by Janice Law
“It’s not worth the fuss,” said Jane.
“Tomorrow,” I said, kissing her cheek. “And I’ll do all the paddling.”
She laughed and, now reprieved, I made a joke of near disaster. I transfered my knapsack from the car to the canoe and put on my moccasins for luck. I’d been extraordinarily tempted by a pair of embroidered moosehide slippers that night in the museum archives, and I had needed all my willpower and professional pride to leave them in their protective packet.
By the time I got to the Donaldson’s, the light was fading. I tied up the canoe to some scrub and walked quietly toward the meadow with my knapsack slung over my shoulder. I can’t describe to you my state of alertness that night. I seemed to hear every insect, every bird, the breaking of every twig, the bending of every blade of grass. Up at the top of the hill, the Donaldson’s house was lit up against the lacy darkness of the partially leafed out trees and the radiant pink and lavender sky. It’s really a very nice location, but since Eva’s death, Andrew had not kept the place up as well. The gaps between the trees along the road had gradually been filled in with a hedge of saplings, shrubs and vines. I was screened by this growth as I approached the work site where the lane was scraped down a good foot or more and piles of earth were heaped along the sides. They had roughly doubled the track, ripping out some of the young trees and cutting several feet into the meadow. I had just about reached this open area, when I heard footsteps.
I practically fell into the only shelter available, a little cluster of maple saplings, poison ivy and bittersweet. A man was walking along the meadow on the other side of the scrub and I was sure it was Andrew. I lowered myself into the vines and grass and waited. He seemed to be checking the work that had been done, tapping the ground here and there with a shovel, but, I didn’t dare raise my head for confirmation.
What if he saw me? What to say? Perhaps I should have been tempted by the Museum’s polished Algonquin war club instead of those moccasins, but actual physical violence, however satisfactory in the abstract, was out of my plan, perhaps beyond my capacity. Instead, I crouched silently for interminable, mosquito filled minutes until his footsteps faded.
Once he was gone, I moved quickly in the semi-darkness. Weeks before, I had picked out a cluster of large trees. As I approached them, I selected the most substantial heap of bulldozed earth on the meadow side. Taking #2456 from my knapsack, I packed the cranium with soil, then gently fitted it into the raw earth. This delicate operation was probably hampered as much as helped by my professional expertise. It was ten minutes by my watch before I felt it looked right, the skull noticeable but half buried in the sand, clay and rocks, and another five before I had erased the softly rounded prints of my moccasins.
When I got home, I offered to run to the convenience store for some of Jane’s favorite ice cream. The pint of pistachio was cold against my arm as I dialed Andrew’s number and listened to it ring.
“Who is it?” he cried. For the first time, I responded. I laughed out loud and set down the receiver.
The discovery was in the local paper the next night. I’d half expected to be called at work. It wouldn’t have been the first time, for with the density of artifacts in our area, I’ve run programs for construction companies on the importance of reporting bones and relics. In turn, we try not to hold up work too long while we recover artifacts and map the site. However, the grader operator was a crime, not an archeology, buff. She saw the skull, remembered the Donaldson investigation, and called the police.
“It’s just a tragedy,” Chloe Feingold told me that evening. For once, I was hanging on her every word. “Of course, poor Andrew is nearly hysterical.” For some reason, he was always one of her favorites.
“Surely they don’t think he had anything to do with it!” I said.
“Well, of course not!” Chloe said. “But he hasn’t helped himself. He keeps saying ‘it can’t be Eva,’ ‘it isn’t Eva,’ putting the idea in their heads, you know. But you can’t imagine his state of mind!”
Actually, I could.
“We’re recommended our lawyer. You know Hugh Boyd, don’t you? He wants that skull examined right away.”
“Surely the coroner,” I began . . .
“Hugh says it looks old, and I’m just sure it is. Why Andrew had to mention Eva at all is totally beyond me.” Chloe said.
“She must always be in his mind,” I said.
