The Archaeologists

by Hal Niedzviecki

  Wow! Great!

  They sip their coffee. June’s fingers curve around the cup handle, grated nails pressing into the soft part of her palm.

  The reporter grins pinkly.

  Mr. Talbot, I’m sorry, but if you could tell me how I can help you…I don’t mean to be…but you see…I have to be—going out—soon—

  When did she get to be such a terrible liar?

  Well, June. Sorry to delay you. I just dropped by to follow up on something. You see, Rose was telling us about the river and how it used to be when she was growing up. And she mentioned something…interesting.

  Oh. What would that be? She feels her spine crawling. Eyes on her, eyes moving through her.

  Well, June, she was telling us about what a help you’ve been to her.

  No. No. I just…

  She was talking about, as I mentioned, the river and how it used to be. And she happened to mention that the area your neighbourhood is in was once a real hub for Native activity.

  Was it? June’s murmuring now. She’s fascinated by the bloodless red of Talbot’s lips, the white flashes of his teeth, very clean, perfect even. Has he been to see Norm?

  And, in fact, Rose mentioned that you, yourself, had encountered, recently, some evidence of Native presence?

  What? June wills herself to laugh. To look confused, incredulous.

  In the form of…

  What? Me? No. Ha! Rose! She must have been—

  June stops talking. He saw the tarp. My hands. What does he want?

  Did you find something in your backyard ma’am?

  —

  June?

  Something? No! I—

  Are you aware, June, of the riverfront parkway development?

  That road they want to build?

  The road they’re planning on building, yes.

  Jesus. Does he ever stop smiling? June wants to shut her eyes. Crawl back into her hole. The site. The bones. Her skin crawling.

  You see, June, a finding in the vicinity of the development. That would be particularly significant, June. Very significant. To the community.

  The community?

  The people of Wississauga. They have a right to know, June. Before it all gets paved over.

  Oh. June goes for her coffee. Calming ritual. Rose drinks tea. The sweat on her body is cold now, a trapped chill under her bulky dirty clothing.

  June?

  —

  What’s under the tarp, June?

  What?

  That tarp in the backyard. What’s it covering, June?

  It’s a fertilizer…ditch. A new technique.

  Really?

  Rose gets, confused. She tells stories and sometimes she gets… confused.

  She’s concerned about you June.

  Why should she be worried about me?

  That’s a good question.

  Stirring her coffee. Spoon dinging the side.

  Do you really think she’s confused, June? She seems very lucid. Surprisingly lucid. Our viewers always enjoy her recollections because of their vividness.

  She is very old, Mr. Talbot.

  Yes she is, June.

  —

  June?

  How can I help you, Mr. Talbot?

  Our viewers are avid gardeners. Always interested in new techniques. Perhaps I could take a look. You could give us some pointers.

  I don’t think so. I have an—appointment.

  Getting your hair done?

  I think you should go now.

  Some other time, then?

  I’m not really…much for…being on TV.

  Ah. More of a private person?

  She gets up. Her legs feel surprisingly strong under her. She could kick him, hurt him. Thank you for coming, Mr. Talbot. Her voice goes loud in the kitchen, fills the achingly empty house. I wish I could have helped you. Boldly, not caring anymore, June extends her hand. It hangs in the gleaming emptiness of the kitchen, rough foreign stained paw from some lost era. Not the hand of a Wississauga housewife: white, prim, soft.

  Talbot shakes gingerly. Thanks for the coffee, ma’am.

  I’ll show you out the front.

  ROSE

  Tuesday, April 15

  THE TIME FOR THE GIRL TO COME has passed and the girl hasn’t come. Not the queer pretty one with all her questions or the quiet plump brown one with the boy’s name who only came once. It’s quiet, they’ve taken away her dinner tray, evening settling over her small apartment like a veil. Rose resists the urge to close her eyes and drift off underneath that ever-present scrim. She twists in her chair, feels her bones creak and grind—spring is coming, the changing seasons getting in her joints—but that’s not it, that’s not what’s bothering her. It’s what the girl told her, and what she told the boy reporter. Bones. Indians. Curses. Bad business. She should have kept quiet. Stayed mum. All these years, 104 years, and she still can’t keep her mouth shut. She never could. Of course these days it’s less and less of a problem. She’s alone most of the time. She’s alone now. Is she? Of course you are, she snaps at herself. Don’t be stupid. So what is it that she’s feeling then? Something’s happening. Something’s going to happen. Rose sighs. She can’t shake the sense that something horrible has been put in motion. Right here, she thinks, right here in Wississauga.

