The Litter Of The Law

The fact that October 29 was forever marked as Black Friday hovered in Harry’s consciousness. Not much of a history buff, she was reminded by the media, as were most people, of the dark day when Wall Street went to hell in a handbasket. Of course, panics and depressions had occurred before but, thanks to radio and newsreels, 1929 slid the whole country into debt, disillusionment, and death in front of the entire world. The news media fed the panic.

Just lately, a second depression, called the Great Recession, was broadcast live by cable TV, radio, the Internet, and every possible form of instant communication. Same old, same old, no matter how you sliced and diced it. That was Harry’s logic as she pondered life from her tractor seat. She plowed under her harvested barley field. She allowed her sunflowers and the small patch of cornstalks to stand as she thought of how history is a shadow dogging your every step.

Finishing up her work in bright sunshine, the temperature a remarkable sixty-four degrees, she bumped along in the old reliable machine, kicking up dust, driving back to the big shed. Next to her, Tucker had a little seat with a seatbelt. At every lurch, her corgi ears would jangle, then straighten out. Made Harry laugh. Sometimes her animals or the wild animals she watched proved so comical, tears would roll down her cheeks.

“Got to check the vital signs,” she said, turning off the engine. After unhooking Tucker’s seatbelt, she held the dog in one arm, not easy, and climbed down backward off the vehicle.

“You are very particular,” the dog accurately noted.

Harry checked the tractor’s oil, the fuel line, and the hydraulic line. The only thing she didn’t check was tire pressure. She rarely worried about that, although if a big temperature shift occurred, she’d do it.

“Tucker, waste not, want not,” said Harry. “If you keep things tip-top, saves money and saves worry, too.”

“Right, Mom,” answered the corgi. “I don’t waste bones or greenies.”

A flutter overhead made both domesticated creatures look up. A brilliantly colored male goldfinch perched on a rafter, showing off his plumage. “Whatcha doing?” the little fellow asked.

“Mom’s going over her tractor,” said Tucker. “She does this every time she finishes a job. Careful.”

“Tell her to put out more seed, will you? The bird feeder’s getting low.” Thinking he saw something to eat, he pecked at the rafter. Nope. He spat it out.

“I’ll try, believe me,” Tucker promised, “but she doesn’t understand. Hey, how come you’re on your own? You goldfinches are so social.”

“Too much chatter in the flock. I needed a break. Who needs to know the sordid details of everyone’s nest? I like being in the tractor shed. Nice and quiet. No one else is here, although in the summers the swallowtails build nests. Pushy, those birds.”

“Don’t the cats harass you?” the dog wondered.

“The gray cat is too fat to harass anybody,” he chirped with pleasure. “Now, the tiger, got to keep my eye out for her. Fortunately, she’s usually occupied by something else.”

“Do you talk regularly to any other birds? Birds that fly around farther away than you do?”

As Harry wiped off her greasy hands on an old red cloth, the happy little fellow hopped down on the tractor seat and looked down at Tucker. “Sure,” answered the bird. “Birds do love to gossip.”

“Ever run into those crows who ate the scarecrow?” asked Tucker.

The goldfinch hopped down to a back fender to get closer. “I heard you were there with the cats. The crows complained you all spoiled a great find, but they didn’t know who killed the human, if that’s what you want to know. They said he was fresh meat. So he was killed close by, maybe even killed in a car or something.”

“We kind of stumbled upon it. Did you talk to anyone who knew about the murdered witch at the church?”

“No, but I heard about it. When you live in a flock, news travels fast. And I also socialize with birds other than goldfinches,” he said proudly, bragging at how cosmopolitan he was. “Anyway, I don’t know anything about that witch except people seem to like killing one another, so what’s it to you?”

“My human is curious, plus she liked the witch lady. She wants to catch whoever did it.”

The bird cocked a snapping black eye at the corgi. “You need better control over her. She’s wasting her time. Now, spending more time on her fields, that will yield something of value.”

Tucker’s attention was diverted by a vehicle coming down the driveway. The sound sent her flying out of the tractor shed to bark warnings.

“Dogs are idiots.” The goldfinch laughed as he hopped to the other rear fender, getting closer to Harry.

The slender woman turned around, hands cleaner, beheld the small brilliantly colored bird. “Hello,” she said.

“Hello back at you,” he chirped, which sounded to her ears like “potato chips.”

Hearing the familiar goldfinch call, she smiled. “You’re a bold fellow.”

