She means the surrey, the station wagon of its day. It’s long enough to carry a casket. That’s what she meant by it not going far, but I don’t think it’s even in good enough shape to leave the garage. “What’s wrong with a hearse?” I ask the obvious.
“Suttons use the funeral buggy.” She looks around at yellow wildflowers beneath bald cypress, and I get anxious that she’s not watching her feet. “Make sure the funeral folks polish my white coffin so it’s nice and shiny for my final journey,” she continues as we move closer to the mausoleums. “I sure will be something in that buggy.”
I know she’s describing what she wants, but I just can’t see putting her in a buggy that could throw a wheel and toss her out, white coffin and all. Out of self-preservation, I block out her talk of death and buggies and fill my head with happy clouds and friendly rocks.
The Sutton family graveyard is just as creepy as I remember it. Wispy curtains of Spanish moss drape the limbs of ancient cypress and live oak trees, falling like dull green witch’s hair across the tops of pocked-limestone headstones and granite mausoleums that used to give me nightmares of mummy-like hands sticking out from between the cracks.
The cemetery is surrounded by an ancient wrought-iron fence, and a weathered metal plaque hangs on the gate:
Sutton Hall Plantation Graveyard
In Loving Memory of Our Dearly Departed
Any Person Who Disturbs This Hallowed Earth
Shall Suffer the Wrath of Our Lord
1831
Undaunted by the dire warning, Mother pushes open the gate, and it gives the obligatory rusty metal screech. The scene inside looks like the setting of one of Lindsey’s horror movies. All it needs is a group of horny teenagers and a six-pack to set the stage.
I’m not convinced that Sutton Hall isn’t haunted, but I ignore my misgivings and follow Mom inside.
“This is so peaceful,” she says as we stop in front of the first family tomb. It’s cracked down the middle, and an angel leans precariously to the left. Time has eroded the face, and I can barely make out the engraving:
Sutton
John Hayward
Born May 1815
Died November 1866
Below is some scripty writing that is impossible to make out.
“This is my great-great-grandpere,” Mother says, but I think there might be one or two more greats in there. “He built Sutton Hall in 1830.” A slight breeze stirs tendrils of Spanish moss and picks up strands of her hair. She points at the engraving. “It says, ‘Beloved father, husband, and patriot. He will live on in our hearts.’?”
Since I can’t make out all the letters, I’m fairly positive she can’t either. Incredibly, though, I bet that is exactly what it says.
“?‘Helen Davis Sutton,’?” she reads the epithet on the next tomb over. The stone is so pocked I can barely make out the date of her death, 1890, but it doesn’t stop Mom. “?‘Niece of President Jefferson Davis. Beloved wife, mother, and daughter of the Confederacy. She is gone but never forgotten.’?”
President? I look at Mom and wonder if it really said that at one time, or if she just straight made it up like she does answers to her game show questions.
We find my great-grandparents, and Mother stops to put her hand on the smooth white marble of George Bernard Sutton and Rose Oliver Sutton.
“Maw Maw Rose. I love and miss you, goodness knows.”
We continue on, making our way past rows of single and large family mausoleums, all inscribed with different names and dates, but each heavily adorned with angel statues. Live oaks have uprooted the ground, tilting stone crosses and knocking several angels off their pedestals. The bright morning sun shines down on white vaults and bounces off marble mausoleums entombing generations of Sutton relatives, and I am surprised by the genuine feeling that settles in my soul. As creepy as I find this fenced-off plot of earth, it holds the remains of one family. My family.
“Isn’t that sad?” Mom asks as she points to tombs of red brick, crumbling past the point of identification.
It’s a rhetorical question, but I answer anyway. “Yes.” Some of the markers indicate a long life, while others memorialize infants or young men taken in wars dating as far back as 1843. Whole families were taken by floods, smallpox, cholera.
“That must be Jasper.” Mom heads to a shiny new vault a few rows away.
I walk with her to a spot where the earth looks more recently disturbed. My bucket starts to weigh on me, and I switch hands with a clank.
“Remember when you dressed like a vampire?”