Slave Graves

by Thomas Hollyday

Then, the morning silence was broken with the grinding clatter of the large yellow bulldozer as its diesel engine started up and signaled the beginning of the challenge. Frank watched as choking puffs of black diesel smoke infiltrated the green leaves of the trees around the tractor. Then the operator straddled the driver’s seat and the big machine made the soil tremble, sending ripples into even the small pools of water in the pit.

  The tractor did not come towards the site. Instead the driver turned the machine and began smashing the small trees and bushes, twisting and tearing from where it had rested. He drove across the lawn towards the blackened farmhouse ruin.

  The operator, his face intent, directed this noisy rampage, a precise, non-feeling, non-emotional, non-caring charge. With a few twists of his fingers on the steering arms, he shifted and adjusted the tractor’s direction until the machine crawled steadily toward the house, some of its beams already shaking from the tremors in the land. Mice and other small animals appeared standing up from the grass, looking quickly and fleeing before those great metal tracks and the acrid smoke.

  “He’s going to start out by pushing the rest of the house down,” said Frank.

  “He’s smart. He’ll use the wreckage of the house to fill in our ship excavation,” said Maggie.

  Like many of the rural structures around the River Sunday area, the farmhouse had been constructed without a basement or cellar of any kind. Instead it stood on piers of brick which in turn supported the massive corner posts and joists of the house. Under this platform there was a space a few feet high running back under the house. This filthy place had been filled with dust and dirt and probably decades of noisy play by happy children.

  The stories were still there but were hidden in rubble. Beneath blackened timbers were shreds of generations of children searching out their fantasies, the tracks of their bare feet once imprinted in this haven from the sun, in this shelter from the afternoon thunderstorms. In the dust were countless tales of games of hide and seek, of cowboys and Indians, of Confederates and Yankees. Other footprints told of chickens or pigs let loose in the yard to forage endlessly and to hide under the house until their true dinner was cast outside for them. Still other shreds told the saga of the foxes and raccoons smelling the chicken tracks and searching for their own food, the eggs. This old space was a simple library of the history of the creatures that used its space. All this repository was converted to black ash, the brick piers barely extending above the collapse, weak from the intense flames of last night’s instant. These weak piles and the strength of the history could offer no resistance to the steel blade of the bulldozer.

  The bulldozer operator, guiding the machine along the side of the farmhouse, had reached the opposite side. He turned the machine again, shifted the great tractor transmission and inched his machine backwards away from the house, the huge tracks crushing a small shed overgrown with vines that had been a hundred feet or so behind the farmhouse. A small section of chicken wire fence attached itself to the steel track of the machine and refused to fall off, entwining its tiny wires tighter and tighter on the track sections. The operator lowered the big blade until it was a few inches above the surface of the yard. Then, with an impassive face, he shifted and inched the machine forward, its crushing tracks moving directly at the house.

  Frank watched the man’s face and saw that even with all the power at his disposal, the operator was being careful as he approached the structure. His maneuvering was calculated because the structure was very weak and could collapse at any moment. He directed the machine forward until the bottom of the steel blade just touched the closest corner post. Even touching it made the remains of the house sway slightly with a rain of black ash falling towards the ground and causing a mushroom of dead smoke to rise. If the bulldozer operator miscalculated the blade might break the corner post and travel under the second floor. Then the remains of the second floor and roof might topple directly down on the tractor, burying the operator in broken wood and plaster.

  The operator backed away and then slowly approached the corner post again. This time he brought his blade in at a lower angle. The wreck of the house swayed menacingly towards the tractor. He backed off again and after moving a few more feet from the back of the house, shut down the machine’s engine and climbed down.

  Another car had joined the operator’s truck parked in the field.

  “Buddy,” an older man dressed in blue overalls yelled at the operator and he climbed out of his car. This man walked up to the bulldozer while the operator was shutting off its engine. The new arrival moved his arms wildly as he talked to the first man. Then the operator, Buddy, with a nervous face, slowly climbed back into the bulldozer. He started up the engine and allowed the machine to travel forward again towards the post. The blade, traveling a few feet off the ground hit the corner post and this time the operator did not slow the machine down.The corner post cracked and broke in half, the top part moving inward and the floor above leaning toward the bulldozer with a shrieking sound. Buddy, his face frigid with fear reached for the lever that raised the blade and the blade began to move up slowly, counteracting the downward shift of the house. At that moment the structure reversed its slide at the bulldozer and shifted quickly and harshly in the other direction, snapping the remaining corner posts and throwing pieces of plumbing pipe and sections of plaster through the air as the building let loose a final spring of energy and collapsed.

  Frank could barely see the operator. Only his head showed over the trash even though Buddy was forced to stand up on his small driver’s seat in order to see ahead. The diesel speeded and the bulldozer moved quickly into the remnants of the house, its tracks crushing the few studs that were still erect As the bulldozer reached the other side of the wrecked house the timbers and electrical wiring and plaster had combined into a large roll of trash, the roll almost as high as the roof gutter of the original house and the circumference a good sixty to seventy feet. The roll moved ahead with a crunching tearing sound.

  “Oh, my God,” said Maggie.

  She had been right. Buddy would fill the site with the wreckage of the house. The roll was coming directly towards Frank and Maggie. Suddenly though, Buddy stopped the machine’s tracks, its engine still idling. He climbed down and walked towards Frank and Maggie, his eyes on the ground. The man walked in front of the roll of broken timbers that towered over him by at least ten feet. He held up his arm to shield himself, as from its top small bits of soil and shingles tumbled from time to time like drops after a terrific rainstorm, bouncing from broken boards to pipes on their way down to the mud.

