P. Parrish - South Of Hell

There was a patch of high, cleared ground on the south bank and what looked like headstones. Or maybe they were just rocks jutting from the ground. He couldn’t be sure.

Louis eyed the dark water. Upstream, it narrowed enough for him to venture a leap across. He made it — barely — almost leaving a shoe in the muck on the bank as he fell forward trying to break his momentum.

Wiping his muddy hands on his jeans, he went up the rise. He was standing on a hill, and he looked south. There, through the bare trees, he could just make out the faded red of the old Brandt barn a mile or so away.

He headed east toward the clearing where he thought he had seen the gray stones. They were, indeed, grave markers, mostly small square slabs of granite, some lying toppled in the weeds, others broken and listing.

He went to the front of the largest headstone. The inscription, mottled with moss, was so worn he could barely make it out:

AMOS BRANDT

BORN MAY 3, 1800

DIED JUNE 6, 1879

WHERE THERE IS MUCH LIGHT

THE SHADOWS ARE DEEPEST

The wind sent the trees sighing, and Louis shrugged off the shower of dead leaves. He surveyed the other headstones. There was one of equal size and shape but it was in two pieces, facedown in the weeds. He pried the edge from the dirt and flipped it over. The only word still visible through a swirl of ants was phoebe.

Amos’s wife.

He went to the nearest stone, the one just to the right of Amos’s large marker. He was expecting to see one of the daughters’ names from the family Bible, Lucinda or Ann. The carved letters were completely covered in moss. He found a stick, squatted down, and dug out the moss until the letters emerged:

CHARLES BRANDT

BORN JANUARY 1832

DIED APRIL 1895

BELOVED SON OF AMOS

Louis rose slowly. Charles? There had been no record of this name in the family Bible. Louis moved on to the nearest headstone. Most of it was sunken in the ground, leaving only one name and part of a date visible;

CLEONA

1889

Near this one was a tiny marker with the inscription

INFANT DAUGHTER

Gone to the Angels 1856

Was this Charles Brandt’s wife and daughter? There were three other headstones that were too old and decayed to make out the inscriptions. Louis noticed another, newer-style headstone in the far southern corner of the clearing and went to it. It was a simple gray marker:

JONAH BRANDT

VERNA BRANDT

D: 1967

D: 1957

This had to be Owen’s parents. Louis looked across the grass, back at the first headstone. And Amos must have been the patriarch who had first settled here generations ago. So, why were Amos’s “beloved son” Charles and his family buried here at Amos’s right side, but their names were not recorded in the family Bible?

Louis felt something touch his leg, and he jumped. He looked down to see a large dog sniffing at his pants. Louis backed away slowly, and the dog gave out a low growl.

“Don’t move.”

Louis spun at the sound of the voice. An old man was standing at the edge of the trees. How had he not heard him or the dog coming? The dog was staring at him. It had one blue eye and one brown eye.

The old man came forward. He was wearing a red plaid jacket over mud-caked overalls, a John Deere cap pulled low over a thin face elongated by a full gray beard. He carried a stripped-down tree branch as a walking stick.

“Here, give him this, and he’ll leave you be,” the old man said, holding out a Milk Bone.

Louis, one eye still on the dog, took the biscuit and held it out. The big mutt snatched it and trotted away. Louis let out a breath.

“What’s your business here?” the old man asked.

There was a challenge in the man’s voice, and Louis was about to ask the same thing when the old man gave him a gap-toothed smile.

“You’re one of them history nuts, right?” he asked. “Snooping around graveyards looking for your roots.”

Louis nodded, deciding it was better not to be caught trespassing on the Brandt land.

“You got kin here?” the old man asked.

Louis searched the man’s face for a smirk. But his expression was merely one of mild curiosity. Then it came to Louis in a cold, clear rush: Charles wasn’t in the family Bible because he wasn’t Phoebe’s son. Charles had a different mother. And she was black.

“You part of the Brandt clan?” the man asked again.

“No, I’m just interested in old cemeteries,” Louis said.

“Lots of folks are,” the old man said, and went off to find his dog.

Louis walked back to Amos’s headstone, an idea forming in his head. The mid-1800s… of course, there would have been black servants living on the farm. A young black servant woman, an older man who wielded power over her. An illegitimate son.

Beloved son of Amos.

The dog was back suddenly, sniffing at Louis’s feet. Louis felt the old man at his side a moment later.

“Do you know much about the Brandt history?” Louis asked.

“Little bit,” the old man said. “Been walking this earth a long time, son. Now I just walk Henry here every day this time.”

“Do you know about the bones found on the farm this week?”

“Yup, read about it in the paper. They say they belonged to a black woman. Been there a long time, they said.”

“Charles Brandt,” Louis said. “Was Phoebe his mother?”

“Well, there was always talk about the Brandts. Way back, I mean,” the old man said. “That there was… well…”

“A black woman in the family,” Louis said evenly.

The man nodded.

Louis went to Charles’s headstone. The big yellow dog trotted over and sat by Louis’s feet.

“Is Charles’s mother buried here?” Louis asked.

“Don’t know. Hard to tell with these old stones being as messed up as they are,” the man said. “Nobody to care for this place anymore. Things went to hell after Jonah died. The daughter, Geneva, ran off, and the son, Owen, got in trouble with the law, I heard.”

Louis was thinking about the bones of the black woman buried in the Brandt barn. It struck him odd that Amos’s “beloved” black son, Charles, was buried here but that Charles’s mother was not.

His eyes traveled over the other ruined and half-buried headstones. Maybe her headstone had simply been lost. Or was she the woman whose bones had been found in the barn?

“Folks are saying she was probably a slave,” the old man said.

Louis looked over at him.

“That woman they found in the barn, I mean,” the man said.

“Michigan was a free state,” Louis said.

The man tugged at his beard. “Maybe she was runaway and the slave catchers found her at a station here.”

“Station?” Louis said. “You mean the Underground Railroad?”

The man nodded. “Two of the lines ran right through these parts, they say.”

Louis looked past the old man, southward through the bare trees, to the faded red of the Brandt barn. He was seeing the bones in the dirt, but he was hearing Amy’s descriptions of men on horses with torches.

He shook his head slowly.

“What’s the matter, son?” the old man asked.

“Nothing,” Louis said.

The old man tugged the John Deere cap down on his head. “This is a haunted place,” he said. “You can feel it, you can.” He scratched the dog’s head. “Let’s go home, Henry.”

Joe was perched on the edge of the bed, the old tin of photographs, the Bible, the piano roll, and the scrap of pink wallpaper spread out on the blanket.

“You haven’t said what you think about all this,” Louis said.

“It certainly explains some things,” Joe said.

“I think Dr. Sher is right,” Louis said.