Burial Ground (13 page)

I saw her stiffen and knew I scored. “Most of ’em wish they didn’t have to fool with us at all, because we’re just part of a federal permitting process they see as a burden. But if they
have
to deal with us, they want only a few things: They want us to be cheap, they want us to be fast, and they want us to make the bureaucrats who review their applications happy. Most of our clients would level the Great Pyramid if they wanted to build a shopping mall there. So we go out and bake our brains in the sun and stumble through briar patches and when we come out some desk jockey at the Corps of Engineers wants to know if we did a shovel test in a place where there’s three feet of water, or they want to know why we didn’t use a screen when we’re in solid clay. Nobody’s ever retired from this field, because it’s too new, but a lot have dropped out along the way, or given up in disgust, or just plain gone bankrupt.”

She stared at me for a long time, and I wasn’t sure what effect my lecture had had. Then she said quietly:

“I don’t intend to fail. I
can’t
fail.” For an instant I saw her without the veneer of self-confidence, almost, well,
vulnerable
.

“As for Panama Jack—” she began, but I cut her off.

“I take it back.” I looked at the photograph on her wall and realized that one of the diggers in the picture was the woman in the room with me, three or four years younger, perhaps, and with dirt on her face. “But you have to realize it doesn’t go over so well when somebody starts trying to appropriate somebody else’s project.”

“I told you, I’m not trying to appropriate anything. I was just doing research.” She put her hands on her hips. “I was trying to help.”

I shook my head, not sure if any of this was getting through. “If you’d called me first …”

And to my surprise, she nodded. “Yes. You’re right. I should have. I got carried away.” Her turn to shrug. “It’s always been a problem with me: too much enthusiasm.”

“Well, it’s better than not giving a damn, I guess.”

I turned around and started out. I’d gotten midway through the front office when she called after me:

“What now?”

“I dunno. Play it by ear, I guess.” I turned partway round to face her. “Look, I’ll give you a call.”

“Sure,” she said. “Look, if this is a kiss-off, I’d rather you just said it.”

“It’s not a kiss-off,” I said. “I just have to think.”

She nodded, unconvinced. “I’ll be here,” she said. “But I want you to get one thing straight.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never gotten my field clothes from Panama Jack.”

T
WELVE

I woke up late Wednesday morning. When I looked in the mirror I saw scratches on my arms and face, and hollows under my eyes. I was getting too old for this work, but I wasn’t sure what happened to old contract archaeologists. Maybe, I thought, they got catalogued and stuck away on some museum shelf. More likely they just died in the woods and were left for the carrion eaters. Or … Digger poked with a cold snout, telling me to stop indulging myself when he still hadn’t been fed.

“It’s easy for you,” I said, remembering the times I’d taken him out to the country and he’d bounded straight for the worst thicket.

I checked in at the office and was happy to find there was no crisis and that Willie’s check had been honored, allowing us to make payroll. With the pressure lifted for another pay cycle, I drove to the hospital, where the nurse told me David was about to go home. I congratulated him and promised to call later. Then I drove up to St. Francis-ville.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but it’s good procedure to check conveyance records when you’re surveying a piece of land. Conveyance records can strip away today’s smiles and reveal old feuds, lawsuits, and bankruptcies. Maybe there was somebody who had an emotional claim to the place. Somebody willing to kill T-Joe to validate that claim.

The courthouse is a cool, stately old structure built in the first days of the century, when wagons creaked through the dirt streets. Oak trees shade the lawn and there are the obligatory memorials to lost causes. Inside, I went directly to the Clerk of Court’s office and was shown the conveyance books.

There was nothing very mysterious about the Dupont parcel, though. It had been purchased nine months before, from Carter Wascom Jr., just as Willie said. The price was $1.25 million and the description was the usual:

Twelve hundred acres in Sections 10 and 11, Township 12 North, Range 3 East, being that land bounded on the north by State Highway 24 and on the east by Greenbriar Plantation, and on south by the course of a certain bayou and on the west by the left descending bank of the Mississippi River, with the exception of four acres fronting on Highway 24, owned by Marcus Briney, and three and one half acres on Highway 24, and adjacent to the aforesaid Briney property on the north, owned by Carter Wascom Jr
.

I stared at the record for a moment, considering the implications: Absalom Moon didn’t own his property; he was a tenant of Carter Wascom.

Then I looked up Briney and found that his own plot, consisting of ten acres, had been purchased from Carter and Eulalia Wascom in 1992, for the sum of five thousand dollars.

So when Eulalia had become sick, and there were bills to pay, Carter had sold a small amount of land to Briney but Absalom Moon hadn’t had the money or the credit to buy his own land. Much later, T-Joe Dupont had acquired twelve hundred acres, but there’d been another major sell-off before him. I checked under Wascom’s name, in the vendor list, and there it was:

Fourteen hundred acres sold by Carter Wascom Jr. to the local utilities company in 1978. Price, $1.4 million
.

Then, eighteen years later, Wascom had been forced to sell more land.

Where had the $1.4 million gone?

I followed the property back to the last century, to see if there were others associated with the plantation. The Wascoms, however, had owned it since just after the Civil War, when Lucas Wascom had purchased it at a sheriff’s sale from Marie Clayton, the widow of the former owner who had apparently died during the war. Chester Clayton, her husband, had bought it in 1830, from one Juan Villa-real, who, according to the faded notation, had received it from the Spanish crown when West Florida was a Spanish possession. I wondered idly if the Wascoms were locals or carpetbaggers from the North who’d pounced on an opportunity. I checked the name in the index and found other Wascoms, so they must have lived hereabouts. Still, I thought, it couldn’t have made them popular, evicting a widow lady. But maybe, on the other hand, they had done her a favor. It was a common enough situation after the war. In any case, it was unlikely anyone around today knew or much cared.

