Blackman's Coffin (9 page)

“You can trust me,” Father added, giving back the storeowner his own words.

The man’s sallow face colored. “Ain’t that I don’t trust you. What if somebody else takes the gasoline?”

“Then you’re saying you’d rather me lose all my money?”

Father and Elijah had snared the man in his own words. He was either saying he couldn’t trust my father or he’d lied when he said no one would bother the cans.

Elijah jingled the coins in his pocket. “Mr. Youngblood, what if I paid this gentleman an extra nickel a gallon for his kindness. That way he’d have a dollar fifty instead of a dollar and a quarter. And I’d pay the extra nickel on any more gas we took from the second can, since it might be hard to measure it out proper.”

The storeowner eyed Elijah as if seeing him for the first time. It must have dawned on him that Elijah had paid for my candy and he had even more money to spend. “That’ll probably be all right.” He spit a stream of brown juice into a cup by the cash register. Then he chuckled. “Shoot fire, if I can’t trust an undertaker, who can I trust? You’d be the last man to let me down.” Then he laughed his head off with a high-pitched giggle.

Father joined in, even though he’d heard that joke a thousand times. Elijah gave me a wink as he slid his coins across the counter.

We drove from Westminster to Toccoa, Georgia and on through Cornelia and Baldwin. I’d never been to Georgia before and it didn’t look any different than South Carolina. As I bit into one of Miss Bessie’s peaches, I wondered if she’d been teasing me about them.

The closer we came to Gainesville the more hills we encountered. A couple times I had to grab onto the coffin’s ropes to keep from sliding. Elijah gave my father directions that became more descriptive—left at the split willow or right at the mossy rock. The last leg of the journey whittled down to not much more than a trail across a scruffy pasture. The only sign of civilization was a stone chimney, the relic of a cabin either burned or rotted down to the ground. Through the open hearse, I watched it grow smaller.

Then the hearse stopped and Father cut the engine. Out of the sudden stillness rose the gurgling of water. We were near a stream.

I grabbed my crutches for aid on the uneven terrain and found Father and Elijah standing in front of the hearse. Ahead, a small square of ground had been marked by a picket fence, long reduced to broken, faded slats. Four boulders, flattened and chiseled on one side, rose above the weeds. The headstones weren’t like the finely carved and polished monuments that Mr. Wolfe provided for my father’s customers, but out in this wild, unkempt place, they seemed appropriate. In the lower corner of the family plot, a mound of turned earth at least a yard high showed where Elijah’s Uncle Hannable would be buried. Beyond the far side of the fence, the land dropped off and I knew the stream ran at the bottom of the slope. Cattle must have grazed here at one time, roaming outside the graveyard’s perimeter and drinking freely from the water below.

I hobbled closer and looked over the fence down into the empty pit. “Mr. Elijah, who dug the grave?”

“Some of my cousin Bessie’s people came after I wired them about Hannable.”

I edged nearer to the rickety gate alongside the open hole. From the pile of dirt sprouted seedlings of broom straw and rabbit tobacco. Evidently, the mound had sat there some time and I wondered how long the body had been in Cincinnati. The coffin maker lacked carpentry skills but the embalming procedure must have been first rate. I’d smelled not a whiff of decomposition.

As if reading my mind, Elijah said, “Uncle Hannable languished for awhile. We knew his time was drawing nigh.”

Father unhitched the gate and stepped past the grave. “Are these your parents?” He knelt down to examine one of the hand-hewn stones.

“Yes. And my grandparents on my father’s side. Old Mr. McAlway owned this property and he’d owned my grandparents before the war. They were house servants in Atlanta and when Mr. McAlway had to give them their freedom, he gave them a piece of land so as they’d keep an eye on his hunting property. Mr. McAlway had planted grain here to lure in the quail so it was easy to convert it to farm pasture.”

