Slave Graves

by Thomas Hollyday

Jake arrived at about nine o’clock, carrying a golf club.

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing with the club at the broken conglomerate.

  “That is what is left of an Eighteenth century iron cannon, a pretty good sized one,” explained Frank.

  “I guess you’re going to tell me it was from the shipwreck.”

  “It was in the wreck location. I can’t be sure it was part of the ship but it’s likely. Maggie and I are surprised to find a quality artifact like that. We don’t understand why this was not salvaged before.”

  Jake looked at the cannon for a few minutes and then turned to Frank.

  “You make too much out of this, Frank,” Jake said. “If you were a native, you’d realize that gun was probably used as somebody’s anchor mooring. Sailors on the Chesapeake used everything they could for ballast and for anchors. Maybe it was ballast on the ship that was in here. Lots of old iron and lead got carried around in the boats to keep them from capsizing. I can’t tell you how many times the farmers around here turn up pieces of iron in their fields.”

  “Did you ever hear of anyone turning up a cannon this size with their John Deere?” asked Maggie. Jake didn’t answer her.

  “You’re probably right, Jake,” said Frank, amicably. He could see the image of Mellow waving her finger, advising him not to aggravate Jake on the first day.

  “It concerns me, though,” said Frank, knowing that Maggie and the Pastor were still checking him out, studying even the subtle voice intonations in his talk with Jake. “We may never know why this gun tube was near the shipwreck. That’s what is intriguing, and at the same time maddening, about these archaeological surveys. Even with all the precision our work entails there is still uncertainty and mysteries remain.”

  “Well, let me know when you find something useful.”

  “We might have something for you by tomorrow night,” said Frank.

  “Can’t you get it done by tonight?” Jake looked at Frank, tapping the golf club. There was a lack of the warmth towards Frank that he had shown the day before. “You’re still working for me, Frank. That the way you see it?”

  “I have never seen it any different,” said Frank, surprised by Jake’s sudden serious tone. He scratched his neck for a moment, knowing he was getting himself in trouble.

  If he didn’t say the right thing he’d lose respect from not only Jake but Maggie and the Pastor.

  Jake continued, “Anytime you need to remember why you are here working in the middle of my marsh, near my bulldozer, on my project, you just take a good look at that crane out there on the Nanticoke. There’s a lot of money tied up in a machine that isn’t doing me any good right now.”

  “Jake, we’re doing the job. Everything is being done as quickly and in as organized a manner as possible,” said Frank. He continued, thoughtfully, more authority now in his voice. “There is a way you can help to speed up the process.”

  “How?”

  “Keep Spyder off the site.” This was a demand from Frank, no longer casual. “Everything that he wrecks by accident is something that we have to do over, something that will hold us up in finding out any answers here.”

  “Sure,” Jake laughed, swinging his club at a clump of crabgrass. “You hear that, Spyder? You keep your hands in your pockets.”

  Spyder grinned, walking behind them.

  Frank showed Maggie’s site diagram to Jake, pointing out with care each theoretical section of the wreck and carefully explaining what they hoped to find. Jake asked questions from time to time and appeared interested.

  “Jake, most of what we need to find out seems to be located within a few feet of the surface soil of the marsh. We think we know why this wreck is so close to the surface.”

  Maggie looked up from her work as Frank spoke. She nodded in agreement as he explained the site condition to Jake.

  “As we see it, the ship was in shallow water, maybe low tide. For some reason, she caught on fire and burned almost to the keel. The tide came in and put out the fire leaving the ship a charred hulk. The tidewater probably covered the wreck at high tide. Over the following months and years the cove silted in from runoff as the fields were tilled. There was also an underground stream feeding the cove which is still active and is the cause of the wetness. The stream added to the silt. There might have been some fill carried in by workers, maybe to try to level out the area. We know some pilings were set into the bank at some time. The backwater in here dried out. It became a marsh. So for quite a few years this shipwreck was pretty well buried. Now, with recent climate changes in the Chesapeake, the river has started to rise. There are more storms, more flood tides. The river is washing out the silting more quickly. I think if we had come along a few more years from now, all our work would be done for us. This shipwreck might be showing right on the surface with all its secrets.”

