~ Cider Creek Plantation ~

by

Sue Thornton

Another night without sleep confronted Brit as the sky outside the window lightened with the sunrise. She continued to rock back and forth in the chair as she stared out of the sunroom, her fingers smoothing the soft linsey woolsy fabric of Esther’s block.

When questioned about her fabulous discovery, all Naomi would say was that she “found” it. The longer she was questioned, the more stubborn the child grew about disclosing the location. By the time Brit could get Naomi calmed down, it wasn’t important where the block was found. For some reason this block was important to Esther and she wanted Naomi to have it.

The night was long and drawn out as Brit contemplated Galen’s project and Esther’s appearance. How did any of this belong together? Had Esther come to Aunt Lolly and asked for her to involve Peg in the quilt quest? When Esther had lived here at Cider Creek was she a free servant or destined to wear chains?

“Yous gonna worry a hole in that patch, Miss Bridget,” Esther spoke from where she appeared in the sewing room door. “Young Massa Henry’s mighty worried about you. Yous don’t sleep and eats barely ‘nough to keep a bird alive. He don’t want to be burying yous alongside his grandmama now. Why don’t yous make young Massa Henry happy and crawl into bed ‘side him. What this house needs is the sound of a baby beings born into this world. It’s been a long time.”

Brit smiled ruefully. “It will be a while longer, Esther. Henry and I aren’t married. Besides, I don’t even know him. He stood me up last night and disappeared before I could meet him.”

Esther chuckled. “Yous ain’t fooling nobody, Miss Bridget. Yous done found the warmth and strength you been searching for in his arms last night. You just keep hiding behind that wall yous built up around yerself, but I knows how yous feel. To have yore man hold yous and tell yous how much yous means to him. There’s nothin’ like cuddlin’ with yore man on a cold winter night.”

Brit’s face flamed hot and she turned away from Esther’s prying eyes, but the woman had already disappeared. Strains of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot echoed throughout the room.

“Buried.” Brit’s gaze darted up the hill toward the cemetery. She jumped from the chair and hurried out the door. She raced up the hill only to stop outside the gated entrance. Of course, if Henry had been the master here, it would make sense that he was also buried here.

The leaves on the trees rustled in the wind and a squirrel set up a loud chatter, angered that someone or something was invading its territory. Then a silence as loud as a sonic boom settled over the small section of Cider Creek land when Brit opened the wrought iron gate and stepped inside the Abbott family burial grounds.

With reverence, she glanced in the direction of Aunt Lolly’s plot lying next to her son, Louie, who lost his life in Vietnam. Her husband, Albert, lay on the other side of her. The two newborn babies who’d died at birth were just beyond Lolly’s headstone close to their grandmother’s grave. Tiny angels dotted the cemetery, marking the loss of the youngest members of the Abbott family, who never grew up to make their way in the world.

Brit moved with quiet respect among the stones, carefully reading the inscriptions. Some were so worn with time she had to rub her fingers across the markings to try to identify the letters.

All through the years of growing up at Cider Creek, Brit would help Aunt Lolly keep the cemetery free of weeds and fill the area with flowers. Sometimes a story about a particular cousin or great-great uncle would be told as they cleaned and beautified the area. But Brit couldn’t remember anything about a Henry.

She couldn’t honestly remember spending a whole lot of time reading the headstones, there was always too much work to be done. As she neared the last row of neatly laid out graves, in the oldest section of the cemetery, her frustration mounted.

“Brit, what are you doing?” Sean asked behind her.

She squealed and whirled around in fright. Horrified, she stared at him while she tried to think. “I can’t find him. I don’t understand why he isn’t here. If he was the master of Cider Creek, don’t you think he’d be buried here? And who was his mother? If I knew that, maybe I could find him.”

The frown on Sean’s face signaled his confusion. “Who exactly was the master of Cider Creek and why are you looking for him?”

Brit turned away and continued her search. “Henry. He should be buried next to his mother.” She reached the last gravestone and threw her hands up in disappointment. “He’s not here. Why isn’t he here?”

Sean opened his mouth to reply, but Galen’s shout from the house broke the silence. Bird song came alive once more and the squirrel must have decided he’d had enough visitors for one day for he began to scold and chatter once again.