Bolt

by Siena West

  Elena talked to herself, looking out the window. María Elena, if you count Linda’s encounter with the vandalized bones, her nightmare, and now the owl, that’s three bad omens in one day. She refused to think about the human bones that lay in Norm’s pasture. Her abuela, if she were here, would have a fit and fashion charms to keep away the mal de ojo. Good thing you’re not superstitious. It was funny, because since the day of her birth, superstition was a part of her life. Maybe three’s a charm, ¿no? She debated for a moment about trekking to the outhouse. She decided against it and returned to bed. The lonely hoots continued until she fell asleep again, echoing longer in her dreams.

  Chapter 3

  Show Low

  Even at 7:30, when the work crews assembled, the morning was hot. Scorching heat and cloudless weather would burn well past the summer solstice. The air rang with voices and the clang of equipment as the crews readied for the day. Water, recording forms, notebooks, cameras, GPS units, lunches, paper bags for the artifacts, dig kits with small excavation and measuring tools—the crews had to organize and pack all of it.

  The students had learned to sleep as late as possible, skip breakfast, and appear for work half-dressed and bleary-eyed. One of these stragglers ran, canteen and backpack flopping, to the survey van, and as soon as the door slammed, Cole drove off in crimson dust. The excavation crew walked to the dig, and students assigned to the lab that day started the routine. They were reluctant; no one liked lab work because it was much more fun in the field.

  Maggie bounced into the parking lot, the last to appear. “I’m off to locate my horses. I’ll find an old rancher in Pinedale or Overgaard who will lend me a couple of nags. Caleb told me his uncle might help.” Caleb Woolford was a laborer.

  “No broncos, mi’ja,” Elena said. “I like the sound of nags. I should have asked this before—you know how to ride, don’t you?”

  Maggie’s eyes glittered with amusement. “Not to worry. The boarding schools I went to practically offered a degree in riding. But Cole’s another story.”

  Mierda. Elena pictured her assistant director with a broken hip, a bronco having tossed him on the first day. She envisioned driving him to the hospital, telephoning his parents. Then Maggie was off, forcing Elena to face the day.

  Elena’s first task was to check on the excavations in the pasture. She and Tim had decided to open new units near the cistern. The director was sure that as long as they didn’t dig up the bones or move them, the Native Americans would be okay with this procedure. They, too, would want to understand the nature of the big, circular feature and the human bones inside it. In the pasture, she found the crew troweling through the burned-wood stratum. Tree-ring samples, wrapped in twine and soaked in a mixture of paraffin and gasoline to stabilize the charred wood, dangled from the branches of a nearby juniper. The samples resembled bizarre Christmas-tree decorations.

  “This unit is looking just like the others, isn’t it?” Elena asked from the safety of ground level. She did not dare climb into the unit. Once was enough. Tim nodded. “I expect the stones to appear soon. We’re almost through the charcoal layer.” He paused. “There’s a weird thing about this feature. We—”

  Elena interrupted him, laughing. “You mean something else that’s weird.”

  “Yeah. Here’s the thing—we aren’t finding any artifacts. Haven’t seen a single sherd.”

  Elena stopped laughing. “That must mean the feature didn’t fill with trash after abandonment.

  “The units you’ve dug so far are what—five meters apart?” she said, half to herself. “If you’re finding the same sequence of deposits in them, with bones at the bottom, it’s likely that much of the feature contains human remains.” Mel had foreseen it that afternoon on the porch. Now, there was proof that the feature held many burials. A hint of nausea rose at the thought.

  “So it’s a burial ground?”

  Elena shrugged. “Perhaps. But listen—we’ve got to stop calling this thing the spaceship. It’s disrespectful to the dead.” Although if we found aliens that might be better than the smashed and splintered human remains. We’d get a ton of publicity, for sure. She stared at the students listening to the discussion. “This means you guys. Ossuary’s good enough for now. No more spaceship.”

  “What’s an ossuary?” a student asked.

  “A repository for skeletal remains. They’re used in places with little land available for burial. They bury the dead first in a temporary grave, and then later, they place the defleshed bones in the ossuary. Sometimes the ossuary is a cave or building.”

