The Archaeologists

by Hal Niedzviecki

At the bottom: the familiar loud hush, earth in measured tectonic shifts, in waves and tides, in slow silent perpetual decay. Dank moist dark dirt baffling—defying—time. June scoops handfuls. She digs with her fingers, her nails snapping.

  I’m sorry, she whispers.

  He wanted—he deserved—

  Young cops jumping in after her. Lady scientists hurriedly encasing objects in plastic baggies.

  Norm: Don’t hurt her. She’s pregnant! She’s pregnant!

  And that old man, his eyes closed, his face, his world, tired. Words through weathered wrinkled lips, whispered incantations between him and the wind, a spreading warm breeze that carries the scent of rot renewal up from the running river.

  TIM

  Tuesday, April 22

  TIM DRIVES. The little red E on the dashboard flashes. His old neighbourhood shimmers and shines around him, spreading squares of grassy front yard waking up to the sun’s truth-telling promise: spring brings summer, weather is inevitable. It doesn’t lie, Tim thinks, not like—

  people.

  Tim’s ribs ache, his mouth tastes sour and hot like a popped blister, his head feels full of burbling water coming to a slow boil. He’s out of smokes, he’s out of money, out of—

  everything is—

  too bright.

  Tim squints to shut out the shimmer, weaves, jerks the car back as a front tire veers into the curb. The gas gauge flickers empty, goes dark, then comes back on. Tim’s flickering too, in and out of days, remembering bits and moments, losing and then suddenly regaining the big picture.

  He vaguely remembers climbing into the driver’s seat of the Pontiac and popping open the glovebox. Out rolled that vial of pills provided free of charge by his good pal Clay.

  He opened the pill bottle and shook its contents onto his trembling filthy palm.

  One, two, three.

  That’s it?

  He’d given the bottle a shake.

  Four.

  That was it.

  He put them under his tongue, all of them, and waited for his saliva to pool at the bottom of his mouth and turn the tiny white pills into a powdery sludge. It seemed like an eternity, his heart hammering out the endless seconds as the pills ever so gradually dissolved, and then, finally, their chemical decay flowing through the wet circuitry of his mind.

  He remembers closing his eyes and seeing the bundle sacrificially sinking to the murky bottom of the river.

  And then?

  Time passed. He lay in the spot and tongued at the sores on his inner cheeks, at times chewing, other times probing with the crusty tip of his sour tongue. He watched birds circle high above—hawks, falcons—and wondered if they were considering swooping down to snap him up for supper, but they never did. He couldn’t keep track of the unfurling leaves of the giant tree, lost count, started again.

  What day is it? he asked himself, over and over. What time is it?

  He knew what he had to do. He just had to—

  do it.

  Carly—

  Carly, I’m—

  coming home.

  Tim squeezes the brake as he climbs the crest. There’s a cruiser in front of his old house. Why? The bright lights flash, redolent in his vision. Maybe they’ve found—No, it’s some kind of protest.

  The signs say: Wississauga for the Wississaugans.

  Weird. More of that—Indian stuff. He squints, tries to see if Charlie is among the protestors. Naw, she’ll be in school.

  And the Wississaugans? Where are they? Wississauga for yuppies, for scumbag pot dealers, for husband and wife Indian doctors. Whatever, Tim doesn’t give two shits, cause he’s—

  outta here.

  Tim presses on the accelerator, shoots past with a groaning belch of exhaust. The road levels then climbs again, a slow bend following the cliff. The sun sits below the clouds, piercing Tim’s indignant skull and making him sweat. He soldiers on. He knows what he has to do. Only, he has no idea. The knowledge of his not knowing branded permanently into his brain, a tattoo of a memory—a rectangle of soft baby grass growing gently in the sun. Carly’s got a tattoo, a yin yang on her back above the gentle protrusion of her ass—What goes around comes around, she says, lifting up her shirt and twirling. Tim’s thought of getting one too. But of what? It doesn’t matter anymore. In the bright luminousness of a Wississauga spring afternoon it’s easy to see: he’s already marked.

  He drives past the rising bluff dwellings. He’s on Upper Grove now; bigger houses here, mini-mansions with circular driveways sculpting front yards, framing columned fronts. Tim slows again, red E sputtering back on. At the top, the houses are spread further and further apart. They sit on the bluff and look down like generals surveying a battle they know they’re going to win. There are no other cars on the road. The upscale manses feel abandoned in the late morning. Tim turns, parks in a driveway in front of a three-car garage.