I left the courthouse, with the feeling of having left something undone. Something rubbed on me like a pebble in my shoe, but I couldn’t place it. I stood on the sidewalk, watching the cars creep past. Across the street, behind an iron fence, was the old Episcopalian cemetery, where the gentry of the last century were buried. On impulse, I walked over and made my way through the graves. The two Feliciana Parishes, West and East, were settled primarily by Anglos, during the brief British ownership of West Florida. When the Spanish had taken over in 1783, the Anglo settlers had at first accepted the change, but later had grown restless. By 1810, after the territory to the west and south had been accepted into the Union through the Louisiana Purchase, they had mounted a brief rebellion against the Spanish, with the result that after a few weeks the West Florida Republic, as they’d called it, also became a part of the United States. Many of these original settlers were buried in this cemetery, and I had in my mind that I might run across the Wascom plot.

Instead, I ran into Carter Wascom himself.

He was standing off in a corner, near the grill fence, partly shielded by a gray marble obelisk. As I watched, he stooped and appeared to lay something on the ground. I ducked back out of sight and watched as he strode quickly from the graveyard, shoulders hunched. When he was gone I walked over to where he’d stood and looked down.

The graves were those of the Wascom family, as I’d suspected, beginning with
Lucas Wascom, Esq
., whose obelisk marked the plot. The
Esq
. made it plain enough: He’d been a lawyer, probably drawing up deeds and conveyances and then buying up what fell his way.

At the bottom of the obelisk were the names of his wife, Rebecca, and three of the children. Their graves, complete with head markers and foot stones, stretched at the base of the stela. Beside the first Wascoms, later generations of the family filled the rest of the plot, until there, in one corner, was a newer, standing memorial, seemingly out of place. On it were the names of Carter and Eulalia Wascom.

Below her name were her dates (January 5, 1943—June 11, 1993) and the inscription,

Underneath this stone doth lie

As much beauty as could die;

Which in life did harbor give

to more virtue than doth live
.

I scribbled down the lines, and looked over at Carter Wascom’s inscription. After his birth date (November 15, 1934) was a single line of Latin:

Fiat justitia, ruat caelum
.

I copied this, too, and then stared at the wreath on the grave. A sudden chill came over me when I realized that this was the fourth anniversary of her death.

T
HIRTEEN

I drove south to the nuclear plant and showed my driver’s license at the front gate. I told the guard I’d come to see Aaron Chustz. The guard nodded and checked a list, then called ahead. He told me Mr. Chustz was in his office.

Ten years ago, before Sam MacGregor had retired, he and I had done a project for the utilities company, here on the grounds. They’d found part of an old sugar mill and we’d had to evaluate it for historical value. We’d spent a couple of cold winter days digging up bricks and had warmed ourselves afterward around the fire at Aaron’s place. The sugar mill had turned out not to be that important, and it had pertained to the plantation adjacent to Greenbriar, so I hadn’t made Carter Wascom’s acquaintance then. But somehow I had the feeling it might have saved time if I had.

I parked in front of the one-story administration building and showed my pass to the guard inside. But he’d hardly had a chance to examine it before Aaron appeared, smiling. In ten years his dark hair had receded to the middle of his head and he was wearing horn-rims I didn’t remember, but he had the same grin and the same friendly handshake. He waited while I signed in and then led me down the corridor to his office.

“How’s Dr. MacGregor?” he asked. “I’ll never forget those stories he used to tell.”

I told him Sam was fine, thriving in retirement in his big house in Iberville Parish, downriver from Baton Rouge. “I still see him every few months,” I said.

Aaron closed the door behind him, indicated a padded chair, and took a seat behind his desk.

“So what can I do for you?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Aaron, you’re still the justice of the peace for this parish, aren’t you?” I asked.

He nodded, his smile fading. “That’s right. Is there a problem?” Then his smile flashed back: “Or did you come up here about a wedding?”

“No wedding,” I said. “And no problem I can put my finger on. But, to be honest, Aaron, I figured that since you work here at the plant as well as being the JP for this parish, you’d be the one with the best information.”

“Well,” he allowed, tugging an ear, “I do perform a lot of weddings and I even write out a few arrest warrants, if that’s what you mean. And I do hear quite a bit, on all sides. But what was it particularly?”

I told him about T-Joe’s death and how David had been injured, and also about the odd way in which P. E. and I had been pursued, holding back only the part about finding the little brass bell.

“To be honest,” I concluded, “I was curious about your neighbor, Carter Wascom.”

Aaron nodded then, as if it all made sense. “Carter, eh? I see what you’re getting at. Carter Wascom’s a mighty strange bird. Of course, whether he’s
that
strange, to follow folks into the woods and try to scare ’em, I couldn’t say. But he’s definitely what the surveyors call half a bubble off.”

“I understand his wife’s death was what did it to him,” I said.

Aaron took a deep breath.

“Well, it hit him hard, that’s true. But, you know, Carter never was quite what you’d call normal. Even when he was little he was different. Kept to himself, wrote poems, stayed inside. Was raised by his mother and a couple of old aunts. His father drowned in some kind of accident right after he was born. I think people were pretty surprised he got married at all. Then, when it turned out to be his cousin—”

“His cousin?”

“Third, I think she was. Just inside the legal limits. Story is she came to visit one day, when she was just a girl, and he decided he had to have her. Well”—he gestured—“that’s the way Carter is: Gets a notion in his head and you can’t budge him.”