  “The shorelines are changing all the time along these river systems. You must have known this, being a native,” asserted Maggie, looking at Jake. “I expect you or your father must have worried about losing part of the marsh as the bank has been washing away.”

  Jake became visibly restless. “What difference does all this research make?” he said.

  “To tell you the truth, Jake,” answered Frank, “It doesn’t make any difference if the wreck is not worth the research. However, if the wreck is an important one, everything that happens in this marsh will be studied.”

  “I’m working here on a test pit that covers where we think the captain’s cabin was,” said Maggie. “Artifacts buried in the earth from the ruins of his cabin will tell us about the ship and that helps to put the story of the shipwreck together.”

  “You find a few soggy bags of wheat and we can all cover this thing up,” chuckled Jake.

  “If it’s wheat from a few decades ago like you suggest, yes, we can cover it all up. I agree with you, I don’t think the wreck of a wheat schooner of maybe a hundred years age is worth very much in maritime research,” smiled Frank.

  “There’s no way you’re going to find a few grains of wheat in all this muck,” said Jake, winking at Spyder.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure, Jake. This is a strange site. We already noticed preservation of materials that should be in much worse shape.”

  “How far down do you have to go?” asked Jake.

  “As I said, it’s a shallow site. We don’t have to dig very far, just until we find what we call sterile soil, the soil before humans came along, the soil left by the glaciers.”

  “Sterile soil has to belong to a period before the wreck,” said Maggie.

  “Right. We double check that strata and make sure there’s no evidence of human activity, that it wasn’t disturbed and then we stop going down further. That’s the soil we call sterile.”

  “So how far down is that?” persisted Jake.

  “Well, judging from the silting, and from the height of the piece of ship’s bow we have already found, the keel and the other parts of the wreck that still exist are probably only four to five feet below the surface, maybe less.”

  “What I’m getting at is that there’s not a lot of dirt to dig into,” said Jake. “Way I see it you folks should be able to finish up soon.”

  “That’s right, Jake. That’s why I wanted you to see all this. It’s possible to get enough done by end of tomorrow. At least we’ll know a lot more by then.”

  “I’d still like it sooner if you can.”

  “We’ll certainly consider the costs that you are running up with the construction halt. I understand that.”

  “Hey, leave that alone,” yelled Maggie.

  Spyder was poking a board at the remains of the conglomerate that fell off the cannon. Frank looked at Jake. Jake smiled.

  “Come on, Spyder. You’re not wanted around here,” said Jake. “What is that stuff anyway, Frank?”

  “We call it conglomerate. We value it because there may be other things imbedded in that hard cluster. Sometimes there are all kinds of pieces of
the wreck that joined together like glue with the water and pressure. Tools, early eating utensils, pieces of chain, all kinds of interesting things.”

  Jake let his eyes move over the piece of conglomerate. He stood carefully, his shoes close but not touching the artifact, his patent leather away from stains by the black swamp liquid still dripping from the cluster. Spyder had returned to the station wagon and now honked the horn. Jake turned away and, without another word, walked quickly over to his car.

  Spyder held a cellular telephone out the car window, and called “New York wants you.” Jake took it beside the car and began listening, his face unsmiling. Then he got into the car, still listening, and Spyder drove out the lane.

  “He’s a busy man,” said the Pastor walking up behind Maggie and Frank.

  “Yes, he is. I could tell that yesterday when I met him at the hotel. Seems to be a popular man too, judging from all his friends I saw there.”

