Ghosts of Graveyards Past (6 page)

As he turned it towards the light, something stirred faintly in his memory. Had he seen the combination somewhere before? In a book or photograph, maybe a newspaper clipping from his former employer's records.

He shook his head. It was useless to try and remember. Especially when it might be a false memory or just a design that was somewhat similar. The moon was a common enough pattern to see, along with the stars and sun and other celestial wonders.

Pinning the sketch to the cork board, he watched it flutter in the breeze from the open window. His thoughts wandered again to the woman with the green eyes who pleaded for his advice, his help, really. And he had sent her away with a piece of knowledge she could have obtained from a simple Internet search.

A fresh wave of guilt coursed through him, a sense of regret for treating her request so lightly. If he wasn't knee deep in this current project, or overwhelmed by one of his bouts of weariness, he might have offered to go with her and view the site. It was the sort of thing a person in his line of work would do, something she clearly expected when she showed up this morning.

Well, she would find another source of information. Someone capable of the energy and enthusiasm required for resurrecting a forgotten cemetery. That was what he told himself, anyway, as he turned back to the unfinished stone on the work bench.

 

 

 

 

6

 

Sunlight filtered through the stained glass window, throwing patches of color across the documents Jenna studied. The window's design, an elaborate piecing of violets on a hillside, seemed too vibrant for the musty-smelling historical society.

The manager had sent her upstairs after checking the list of names from the cemetery against a computer database. “You're looking for a part of our collection that spans the 1860s. Most of these artifacts are extremely fragile, so I'm afraid no photo copies or scans will be possible.”

“What about a checkout policy?” Jenna asked.

“I'm afraid we don't have one,” he admitted. “All research takes place on site.”

He scribbled down the shelf's location number. “It's the first door on the second story. Ask one of the volunteers to retrieve the items and a pair of gloves for handling them.”

This request earned her a blank look from the two university students sorting boxes upstairs. The girl, whose nametag identified her as Paige, was perched atop a ladder, her gloved hands easing a garment box back in its place. A boy with spiky brown hair lounged on a stool down below, his fingers scrolling through something on a cellphone.

Neither was happy to see her, though the girl did a better job of hiding it. Pulling earbuds free, she hopped down from the ladder and rolled it towards another aisle in the back. “Here for the festival?” she asked Jenna as she glanced over the labels on the requested items.

“Sort of. That is, I'll definitely be attending. This is everything?” Jenna shifted her weight beneath the armful of notebooks and documents handed down, hearing the disappointment in her question. Somehow, she expected a town this obsessed with its Civil War past to be overrun with priceless relics. Hadn't the clerk at the hotel mentioned a museum being open at one time?

“There's some uniforms and revolvers and stuff. But the festival workers will be using those for displays this weekend.”

“No more papers, though,” Jenna said.

“I think there used to be more,” the girl replied. “Documents down at the courthouse, but most of it was damaged in the fire. The same one that burned the museum.”

“Of course,” Jenna said. With a sigh, she spread the contents over a nearby table, as the volunteer disappeared into the rows of shelves once more.

There was an album of tintype photographs, most taken of town businesses and landmarks that she suspected no longer existed. She glanced over sepia images of a dry goods store, a post office, and many more buildings that were not as readily identifiable.

A snort of laughter echoed from among the shelves, followed by a shushing sound.

Jenna glanced up, a frown tugging her mouth. In truth, it wasn't the students' hushed chatter that distracted her but something else. Something she was almost ashamed of, given the circumstances.

Her encounter with the stone carver had left her feeling restless. Seeing him up close, catching hold of his guarded expression…there was a sadness behind it she wanted to understand. His manner, though awkward at times, had seemed to pull her towards him, like the force from an invisible string.

“He's a little different, isn't he?” Those were the words of the county clerk she had phoned to report the cemetery's neglected state. A reference to the stone carver had prompted a tsking sound. “Almost never leaves his shop, or has visitors. Sad, especially when you consider he's still young.”

“What about his family?” Jenna asked, remembering the mention of a wife.

“He's alone, as far as I know,” the woman replied.

A call on another line had prevented further speculation, leaving Jenna to wonder even more about the craftsman's strange habits and her own fascination for someone she had only just met that morning.

Yes, he was good-looking—almost in a haunting way, if she could bring herself to use such romanticized language. But the pull she felt was something deeper than a chemical reaction. More like the same urgency that drove her to uncover the cemetery, as if she hoped to piece his secret self together the way she did the bits of jagged stone.

But why? He hadn't shown any enthusiasm for the recovered headstones. Which made her think his skill was for business reasons only and not enough to make him feel a connection to the lost and damaged monuments.

So that was that—best to forget the whole thing, and cross him off her list for potential research sources. Her agent would be disappointed, but hopefully something else would turn up to make the graveyard come alive, so to speak. One of the objects on this table, perhaps.

Placing aside the collection of tin types, she reached for a stack of documents grown brown and crumbly with age beneath their plastic shields. Most were newspaper fragments, articles with topics that ranged from the war to the weather. No obituaries or marriage announcements, though, to her great disappointment.

The bottom of the stack contained papers salvaged from the museum rubble. Among them, sheets of stationary, penned with a feminine script. Singed in places and too fragile to touch, they had been labeled as ”Two Letters to Soldier from Sister.” The dates were from 1862, making her bend closer for a look at the contents.

 

My Dear Brother,

 

I pray this letter finds you, and all from your camp, in good health and spirits. The training sessions you described sound most arduous, though you seem to be managing them well. I know you are eager for marching orders, but I cannot help hoping it is still some time before that day occurs.