“Of course,” Chloe said impatiently, “but it can’t be Eva, it just can’t be, and the sooner they get you to date the remains the better. It’s important that we all rally behind Andrew.”
The dean said something similar to me when he learned that I’d been asked to examine the skull. That was after the police had dug around the road without success; after Andrew, behaving badly, had retreated into shock and mental anguish, and after Hugh Boyd had told all and sundry that his client was being subjected to duress. Though I let Andrew stew as long as possible, I eventually had to give my opinion.
We assembled in a small conference room in the county jail, Hugh Boyd, Andrew, me and the investigating officers. As the seating worked out, Andrew and I were across from each other at the institutional gray metal conference table, an optimal arrangement. This was the sort of single combat I’d envisioned, and I was pleased to see that Andrew had lost his rosy tan and aura of fitness. He looked like a gaunt acolyte of some obscure and fanatical religion, and though he greeted me warmly, I sensed that his nerve was failing. Mine, as you’ll see, was in perfect condition.
I laid the carefully repackaged skull on the table and opened my briefcase for my notes. I moved very slowly and deliberately; I had waited in secret for this moment for nearly three years. I think the secrecy is worth emphasizing, for how much of achievement is anticipation, and how much of anticipation is the pleasure of sharing hopes with others?
Andrew winced at the sight of the skull, and I felt myself smile involuntarily, before I cleared my throat and began reading. In essence, I said that the skull was very old and its presence, somewhat anomalous. I speculated briefly about trade routes and the diffusion of Archaic civilization. My lectures are considered first-rate and my introductory classes are always filled early.
“The key thing,” said Hugh Boyd, ignoring Eva’s disappearance, Andrew’s guilt, and my revenge, “is that, as we’ve maintained all along, the bones could not possibly be those of Eva Donaldson. That being the case, there is absolutely no reason to continue questioning my client.”
When the investigating officer had reservations about this, I raised my professional concerns: the possibility of more bones, even artifacts. I suggested a modest excavation trench. “If we concentrate on the meadow, we won’t need to hold up the road work at all,” I said.
“No,” said Andrew, very loudly and angrily.
I feigned the greatest surprise. “Surely, it would be the best possible thing for you, as well as for certain lucky selected graduate students.”
“No,” Andrew said. “I won’t have the meadow disturbed any further. It was Eva’s meadow; she wanted it in flowers.” For a moment, I thought he might attempt tears. “I don’t know why you even raised the subject. All you were asked to do was to estimate the age of the—” he flapped his hand toward the packet, “— the remains.”
Hugh Boyd made soothing noises, but the Lieutenant was clearly interested.
“Of course,” I said, “my apologies for even suggesting it, but I’m sure Eva would have wanted this cleared up.”
“How do you know what Eva would have wanted?” Andrew demanded. I think right then that he began belatedly to suspect me.
“I know the Dean is concerned,” I continued, “and with your tenure reviews coming up . . .” I left this phrase dangling. “Suspicion,” I added, “suspicion can have such a negative effect. You can hardly imagine,” I told Boyd and the Lieutenant.
“I think everyone will understand my situation has been perfectly terrible,” Andrew said. I’m sure I was not the on
ly one to notice that with the notion of tenure, his emotions were suddenly completely convincing. “The Committee, the Dean, everyone . . .”
I laughed, a miscalculation, but I couldn’t help it. There’s a kind of wilful naivete I find irresistibly comic.
Andrew started as if he’d been struck. “This whole business was your doing!” he cried. He actually stood up at the table. He was right, of course, but I can’t say I rate him highly in quickness of perception.
“Control yourself, Andrew. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The words poured out, “That skull,” “your laugh,” “Eva!”— but I’ll spare you the full and unabridged text. I remained calm, courteous; I really was extraordinarily calm and courteous that day. I ignored the personal aspersions and said, “There’s no reason for you to panic about the meadow, Andrew. For the price of a few aerial photographs we can set everyone’s mind at rest. I just thought the process of trial and error would be good for the students.”