Mr. Elijah walked over to the far stone. “We picked this spot to Granddaddy’s liking. He’d fish down in that stream. Taught me to catch trout. The gravesites are high enough to be clear of spring floods, and nobody bothers them back here.”

My father stood up and looked around. Overhead a hawk shrieked as it soared toward a copse of pines. “Are you the last of the line?”

“I’ve got a son in Chicago. Too far for him to help me. He told me he wants to come to Asheville when he’s earned enough money. But he doesn’t feel much connection to this place.”

“Your wife in Asheville?” Father asked.

“Sarah died in Chicago in 1902 when our boy was 17. I’d been down here working for Mr. Olmsted and I’d go north every winter when the ground froze up. I’d first worked for Mr. Olmsted when he was doing the Chicago World’s Fair. When he learned I was from around these parts, he wanted me to help with the Vanderbilt commission. That was in 1893.” Elijah shook his head. “Mr. Olmsted could look at a piece of land and see every plant, tree, and stream he would put there, whether it was one acre or a hundred thousand acres.”

“He put in streams?” Father asked.

“Diverted them. We changed the channel for the stream going into the Vanderbilt estate. Mr. Olmsted wanted the carriage road to go alongside it and put that natural feeling into the guests so they knew they were leaving the city behind.”

My father stood and moved to another stone. “Your parents came here with them?”

“No. Only after granddaddy died. I was twelve when they came to work the land. I spent five years here with no other company except nature and the school books my momma got from the county. She was stricter than any teacher would have been.”

“And then you moved to Chicago?” Father asked.

“I wanted to go someplace I could use my education. I met my wife in 1883 and we had a good life. But when Mr. Olmsted brought me back to the mountains, it was like my soul being rejoined to my body.” He took a deep breath. “Well, we’d best get that coffin in the ground. I want to find a stone for the head. Then I’ll be back someday to set a proper marker.”

Father positioned the hearse as close to the grave as possible. He and Elijah used the ropes to lower the coffin into the ground. The hole wasn’t as deep as some I’d seen.

Elijah shoveled the dirt on top of the lid with quick rhythmic strokes. In a short time, the grave was filled. He patted the earth into a rounded crest with the flat of the blade and then grabbed the pickax. “I’ll find a stone and then we can be on our way. Always good rocks in the stream.”

“Let me help you,” Father said, and he followed Elijah down the slope.

I sat beside a headstone, not wanting to be disrespectful by squatting on a grave. I brushed away a thin layer of moss. Crude letters had been notched into the rock: Annabelle Robertson—born 1823, died 1881. She would have been Elijah’s grandmother. Born a slave and died a free woman on her own piece of land. Without standing, I crawled to a second marker. Obadiah Robertson—born 1844, died 1902. Elijah’s father, also a slave.

I wondered how old Elijah was. The far grave must have been his grandfather’s. Elijah said his parents came here when his grandfather died. Elijah had been twelve. The same age as me. I read the stone. Malachi Robertson—born 1819, died 1875. Malachi, Obadiah, Elijah. A family of prophets. Elijah would have been born a slave in 1863. Even I could see that held no claim on his life. A slave was something somebody else made you, not who you really were. Mr. Elijah was wise. He had helped move streams. He had gotten the gasoline for our return home. He had saved my life.

Sunday, July 6th: I spent most of the day writing the entry for yesterday’s journey to Elijah’s property. Our return trip was uneventful and not worth recording, other than we got home at four in the morning and father excused me from attending church. Mr. Elijah slept on our porch again until a respectful hour when he could retrieve his mule from Mr. Galloway.

Mother fixed breakfast for all of us before she and my father left for the Sunday service. I was told to go back to bed, but I sat on the porch with Elijah and listened to his stories about the building of the Vanderbilt mansion. He spoke reverently of Mr. Olmsted, like we were having our own church service except Mr. Olmsted was the creator.