You would laugh, Henry, to think how often I worry about your uniform. My poor sewing skills were all that could be found, with both Mama and Granny Clare suffering rheumatism of the fingers. I fear my fortune will never be made by the needle, though, and once dreamed that all the stitches began to burst, leaving you as raggedy as the toy soldier doll you played with as a boy.

Do you remember the time his poor jacket was torn by the dog? It was I who sewed it up back then, and what a mess my clumsy fingers made of it! Poor little Jack (for I believe that is what you called him) was nothing but a mass of frayed threads around the arms and shoulders. I would hate to think your own coat should suffer such a tragedy, so please put my mind at ease by writing that it is quite sturdy thus far.

I can scarcely believe you have been gone from us these many weeks. Sometimes, I will hear a sound from your old room—some faint creaking as the doctor arranges a trunk or medicine cabinet say—and for a moment, I will think it is you. How strange the mind is to play such tricks on the heart!

 

Forgetting that she came only for documents that matched names from the cemetery, Jenna let herself sink into the letter writer's old-fashioned narrative. Her gaze following the curve of the script to another place and time, where a young woman composed her thoughts to a brother called away to battle.

 



 

Nell Darrow was almost twenty when the war that tore the states apart finally made its way to Sylvan Spring.

It came in the form of a newspaper advertisement. Her brother, Henry, folding back the
County Times,
showed her where a recruitment meeting was being held two towns over, a call for all able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five to pledge their service to God and homeland.

“You won't be eighteen ‘til March.” Nell's voice held a note of panic, her hands buried inside the dough she was kneading for that night's dinner. The worried remark had earned her a sigh of exasperation from the youth who shared her suntanned complexion and tawny-colored hair.

“Yes, but
they
won't know that,” he said. “All they're looking for is someone to handle a rifle and pull their weight on the trail.” He spoke matter-of-factly, though neither of them knew anyone from the soldier camps. Until recently, the war had been just a rumor, a story brought by the tradesman passing through from other territories.

“What will Papa say?” she asked, knowing full well he would tell the boy to do as he wished. That was the luxury of a blacksmith, whose harvest was small and livestock holdings even smaller. Her father could spare a son's help easier than his neighbors, whose crops and cattle were a livelihood that demanded the strength of youth to run smoothly.

Later, she had watched as Henry squeezed into a cart with six other boys. Others from the town were riding horses and taking turns with those who traveled on foot for lack of better options. All were laughing as they sang snatches of a war song she had heard played at the last community dance. As if they were going off to a picnic, she thought, heart sinking with the carefree sounds.

It was her small hands that sewed his uniform a week later, and pieced together a kepi hat in the fashion of Johnny Reb from the newspaper cartoons. She stitched the brass buttons in place with a mixture of pride and nervousness, the idea it might become his burial garb causing her needle to slip more than it normally would, pricking little dots of blood along her fingers.

She cried when he tried it on for size and then again when he packed it inside a haversack with his other scant belongings. Squeezing her arm reassuringly, he said, “It's not as if I wouldn't have gone eventually. This way it will be over and done with. Besides,” he added, “the war can hardly last much longer. Everyone says as much. I want my part of the fuss before it's over.”

Glory, excitement, adventure—these were things enrollment in the Confederacy promised to bring. Compared to this, Sylvan Spring was just a sprinkle of homesteads along a wooded stream, gradually expanding to include a church and school, a post office and general store. The blacksmith's stand and mercantile shop were the last obvious signs of civilization before dirt lanes gave way to fields of cotton and corn, a few farmhouses visible here and there to break apart the acres of crops.

Planting and gathering the harvest was the main past time of the local youth, even more so than the subjects taught in their one-room schoolhouse. Perhaps this was why so many of them chose to don the uniform of a private. Boys who once used rifles for hunting wild game talked excitedly of driving Yanks from their native territory. Others spoke of marching into places they had only seen on the pages of a school atlas, tracing the battle sites they read about in the newspapers with a sense of awe.

Wives and sweethearts were left to worry and to send their love in letters to the camp where newly signed soldiers underwent training. Nell had only her brother to write to, her heart unsought by any among their small community. Which wasn't to say it had no secret admiration of its own—for Nell was hard-pressed to conceal her girlhood crush, now turned to something deeper with the passage of time.

The object of this quiet affection had not been among the figures she saw bound for the recruitment meeting that day. Instead, he fought a different kind of battle, one he seemed to be losing as the days slipped by.

 

Our friend, Arthur, does no better since you left. The sickness that came upon him these past weeks refuses still to leave, a remitting fever as many says it must be. I see little of him in the family's fields, and last week he did not attend church, which ought to tell you how severe he suffers with it. Such attacks leave him no choice, though he says nothing will stop him from being among you all when marching orders are finally given.

 

Dark, serious Arthur. His face flashed before her with astonishing clarity, causing her to break partway through her narrative. Those features, still so boyish, yet full of understanding, were as familiar as her own shabby reflection in the mirror.

She knew them from years of glances stolen across a schoolhouse aisle, where Arthur's head was always more inclined to the lesson than those of his friends. The same was true in church. When others had passed tic-tac-toe on scraps of paper or hid magazine stories between the pages of a Bible, always, he kept his eye upon the pulpit, an action that Nell would try to mimic, as thoughts of him drew her away from the sermon.

He was handsome, but not with the bold air that made his friend Wray Camden such a favorite among the local girls and envious boys. The two were inseparable and the natural leaders for the group of boys who trailed through the woods after school each day.

Eight year-old Nell would try to tag along after them, bare feet and braids getting caught in the thick foliage that grew among the woods.

“Go on,” called the oldest Stroud boy, as he spotted her in the thicket. “Leave us be, why don't you?” He was perched on a log above the spring, where the youth had been daring each other to walk a balancing act.