Relics

by Mary Anna Evans

  “Oh, my God. The Song of Songs. I cannot believe I missed a biblical quote,” Faye said as she read further down the page. She wondered if it was time to go back to church before she forgot an important commandment or something. “Grandma made sure I got to church every Sunday when I was little. But I’m wondering why you picked the Geneva Bible as the source. Weren’t there several English translations that were widely used in the sixteenth century? Didn’t Henry himself commission Cranmer’s ‘Great Bible’?”

  “Yes, he did. Your grandmother would be proud of your bible knowledge. But Miss Dovey used words that are specific to the Geneva Bible. I pulled this verse out of six bibles published in the century before the King James Version: the Coverdale, Matthew, ‘Great,’ Geneva, Bishops’, and Rheims-Douay bibles. Only the Geneva describes the speaker as ‘comelie.’ The other versions use words like ‘fayre’ or ‘welfauoured’ or ‘beautiful.’ Only the Geneva Bible speaks of the ‘curtines of Salomon.’ There’s no doubt in my mind that the person who wrote new verses for King Henry’s song was familiar with the Geneva Bible.”

  Faye, ever-practical, moved from a word-by-word analysis straight to the point. “So, if we assume one of Miss Dovey’s ancestors adapted ‘The Kynge’s Ballad’—”

  “Or someone they knew,” interjected the always accurate Dr. Amory.

  “Right. An ancestor of the Sujosa, or someone they knew, probably lived in England or Scotland at least until the Geneva Bible was published in 1560.”

  “And I’d imagine that they composed their adaptation of Henry’s ballad shortly after that, while it was still fresh in their minds.”

  “Right. But the combination of the two songs tells us even more than that,” Faye pointed out. “Have you heard Miss Dovey’s story about the yellow-haired sailors who kidnapped a group of women while they were gathering water? She specifically said that the men came to love their captives. Think about these lyrics: ‘I am blacke, but comelie.’ Can you name a bible verse or, come to think of it, any English poem of the time that would be as meaningful to a white man in love with a dark-skinned woman?”

  “Not a one. So this song places some of the Sujosa’s ancestors in present-day Britain through the middle of the 16th century, and it suggests that their dark-skinned ancestors entered their genealogy shortly thereafter.”

  “Yep.” Faye read through the biblical passage again. Miss Dovey’s ancestors had taken the words of Henry VIII and of Solomon’s anonymous lover and made those words their own.

  “I’m glad there’s a team meeting tonight,” Amory said. “I’ll finally have something substantive to report. I mean we’ll have something to report.”

  “Tonight?” It had been a long week, but Faye was pretty sure that it wasn’t over yet. “It’s only Thursday. Isn’t the meeting tomorrow night?”

  “Raleigh’s going home a day early, so he moved the meeting up. It seems his wife misses him.”

  “Like Catherine of Aragon missed Henry the Eighth.” Faye clapped her hand over her mouth after the undiplomatic comment escaped, but Amory seemed to enjoy it.

  As Amory turned to go, she put a hand on his arm. “Wait. I’ve got another linguistics question. What is the etymology of the given name ‘Carmo’?”

  “How is it spelled?”

  “C-A-R-M-O. It’s Irene Montrose’s middle name, and she says there’s been a ‘Carmo’ in her family for generations.”

  “I’ve never heard of that name. At first blush, I’d guess it came from one of the Romance languages, but I could be dead wrong on that. Let me check the Internet and I’ll get back to you.” He nodded good-bye and headed for his office.

  Faye purchased her pajamas and looked around for Laurel. She found her leaning on her crutches just inside the door. Her purchases were stuffed in a plastic bag that Jenny had tied with an extra-large loop to make it easier for her to handle.

  “Let me carry that for you,” Faye said.

  Laurel slid the loop over her wrist and grasped the handles of her crutches. “Thanks, but I can manage.”

  Faye opened the door and followed Laurel through it, saying, “I’m glad we have this chance to spend a little time together. With work and the accident and the fire and now Jimmie’s death, we’ve hardly had time to talk since—”

  “Since we met.”

