Based on a true discovery about what the legacy of slavery did in a family.
Copyright 2006 by Print Source Direct for Jerry W. Engler
The magic of big, soft late-winter Missouri snowflakes falling on a broad vista of still-green fescue pasture and interspersed trees leading to heavy stands of timber wasn’t lost on Jonathan Stetler.
Everything here was magic to him, and different than his growing-up time on the western high plains. He and Julie were newly married, which was a magic in itself. They had been fortunate to find this old farmhouse to rent south of work in the city in Central Missouri.
“Look at this, Julie, look at this snow and the trees down there. Isn’t this incredible?”
“Beautiful, beautiful,” she replied, smiling at him.
The flakes were so large, he could see the geometric designs of their crystalline structures just looking out the window. They stood there together, looking through the glass at Merideth Macon’s two-story white home across the road and up a quarter-mile driveway.
The Macon farm was lined along the road and up both sides of the driveway by white-board fence. Huge red-oak trees were evenly spaced along the driveway.
“The snow’s so heavy you can barely see Mrs. Macon’s house now,” Jonathan said. “It’s building up on the tree limbs already.”
“Oh, Jonathan,” Julie said, “isn’t it wonderful just being here together? I hope we get snowed in. Wouldn’t it be nice?”
“Yes, that would be nice, like magic, like a Camelot, just being here together, and not having to go in to work. You know, Julie, I would like to ask Mrs. Macon just one more time if she would allow us to walk on her land, too. I would love to explore that timber.”
They both stood there, contemplating their move into this neighborhood.
Harlan and Betty Freiley--tall, sandy-haired, pink-faced people, up the road to the west, with the big horned Hereford cows and robust new spring calves--had greeted them as a welcome addition to the area. They showed them their poultry hobby, their guineas, ducks, geese and bantams.
Jonathan and Julie liked to hike, and the Freileys assured them they were welcome to go from their landlord’s farm through the fence to roam the Freiley land at will.
“Just check with us ahead to see where the bull is,” they had cautioned.
The people in the nearby small town had been nice, too. Julie took clothes to wash at the laundromat while Jonathan was at work. The very first time she had been there, a lively 6-year-old black boy ran through the door to watch her rubbing a spot from a shirt.
As his mother, a young golden-brown woman only a few years older than Julie, came through the door carrying a baby and a basket of clothes with two other small children following, he asked, “What’s your name?”
“I’m Julie. What’s your name.”
“I’m Eddy Johnson, and that’s my Mama, Elaine, and my baby sister, Echo, and my big sister, Elen, and my brother, Freddy. You got any kids?”
“No, I don’t yet. You’re a bright boy,” she had said, smiling at the mother. Afterward, they spoke to each other a little every time they met. Mr. Johnson apparently was a house painter who did very well because the Johnsons lived in a very large two-story, well-kept home on the edge of town.
Julie determined that she would get to know Elaine Johnson better.
Mrs. Macon had been different than any of the others. “She’s is really different, don’t you think?” Jonathan asked.
“Yes, I’d call her different, nice maybe...pleasant enough, I think. You know, Jonathan, she was almost strange, like maybe she liked us but wasn’t sure she wanted us here. I don’t think she liked it when you asked if we could walk on her place, too.”
White-haired, ruddy-cheeked, square-built Meredith Macon, in her pink and white homey apron, hadn’t seemed immediately different. She smiled at the sight of the tall, thin almond-eyed newlyweds standing with arms wrapped around each other in matching red sock hats in her doorway--smiled like nearly any older woman will at the magic of young love.
She brought them into her front parlor, and served them homemade oatmeal cookies.
But her expression grew more somber as the young Stetler lovers talked about walking across the land and their first sighting of groundhogs in the rain in the Freiley’s most remote back pasture.
“We just love the big maples and oaks here,” Julie said.
“And that reminds me,” Jonathan added. “Would you mind if we walked on your land, too? We’d be careful not to bother anything.”
Meredith Macon had narrowed her eyes pausing for a moment looking at him.
“No,” she said, “I don’t think that would be possible. I don’t think I would want anybody to walk on my land. No, definitely not. I don’t want you walking on my land.”
“Well, if you say so,” Jonathan said, unaccustomed as he was to being turned down. Most people were fine with it as long as their permission was asked to show respect for private property. “If you want to think it over at all, the Freileys can tell you we’ve been OK on their place.”
“No, I don’t think so. Just stay off my place. Thank you for coming over to see me. You do seem like a nice young couple, and I’m happy to know you. Stop back at the house sometime. Now, if you don’t mind, I have things in the oven, and I need to get back to my baking.”
Meredith Macon had brought them over a plate of cookies for Christmas.
When Jonathan asked Harlan Freiley about Meredith Macon, Freiley replied, “Well, she’s lived there a long time by herself, and that can make people set in their ways, you know. Meredith is the last of her family. She never married. Her brother died in the war. Her folks have been gone probably 40 years.
