A Cry of Angels (38 page)

The waiter led us through the dancers moving slowly among the wood supports that ran up to the heavy-beamed mill roof. At the tables around the main floor couples ate and laughed and held one another in the shadowy flicker of candles, soft in the mood of sex and food in the room where their ancestors had labored in slavery, lulled by the electric robot sitting in the corner, neon bubbles coursing its veins, singing in the voice of muddy waters.

We followed the young waiter up the stairs to the balcony, where he placed us at a table overlooking the river. The place was so warm the windows were left open, and a cold breeze mixed with the hot, rich odors that drifted up from the kitchen. We sat watching the dancers until the waiter returned with smoking plates of minced pork and french fries and passed around frozen mugs of root beer.

It was as though I had never tasted food before. We sat eating in perfect contentment.

Outside, the river trees shivered as a black wind brought a mist of sleet, the pellets shooting by the millions through the tavern-lit leaves to do a silvery dance among the darkened roots.

Pungent barbecue steamed into the air to mingle with our frozen breaths, washed down with burning swallows from the dark mugs numb in our hands. I looked up from the red candle flickering on the table.

"Merry Christmas," I said.

Em nodded and winked. "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," I said.

Tio, glassy-eyed, his mouth crammed full, lifted his battered hat. "Mnm-ynnuh," he said.

And it was. The best I could ever remember.

It was the first Saturday in the new year, Poncini Day, the official opening of the six-month-long centennial observance, and a thundering, hell-springing day in Quarrytown. Mayor Crawler had made a proclamation speech from the courthouse steps. Poncini Park, a network of sidewalks and benches crisscrossing two acres of azaleas behind Galaxy Plaza, had been dedicated.

The streets were jammed with people vying for bargains at the Poncini Day sales, people in newly sprouting beards, in derby hats and string ties and homemade grandma dresses; not altogether authentic maybe, but
Old Timey
.

A square dance was in progress in Allie Shafer's car lot, under a big banner proclaiming Centennial-Sell-Out-Time. Somehow a couple of the Cohen boys had just beat out the favored Amborsini twins in a Poncini Brothers look-alike contest on the square, and some perfectly authentic native tongue was flying among the older Italians.

The Jaycees sold hot dogs. The high-school band serenaded from the courthouse lawn. Buggies and wagons snarled downtown traffic.

A frightened horse bolted and ran in the front door of the Marble City Hotel, trapping the woman driver under the canopy. They finally had to unhitch the horse and lead him through the lobby and out the back and lifted the hysterical driver through a slit in the canvas.

On our way home, Em and I fell in with a crowd in back of the county library setting out to find the grave of Easter Robinson. Tad Breisner, the doctor's son, was there, along with a half-dozen other historians and archeologists from the university in Athens with their charts and documents, arguing and comparing records with members of the Pollard Historical Society and its visibly upset president, Odetta Woolsen, while the Presbyterian minister tried to placate them. Auxiliary ladies in heavy skirts passed out hot coffee and Tad Breisner's pamphlets.

Mrs. Woolsen had been upset ever since those pamphlets first appeared.

Easter Robinson, a "brass-ankle," half-Indian, half-Negro, was a tall, dashing figure and the center character in much of the foothills folklore. With a band of outlaws and army deserters he had pursued a lucrative career of plunder and murder back and forth across Georgia and South Carolina from 1854 until 1862, until he happened along up the Little Iron River and came to a mysterious end at Colonel David Johns's estate.

The official version of the cutthroat's demise, as set forth in the journal of the Reverend Josiah Whittier, the historical society's founder, held that Robinson had been shot by the valiant Mrs. Johns as he and his gang battered the door of the mansion in the colonel's absence. The historical society had enshrined Mrs. Johns's birthplace on the Atlanta highway and turned the mansion into the Martha Pickner Johns Memorial Library.

Now Tad Breisner had come along with his pamphlets, replete with laboriously detailed research, and even photostated copies of letters in Mrs. Johns's hand, giving horrifying credence for the first time to that other, darker version of the story.

