CHAPTER 21
In the dining room, Ginny braced her back against the table. The intermittent sounds of hammer and saw in the shop rang out into the dark. Ginny imagined Benjamin and his Lucian at work on the two coffins. She could almost hear the sizzle of great brown moths drawn to the light of their lanterns. The bodies lay side by side on wide planks atop the trestle table against which she leaned. She flapped open a pillowslip to wrap Hammond’s head. It proved too small. She lay it loose over his ruined face. As she pulled fresh sheets over the bodies, a slight sound in the hallway startled her.
Adeline appeared in the doorway.
“I must wash them,” Adeline said to no one in the room. She reached for the corner of the sheet, but Ginny caught her hand.
“You ain’t doing this, Miss Adeline.”
Adeline raised her head. “You forget yourself, Ginny.”
“I ain’t never forgot myself, Miss Adeline. But you ain’t doing this. You don’t need no more in your memory. It’s enough. I’m gone wash them like they was my own. You go on out of here now. You got tomorrow coming.”
Adeline’s tears came at last. Ginny guided her to bed, where she lay curled, face to the wall, her burned hand cupped in the other. Ginny loosened the dark, heavy hair, just graying, and smoothed it away from her face. Adeline relaxed her hands against her breast, and Ginny turned back toward the task of the night.
Ginny had prepared any number of bodies for burial, but none like these. Benjamin and Lucian had cut away the fouled clothing, but the odors of death—blood and urine and feces—assailed her and she gagged. For close on half an hour, Ginny sat motionless. Her nausea subsided. She could not wait any longer. Even in the chill of the night, the stiffness would soon set in. Ginny raised the pillowslip and washed what was left of Hammond’s beautiful face, his muscular body, and covered him with a fresh sheet.
On the other side of the table, Ginny held her breath. Heavy saliva and the bitter taste of bile filled her mouth. She sloshed her rag in the bucket, wrung it, and began to wash Charles’s body by feel, not looking at the rope-ruined face. When she was done patting the bodies dry, she took her bucket out back, flung the fouled water across the hard ground, and threw the washrag into the trash pit to be burned.
Back inside, Ginny struggled to maneuver fresh clothing onto the bodies. But the weight of death was more than she could manage. With Adeline’s scissors, she cut through the shirt collars, ripped the fabric down the center back, and slipped the stiffening arms into the sleeves. She slit the trousers and laid them over the bodies, tucking the raw edges underneath. Like making a bed, she thought. She could not cut the boots. She left them under the table. Ginny laid Adeline’s handkerchief, embroidered with violets, atop the pillowslip over Hammond’s face. No matter how she adjusted it, the neat blue-striped shirt collar failed to hide the bloody furrow on Charles’s neck, his face a strange dark hue, a bizarre almost black, blotched in a coagulated web of broken blood vessels. Ginny had never seen a white man lynched. She dropped the sheet onto the floor and padded away to her narrow room.
* * *
Bars of colorless late-morning sun slanted through the narrow pines. The coffins jolted in the wagon, banging against one another. Thomas Slate held the reins slack, hunched forward, making no effort to avoid the ruts. The meager procession of mourners followed on foot.
Behind the wagon, Adeline supported her bandaged left hand in her right, as the group trudged toward the graveyard. She carried nothing, no Bible, no prayer book. Steps behind her, Emily held the weight of her womb under her heavy skirts, her feet sluggish, dream-like. At the rear of the group, a fine cloud of red dust rose around Ginny’s dogged footsteps, made heavier by the weight of the little girl in her arms. Rosa Claire’s stockinged legs protruded from under the blue woolen shawl Ginny had wrapped around them both. She hummed, her dark hand stroking the girl’s pale curls. Ginny’s tears were silent.
The coarse cawing of a blackbird broke the air. The sky darkened with the harsh flapping of a hundred unexpected wings. No one raised an eye except the child. She rubbed her eyes and buried her startled face back into Ginny’s shoulder. The wagon turned from the uneven lane onto more level ground, punctuated by fallen leaves piled against an array of angled headstones and rough crosses.
“Whoa, you devils, whoa.” Slate’s snarl was broken by a rasping cough. His flick of the reins confused the horses. They halted, stamping and restless. The wagon lurched. Slate pulled on the reins. Behind him, only the horses caught a faint click from Adeline’s lips. They snorted and held.
“Goddamned, stupid beasts,” Slate muttered, as he slung himself from the wagon. He grasped at the footboard to maintain his balance. He cursed again and slapped his hat against his thigh, raising dust that brought on another bout of coughing. He hunkered against the spasm. The hat dangled at his knee. The women watched while Slate staggered upright. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and pulled the hat low on his head.
