The Archaeologists

by Hal Niedzviecki

  It’s cool, he whispers hoarsely. Everything’s cool.

  Get out of my backyard, June says.

  Yeah, the man-boy says. Cool. No problem. Just…just give her to me. And everything will be…cool.

  Some kind of junkie, June thinks. I don’t know what you’re talking about, she states flatly.

  I saw you, man-boy says, clearly agitated. I saw you. I was…I’ve been…up there. He motions to the trees jutting out of the gorge.

  You didn’t see anything, June says. But her gaze wavers to the dark branches overhead.

  Yeah I saw it! I saw everything! Man-boy shakes and spits a little as his voice rises. She’s—I’m supposed to—they’re mine! I have to—she’s mine!

  June brandishes the shovel. You get out of here right now, she says evenly. Walk away right now or so help me god I’ll…

  Man-boy’s head lolls pathetically, his eyes bulge, confused. I grew up here, he mutters.

  June steps forward suddenly. He stumbles back, loose earth sliding down the walls of the hole.

  Just—he’s begging now. I know you have her. I saw you.

  He’s been watching her. Then maybe there never was—

  You’re a liar, June says. Who sent you?

  His bloodshot pupils, unfocussed, roll in the whites of his eyes. He turns quickly and grabs a handful of tarp.

  Don’t touch that!

  He snatches it across, exposing the hole. The clouds part, silver light sticking. The hole glows. Man-boy groans.

  You’re a liar! June screams. She swings the shovel, connects with his spiny back. He teeters on the edge, then plunges in.

  HAL

  Thursday, April 17–Friday, April 18

  PIZZA AND COKE ZERO, the TV turned to Scott’s favourite hip-hop video hour, thugs pimped out for primetime. Just another Thursday night. Hal, back from changing out of his chinos and oxford, surveys the scene, watches Scott chew on a slice.

  So, how was that road meeting thingy? Sit down, have some pizza. Scott, who’d gotten into the habit of coming over after work and letting himself in, pats the spot on the couch beside him.

  Hal stands there. How was the meeting? His mind is overfull, there’s too much to think about. Replays from the last few days, slo-mo and fast-forward, he keeps stringing them together like a trailer for a movie—a thriller, Hal thinks, complete with conspiracy, cover-ups, and all the mad truth anyone could hope for. The Wississauga politicos, the angry crowd, the shouts and questions. And then, out of nowhere, that protestor, whoever she was. And the woman, June, Rose’s pal, she was there too, though she didn’t look very happy about it.

  Hello? Earth to Hal? Earth to Wississauga’s favourite kid reporter?

  Scott’s grinning at him, his big brown eyes laughing.

  Sorry, he mutters. I’m—and then, before he can stop himself: I’m on to something. Something big. He says it loudly, defiantly. It’s true, isn’t it?

  You are?

  You can’t tell anyone.

  I won’t. I won’t. Who’m I gonna tell?

  It’s about the road.

  The road?

  The expressway, Hal says, suppressing his impatience. The one they want to build along the river.

  Oh, oh yeah. Scott’s eyes wander back to the TV, but Hal plunges on.

  It’s this woman I talked to the other day. I went over to her house. I’m pretty sure she’s discovered some kind of…site. You can’t tell anyone. It’s in her backyard, for Christ sakes. Some kind of… Native site.

  Like Indians?

  She’s hiding it. That’s why it’s so weird. She lives right beside the river. They’re going to run the new road behind her house. And she’s got this ancient grave there. She could have a whole village buried back there. Who knows?

  Wow. Did you see it?

  No. She’s wouldn’t let me see it. She’s hiding the whole thing under a tarp in her backyard. But get this: the professor who I sometimes interview when there’s an archaeology angle on local stories or whatever, I called him up and he’s met her! He said she came to see him. She was asking all kinds of weird questions about who lived here thousands of years ago and stuff like that. And he told me that they find ancient burial grounds and that kind of thing all the time in Wississauga. He says they’re going to pave over stuff that could be a thousand years old.

  Scott munches on pizza, his eyes moving between Hal and the preening bodies bouncing inside Hal’s hazy TV.

  And then, at the meeting tonight, there was this…woman. Some kind of activist…

  Hal trails off. How does she fit into this? What does she know? It’s like he’s got the puzzle all figured out, but the last piece doesn’t fit.

