Disappearance at Hangman's Bluff

by J. E. Thompson

  “Thanks for the warning,” I whispered, using my paddle to keep us from getting swamped.

  Bee turned, almost up to her waist in water, apparently not even caring that her new running shoes were probably filling up with black, gooey pluff mud. Any other situation and she would have been trying to dive back into the kayak. “Come on,” she whispered. “We need to find Yemassee and get the heck out of here.”

  She was right. I glanced at my watch. It was almost seven thirty, and we had agreed to get back by nine. A yellowish pall now covered the entire sky. The wind was coming harder off the water, kicking up small whitecaps and whistling in the branches of the trees along the shore. Even though the tide would be helping to take us home, the wind was going to be pushing us back upriver. It was going to make the paddling slower and more difficult, especially with a load of dogs.

  I climbed out of the kayak, and we pulled it all the way out of the water on one side of the cut so it couldn’t drift away while we were looking around.

  Bee’s legs were dripping mud as she stepped out of the water. She scrabbled up the dirt bank ahead of me, and I could smell the stink of rotting vegetation and dead fish that is pluff mud’s signature scent. Bee couldn’t have cared less.

  She reached the top first, then let out a big gasp and ducked down. “Abbey!” she whispered.

  I came up alongside her, staying low so that anyone on the other side of the embankment wouldn’t be able to see us. As I peeked over the top I forgot about staying hidden, because the sight that hit my eyes almost made my heart stop.

  The huge hole that yawned in front of us seemed to go on forever. It was maybe seven or eight feet deep and probably ten acres in area. The hole was muddy at the bottom but pretty much totally level.

  On the far end of the hole two huge mountains of dirt towered over the landscape, and I knew they had to be the stuff that had been dug out of the earth.

  “Didn’t your dad sue Mr. LaBelle for stuff like this?” Bee asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, totally confused. “But he’s not building anything now. It looks like he’s just digging.”

  “But why would he dig such a big hole?”

  “I haven’t got a clue.”

  Beyond the two huge piles of dirt I could see what might have been a shed or barn. But the hole was what drew my eyes. The whole thing was shocking, a horrible scar to the land. Somebody had ripped into a beautiful place and made it as ugly as they possibly could.

  Seeing this made me mad as a a momma gator when somebody’s threatening her babies. I couldn’t wait to tell Daddy and the judge. I didn’t know if there were laws about digging holes, but there sure needed to be. What Mr. LaBelle had done here was just wrong.

  I knew, from living on a plantation all my life, that topsoil is valuable, and that sometimes people sell it. Low-country island topsoil is more valuable than most because it’s so rich, but even so it goes down only a couple feet. But Mr. LaBelle had dug way past the topsoil, all the way into the marl, a thick, junky mixture of clay and mud. Nobody would want marl. It wasn’t good for anything, and because of that I couldn’t imagine why anybody would go to the trouble to dig such a huge hole.

  The shock of seeing the hole had made me forget why we were there for a moment. As my thoughts snapped back, I realized Bee wasn’t with me, and then I saw her running along the side of the dirt rim, popping up every few seconds to look at something, then running again.

  “Bee, what are you doing?” I said in a loud whisper, but she was already too far away.

  I took off, too, but didn’t catch her until she’d gone maybe a hundred and fifty yards. We were less than a hundred yards from the end of the hole now, and when I glanced over the top to see what Bee was looking at, I could see the two huge dirt piles up ahead, and I could tell that the shed I had spotted a moment earlier was one of those double-wide trailers. A bulldozer and one of those big trucks that carried the dirt were parked to the left of the double-wide. Bee didn’t seem to be looking at any of that but was staring hard across the hole.

  I finally managed to grab her. “Stop before you get us caught,” I whispered. We were both panting hard from running through loose dirt. “You see Yemassee?”

  When Bee turned to look at me, tight creases cut at the sides of her mouth and around her eyes so that she almost looked like a stranger. It took a second to realize that I was seeing anger—pure, white-hot rage.

