Burial Ground Read Online Free PDF

land?” David asked then. “Is the plantation on hard times?”
    “Sort of.” He slowed as we entered a turn. “Carter Wascom’s wife died a couple of years back. He blames the nuclear plant. Some kind of cancer he thinks came from dumping wastes. He hired all kinds of lawyers and private detectives but all they did was bleed him dry. The thing got thrown out of court and he ended up having to pay the expert witnesses and court costs. Then I hear the company sued him for defamation and got a judgment.
    “Our land’s just the other side of that fence.” Willie pointed. “I think we got the best acreage. He didn’t really want to let us have it all, but we made him a good offer.”
    “But you said he was having second thoughts,” I said.
    “My dad got a call from him right before he went up here. Carter wanted to talk to him, he said. He didn’t tell what it was about, just that he was being a pain in the ass.”
    We slowed at another gate. This one was open. Through the fence I saw a pasture, with a tree line a few hundred yards back.
    “Our land goes all the way to the river,” Willie said.
    The pasture ended with a fence line and on the other side of the fence was a big white house with columns, set back from the road, with a gazebo to one side and a lane of pecan trees leading to the front door. A sign on the front gate said GREENBRIAR . The gate was closed. Just the other side of the plantation was a low, white frame house with a screen porch, with a pickup truck out front, and a satellite dish in the yard. Probably the overseer’s place, I thought.
    A second house was just beyond this one, and it was there that we stopped. Little more than a shack, the structure was raised above the dirt on cast cement blocks. Chickens pecked in the yard, and a scrawny dog hoisted itself from beside the gate as we turned in. There was a little vegetable garden with a scarecrow off to the side.
    “Absalom’s place,” Willie said.
    As I opened my door an old man appeared on the front porch. Lanky, with red suspenders striping a checkered shirt, he had skin the color of coal. Deep-set, lively eyes considered us under a head of short, grizzled gray hair.
    “Morning, Absalom,” Willie greeted. “I brought a couple of fellows to talk to you about history.”
    Absalom Moon gave a little nod, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.
    “Bad ’bout your dad,” he said.
    “Yeah,” Willie agreed.
    Willie told him our names and the old man nodded again. “Well, come up on the porch,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “No good standing out in the sun.”
    We trooped up the rickety wooden steps and Absalom pointed to a couple of aluminum lawn chairs with plastic webbing that was about to fall through. He took a seat in a wooden swing, unconcerned about the fact that one of us would have to stand.
    “David, huh?” he said in a half-amused tone, then looked over at my companion: “You don’t look like my daddy.”
    Willie frowned but David, standing behind me, smiled at the biblical allusion: “And you don’t look like my son. If I had one …”
    Absalom chuckled with delight. “Bet you ain’t got no boy named Amon, neither.”
    “No, but my father’s name is Solomon,” David told him. “Only people call him Sol.”
    “I be jiggered,” Absalom said. “You not from ’round here, though.”
    “New Orleans.”
    “I be jiggered.”
    Willie leaned forward: “I told them about the Indian things you found.”
    I felt Absalom withdraw and wished Willie had kept quiet.
    “Lots of Indian things,” Absalom said vaguely, sitting back against the swing. “Arrowheads, mostly. Wash out after it rain.”
    “I’m talking about the beads,” Willie said. “And the copper bells.”
    Absalom’s eyes dropped away. “Arrowheads what most folks want,” he commented. “I got some big as your hand.”
    “Did you find the other stuff with the arrowheads, then?” Willie asked.
    “Arrowheads mostly alone,” the old man