VI
I hadn’t seen Doolan since grade school. What happened to him, I don’t know. People come and go, my Dad always said. I hadn’t forgotten about Doolan, though, and even shared some stories with my new high school friends about going into the old factory with him. But never had I mentioned our visits to the clock tower to anyone. Someone said he had moved but not knowing exactly where he lived, I was never able to go and find out.
The clock and bell had long since been repaired and were keeping perfect time again, and the mystery surrounding their temporary time-out had faded through the last three years. In my new life as a high school student I might have forgotten too. But that wasn’t to be, not after I saw the man with no head.
It was one of those blistering hot South Jersey evenings when the mosquitoes are thick and the day’s 90-degree heat stays locked in the still, humid air. I had gotten through my freshman year of high school and was spending the summer cutting lawns for a few people, filling in for my friends when they went on vacation and needed someone to run their paper routes, or trying to catch catfish in the creek.
Mom and Dad were out this night, food shopping and then to Sears, something they liked to do on especially hot nights just to get in the air conditioning for a while. I was on the screened porch watching the Phillies game on TV. Notes of military marches from the Bonsal Blues band flowed through the soggy air from the old American Legion hall, a former mansion that stood fortress-like on a hill behind our backyard, providing a free summer concert for all of the neighbors, whether they wanted it or not.
The big orange sun was dropping toward the rooftops up the street, casting long shadows from the maples lining the street. Perhaps it was the moving shadow that caught my eye. I looked up and a lone figure walked slowly down the sidewalk toward our house. The sinking sun cast a silhouette of legs, body, arms, even one hand clutching a cane. But there was nothing above his shoulders. I blinked and took a deep breath, and I might have run into the house in a mild panic if my curiosity had not glued me to the spot. I blinked again as the figure stepped closer to the walkway.
As darkness swallowed up the day’s last light, the man stopped for a few seconds, then turned into the walkway leading to the porch steps. Through the screen door, I could now see only an outline. The man tapped his cane sharply twice on the door frame, then twice again.
"Young man?" The voice was shaky and sounded like sand was caught in his throat. Despite the heat, he wore long, dark pants and a slightly tattered suit coat. "Come to the door, young man."
I did as he asked, and -- against my parents’ wishes, I’m sure -- even opened the door a crack so I could get a better look. A head drooped almost to the old man’s chest from his stooped shoulders. But his eyes glinted upward and made contact with mine as he gave his reason for stopping.
"Young man, do you know where Lupton Street is?" The words had a twinge of a German accent.
I thought for a moment.
"Yes. It’s across town. You just go up this street, make a left, go to the corner and a right. Cross the tracks and just keep going straight. It’s just ..." I paused. "Are you lost, mister?"
He didn’t answer right away. Then his shoulders shifted so his he could fix his eyes more directly on my face.
"Lost? Am I lost?" he gave a gurgling chuckle. "I suppose you could say I am lost. But I think I will find my way."
"Do you live on Lupton Strreet?"
He paused. "Young man, do you know of Stranger Burial Ground?"
"I, uh, no, I don’t think I have. Is that on Lupton Street?"
After another brief pause, he reached into the side pocket of his coat and held out his hand."Did you lose something, young man? Here, take it."
I put my hand out the door and he dropped what seemed like a coin in my hand. I looked down. It had the same markings as my lucky coin, with the black, drooping eagle wings on a dull silver backing.
The coin in the palm of my hand had all the markings of the one I had lost in the town’s clockworks, the black eagle with drooping wings. I turned it over and the S-W-E-I markings were there. I had no idea who this stranger was, and was totally perplexed as to how he could have found the coin I had lost in the town clock -- or me. How could he have known?
I looked up so I could ask, but the old man had turned and was shuffling away, the tip of his cane tapping the sidewalk with every step.
"Sir? Sir!" I called through the screen door. "How did you know? Sir!" The man didn’t answer and the tap-tap-tapping of his cane became fainter as he made his way up the street, into the shadows that were overtaking what was left of the day’s light.
I looked at the TV screen for a moment and my parents’ admonitions raced through my head: Don’t talk to strangers. Never let strangers in the house. Lock the doors at night.
I flipped off the TV set. Then other parental words of advice ran through my head: Help someone in need. It’s Ok to give directions if someone’s lost. I wondered if my strange visitor needed help finding his way to Lupton Street. I went into the kitchen and opened the tap to get a glass of water, letting it stream over the tall glass until I knew it was nice and cold. As I drank it, I decided to set out to find the lost soul. I didn’t know whether it was pity for the man or curiosity that prompted me to follow, probably a combination of both, but soon I was out the door in his path.
