In fact, he wondered so hard about it that it reminded him of something else that the Provost Office sergeant major had told him and he picked up the phone and made another call.
Trace was surprised by the number of cars going onto the post this early on a Sunday morning in front of her.
She was part of a line of a dozen or so vehicles. Trace accelerated through onto Thayer Road, passing the Thayer Hotel on the right and Buffalo Soldier Field to her left. At the end of Buffalo Soldier Field, she came to a stop sign.
The road to the right went down to the river, 200 feet below.
Straight ahead was the cadet area, and to the left, the road wound its way up to Michie Stadium and Lusk Reservoir and the various housing areas.
A small temporary sign indicated going to the left for the Scout Jamboree at Target Hill Field, and the other cars all turned in the direction, which helped explain the unusual amount of traffic. Trace went straight, deciding to go around the Plain before heading toward the cemetery. A low stone wall and concrete walk was on her right. As a pair of cadets jogged by. Trace thought of the hundreds of times she had made the run out to Thayer Gate and back from the barracks, a round trip of about two miles.
Officers’ quarters crowded the hill to her left and then she came to a fork in the road. Straight ahead, the road dipped down, running between Mahan Hall and Thayer Hall. To the left, the road passed between the cadet barracks and the academic buildings. Trace turned left and very slowly drove by. Sunday morning was when the Academy was at its least active, and there was little sign of life as she passed New South Barracks, her home for her first two years. Not for the first time she wondered what sadistic mind had decided to cover every building with gray stone.
Certainly not the most inspiring building material and with the current overcast sky, one that was sure to dampen even the most buoyant heart.
Bartlett Hall, home to the hard sciences taught at the Academy, was on the right while old Pershing Barracks, still standing from the days of MacArthur, was to her left.
It was there that Trace got her first real surprise on the grounds. The road, which used to continue straight ahead and go around the Plain, was gone. The Plain had been expanded since her time, and where the road had been there was now only smoothly cut grass. Her only option was to turn to the right and go by the library. Trace stopped the car, glancing in her rear-view mirror to make sure no one was behind her.
She stared out at the green surface of the parade field, remembering sweating out there in the fierce summer sun, learning to march. About the only good memory she had of the Plain was her final parade just prior to graduation when she finally could believe that she would be out of the Academy after four long years, Trace continued’on, her mind and heart overwhelmed with memories. She had a job to do, but she found it difficult to not pluck at the scar tissue that surrounded her core. Whether positive or negative, the Academy was a part of her life.
What she had learned after years of active duty and more recently, the revelations about The Line, still couldn’t totally eradicate the four years spent at her “Rockbound Highland Home.”
Trace was surprised to hear the distant chatter of helicopter blades and she twisted her head to watch an aging Huey helicopter fly by, then dip down over the horizon in the direction of the river on the north side of the Academy.
The road curved around, following the contour of the Plain, overlooking the Hudson River below. Trophy Point and Battle Monument went by on the right and Trace was reminded of the chapter in her manuscript that had started this whole mess.
Old houses that were quarters for the permanent faculty at West Point, the heads of each department, lined the road to her left. She wondered which one Colonel Hooker had lived in during his long tenure as head of the history department, The entrance to the cemetery, directly across the street from the fire department, appeared on her right. The old cadet chapel had been transplanted here in 1910, stone by stone, after the present chapel had been built, and stood just inside the gate.
Trace went past the entrance to the cemetery and continued to the post exchange parking lot. The cemetery was now off to her right, shielded from the parking lot by a line of eight-foot-high trees. Trace parked and sat still for a few minutes, collecting her thoughts. The PX wasn’t open yet.
That was obvious from the fact there were no other cars in the lot. The post gas station was directly ahead and it too wasn’t open.
Trace remembered Boomer’s statement about being paranoid, but she felt there was no reason why she couldn’t at least go into the cemetery and find out exactly where Custer was buried. Despite her time at the Academy, she had never entered the cemetery; she’d never had reason to.
Trace left the car and walked through a gap in the trees at the edge of the parking lot. Among the grave markers in front of her, one immediately stood out: a massive concrete pyramid, at least twenty feet high. She followed the gravel road around, checking out the stones as she went. Many of the markers were relatively new, within the last several decades, so she knew she had to get to the older section of the graveyard.
Passing the pyramid, which on the other side showed itself to be a mausoleum, she came upon another elaborate marker, this one consisting of several columns holding up a roof with an eagle on top. She recognized the name: Major General Daniel Butterfield, born October 31, 1831, died July 17, 1901. Butterfield, a graduate, was the man who had written the traditional military bugle call Taps among many other accomplishments in his life.
Trace knew she was getting closer to Custer as the markers got older. A large tree hung over an obelisk at the edge of the next row of graves.
A small placard was nailed high up on the tree and Trace walked up and read it: fag us sylvatica, pendula, a weeping beech,” it said, identifying the tree. Trace walked around the tree and looked to see over whose grave it wept. The bronze plaque on the base of the obelisk told alclass="underline"
GEORGE A. CUSTER LT. COL 7TH CAVALRY BVT. MAJ. GENL. U.S. ARMY BORN DECEMBER 15TH 1839 HARRISON CO. OHIO KILLED WITH HIS ENTIRE COMMAND IN THE BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN JUNE 23RD 1673
Trace pulled out the letter and looked. It said the diary was to the left of the base of the monument, between Custer’s and his wife’s grave. But there was no grave to the left, just the weeping tree.
Trace went around the obelisk, to the other side. A bronze buffalo head stuck out of the side facing the tree.
On the far side, a soldier on a horse was emblazoned, along with the family name of Custer at the base. To the left, a long, stone grave marker read:
ELIZABETH BACON WIFE OF GEORGE A. CUSTER, MAJOR GENERAL U.S.A.
APRIL 8, 1842; APRIL 4, 1933.
The top edge of Mrs. Custer’s marker was on line with the front edge of her husband’s. The diary lay in between.
The cemetery was on a level with the Plain, a hundred feet above the Hudson River. A hundred and fifty feet from Custer’s grave, there was a low stone wall, then the heavily wooded ground on the other side precipitously descended down to Target Hill Field at river-level where Trace had spent many an afternoon playing soccer in intramurals. She could hear the descending whine of a helicopter engine coming from that direction; it must be the Huey that had flown by while she was driving around the Plain shutting down. The sewage treatment plant for the Academy was also down there, and the smell of the plant was well known to cadets because every time they had to take their two mile physical fitness test run, the course went out past the treatment plant and then back.