MARSHALL'S GRAVEYARD
© 2000 James D. and Rebecca P. Pearce
The town where Thelma lived as a child had two sides. It was spoken of as having two sides because there was a two-mile-long gravel highway running in an east-west direction, with a one-mile dirt street on the north side and a one-mile dirt street on the south side.
Just beyond North Street was the river, and just beyond South Street was the ravine. Both the surface of the river and the bottom of the ravine ~ which usually had only a trickle of water in it ~ were well below the flat surface of the town, having been carved over many years by the movement of storm water seeking the sea.
The ravine with its thin line of water seemed out of place. Some speculated that somewhere in the dim past the river might have run down that side of town before moving over to the north.
Thelma and most of her childhood friends lived on South Street, near the ravine, and they often played on its banks and in the peanut and cotton fields nearby.
To get to the fields, they had to cross the ravine, which was easily done during the dry spells of summer and fall. After they crossed the ravine, if they went left instead of to the fields on the right, they soon came to a clump of pines that had grown tall and thick over the years.
For many more years than Thelma knew, the tall pines had been carpeting the ground beneath them ~ and the graveyard within ~ with their long brown needles, and the area was a quiet and somber place.
The graveyard wasn't very large. Most people of Thelma's time were being buried at the new cemetery, on the east end of town near the river.
The little resting place was very pretty. It was square, with an iron fence surrounding it, an iron archway at the main entrance, and cone-like decorations on the tall iron posts at each of its four corners.
Thelma and her friends called the cones "witches' hats."
~~~
W. Gary Parker (George) and
Thelma (Christine) Leonhirth
at the ravine, c. 1920
~~~~~
The old man's name was Tom Baker. He lived alone and worked at the basket factory. Thelma and her friends spoke of him as "Old Man Tom."
He had some friends, but not too many. He was very quiet and kept to himself. There were some people in town who called him "strange."
On afternoons after work, while the sun was still up, Tom would maneuver his Model T down into the ravine where the trickle of water was the narrowest, and drive it up the other side over to one corner of the peanut field, not too far from the clump of pines and Marshall's Graveyard.
Here he would cut off the motor, lean back in his seat and look toward the clump of pines. And after he sat a while, he would doze off, and then fall into a sound sleep. He did that often when he sat quietly.
And unthinking children sometimes would crawl from the ravine, run into the peanut field and gather clods of dirt to throw at his Model T, and disturb his dreams.
~~~~~
Thelma was born in a boarding house. Many years before it had been an inn, or an "ordinary," or a hotel. It had two floors, with many rooms, and wide porches all around, and for young married people like Christine and George, Thelma's parents, it was a place to stay while they started building their families and their own places in the town.
Tom Baker lived at the boarding house at the same time as Christine and George, but he had no family. He kept to himself, and he seldom smiled.
But as Christine told it later, there were times she had seen him smile, and there were times she had seen him laugh out loud.
~~~~~
George bought a radio, in the days when the only station that could be received was a long way away ~ KDKA, away up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
It was what was called a "crystal" set, which meant you listened to it over headphones during the two hours that KDKA was in the air over Eastern North Carolina at night. George's radio had two sets of headphones.
George was one of the few fairly close friends that Tom Baker had, and as Christine told it, when KDKA first started coming in, Tom began to consider himself as having a standing invitation to come over to Christine and George's place to help George make use of the two sets of headphones.
Up to one point this was all right with Christine, but up to another point it came to be somewhat aggravating.
Christine said George and Tom would sit with their elbows on the kitchen table and the headphones over their ears and listen a couple of minutes ~ and then burst out in peals of loud laughter. Then they'd be quiet and listen again, and then they'd break out laughing again. And they'd do this over and over, until KDKA signed off and they took off the headphones.
Christine thought she ought to be allowed to get in on the joke. But the way it was with men at the time, women were looked on as mothers, household decorations and appliances and little else. And if they had the headphones on and Christine asked what was so funny, they would wiggle their hands "no," and shake their heads "no," in an effort to quiet her.
Christine would get mad and go to bed.
~~~
Little "Thelma"
One Sunday morning around the time Thelma was beginning to walk a little, Christine took her into the yard near the end of the wide porch on the front of the house.
She noticed that at the far end of the porch Tom Baker was sitting alone, moving back and forth slowly in a tall wooden rocker. His head was nodding. Falling asleep again, she thought, as he continued rocking.
Walking behind the house and coming around the other side, she suddenly was startled to hear those familiar peals of loud laughter. And they didn't stop. When she neared the porch, she saw Tom standing there. His laughter dropped to a chuckle.
"You didn't see that, did you, Christine?" asked Tom.
"See what?" asked Christine.
"Well," said Tom, "I went to sleep in the rocking chair, and it must have walked off the edge of the porch."