  You have to do what you have to do, he thinks.

  His father: dead.

  He pictures hundred dollar bills sailing down the river like swans.

  Sacrifice.

  Sacri-fucking-fice.

  He needs—

  money.

  He struggles out of the car. Keep moving, he tells himself. Whatever you do, don’t stop. He scurries toward a wrought-iron gate leading to a backyard. He fumbles with the latch of the gate. It swings open. In Tim’s downtown neighbourhood everything is sealed up tight—barred, shut, bolted. You know where you stand. Outside looking in. They think they’re safe here. Sure, they’re safe here. Tim stands in an open expanse of backyard. The spreading lawn compounds his headache, makes him want to dig under, bury his head in the dark dirt.

  Tim moves to the base of the tree, Charlie’s escape route. He looks up. The tree swaying in some invisible gale. Already dizzy, Tim reaches for a lower branch. He starts to climb.

  Three quarters of the way up, he edges out onto a thick limb running parallel to a window. He squints into a frilly room glowing pink in the sun. Charlie’s room. Tim slides the window open. The screen is back in. Charlie must take it out and put it back in when her parents are around. He pushes at the mesh, feels the wire fabric push back. Fuck it, he thinks. He jumps awkwardly, shoulder first. Tim flies through, lands on the carpet and rolls like he’s some kind of action movie hero. He lies still on the soft shag, breathing. He can feel a cut on his temple where the ripped wire dug a groove. He doesn’t so much feel it as sense it through the headache haze, the boil of his brain stewing in its own trapped juices. Don’t stop. Keep going. Tim gets it now, seeing red, everything tinged with scarlet.

  He stands, pondering the spots of blood and bits of wire on Charlie’s carpet. He shrugs, turns to her dresser. A piggy bank sits on the white wood chest of drawers, ceramic oinker wearing a banker’s bow tie. He works the cork plug out of its backside. Coins spill. Tim was hoping for bills. He yanks at the drawers, dumps sweatshirts, jeans, underwear. He comes up with a jewellery box. He opens it. Hands shaking, he gropes a diamond necklace, gold bangle bracelet, jewels in shifts of liquid coal. That’s more like it.

  Down the hall, he tumbles into the master bedroom. The curtains are drawn. The room feels thick, veiled in rich fabrics. Tim sinks, slogging through viscous broadloom. In front of him, the parental bed, curiously dishevelled in a scatter of pillows and lumped blankets.

  Charlie’s head emerges from under the covers.

  Hey! she squeals.

  Tim lurches back.

  I’m sick, Charlie announces, sitting up in bed and focussing her baleful brown eyes on him. My mom says I have a fever.

  You’re sick?

  What are you doing here?

  Tim’s eyes rove, as if searching for an exit.

  Why do you have my necklace?

  He looks down at his hand. Gold diamond fistful. Tim staggers into the en suite bathroom, closes the door behind him. He hears his breathing in the dark room. Then someone turns on the lights. Bright bulbs arrayed around in the gold gilt frame of an ornament
al mirror. Tim blinks furiously, trying to see.

  What are you doing? Charlie asks. She stands in the doorway. Her hair is matted in the back, sticks up in the front. She’s wearing flannel Snoopy pyjamas.

  Tim opens the medicine cabinet. He fumbles with the lotions and shaving creams and toothpastes. A delicate little glass bottle of perfume falls into the sink, smashing. Tim digs for prescription plastic. Scent rising. He brings the plastic bottles to his face, scans for words: Take 2 before—for the relief of—may cause—if symptoms—

  What are you doing? You broke my mother’s perfume. Charlie’s voice is calm, as if she expected something like this all along.

  Perfume. When he was a kid, his mother would sit at her makeup table in a sheer white slip, put on her face while he watched wide-eyed. How beautiful she was, puckering her lips, delicately gliding a stick of dark red over them, turning to him and blowing a slow glistening kiss. What do you think, little munchkin, does Mommy look pretty? Yes, yes, she looks pretty, more than that, she looks perfect, a flitting holograph burned in his mind, forever bending down in front of him and spraying the lightest waft of scent onto her finger, tickling him ever so gently under the chin, little Timmy giggling. There, sweetie, so you won’t forget me while I’m gone…

  Lavender and rose and the sharp seductive tang of alcohol.

