“There are so many sites like this out here. But the thrill of finding a new one never goes away. Parks can be a problem, but they are also pretty good harbors, sometimes . . . when they let us do our jobs,” Paul said.
Sophia was gone, her attention returned to the first block of rooms, which were decimated because they had been too exposed to the elements. Luckily, most of the vertical planes remained in place, giving a sense of the organization and size of the original structure. Sophia allowed her hands to rest upon the walls as she moved throughout the spaces, though she knew she should be wearing gloves. Above this structure was a higher level of buildings, constructed in a secondary alcove. They looked like something from a story told to amuse an emperor. Any attempt at a description would always be insufficient. You could not do it with data or with poetry. It was simply impossible.
“I have to go back for something,” Paul said. “You keep exploring. I’ll catch up with you.”
“Yeah, um, sure. I’m just going to . . .” Sophia drifted past the closest structure to those built into the rock under the massive cliff brow. She drew close and peered through the narrow door, the wood lintel and doorframes still in place, smooth and lithe, holding their former shapes as limbs and branches. They were low enough that she had to stoop. The interior space was cool. Her eyes had to adjust to the dim light. When they did, she saw that the space inside was small by modern standards but proportioned in a purposeful way. In the opposite corner, she saw a haphazard cluster of sticks leaning against the wall. Next to them was a pile of desiccated corn cobs and a wooden ladder leading from this space through a square hole in the roof. No baskets or pottery. No tools. The room was devoid of what she’d seen in many years of slideshows, drawings, photographs, textbook descriptions, and exhibits in museums and repositories. Nonetheless, it left Sophia with the singular thought that any claim of newness for this continent, any sense of it as a “new world,” was undeniably and irredeemably false.
Sophia skirted the rest of the buildings in the block, and she turned at the corner, where she discovered a natural approach on the rock itself that gave her access to the second story. From this vantage, she could see back along the path from the overhead view, which revealed the genius of the people who planned and built this place. The line of roofs revealed four ladders spaced at nearly even intervals. More than anything she wanted time to explore and document these spaces. She also knew that trying to gain entry would risk catastrophe. Along the rock floor of the alcove was a room with the perfect right-angled shadow of a door.
Overhead, cliff swallows swooped back and forth. The entire overhang was filled with the churring calls of these acrobatic birds. Perhaps the alveolar clusters of bulbous daubed nests above were the inspiration for these adobe buildings, or perhaps it was a deeper design. She looked out again, her position granting her a clear view of the amphitheater and back across the desert from which they had ascended. Through notches in the ridgelines looking west she could see Antelope Flats, and behind that, the Vermilion Cliffs. The sun had dropped just below the horizon, holding its intensity. Dusk would soon follow.
Sophia moved to the door and looked inside. Again, she waited for her eyes to adjust, hoping for the slow materialization of objects: pot, basket, metate, something. But the room was barren except for an indistinct pile in one corner. She looked around and did not see Paul, so she stepped through the threshold and into the darkness. The pile turned out to be a heap of seashells of all sizes, most broken, but many intact. Sophia began to understand that Swallow Valley had already been picked clean by others. The shells had likely been held in some other vessel, upended and stolen years ago. She withdrew from the room, scanned the area, and saw Paul looking around before descending on a ladder into one of the kivas whose roof remained intact.
He said he left something behind. Sophia descended the cliff trying to decide whether or not to call out to Paul or to keep the element of surprise in her favor. In the end, she decided she wanted to see what he was up to for herself.
The kiva was off to one side, set above the ground on a brick-and-adobe rim rather than lying flush to the ground. Three roof poles emerged from one side, extending three feet past the short walls. Sophia lay on her belly and peered down into the kiva entry. She spied Paul crouching in the far corner, awash in the yellow glare of his head lamp, his knees splayed out frog-like to either side, a small bowl in one hand. With the other hand, he moved the soil aside, set the bowl into the well, and turned it. From his shirt pocket, he took a small branch and feathered out the soil to erase his presence.
“What the hell?” Sophia said. “I’m coming down there!”
“Nothing. No. Don’t. I’m coming out,” Paul said.
“Is that pottery?”
