Chapter 2. Take Your Shot #2
“It’s like a logo or trademark blacksmiths put on the things they make to identify their work,” Gail informed him.
“Virgil’s touchmark resembled a wagon wheel.
The spokes formed the V in his name. A wagon wheel symbol was used on the Underground Railroad, too.
It was common back then to see quilts hung from a window or fence to air out.
The patterns on the quilts sent secret messages.
If a quilt had a wagon wheel on it, it was a sign to enslaved people to get ready to flee.
A pattern that incorporated britches meant that escaped slaves should dress nicely, as if they were free, to fool white folks in the area.
A log cabin design meant a house was a safe place to seek shelter. ”
I hadn’t known about the quilts. What an ingenious way to communicate.
Our footsteps fell softly on the dirt floor as we entered the barn.
Slivers of sunlight revealed gaps in the boards and shone spotlights on the microscopic particles in the air, which sparkled like fairy dust. The place smelled of moist earth with a hint of rust, the typical scents of yesteryear.
Ancient farming implements leaned against the interior wall next to the door: a long-handled manure shovel with a flat blade; a hoe for preparing a small garden; a pitchfork for tossing hay.
The five prongs of the pitchfork were surprisingly pointy.
Someone must have used a metal file to sharpen them not long before the tool was put out of use.
A variety of abandoned horse tack was scattered about, including a bit and bridle, a set of stirrups, and a Western saddle so dried out it appeared to be made of beef jerky.
A rusty horse-drawn plow sat to the side next to a fancy enclosed carriage, its surfaces covered in a thick layer of dust. Though the metal wheel hubs and tire rims remained, the wooden tires had long since disintegrated.
Lettering on the side, so faded as to be barely discernible, read WOMBLE LIVERY LEIPERS FORK.
It must have been decades, if not a century, since the carriage had last been used.
I wondered if it might have been the carriage that carried Martha, Virgil, and their children out of bondage.
I also wondered what it might take to restore the thing.
I walked over to take a closer look, running a hand over the side panel.
The workmanship was excellent. “This carriage must have been lovely back in the day.”
“Top of the line,” Gail said. “It was the one Wobbling Womble always took to town. He liked to show off.”
My gaze traveled through the large barn.
I noted a total of twenty stalls, ten on each side of a center aisle wide enough to lead a horse through.
I whipped out my measuring tape. Each stall was twelve feet by twelve feet.
The windows in each stall were six feet wide by four feet high.
The center aisle between the stalls was ten feet wide.
I looked up at the floor of the hayloft.
The loft spanned the entire center aisle and extended out a few feet over each stall.
I pulled out my cell phone and recorded the measurements in my notes app before turning to Gail. “May we go up into the loft?”
“If you’d like,” she said. “Watch your step, though. The last time this place was used was the late eighties. The boards are probably rotten in places.”
I walked back to the front of the barn, where a ladder led up from the tack area to the hayloft. I grabbed the rails and gave them a firm shake. “They’ll hold,” I advised Buck, who’d trailed me to the ladder.
He waited below until I’d climbed into the loft, then followed me up.
There, we discovered a stack of hay bales sitting on a weathered canvas tarp.
Another tarp lay atop the bales. Large stones held the covering down across most of the stack, though the tarp had pulled free on a front corner, probably assisted by winds coming through the loft door.
The edge of the tarp was folded back atop the stack, exposing the hay to the elements.
The bales had disintegrated over time, losing their shape, and what remained was rotten, even moldy in places.
Though the hay was unfit for consumption, it served as a nice-enough home for field mice, two of whom scampered away when they spotted us spotting them.
Other than the rotting hay and an ancient oil lantern, the only things in the loft were random twigs, leaves, feathers, and other pieces of nesting material, as well as an abundance of bird excrement, which decorated the floor and walls like white graffiti.
Horses might not have lived in the barn in decades, but the place had clearly served as an aviary in the time since.
I scanned the floor, looking for rotten boards, and noted a scattering of tiny mice droppings and a series of trapdoors set at regular intervals.