  “Don’t be fooled by that, Frank,” said the Pastor. “They are not friends. His father, Mister Terment, ran everything in the town. He was royalty, like a king. Now, Jake’s hoping his television celebrity status makes up for his father’s death and that loss of the family status around here. The celebrity status is weak though. I’m not sure very many of those so called friends would lift a finger to help him if they weren’t getting something out of it.”

  “Same thing at our university,” said Frank. “People come to us and say how much they love the school but they only send in a contribution when they have a real reason.”

  “I’ll bet they pay up when their kid is in the school,” said Maggie.

  “Exactly.”

  “There’s a lot of folks with interest in this island development, that’s for sure,” said the Pastor. “It’s just about the biggest building project that has come to River Sunday in our lifetime. Jake’s right about one thing. There are going to be lots of jobs putting up all those houses.”

  The Pastor smiled. “Tell you two something about that man though.”

  “What?”

  “He’s got to be the most superstitious person you ever want to meet. If he has a weakness it’s his superstitions, his worrying about bad luck. The man held up traffic one day in the middle of River Sunday.” The Pastor moved his hands up to imitate Jake stopping traffic. “Terment stopped his car because a black cat crossed in front of him. He squealed the brakes and turned his car around right in the middle of the street. He hates cats.”

  “I saw Spyder kick a cat out of the way for him at the hotel.”

  “Jake doesn’t change.”

  The Pastor looked at the dust cloud of the disappearing station wagon. “Maybe part of his problem was the way he was brought up. I mean we all had tough times, but he always seemed to be alone. He was raised by a woman his father lived with but never married, as far as I know. She came from Baltimore. His real mother died when he was born. Some say that Mister Terment wasn’t the father. His real daddy was some Thunderbolt pilot stationed up the Chesapeake Bay who came by the local airport doing landings during the war. Lot of folks treated him like he wasn’t a Terment, like he was some kind of bastard child.”

  “That must have been tough on him,” said Frank.

  The Pastor nodded. “What made him so deep down mean. Then again, I think he got all the superstition from the woman who brought him up. She was something. Folks liked her better than they did the old man. She wore real bright clothes. I think she had been a dancer, a burlesque queen, up in Baltimore. She started coming around after Jake’s real mama died, after the war was over. Jake’s father met her and brought her down here with him. One of my friends told me. He was butler up there on the island one evening when she got drunk. She put on her G-string for some of the old man’s poker friends, dancing for all of them out there at night at the mansion after the little boy was in bed. She danced there in that paneled colonial room with all the old furniture. My friend and the other servants watched this through the partly open kitchen door. There was loud music. Terment was clapping his hands in time to this music, slow beat it was, on the record player. She was swaying around the room, stepping up on all the old antiques, her all naked. She kept throwing her clothes at the poker players, having a good time and laughing that real hooting laugh she had, her hair flying after her.

  “Mister Terment went through a lot of servants. He fired any servant who saw too much of her dancing. He did this after he found out they were telling stories that he didn’t like down among their families and cousins in River Sunday. Of course it was his own fault. He would get the poor woman drunk and then she would carry on the only way she knew. He was a drinker, too, and that’s what killed him, his whiskey. Killed a lot of them old time white people.

  He chuckled. “Talk about stupid. They got into this idea that their status was based on having their whiskey branded with their family name. The bottler went along with the damn fools but he said they had to buy a lot of cases to keep his inventory cost down. They weren’t alcoholics when they started as I understand it. They had to keep that whiskey coming though so the man would keep their mark in stock. They couldn’t pour out the whiskey so they had to drink it. Folks told me they’d see a couple of cases coming in every month. Poor fools drank themselves to death, that’s what I think, and just to show off. Kinda came to a halt in the late Fifties. Most of those people were dead by then and their children were too poor to keep up the orders or else they didn’t have the livers for all that whiskey.”

  Frank laughed out loud at the story. So did Maggie.

