Airtight Case

by Beverly Connor

  Don’t fall apart.

  She was awakened by the ringing phone. Why was the phone ringing in her room?—it didn’t have a phone. She wasn’t in her room. It was her car phone. She stretched forward and grabbed the phone.

  “Yes?”

  “Lindsay, is this you? My old eyes must have made a mistake. I was calling Emily. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

  It was George West, Cherokee elder and John’s father. Lindsay rubbed her eyes and looked out the window. It was still dark out, even the house was still and unlit. She settled back deep in her sleeping bag.

  “You didn’t disturb me. I’m glad you called.”

  “And how are you?”

  “I’m fine. I . . .”

  She fumbled through an account of her middle of the night experience, feeling silly when she had finished.

  “So, you had a vision.”

  “A hallucination, I imagine.”

  There was a pause. Lindsay saw a light come on in the window of the second-floor room where Drew and Claire slept. The house was waking up.

  “What were you doing before your encounter in the mirror?”

  “I’d awakened from a dream . . . about what happened to me.”

  “And before that?”

  “I was reading about the history of the site. Normal archaeological information . . . there was some stuff about ghosts. The, uh, house I’m staying in is supposed to be haunted.”

  Lindsay heard a car. Mrs. Laurens’ old Buick was rounding the curve to the side parking lot. She was arriving to make breakfast.

  “So you read about ghosts, dream about your ordeal, then see something strange in the mirror in the middle of the night. If that happened to John, what would you tell him?”

  “That the play of shadows distorted his features and he saw his fears. Apparitions in mirrors are fairly clichéd ghostly stuff that taps into childhood fears. His subconscious expected to see something scary in the mirror, and he did.”

  “Why can’t you tell yourself that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you can’t because you are afraid that your mind is no longer reliable and you feel guilty for allowing yourself to get hurt. You think?”

  “I suppose.”

  “John works with a lot of complex machines. Sometimes when one is moved to a new place it has to be recalibrated. And sometimes the machine is working right, but the operator misreads it. Either way, it’s not the machine’s fault. It’s doing what it’s supposed to. Maybe your brain is not failing, but working the way it should.”

  Lindsay was silent.

  “You have had visions before.”

  “I can mentally reconstruct an archaeological site to its original condition, but that’s because I have data and understand what it means.”

  “Maybe you just don’t know what this means yet.”

  “You think it means something?”

  “It means something. Maybe just your fear. But that doesn’t mean your brain’s not working.”

  “Thanks, George. I’m glad you called.”

  “I’m glad I did, too. Take care of yourself.”

  Lindsay was smiling when she got out of the Explorer and walked up the steps to the house. As she opened the door, she realized she had left it unlocked. She tiptoed past the guys’ bedroom—the round room directly under hers. The stairs were much less foreboding this morning. She managed to make it up to her room without passing anyone, without having to explain what she was doing running around in her robe. Not that it should matter, she thought, as she slipped on her work clothes and went back downstairs.

  She poured herself a glass of milk for breakfast.

  “Are you sure you don’t want anything solid? How long will that glass of milk last you, working out there?” Mrs. Laurens was making pancakes for the crew, several of whom were in the dining room eating.

  “I’ll be all right. You know anything about the rumors of ghosts around here?”

  Mrs. Laurens took a hot pancake off the griddle and put it on a paper towel to cool.

  “Don’t believe in ghosts myself, but Cal hardly likes to come here. Says he hears things in the house. I’d be worried if I didn’t hear tapping and creaking in an old house like this. As far as I know, he’s not seen one. We’d have all heard about it.” She folded the pancake up in the paper towel and handed it to Lindsay. “Here. Eat this on the way to the site. You’re going to need something.”

  Mrs. Laurens reminded her of her great-aunts. Lindsay grinned as she accepted the blueberry pancake and took a bite. It was sweet, warm, and aromatic. “Thanks,” she mumbled on her way out of the house into the early morning.

  She shivered as the cold mountain air penetrated her sweatshirt. Tall, thin Erin, dressed in cutoffs and a sweatshirt, came up beside her. “It’s cold this morning.” She rubbed her hands together.