“They once had a couple thousand acres, but Meredith sold most of it. She’s got plenty of money to take care of herself without doing anything on what’s left. I’d guess she must have 200 acres left there with the house and outbuildings and the cemetery.”
“Cemetery?”
“Yeah, Jonathan, there’s an old cemetery of some sort back down in those woods. Saw a little of it once myself. But even though I’ve lived here most of my life, I’ve never really been down in there to look around. Meredith doesn’t like anybody even asking about it.”
“Why not?”
“Folks say it’s a slave cemetery, left from the people the Macon family once owned. I figure Meredith just doesn’t want anybody poking around down there--wants to keep it just her business.”
But Jonathan was only made more curious by the revelation. He tried to focus his eyes through the snow at the timber to see if he could see anything.
When he got the binoculars out to look some more, Julie said, “I’ve looked, too, but I don’t see anything down there.”
The snow began melting quickly the following day in intense sunshine with birds singing spring songs that promised a quick change in season. Jonathan again was at the window staring in satisfaction at hunks of watery snow falling from the trees.
“We really ought to get out for a walk this afternoon, Julie,” he said. “It’s going to be warm.”
Jonathan stared back through the timber as splotches of white made way for the black of bark and wood on the trees. He saw a squirrel far away through the binoculars. Then came the moment he noticed an aberration, a white against the black that wasn’t irregular like the snow, but instead squared off.
“Julie, I’m seeing something I couldn’t see before. It’s something squared off...ah, a board, I think. Yes, it’s held up by another board. Julie, it’s a cross. I think I’m seeing that cemetery.”
“You really think so, Jonathan? There wouldn’t be any board cross left on something that old would there? Don’t you think it would be all rotted away, and overgrown with vines and trees and grass and stuff? Here, let me look.”
That’s when they decided. They would drive the car down to the next road south of Meredith Macon’s, and walk back in to her land from the other end. They would see the cemetery, and Mrs. Macon would never have to know they had been there.
Their Mustang spun out hunks of mud behind it, and all but bottomed out twice as they went up the cross-country road. The timber lined the road so thickly on the north side of the road that they couldn’t see Meredith Macon’s home even though they knew it was less than a mile away.
“I guess this is about it, Julie. I would guess we’re about straight through from the cross I saw if we can walk it through the trees. What do you say? I think we’ll get wet and muddy. Are you still up for this?”
“Oh brother, you know I am. I’m as curious about this slave cemetery now as you are. Just hold the barbed wire apart for me, so I don’t rip my sweats climbing over. We’ll be so hidden by the trees I don’t think anybody will ever know we’ve been in here. By the way, what do you want to say if we do get caught?”
“I don’t know. How about we came in from the south, and didn’t even know we were on her place until we came to the cemetery.”
“That’s OK, but don’t even mention the cemetery. Just say we came in from the south, and didn’t know where we were. I don’t think it would be good to let her know that we knew the cemetery was on her place.”
To their delight, they walked on leaf-pack instead of mud, with moisture seeping up under their footsteps. They came out of the trees onto an expanse of fescue grass that also provided the same solid footing. It was only when they tried to jump across a small slow-flowing stream that they slid in mud going up the short bank on the other side. At least they had saplings to hold onto.
Away through the next fringe of trees they came to, they could see through the branches the broken outline of Meredith Macon’s big box-structured house with its large front porch. Much further to the west was the suggestion of a dip where the road should be and a faint patch of white that might be their own home.
“I don’t see anything of a cemetery, Jonathan, do you? Don’t you think we should be there?”
“I’d say let’s bear left, and don’t go much further ahead. I’m afraid if we get too close to those trees, somebody might be able to see us from a ways off. Watch these thorns. Hey, I think these are blackberries. Maybe we could come back here in the summer. Maybe Mrs. Macon will soften up on us walking here if we get to know her better.”
“Oh, Jonathan, look through the trees over there--white crosses! Why there must be more than 30 of them all freshly painted white. Somebody is keeping this up. Look, boards--they’re building a new fence around it.”
“Sssh. Try to talk more softly. I’m beginning to feel like we could be a little exposed here.”
They stopped at the edge of white-board fence, looking at broken pieces of old native stone roughly in lines with new wooden crosses marking more clearly where graves would have been.
“There are a lot of people buried here, Jonathan. This place easily could have been used for 50 years.”
“As a matter of fact, we think it was,” said a voice out to the side of them. Jonathan and Julie were frozen in place by the sight of a tall black man in tan coveralls walking out from among the nearest trees.
“Who are you kids? What are you doing anyway? Oh, don’t worry. You’re OK. I’m Josh Johnson. I’ve been doing some fence-building, cross-building and painting for Mrs. Macon down here. Finding these graves, and putting a cross on each one of them is an extra we like to do. I trade work with her all the time for our place in town. You might even have seen my house, big white one on the edge of town. Now I’ve let you know who I am, so, you don’t think you stumbled onto a bugga-boo out here in the woods. Why don’t you tell me who you are?”