  Finger under his chin, tickling.

  Tim drops pill bottles, plastic bouncing on tile.

  He loved her. He loved everything about her.

  He reaches in, digs around, finds another smooth plastic receptacle. He holds it up to his squinted gaze. For the relief of. He smashes it against the ceramic sink.

  Stop it? Hey! What are you doing?

  The bottle shatters, ragged plastic spears his hand.

  Stop that!

  He picks pills out of the sink, dry swallows, 2, 3, 4, 5, he counts as they wend their way down his ragged throat, counts to make it quicker, to make it last longer. Eyes closed, nose buried in his reeking jacket, but still the smell over him, on him. That smell.

  Are you okay?

  Tim forces himself to open up. Charlie is a silver smudge of girl. Her eyes, once so deep brown, have now gone a strange matte grey. Tim tries to smile. He feels his cheeks sliding into place.

  I’m…okay.

  You broke my mom’s special perfume, Charlie says gravely.

  Oh…yeah…I…Smashed glass and plastic underfoot, Tim pushes past Charlie and crunches his return to the bedroom. The bright soft curtains cast clouds of sunny mercury for Tim to wade through, water-bug beads scattering as he moves.

  Back into the hall, he’s gliding now, floating just above the rich carpets. He drifts down the stairs to the main floor, follows his legs into the kitchen.

  Tim stands in swaying stillness contemplating the room’s multitude of shiny surfaces: black stovetop, long empty marble counter, gleaming slate butcher-block island.

  Now what are you doing? Charlie says. She’s following him.

  Tim contemplates the cupboards.

  Charlie moves in front of him, stands between him and the kitchen counter. What are you doing? she says again. Her voice quivers the air and swirls microscopic silver darts of dust into Tim’s face.

  Charlie…Tim says. He sounds calm, reasonable, a million miles away. You’re my friend, right?

  Charlie nods slowly.

  Charlie, the thing is…I need some…money. I…I’m—I’m trying to…

  Charlie nods again, a serious look on her face. Okay, she says. Just don’t….wreck anything. Nimbly, she climbs up on the kitchen counter. She stands, teeters, gets her balance. She pushes around jars of grains and beans and weird pickled bits of organ-looking preserves. She reaches into the back and pulls out an old tea tin. Carefully she climbs down from the counter. Her face is pale. She proffers the tin to Tim.

  My mom says you always need to have emergency money at home because you never know, she says.

  In Tim’s hands, the tin feels light and full. He digs at the lid with long dirty nails, finally gets it open.

  Charlie—Tim says, staring at the money in the tin, tight pack of bills in an elastic bundle.

  Just go, she says.

  He moves quickly through the front hall. Charlie follows along behind him, but he doesn’t look back. He unlocks the big front door and steps outside. He stands in the quiet suburb with the tea tin under his arm, Charlie’s diamond necklace dangling from his wrist. He hears a car, DJ chatter booming out of deep bass woofers, some passing Porsche convertible, rich asswipe, doesn’t matter. The front door slams behind him. Tim’s legs suddenly go weak. The Pontiac is a black hole under a murky mid-day sun. He staggers toward it, puts his hands on the car’s roof to steady himself.

  Tim coughs, grabs to hold his sharpening insides. He’s going home. Home for a shower, a sleep, a meal; but first he wants a beer. Jesus, his mouth is dry. He can already feel it, cold burbling bubbles, taste of metal and glass tickling his tongue. Just one and then—

  So let’s go already. Let’s—

  get out of here.

  He doesn’t move. It’s like he’s stuck in quicksand, his burbling mind slowly pulling him under. His eyes are heavy. But his mind—racing, roiling. His father: dead. His mother: dead. A ghost? He doesn’t know. There were—bones. Where are the—? He coughs again, fluid pooling in his throat. He turns to his side, gags something pink and yellow. He pictures Charlie, back in her parents’ big bed, the covers pulled over her head.

  Sacrifice, he thinks sadly.

  He didn’t mean to—

  He won’t see her again. His mother—

  she’s gone too.

  But she came and she touched him under the chin and let him smell her vanilla hot skin. She came and he wanted to hold her, reach out to her, but he didn’t, he couldn’t, and now, now it’s—

  too late.

