The Grave Robber's Secret
Read The Grave Robber's Secret Online
Authors: Anna Myers
The
GRAVE ROBBER'S
SECRET
A
NNA
M
YERS
WALKER & COMPANY
New York
Contents
For two lifelong friends, Charlene Richardson Sasser and Darlene Fast Crofford. I am so glad we shared our childhoods and life's journey
Philippians 1:3
I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.
T
here was no moon when Robby first went to the graveyard at night. On the broken front stoop of his home, he waited, wrapping his arms around his thin body as best he could, partly for warmth against the chill of the early spring night and partly in an effort to slow the beat of his heart. He searched the sky for a star, but not even that small light could be seenâa dark night for a dark task. His father, Roger Hare, came around the corner of the house with a wheelbarrow that Robby had never seen. Without a word, he picked up his shovel, put it over his shoulder, and moved from the shadow to walk behind his father. Robby expected no conversation between them on this journey, but Da wanted to boast about acquiring the cart.
“Picked up this little beauty back of a house over on Society Hill.” Da waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “They got plenty of money to buy carts. Yes sirree, Bob!”
Robby made no reply, and the streets of Philadelphia were quiet, so that the words of a town crier drifted from the lane behind the house. “Three o'clock and all's well!” Robby's stomach tightened. He made his free hand into a fist, but he relaxed his fingers because, of course, he could not hit his father. He wished he knew how to relax his stomach.
After the town crier, Robby heard nothing except the sound of a barking dog and the cart wheels on the cobblestones. The walk was a short one, and too soon he could see the rock wall that enclosed the graves. His feet felt heavy to lift, but he struggled to follow the bulky figure moving in front of him to the stone archway entrance with its black iron gate. For one joyful moment, Robby thought the gate might be locked, but he was wrong.
Da waved Robby forward. “Open it, boy. Hurry!”
Breathing hard, Robby moved around his father and pushed against the gate. The metal felt cold, but it was not as heavy as it looked. He opened it wide enough for his father to move the wheelbarrow through. Inside the cemetery a big willow tree grew just to the right of where Robby stood behind the open gate. In the darkness he could not see if new leaves were appearing on the thin branches yet, but he was almost certain he saw movement among them. What creature hid there?
“Close it now,” his father said, and he traveled on down the path, not waiting for Robby, who made himself catch up.
The darkness felt thick, like a huge black-velvet blanket draped over the path and over the headstones, only the white ones visible. No stone marked the fresh grave, but Robby knew he could find it. He had been there earlier and had traced the route in his mind until he had memorized it. Soon the path would divide at a crossroads where a white angel statue marked a grave, and as he turned his head to look to the left for the angel, he stepped into a hole. His shovel fell from his shoulder and he waved his arms in an attempt to keep his balance. Before he could stop himself, he cried out in surprise. It was not a truly loud sound, but it cut through the still night. Da would not overlook the blunder.
Roger Hare put down the handles of the wheelbarrow, which held another shovel, a metal crowbar, a rope, and a long sack Robby's mother had sewed from white material. He leaned over Robby and thumped his massive thumb hard against Robby's head. Then he grabbed the boy's arm and yanked. “Up with you and mind your step, you little imp,” he muttered, giving Robby a final rough jerk. “I brung you out here to give me a hand, I did, not to go stumbling about and shouting at the top of your lungs.” He turned and tromped on, leaving Robby to push the cart.
When the path forked, Da stopped. “Which way? Quick now!” Robby wanted to lie, to lead his father in circles through the graves until the sun rose and made their ghoulish mission impossible. There could be no grave robbing in daylight with carriages going up and down the busy street just beyond the rock wall. He gritted his teeth. Not taking his father to the fresh grave would never work. He did not think Da would go so far as to actually kill him, but Robby had suffered a beating at his father's hands before.
“That way,” Robby said, pointing toward the angel, and after only a few steps, they saw the mound of newly turned earth.