“Where’s them goddamn niggers?” he said, and coughed again.
Adeline gazed across the cemetery at the newly dug graves, two at hand and one far across the field.
“Benjamin is here,” she said.
The little group stood like that, huddled, yet each one alone, waiting. At the edge of the woods a twig snapped and Benjamin stepped out, tall and easy gaited, his skin glistening with sweat from digging, his white hair catching the sun. Lucian followed, a younger version of his father, though a shade lighter. Benjamin tugged at his beard and nodded to Adeline.
“Miss Adeline,” he said. Then again, “Miss Emily.” He nodded a second time.
Benjamin focused on the wagon, gauging its contents. He did not speak to Thomas Slate, but nodded. He did not remove his hat. As he reached to take hold of the ropes, the welted scars of two different brand marks showed on the backs of his wrists. Without warning, Slate’s sallow hand coiled around Benjamin’s wrist, while the other knocked Benjamin’s hat to the ground.
“Goddamned nigger,” he said. No one moved. Slate’s wracking cough crippled him again. Benjamin picked up his hat, dusted it off, and resumed his task, unwinding Slate’s inept knots, coiling the ropes in orderly piles.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” Benjamin’s voice was subdued and husky. He lifted a corner of the nearest coffin, testing its weight. “Lucian,” he said.
Adeline backed away, her bandaged hand on Emily’s arm. Lucian applied his shoulder to the coffin as Benjamin slid it from the wagon. Emily flinched at the raw scrape of wood on wood. Benjamin paused to assure himself his son was secure before readjusting the load. As the full weight of the coffin slipped free of the wagon, Lucian staggered, then righted himself. The two moved slowly toward the nearest open grave.
Slate, standing apart, coughed again as Benjamin and Lucian revolved in a strange dance beneath the coffin. In a singular movement, they shifted its burden from their backs and lowered the casket into a cradle of ropes secured by yellow pine stakes. The father and son stood back, their breath heavy, as Adeline guided Emily, stumbling and pale, into the space between the open graves. With the grace of habitual labor, the slaves anchored a rope cradle in the other grave. In minutes, the second casket lay in it, rocking. The two men stepped back.
Ginny readjusted Rosa Claire on her hip, put her hand on Emily’s elbow, nudged her mistress forward. Adeline looked back at her husband. He shook his head, his feet planted where he stood. She regarded the faces of the women near her.
“These were my sons,” she said. “I loved them.”
That was all.
Benjamin cleared his throat. Lucian loosed a coil of rope, holding it tight against the stake, its fibers cutting into his palms. Benjamin braced his outspread legs and together father and son coiled and uncoiled the ropes. The coffin descended in small jolts until it hit the earth below. When the second coffin lay in the earth, Benjamin straightened his back and waited.
Adeline filled her hand with dirt. She dropped most into Hammond’s grave, the remainder into Charles’s, brushing her hands against one another over his grave. The sound of the dirt falling onto his coffin was insignificant. Adeline nodded to Emily, took Rosa Claire from Ginny, and motioned across the field.
“Come on, Miss Emily,” said Ginny. “Let’s us go.”
Emily’s eyes were on the ground. The path round and among the headstones was a maze, and her feet caught on thick clumps of uncut grass. As she neared the other side of the cemetery, she raised her eyes and the assembly gathered there came into focus: numerous slaves, their faces familiar, some grim, some weeping openly; a band of people from the town, mostly business associates; and Preacher Morton, surrounded by a cadre of parishioners. Apart to one side, Michael Lambert removed his hat. Beside the grave lay an elegant oak casket.
One of the elderly slaves came to meet the two women. Emily concentrated on his leathery hand as Old Benton led her to the open casket. An irrational fear seized her that the heavy cover might suddenly fall shut. She did not stoop. Benton waited as she studied the face in the casket, the cheeks sunken in death and devoid of color.
Emily backed away, stumbling. Benton steadied her, then leaned forward to close the coffin. The ropes slid through the men’s hands as it lowered into the earth. The businessmen stood apart. No one from the church came near her, not even Preacher Morton. Emily nodded to the dark, familiar faces around her and turned away. Through her grief, she felt Michael Lambert’s gentle strength steadying her as he brought her back to the waiting women. Ginny followed.
“Mr. Lambert,” she heard Adeline say as they approached. “Yet again.”
Thomas Slate crouched retching at the far side of the wagon.