She hung up the red rags, walked out of the shed, glanced over her shoulder. The goldfinch chirped, then flew up to the rafter.

“Hey,” Cooper called out, Tucker at her heels.

“Is this a courtesy call or business? I never know when you’re in uniform,” Harry said.

“I was down at Rose Hill. Thought I’d stop by on my way back to town.”

The two fell in side by side as they made their way to the house.

“How’s Aunt Tally?” Harry asked. Rose Hill was the old lady’s estate.

“Never changes. She’s besotted with the baby.”

The two walked into the sunny kitchen.

“Is she dispensing advice?” Harry asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No, she’s leaving that up to Big Mim, who, by all accounts, is a treasure trove of childrearing wisdom.”

They laughed.

Before they sat, Harry asked, “Coffee, tea, Co’Cola, hot chocolate?”

“Nothing, thanks.” Cooper took a seat at the table. “Harry, I asked Aunt Tally a lot of questions about Hester, about ownership of old farms, stuff like that. Someone should record what she remembers before it goes with her.” Cooper felt that every old person was a library.

“Good idea,” said Harry, sitting across from her. “Learn anything new?”

The tall deputy nodded. “More than I imagined. Who married whom. How many children, legitimate and non. Who hated whom and who was smart and not. She said such things run in families. I showed her a county map with farms outlined. She knew the history of every single one, and her memory started with the end of World War One. Got really clear in the twenties, but she said with her parents, her friends’ parents, and their grandparents—well, the living memories recounted to her when she was young, all put together, reached back to the 1830s. She could just rattle stuff off.

“She pointed out which farms had been well managed, even through the Depression, World War Two, and up to today. She knew where some of the old slave graveyards were, and even where there are Indian mounds, which may or may not be graveyards. Most of that history has been lost. She said if you have an ancestor in a graveyard, you have a legal right to tend to that graveyard once a year. She noted farms that had endured ups and downs, and much of that seemed to tie in to drinking. Then there were those who lost everything.” Cooper sighed. “I hit a dead end. Learned a lot, but …”

“Any disputes?” asked Harry. Aunt Tally could always tell a good story.

“Not as many as you would think. A lot of squabbling among heirs in certain families. Any dispute she recounted seemed to involve wine, women, moonshine.” Cooper laughed.

“Never a bad place to start.”

Cooper, hat off, ran her fingers through her ash-blonde hair. “I’m pretty frustrated.”

“I can understand that,” said Harry. “Look, I know I get in the way, but let me make a suggestion. Hester, though well educated, was country. I’m a Smith graduate but country. I can help.”

Cooper shook her head at her neighbor and friend. “You? Harry, one of these days you’ll either fall into a well or get yourself killed.”

“Now, just a minute here. Hear me out. Let’s go to Hester’s house. Let me go through her truck, the outbuildings where she kept equipment. If we don’t find anything of interest, then let’s go to her roadside stand.”

“You don’t want to go into the house?” Cooper’s curiosity rose. Despite herself, she wanted to understand Harry’s logic.

“No. Like I said, I’m country, Hester was country. I can look at equipment, tools, trucks, tractors, and see things you don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s find out,” Harry egged her on.

Challenged face-to-face, Cooper had to say yes.

Cooper called ahead and asked permission from Sarah to comb the outside grounds and equipment. Sarah readily agreed.

In the barn, pulling open every drawer of Hester’s freestanding toolbox, Harry found old tools but nothing that proved helpful. She ran her hands along the inside walls of the shed—no false boards or hiding places. She opened the small box behind the tractor seat, finding the manual. She lifted up the seat. Carefully searching each outbuilding, examining each piece of equipment, she even looked into the bins holding birdseed, sticking a broom handle down into them and twirling it around.

Cooper admired Harry’s thoroughness. “Hiding something in a seed bin—now, that’s clever, though there’s nothing here.”

“Moonshine is often hidden that way, just like when it’s trucked, it’s generally hidden in the middle of another shipment, like furniture boxes. Or before flyovers with infrared cameras, when the boys would grow marijuana, it would usually be in the middle of a corn crop. That doesn’t work anymore.” Harry looked around the shed. “Let me check her truck. She spent a lot of time in it; she told me it was on its third set of tires.”

Before going into the cab, Harry pulled off the hubcaps. “Cooper, pull the ones on the other side. Hubcaps can be good storage if you’re careful.”