  I didn’t have long to wonder about it, because right then Bee jumped up and started running along the top of the dirt wall.

  “Get down!” I hissed, frantically looking around. “Remember that guard and Leaper!”

  Bee ignored me. It took a few seconds to catch her again, and I tugged her lower on the bank to get us both out of sight. “Have you lost your mind?”

  She turned to me and growled. “Yucca.”

  “What?”

  “There are yucca plants over there. Lots of them. Remember what Professor Washburn showed us? They mark the graves in slave graveyards.” Her voice was strained and hoarse as if she had something stuck in her throat.

  I crept up and looked over the edge of the embankment and saw the plants that are also known as Spanish bayonets because their leaves are tipped with daggerlike spikes. A bunch of them were growing along the edge of the hole on the far side, not all bunched up, but spaced out like they might have been marking graves. Bee must have eyes like an eagle’s to have spotted them from where we started.

  “You think those are really graves?”

  “Yes.”

  I wasn’t so sure, but having no way to stop her I followed. At the end of the big hole the sides were no longer straight up and down but slanted so equipment could drive in and out. We jumped down and ran across the opening, trying to stay low enough not to be visible to anybody in the double-wide. When we reached the other side, we climbed back up to the top of the embankment and stared down at the yuccas. Some of them had been dug up and shoved around, and pieces of pottery lay scattered on the ground. I knew from the graveyard we’d visited with Professor Washburn that these were definite signs of old slave graves, and walking to the edge of the hole I saw where other yuccas had toppled in and lay in the mud.

  Bee came to stand beside me and looked down at the dislodged yuccas. A sound like a growl came from her throat, and then without another word she jumped halfway down and then slid the rest of the way into the hole.

  “Bee, stop,” I hissed.

  Once again ignoring me, she started clawing into the loose packed dirt along the side of the hole with her bare hands. I squatted behind one of the yuccas and tried to spot the guard or Leaper. I saw no sign of them, but even so we had to find Yemassee and get out of there before the storm got worse. The ruined graves were a terrible crime, but we needed to get home alive in order to report it to the police.

  I felt a fresh blast of wind and looked up at the sky. The sun was totally hidden now behind the thickening clouds. A glance at my watch showed that it was almost eight. We had only a few minutes before we needed to start back to Reward.

  “We gotta go!” I said in a loud whisper.

  If Bee heard me, she gave no sign. She kept ripping at the dirt like a dog going after a bone. Her hair was frizzing, and there was dirt and mud on her arms up way past her elbows. I stared at her in amazement, not believing this was the same girl who was always so worried about being neat, keeping her nails perfectly clean and never breaking the rules.

  “Bee!”

  She kept digging, her eyes fixed on the hole she was widening out. Finally she stopped, and a second later pulled out something that was so totally crusted with dirt that it looked like a rock. She brushed away dirt until the white of bone showed through, and suddenly there was no mistaking the shape. A chill ran from the back of my neck to my feet.

  “Please tell me that isn’t a human skull,” I said.

  Bee held it like it was as precious as a bar of gold. “I knew it,” she whispered. “I knew it.”

>   When she raised her head and looked at me, tears were running down her cheeks. “This could be someone in my family,” she said.

  All I could do was nod, because the realization of what she was feeling right then hit me like a sledgehammer.

  “These people have to be punished,” she said.

  “Yeah, but we can’t punish them right now. We gotta get out of here,” I urged.

  Bee looked around, suddenly seeming to see everything else for the first time. “Why are they doing all this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bee kept the skull in her hands, but she turned and started walking toward the dirt ramp at the end of the hole. Rather than trying to stay low and hide, she just headed toward the two huge dirt piles.

  I trotted to catch up. “Will you stay out of sight?” I whispered. “We have to find Yemassee and then go. Have you forgotten about the storm?”

  Bee spun around. “The storm is what I’m thinking about! Like what five or ten inches of rain are going to do to these graves! They’ll be washed away forever.”

