Fall

On the evening of October 15, 2006, my husband Andy and my son Duncan and I made a short jaunt to the Oberlin Village cemetery. It sits behind the YWCA and is the final resting place for freed slaves and their descendents who built and lived in the Oberlin Community in Raleigh. On the way, Duncan asked me what I was hoping to find.
“Ghosts,” I said.
“What kind?”
“Dead ones.”
I mean, how many kinds are there? It was 8:50 pm. I brought a compass, a thermometer, and a flashlight. Andy had a video camera. Duncan had his own flashlight. We crunched among the graves strewn with dried brown oak leaves. It was impossible to be quiet. We sounded like Riverdance done on cornflakes. Heat lightning pulsed silently overhead. Andy went over toward Cameron Village and Duncan and I went left toward the new condos that face Wade Avenue. We read names and dates on tombstones.
William B. Pettiford MD.
8-4-1893
1-26-1956

The compass was supposed to spin if a ghost showed up. The thermometer was to register temperature drops. The temperature was not the only thing that dropped. Acorns pinged off the headstones. I dropped into a sunken grave up to my knees.
“Son of a bitch!” I vaulted out. I was so busy reading stones I hadn’t looked at the ground. A significant number of the graves are sinking. Markers are toppled or broken. I lost the compass in someone’s plot. I decided not to hunt for it. Duncan hot footed it back to the car. For fifteen minutes, Andy and I sat on a wooden bench and were silent. We listened to the acorns and the traffic beyond the balconies of the condos. The wind stirred the oaks and magnolias. Finally, I asked,
“Well?”
“Nope.”
“Me neither.”
Duncan had the windows rolled up, the car locked, and the radio on. I decided to come again to the Oberlin Cemetery when I could see where I was going. Duncan asked if the families of dead slaves were pelting us with acorns because they didn’t want us there. I gave it serious consideration.
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I think it’s just, you know, fall.”

I went to the Oberlin cemetery again one warm November afternoon with writer, Jill McCorkle. We found wild gourds growing around some of the graves. I discovered a tombstone with my brother’s name engraved on it. That was creepy. I wondered if we were related to any of the African American families in the Oberlin Community. What with reading Faulkner and all, I thought it not out of the question. The only vibe I got from the Oberlin cemetery visit with Jill was by an iron fence enclosing the remains of the Howard family. I had entered other fenced off family plots with no feeling other than mild interest. I did not enter the Howard sanctuary. I got a distinct impression that disapproval emanated from those inside. In all my research, it was the only time I got a sense of incipient menace. Jill did not report any feelings about them. Maybe it is because I have Howards in my own family. Maybe they had slaves way back. What Jill did see not far from the Howard compound that disturbed her was three black men’s sneakers. Two lefts and a right. They bothered me too. Why were they there? Same shoe. Size about ten and a half. Why leave them in the cemetery? Why three? Jill told me that she was digging in her back yard once and discovered a Bass Weejan. Just one. It bothered her enough that she wrote it in to a story about a woman who finds a body in her back yard. Jill said she had not personally experienced any ghosts. But, she admitted, since her father’s death she had smelled his tobacco in her car. And she has a picture of her grandmother’s porch and screen door. Behind the door, when Jill took the picture, was her grandmother. Although her grandmother was in the darkness behind the screen, Jill kept the photograph because she knew that her grandmother had been there in the dark. Lately, Jill told me, after more than twenty years, her grandmother’s face was emerging out of the darkness. She thinks the photograph will end up in another story. I will be looking for a story that includes the finding of three shoes.