  The phone rings. Rose startles. She forgets she even has the damn thing. It was her daughter who insisted she install it. And it’s her daughter who’s calling. Who else? After the girl comes and then goes, after the dinner tray comes and goes, that’s when her daughter calls. Today the girl didn’t come. But her daughter is still calling. Frankly Rose would’ve been happier if it’d been the other way around. Beggars can’t be choosers. Not that she’d ever been a beggar. Her daughter said she’d pay for the phone line. I’ll take care of myself, Rose snapped, thank you very much. She has money. She gets her old age every month, and the money they gave her when they threw her out of her own house like a dusty chesterfield no one wanted anymore. So, yes, she has money. Once a month she carefully writes out a cheque for the phone bill. Everything else they take right out of her government cheque before she even has a chance to say so much as a how-do-you-do.

  The phone keeps bleating. She should just unplug the infernal contraption. But then her daughter would ring up the nurse. She’s done that before, all in a foolish panic. They’d come barging in without knocking, asking their questions—How are you doing there, Rose? Why don’t you answer the phone, Rose? Do you need to go to the lady’s room, Rose? Some of them she can’t even understand: the Black one, the China one. Speak English, she wants to tell them.

  It’s no good. She might as well get it over with.

  She reaches a shaky hand out and grabs the heavy plastic receiver.

  Mom?

  Well who else would it be? Rose snaps.

  Jesus Mom, happy to hear from me much?

  Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain with me, missy.

  Sorry Mom. Her daughter sighs on the other end.

  I’m still your mother and don’t you forget it.

  How are you, Mom?

  I’m fine dear, Rose says, her tone softening. I’m just fine. She isn’t fine. Even the air in her room feels different: alert and alive, like a night animal. The evening traffic sluicing by in the distance.

  Are you sure, Mom? You sound…

  How would she know how I sound? Rose hasn’t seen her daughter since she came back to help her move into the home seven years ago. And even then she was barely there, rushing to and fro, constantly staring at some kind of gidget-gadget, tapping at it with her fingers. I’m over here, dear, Rose has had to announce more than once.

  How are your knees, Mom?

  My knees, dear? Well, you know, I’m not as young as I used to be.

  Have you seen the doctor lately?

  Doctors!

  More sighing. Are you at least using that cream I sent you? And wearing the necklace? It’s excellent for arthritis.

  Yes de
ar.

  Her daughter sends her things. A strange smelling tube of green paste. An aquamarine necklace dotted with magnets and blessed by some man, some Sri something-or-other. She went all the way to the other side of the country to be near this man, this stranger more interesting to her than her own mother.

  And are they helping?

  Well, dear, I’m still having a bit of trouble getting around.

  She’d given the necklace to one of the nurses.

  Rose’s daughter is her youngest. And there are the two boys. Grown up now, of course, they both live in the city. They come to visit once a month or so. They bring their wives, sometimes their children; they aren’t children anymore, all of them staring at their gadget-gidgets, tap-tap-tapping. Rose wonders what will become of them. She knows where she’s going. She isn’t worried about that. But the rest of them, she really can’t say. They aren’t young anymore. Her youngest, her daughter, she’s over sixty already. She isn’t married. All that way to be near Sri something or other and she doesn’t even get married. It’s not like that, Mom, her daughter says whenever Rose brings it up. Well what’s it like? Rose wants to know.

  Mom? Are you still there?

  Yes, of course, where else would I be?

  I’m worried about your knees, Mom.

  I’m fine, dear.

  Rose is getting tired. Even a phone call tires her out these days. She just wants to close her eyes and forget all about it. The queer girl, the Indian ghost, the reporter Hal Talbot. All of them swirling around her, some kind of unholy trinity, something terrible coming. Rose can feel it.

