Homeward Hound

CHAPTER 19

Spread over long tables pushed together in Crawford’s office, Ronnie, Margaret, Crawford, and Charlotte studied the U.S. Geological Survey topographical maps. Five thousand acres covers so much territory that they studied the maps in shifts.

Crawford pointed to where the house ruins stood. “I think there has to be burial grounds near the house.”

“There’s the traditional family plot.” Margaret pointed to the place. “Sophie is buried there along with everyone in our family except those who fell in foreign wars. An uncle lost at sea during the Spanish-American War, well, a great-great-uncle, but you know what I mean. But everyone who died here is buried here.”

Crawford rubbed his chin. “The proposed route sweeps this way.”

He ran his finger behind the house, the stable, and outbuildings.

“Given the size of this farm, the number of people working here including the enslaved, the indentured servants, there have to be cemeteries all over.” Ronnie held a magnifying glass over the stable area.

“No doubt, but we don’t know where they are.” Charlotte agreed. “Even if some of the workers were buried at their church, many have to be here. What I don’t understand is why aren’t those graves marked?”

“I think they were. I remember my grandmother alluding to overgrown sites. My grandfather, whom I really didn’t know, didn’t care. And you all know how lush Virginia can be. I expect those graveyards are overgrown, deep in the woods. How can you find out?”

“Ground-penetrating radar,” Crawford said.

“For five thousand acres?” Ronnie was incredulous.

“If I have to, yes, but I think the chances are the dead will be closer to the house or at least the more inhabited areas. And we have some maps back to World War One.” He laid an old map, pulled from under the topo maps, on top of the government maps. “See. Outbuildings are on this map that don’t appear elsewhere. Some things are easy to identify. The old draft horse barns, the cattle barns.”

“Are you going to restore those?” Ronnie asked.

“No. I will rebuild the carriage barns as they were beautiful. I have photographs of them. Maybe I’ll build cattle barns later if I get cattle.”

Charlotte swept her hand over those maps on the table. “There have to be Monacan bones. They lived here. Not only will the tribes here fight it. So will a lot of other people.”

“An ace in the hole.” Ronnie nodded. “I want you all to know, I have to say it out loud, I work for Soliden. They are our client. But you know where my heart is. If you can furnish me with proof of buried slaves, buried Monacans, anything of a historical nature, I can convince them to swerve away from the Chapel Cross area. I think Gregory was leaning that way, but with proof I can convince the new leadership.”

“The entire area?” Charlotte was intrigued.

“Surely the Monacans covered much of the land out here. Clear, hard, running water off the mountains, tons of game. It’s a perfect environment, so my argument will be, go along or over the Skyline Drive until you find a less precipitous way down and one that doesn’t drop right into former Indian territory, into a historic site being architecturally restored.”

“The Skyline Drive will set everyone else off.” Margaret sighed.

“Yes, it will. Digging along that road right-of-way will delay traffic for years and that park is the most visited park in the country.” Ronnie knew his stuff. “But that uproar will shift away from this uproar and Soliden’s engineers will busy themselves finding one way up the west side of the Blue Ridge, crossing over the Skyline Drive at only one place that would be perfect and then dropping down on the east side, hence through the Piedmont and to the sea. One way or the other, this pipeline has to reach a major port and it can’t be Virginia Beach because of the naval base.”

“I thought the end point is to be in North Carolina,” Margaret said.

“It is, but that, too, can be changed. If Virginia offered enough incentives, like deepening an existing port, that base would mean permanent jobs. Construction work isn’t permanent, so we’ll see a spike for the years the pipeline is being dug and then that’s it. There will be more company maintenance people but not all that many.” Ronnie paused. “However, some jobs are better than no jobs. There are people who need work.”

“But are the workers coming from our state?” Charlotte asked the obvious question and one loaded for politicians.

“Some. Whatever state is impacted will have a number hired to sweeten the deal,” Ronnie informed them. “It’s how Soliden or any megacompany buys off the state legislators. And the governor.”

“Ah.” Margaret, a doctor, hadn’t considered this.

“So anything you can remember—walks with your grandmother, your father, anything—let me know.” Ronnie was sincere.

