Рита Браун - Tail Gait

“Aren’t you needing a jacket? It’s a bit brisk.”

“No, thanks,” said Harry. “Feels great to me.”

The mercury hovered at sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit and she wore a sweater over her Under Armour, jeans, kneesocks, and cowboy boots.

The new grass felt soft and giving underfoot as they traversed the large outer quad. Reaching the cemetery, beautiful stone walls encasing it, a wrought-iron gate at both ends, the Reverend reached down, flipped up the latch. They walked in.

Obelisks, large square monuments, and regular-sized tombstones greeted them. The wealthy paid for lustrous white marble statues behind their heads. Angels, lambs, crosses, the entwined Alpha and Omega bid one consider one’s spiritual journey. Much of the statuary boasted fine work.

“Let’s walk along these first rows.” He paused and read out names “Jacob Yost, 1721 to 1778; Macabee Reed, 1759 to 1822; Lavina Reed, 1765 to 1840; Karl Ix, 1761 to 1850. Now, there’s a long life, and look here, two wives. The first predeceased him and the second outlived him by nearly thirty years. And here are two little tiny stone markers for two of their children.” He swept out his arm as they entered the second row. “You can see most of these early names are German or English. Ginger, having some of the prisoners’ names from The Barracks, matched them up to these names. Some of these sleeping souls were either escaped prisoners of war or men who decided not to go home. Over here, a few Italian names. You would think they would be in a Catholic graveyard, but Catholic churches were few and far between back then. Somehow they wound up here. Ginger said Italians did fight for King George, so these people resting here were also, shall we say, impressed citizens.”

“If they escaped, why weren’t they brought back?” She paused. “Ginger, when he gave us our high school tour, did say The Barracks was overcrowded.”

“Here are Irish names, more English ones, too. Yes, The Barracks was jam-packed, even after a thousand men were sent up to York, Pennsylvania, to ease the crowding. Ginger spent time up there himself. When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, more prisoners were sent here.”

“It must have been awful.”

“Better than losing a limb. Still better than that. Sometimes I’d go with Ginger to visit another old church. I could pass time with the priest or pastor while he would sift through records. I learned a great deal about our country’s early days.”

She smiled. “I envy you those trips. I bet Ginger never stopped talking.”

The Reverend smiled, too. “Well, I could talk pretty good myself.” He leaned down for a moment to rub Tucker’s ears. “Tucker, best we don’t know what you say.”

“You got that right.”

The Reverend and Harry laughed at the dog’s light bark.

“Anything stand out in your mind, about what you learned, I mean?” asked Harry.

They continued to walk through the peaceful graveyard, statues shining in the spring light.

“People need God, just as they did back then. Especially then! The distances between people, the difficulties of travel, the church was a welcome place to come together, pray, sing, share joys and troubles. So many worshipped at a church that was close, one where friends gathered. Others, fired up by intellectual considerations, would start a tiny church with maybe three families. The people lying here might have started life as Catholics, Anglicans, I guess I should say, Church of England, but many were true Lutherans. Born Lutheran. Most all the Germans were, except for those few from Bavaria. Bavarians are Catholic, usually.”

“Did any of the early parishioners admit to having been prisoners of war?”

“Yes, they did. As generations grew and prospered, it became a matter of pride in the early nineteenth century and really up to mid-century. According to Ginger, who read more diaries than anyone, I swear he did, this was cited as proof that their forebears from the old country, as it was and still is called, saw a New World and much preferred it to the old. Given that most everyone buried here was not on charity, they prospered.”

Harry stopped, eyes reading name after name. “Makes you proud, doesn’t it? These brave souls.”

“It does. They endured so much. They had so much hope and energy. Here they rest some two hundred years later and we remember them. The surnames on these tombstones are still part of central Virginia.”

They walked out of the cemetery, back across the lawns.

“It’s true we are all standing on someone else’s shoulders.” Harry drew closer to the beloved pastor. He was a man whose very presence calmed and consoled.

“You think, somehow, this is connected to Ginger’s murder?” he asked.

“I do. I’ve thought of everything, academic revenge, but everyone loved him and he never wrote monographs attacking someone else’s work. Even the uproar over Sally Hemings was resolved and he was even tempered about it all.”

“He was that. But you think his murder was connected to these prisoners of war?”

“I do. The path keeps bringing me back to The Barracks, Colonel Harvey’s lands, Ewing Garth’s, and the Loyalist, Peter Ashcombe. And then, poof, dead end.”

“Well, you know St. Luke’s was designed by a prisoner of war after the war’s end, in 1781, really. The treaty, I think, was 1783.”

“I sort of knew that, but didn’t pay much attention in school.”

“Well, let me show you.” They walked into the church vestibule, high-ceilinged, a floor of black and white marble squares, lovely touches of woodwork where the ceiling met the walls, with a recessed alcove holding a statue of Christ as the Redeemer. Their footfalls echoed softly on the marble.

“How many times have you walked past this?” The Reverend pointed to a black, high-gloss marble rectangle set into the wall. “Charles West, Architect and Benefactor. This was set in when the church was completed.”

“I read the name, but I didn’t know he was a prisoner of war.”

“Ginger often remarked on fate. Anyway, West was young, nineteen, I think, captured at Saratoga and marched here with hordes of others, all the way from Boston. Here he discovered his talent for architecture, and at war’s end he learned this trade. He did a beautiful job.”

“He certainly did.”

“He married the younger daughter of Ewing Garth, and that was a leg up. Ewing introduced him to everyone. Commissions dribbled in and then flooded in.”

“Garth. Yes, his lands backed up on the camp.”

“Rachel and her older sister were great beauties, so I expect at some point the young fellow lost his heart to her. Well, I’m always a sucker for a love story, but they’re buried out in the graveyard. The large mausoleum with the winged angel, hands outstretched to heaven. They had eight children. Eight, and five survived into old age. We all are standing on someone else’s shoulders, as you said.”

As they left the church and walked through the arcade and back to the office part of the complex, a soft breeze lifted Tucker’s fur.

“When you get the time, maybe Ginger has papers on West,” said Reverend Jones. “I know he researched anyone involved with the camp and it’s a good story. I doubt it has any bearing on his demise, but still, it is a good story. And West was so artistic, many of his pen-and-ink drawings are scattered throughout the county. He made drawings of estates for a little money.”

“I’m sure I’ve seen them and never known.”

Once inside, walking down the hall to his closet, the Reverend noted, “I didn’t leave the door open.”