  The Pastor went on, “There was a story that Jake got his name when his mother was carrying him and his father was off in a poker game in Baltimore. Mister Terment had traveled over there to win some money off some rich black businessmen from East Baltimore. Turned out one of his black opponents was holding all the cards that night. He kept on goading Terment, making him careless. Terment wasn’t a member of the white hate groups around Maryland but he didn’t oppose them neither. Everyone at the game knew Terment didn’t have much use for blacks getting any financial power. He didn’t like the competition. So his opponent got Terment off balance, made him crawl and in the final big hand, taunted him with a bet, that if he won, he’d get to name Terment’s kid. Terment by then was so angry he took the bet. Like the man planned all along, Terment lost big, lost all his money he had brought to Baltimore. Then the black man grinned, laid down his hand of four Jacks and said, “Mister Terment, four red and white Jakes. I’ll just say Jake’s a good name for your baby.” He had to come home that night and tell his pregnant wife, who most of us around River Sunday knew didn’t like black folk any more than she liked him.”

  “The woman, the dancer, who brought Jake up, wasn’t a bad sort. She was just ignorant. She was nice enough to me. Always putting out good food for me and my brother. In those days my father was gardener at Peachblossom. He had survived because he stayed away at night and never saw all the going’s on.

  “My father’s job ended when Jake went to his father and got him to throw out my dad and mom and me and my brother. Jake was angry at us two kids for some reason, some game out in the yard that he had lost. He made up that my mother was stealing some of the silverware. My mother never stole anything in her life but some of the silver was missing. I was pretty young at the time. I didn’t understand that Jake had probably hid the silver himself just to get my mother in trouble. I still played with Jake for a few more years. I just didn’t live there at Peachblossom anymore.”

  “I remember the dancer woman kept a bottle of dye for her bright red hair. Jake told me one time that he poured the dye out on the floor. He got slapped around pretty good for that, maybe by her but I think by the old man.”

  “Does she still live up there at the mansion house?”

  “She never did live up at the big house. The old man kept her down in a little cottage about a quarter mile from the house. It was one of the old slave quarters that he had fixed up. She would j
ust come up to the big house during the day. After the old man died, Jake sent her away. Jake told folks that she wanted to live in Baltimore. She was an old lady by then. Still had that bright red hair. I guess she and Jake didn’t get along. I bet he didn’t give her a cent out of the old man’s money either, probably not even bus fare.”

  “Jake would do that?”

  “It’s a side of him that people don’t know. The woman liked animals. She was superstitious sure but she never hurt animals. I remember she would take a fly outside. A housefly. Wouldn’t let anybody kill a fly. Jake may hate cats just because she liked them, just to spite her memory.”

  “I guess you learn to figure out people, being a preacher. You get to know both sides, the good and the bad.”

  “Yes, you do. Little hard finding the good side of Jake Terment, though. It’s been one of the toughest jobs in my ministry, finding something good to think about that man,” he said, as he climbed down into his probe pit to continue his work. “Even in all the evil I saw in Vietnam I was able to find some good in the faith of some of the men. Not as easy when I start thinking about Jake Terment.”

  Frank paused, “I wanted to help children in that war,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Children?”

  “Yes, in those days I thought that the war was to make South Vietnam into a haven for children, a place where these kids would grow not being slaves to the communist government, a place where they would be free.”

  Frank worked at the soil again, “I went over there to help kids. Then this little boy comes along and nearly kills me and kills all my buddies, guys I had spent months with.”

  “Viet Cong sapper?”

  Frank nodded. “Big explosion. We never knew what hit us.”

  They worked silently for a few minutes. Then the Pastor changed the subject. “So you and Maggie worked together before.”

  “Maggie was the best field school student I ever taught.”

  “You two make a nice couple, both archaeologists. It’s good to have the same career. My wife and I were both in the church. We talked about similar things. It was good.”