And again he broke down, he was laughing so hard. But then he stopped, and Christine took Thelma and went along.
~~~~~
Christine listened intently when her older friend started telling the story.
Tom Baker, who wasn't from one of the best families in town, and Joan Blackwell, who was the only daughter of the best family in town, fell in love.
Her daddy, Moses Blackwell, wasn't going to have it.
Tom asked Moses to allow him and Joan to get married, but Moses exploded.
"Never," he said. "Over my cold, dead body," he said.
Moses went so far as to hire a colored woman, Sue, to shadow Joan constantly and report to him if she so much as looked at or spoke to Tom Baker.
Joan was sorely upset by her father's actions, and by his paid spy.
She had told her father in no uncertain words that she was in love with Tom Baker, and that she was never going to be in love with anybody else, and if she couldn't marry Tom Baker, then he ~ Daddy Moses Blackwell ~ was forever going to be without a grandchild because she would never marry another and would never carry anybody else's child.
Moses wanted grandchildren, but he didn't believe her, and he was unrelenting. He felt that if he held the line long enough, Tom Baker would just fade from Joan's mind and out of his life.
It didn't turn out that way, of course.
~~~~~
Sue almost worshipped her ward. She was overjoyed at the very idea of being paid just to follow such a beautiful child around.
The problems developed because Sue began to see Tom Baker as a sort of decent and likable fellow ~ and because she let Joan know this, and because she sometimes became inclined to doze off, herself, at times intentionally.
Marshall's Graveyard, the old cemetery with the iron fence, on the other side of the ravine, always was a popular place for the young folk of the town.
They were respectful enough of its permanent residents, but the seclusion of the tall pines and the quiet of nature's carpeting brought more than one young couple to tarry there, hold hands, whisper quietly, or sometimes pass notes under the protection of the little cone-like decorations that they called "the witches' hats."
Tom and Joan didn't see each other in the presence of Moses for three years, but they did stay in contact. They passed notes to each other under the "witches' hats," and refused to engage in any social activity with the rest of the younger set.
Joan would sit by the window and pine, and wait for the hour when she could walk with Sue to Marshall's Graveyard. Moses would look at her and wonder how any girl could stay so lovesick over some ne'er-do-well for so long.
And, as was noted, Sue sometimes dozed off.
Joan became pregnant.
~~~~~
This was a terrible situation in a small Eastern North Carolina town in the early 1900s.
Who would think? The only daughter of the best family in town. In that condition?
Moses was devastated. He thought terrible thoughts. He decided to kill Tom Baker. He considered killing his daughter. He considered killing his wife, and Sue. He considered killing himself.
In the end, he could see only one way out.
So he took his shotgun, loaded it with two shells, and went to visit Tom Baker.
"You will make an honest woman of my daughter!"
~~~~~
Tom Baker was as cool and unshaken as Moses Blackwell was hot and overwrought.
"Mr. Blackwell," he said, "you don't have to come at me with a shotgun to make me marry Joan. I have wanted to marry her and take care of her since I first saw her. I asked you three years ago to let me marry her, and you shut her up like a nun and wouldn't let me."
"Put away your shotgun. I am a man, and I will take care of my wife, and I will take care of my child."
So Tom and Joan were married, and Moses Blackwell became a proud grandfather.
~~~~~
This was the story Christine heard from her older friend:
It wasn't just a grandchild.
There were two of the pretty little ones. Twins. One a girl and one a boy.
Tom worked hard and was a good father. Moses was reconciled. Joan was an adoring mother of two beautiful children.
When Joan took them for a ride in their carriage, with Sue walking proudly behind, people would smile and say: "Look at Joan and those two beautiful children with those big black eyes."
"Those are Moses Blackwell's grandchildren."
"Don't you think they have the prettiest dark eyes?"
~~~~~
Then it was the winter of 1918. A lot of people in the little town fell ill with influenza. Some of them died.
Moses Blackwell didn't die. Tom Baker didn't die. Joan Blackwell Baker and her two beautiful, dark-eyed children died.
Tom, with his closer friends attempting comfort, walked to the cemetery behind the horse-drawn hearse.
That was the story Christine heard.
~~~~~
On a long summer afternoon after work the old man, who was so quiet he was known as "strange" by some, maneuvered his Model T down into the ravine and up the other side. He drove over to the edge of the peanut field, and turned his vehicle so he was facing the clump of pines that stood over the small plot that had the iron fence with the "witches' hats" on the tall posts at its four corners.
He turned off the motor, leaned back against his seat, and a far-away look came into his eyes.
After he sat awhile, his head began to nod, and his eyes closed, and he fell into a deep sleep.
Unthinking children crawled from the ravine, ran to the edge of the peanut field and gathered clods of dirt and threw them against the sides of his Model T, and disturbed his dreams.
~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~
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