  “Nice and brisk.” Lindsay finished her pancake and stuffed the paper towel in her pocket.

  “If you say so.” Erin shivered.

  “Hi, guys.”

  “Adam.” Lindsay pulled the profile pages from under her sweatshirt. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  “The radar profiles? What about them?”

  “Just two of them. Look here and here.” Lindsay pointed to the dense object echo on each of the profiles.

  “I kind of remember those. Claire says they’re rocks.”

  “Perhaps. But they may be something else.”

  “Wait—this one’s in my trench line. Someone from the initial survey must have planned the trench here to find out what that is.”

  Lindsay nodded. “Likely.”

  “What is it?” Erin looked at the ground-penetrating radar images on one of the pages. “I don’t see how you can tell anything.”

  “I’m almost to that depth,” said Adam. “We’ll probably find out today. Any ideas, Lindsay?”

  “Yes, but only because there’s one here, too.” She shifted the pages so that the Feature 3 profile was on top.

  “So. What’s special about this place?” asked Adam.

  “Let’s see what you find today.”

  Adam nodded. “It’s nice . . .” He looked over his shoulder. “It’s nice to start out the day looking forward to something besides Claire on a tear, or Trent on a drunk.”

  An early morning fog was coming off Helget Pond, shrouding the bridge. Fogs at excavations are eerie, the way they hover near the ground over the leavings of the past, like the spirit of artifacts, ghosts of things gone by. She shivered as they passed through the mist, making each of them momentarily invisible. Their footfalls on the wooden planks sounded loud in the early morning stillness.

  “Anyone ever see The Incredible Shrinking Man?” asked Adam.

  “Yeah,” said Lindsay.

  “What’s it about?” asked Erin.

  “A guy went through a mist like this. Started shrinking until he was nothing but a molecule.” Adam made a gesture with his hands.

  “Nice thought,” Erin replied.

  Lindsay helped Erin take the plastic coverings off of Structure 3, and Adam tended to his trench as some of the other crew drifted onto the site. When the plastic was folded and off to the side, Lindsay crossed to the processing tent, passing structures and features that she mentally raised from the surrounding rock and dirt into images of a smokehouse, corncrib, barn, and fence.

  The twenty-foot by forty-foot tent was the shape of a Quonset hut—constructed from a series of metal rods curved into arcs and covered with weatherproof material.

  “Anybody home?” Lindsay called out at the door. Someone always stayed in the structure overnight, guarding the artifacts from thieves.

  “Me,” Joel yelled. “Come in.”

  Lindsay entered through the door flap to the interior where a series of long rough-hewn tables lined one side, and equally unfinished shelves and cabinets lined the other. Sacks and boxes of artifacts, brought in for Marina to process, covered almost every surface, as did a coatin
g of dust. Joel was coming from his makeshift bedroom behind a wall of tall shelves at the far end of the tent, pulling on a green, black, and white plaid long-sleeved flannel shirt over his T-shirt and cutoffs. A cold Pop-Tart stuck out of his mouth.

  “I need the mapping equipment, today,” she told him.

  Joel pointed to the cabinets. “The grid’s standing against the side there. Sorry to hear about your troubles,” he mumbled. “But this is a great site, isn’t it.” Joel’s enthusiasm never failed to surprise Lindsay.

  “Let me show you something,” she said.

  She spread her profiles out on a table. Joel bent over them, his hair falling forward in front of his face.

  “Something’s there,” he said.

  “Maybe,” agreed Lindsay. “We’ll find out today. Adam said he’s almost to that depth.”

  “If Claire doesn’t pull him off onto some other project. Do you know she stopped the crew in the middle of their work on Feature 3 and put them on something in the woods that wasn’t even in the initial survey?” Joel brushed Pop-Tart crumbs off the page and turned his attention to the radar profile in Feature 3.

  “I think I might know what this is.” He glanced sideways at Lindsay. “I think Feature 3’s a cemetery. Have you seen the flowers and berm around it?”

  “Yes, and I think you’re right.”