Hugh Boyd began sputtering, but the Lieutenant— I think that was his rank, trooper ranks are different from city police, you know,— asked, “Aerial photography?”
“You hadn’t thought of that? Archeological trade secret, I guess.” I was well into my explanation of how ruins, foundation trenches, and graves can be spotted from the air, when Andrew lunged across the table and— there’s no other appropriate word here— attacked me.
I still haven’t decided whether that was deliberate or not, I mean, a deliberate ploy to suggest unsoundness of mind or just a total failure of self control. In any case, Andrew Donaldson was held for psychiatric assessment, and three days later, I had the painful satisfaction of pointing out a small oblong, visible in a properly enhanced aerial photograph of the meadow. When excavated, this telltale depression proved to contain my Eva’s body.
After the trial, I asked for custody of the old skull, although this was a somewhat delicate matter, the state troopers having some suspicions about the source of the original find. Then one of my graduate students became intrigued with the resemblances to known Adena skulls; she wanted to examine both the site and the skull more thoroughly. It was with difficulty that I dissuaded her; in professional conscience, I could not let her build her thesis on a hoax. Finally, as expected, the Pequots got involved. I had some delicate negotiations with their heavy weight lawyer, before they settled for three other bona fide eastern woodlands relics from the historic period.
When interest dies down, I will quietly relabel #2456 and return her to my private collection. Or perhaps I will take her home and rebury her somewhere in the Ohio valley. Perhaps I will do that; I think I will.
Her people believed in an afterlife and provisioned themselves well for it, tempting grave robbers and that better class of thief, the archeologist. But after the great favor she’s done me, I don’t feel I can leave #2456 to dream away her eternity in my mahogany cabinet. She can even have some grave goods; I have extra specimens that will never be missed. And even if they were, I feel a sense of obligation, for I understand now that even the bones of one’s beloved are sacred. I understand that every time I slip into the old cemetery to lay some of Eva’s wild flowers on her grave.
Star of the Silver Screen
He’d promised to kill her if she ever left him— and she believed him absolutely. When he’d first whispered it to her over drinks at expensive restaurants or amidst the sexy rumble of the dance floor, she’d interpreted his declaration as love, as devotion, as need. She’d been flattered and reassured; he’d seemed so strong, so passionate and determined.
Now, she knew better. Ben didn’t know much about love and nothing about devotion. What he knew about was need and power and control, and he’d known so much about those that he’d gone from an underfed kid selling handfuls of pills and bags of crack to one of the biggest men in the northeast. Big enough so that he handled the money end, the organization end; big enough so that the “product” could have been anything— electronics, imported fabrics, luxury cars, or— his usual response when folks who didn’t know better asked what he did— fine imported wines.
That was a laugh, she thought. Where Ben came from a “fine wine” was an unopened bottle of Thunderbird. But he did know a lot about vintages. He was always impressive, the way he could talk about the bouquet and the palate and the fruity blush while the big spenders and society types nodded their heads and raised him a notch with every word. Oh, she’d often watched him in action. First, when she was dazzled by him and later when she was scared; either way, she had to admit Ben was smart. He was the smartest man she’d ever met and every time she thought about that, she gave a little shiver. He said he’d kill her and she believed him— absolutely.
She’d hoped— which shows what kind of a fool she’d been— she hoped that getting so far from “the product” would change him. That the skinny kid who’d become the glamorous and wealthy man would keep changing and that somehow the underpinnings— the sordid overkill and cruelty and stupidity of street life would vanish, presto!, and they could be left with all the things she liked: the city apartment, the country house, parties with musicians, platinum credit cards, Mercedes and Jaguars and private jets. Like Ben, she’d developed her tastes. She’d toned down the flash and bought quality. And if Ben complained a dress was “too plain,” she loaded up with jewelry, with beautiful, flawless stones in handsome settings, good as money in the bank any day, because Ben had been very generous.