That account, previously dismissed as salacious slave gossip, held that Robinson was, in fact, no stranger to the Johns residence during periods of the colonel's absence, and met his death climbing out of the upstairs bedroom window one night when one of the female servants, a new girl and unfamiliar with the custom of the place, brained him with a stick of stovewood. Mrs. Johns, the account went on, had Robinson buried in a Johns family vault below the slave quarters, and later had the errant girl flogged and sent to Savannah.

At any rate, notorious as he was, Easter Robinson had brought a glimmer of fame to Pollard County, and all sides were determined to resurrect and claim him during the centennial year. Tad Breisner, with his team of experts from the university and the services of surveyors and earth-moving equipment donated by the granite association, had sworn to bring him to light before the week was out. The assemblage set off from the rear of the mansion, following a dry creek bed through the fields toward the east end of the Johns property, drawing ever closer to the lip of the Ape Yard. Here the discussion grew heated indeed.

"This simply cannot be," said Mrs. Woolsen. "The easternmost boundary of the Johns estate followed the southerly turn of the creek. It's right here in Reverend Whittier's Journal." Mrs. Woolsen, having authored two books on Pollard County history herself, was not accustomed to having her sources questioned.

Tad Breisner tapped a roll of Xeroxed maps. "These plates are from the capital archives, and they coincide perfectly with the courthouse records. It must be remembered that Reverend Whittier chronicled more from popular belief than fact, and his tracts were appended to a historical account drawn a good deal from memory late in life." He opened a leather-bound tome on his knee. "Now, the one point on which all sources agree is that Robinson was buried below the slave quarters, by the creek that, in its southeasterly turn, formed the northeast corner of the Johns property. But since we're fairly sure of the boundary markers at the front of the estate, it's back here that the total acreage is being short-changed. And it's this creek bed that's causing the problem. Now, what everybody's failed to take into account is that on a plateau like this, a shallow creek tends to meander to a considerable extent. And in the past hundred years, this creek did in fact cut over and join Twig Creek, cutting short the Johns property. But before the construction in the hollow, it flowed along this depression a couple of hundred yards farther northeast before it turned. Let's proceed on that assumption for the time being at least." And off they trekked again, the men shedding their frock coats in the bright afternoon sunshine, the ladies snatching their dresses through the briars. Em shared his hip pint with a perspiring bulldozer operator and made a friend who gave us a ride.

No little curiosity was aroused in the Ape Yard by the procession marching down the slopes, and soon its number was enlarged by several dozen black faces as it filed along the hillside shacks. "It cannot be," protested Mrs. Woolsen, "it simply cannot be here!" When we reached the last surveyor's pole, Tad Breisner called a halt. We were on the weedy apron of eroded land directly between the garage and Mr. Teague's grocery.

Tio came skipping across the rocks. "What's happenin', man?"

"Easter Robinson's grave, it's right around here somewhere!"

"Shoooeeeee!" Tio said. We had played Easter Robinson all up and down those hills.

There was a conference among the Athenians; a consultation of maps, comparison of figures and notation of topography, and a final stretching of tapes. At last Tad Breisner stepped forth and pointed to a rectangle cornered by stakes. "It is the opinion of my colleagues and myself that the grave is within that perimeter. Dr. Spetchen here estimates a ten- to twelve-foot overburden accumulation due to erosion since that time, which would have covered many topographical features and altered bench marks, of course, but we are all agreed that this was the former bed of the creek. That being true, and all other calculations being correct, this should be the true northeast corner shown on the original deed."

This announcement was met with great excitement by the crowd, which by this time had grown to at least a hundred. Mayor Crowler wanted to know whose property it was that held this singular honor. Somebody called out that it was Mr. Teague's.

"No it ain't," said Mr. Teague from the other side of the creek, "my property stops right here. That used to belong to the Cahills. I don't know . . ."

"It's mine," said a voice, and Doc Harley Bobo stepped through the crowd. "I purchased it when Mrs. Cahill left town."

Em smiled down at me. "Meet your new landlord . . . Mr. No Face."

Mayor Crowler explained the mission of the expedition and asked permission to dig for remains, laying on heavily for civic pride and historical significance.

Tad Breisner explained, "Being pressed for time and funds, our plan is to do a quick excavation and sift for artifacts. I have good reason to believe," and here he slipped a glance at Mrs. Woolsen, "that he was buried in a vault. If not, this clay may have preserved some of the bones, or at any rate there may be a sword, pistol, buckle or some other article of hardware."

