Chapter Twenty-three
A phone call to the Livingston County records office had led Louis to a clerk who had patiently gone through the records but found nothing with the name Brandt in it. It didn’t even appear on the countywide survey of family plots the Daughters of the American Revolution had done back in the forties.
But the clerk had told Louis that her grandfather often talked about an abandoned cemetery somewhere out by Lethe Creek. She directed him to Talladay Trail, a dirt road that ran along Lethe Creek. The creek, Louis knew, was the northern border of the Brandt land.
The Bronco bounced along the rutted road, overgrown branches scraping the windows. Louis slowed to avoid a hole, and that was when he saw the small break in the trees. He stopped and peered out of the side window.
He thought he caught a glimmer of water through the brush. But no way could he get the Bronco down that road. He switched off the engine and got out.
Through the quiet, the trickle of water pricked his ears. He followed the sound through the brush and down a hill, emerging into a marshy slough.
Lethe Creek spilled out before him, its tea-colored water cutting a slow, broad swath through the cattails and sedge grasses before disappearing into a tunnel of black trees to the west.
There was a patch of high, cleared ground on the south bank and what looked like headstones. Or maybe they were just rocks jutting from the ground. He couldn’t be sure.
Louis eyed the dark water. Upstream, it narrowed enough for him to venture a leap across. He made it — barely — almost leaving a shoe in the muck on the bank as he fell forward trying to break his momentum.
Wiping his muddy hands on his jeans, he went up the rise. He was standing on a hill, and he looked south. There, through the bare trees, he could just make out the faded red of the old Brandt barn a mile or so away.
He headed east toward the clearing where he thought he had seen the gray stones. They were, indeed, grave markers, mostly small square slabs of granite, some lying toppled in the weeds, others broken and listing.
He went to the front of the largest headstone. The inscription, mottled with moss, was so worn he could barely make it out:
AMOS BRANDT
BORN MAY 3, 1800
DIED JUNE 6, 1879
WHERE THERE IS MUCH LIGHT
THE SHADOWS ARE DEEPEST
The wind sent the trees sighing, and Louis shrugged off the shower of dead leaves. He surveyed the other headstones. There was one of equal size and shape but it was in two pieces, facedown in the weeds. He pried the edge from the dirt and flipped it over. The only word still visible through a swirl of ants was phoebe.
Amos’s wife.
He went to the nearest stone, the one just to the right of Amos’s large marker. He was expecting to see one of the daughters’ names from the family Bible, Lucinda or Ann. The carved letters were completely covered in moss. He found a stick, squatted down, and dug out the moss until the letters emerged:
CHARLES BRANDT
BORN JANUARY 1832
DIED APRIL 1895
BELOVED SON OF AMOS
Louis rose slowly. Charles? There had been no record of this name in the family Bible. Louis moved on to the nearest headstone. Most of it was sunken in the ground, leaving only one name and part of a date visible;
CLEONA
1889
Near this one was a tiny marker with the inscription
INFANT DAUGHTER
Gone to the Angels 1856
Was this Charles Brandt’s wife and daughter? There were three other headstones that were too old and decayed to make out the inscriptions. Louis noticed another, newer-style headstone in the far southern corner of the clearing and went to it. It was a simple gray marker:
JONAH BRANDT
VERNA BRANDT
D: 1967
D: 1957
This had to be Owen’s parents. Louis looked across the grass, back at the first headstone. And Amos must have been the patriarch who had first settled here generations ago. So, why were Amos’s “beloved son” Charles and his family buried here at Amos’s right side, but their names were not recorded in the family Bible?
Louis felt something touch his leg, and he jumped. He looked down to see a large dog sniffing at his pants. Louis backed away slowly, and the dog gave out a low growl.
“Don’t move.”
Louis spun at the sound of the voice. An old man was standing at the edge of the trees. How had he not heard him or the dog coming? The dog was staring at him. It had one blue eye and one brown eye.
The old man came forward. He was wearing a red plaid jacket over mud-caked overalls, a John Deere cap pulled low over a thin face elongated by a full gray beard. He carried a stripped-down tree branch as a walking stick.
“Here, give him this, and he’ll leave you be,” the old man said, holding out a Milk Bone.
Louis, one eye still on the dog, took the biscuit and held it out. The big mutt snatched it and trotted away. Louis let out a breath.
“What’s your business here?” the old man asked.
There was a challenge in the man’s voice, and Louis was about to ask the same thing when the old man gave him a gap-toothed smile.
“You’re one of them history nuts, right?” he asked. “Snooping around graveyards looking for your roots.”
Louis nodded, deciding it was better not to be caught trespassing on the Brandt land.
“You got kin here?” the old man asked.
Louis searched the man’s face for a smirk. But his expression was merely one of mild curiosity. Then it came to Louis in a cold, clear rush: Charles wasn’t in the family Bible because he wasn’t Phoebe’s son. Charles had a different mother. And she was black.
“You part of the Brandt clan?” the man asked again.
“No, I’m just interested in old cemeteries,” Louis said.
“Lots of folks are,” the old man said, and went off to find his dog.
Louis walked back to Amos’s headstone, an idea forming in his head. The mid-1800s… of course, there would have been black servants living on the farm. A young black servant woman, an older man who wielded power over her. An illegitimate son.
The dog was back suddenly, sniffing at Louis’s feet. Louis felt the old man at his side a moment later.
“Do you know much about the Brandt history?” Louis asked.
“Little bit,” the old man said. “Been walking this earth a long time, son. Now I just walk Henry here every day this time.”