In the beginning, she’d accepted his presents as love. When he grew more difficult and distant, she extracted them as payment, wages due for slaps and curses, for violent scenes and humiliating demands. Finally, when she ceased to feel anything for him but fear, she bought jewelry for herself, quietly siphoning cash from the almost unspendable money stream that seeped through their lives.
So, all considered, she couldn’t exactly say she was unprepared, though she did stay on too long. The bottom line, of course, was his whispered, shouted threat, but there were other distractions, too: trips, cars, furs, jewels; fabulous parties, new clothes, new houses, new rooms, new apartments. Time can be filled up if you only have money, and even when she found herself needing more and more to fill up less and less time, “the product” provided.
She had no real scruples about that. Like a lot of people, she was selectively unimaginative, and she did not find it too great a strain to block out speculations on the overall cost of doing business. She could have been happy— she realized that later— she could have been happy as a permanent thing, if Ben hadn’t started drinking. Well, not really drinking, but it sounded nicer to say “drinking.” What Ben really did was to become better acquainted with “the product.”
That was when she began to be afraid of him, of his sudden rages, his sly paranoia and violent accusations. That was when she began to be afraid of losing everything, not just the swank parties and designer clothes; not just leather seats and satin spreads and damask linen, but herself, her identity. She’d vanished into luxury. She’d thought she’d been growing and developing, but had she? She’d become the woman who lived at the Chateau Blanc, who ate in certain restaurants, shopped at certain stores, traveled in certain circles and appeared at certain parties. That’s who she was and who would she be without the Gucci shoes, the Ferragamo scarves, the Channel accessories? She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.
But he said, “I’ll kill you,” and she believed him because of one night when they were up late in their elegant black and white kitchen. She was heating water for a cup of tea; he was drinking an expensive old whiskey. She had spent the evening watching Pretty Woman on video; he had been out with old friends, “product” friends, and he was coming down from strenuous partying, when, without warning— that was the terrible thing— without any warning at all, he spun into a rage and, knocking the pan from the stove, forced both her hands onto the burner.
The next day, he brought her orchids in the hospital. Live, potted orchids that would later fl
ourish in their professionally maintained greenhouse. And bunches of lilies and roses in a crystal vase and a magnificent jeweled evening bag shaped like Humpty Dumpty, that was too heavy for her scorched hands to hold. But he did not say that he was sorry. It was as if he hadn’t done anything at all, as if the maniac in the night kitchen had been some other Ben, some other man altogether. When she realized that, she’d become really frightened and understood at last that she had to leave.
All the while her hands were healing, she made elaborate, obsessive plans, but she lacked energy to put them into action until the day Ben frightened her again. Overwhelmed by terror, she ran to the safe for her jewelry case as soon as he went out. The minute she had it in her hands, she knew she’d decided and became calm. She marveled about that later; about how you can get through terror to the other side, like stepping out of a dark, cramped elevator into a big, well-lighted foyer.
She laid the jewelry case on her bed and went into Ben’s office, where she rooted through the closet for the heavy leather bag she knew was stashed at the back. She hauled it out, fetched a knife from the kitchen, and forced the catch.
Inside, the casino chips sat in neat plastic boxes, rows and rows and rows of them, red, white, and black with satisfyingly large demoninations stamped on their shiny faces. She transferred the whole lot to a suitcase, replacing them with some heavy cans to make up the weight, and returned Ben’s leather bag to his closet. She changed her clothes, loaded the cases into her pretty silver Mercedes, and drove out the gates of the Chateau Blanc without looking back.
It was foggy the whole way to the casino. That’s what she remembered afterwards: the ghostly, foggy night with haloed lights and mysterious white voids, and Ben’s voice in her ear every minute saying, “I’ll kill you if you ever leave me.” When she reached the gambling palace— all flash and lights and aggressive architecture— they knew her, of course. How often had she come in on Ben’s arm to watch him at the tables, to bring him luck at black jack or to be bored off her feet at poker or roulette? The manager hustled out immediately, obsequious in his tuxedo, to insist that she wait in his office. He offered her coffee and a liqueur and small green cigars while they cut the cashier’s check.