"Hey, Doc," called Mr. Teague, "you ain't gonna let 'em set up no toll-payin' shrine back here, are you?"

"Oh, good heavens, no," said Mrs. Woolsen, eyeing the black children crowding dangerously close to her skirts. "The remains would be placed in the county museum."

Doc Bobo, hat in hand, smiling broadly as Flake Webster roved about with his camera, said, "It would be my honor to have you dig here. In fact, if you could use some additional help . . ."

Tad Breisner gave the signal and the bulldozers dropped their blades and began rolling up topsoil.

"Just see they fill every shovelful back in," said Mr. Teague, turning back for the store. "This county's too full of holes as it is."

Work commenced through the afternoon, the dozers scraping up soil for a front-end loader, which in turn dumped it through a slanted iron framework to separate out rocks and break up larger chunks of clay; and from there, the cloddy earth was shoveled through wire screens to be raked and sifted by hand.

By sundown, when Tad Breisner called a halt for the day, the excavation had produced a rusted roll of wire, a hubcap, several fence posts, and a basket full of broken jars, but no sign of Easter Robinson. When work resumed the following morning, the lemonade ladies didn't return, nor did Mrs. Woolsen. Em Jojohn displayed a similar lack of interest, much to the regret of the equipment operators who kept asking about him. The Ape Yard children were there in full force, much to the aggrievement of Tad, who had spent the preceding day passing judgment on whether each of the dozens of peculiar stones they found was or was not an arrowhead.

Shortly after noon there was a commotion in the pit.

The bulldozers were down about twenty feet and could go no deeper. What had at first been thought to be a slab, or a fragment of a shelf, continued to grow larger as more dozers came to push earth away. The tracks slipped across a floor of solid rock.

Pink rock, sparkling and glistening in the sun.

Mr. Thurston, of Blue Light Monuments, climbed down to inspect it. "It's marble, all right!" he said excitedly. "Push out a little more there!" The dozers moved back in, racking and spinning until an area of several hundred feet lay exposed. Other granite men came down.

"The finest grade of pink marble I've seen in this part of the country," said Wilbur Taylor of the Three Angels sheds. "Wouldn't expect to see that kind of stuff this side of Salisbury."

"Could be just a shelf," said another.

"Well, sure, you'd need a core sample," said Mr. Thurston, "but look"—he waved a hand over the rose expanse—"you ever see a surface that big with as few flaws?"

The men shook their heads in admission that they hadn't.

"Hey! Over here—over here!" A bulldozer operator in the north corner of the excavation was standing up, waving his arms. He pointed to a large block of earth, which at first glance looked like a clay-caked boulder, tilted on the corner of his blade. The Athenians fell over each other getting to it and dropped to their knees, clawing at it with eager fingers.

A rusted metal corner appeared through the clay. "Hold it," cried Tad Breisner. He ordered everyone away and with the help of Dr. Spetchen and a couple of their colleagues carefully wrapped the entire block in protective tarpaulins. A truck was hastily summoned, it was lifted aboard, and they rode with it up the hollow, shouting caution to the driver, hugging their find.

Word came back a few days later, in a front-page article in the
Star
. It was Robinson's remains, all right, those of a large person, measuring to a height of six-feet-four, with a fractured skull, and they were encased in a heavy bronze vault bearing the Johns family coat-of-arms.

Odetta Woolsen was not available for comment, but within a week the historical society had withdrawn its fund for the support and maintenance of Martha Johns's birthplace, and a petition was before the county commission to change the name of the county library.

Tio walked back and forth, calculating. Em and I sat shelling peanuts, watching him deliberate. The principle was sound, we all agreed on that. By rights the automatic potato bin should work like a charm.

The manager of the Valley Farm store had grown so accustomed to seeing Tio hanging around studying his operations that he took the boy aside to give him advice from time to time. Always keeping your shelves and bins stocked was basic, he said; customers never liked to buy the last few items of anything. In shoe stores, he pointed out, didn't they always bring you shoes to try on from somewhere in the back? It was because that vast display you saw along the walls was mostly empty boxes!