  Frank had never thought of Maggie that way, of the two of them as a romantic couple. The last time he had seen her she was a student finishing college and he was a hardened war veteran just getting his feet back on solid ground as a teacher. On this site, they shared their expertise as professional archeologists. It was a form of equality, a mutual outlook on the problems and excitement of this wreck excavation. The equality brought them closer together, made him look forward to her opinions on each new discovery, as the hours went by in the tension and heat. They were not related in the normal sense of the word, not brother and sister, but, the Pastor was right, a special kinship was there between them.

  “I hope to meet your wife before I leave,” said Frank.

  “She passed away several years ago. It’s just me. Me and my church.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I live with the loss of her. I gather you do a lot of this kind of archaeological work, working on real estate deals, I mean.”

  “We get a lot of requests at the university for expert opinions on sites. There’s always someone who wants to build something and hits into an historic artifact. It always seems to be a situation that requires everything to be done in a hurry. It’s easy to understand if you think about it.”

  “Why?”

  “I got this theory. The colonials who settled these areas were not stupid. They picked the same sites that developers today want. The Native Americans, they were smart too. That’s why Maggie found all the arrowheads near here. Each new century people want to change what they built. However, they want the same strategic locations on river banks, same vistas, all that kind of thing. Bridges are always built at important spots. So when the rebuilding starts new owners run into the old construction and guys like me come out to see how important the artifacts are.”

  “That’s where the trouble starts,” said Maggie from her digging place.

  “Sure. The historians and the developers are going to go round and round.”

  “Most of the archaeologists feel there is no room for compromise,” said Maggie.

  Frank sat back on his heels. “Maggie was involved in that Southern Maryland controversy, yet you say you chose her to come down here. Why, Pastor?”

  “Don’t you think she is qualified?”

  “Of course she is qualified. One of the best I know.”

  “Why should the controversy affect our choice on this site?”

  Maggie added, “Frank, you thought that because I was fighting to save Confederate relics that I was a racist and unsuitable for work on a site that might have black history.”

  “I know you’re not a racist but I thought there might be folks who would not understand what you did.”

  The Pastor interrupted, “I don’t understand how I can see Maggie as a racist if she is just being a good historian. Her job is to find the relics and describe them and preserve them. What was it, some kind of site for Confederate spies during the Civil War? Just because it’s not likely that I will be interested in the history of men who wanted to keep my family enslaved, doesn’t mean I don’t want her to do her job as best she can. It also doesn’t mean that I can’t respect her. I wanted her down here because of her reputation. I know she will do this job correctly and that she will fight to save anything that is significant, no matter what it is.”

  “You are thinking about my being politically correct, Frank, just like any modern college professor,” said Maggie.

  Frank smiled, “Pastor, I like the way you talk. I got to admit, I’m jealous of Maggie’s freedom to fight for good research.”

  “That’s why I’m a little worried about what you are going to do down here, Frank,” said the Pastor.

  “We’ll all do the right thing if we find anything.” He looked at the Pastor. “Jake seems to think you are kind of controversial too.”

  “We’re all controversial in one way or another.”

  The Pastor stood up and stretched. He had left his coffee on the ground near his pit and he reached for the cup. “Did you see the Terment monument out in the harbor?”

  “Jake showed it to me.”

  “Bet he did. There were all these newly freed black folks living in the town after the Civil War. Instead of giving them jobs building the monument, the jobs went to returned Confederate soldiers. The irony of it was that the Terments bet their plantation on the outcome of the war.”

  “Bet their plantation? You mean, Peachblossom?”

  “They got family members into high level positions in the Yankee government and army. After the Civil War was over, turned out the family members on the Northern side had title to all the land and wealth. They arranged transfers of the land back to the southern members of the family. The Terments never lost anything in that war.”

  “The money they had invested in slavery?”

  “They sold most all their slaves to cotton farmers down in Mississippi in the last five years before the war broke out. Like people sell out their shares before the stock market goes down, that’s all it meant to them folks.”

  “Jake is the last of one of the oldest families in this part of the United States.”

