Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
and abandoned but with stones that dated through 1910. A number of former slaves became
tenement farmers and stayed during Reconstruction and beyond. Pat and May have worked
to record this cemetery as well.
Paul turned to me. “Why don't you go get your dog?”
Solo was ecstatic to be out of the car, whirling and barking sharply, coming back to hit
my leg. I offered him water, since he had been panting in excitement. He wasn't interested.
He dashed down the hill, ignoring the rough cotton stubble, and into the woods and un-
derbrush and tangled periwinkle at the bottom. Scent must have called to him. By the time
we entered the woods, he was already working. Solo had never been exposed to gravestones,
except for a hasty search of a modern graveyard; he had no reason to suspect they had any
significance. Given how they were scattered, neither did I. Nonetheless, in one spot, I could
hear Solo snorkeling from twenty feet away. He did his down alert, staring at me. He was
surrounded by periwinkle and daffodils, and I saw several tilted headstones under the vines.
“Reward him,” Paul said. I did. Solo alerted seven or eight times. Paul estimated that at least
seventy-five people were buried at this larger site. Pat doesn't know how far it goes back. The
DAR has not put a stone marker here.
It was now midmorning, so we moved back to the top of the hill, where we expected
fainter scent because of the age of the burials, if they were there. Paul took out Macy again;
ten degrees warmer, and Macy's behavior change was astonishing. He alerted several times.
We started to notice shapes and depressions that had been covered with leaves. Paul pointed
them out to Pat and May. The more oblong and rectangular, the more likely. Possibly up to
six adults and five children, Paul estimated.
Paul then ran Jordan, his other Labrador. She was soft and black rather than hard and am-
ber, like Macy. She alerted repeatedly in the deep leaves, in a couple of spots where Macy had
alerted, in a couple of new places, where we could then see depressions. Both dogs worked
the area in ways so similar that I marveled. Macy was fast, Jordan much slower. Nonetheless,
the same depressions seemed to hold scent. The two Labradors threw their heads around the
same trees, went down to the same holes, and did their final alerts in four or five places.
I could hear Solo howling. Paul turned to me, and I freed Solo from his Camry prison,
letting him run into the little woods. I stood well back. It didn't matter. His work overlapped
Macy's and Jordan's—several alerts and head throws in the same places. I was no longer sur-
prised.
We had finished searching for the day. We placed flags, and the work of measuring began.
Pat and I went to poke the depressions shallowly to see if we hit stone; markers could have
become buried underneath the humus of the woods. Burials of the era tended to be at least
four feet deep, so it didn't feel as though we were poking at the dead.