Now the sun was gone and people had turned on their porch lights. Looking up the street, I couldn’t make out a shadow or silhouette of anyone on the street. Where could he have gone? I turned the corner onto Cooper Street, heading for the tracks, and aside from a mother pushing her baby in a carriage on the other side, no one was on the sidewalk. I picked up my pace to a trot, knowing I would soon catch up to the old man. I passed St. Patrick’s Church, crossed Euclid Street and passed the rectory on my right. Where the buildings got closer together, I looked up the narrow side streets and alleys to see if the stranger had wandered off into the shadows. I stopped across the street from Snelbaker’s shop where cemetery headstones were carved, peering up the alley between the workshop and his tiny house, but could see no one, not even a shadow.
Soon, I was at Broad Street. I stopped at the crosswalk and looked up to the town clock, smiling as I remembered climbing into the tower with Doolan. I looked at the moon-like clock face: 7:45. My eyes drifted back to the street to see if the light had changed; it was still red. Taking another glance at the clock, I noticed what seemed to be a wisp of black smoke coming from the tower, the curl up almost in the shape of the strange visitor I was pursuing. The image made me feel weak in my knees for a moment, and I convinced myself it was just fatigue from my long trot up the street. A light tap on my shoulder almost sent me to the ground.
"Gonna cross, kid?"
I looked up to see the light had changed to green. As I regained my composure, a man wearing a white shirt and bow tie stepped off the curb and began walking across Broad Street, smiling as he passed me. I made my way across and started down Delaware Street, past the jailhouse and library, straight toward Lupton Street. I stopped for a moment at the corner, now wondering what I was doing here. Maybe I should have stayed home and watched the Phillies, I thought. But the coin. Where did he get the coin?
It looked like tomorrow was going to be trash day on this side of town. The only people outside were putting their trash cans beside the curb. The heat and humidity hadn’t lifted and the sweat was now streaming down my face and arms. I picked up my pace once again as I walked down Lupton Street, keeping my eyes on the sidewalk ahead to see of the old man was anywhere in sight.
Breaking the damp silence of the steamy night were two sharp barks, so loud it seemed the dog was right at my heels. The yelps caught me off balance and sent me careening into a pair of metal trash cans that had been placed at the curb. They clanked and clattered as I fell on top of them, and instantly a light popped on in a garage next to the nearest house.
"What? Who’s out there?" I heard a man yell. "Whatcha doin'?"
As I picked myself up the man ran to the curb.
"What’s with you boy, you all right?"
I picked up the cans and started picking up tin cans and papers that had fallen out in my clumsy fall.
"OK," I said as I brushed myself off. "I guess I wasn’t watching where I was going, I guess. Sorry."
He must have taken pity and started scooping up some of the spilled rubbish with the flat-nosed shovel in his hand.
"Sheesh. You look all right I guess. You live around here, boy?"
"The other side of town. Holroyd Place, a little street."
"Yeah, I think I know where it is. What you doin’ over here? Friends or something?"
"Well, year. Just taking a walk, really. It’s hot. Sometimes you feel cooler moving around a little."
The man looked at me and then smiled slightly. He tapped his shovel handle a couple of times on the sidewalk, knocking a clump of dirt off the top onto the sidewalk.
"Guess we got this mess cleaned up, fella. On your way."
As I turned I heard his voice again.
"Say, kid, you’ll never guess what I just unearthed here. Wanna take a look?"
I stopped and turned. The man was holding out his hand while the shovel leaned against his shoulder.
"Lookit here. Know what they are?"
I looked in his outstretched hand and there were two round pieces of dull silver and black. My eyes widened and I felt a pang of shock like I hadn’t felt since I was a little kid and stuck a fork in the toaster. They were just like my lucky coins.
"Cat gotcher tongue, boy?"
"No, I don’t think ... what are those, mister? Is that some kind of foreign money or something? I think I’ve ... " I stopped myself in time from saying I had a lucky coin like those, I don’t know exactly why. I felt like I was going to find, at long last, the answer to a mystery that had been eating away at me. Like Christmas morning, when you get to open the present that you had first spotted in a closet the week after Thanksgiving.
The man took a breath and paused. "Come with me and I’ll tell you."
He swung his shovel over his shoulder military style and headed toward his garage, stopping along the way to stick his hand in and flip on a light, which cast a dim glow over his backyard. I followed him to a garden in the rear of the yard.
"Know what this is?"
"Looks like a garden to me, tomatoes and lettuce and stuff. So?"
"Not just a garden. Yeah, a garden now, but turns out this was a graveyard back a couple hundred years almost when they were fighting the Revolution. You know soldiers, colonials and British, and German Hessians too, they marched in and out of Woodbury quite often, right? You learn that in your history books, boy?" he said with a wry smile.
"Well, sure, some." History was never my favorite subject, but I knew this was a busy Colonial town and a fierce battle was fought not too far away at Red Bank.