  “That’s gross,” Tim said. “And bizarre. There’s no shortage of land around here.”

  “Everything about this feature is abnormal. I don’t know what else to call it.”

  “Never heard of ossuaries in the prehistoric Southwest.” Tim was well read.

  “Nor have I. We’ve got a little mystery.”

  A big mystery, in point of fact. I hope it’s one we can solve.

  * * *

  Elena’s next task was to drive to Show Low and make her phone calls. Sometimes the cell-phone magic on the ranch worked, and sometimes it didn’t. It was better to drive to Show Low than risk dropping an important call.

  The town named for the turn of a card was an uneasy combination of Mormon-owned stores and motels and restaurants for the tourists heading to the Sunrise ski resort or the Apache-run casino at Hondah. A thin veneer of Apache culture topped it all. Elena stopped at a motel with a nice coffee shop and settled into a booth. She was grateful there were few other patrons because she didn’t need an audience. The lunch special looked good: a trio of enchiladas—enchiladas de las banderas for the colors of the Mexican flag. She ordered it and unlocked her phone.

  Jason Whitney held the field school’s permit to survey on National Forest land. She placed the first call to him. He was unhappy when Elena told him about the vandalized burials. She imagined him snapping pencils or scribbling furiously on a notepad as he listened. But what they had done to protect the burials pleased him.

  “That was smart, Dr. Vargas. We sure don’t want predator damage or a cowboy deciding a human skull would look nice on his mantel back home.” Certain people believed they were entitled to collect whatever struck their fancy, even on federal land. Their taxes paid for it, after all.

  “So that’s your protocol for proceeding. At the end of the field season, we can lump the cases of human remains and consult with the tribes on everything at once.” It would save time and paperwork.

  Elena tackled an enchilada and fortified herself with strong, hot coffee. The next conversation would be less pleasant. The repatriation coordinator at the State museum was a stickler for procedure, but she could be inconsistent in her requests. She spoke to Elena as if the director did not understand ARS §41-865 precluded disturbing human remains on private land. Elena explained that the field school had never obtained a burial agreement for their fieldwork. They did not excavate human burials on purpose and were unlikely to encounter them by accident. Yes, she was certain the remains were human, and no, she did not need one of the museum’s bioarchaeologists to verify that interpretation.

  “But how can you be certain the bones are human?” the coordinator asked.

  Elena gritted her teeth. Was the entire world run by idiots? She said, still pleasant enough, that she and her staff were registered professional archaeologists. Mollified, the coordinator agreed that the museum would follow through with the specified protocols for contacting the various Native American tribes. Elena could expect to hear from them before long. In the meantime, protect the bones, treat them with respect, blah blah. The director stopped listening. No wonder the museum had engendered ill will among the private companies that practiced archaeology.

  Elena ended the call with relief. She gulped the last of the coffee and paid the bill. Most of the afternoon lay before her, and she was reluctant to head back to the camp with its gothic secrets. On im
pulse, she decided to stop by Tinker Reidhead’s trading post. Beautiful, handmade things would raise her spirits. So would Reidhead’s fake mountain-man demeanor. Reidhead was one of her favorite old coots.

  With a wide porch, elk antlers on the walls, and hitching posts out front, the silvered-log building was anachronistic. At any moment, a bearded mountain man in fringed buckskin might appear and tie up his horse at the hitching post—Jeremiah Johnson or someone of that ilk.

  Cowbells hanging on the knob jangled as she closed the door. The shop had a curious but pleasant scent mixed of wool, tobacco, the plant fibers used to weave baskets, and wood smoke. Navajo rugs hung on the walls and lay on the floor in pools of rich, luminous color. Reidhead was polishing the glass tops of the scarred display cases. He affected the cowboy-stereotype appearance to impress tourists, sporting a bushy, grizzled beard and longish white hair. It was impossible to estimate his age. Reidhead might have been sixty or old as God. No one knew what his real name was; people had called him Tinker forever.