  The devil’s work, Rose mutters.

  What’s that Mom?

  Of course she wouldn’t believe in that. The devil.

  Are you okay, Mom?

  I think, dear, I’ll just have a rest now.

  Oh, okay Mom. I’ll talk to you soon. Okay? I’ll talk to you soon?

  Rose lets the receiver slip from her shaking fingers and is relieved to hear it click into place. Now she’s alone again, alone in the buzzing static silence.

  Not alone. Not quite.

  She’s so tired. Rose digs her fingers into her scrawny thigh. She needs to wake up, rouse herself. She can’t just sit here and wait for it to happen. She’s tired of waiting. The girl comes, or she doesn’t come. Her daughter phones, her sons visit—or they don’t. Death hovers over her. Everyone waits for her to die.

  They can keep waiting. But Rose is tired of it. Waiting.

  It’s teatime. The 7pm news is on, Hal Talbot talking about a meeting happening, a meeting about that new road down by the river. They’re calling it an “expressway.” They call every road an “expressway.” Where’s everyone going in such a hurry?

  It’s teatime, but nobody’s come to make Rose her cup of tea.

  Do they think she’s just going to sit here, waiting, forever? The June girl, that Hal Talbot on TV, her daughter with those special necklaces and magic potions. Everybody thinks there’s an easy way out. Well, there isn’t. There’s no such thing as magic. That’s the devil’s work, oh yes. You open the door a crack, just a crack, and it all comes flooding in.

  Rose sniffs the air, catches the scent of burning toast. That scrawny beanpole Bernie down the hall is always burning toast.

  He’ll start a fire one day.

  Hal Talbot interviews the man on the street.

  Rose stares at the street on the screen. When was the last time she walked the “expressways” of the town she was born and bred in?

  She just wants a cup of tea. They can’t expect her to sit here all night without her cup of tea.

  Rose fumbles for her walker. She leans forward and grabs its handles. Then, in a Herculean feat, she pulls herself up and over. Her knees creak like old stairs. The pain shoots up her thighs and down her calves. She stands, her swollen feet bobbling in her slippers. It doesn’t matter. She’s still here, she’s still alive, and she isn’t going anywhere—unless she wants to.

  Hal Talbot is off now. The girl with the tight blouses and the makeup is doing the weather. Rose shakily advances her walker, ignoring the fact that she can’t really walk. She gets the handle of the door turned. She presses into the door. It swings open. She inches out into the hall. Slowly but surely, she’ll get there. She’ll walk the streets of her town. She’ll buy a car, a bottle, a shiny gidget-gadget that tells her where to go and what to do. She’ll dance, alone at night, the devil pressed tight to her withered breast. Why not? What else is left for her? There are nights when Rose wakes up gasping for air, thinking: Don’t you dare, don’t you even dare.

  Rose shuffles down the long hall. Midway to the elevator sits the empty nurses’ station. Rose glances over. There are pictures taped above it, snapshots of children, scrawled crayon drawings. Rose feels her knees, tightening, buckling. She wills them to bend, drags herself forward. The pain is nothing. Rose knows pain. She buried her husband in the rain. Since then she’s been alone. She’s been vigilant. Not ever opening that door. Not even a crack.

  Rose stops in front of the elevator. She stabs the button. She feels her strength ebb, her body slacken. No, she thinks. She’ll get there. She tightens her grip on the handles of her walker. Where’s there? The elevator dings. Rose prepares to haul her body across the threshold. She looks down and sees her bony knuckles, grey-white protruding as if she’s already died, her flesh withered away.

  The elevator door groans open slowly. Rose hears laughing. The devil’s wet snaked tongue undulating. She lifts her head off her chest, her neck cracking.

  Two nurses, giggling. They stare open-mouthed at Rose, the oldest person in Wississauga, hunched over her walker, just barely holding on.

  Then the black nurse says, in the loud sing-song dialect Rose prefers to pretend she doesn’t understand: Rose! Whierr ya goin’ girl? Ya takin’ youself down to the beauty parlour, now?