  “Yeah. I guess we’ve never had a chance to get acquainted, have we?”

  “Part of that is my fault. I’ve made myself scarce on purpose.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I’ve been spending more time with Joe than I ever intended to.” Laurel stretched one crutch forward and took a tentative step with her left leg. Then she reached out with the other crutch and dragged the right foot, encased in its heavy walking cast, forward. “I enjoy sitting at the kitchen table chopping onions while he cooks. And I’m really getting into flintknapping since Joe taught me how. It’s something I can do sitting down that doesn’t involve a needle. Knitting and cross-stitch are so tedious that they make me crazy, but chipping stone settles my mind.”

  “That’s what Joe tells me. I mean, I don’t know that he’s ever tried needlework, but he says that flintknapping makes him feel peaceful.”

  Laurel picked her way slowly through the parking lot, making sure her crutch tips sat solidly on the uneven gravel surface before trusting them to bear her weight. After the rain ended, a cold front had swept through and sent the late afternoon temperature plummeting, yet Faye could have sworn she saw perspiration on Laurel’s upper lip.

  Looking up from the ground in front of her hobbled feet, Laurel said, “Maybe I’m being silly. I mean—I haven’t known Joe a week, but I need to know now, not later, where you stand. When Joe started walking me to work and back, I was afraid you’d be mad at me, but you never said anything. When he gave me this,” she said, reaching inside her jacket and pulling out a necklace fashioned from a bird point and a length of leather lacing, “I was sure you’d have something to say about it, but I was wrong. It looks like I’m going to have to come right out and ask you this. How do you feel about Joe?”

  Faye was so busy trying to figure out why she’d never noticed Joe squiring Laurel around the settlement that she almost missed the real question. How did she feel about Joe, anyway?

  “Joe’s my friend,” she said. This much, at least, was the truth. She was certain of Joe’s friendship. “I’m happy that he’s found someone who appreciates his gifts.” She didn’t add, And who overlooks his shortcomings.

  “He helps me so much, without even trying. He tries to walk slow, so I can keep up with him, but I don’t think it’s possible for a man with legs that long to travel at my speed. After walking a quarter-mile with Joe, I’m worn out, but my feet are working better.”

  “He would die if he knew he was making you hurry.”

  “I know, so don’t tell him.”

  Faye watched Laurel creep slowly across a rocky patch of ground. Even if Joe took baby steps, she could never keep up with him.

  “So?”

  “So how do I feel about Joe?” Again Faye wished she hadn’t been too oblivious to have seen this coming. There was no easy, obvious answer to Laurel’s question, but Faye knew she must answer, and there was only one answer to give. “There’s nothing between me and Joe. I wish you every happiness.”

  They neared the bunkhouse and saw Brent standing on the porch, wearing a Crimson Tide jacket and cap to ward off the growing cold. She wondered if he’d heard that Raleigh had rescheduled the team meeting, effectively canceling their dinner date, since Alcaskaki restaurants closed way too early to accommodate workaholic outsiders. And she wondered if he would realize she was angry at him. Faye had a hunch that, when it came to matters of the heart, Brent was as oblivious as she was.

  Faye helped Laurel climb the porch steps. She noticed that Brent didn’t scold her for interfering with the younger woman’s progress. Perhaps he noticed the fatigue on Laurel’s face.

&nbs
p; As Laurel disappeared into the house, Brent said, “I hear we’ve got to work tonight. Could we set another date to have dinner?”

  “Raleigh doesn’t think the rest of us have social lives. He has no problem changing a meeting date at the last minute to suit his own schedule.” She purposely didn’t answer his question.

  Too smart to let her reject him obliquely, he asked again. “Want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

  Faye hated it when people sidestepped a simple question with a question of their own, but she did it anyway. “Why didn’t you tell me you were part Sujosa?”

  He actually took a step backward. “Did Adam tell you that?”

  “No. You did. Your hairdresser blew your cover,” Faye said, touching the back of her head, near where a line of stitches snaked across her scalp.

  His hand crept up to touch the light streak on the back of his own head.

  “What made you think Adam had given away your secret?” she asked.