  “Howdy, Miz Vargas,” Reidhead said, his eyes lighting at her approach. “Ain’t seen you this summer yet. Must be keepin’ busy on the dig.”

  Elena agreed, looking over the rows of brilliant Apache beadwork, Hopi and Navajo silver jewelry, and Zuni stone fetishes that would tempt buyers. “We’ve been working hard. I came into town today on business. Otherwise I’d still be at camp, harassing my staff and herding students.” She smiled at Tinker. “But I couldn’t pass up a chance to come see you.” Pleased, Reidhead puffed up as a big wad of Red Man made lumps in his cheek.

  They made small talk as Elena appraised the kachina dolls with an experienced eye. The figures were beautiful but too expensive for her assistant-professor salary.

  “Trade’s been slow this summer,” Reidhead ventured. “It could be the economy, but even the tour buses with the Japanese and Germans don’t stop often now.”

  “Is the chew driving them away?” Elena grinned at him. “You should be more careful where you spit.”

  Reidheid glowered. “Shoot, I been tryin’ to give it up—the wife’s after me. I been rollin’ my own sometimes, but it ain’t as satisfying. I like a constant stream of nicotine in my blood.”

  Two pottery vessels displayed on a piece of Hopi weaving caught her eye. The turquoise and shell beads Reidhead had draped artfully over the pots highlighted their subtle earth tones. He saw her looking.

  “Just got these in, Miz Vargas.” Reidhead unlocked the display case and set the smaller of the vessels on the glass so she could get a closer view. The little bowl stood about three inches high.

  “These are prehistoric ceramics, Tinker.” The Reidhead family had looted sites for a long time. He had taken the better road, becoming a trader. Still, sometimes, she wondered.

  “Yup. Came from a family collection. Found back in the late 1800s and handed down to the children—long before ya’ll passed any laws.” Reidhead winked and grinned. “You’re aware I don’t buy prehistoric pots unless I get valid paperwork on the provenance, Miz Vargas. Don’t wanna get the federales and the Indians pissed at me.”

  Elena examined the little bowl—a brown corrugated pot, its indented coils echoing a coiled basket. The inside was so black and shiny she could almost see herself reflected in it. The companion piece was a small pitcher, also corrugated and painted with geometric designs in white and red.

  “You know these are burial pots, right? Please take care what you buy and from whom you buy. Wouldn’t like to see you in jail.”

  He snorted. “Me, neither.” Reidhead returned the pot and locked the case.

  “I’m curious about something,” Elena said. “Are more people trying to sell prehistoric artifacts to you than usual?”

  “I haven’t noticed anything. If they was illegal, I wouldn’t buy ‘em, anyway. How come you’re asking?”

  “We’ve seen more pot hunting this summer than ever,” she explained. “I wondered if the economy’s to blame or something else.” Reidhead raised a bushy eyebrow.

  “No kidding. Seems like hard times everywhere. Lots of Apache people are coming in to sell baskets and beadwork now. Most is poor quality, machine-made beads and fake turquoise, and I can’t buy it. It’s sad.” He spat into a can hidden behind the counter. His eyes gleamed with amusement.

  “Tell you what, I had a very unusual visitor this morning, Doc. A real bona fide FBI agent from Lakeside. Name of Frank Rodriguez.”

  “You’re kidding. An FBI agent? I was sure you’d get in trouble someday.”

  Reidhead growled. “He was asking for my help, Doc. The FBI is supposed to be investigating this big pot-raiding ring in northern Arizona. They’ve been interviewing everybody, from dealers like me to local ranchers with a reputation for digging. The guy asked me questions for about an hour, tape recorded it and everything. I told him what I know, which ain’t much.

  “Might be you’ll get lucky, Doc, and the FBI will come to the ranch and interview you, too. Somebody else ought to git their time wasted besides me.”

  “I’ll look forward to it. See you later, Tinker.”

  Reidhead stopped Elena on her way out. “Saw you lookin’ at them kachina dolls,” he said. “I can cut you a good deal on one.”

