Monday, April 25
“How’re things going, Danny?” Hunched over the keyboard, Danny glanced up at Mark, then waved his brother into the room.
“It’s going pretty good, actually. I ought to be finished in another few hours. This is going to help you out a lot, soon as I teach somebody else how to use it.”
Danny had finished installing the main program after a slow start and was trying to make the features as easy to learn as possible by jotting down his thoughts on paper as he went. The computer Mark had purchased for the business turned out to need upgrading to handle the new program, which meant placing an order and waiting for new hard drives to arrive. The so-called user’s manual had been a little too complicated for a beginner, so Danny was creating his own.
Danny had graduated from technical college with a CAD (computer assisted drafting) degree in Raleigh, gone to work immediately with a large firm, and six months later been laid off when the company lost a state contract. He came for a visit while sending out resumes, and Mark had found an immediate use for Danny’s ‘spare time.’ He needed someone with computer expertise to bring his company up to date.
Danny didn’t have to be asked twice; he packed up his few belongings in the back of his pickup truck, and made the move over a weekend into one of Mark’s construction trailers in back of the office complex.
His new quarters had been cleaned, rearranged several times to make the best use of the small amount of space, and Danny had made several trips to the mall for various items — most importantly, a coffee maker, mugs and the fixings for morning coffee.
He needed a short, quiet wake-up time with his coffee before he was ready to face the day, but now he felt pretty much at home in the trailer. He preferred to get his bacon and eggs at the Downtown Diner across from the courthouse. Occasionally Mark would join him for a second or third cup of coffee.
As they had talked over the ins and outs of the construction business, Danny asked good questions, getting the general idea of how things worked on a daily, weekly and monthly basis down at the office. That way he could tailor the company’s new computer program to the actual work that Mark and his staff did.
During the day he shadowed Mark on the job sites where building projects were underway, meeting the subcontractors and running errands whenever possible. After hours he made notes of whatever he had learned during the day.
Danny had an orderly way of looking at things and kept an orderly outline in his head of what he knew, what he needed to learn, and what he needed to do tomorrow. He was determined to earn his keep. So far, he’d gotten no firm job offers from the multiple resumes he’d mailed.
“Danny, I’m going out to the Elliott property this morning, I’d like you to come along. There’s something we — ought to talk about.”
“Sure, just let me cut the computer off. Something important?” Danny was caught off guard by Mark’s lowered tone of voice on the ‘ought to talk about.’
“Could be. We’ll talk about it out there.” The two men grabbed their windbreakers from the coat rack and stopped by the break room to fill their coffee mugs to take with them.
“A little problem has come up you need to know about, Danny. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it to anyone else.”
“Now I’m really curious. What’s so serious?”
It only took a few minutes to reach the outskirts of town, heading towards the Elliott Pointe property. Mark was quiet as he drove, trying to formulate his thoughts in such a way as to convey the right message to Danny.
The main entrance to the project was still just a rough dirt track. They left the truck and started making their way down into the center of the property. The track meandered quite a bit before ending at Jensen’s Creek. The main entrance would start further west, but this narrow road was parallel to where Mark had walked before. He began to describe his last visit to the property but as he got to the place in his narrative about the stone, he hesitated.
“What is it, Mark? Something got you spooked?”
“Well, the best thing is probably show you, Danny.” He angled off to the right into the woods, and in a few more minutes they were there.
“Humh.” Danny squatted down on his heels, staring at the broken marker and the lettering carved into it.
“Yeah.” Mark was taking deep breaths intermittently.
“Well, what’s this going to mean, Mark? I mean, is this going to…” Danny knew this stone might throw a monkey-wrench into development plans for the Elliott land.
“That’s what we need to discuss.” Mark sat down on an old fallen pine tree, his hands dangling loose between his knees.
“You know who that marker is for? See that line?”
With his forefinger Mark traced the mildew-stained letters — ‘LT SC LINE’ and ‘REV WAR’ below the carved name ‘JOHN ELLIOTT’ and the dates underneath, ’1755 1783.’
Danny knew something about historic sites, the law and land development. He frowned as he spoke.
“You didn’t know about this when you bought the place, Mark? Any other old grave stones out here?”
“I don’t know. We need to find out. No, I didn’t know about this place when I took over this property. At least, not exactly. Pop never mentioned it. I don’t think he knew about it or he would’ve told us some time or other.”
Mark rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. A nagging headache was starting up.
“The thing is, Stuart knew about some kind of restriction on the deed, but he was sure any graves out here were moved a long time ago. So he said. Anyway, he didn’t copy the restriction over to my deed, and I don’t know what we’re going to do about that, either.”
He rose to his feet and twisted his neck back and forth, trying to ease out the tension.
Danny rose to his feet. “Well, let’s start looking. You look around any more when you found this stone?”
“Not that day. I just wanted to get out of here and do some thinking. You head towards the creek and I’ll go south. Holler if you find anything. And be careful, there could be a few snakes out here, specially close to the creek…”
They split up and slowly edged their way through the brush at right angles to each other, pulling apart small trees and bushes, trying to keep to fairly straight lines as they went. They had only gone a short distance when Danny called out.
“Mark!” He was close enough to the creek to hear the gurgle of water running. Kneeling down, he was examining another grave stone when Mark reached him.
Chewing his lip, Mark helped Danny strip away the tendrils of vine clinging to the surface and read ‘SARAH ELLIOTT’ followed by ‘BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER’ on the line below, and the dates ’1758 1821″ below that.
“I guess these two markers go together,” Mark thought out loud. This stone leaned forward at an angle. “Let’s see where the other one was supposed to be.” As they pulled away the matted ground cover, it didn’t take long to find the broken base of the first grave stone.
“See any more, Danny?” Mark turned in place and kicked at the ground around him.
“Not so far.” Danny moved away several feet and also slowly turned. For the next thirty minutes they searched back and forth, making sure those two graves were the only ones.
“What you want to do, Mark?”
“For now, let’s put that first marker back where it belongs.” It took both of them to get it off the ground. Carefully they propped the broken stone against its base, and Mark debated his next step.
He recognized this area, close to the creek. It was more or less where Donna wanted to put her new house.
