Page 61 of Camino Ghosts

They were worried about Lovely making the trek, but she insisted on being at the gravesite if bones were found. They were under her strict instruction not to remove anything from the graves without her being present. Otherwise, the spirits would be upset.

After a round of beers, they dined on canned beef stew and cheese crackers, then moved their chairs closer to the campfire. It was not yet 8:00 p.m. and too early for bed, though they desperately needed sleep. They had joked all day about the panthers disrupting their night. Surely they would leave them alone tonight.

Dr. Gilfoy asked the African American archaeologists about other slave burial projects they had worked on, and this led to several stories. Dr. Sargent had been involved in perhaps the most famous discovery. In 1991, in Lower Manhattan, a contractor was doing site work in preparation for the construction of a new federal courthouse and discovered the graves of several dozen slaves, all in wooden caskets. Controversy erupted on all fronts and construction was delayed. Archaeologists descended upon the site and more graves were found. In all, historians estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 African Americans were buried there, not in a mass grave but in individual coffins. Some were freed blacks but most were slaves. Half were children, evidence of the high mortality rate. A total of 419 caskets were relocated, with names, and a monument was erected in memory of their lives. The federal courthouse was built elsewhere.

Lovely told the story of her father’s death and burial. It was in her book and all of those around the fire had read about it. Jeremiah died in 1948. His body was placed in a casket built by his brother, a carpenter. She would never forget watching it lowered into the grave.

Like all the others, it faced east, toward the ocean, toward home in Africa.

“We’ll find it tomorrow,” Sargent promised.

15.

The night was still and peaceful, uninterrupted by storms or wild animals. They were up at sunrise and eager for a long, productive day with their shovels. Breakfast, again, was oatmeal and fruit, with plenty of strong coffee. The plan was for Lovely to leave early with them and supervise the opening of the graves. If she needed rest, half the team would accompany her, Diane, and Mercer back to camp.

In the woods, she was stunned and saddened by the destruction. She mumbled over and over, “I can’t believe this.”

They stopped at the pile of timber and debris. Dr. Gilfoy showed her the hinge and the piece of the door it came from. “Could the village have been around here?”

“I don’t know,” she said, bewildered. “Everything is so destroyed, so different.” She thought a moment as she looked around. “Maybe. Yes, our homes could’ve been here. The cemetery should be that way.” She pointed in the right direction.

When the trail began its slight ascent, Lovely struggled to keep her balance. She leaned on Mercer and her cane and made every step count. Three of the archaeologists walked ahead of her, guarding the trail and looking for snakes. The other three walked patiently behind.

Lovely had made a list of her ancestors who were buried on the island. There were seventy-three in all, though some were buried in different places. A great-uncle had split with the family over a romance and moved away from the village. He and his people had their own little cemetery. As a child, she had known of other small burial grounds around the island. Two hundred years earlier the dead were buried in shallow graves with no caskets.

They stopped where they had worked the day before, in the clearing where the weeds and vines and saplings had been cut away. “We found some graves here,” Dr. Sargent said. “Does anything look familiar?”

She was shaking her head and wiping her cheeks.

“We have to start somewhere, Lovely.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing is the same.”

They removed the blue tarp and gathered their shovels and tools. The tarp was strung up to provide shade from the sun and Lovely took her place under it. She was overwhelmed and emotional and they left her alone.

The row of low spots in the earth seemed like the best place to start digging. Within half an hour they found bones, too small for an adult, and not intact. The skull was crushed and the feet were missing. They were less than two feet from the surface and there was no sign of a casket. Lovely backed everyone away and knelt beside the grave. Without touching the bones she held her hands over them, closed her eyes, and mumbled a prayer. She looked at the other indentations and said, “I remember now. The graves of the children, buried long before my time. Back when they didn’t use caskets.” She stood, looked around, and pointed. “Not long after Nalla died, a fever came to the island, killing most of the children. They buried them here, in a row, in shallow graves because they were in a hurry.” She pointed again and continued, “My people are over there, in that corner of the cemetery.”

Over there was a thicket packed with thorns and vines and certainly hiding snakes. The team put down their shovels and used their machetes, swing blades, and chain saws. For two hours they hacked at saplings and small oaks and dense brush and hauled it away to another corner, where, hopefully, they wouldn’t have to touch it again. When the ground was cleared and scraped they studied the dirt and discussed the lay of the land. In one place there was a slight unevenness that, upon closer examination and expert study, looked somewhat out of place. The shovels went to work. The sandy soil was soft and easy to dig, not necessarily a good thing. If they found human remains, they would most likely be a mess. Moisture led to a more rapid deterioration of a human body and decimated traces of DNA.

Three feet down a shovel hit something solid. It was wood. Four of them dug earnestly, but carefully, and soon found a corner to what they knew was a coffin. It was an old box for sure, and its top was rotted and its sides had caved in. When they had scraped away as much dirt as possible, they began to find bones resting haphazardly.

Leo’s storm surge on Camino Island was measured by experts at twenty-seven feet. Since Dark Isle had no inhabitants, the surge and winds were not measured there. The slight ridge where they were working was about twenty feet above sea level, and they had assumed that the entire island was under water during the storm. Judging from the mounds of rotting trees, it was not difficult to believe that a massive surge had swept through.

Poking through the skeletal remains, the archaeologists agreed that the floodwaters had inundated the casket.

Lovely hovered over the bones, chanted a prayer that was thoroughly indecipherable to the rest, and returned to the shade under the tarp. By noon, they were exhausted and hungry and decided to return to the camp. Lovely needed a nap.

16.

The second and third graves were excavated. The caskets were rotted, the bones scattered about inside, and nothing of value or interest had been buried with the bodies. Lovely blessed them, then backed away as the team picked through the bones, scraping gently, examining fragments, searching for clues, filming and photographing everything. When the sun began to fade, they covered their work with more blue tarps and trekked back to camp.

17.

The cemetery was an archaeologist’s dream. There was no shortage of graves with old caskets filled with skeletal remains, and it was tempting to lose sight of their mission—to link a bone or two to Lovely’s DNA. After three days of nonstop digging they realized it could go on for weeks.

Lovely was ready to leave. Everyone wanted a shower and a hot meal. When they finally agreed that they had enough clues, Dr. Sargent called for Ronnie and his pontoon.

18.

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