Love Cemetery

Unburying the Secret History of SlavesBy China Galland

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2008 China Galland
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780060859558

Chapter One

Getting into Love Cemetery

They are not powerless, the dead.
—Chief Seattle,
Suquamish and Duwamish Native American leader

The road that leads to Love Cemetery is deeply rutted red clay and sand, and it winds for well over a mile through open fields and stands of East Texas pine until it arrives at a ten-foot-high chain-link gate just a couple hundred yards from the graveyard. On a chilly late winter morning in March 2003, the fence seemed impenetrable, with heavy metal chain woven around the steel end-poles clamped shut with a big brass combination lock. Mrs. Nuthel Britton, guardian and caretaker of Love Cemetery, had been given the combination, but the lock would not yield. This was a new fence, a new gate, and a new lock, and therefore, Mrs. Britton suspected, a new owner too. The 3,500 acres surrounding the old, overgrown cemetery, which she had rediscovered in the mid-1990s, had been cut up and sold off again. Whoever bought this parcel had fenced the cemetery in. The combination Nuthel had been given must have been for an old lock on the outer gate, the first one we'd come to. There was no fence attached to it; that one was just a free-standing gate. The deep ruts around it indicated that the fence had been taken down years ago. We drove past that first gate and continued on until this second gate stopped us. Now Nuthel stood there with Doris Vittatoe, who also had ancestors buried in Love Cemetery, and me, trying to solve this puzzle. This second gate was big enough for an East Texas logging truck to drive through—if you had the combination. We didn't.

A manganese blue sky shone through the pines and the bare branches of a few red oaks that still grew here. The bright sun took the chill off the air. The quiet of the morning was broken by the resonant calls of mockingbirds, mourning doves, and a warbler. The familiar rat-a-tat-tat of a red-headed woodpecker echoed from deep in the woods.

We shook our heads, thwarted by the new lock. At seventy-nine, Nuthel—as she insisted we call her—was still lean, tall, and active. Doris, about twenty years younger, had an elegant oval face with big dark eyes. Like Nuthel, she mowed her own yard and worked in the garden, staying trim and fit. Nuthel wore a long-sleeved red sweatshirt and an army camouflage hat. As secretary of the Love Colored Burial Association, she was "the Keeper of Love." Nuthel had wanted to show us the cemetery, but she was blocked this morning. Legally, she had every right to be there, and so did Doris. The land belongs to the dead in Texas. Cemeteries cannot be sold or transferred. In 1904 a local landowner named Della Love had deeded this 1.6 acre parcel to the Love Colored Burial Association. In turn, the Burial Association secured a permanent easement to use the road to the cemetery. Someone from the timber management company that once owned the larger, surrounding parcel had given Nuthel the combination to the lock some years before, but the property had changed hands many times in recent years—from a timber company to an insurance conglomerate to whomever the current owner was.

Last Nuthel knew the timber was owned by an East Coast insurance company. "It must have changed hands again," she said, matter-of-factly. That would explain the fancy new fence and new lock. "Whatever they got in there, they don't want it to get out, that's for sure," she said with a chuckle.

She pulled up her sweatshirt to get to her pants pocket and fished around. With a straight face and a solemn air, she pulled out a small strip of paper with the combination number written on it, glanced at it, then shot us a smile. Nuthel had an inscrutable face that I was only learning to read. She was a great tease. "Hmmm," she said, shaking her head and chuckling, puzzled, "I see here that I put in the right numbers," she paused. "Only thing is, it's the wrong lock."

A rifle shot cracked in the distance and startled me, a city dweller. Nuthel and Doris paid it little attention.

"Somebody's back in there huntin', I bet," Nuthel remarked with another big smile, as Doris nodded. "It's nothing. You're just not used to it," they assured me. Hunting was still a way of life here. We had passed a deserted duck blind and an empty hunting camp on the dirt road coming in.

"Look," I said, "I'm going to get some folding chairs out of the trunk of my car. You can sit here in front of this locked gate; I'll take your picture and interview you right here. The picture alone will tell a big part of the story."

But when I brought the chairs back, I noticed that there was something strange about the gate. It didn't look right, it wasn't straight—something was awry. "Wait a minute," I said. I looked at the hinge on the right and—sure enough—the gate had been lifted off its hinges and opened from the side. Maybe someone had slipped inside and was poaching. That would explain the rifle shots we had heard even though hunting season was over. I pointed out this opening to my companions.

"Since you have family buried back there, you two have a right to go in," I said, "at least that was how the attorney explained it to me."

They considered this a moment. Then Nuthel grinned and clasped her hands together, "And you're with us, China," she said, "so you can come too."

"Well, that would be my logic," I said, laughing.

Doris nodded in agreement. "Of course."

We picked up the gate and inched it open just wide enough for us to slip in one by one. We laughed like schoolgirls, excited by our unexpected adventure. As soon as we were on the other side we pushed the gate back just as we'd found it, so close to the pole that it looked all the way shut.

Continues...
Excerpted from Love Cemeteryby China Galland Copyright © 2008 by China Galland. Excerpted by permission.
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