  Joel looked up from the profile and grinned. “Uh-oh,” he said as he looked out the gauzy tent window. “Bogey at twelve o’clock. Can I take these?” He stuffed the ends of the folded pages in his cutoffs.

  “Sure.” Lindsay looked up to see Claire and Marina walking toward the tent.

  “I’m working with Adam today,” Joel said. “Just so Claire doesn’t decide to reassign me, I’m going to slip out the back door before she sees me.”

  Before Lindsay could say anything, Joel headed to the sleeping area behind the bookcases and, presumably, out the back way. She picked up the mapping equipment and started through the door.

  “And where are you going with that?” asked Claire, standing in front of her. Marina rolled her eyes.

  “You said you wanted Structure . . .” She had to think a moment. “Structure 6 mapped.”

  “You haven’t done that yet? Yes, I do. Try to have it done before lunch.” Lindsay resisted the temptation to salute. Like Joel, she hurried out before Claire could think of any other little insults.

  “Really, Claire . . . ,” Marina said before Lindsay was out of earshot.

  Structure 6 was possibly an outhouse. Lindsay thought it should be excavated and the fill floated to separate the contents for analysis. The most amazing kind of minutiae can be found in an outhouse. Pollen, tiny seeds, carbonized plant remains, bones, and the staple of all archaeology—things lost. However, Claire thought a map of the foundation stones and a soil sample would do. Maybe . . . no, she was in enough trouble with Claire already because some of the crew now and then came to her for advice.

  Lindsay put down the equipment beside the collections of stones that formed more or less a rectangle. The mapping grid was a one meter by one meter wooden frame strung with wires every tenth of a meter so that inside the frame were one hundred small squares, all one decimeter by one decimeter. She placed the grid over the right-hand part of the feature with the right corner of the grid adjoining a previously mapped wooden stake. She sat down beside the grid, took up the clipboard and graph paper, and began to draw and record the rocks inside the grid.

  Thirty minutes later, she got up to stretch and move the grid over one meter. The early morning cold was gone and sweat was already forming on her brow. She took off her sweatshirt, tied the sleeves around her waist, and resumed her task.

  Mapping was actually relaxing. Drawing was a quiet, solitary pursuit, and she couldn’t complain about the soothing sound of Big Branch Creek in the background and the smell of fresh air. So far, the day was quiet, which meant no arguing—probably a benefit of Drew’s presence on the site. Drew was excavating with Sharon and Bill on Structure 1, the main house—formerly a log cabin.

  Occasionally, Lindsay heard phrases like two-pen construction . . . maybe two springhouses . . . is this one of those pipes?” come wafting across the “site from various directions, intermingled with the sounds of trowels clinking on rocks, dirt being sifted through screens, and the squeaking of wheelbarrow wheels. She smiled to herself when she heard Trent’s high-pitched voice from his excavation in the woods. “Really, I heard the ghost go past the door last night . . .”

  At one point, she looked up to see Powell dancing across the site toward the drinking water wearing a Walkman, his Adonis blond hair blowing in a mild breeze. He grabbed Kelsey, whirled her around a couple of times, and continued on his way. Now that Drew had been served with her papers, maybe she would stay at the site a while and things would stay calm.

  Lindsay glanced at the sun to estimate the time and rose from her sitting position, stretching each leg. It was still well before lunch and she didn’t look forward to finding Claire for her next assignment.

  “Yo, Lindsay,” Adam shouted from his trench. “Come look what we’ve found.”

  Chapter 13

  NASA And Old Air

  “I’LL BE DAMNED,” said Powell. “I thought this was a trash pit.”

  Bill, Drew, and Sharon reached the trench just ahead of Lindsay and stood staring. In the ditch Joel and Adam squatted on either side of their find. Joel brushed the surface with a whiskbroom. Byron sat cross-legged like a giant bearded guru on the bank above with a shovel across his knees. Sticking out of the trench cross section were the head and shoulders of a wedge-shaped coffin.

  “It’s metal,” said Byron.

  “Lead,” said Joel.

  Lindsay climbed down into the trench to get a closer look just as Claire arrived.

  “What is it?”