  “Yes. That he is. The Terments were here in the early days. Two brothers. One of them had the money and the other one worked for him. The one with the money, his name was Henry Terment, went back to England, got sick and died. The brother that was here, Richard Terment, the ancestor of Jake Terment and his father, was the sole heir and inherited the money. Then Richard started buying up all the land around River Sunday and on the island, all he could get his hands on. He was the colonel of a local militia, kind of a paid private army.” The Pastor smiled. “His money could not buy one thing though. Did you notice that the island is called Allingham Island?”

  “You’d think that it would be called Terment Island,” observed Frank.

  “That’s right, but
the Allingham family settled the island long before the Terments arrived. Then, the Allinghams died and left the island to their infant son. The Terment who inherited all his brother’s money, well, he somehow became the trustee for that Allingham infant. The child died and Richard Terment bought the Allingham property at auction. The Maryland colonial legislature investigated, it was so shady, but Terment bought them off. Turns out though that the colonial Maryland governor had more money and friends in England than Terment did. The governor wouldn’t let him change the name of the island. Terment got the land but didn’t get the name. It remained on the maps as Allingham Island. Terment owned all that land but he had to call the land by someone else’s name. Knowing the Terments as I do, that must have aggravated them over the years. Jake has a lot of that family allegiance. I think that’s why he named the new town Terment Town. Jake probably hopes that the place will become known under the town name and that will get rid of the island name forever. Then he will have accomplished something his ancestor couldn’t do. Hard to believe that today a man like Jake even cares about his heritage, but he does. Probably the only thing he cares about. Yessir, I made a life study of that family, so I know Terments.”

  “Your name is Allingham, Pastor,” said Maggie.

  “My great grandfather was freed in the will of a man named Allingham. He also was given a small farm. His name was Jefferson too. When he was a slave that was the only name he had. After he was free, he took the name of his former owner.”

  The Pastor smiled. “Of course, I don’t recollect any white Allinghams would own to being kin to that branch of their family.”

  Maggie walked over and looked down at where the Pastor was digging. She stepped down beside him and squatted, her bare feet backed into one corner of the small pit.

  “Pastor, I think you’ve found something.” She worked for a few minutes, switching from trowel to paint brush. Bones appeared in the soil.

  “Looks like the skeleton of a human adult. Frank, come take a look.” Together, they worked swiftly, methodically. The skeleton was on its side, the skull was pressed to the chest, knees up to the skull. There were small patches of faded but still discernible dark blue cloth still attached to the bones and in the soil.

  “A man. See the torso bones,” said Frank.

  “Likely Caucasian,” Maggie said. “The nose cavity. It’s hard to tell though. He may be a black man. Maybe one of your slave graves, Pastor.”

  “Yes,” said the Pastor, excitement in his voice.

  “There’s another thing, though, Pastor. If it’s a grave, especially African, there ought to be some jewelry, some food dishes even if there is no coffin.”

  “Yes, slave families buried their relatives that way.” Maggie added, “We know from some of the plantation sites that have been researched.”

  “What about this cloth?” asked Frank.

  “It’s a strong material, thick, like a woolen.”

  “Let me look closely here for a minute or so,” said Frank. Maggie moved up to the surface to give him more room. “Unfortunately,” he finally said, “the cloth and bones are located well above the strata associated with the ship.” Maggie looked where he was pointing. “Yes. I’m afraid, Pastor, this skeleton is from a later time period,” she affirmed.

  “There looks to be a small bit of metal here.” Frank brushed at the small glint in the soil.

  “A metal buckle. Belt buckle, I think. See, it’s near the torso, the waist area.”

  “There are letters on it.”

  “A “U” and an “S.” What do you make of it, Maggie?”

  “Military. A Federal soldier?” she suggested.

  “Strange place to find a Federal soldier. I don’t think there were any Civil War battles around River Sunday. The war was all fought to the south of here, across the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.”

  The Pastor smiled. “I got an idea who this was,” he said.

  Chapter 6