  Dude, Scott says enthusiastically, this sounds awesome!

  Yeah. Hal can’t help but smile. Awesome. It could be. But I’m just…I’m not sure, you know? What if I’m wrong?

  Scott takes a swallow of beer. You’re not wrong, he says, smiling brightly at Hal.

  I’m not wrong, Hal says, mostly to himself. It all makes sense. He can feel it. Out with the old, in with the new. But it’s not that easy, right? Everything has consequences. That’s where he comes in. His job is to let people know what’s really happening. There’s no wrong or right. Not really. That’s not what this is about. Scott gobbling pizza, slice after slice, not an inch of fat on him. You take what you can get. Make your own rules.

  Will you go over there with me? Hal blurts.

  Like…tonight? Scott’s finally paying attention to Hal, not the TV.

  Yeah, Hal mutters. Maybe. Maybe it’s a bad idea. What if we get caught?

  What if we get caught? Scott smiles mischievously. We won’t get caught. I mean, it’s just a backyard, right? They’ll be asleep and we just sneak in. It’s barely even illegal. When I was a kid we used to sneak into people’s backyards all the time. We’d even swim in their pools and stuff.

  Hal and Scott both grew up in what were then the suburbs of the city. Hal’s parents still live there, halfway between downtown and Wississauga. More city than suburb now, there are high-rises and a subway station. Hal drives over to see them every second Sunday. They eat lunch and smile tightly at each other, and then Hal leaves feeling frustrated and refusing to acknowledge exactly why.

  I just…Hal says. His face feels hot, strangled, like his tie is way too tight. He isn’t wearing a tie. There’s something about that place, the backyard, the house…It’s a feeling he hasn’t been able to shake, it’s been sitting with him, in him, even since before he visited the woman, maybe ever since Rose started going on about ghosts and Indians. It’s not a pleasant feeling—like someone’s been following him, getting close, breathing on the back of his neck, but when he turns around, there’s no one there. He pictures June’s empty, creepy backyard. So he’s creeped out. Big deal. Grow up. This is it. This is the story. But you have to know for sure. Reporters do that kind of stuff. Sneak around. Deep Throat and all that. He wipes sweat off his forehead with the rough cotton shoulder of his T-shirt.

  We’re going over there, Scott says, grabbing the remote and turning the channel to the network news.

  Yeah…okay…Hal locks eyes on the stern-faced man staring out of the TV screen. They gaze at each other through the endless movement of bright light particulate, the new matter assembling its churning worlds.

  Scott’s silver SUV cruises through the empty streets. Digital numbers on the dashboard glow 2:43 am.

  It’s really quiet, Scott says. He yawns loudly. Like Hal, he’s not much of a late-night guy. They’re usually asleep by 11. Scott has 7 and 8 am appointments with the before-work go-getter types.

  It’s almost three, Hal snaps. He cringes at the tight sound of his voice. Scott didn’t mean anything by it. He never means anything by it. Hal closes his eyes. Gotta relax. He tries to fall back into the leather bucket seat. The air in the car is settled, ordered, manufactured. New car smell. Let’s just drive, he thinks. Let’s just not have to go anywhere in particular.
<
br />   Turn here? Scott asks.

  Hal pops his eyes open. A street sign lit up by the glare of a lone halogen.

  Yeah, he says. This is the street. Grove. Make a left.

  Here we go, Scott says, giving the SUV just a bit too much gas. The tires squeal as they take the corner.

  Scott!

  Sorry.

  Scott slows down. The street is long, straight, gradually sloping up as it follows the river.

  Is that the place? Scott wants to know.

  Yeah, Hal whispers.

  Hal ponders the hulking house, a typical faux colonial replete with columns framing the big double doors of the front entrance. The place feels vacant. All the houses around here do. But who knows? Who really knows who might be looking at who through dark blank windows? Hal represses a shiver, feels it inside, surging through him.

  Scott opens his door and jumps out of the truck. Hal watches from the window as he moves quickly to the back gate with long fluid strides. The gate is half open and Scott looks back at Hal with a kind of told-you-so expression, the unlocked gate an invitation, a gift handed to them on a silver platter. Hal feels his face flush. He takes a deep breath and opens his door.