  And they start laughing again.

  PART FOUR

  JUNE

  Thursday, April 17

  IN THE SCHOOL ASSEMBLY HALL Norm takes June’s arm, directs her to the second row middle—right in front like it’s a concert or something. The room is overflowing with concerned citizens turned out for the community meeting. Norm nods and waves, a big smile on his face. June feels her arm under Norm’s gentle grip. Her bicep is hard, ready. She’s wasting time. She needs to finish what she started.

  Behind the lectern a banner hangs, proudly emblazoned with the Wississauga slogan: Faith in Our Future. Pride in Our Past.

  What does that even mean?

  Rose would—

  That crazy old lady, June thinks savagely. The lights dim. June looks up from her lap as a sports-coat man too tanned for Wississauga’s weak spring takes the stage. He taps the microphone, speaks earnestly through a broad, generic smile.

  Hello everyone! Great to see you all here!

  When this fails to get the crowd’s attention, the man’s smile seems to widen, as if trying to entrance, hypnotize, with his rows of glinting white pearls.

  Hi everyone! We’re ready to begin now, if you could all please—

  June realizes that the crowd’s buzzing is belligerent, a swarm of angry wasps, not the complacent worker bees she imagines her neighbours, her community, to be comprised of. They aren’t here to shut up. They’re here to be heard.

  So, thank you, we’re ready to—yes, hello everyone, it’s great that you’re all here, and we just need to, yes, thank you. If I could have your full attention now, we’ll get started.

  The crowd hushes reluctantly. In the silence, June feels exposed. She shrinks down into her seat.

  So thanks everyone for coming tonight to this town hall meeting on the topic of the proposed parkway project. Now I’d like to start by introducing your own Councillor Lanny McLennan who’s going to introduce the project and make some opening remarks.

  Heavyset, balding councillor McLennan takes the stage with a cursory handshake and a spattering of applause. He clears his throat, ready to launc
h into his spiel.

  TRAITOR! someone in the back yells.

  I’ve been called worse, the jowly councillor jokes. A few people laugh nervously.

  June notices that off to one side, that same reporter, that Hal Talbot who came to her house, is unobtrusively taking notes on the proceedings. June colours, quickly looks away.

  I know there’s a lot of passion around this issue, the councillor says, and I want to assure you that everyone is going to get a chance to speak about their concerns. But I do hope that we can keep things—

  LIAR!

  A murmur rustles its way among those assembled.

  Please people, the tanned facilitator calls out in mock umbrage.

  As I was saying, Councillor McLennan continues, name-calling and insults are not going to help solve anything. So let’s just try and—

  June feels eyes on her. She burrows further into her seat. No—nobody’s—this has nothing to do with me, she keeps telling herself. Her breathing is shallow, self-conscious. She shouldn’t be here. She doesn’t want to be here.

  And now, Councillor McLennan is saying, I’d like to introduce Paula Watson from Wallet Valley Integrated Regional Planning, who will provide us with an overview of the proposed parkway project.

  Paula is trim, compartmentalized. She reminds June of lawyer Chris with her executive skirt suit and low-fat yogurt. Paula begins an aggressive PowerPoint presentation that moves along at a pace offering no opportunity for contemplation or interjection. Population flow charts, traffic density graphs, growth projections in spikes and valleys.

  In the darkened room the malevolent crowd settles. June risks a peek behind her: blue graph forehead reflections, faces lost in data light. June feels the grainy earth in her fingernails, fights the urge to claw out of the dim room. The final slide is displayed, an artist’s rendering of a four-lane “parkway” bordered by full-grown oak trees, bike lanes, cheery pedestrians, and a blue sliver of gently flowing ribbon river replete with jumping fish.

  Wississauga, the planning factotum crisply concludes, needs this road in order to ensure its ongoing growth and central role as an important business conduit in the greater urban region. At the same time, this road will be a model of conscientious development with every possible environmental and community concern addressed. Wississauga, she says with no apparent irony or change in inflection. Faith in our future. Pride in our past. Thank you for your time ladies and gentlemen.