Sophia turned and came down the ladder, the thick wood stable, showing no signs of weakness or wear. Her attention was split between the interlocked wood poles that comprised the cribbed roof and Paul standing up and brushing off his hands.
“Put your light on it,” Sophia instructed.
Paul turned his head until the bowl was illuminated. The exterior was undecorated but starting at the rim there was a red band, and after that, diagonal lines that covered the interior. She stepped forward and dropped to her knees to see inside the bowl. There was a striking humanoid face there, red with large obovate eyes and an open mouth set on the top and bottom with rows of triangular teeth.
“Is it intact?”
“Yes.”
“Where did it come from?”
Paul didn’t answer.
“Did you move it from somewhere else?”
“That’s a complicated question.”
“No, Paul. It’s pretty simple.”
“Okay, well, then it’s got a complicated answer.” Paul stepped around the bowl, picked up a scrub oak branch and cleared his tracks as he came past Sophia, mounted the ladder, and climbed past, switching off his head lamp.
“You’re not going to leave that here,” she said.
“Yep. That’s what I’m doing.” Paul stepped out of the portal and was gone.
Sophia followed Paul out of the kiva. He was walking away from her toward the plaza and their backpacks. The amphitheater was in the full shadow of evening, and while it wasn’t cool yet, the blue sky was deepening, and the rock was turning from orange to purple.
She called after Paul, but he kept going.
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” he said.
“Then why bring me on a super-secret site-destruction mission that you knew would infuriate me?”
Paul stopped and turned. “For all the rest of it,” he said, spreading his arms. “And because you told me you were missing out on some cool summer international dig in Jordan, and this was your consolation prize research. I thought maybe you’d like the adventure. And who knows . . .” Paul stopped and crouched next to his pack and returned a red stuff sack to the interior. He took out the blue lab book and made a notation.
With so much theft and vandalism, the idea that somebody might return an artifact was unthinkable to most people. It would be a high-risk move for him as a government employee. Part of her wanted to dive right into that conversation. Another part of her wanted to stay on the moral high ground. What she couldn’t do was walk away. “You know, anyone who finds that pot will discover a lie.”
“Sort of.”
“They’ll think it’s something it isn’t. This place has been stripped, Paul. There’s nothing here but that bowl.”
“But that bowl is where it belongs.”
“How do you know that?”
Paul held up the notebook. He flipped through the pages and stopped at a rendering of the bowl, a detailed description of its location in the kiva, even a sketch of the exterior with its low wall and ladder. “I know it was taken in October 1973. And I know he asked me to return it six weeks ago because he knew he would never make it back.”
“Who has you doing this? It goes against so many regulations
—it was Cluff, wasn’t it?”
Paul nodded.
“So, you’re up here for him, not because you wanted to spend time with me.”
“Well, can’t it be both?”
“I’m glad I can be another one of your efficiencies.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that. You dragged me up here to kill two birds with one stone. That bowl was in your pack, which is why I swung around upside down on a rope. So, what am I supposed to do now, report you? I thought we were doing something else.”
“Something else? Look, you don’t have to file a—”
“Of course I do. Dammit, Paul. And I have to take that bowl with me. I have a professional obligation.”
“And put it where? It’s right where it belongs. It’s just been on loan. But isn’t that what you want? Aren’t you the one who says museums are complicated?”
“They are, and all this—whatever it is, a date or a field trip or some kind of backward heist movie—did not un-complicate any part of it, for me.”
“It’s what Bruce wanted. His death changed the timeline.”
“But it’s not Bruce’s bowl, Paul. It belongs to the people from this place.”
“They moved and left it. There’s no sign of violence in this place. It was abandoned.”
“No violence in this place, yes. Violence to this place? That’s a different story.”
“Well, like I said, you weren’t supposed to see this,” Paul said. He swung the pack onto his shoulders. “I’m going to set up camp for the night.” Sophia stood and put on her pack.
She walked out of the amphitheater, watching where Paul stopped on a ridge facing west. Eastward the clouds were blazing red and orange, tall kachina clouds full of rain and lightning. Beneath them were the cliff walls of Swallow Valley, the dwellings tiny and delicate at the base.