“I’m Jonathan Stetler and this is my wife, Julie. We live over that way. We were walking around from that road back that way, and kind of lost track of where we were at. I guess we just kind of stumbled in here. Are there people really buried here?”
“Yes, there are people buried here. I was about to go up to the house to have some cookies with Mrs. Macon and my family. Why don’t you walk on up there with me? Mrs. Macon can tell you more about this place if she wants to, and you can meet my family.”
They emerged from the trees walking across the large expanse of green fescue together, Johnson asking them what part of Kansas they grew up in, and telling them a little of his own youth in St. Louis, long before he had come out to school and met his future wife, Elaine. “This is the first time in my life I ever really had anything,” he said.
Meredith Macon’s eyes narrowed as they came in the front door. The wrinkles in her face sunk into a frown as Johnson explained how they were lost, and he met them at the cemetery.
“We lost track coming in from the other way,” Julie said.
Meredith Macon wiped her hands on her apron as her frown softened into a grim smile. “Well, I guess you are from Kansas, nosey yankees. My Daddy said his Grand-dad would tell how the Jayhawkers would ride in unexpectedly. You might as well have some cookies with us. Do you drink coffee? I will offer you courtesies and friendship even if I don’t believe you just stumbled in here lost.
“You’ll have to excuse the papers on the table until I get them cleared off. We were going through some business. This is my last living relative, Elaine, and her children.
“Since you seem to have been so curious about our history as to have accidentally stumbled into the cemetery, I’ll tell you that when I die this will be her place, or her children’s if she goes first. She can even choose Josh for her heir as long as her children follow him.”
Jonathan looked across the table where Elaine nodded her deep brown face at him, and back at Mrs. Macon whose pink cheeks were set in pasty white skin.
Mrs. Macon observed his glance, and added, “I suppose you think it’s odd that a white woman is leaving her land to a black woman? You yankees never have understood our peculiar family institutions.”
“Oh no, Mrs. Macon, I didn’t mean anything by it—I know we’re butting in here. Maybe we should be going.”
“No, no, it’s just that usually I don’t like to have anybody coming in here, looking at our cemetery. I’ve come to look at it as ours. Josh Johnson says he and Elaine may open it to the public when I’m gone. That will be OK if it’s our own people who open it, and not a bunch of yankees holding it up like a freak show. It would be nice if they could figure out the name of each person who went in each grave. They say my great grandmother tried to keep track of it if we could find it among all this paper.
“I suppose you think relationships between all slave owners and their Negro people were destroyed by the Civil War. Our old timers told how the blacks helped hide them in the storm cave when the Union cavalry came through so they wouldn’t tear the place up too badly.
“It was a peculiar thing that you had relationships with folks who were your property, but they had their own situation here. They were used to it.
“Many of the people who used to be slaves stayed on, and worked for my great grandparents. There got to be fewer of them all the time as their children went off to the cities, and the machinery got more modern. I’ll admit that I never thought it was much anything odd for us all to stick together. My Daddy used to raise thunder if any town officials tried to make trouble for our black folk.
“I’ll also admit there was a time when I was uncomfortable with black people named Macon in the same community. Both sides of the mix of feelings were there. Then Elaine got married, and she wasn’t a Macon anymore. She was a Johnson. She was the only one of the black Macons left.
“She’s very pretty, you know. Aren’t the children cute? I’ve come to love Elaine’s little family in a very short time, but I had to decide to go out of my way to do it.
“Some of the old-timers got to be really harsh at times. It was the way things made them back then. But we don’t have to keep making the same mistakes our parents and grandparents did, do we? Love can overcome everything.
These are really the last relatives I have left. It’s the best of what we were.
“I didn’t mean to have folks like you drawn in from the outside to try to understand our strange way. Elaine and I, we go so far back that our families became family.
“I know that there are people who are going to say that Elaine somehow tricked me into willing her property. I tell her to ignore them because they can’t understand.
“If you’ve ever known the magic of a beautiful moment, like the snow when it fell this week in those big flakes--love is like that, isn’t it? Except that, where the snow melts, love is what keeps you going for years and years. We delivered their babies, and they delivered ours. They cared for us when we were sick, and we cared for them. The same rhythms went on decade after decade after decade. It took more than a season to change them.
“The love I have realized from it has made me alive again. Love truly is the magical cure for everything. Love is hanging onto what was wonderful about the past, even the ordinary long-lasting day to day things, and letting the ugly slip away.
“You yankees have understood the worst of it. Keep coming over. Maybe you can understand the best of it.”
A very beautiful story, Jerry. I love your imagery and descriptions of the landscape. It has a wonderful, magical feel about it. And your point is well taken:
Love is hanging onto what was wonderful about the past ... and letting the ugly slip away.
Much enjoyed as always.
“If you’ve ever known the magic of a beautiful moment, like the snow when it fell this week in those big flakes--love is like that, isn’t it? Except that, where the snow melts, love is what keeps you going for years and years.
It truly is, and this is a most captivating story, Jerry.
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