  “It’s not a secret. Everybody in the settlement and in Alcaskaki knows who I am.”

  “I didn’t.”

  He gestured toward the porch swing, as if he thought she’d be calmer and more rational if they had this argument while seated. She stayed on her feet.

  “Was I supposed to announce it when we met? Should I have said ‘Hello, my name is Brent, and I’m of indeterminate racial origin,’ before I even asked your name?”

  “No, but you could have mentioned it sometime. Like maybe when I was afraid I was out of place, being the only person of color sitting with your Alcaskaki friends. Or when you told me you’d decided to forgo a big pile of money, so you’d have time to do charity work in the Sujosa settlement. You could have said they were your people, instead of letting me think you were Mother Teresa, serving the poor just because they were there.”

  “I never said I was a saint. Why are you so angry over this?”

  Faye knew she couldn’t explain what it was like to always—always—be set apart from everybody else because you didn’t look like anybody else. Brent’s bloodlines probably weren’t so different from hers, but he didn’t look multiracial. He looked like a white man with a tan. He was smart, he was good-looking, he was personable and, according to Adam, he was athletic. He was born for social success; it was his birthright.

  It occurred to her that Adam, in his low-key way, might have tried to tell her about Brent, even before she realized the truth herself. When he’d said that he, Brent, and Leo had been like brothers when they were on the high school baseball team, she’d thought he was saying that proximity had broken down the racial barriers between Adam and Brent, two white Alcaskakians, and Leo, a brown Sujosa. If asked, Adam might have placed the racial barrier in a different place—with him on one side, and Brent and Leo on the other.

  “Look,” she said. “Maybe I’m overreacting and maybe I’m not. It’s been a bad week. And my head really hurts. When are you going to take my stitches out?”

  “Next week.”

  “Then let’s talk about this next week.”

  She walked into the house before he had time to answer, and shut the door behind her.

  She wanted to be alone for a while, but the bunkhouse provided few options for that luxury. Every horizontal surface in the parlor was festooned with Raleigh’s budgetary paperwork. The kitchen, the only other public area, was chock-full of domestic bliss, for Joe was elbow-deep in the sink, washing grit out of a mess of collards, and Laurel was chopping pickles for the potato salad that would be accompanying Joe’s greens. Faye might have given their relationship her blessing, but that didn’t mean she wanted to give herself diabetes by watching it develop, step by sugary step.

  Her bedroom offered certain attractions. She was assured of privacy, since her roommate was in the kitchen making cow eyes at Joe. Thanks to her recent purchase, she was assured of warmth, too. Though the thought of putting on those ugly pajamas and crawling into bed warmed her Florida-bred bones, it smacked of clinical depression.

  Checking to make sure that Brent was out of sight, she slipped back outside. She would spend the hour before the meeting at her office. Jenny would sell her some Vienna sausages and saltines for supper. If the atmosphere at the bunkhouse didn’t improve, Faye was pretty sure she could subsist on nothing but canned tubes of mystery meat for the duration of the project. Unless she got scurvy.

  Interview with Brent Harbison, October 29, 2004

  Interviewer: Carmen Martinez, Ph.D.

  CJM: I understand that you’re from Alcaskaki.

  Brent Harbison: Born and raised.

  CJM: And your parents?

  Brent Harbison: My family goes back more than a hundred and fifty years in this county, on both sides.

  CJM: They’re both from Alcaskaki?

  Brent Harbison (Interviewer’s note: Mr. Harbison took his time answering.): My father was born in Alcaskaki, and he never left, except to visit me in Tuscaloosa while I was in school there. My mother moved to Alcaskaki when she was nineteen and stayed there all her life, except for those same trips to Tuscaloosa.

  CJM: And she was born elsewhere in the county?

  Brent Harbison: My mother was born in the Sujosa settlement, as you perfectly well know. That’s why we’re talking, isn’t it?

  CJM: Well, if she ever told you anything about Sujosa history, I’d love to hear it. That’s why I’m here, you know.