  I stood there, trying to think of some way to get through to her. “I understand how upset you are. I’m upset, too, but we can’t do anything about the graves right this second. We’ll come back. I promise.”

  Bee looked at me. Her eyes were wild, but finally she nodded. “Okay,” she mumbled, “let’s find Yemassee.” With that she turned and took off running. I watched her for half a second, realizing with horror that she was too angry to be her normally cautious self, and then I ran to catch her, praying with each step that we weren’t about to get eaten by Leaper.

  Bee had already come to the first of the huge piles of dirt and started around it, but in the next instant she disappeared completely. I sprinted after her, fearing the worst.

  Twelve

  The pile of dirt was huge, maybe a couple hundred feet around and thirty or forty feet high. At first glance it looked like a solid circle, but when I reached the spot where Bee had disappeared, I saw that the dirt had been scooped out to form a deep hollow. There was a half-buried truck and a bunch of other junk scattered in that hollow. That’s where I found Bee.

  “Thank heavens,” I whispered. “Can you not run off like that?”

  “I saw this opening and thought Yemassee might be here,” she said, looking around. “This is weird.”

  “Where next?” I whispered.

  “The other pile,” she whispered.

  We ran across fifty yards of open ground, reached the other pile, and started around it. I was right on Bee’s heels when she slammed on the brakes and turned toward me, her face stretched in panic and silently mouthed the words, The guard!

  “Where?”

  “Over by the shed.”

  I crept forward enough to peek around the corner of the dirt pile. The man who had chased us off the other day was maybe a hundred yards away. He had a double-barreled shotgun broken across his arm. He wasn’t looking in our direction but up at the sky and out toward the water; however, Leaper was just a few feet behind him, and he had his nose in the air like he was sniffing for trouble. It looked like the guard was heading toward the far side of the hole, but I saw the problem right away: if he walked around the hole, he was going to put himself between us and our kayaks, and then, if he did a full loop, he would come back straight toward the dirt piles where we were hiding.

  Bee and I started to inch around the side of the dirt pile to stay out of his line of sight. As we rounded the far side we came to a second big hollow similar to the one we had found in the first pile, and we scrambled into it.

  “What’re we gonna do?” Bee hissed. “He’s got us trapped in here. What if we can’t get out and the storm gets worse? What if he spots our kayak? What if Leaper smells us?”

  “We gotta think.” My blood was pulsing in my ears like a bass drum “Okay,” I said, trying to shove down the panic that bubbled in my stomach. “You keep checking on where he is, and I’ll try to come up with something.”

  I turned and looked around the hollow, but all I saw was another wrecked truck, hunks of metal all over the ground, and a table made out of a plywood sheet laid over a couple of old barrels. Two masks lay on top of the table, and beside it were some hoses and tanks. I knew it was welding gear because I’d seen the plumber use the same stuff when he had hooked up a new well on the plantation about two years earlier. It wasn’t going to help us get away from Leaper.

  “Abbey!” Bee hissed. She turned toward me, her eyes wide with fear. “He’s changed direction, and he’s coming straight at us.”

  “How far?”

  She peeked again. “He’s almost here.”

  Needing any kind of distraction, I grabbed one of the welding masks and heaved it over the top of the dirt mound so it landed someplace on the side away from us. It was a desperate and lame move, but I hoped the guard might hear it and go explore in that direction.

  “What the heck was that?” I heard him mutter, his voice sounding way too close for comfort. I prayed he would turn toward the noise and move away from us, but I had no time to worry, because in the next instant a big diesel engine roared to life. Bee and I both froze, and my heart began to really, really slam against the walls of my chest. The machine was loud and rough, a sound like a bulldozer might make, and the clank of the machine’s metal treads grew louder I realized it was coming right toward us.