“Don't just stand about gaping,” said his father. “Get to the other side and start digging.”
Robby did as he was told, pushing his foot on the shovel with all his might. The wooden shovels did not slide through the earth as well as metal spades would have, but Robby knew the wooden ones had been selected because they were quieter. He stared only at the earth he moved, careful not to look at his father. Maybe he could run away. He had planned to do so last night, but in the light of day, his courage waned. Roger Hare was a huge man with powerful fists that could come down hard on Robby. Still, Robby was fairly certain he could at least outrun him. The problem was he had no place to go. Da was certain to find him, and besides, there was his mother to consider.
An owl hooted from a nearby tree. Maybe it was the owl that had been in the willow. The sound came again, and Robby thought the bird called out a warning about disturbing the grave. Just then he heard the thud he had dreaded.
“There we go! I've hit the coffin,” Roger Hare said with pleasure. “Fetch me bar from the cart.”
Robby scrambled out of the hole, took the crowbar from the cart, and handed it to Da, who stuck the end of the bar under the lid of the coffin and pushed with all the strength in his hulking body. Robby moved his lips in silent prayer. “Let the lid hold, please God, just let it hold,” he pleaded, but he soon heard a cracking sound. He looked down to see his father lift the top half of the coffin lid, but blessedly he could not see the face in the dark hole. “Get the rope and hop down here, boy. You can do the tying.”
Robby's stomach turned. “Please, Da, no,” he whispered. “Don't make me.” But he knew he would have to do it. Still, he couldn't force himself to move until his father had hauled himself from the hole.
“Down with you, boy,” Da said, “else I'll shove you, I will.” He stretched out his arm toward Robby, who jumped before he could be pushed. The top part of the coffin was open now, but all Robby could see was a white cover. “Get the cover off her,” said Da. With a shaking hand, Robby touched the soft white blanket and pulled it away from the face and chest. His father dropped the looped end of the rope down. “Slide it over the shoulders, boy,” he said.
Despite the cool night, sweat poured down Robby's face. He put out a hand to grasp the loop, but his trembling made it impossible to catch hold until he used two hands. He knelt down on the part of the coffin lid that was still intact. Now he had to look at her. He had seen the body earlier in the day, forced as he was to attend the funeral and to walk with the mourners to the cemetery. “You're not afraid of the dead,” Robby told himself. Hadn't he helped his mother prepare the body of his little sister for burial? He swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat. No, he was not afraid of dead bodies, but he was desperately afraid of grave robbing.
Da had come home early from the pub last night with the grave robbing idea, bursting into the kitchen, where Robby and his mother had been finishing washing the supper dishes. “There's considerable money to be made,” he had announced, “and we ain't going to break no law. Nobody owns a dead body, and that's a fact. We can't be charged with stealing if we be careful not to take the clothes nor the shroud nor nothing buried with the body.”
“Still, it's dangerous,” Robby's mother had said, turning from her dishpan. “Wasn't a fellow beaten almost to death just a few weeks ago when he was caught?”
“What's it to me if he was?” Da pulled a chair near to the big black kitchen stove. “I'm a deal smarter than most men, I am. I'm not likely to be caught, now am I?”
Robby's father had laid out his scheme then. A girl had died just that morning. “Just a slip of a thing, ten years old, they say. Still, her body will bring as much as one full growed,” he had said. “And it won't be heavy to lift.”
“Then why must you take Robby?” Ma had pleaded.
“Hush, woman. I am taking the boy. In fact, I've just had me a brilliant notion. Our boy will be attending the funeral tomorrow, joining the mourners at the grave site. No one will notice the likes of him. He can put the location in his head, so as to lead me. It won't do to have us wandering around the cemetery looking for the spot. The longer the job takes the more the chance we have to be caught.”