  Brent Harbison: Is that why you’re here? I helped write the grant proposal, you know, and every day I’m shocked by how far reality has strayed from our original plan. There was supposed to be money for another doctor to work in my clinic. Now I’m told that I’ll get a part-time nurse’s aide sometime next year. There were supposed to be four tutors for the Sujosa’s children: one for high school kids, one to handle middle-schoolers, one for elementary kids, and one to give preschoolers a good start on life. Laurel Cook is a miracle-worker, but she can’t do the work of four people.

  CJM: I’m concerned about those things, too, but I can’t do anything about it. You need to speak to Dr. Raleigh, and I hope you do. He might listen to you.

  Brent Harbison: Well, he sure as hell listens to you.

  CJM: Pardon me?

  Brent Harbison: I was there when you torpedoed Jorge Knight’s proposal to do project-funded house repairs. The work went out of the settlement instead. It’s being done by Alcaskaki’s most prosperous contractor. That’s not who we’re here to help.

  CJM: A portion of our grant money is earmarked to repair the Sujosa’s homes, that’s true, but have you met Jorge Knight? It would be irresponsible to trust him with public funds.

  Brent Harbison: Jorge Knight only has one problem: he’s got no place to put his brains and his ambition. If the vocational training budget hadn’t been eliminated, Jorge would be a young man with a new home-repair business, instead of a troublemaker. But I don’t expect you to understand that. I’ve read your work.

  CJM: Pardon me?

  Brent Harbison: You get your subjects to trust you. You flatter them, and pretend you care, so they’ll like you and give you what you want. They play host to the parasite of your research.

  CJM: I beg your—

  Brent Harbison: You come off like Margaret Mead, describing the quaint customs of whatever primitive culture you’ve decided to grace with your presence. Then you marvel at what the “natives” have been able to accomplish with their limited resources and inadequate educations. Finally, you write your papers and get your fame and your dollars from their stories, while they get nothing.

  CJM: Don’t hold back, Brent. Tell me how you really feel.

  Brent Harbison: I will. And I’ll tell you about the Sujosa. Whether you want to hear it or not. You are well aware that the Sujosa were segregated into their own school until I was in my teens. Did anybody tell you about the time they finally got around to giving the settlement kids the SAT?

  CJM: Nope.

  Brent Harbison: Wel
l, it was a small school, so there were probably only five Sujosa who took the test that year, compared to several dozen Alcaskaki kids. The smartest kid in Alcaskaki made the seventy-fifth percentile, which ain’t bad for a poor, rural school.

  CJM: And?

  Brent Harbison: All five of the Sujosa—every last one of them—topped the seventy-fifth percentile. And don’t forget that they’d had only one teacher, Miss Dovey, and she was working with out-of-date textbooks, when she had books at all. The settlement kids don’t always do so well these days, without Miss Dovey on their butt day and night, but the intellectual raw material is there. Dammit, Carmen, we need those tutors here.

  CJM: Brent, I agree with you. I had nothing to do with them being cut from the budget.

  Brent Harbison: Maybe you had nothing directly to do with eliminating the tutors, but I’m talking about perception. Do you understand how important that is?

  CJM: I’d like to think so.

  Brent Harbison: Then listen to this. More than a hundred years ago, a Sujosa man shot an eagle that was flying with a rabbit in its talons. Now, don’t go getting environmental on me. The woods were full of eagles in those days. Anyway, this man weighed the rabbit. He weighed the eagle and he measured its wingspan. After he did some figuring, he built wings and something kinda like a tail, then he attached them to his bicycle. When he got finished, he wheeled the contraption to the top of a hill on the far side of the river.

  CJM: You’re not telling me—

  Brent Harbison: I am. He hopped on that bicycle and pedaled down the hill. About halfway down, he took off, so his calculations must have been accurate. Later, he said he’d planned to steer by shifting his weight, and that he’d hoped to be able to land by leaning forward. Instead, he flipped the thing end-over-end, nearly killing himself. This was ten years before the Wright brothers went to Kitty Hawk.

  CJM: Everybody was experimenting with air flight in those days. They say that “In steamboat times, men build steamboats.” Those were airplane times.