“As smart as that man was,” Elijah said, “he’d listen to my ideas. I liked geology, how the shape of the land comes from what’s under it. ‘Build your house upon a rock,’ the Good Book says. So I wanted to know where the best rock lay, and where the seams were if you had to split and move it. How the water would flow and what the streams can tell us about their source. The great flood back in 1916 should have come as no surprise. Earthen dams can’t hold the runoff from these mountains.”

Almost three years ago, July 16
^th
, Biltmore Village and the west side of Asheville had nearly been wiped out when two hurricanes moved through the mountains in less than a week. Two lakes burst upstream and the French Broad and Swannanoa turned deadly. I knew families whose farms had been destroyed and children drowned.

Mr. Elijah took his leave. The hour wasn’t quite eleven, but a decent enough time to call on Mr. Galloway.

I went back to bed and fell asleep. A noise at my open window awakened me. Mr. Elijah stood outside with his mule.

“Sorry to disturb you, Henderson. Mr. Galloway must have been at church, but I left him some money for his troubles. I couldn’t find Junebug’s pack, so I’d appreciate it if you or your father would ask about it if you see Mr. Galloway first.”

I promised to tell Father and said I’d be checking on my pony Brownie at the stable tomorrow.

Then Mr. Elijah said a strange thing. “It might be best if you and your father didn’t tell anyone where we went yesterday. Let that be our secret. Someday maybe I can reward you for your help if you come visit me in Georgia.”

“You’re moving?” I asked.

“I think the Lord is leading me there, Henderson. The time may be soon.” He doffed his leather hat and turned away.

Wednesday, July 9th: This evening Dr. Lynch came banging on our door during supper. He apologized to Mother for interrupting and then asked to speak to Father outside. Mother and I waited in the kitchen where she put on a pot of fresh coffee. The aroma had filled the room when Father returned. His face was gray as wood ash. Dr. Lynch followed.

“Would you like coffee?” Mother asked.

“Thank you, but no,” Dr. Lynch said. He looked to my father.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” Father said. “Dr. Lynch came to tell me that Elijah Robertson was pulled from the French Broad River this afternoon. He’s dead.”

My stomach knotted up. In my mind I saw Elijah at my window with Junebug. “No,” I blurted out. “That can’t be. He was too smart. He knew the river better than anybody.”

Dr. Lynch stepped forward. “Son, it’s hard for any of us to believe.” Again, he looked to my father, but my father only nodded.

“Elijah didn’t drown,” Dr. Lynch said. “He had been beaten.”

Mother gasped and collapsed on a chair at the table. Father came to her side. The air in the kitchen got heavy, almost smothering me. Tears blurred Dr. Lynch’s kind face and I felt his hand on my shoulder.

“I’ve reported the circumstances of his death to the sheriff and Asheville police chief. More importantly, I’ve told Mrs. Vanderbilt. She will make sure they look into it. She’s the one who asked me to fetch your father so we can prepare for the burial at Mt. Zion.”

I wiped my eyes. “Mr. Elijah wanted to go to Georgia. He told me.”

“Georgia?” Dr. Lynch turned to my father. “Is this true?”

“Yes. He has property there, but he’s very active at Mt. Zion, and maybe that would be—”

“No,” I interrupted. “He told me himself. The Lord was calling him. He should be buried there.”

“I’ll talk to Mrs. Vanderbilt,” Dr. Lynch said. “She offered to take care of expenses, but she thought he’d be interred in Asheville.”

“Elijah has a son,” Father said. “If Mrs. Vanderbilt has a way to reach him, then he can make the decision.”

Mother lifted her face from her hands. “We have our son because of Elijah. For God’s sake, take the man where he wanted to be.”

I knew Mother’s words touched Father’s heart. If Elijah’s son consented, we’d again make the trip to the graveyard by the stream.

And I remembered Elijah’s words: Tell no one where we went. I had just broken that promise.

Vocabulary and style getting away from him. Ask Harry about the mule.