"Let me tell you a little they might not have taught you in school. Many of the dying and wounded men were brought back here to Woodbury, and some made it and some didn’t. The Hessians found a field to bury their dead, and it turns out that that burial place, if you look at the old maps, was right here on my property, and part on my neighbor’s. They had a name for this place: Stranger Burial Ground.
Stranger Burial Ground -- the words hit like a thunderbolt. The man paused a moment and gazed at his garden, then went on.
"I never gave it too much thought, tell you the truth, until I was digging the garden up one spring to plant. So what do I find? Buttons, pewter buttons from the Hessians’ uniforms, just like those I gave you. Keep ‘em. I have plenty more, and Lord knows, there’s probably dozens more in the soil there still."
"You’re sure they’re from the Hessians?" I asked.
"Look at ‘em, son." I did, though the light was not good. "They’ve got that black eagle marking, no mistake on that. Besides, where else would they have come from?"
"Why did they go and build houses right where a graveyard was then? Didn’t they know?"
"Good question. They did know when they made this street back in 1911. So the graveyard, that is, all of the remains of the soldiers that they could find were dug up and removed to a different place, up on Broad Street. But as you can see, they left some things behind. " He paused, then smiled. "I try not to dig too deep when I’m gardening. Don’t know what I’ll find."
He started to walk back to the sidewalk and I followed him. Now I had an idea where my lucky coin -- or button -- came from. But that answer led only to bigger questions.
"Thanks for the buttons. I’ll keep them. And thanks for the history lesson," I said.
"Partial history lesson," the man said.
"Pardon?"
"There’s more about this you won’t find in your history books," he said. "Not all of the Hessians from Red Bank were brought back here after the big battle. Lots were killed in the fight and were buried in trenches right at the battlefield. I imagine you’d find your share of buttons there if you looked. And then -- this is the part the histories don’t tell you -- there were two who died there, two men whose heads had been blown off during the fight. Vicious fight, you know. Lots of cannon fire, all that. They were buried at Red Bank, but in different places with the skulls of each other’s bodies, you see?"
"How do they know?" I asked.
"Well, a lot of people say the two never rested in peace, and have haunted houses and buildings around here ever since searching for each other’s spirits. Hard one to believe, isn’t it boy?"
"Yeah. Well, thanks for the buttons, the Hessian buttons. Sorry I tripped over your trash."
"Not a problem. You’d better get home now."
I started to walk away, but turned back. "Sir? I meant to ask. Did you see an old man with a cane, his head bent way over, walk down this way?’
"Can’t say I did, son."
"OK. Bye."
The day’s heat was still trapped in the musty night as I started walking back home. I pulled the freshly unearthed buttons from my pocket as I walked, looking up every few steps so I wouldn’t clumsily knock over any more trash cans. The buttons were just like my lucky coin, but now I knew it was a Hessian soldier’s button too. But mine was different: Why did the S-W-E-I appear in the back? What did it mean? And who was the old man with the bent-over head who came to my house? Those and a hundred other questions swirled through my head as I slowly paced toward Broad Street.
This time, I walked on the other side so I could get a better view of the town clock. I dropped my pace even slower as I looked up, but no black smoky wisp came into view this time. Almost to Broad Street, a pair of car lights turning the corner reflected off a big pane of window glass on Sori’s Barber Shop.
Instinctively, I turned my head toward the glass. The silhouette of the old man who had been to my house appeared, his shadow casting no image of a head. I looked behind myself to see if that old man, or someone else, had made the shadow, but there was no one. I didn’t want to look back at the window, but I had to. I felt like peeing my pants. One of the hottest nights of the year, and it felt like someone was running an icicle down my spine. I was frozen in that spot on the sidewalk, feeling like I had sunk in went cement. Was it one of those dreams, where I want to run and my legs won’t move? I felt my heart pounding as if it was about to explode from my rib cage.
Mesmerized, I looked at the glass. The shadow slowly raised an arm, pointing away from Broad Street, toward Lupton. Wanting to see no more, I began to turn my head again, but was drawn back by a flick of his wrist, with his slightly arched index finger pointing with a wiggle. As I watched, the words Sori’s Barber Shop changed form. My legs still numb and immobile, I watched as the dripping paint swirled into new letters. It was a minute, maybe just seconds, before new letters came into view: R Bank 2 Crown Pt. As I focused on the newly formed letters, the shadowy image faded. I blinked, and suddenly felt free to turn my head again. Still no one on the sidewalk. I blinked again and looked back at the shop window, where the familiar words Sori’s Barber Shop were back.
I shook my head and lifted a knee. I was free again to move, and I did, running at full tilt across Broad Street without waiting for the light to turn, toward home. At the train station on Cooper street, I ran out of breath and slowed down to a walk as I crossed the tracks. Looking beyond the station, I could see the amber signal lights shining through the moist air, but instead of three across, only two were lit, almost like a set of eyes. I picked up my gait and ran home.
