“We all got to eat.”
“Yes.”
“You find them graves yet, Pastor?” the man asked.
“No, but I’m going to keep myself at it.”
“We’re all praying for you,” the man said as he arranged the liquor bottles.
Out in the yard, a young waitress put down her tray on a table and pointed at the river.
“My God, look at that,” she said.
“Jake, something’s wrong,” someone else said.
Over the tops of the tall trees at the edge of the riverbank they could see the great arm of the crane, its black pulley wheel stark, the spokes outlined. The boom was wavering, moving slowly then more quickly, back and forth. A turkey buzzard, looking for dead animal
carcasses, circled above the moving crane, while steel cables began to slap at the pile driver hammer resting on the barge deck.
“Looks like that bird has found something. That bird bothering your crane, Jake?” said one of the early guests, laughing. He was a big man in a white tennis shirt, pencils and pens stuck in the tiny pocket on his huge chest.
“Seems like it, doesn’t it?” said Jake, trying to grin. He started towards the shoreline, first walking, his eyes following the moving sprocket tip of the crane, then running as the crane began to wobble even more. The buzzard suddenly flared straight up and flew off. The crane moved faster, slipping back and forth in a wide arc.
“It’s as if a giant is shaking it from below,” said Frank.
The crane arm steadied to a vertical position, then began to head downward towards the water surface. It creaked, an ugly noise, as it went, its wire cables reeling forward into the water, the barge itself showing a decided list. The hammer mechanism tipped forward starting to collapse.
Jake and Spyder had reached the shoreline. The cabin and caterpillar tracks of the great crane were at such an angle that the whole rig began to slip and slide slowly across the deck of the canted barge, the great arm and tip closer to the water. Then with a lurch and creak, the long arm stopped not more than fifty feet above the water and stretching well towards the middle of the channel, cables looped into the water like tangled fishing lines. At this moment, with the strained pile driver braces bending, the hammer restraint broke and, metal screeching, the huge hammer crashed into the river causing a massive geyser of brown water.
Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1) Page 18