“I’ve walked a great deal around the ruins as well as the old outbuilding sites. I was looking for raised ground or depressed grounds, burial size, casket size. I’ve uncovered nothing.” Crawford frowned. “They have to be out there.”

“Will you have to unearth some graves for proof?” Margaret hoped not.

“That’s the point of the radar. If the remains can be seen, nobody should be disturbed, although if someone wants accurate proof of age, they might want to carbon-date the bones. I’m for a rough estimate, no digging.” Crawford folded his arms across his chest. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if a legislator wanted physical proof to cover his ass if this comes to a vote. Soliden will lobby endlessly to see that it doesn’t.”

“This is a lot of effort.” Margaret sat down. “You’re being forced into this. We can all thank the Supreme Court for this. Remember when they made that decision that private land could be seized for private profit? Goodbye eminent domain if the corporation is big enough. They can take anyone’s land, which is the point of this, isn’t it?”

“Margaret, money talks.” Said a man who knew how loudly it did. “Gregory Luckham has to or had to answer to a board and the board has to answer to shareholders. So if moving the pipeline costs, say, two percent of the profits for, say, ten years, it will cost billions. The profit loss per annum may be as much as two to three billion per year. That’s the real issue. Everything is shareholder value, not public value. You and I and everyone else along this route were not consulted. Nor were our elected representatives. Of course, now it’s an issue, but until citizens protested, essentially this was done by executive fiat.”

“Payoffs?” Charlotte asked Crawford.

“Too obvious.” He smiled for he knew the game well. “A crude way to agree is for the company, any company, to put sums of money in Aunt Minnie’s bank account. Not yours, not your wife’s or your parents’. Hard cash wakes up most people. Another way to pay off is making sure a legislator’s child is accepted at a high-level university or gets a high-paying job once out of that university which will cost about $80,000 per year figuring in tuition, books, clothing. Tuition alone at an Ivy League school now runs about $68,000 per year.”

“What about kickbacks?” Ronnie’s eyebrows were raised.

Crawford cleared his throat. “Effective if you’re careful.”

“What do you mean?” Margaret, in many ways innocent to corruption, asked.

“Let’s say you manufacture a type of pipe that can withstand the pressure needed to force the gas or oil through the pipeline over hundreds of miles. You have competitors and one might be a Chinese factory that can undercut you. But you work out an arrangement with the union over their wages, you will surely be unionized, you win the contract. You shave off a half a million, more or less, and give it back to the union president as well as the president of the company or the vice president or whoever is in charge of materials. You need to be careful how you do it. Again, Aunt Minnie is critical here.” He laughed.

“My God, I had no idea.” Margaret was shocked.

“Margaret, have you ever known anyone who served in the House of Delegates or Congress who left office poorer than they went in? Setting aside the Founding Fathers? A vastly different time.” Crawford considered all this the cost of doing business.

“They were vastly different kinds of men than we have today,” Ronnie added. “Oh, there was a venal one here or there but in the main they truly believed in public service, they cared about the public good. A few such souls are left to us but it’s the politics of smash and grab.”

“Oh, I hope not. I do hope not.” Margaret was ashen faced.

“He’s right. These are the times in which we live,” Charlotte added. “That’s why I get hired to unearth, forgive the expression, histories. It’s exciting, in its way, going up against a corporation or the state houses. Everyone pleads that they’re doing what they have to do.”

“Did you offer Gregory Luckham incentives?” Ronnie directly asked Crawford.

“I did.” He said this without shame for as far as he was concerned Soliden was wrong. “I didn’t ask him if he had an Aunt Minnie but I alluded to the fact that I could and would be helpful. He was noncommittal. Certainly it wasn’t the first time he’s encountered such an offer.”

“Did you get the feeling he was corrupt?” Margaret looked up at Crawford.

“I got the feeling everyone has a price, including Gregory Luckham.” He now sat down next to her.

“I hope I don’t.”

“Margaret, of course you don’t, but the hospital with which you are associated does.” Ronnie’s voice was low.

“Yes.” She nodded.

“No one’s trying to buy me off.” Charlotte smiled. “I am determined to find those underneath us. Once the snow is all melted we’ll begin. I know there are bodies, many bodies, under Old Paradise.”

She was right, of course.