  Scott steps into the backyard.

  Wait up, Hal hisses. He creeps through after him.

  It’s darker in the backyard, away from the streetlights hanging over the long straight road. The night is a grainy black. Clouds spill over the stars and the full moon is just a glow lost in the inky spread of the sky. Hal can’t see. He blinks, waits for his eyes to adjust. Then he steps forward, bumps into something, startles—

  Fuck, Scott.

  Scott giggles.

  Quiet, Hal hisses.

  They stand there. Gradually Hal’s pupils widen and he becomes aware of his surroundings. Behind him is the house, all closed windows and bricked-in bedrooms. In front, a dark tree emerges from the gorge, empty branches communing with the wind. And the pit, a spreading gash. Hal steps forward. He sees the pit now. It’s uncovered, the tarp thrown to the side revealing a misshapen hole, funnelling deep. Weirdly, Hal sees a gentle flickering light emanating from its depths. The wind gusts through branches groaning awake from winter. Clouds obscure a fragment moon, and the pale light from the hole intensifies. Hal grabs Scott’s thick arm, pulling him back.

  Come on, Scott whispers. He moves near to the edge, dragging Hal along.

  At the crumbling verge, the shaky light caresses their faces, a heat coming up out of the earth. Hal feels the hot on his cheeks. Then the wind dies and the world goes quiet. And Hal hears a scrabbling sound, fingers in dirt. And a murmuring, strangely atonal, a plaintive chant.

  They look at each other. Scott grins weirdly, like a grave robbing ghoul coming across a freshly dug hole. Hal surprises himself, pulling out of Scott’s grasp and falling to his knees. He thrusts his head in and down.

  The clouds part. The air fills with phosphorescent moonlight. Hal’s eyes, blazed open.

  He sees him—it—then. Lying at the bottom. Ghost creature droning his tuneless lament and clawing at the silvery soil.

  ROSE

  Friday, April 18

  ROSE DUNKS A SLICE OF WHITE BREAD, the tea’s stain a slow spread. She gums the spongy copper dough. The television murmurs a traffic update. Rose listens to the fate of intersections. The highways, discussed on television in a series of codename monikers—404, QEW, DVP—simply serve as indisputable evidence of steady decades of expansion that stand in contrast to Rose’s slow shrinking presence; dwarfing vast wastelands of concrete entirely occupied by alien tank-like vehicles, SUVs they call them on the TV.

  Rose dunks a cookie.

  Oatmeal raisin, Rose is pretty sure. She’s not sure. She doesn’t taste as much as she used to. Her tongue is rusted dry, no longer at full capability, like a country that hasn’t fought a war in decades, its tanks and planes left to slowly decay.

  Rose’s Morton fought in World War 11, god rest his soul. How alone she felt when he left, how afraid she was and how determined she was not to show it. He did what he had to do. And Rose did likewise, though letters couldn’t keep her warm at night and it was cold that winter, that unbearably long winter of months and years when Morton fought the Japs in a Pacific that Rose imagined teeming with clever oriental pratfalls her Morton was smart enough to avoid, of course. Built of solid Scottish stock, he came back to her in one piece so he could work at Great Lakes Starch and provide his family with a good enough living and die early of a heart attack at 63, leaving Rose alone again, her children having long since scattered.

  Her children. They rarely visit now. And when they do, they’re distracted, rude, anxious to be off again. How did her offspring get so weak willed and ill mannered? They let themselves go, Rose thinks. Her Morton was a wiry man with a bristly moustache, soft spoken and polite in that brusque way of his. He always behaved like a gentleman even under the influence of one or two, which Rose disapproved of but permitted, men being men, after all. But those lumpy children, where do they come from? With their impatient sighs and their constant interruptions—beepers and buzzers set to ring every time Rose opens her mouth to say any little thing. Always fidgeting and moaning and making all kinds of promises to do this or that before rushing off. Promises. A promise not kept is a lie, as far as Rose is concerned.

  Local news comes on. Rose swallows wet cookie, cocks her head toward the television. It’s her reporter, young Hal Talbot. He looks tired, Rose thinks. He’s talking faster than usual. Rose’s hearing isn’t what it used to be. She struggles to string words together out of the rush of sentences.