  The sun hangs overhead. High noon. A flatbed landscaping truck creeps past, thin toddler trees in teetering rows.

  Finally, Tim opens the door and carefully bends his lanky frame into the driver’s seat. He turns the key and the car engine makes a weak whine. He tries again, his heart bouncing in his throat. Piece of shit. He’ll buy her a new one. He’ll pay off Clay, start again, forget dealing, bad idea. Carly’s right, work hard, nose to the grindstone, hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work you go. How much is in the tea tin? The Pontiac jerks, groans, and when Tim gives it a pump of gas it staggers to life. What’s a grand to a coupla Indian doctors? In a week they’ll make it back. They’re rich, they’ll get her another necklace. A prettier, bigger necklace. The front yard churns, grass roiling. Easy there. You’re okay. Things are hazy, the high sun leaving streaks on his eyeballs. Tim digs a shaking hand into his pocket, pops two more of the blue jobbies from Charlie’s parents’ bathroom. Then two more. Then one for good luck. He rubs his eyes with a fist to make the lights go away. Okay. Now it’s time to—

  go.

  He blinks. A rolling stone gathers no moss. Right dad? His mouth, all cottony floral, like he ate a scented tissue. He’s dying for a drink. A cold beer. Sour sweet with that carbonated tangy alcohol ache bursting over the back of your throat. Cold. Just cold. Driving now, Tim wavers down the road. He ponders the vast sky. Intersecting lines of smearing light. Geometric studies of parallel paths: alternative future possibilities. Tim sees lines of blood. Endless perpendicular distances, astral projections of pure life essence slipping through the either-or of never-never land. He’s gotta go. Tim’s a tiny piece of a bigger puzzle, a graphed chart delineating the slow shrink of the land parcelled into smaller and smaller squares. He never finished high school. He never learned about angles, graphs, the way the infinite can be encased, reduced to a manageable series of equations. It doesn’t matter. The road is a straight-line vein. He closes his eyes. Lines and more lines. Bright lines flaring on his brain.

  PART SIX

  JUNE

  Thursday, June 26

  BUT I SAW…

  Doctor Solomo
n clasps his hands together as if in solidarity and prayer.

  The mind plays tricks, June. We have to accept that. Your mind is tricking you. Showing you things that aren’t there. Accepting that is part of your healing.

  June looks at the photograph on the wall over the doctor’s head. They’re in his office. Apparently she’ll be seeing him three times a week now, part of some kind of agreement worked out between Norm, Christine, and whoever else cared to witness her scene, as they are collectively calling it, in the backyard. And Norm’s hired her a chaperone, the housekeeper, he’s calling her, a Filipino woman named Mary-Beth. She’s in her late twenties, just a few years younger than June, and according to Norm her job is to keep June from getting tired out. Mary-Beth’s to do the cooking and cleaning. But June knows that her main role is to keep an eye on her.

  Do you need anything miss? Mary-Beth keeps asking.

  No thank you, Mary-Beth.

  What does she need? Under Mary-Beth, the house has reverted to its normal state of cloaked quiet. He’s gone, June knows. If he was ever—

  He was. She’s not supposed to say it. But he was, no matter what else happened.

  Now that she’s barely leaving the house, June is actually missing the protestors. She found their constant chanting somehow calming. They reminded her of—

  In college her roommate used to play a tape of ocean waves hitting the surf. June would close her eyes, lie back in her bed and contemplate the waves. June lets her eyes close and her head drop. Just for a minute. June feels herself detaching; she drifts away from herself, from her past and future, from what she did and didn’t do.

  June? Ah, June?

  She startles. Doctor Solomon sits in his leather chair, pondering June’s spaced-out hunch.

  So June, he says, a hint of a smile peering through his bushy brown-flecked-with-grey beard. When they searched the backyard, how did that make you feel?

  Doctor Solomon’s voice is low, a cross between the famous mellow baritone of James Earl Jones and, June imagines, the Hebrew magic of some ancient rabbinical coven. He’s a skinny Jew who grew up in the city, wears tan slacks and polo shirts. June doesn’t know many Jewish people, has always imagined them as mysterious, attuned to spiritual forces only they can communicate with. June prefers to close her eyes when she talks with Doctor Solomon. Which Doctor Solomon says isn’t such a hot idea. He says she needs to focus, needs to stay in touch with the real world.