Trapdoors were common in haylofts, used to drop hay to the animals below.
Treading lightly, I moved forward to give Buck space to join me.
Tyler had followed him up the ladder, and glanced around in curiosity.
He raised his camera to his eye to snap more photos.
The sound of the shutter opening and closing sounded loud in the silent space. Click. Click. Click.
“Careful,” I warned them, pointing at the floor. “See those trapdoors? Don’t step on them or you could fall through.”
Together, Buck and I measured the width of the loft. “Eighteen feet,” he said.
I snapped some pictures with my phone, then made my way to the open hayloft door, stopping a few feet back lest I tumble out of it to the ground outside.
Buck and Tyler joined me. A cold gust of wind blew through the opening, so strong it lifted Tyler’s lanyard and tossed it over his shoulder and nearly tore my hard hat from my skull. “Whoa! Let’s get back downstairs.”
We descended to the main floor of the barn, where I addressed Gail again. “How much acreage did you say you have?”
“The property is down to seventeen acres now, including about four hundred yards along the riverfront. During the Great Depression, the family sold off a hundred acres for next to nothing. Had to or starve to death. Another acre or two was sold off here and there over the years to pay the bills. The house burned down sometime in the nineteen fifties. It was already falling down by then. The family had moved into more modern homes in Nashville and had no use for an old farmhouse with no electricity or indoor plumbing. Shame they didn’t preserve it.
” She pointed to a tall brick chimney standing alone in the distance. “That’s where the house was.”
Curious, I asked, “Can we take a closer look?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Again, we followed her, carefully picking our way across the uneven terrain until we reached the former homesite.
An ancient rusty hand pump stood in the dirt, and my mind’s eye could visualize people in antebellum clothing using the device to draw water into aluminum buckets.
I was half tempted to give the thing a try, see if it still worked, though I knew it was unlikely.
Even so, the technology, which existed for thousands of years before modern plumbing, was impressive.
Manual water pumps had changed people’s lives, giving them access to clean water even if they lived far from a surface water source.
I turned my attention to the crumbling chimney.
It was a two-story design with two fireplaces, one at the bottom and one approximately twelve feet higher, where the second floor had been.
The upper fireplace was offset from the lower, and though they shared a single chimney, I knew they had separate flues to prevent soot from the lower fireplace from entering the house through the upper one.
You learn such things when you badger tour guides at historic properties.
I ran a hand over the brick. “This is high-quality masonry.”
Gail’s expression was half-sour, half-proud. “Enslaved people did good work. They didn’t get paid for their labor, but they knew they’d pay a price if they didn’t do things right.”
Tyler chimed in now. “Do you know what types of things Martha did around the house?”
“She did most of the cooking and cleaning, I suspect,” Gail said.
“But she was also a talented seamstress. She had a knack for embroidery, too. She made some very fine dresses for Cornelia. In fact, Martha’s seamstress skills were what kept the family fed during their time in Canada.
When they returned to Tennessee, she started a clothing business in the village.
Virgil set up his own blacksmithing shop here on the property.
Between the two of them, they did quite well.
They built a house on the property, not too far from the main house.
It was small and rustic so as not to offend the white folks who didn’t like to see anyone with dark skin doing well for themselves.
The man who’d taught Virgil how to blacksmith was none too happy when Virgil returned and became his competition. ”
Tyler jotted more notes then addressed Gail. “Any chance you’ve got an article of clothing Martha made?”
“I’ve got a couple of her dresses back at my house.”
Tyler’s eyebrows rose. “I’d love to shoot some photos of them.”
“That would be fine,” Gail said. “Just don’t expect me to model them. I’d never be able to fit in them. Women were much smaller back then. But they’re beautiful and expertly made.” Her gaze shifted from Tyler to Buck and me. “Let’s go down to the river. It’s a special spot.”
As we made our way, several stone markers at the edge of the woods caught my eye. “Are those gravestones?”
“That’s the family cemetery,” Gail said. “Cornelia is buried there. Her boys, too.”
“What about Wilfred?” Tyler asked. “Was his body moved there at some point?”