Using her penknife, Cooper popped off the hubcaps, took a look, then replaced them. Next she opened the truck’s passengerside door as Harry opened the one on the driver’s side.

“Our team went over the truck,” said Cooper.

“I know,” said Harry, though she continued searching, undeterred.

In the glove box, they found the usual: manual, registration, insurance information, old pens, a box of Altoids. From the side pocket, Harry fished out one earring, a notebook, which she leafed through, a powerful LED flashlight, and bits of leaf, dirt. Leaning over the steering wheel, she ran her palm over the dash.

“Damn,” Harry cursed low.

“I told you we went over it.”

“Pull up the floor mat.” Harry did it on her side of the truck and tossed the rubber mat outside. “There’s the covering that came with the vehicle underneath. Take your penknife and slowly work around that to see if anything lifts up.” As Harry did this on the driver’s side, excitement crept into her voice. “I think I’ve got something.”

She raised the loose edge of the original mat and carefully slid her hand underneath it. “Aha—here’s something …,” she said, and pulled out a flat manila envelope with a clasp. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” She hurried to the back of the truck and dropped the tailgate.

Now next to her, Cooper watched as Harry drew papers and a map from the envelope and gently spread the map on the truck bed.

“Same as the other map …” Cooper’s voice trailed off.

Harry squinted. “Some properties have parcels that are outlined in purple.”

Cooper grabbed some papers. “Here’s the key. The purple signifies ancestral land.” She pointed to a spot on a nearby farm. “Here’s a Quaker school near Midway Farm. That school’s gone now. Boy, is this thorough!”

Cooper flipped through the other pages. “This is Josh Hill’s research,” she said, pointing to his name on a document. “Look here. Says the Virginia tribes cared greatly about education.”

Harry exclaimed, “Some of this goes back to right after the Revolutionary War. He has a note here, ‘Many of us took Quaker names. The Quakers have been consistently helpful identifying and helping the Monacans and other tribes to reclaim our lands.’ ”

She picked up an old newspaper clipping. “Here’s an article about how the Upper Mattaponi purchased land and restored Sharon Indian School, which is the only Indian school on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register.” Harry checked the map again. “Hill drew double lines around old church schools, Random Row, and also where old churches used to stand. And hey, about forty acres of Buddy’s one hundred acres are marked off in purple.”

Cooper leaned over and studied this after setting down a paper she’d just been examining. “Hill wrote out a plan for raising money to purchase Random Row and part of Buddy’s land, saying it would be easier to prove tribal usage there, even with Walter Ashby Plecker’s paper genocide.”

Harry straightened up at the ramifications of Hill’s report.

Cooper continued. “He wrote that while church lands were carefully recorded, the buildings had usually disappeared after a century and more, but, and he underlined ‘but’ in red, with the School Desegregation Act of 1965, the records for schools are much more recent.” She put her forefinger to her lips. “The problem goes back to how to prove you’re a Virginia Indian.”

“If someone like Josh or Hester could arouse interest among the African American community to jointly preserve history—say, at Random Row—working together would render that less important,” said Harry. “Here’s a list of local people Hill thought might help their efforts.”

“Your name is on there,” Cooper remarked.

Harry stared at her name, along with the names of professors, businesspeople, and community leaders, white, black, and tribal. “Tazio’s name is on here, too. Hill did his homework.”

“And he paid for it,” said Cooper.

“Hester did, too. She must’ve hid these documents because she was afraid. She didn’t want this information to fall into the wrong hands and all of this research to be destroyed.”

Cooper whistled. “Those that would gain by this being destroyed are Buddy, Wesley, and maybe Neil, as they often work together on land purchases.”

“They don’t seem like murderers,” said Harry, mulling it over. “Wesley and Neil are on the vestry board. Buddy is the sweetest man ever.”

“People can fool you.” Cooper thought a long time. “I can’t arrest three men on suspicion of murder with only a map and these papers to go on. And there is the good possibility they have nothing to do with it. But I’m nervous about what might happen at the hayride, and it’s only two days away.”

“Can you assign extra security to it?”

“I can try again.” Cooper called her boss and pleaded her case once more.

Finally Rick relented and said he’d assign Dabny to work with her.

“Thanks, boss.” Cooper clicked off her cellphone. “Dabny.”

“One more is better than none.” Harry folded her arms across her chest. “Thursday night is going to be interesting.”

“I hope not,” Cooper said, though she feared the worst. Halloween had never seemed so frightening.