  “A lead coffin,” answered Drew.

  “I’m willing to bet there’s another one in Feature 3,” Lindsay said, shielding her eyes from the sun while trying to include both Drew and Claire in her gaze. “It showed up on the radar profile.”

  “Who said you could look at the profiles?”

  “Claire,” said Byron, “enough is enough. You thought they were big rocks.”

  “This is a real find,” said Lindsay. “If the interior hasn’t been compromised, there’s a possibility of retrieving a sample of very old air.”

  “No kidding?” said Joel and Adam together.

  Bill pushed up the wire-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose and took another look at the dirt-stained receptacle. “Old air? How?”

  The other members of the crew noticed the congregation around the trench and drifted over to have a look. However much archaeologists say that patterns indicating behavior are more important than spectacular artifacts—spectacular artifacts still draw their attention.

  “NASA has already worked out the protocol," Lindsay said.

  “NASA?” said Claire. “Like we can call them down here. Just who’s going to pay for it?”

  “I think I can find the money. There’s a lot of people who would be interested in an air sample. This could be a major find.”

  “Think of the publications you can get out of this, Claire.”

  Adam wanted this, Lindsay could see. Enough to hold out bait for Claire.

  “You say you can get funding?” asked Drew.

  “I believe so.”

  “Good. Keith ought to love this.”

  Lindsay thought she heard a hint of resentment in Drew’s voice as she said the president of Sound Ecology’s name. It was understandable she might feel that way, since he had apparently asked his friend Francisco Lewis to send Lindsay to check up on her.

  “If it’s that important,” Claire said, "then I’ll personally supervise the excavation of the coffin.”

  The glances Adam and his crew exchanged with one another conveyed their displeasure at the idea. Lindsay almost felt sorry for Claire, having the respect of no one, when respect was som
ething she desperately wanted. Claire was her own worst enemy, and now Lindsay was about to make her more angry.

  “We have to stop excavating until the arrangements are made. Re-bury this coffin until then. Everything has to be coordinated, and I don’t know when we can get the experts here. I believe some of the tests have to be done while the coffins are still in the ground.”

  Oddly, at least to Lindsay, her taking charge didn’t make Claire angry. On the contrary, Claire took it like she was about to be a part of something special—the site director of a significant find. She ordered the trench to be filled in without argument or deferring to Drew.

  Lindsay breathed a sigh of relief. Now to go make the arrangements. She walked back to the house to make some phone calls. The phone sat on a scratched-up end table beside a wine-colored Naugahyde sofa. Getting up off Naugahyde was like pulling off a Band-Aid the way it stuck to her legs, so she pulled up a chair and dialed the number of the office of the UGA Division of Anthropology and Archaeology. Luck was on her side. Francisco Lewis was in. She admired Bill’s photograph of the site hanging on the wall as she waited for Kate to put her through to Lewis.

  “Lindsay. How are things? Better I hope.”

  “A little. I have a favor to ask.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I need some money for some extra analysis.”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Because you owe me for putting me in this hellhole.”

  “Keith has a budget. You know about the shortfall because of the semester debacle . . .”

  “Lewis. Don’t give me that. I’m not asking you to build a cofferdam around the site.”

  “What are you asking?”

  “I need you to call NASA and arrange for them to send a special team to analyze a couple of coffins for us. If you could coordinate this with the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, it’d be great.”

  Even with the phone held away from her ear, Lindsay could hear Lewis’s laughter clearly.

  “This is a joke, right? NASA?”

  Lindsay explained what they had found and what she hoped to gain from the analysis.

  “Antiquated air,” he mused. “Do you know how old?”

  “No, not now. The last family to live on the farmstead, the only family for which we have documentation, dates from around 1836 or thereabouts. The first non-Indian settlers at Cade’s Cove didn’t come until the early 1800s. But we’ve found artifacts that seem to point to a much earlier occupation of this site. To add to the puzzle, the only lead coffins I’ve read about were found in the North and East, and are artifacts of wealthy families. But, except for the presence of the lead coffins, this appears to be a typical frontier wilderness farm homestead. Interesting, huh?”