  Elena shook her head. “They’re still too pricey for my salary, Tinker. But thanks anyway. When I get tenure, I’ll be able to afford them. I promise to come see you then.” She left as he proposed layaway. She appreciated his sales pitch, but she had wasted enough time on nonessential things. The visit with Tinker had raised her spirits, however, and she was ready to get back to her camp and her troubles. But Tinker’s words were prophetic. The FBI would visit her at the ranch. And prove lucky it did, in more ways than one.

  Chapter 4

  Dream

  The morning breeze shimmered in the cottonwood leaves, sending fuzzy down floating in the air. The trees clustered on a low hill north of the ranch house, marking the ancient room blocks. A wash cut through the Taylor Ranch, and it divided the pueblo into two room blocks. The arroyo had widened and deepened over the centuries, and rooms were eroding. When the field school moved to the ranch, Elena made the pueblo a priority. In previous seasons, the archaeologists mapped the ruin. They had tried to figure out where Norm’s father had dug and make archaeological sense of the piles of architectural debris and dirt that marked the illicit excavations.

  This summer, Elena decided to dig one of the eroded rooms before it fell into the arroyo and stabilize the endangered rooms. Stabilization was dirty, exhausting work, and the laborers did most. The excavation crew rotated in to learn the process. In the eroding room, the diggers were busy removing the upper layers of fallen wall stones, trash, and dirt.

  Elena found the crew working, but the late-morning heat was making them move as if they swam in jello. Caleb’s task was to screen at the tripod and stack up the wall stones removed from the rooms. The young man still sported winter-pale skin despite the Arizona sun. His cheeks bore light scars as if from adolescent acne.

  A bright orange bandanna tied pirate-style identified the crew chief. Mel sat on an overturned bucket, checking a form. When she saw the director, she unfolded long legs and hollered at the crew.

  “Yo, troops, the boss is here. Best behavior, now. Don’t throw backdirt on the director.” Mel chortled at her own wit.

  Four uneven-sized quadrants divided the room. Because the west wall nearest the arroyo had fallen down the hill, the western quads were smaller than the eastern. The excavators left a balk in the center to preserve the layers that time and the elements deposited. Mel guided Elena to the northwest quadrant on the edge of the arroyo. “Tell Tía Elena what you’ve found,” she directed the student working there.

  “I think we’re near the roof-fall layer,” the student explained.

  “I’m hoping the room burned,” Mel said. “I’ve told the kids it’s our best chance to date it.” Laborious tree-ring sampling of the charred roof beam
s would be necessary if the roof burned. It was ironic that burning preserved the roof, whereas an unburned roof decayed and disintegrated. “Except for Caleb over there,” Mel said, “who likes to herk wall stones to pump up his biceps, we’re not having a lot of fun.” The scrawny young man blushed all the way to the tips of his ears.

  “You’ll be singing a different tune if the room burned,” Elena said. “You’ll spend days taking tree-ring samples and getting nauseous from the gasoline.” Mel screwed up her face, and Elena laughed at her expression.

  “Maybe, but it would be better than this.” Mel swept an arm toward the pile of sifted backdirt below the screens and the stacked wall stones. “It’s plain old hard labor. Like in a prison gang.”

  Mel’s wide grin showed white against her sun-browned skin. Her complaints were for show, because she was one of those women who tried her best to out-shovel, out-pick, and out-lift every male in camp.

  The young woman working in the southeast quad directed Elena’s attention to a rectangular grouping of stones. “At first we thought it might be a hearth or mealing-bin slabs,” she said. “Now we can see they’re wall stones that ended up that way when the wall fell over.”

  “That’s too bad,” Elena said. “A roof hearth or mealing bin would have been interesting. We don’t find them often.

  “So what’s next, Mel?”

  “We’ll make sure we’ve gotten all the wall fall out. The southeast quad is a little behind the other quad because it’s bigger. Then, I’ll put a couple of students on the roof, if we find one, and have the others start on the northeast and southwest quads.”

  Soon, Elena left them to visit the ossuary. Later, she would recall this seemingly normal, pleasant day with amazement. How could she have not known? Even here, in the bright sun and summer heat, dark implications cascaded like beads from a broken necklace, spilling and scattering in utter disarray.