Read The Sound of Building Coffins for Free Online

What I mean to say is,” Trumbo continued, “I wasn’t aware that men of color were privy to Confederate ciphers during wartime.”
    “ Don’t feel bad, young fella,” Marcus smiled, displaying the absence of two formerly prominent front teeth, “lots of white folk—and black folk, too—have a hard time believin’ there were plenny of proud black Confederates in the South back in them days. I was as free then as I am now, sonny. And happy with my life the way it was—like lots of free black folk was. Didn’t cotton much to that double talkin’ ’mancipation proclamation. Ol’ Abe hadda mind to ship ever’ last one of us back ta Africa—a place I ain’t never been and never cared ta go. Worst yet, when Abe couldn’t get that idear ta fly, he was talkin’ bout sendin’ us all to Texas . Lawdy mine !”
    Trumbo shoved the conversation hard towards its original path:
    “ Are you saying you can decipher this, sir?”
    The gravedigger looked up at him. “Why, shorely I can. Yes indeed. Hand it over ta here.” He snatched the paper from Trumbo’s hand and flattened it out carefully on the table. “Spare a clean sheeta paper and pencil if you please, sir.” Trumbo pulled a blank page from the notebook in his satchel, found a pencil. Beauregard got up from the table, offering Marcus his chair—Marcus huffed at the big man, but accepted the courtesy.
    “ Well. Now. Let’s have a look at this thing. Hmm. All righty now.” The group of men and the young girl gathered close around the old gravedigger. Wide-eyed and curious, like kids at a circus.
    Marcus stared at the nonsense words on Trumbo’s original sheet.
     
    U UERI NAD PTEL FUYQ LORD
    EAF VULCFOL IYLRLCO AFN
    EFEHDS SNUB STGSY ORTET
    HSONU ETKDS BCSHE EOAOK
    EREH ESRE PEYR EVWE
    4X5X4/4X4X1
     
    “ Yes, indeedy,” he began. “See, you gotta put the letters in a square. The key—these numbers down ta here at the bottom—tell you how to make that square. Easy as puddin’ and pie. Like so.”
    He drew what looked like a too-tall tic-tac-toe board within a rectangular border:
     
     
     

     
     
     
    “ See that? Says four by five by four. Means four times five—which comes to twenty—but four times. You kin tell yer on the right track cause the first four lines have twenty letters a piece in ’em if ya count ’em up right. Go ahead and count ’em. Tell me if I’m wrong, sonny.”
    Trumbo did the simple math in his head. Sure enough, the old man was onto something.
    “ And the second line of the key—four by four—but one time. Thass right, too,” Marcus went on. “See? One row of sixteen letters right there at the bottom.”
    “ Well, I’ll be damned,” said Beauregard. “You crazy, sly old devil…”
    Trumbo stared at the nonsense words in wonder, counting letters: “Yes, I can see—but how do you decipher…?”
    “ I’m getting’ to that, sonny.” Marcus, slightly irritated, shot Beauregard a stern glance. “Watch and learn.” Trumbo shut up. Beauregard tried in vain to conceal his amusement. Doctor Jack’s expression lacked any trace of amusement at all.
    Marcus methodically filled the boxes with letters in the same order as they appeared on the original sheet. “Trick is, you write ’em top to bottom, but read ’em left to right. See? And each individual line gets its own four-by-five box. Folla?”
    The first line of letters filled its grid like so:
     
     

     
     
    Marcus’s eyes swung up to meet Trumbo’s:
    “ Sir, I gotta ask again to be sure. A little baby wrote these letters?”
    Trumbo said nothing. Only stared at the sheet in wonder. Nodded.
    Marcus: “Lord, Lord.”
    The old gravedigger wrote the letters out in their new order beneath the rectangle:
     
    UNEQUALLEDFORPURITYD
     
    “ Says, ‘Unequalled for purity’. The ‘D’ at the end prob’ly first letter of the first word in the next box.” Marcus drew three more boxes for the remaining lines containing twenty letters apiece, a smaller