That night Robby tossed about on his pallet before the kitchen fire. Deep down he knew he would never run away, but he liked to pretend he might. Before he left for the funeral, he could take what bread was in the kitchen, wrap it in a cloth, and carry it beneath his shirt. The resolution made it possible for him to sleep. The next day, though, he had gone to the funeral, slipping into a seat at the rear of the church. Her name was Ruth Caldwell, and he saw that her parents were wild with grief. When the mourners filed past the casket, he had hesitated to go, but at the last minute had changed his mind. He wanted to look on the girl's face. He had stood for a few seconds, looking down, and had been consumed with guilt. “I'm sorry, Ruth, so awful sorry,” he whispered, and then he had moved on.
Only this morning his mother had tried again to prevent his father from including Robby in his new moneymaking scheme. Breakfast had long since been over, but Da still sat at the table smoking his pipe. “Come now, Roger,” his mother had pleaded, “he's but a child.”
His father had turned to where Robby stood in the doorway, having just come in to pump water for his mother to heat for washing bed linens. “How old are you, boy?” he demanded.
“Twelve,” Robby murmured, and he moved to the kitchen pump.
“Huh? Speak up, boy!”
“Twelve years old,” he all but shouted, and he wanted to add, my name is Robby. He hated how his father almost always called him “boy.”
“Twelve!” thundered Da. “It's long past time you did something to bring in money.”
“But he does,” protested his mother. “I couldn't manage here, couldn't keep this boardinghouse without Robby's help. Please, Roger, if you be determined to do such gruesome work, don't put our Robby into the mix. God knows what might happen if you're caught.”
“Gruesome, is it?” Da pounded the table. “I say that me selling bodies to the surgeons will save lives, that it will! Besides, the money is good, a better wage than ever I've earned at some ordinary job.”
Robby caught his mother's eye. He knew that like himself she was trying to remember the last time Roger Hare had brought home money from any job. He liked better to sit at the table, smoke his pipe, and criticize whatever his wife or son might be doing.
“It's all right,” Robby whispered to his mother when he passed her with the water bucket. “Don't fret about me.” He did not want his mother to argue more with Da, who might suddenly go into a rage and slap her hard.
He had tried not to think about Ruth as he followed the mourners to the cemetery, staying always at the back of the crowd. He had wanted only to memorize the path, but now standing in the girl's grave the guilt came back, and his loathing for what they were doing made him sicker than he had ever felt before.
Da leaned over from above him. “What is it, boy?” he said in a voice that sounded like a growl. “Get the rope around her shoulders now! We ain't got all night here!”
Robby slipped the loop over Ruth's head. His hand brushed her face, and her skin felt cold. “Just get it done,” he told himself. “Get it done.” He had to lift her head and shoulders slightly in order to slide the rope under. Her dress was white, and Robby remembered that little pink flowers were embroidered in the material. He touched one on a sleeve, then arranged the loop over her shoulders. “I'm finished,” he said to his father, and he started to climb up.
“No, boy, stay put. You'll be needed to give her a lift. I can't tug too hard. Those bloody surgeons won't buy a body already pulled apart, you know.”
Robby drew in a sharp breath. He did not want to touch Ruth again, but he had to do what his father ordered. Besides, he could not bear to see the body torn apart. Da pulled gently on the rope, and Ruth began to rise. “Yes, sir,” said his father. “Yes sirree, Bob, we're raising her out of the grave, ain't we, boy? You and me, we're resurrection men. That's what we are.” His voice sounded proud.
Ruth's lifeless form proved easy to pull, and Robby had to lift only once just as the lower part of the body came out of the coffin. “Come on up, boy,” his father told him then. “I can get her easy now.”
When he had climbed out, Robby picked up a shovel to begin filling the grave with dirt, but his father stopped him. “Not yet.” Da began to slip the white dress over the body. “We got to put this dress back. It's a shame, likely bring us some nice coins, but we can't take no chance of being arrested for thieving. Not on your life.”