  Wississauga’s living legacy, Hal says on screen before cutting to Rose smothered in blush and lipstick, wispy hair brushed to one side, barely covering her spotted scalp. Bones, she croaks portentously. Indian bones. Rose pauses to purse her pruned lips. She blinks defiantly at the camera. No good will come…Cursed…Bones.

  And Hal in front of a placid suburban home. Here in the heart of old Wississauga, an incredible discovery. Even as the city plans a future based on a massive new road behind houses just like this one, the buried past is being discovered. Has the area’s true history been unearthed? And will it haunt our community’s future?

  Hal Talbot, kid reporter, fumbling with a gate. June appears, startled, white faced except her cheeks, a blotched blushing red. The incriminating blue tarp sits stark behind her. Hal introduces himself and June blocks the way, blocks the camera’s view of the backyard.

  Cut back to Rose: Bad luck, the old lady intones. No good can come of this.

  It would be a very significant find, proclaims local archaeologist Professor Sven Nordstrom.

  Is there an ancient Native burial site in the backyard of this Wississauga household on the edge of the proposed site of the new parkway? This is Hal Talbot reporting live for Wississauga Cable Community News.

  The TV goes to commercial: The Middle Mall: Where Wississauga IS Shopping! Indian bones. Cursed of course. Well she warned them. Nice girl, weak willed, hysterical, but still Rose tried to help her. She hasn’t seen her since. The young reporter missed his visit too. She’s alone again. Isn’t that just typical? Put the bones back where you found them and have done with it. Cursed, everybody knows that. Rose shudders. She’s chilled. They’re skimping on the heat. It was warm but now it’s cold. A spring freeze, the worst kind of weather. Kill the blossoms on the fruit trees. Now we’ll all pay the price, Rose thinks. The thrum of passing traffic blowing like a wind through the window. Rose pulls her sweater tighter. She sits huddled in her frayed cardigan. In her day, the trees kept the wind from sweeping willy-nilly and freezing all the old people right to death. In her day. Rose closes her eyes. Shivers again, trembling into slumber.

  She dreams of walking down great big Hurontarion. The traffic is stopped, everyone sits in their cars, frozen. She’s not young, exactly, but spry, walking fast. She goes into the Wallet Valley General Store. They used to send a boy on a bicycle to deliver free of charge and give
you credit to boot, not that Rose ever needed much credit, just a bit to tide the family over at the end of the month, and not every month either. She’s always been frugal, paid her debts, tipped the boy a nickel, did what was right no matter what. Rose goes into the store. She remembers it as one big room lined with barrels of dried goods and sacks of flour and tea. But now the store looms, expands, twists and turns. Shelves cover the walls, reaching high up beyond what Rose can see. Walls of narrow aisles lined with flashing computer screens, flickering televisions, blaring stereos.

  Rose keeps walking. The shelves teeter and lean in precariously. They’re going to fall, Rose thinks. She’s relieved when she turns a corner into furnishings. She emerges into a long row of mattresses. A salesman appears, that young man, reporter Hal Talbot. Try a mattress, he says. Lie back! Relax! Put your feet up! Just as if you were sleeping at home! Don’t worry about your dirty shoes! It’s the floor model!

  Rose lies down. There’s something under her. Something clammy, breathing on her neck. She wants to get up, but suddenly she’s exhausted. She struggles against wet hands over her mouth. She’s dying. She’ll die soon.

  How d’ya like it? Hal the salesman asks cheerfully. Soft enough for you? A breeze sweeps colourful brochures out of his hands. Rose feels the pamphlets cover her face as she struggles to break free.

  Sorry about that, Hal the salesman says, stooping to clean up.

  In the mall. What breeze?

  Rose jolts from her half slumber. Pain in her hips, her knees, her swollen ankles, her brittle knuckles. Cold air seeping in, spreading the tuneless rumble of rush hour traffic and the grey atonal odour of exhaust. Look at that. The window is wide open. Someone must have come in while she was sleeping and opened it. Why would they do that? Rose won’t have it. She won’t have open windows, the draft going through her, right into her.

  Rose grips the armrests with skeletal fingers and takes aim at the walker positioned so that it’s no more than a single arthritic stumble away. Her muscles, still aching from her last failed foray, creak into rusty gear. Rose pants through her wet mouth.