  We were totally trapped, with the guard and Leaper someplace to our left and the bulldozer driver to our right. We couldn’t climb over the dirt pile because we’d be visible. I glanced at the wild undergrowth just a few feet from where we hid. It looked impenetrable the way only South Carolina jungle can, an impossibly thick tangle of live oak, pine, and palmetto, interspersed with snarls of honeysuckle; bamboo; big, thorny brambles; wild rose; and plants I couldn’t name. There wasn’t enough space between the tree trunks, vines, and branches for us to go more than a few feet before we’d be stopped.

  The treads continued to grind closer; then they seemed to stop, and for several seconds it sounded like the machine was going back and forth. We could hear the bulldozer blade biting into the dirt right around the corner from where we were hiding.

  A second later a huge wall of dirt appeared to our right. The bulldozer was pushing the dirt, and I realized the driver was getting ready to fill in the hollow where Bee and I were standing. We had no choice. We couldn’t just wait to get buried alive. We had to move.

  I had no idea where the guard and Leaper were, but it didn’t matter because the bulldozer was just about to push the dirt right on top of us.

  “Come on!” I shouted, over the roar of the engine.

  I grabbed Bee’s arm, and we bolted through the fast-closing opening in the direction of the water. Right away I twisted my head to look for the guard. I saw no sign of him, and for a few seconds my heart soared. We had a clear shot, and all we had to do was run across fifty yards of clear ground then around the sides of the big hole. At the far end we would leap off the embankment, shove the kayak out into the river, and jump in. Once we were out on the water and paddling for home, there was no way they could stop us. We wouldn’t have Yemassee, but at least we’d be alive.

  We made it across the open ground and began sprinting along the top of the embankment, both of us stumbling in the loose dirt. I saw the river two hundred yards ahead, glinting like dark metal under the overcast sky. My lungs were burning, and I could hear Bee’s ragged breathing as she ran just a few steps ahead. She looked like a halfback, with the dirty skull tucked like a football in the crook of one elbow.

  We reached the corner and followed the embankment as it turned toward the rice gate and our kayak just below. My heart was beating so hard it felt like it might explode, but we had only a few yards to go.

  We neared the rice gate, and as soon as we were above the cut that ran out into the river Bee jumped down, and I followed. The second my feet hit the ground I looked for the kayak, and I heard Bee’s intake of breath as she saw the sa
me terrible thing I did.

  The kayak was gone. With a feeling of desperation, I looked out at the river and spotted it, low and yellow, floating perhaps fifty yards from shore, turning in a slow circle as the wind pushed it upriver and the tide tried to take it down.

  For a second my mind couldn’t grasp how the kayak had come loose. We had put it high up on the mudbank, so it should have been impossible for it to blow off and drift free.

  My brain was still trying to understand when I heard a very deep growl.

  A fresh bolt of fear shot up my spine. I turned my head slowly, barely moving, just how I’d have done it if I just missed stepping on a cottonmouth that was now lying coiled and angry just a few inches from my leg.

  Leaper crouched behind us in the shadows, his lips drawn back over his fangs. He was huge, over a hundred pounds of black-and-brown muscle, and his eyes were as cold and as hard as lumps of coal.

  The guard stood right behind. He had his shotgun closed and pointed directly at Bee and me. “Well, well,” he said with a smile. “If it ain’t our two little pony riders.” He looked back and forth between us. “What’re you girls lookin’ for?”

  “Nothing,” I started to say. “We were just—”

  “You’ve been digging where you shouldn’t,” Bee said, her voice a harsh rasp.

  I turned, giving her a look, wanting to shut her up.

  Bee totally ignored me. She still had that mud-encrusted skull in her hands, and now she held it out. “You’ve destroyed a slave graveyard. It’s against the law.”

  I shook my head, because I couldn’t believe she was saying this. Well, actually I could. Bee was an expert at saying all the things you’re never supposed to say if you’re trying to lie your way out of trouble.

  “But we won’t tell anybody if you pay us some money,” I interjected, before Bee ruined things even more. I figured our only chance was to do what the guard would have done if he was in our shoes. I wanted him to think we were as low-down as he was, and that the least troublesome way to handle us was to pay us off and let us go.