THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 19and urban values, the proliferation of misinformation and
conspiracy theories.
Regardless of whether Tom is acquitted or found guilty, it is
not clear to me how small communities like mine will find a way
to bridge the chasm that the insurrection revealed. One evening
as dusk fell I attended an outdoor concert in Berryville featuring
Malian musician Cheick Hamala Diabate. Kids ran through the
recently mowed grass, couples sat in neon-colored camp chairs
and food trucks doled out barbecue. It was mildly idyllic and felt
like the home I knew was there, underneath the muck.
But I also knew a lot of people from the county weren’t there
that night and that increasingly there were no structures to bring
these two groups into the same space, much less conversation.
The local paper, the Clarke Courier, which I wrote for in high
school, was the first small-town newspaper in Virginia to fold,
and like the rest of the country, many are consuming their news
online and on cable, fed the same stories and opinions in a
never-ending loop. I thought about the video of the child
smashing the Black Lives Matter sign, and how both violence and
beliefs can be inherited from one generation to the next.
Recently, Clarke’s Board of Supervisors decided not to remove
the Confederate statue of an unnamed soldier who stands outside
the county courthouse: Too many people had written letters
demanding the statue stay because it represented their history. It
was clear from reading through the public comments that some
of those supporting the statue also subscribed to more modern
conspiracy theories, an ecosystem of lies and distortions building
on one another.
There is no monument yet to the 60 Black people from Clarke
who fought and died for the Union Army, but there is a graveyard.
The dry grass crunched beneath my feet as I visited the resting
From left: Stone’s
Chapel, constructed
in 1848; a wooden
cutout of a Boy Scout
uniform on display
downtown.place of Thomas Laws, a free Black Clarke resident who risked his
life to help feed vital intelligence about Confederate troop
movements to the Union Army.
A few days after my arrival, I heard Tom and Sharon had
started attending Berryville Presbyterian Church after his release
on house arrest.
As I parked in the church’s back lot on a Sunday morning, a
shiny baby-blue antique Thunderbird slid into a spot at the rear
entrance. It was the Caldwells, casually but neatly dressed: Tom in
a tucked shirt, khaki pants and New Balances, Sharon with a bright
green shirt, her golden highlights glinting. They ducked in through
the back, Tom carrying a cane but ascending the stairs easily.
I entered through the front and took a seat on one of the pews,
inhaling the polished wood and velvet, the light spilling through
stained glass. The sermon that day was on unity. Pastor Jonathan
Bunker urged the congregation to “live lives worthy of the gospel:
humility, gentleness, patience and love,” all of which are relational
qualities. He spoke of man’s brokenness but also said, “What was
made to be whole might be whole again,” and emphasized the
work was to “love everyone God has made.” From their pew near
the front, the Caldwells looked straight ahead, never glancing
around or speaking to anyone except each other.
After the service, the couple went quickly out through the rear
and got into the convertible. Tom put his sunglasses on and then
lowered the top. They looked carefree and weightless as they rolled
out of town. As they turned off the highway onto a winding back
road, the blinding midday sun illuminated the pale white sacks of
gypsy moths hanging from the trees. Tom Caldwell accelerated
around a curve and then disappeared.Caitlin L. Chandler is a writer based in Berlin.