  He did not look at the two archeologists several hundred feet in front of him. In a moment Buddy had reached one of the few remaining patched of green grass. He stooped to pick a tiny blue blossom that had survived the crushing of the heavy fire truck tires the night before. Frank could barely hear his voice against the purring of the diesel.

  “My wife’s favorite color,” he yelled back to the other man, holding the flower up. “Thought I’d save it for her.”

  Immediately behind where Frank and Maggie were standing was the remains of the test pit H. This was the bow spot where the Pastor had found the skeletons that they thought were the crew. A few feet in front of that spot was the frame section that the bulldozer had originally uncovered which had been the start of the whole project. The crowd the previous night had not walked near this up thrust piece of timber. It was untouched by the beer cans and the other trash. Even the ground near it was not marked with footprints.

  Frank moved towards the bulldozer, the sifting pile in front of him. Maggie was beside him. The bulldozer noise was deafening. Maggie climbed upon the small sifting pile hill.

  “Is this what soldiers do, Frank?”

  He nodded and joined her. “Except that in the war we’d have killed that driver right away. Funny how you think you’ve forgotten how to kill but then you realize you can’t forget. You see something crude, hateful and dangerous like that bu
lldozer and you remember.”

  For a moment Frank gaped at the big machine, his eyes open but dull. He rubbed his neck. Maggie stood there on the small mud hill, her stance daring the opposition to attack. Frank was less jaunty. He was like a reenlisted soldier, still adjusting his posture, slowly remembering how to march, but knowing from experience what danger they were in.

  The two of them from time to time glanced behind them at the entrance road. They still had hope that the Pastor could bring his demonstrators, whatever few persons he could convince to come to this isolated spot, to be voices to hold Jake and the bulldozer back with their pleas.

  Frank’s mind searched for some answer, some way to make the peace. He and Maggie both knew that they were in a hopeless position, one which they would have to leave momentarily, whether bravely or cowardly, unless they wanted to be killed, crushed by the great roll of steel and wood in front of them.

  Police cars wailed from the road. These cars were closely followed by a green stationwagon. The cars bounced on the ruts at they entered the yard at high speed, then braked suddenly and parked near the vehicles of the bulldozer operator and his boss.

  Both black and white officers hurried out of each car. They assembled in a small group, ten in all, and their leader, Billy, ordered them to stand near where the bulldozer was idling. Then from the green car Jake stepped out with Spyder behind him. Jake placed his feet carefully, looking at the ground as he walked toward the bulldozer. He was dressed in another white silk suit and walked deftly so that the suit and his well shined shoes would not be covered with the mud and black ash that was everywhere. He stopped for a moment and stared at the excavation, then continued on. He ignored Frank and Maggie, passing beside them by fifty feet, his face directed forward as in a trance.

  When he reached the tractor he talked for a moment with the chief and then with the bulldozer workmen. He had the same smile he showed Frank that first day. He waved at the tractor operator who waved back. The operator held up the small blue flower and Jake nodded.

  The operator eased the clutch and increased the throttle. The tractor engine speeded up and began again to push the great roll of debris forward. Jake turned his face toward Frank. He stared at him and Maggie, then shook his head and put his arm on the shoulder of the chief. The police did not move toward Frank and Maggie but appeared ready to do so at Jake’s command.

  The mass of wreckage rolled closer. Frank glanced at Buddy’s face a tiny orb above the heavy roll of broken wood and plaster that was tumbling toward the two of them. The face of the driver was impassive, the only emotion it had shown so far was this procurement of a flower.

  Maggie was shaking but she was resolute in her stance. Frank watched her, the way he would have watched his fellow soldiers in Nam, the way they had watched him, each to see if the other would run. Her face showed non-belief, as if she could not grasp that she had become a soldier. Like Frank, who understood her feelings and pressed her hand to let her know he was with her, the two of them desired most at this moment to be left to be archeologists again. Yet both knew they would not run, they were here, they knew they had to be here, and they knew they had to stop Jake somehow.

  Frank watched the puzzlement with Maggie on Jake’s face, knowing that he was not seeing a woman, just an impediment, a low level civil servant. Seeing her ready to fight him confused him. When he met Frank’s eyes, his face changed as if Frank was more his equal, as if he were more experienced in fighting against other men. With Frank, however, his face showed another kind of puzzlement, perhaps one of not understanding why Frank wasn’t beside him, as if Frank should be working on the final report, encouraging the bulldozer’s progress, continuing his upward bound professional growth as a young professor. Jake had brought Frank into the project and could not understand why his carefully selected appointee had rebelled and was standing on a little hill about to be totally destroyed.

  The police shifted their feet, some of the officers seemingly restless with their assignment. Frank and Maggie continued to cheer each other to appear brave. Jake smiled and motioned to Buddy to speed up the machine. The juggernaut moved more quickly, the crackling rolling thing of twisted sharp metal and wreckage, tumbling, lurching, smashing toward the two archeologists and their bare skin.

  About a hundred feet from the hill, a can of bright red paint appeared at the top of the roll, once probably stored in some remote cupboard in the old house, and strangely unexploded from the intense heat of the night before. It tumbled in the wire and branches and suddenly burst open with a popping sound just at the top of the roll. Frank watched as the roll turned forward and the paint dribbled from the bent container. It ran down over the various pieces of blackened wood like blood and dripped on the tiny bits of green grass still left on the old lawn.

  Then the operator stopped the engine, quiet returning to the marsh again. Jake rushed over, his arm waving in surprise. Buddy climbed down, his boots clumping on the steel of the bulldozer frame. He inspected the engine and shook his head. Then he pulled some tools from a metal box on the running board of the great tractor and began to disassemble a part of the engine. Jake stamped back and forth, his hands on his hips.

  Frank listened to the clanking of the wrenches, dreading the end of that noise. He reached for Maggie’s hand and together they waited for the inevitable.

  Chapter 21