Sophia made her camp away from Paul. She ate without speaking to him, watched the sunset burn away and the stars prick the firmament. After twilight had dissolved, a meteor arced across the belly of sky through the constellation Leo. It burned for a full second before pulsing once and fading.
“Paiutes call that putsuywitcapi. It means star excrement,” Paul called out.
Sophia lay back and slapped a mosquito. “You ruin everything,” she called back.
PART II
Day Six
A rain delay : A hero twice in one day : Growth mind-set : The destination is on your right : They always run : Additional variables
A clap of thunder woke Sophia. She sat up straight in her sleeping bag and listened as the boom echoed through the canyons and decayed to a hollow rumble. It was dawn, but Swallow Valley was still mostly in shadow. Wind rattled the cottonwood and willow leaves, and the air was much colder than she would have expected.
She climbed out of her sleeping bag and slipped her boots on. Paul’s gear was packed, and his bag leaned against a rock. He wasn’t anywhere in the amphitheater. She walked around, checked the kiva from yesterday, and went up to Paul’s backpack, where she found a note stuck into one of the inch clips like a tiny flag:
Checking the trail.
Filtered water from the pool in those bags →
PT
She followed the arrow with her eyes and saw a dual-bag filtering system hanging in the branches of a tree, the lower bag bulging. Beyond that tree lay the amphitheater, the overhang, and the silent dwellings. It was no less amazing on the second day, though today’s light was more subdued, cooler, filtered through the clouds, and the cliff faces seemed more rounded and smooth. Sophia thought about what it would have been like to have inhabited this place, to have emerged every morning of your life into this.
The lightning came first—a white etching in the grayness. She counted out the interval of twenty-three seconds, then the thunder followed. She couldn’t remember how that translated to miles. Longer was safer. She knew that, but she didn’t know how to interpret thunderclaps coming so close together.
She turned again and beheld the ruins until the urge to pee was overwhelming. She imagined that Paul would return the moment her pants were down, so she sought some privacy in a semicircle of scrub oak.
When she finished, she returned to her pack and pulled out two granola bars, then she went to the water bags and filled her bottle. After that, she pulled out her notebook and a pen, and saw her camera partially wrapped in a sweatshirt. She remembered Paul’s plea not to take pictures, then thought about how scandalized he looked when she caught him in the kiva. Screw him and the horse he rode in on, she thought. It was her father’s pet phrase, and it delighted her to use it now. She pulled out the camera and turned it on, then located an extra memory card and stood. Somebody’s got to do this, she said to herself. She wasn’t going to leave empty-handed. If this trip was off the books, then he’d never bust her. She could leverage that.
The notebook went into a cargo pocket in her pants, the camera around her neck. She began taking wide-angle photos of the area, one of them using the panorama function that stitched together slices of the Swallow Valley into a wide ribbon of landscape. She worked quickly, systematically cataloging the midden area, the pit houses, showing details of the collapsed roofs. She captured each of the rooms in the main structure, moving from east to west, noting the shot numbers in her notebook and writing small notations to go with them. Each time she captured an image she thought about how she would want to return to see what it was like in different seasons.
It was one thing to explore a site that was already on the books, but to be the first, maybe that was no longer even possible. You’d just be the most recent to discover something. And that was the problem: the race of archeology, the carving out of one’s career, setting that priority over the site, the artifacts coming in ahead of the people who had lived and died there. The best solution was to get out of the way, but the building of a career had so much mass, so much gravitational pull. She tried to make sure her motivation was people over things, but she could wrestle with that after she got the photos.
Once she’d documented the room block, she returned to the kiva she was in yesterday and photographed the interior, including the bowl Paul replaced. She looked for voids that would suggest the activity of other thieves, and found nothing, even when she shot with the flash. There were no other footsteps beyond her own. She considered removing the bowl and carrying it out in her pack, but decided, in the end, that she’d likely destroy the pot in the process.
Instead, she climbed out of the kiva and, following Bruce Cluff’s lead, wrote down details of the replacement using Paul’s initials instead of his name. When she closed her notebook, she noticed the clamor of the cliff swallows, and switched her camera to video mode. She shot over a minute of the birds swooping into and out of their nests. When that was done, she took a breath and considered her choices. She knew where this place was. Paul was in way over his head. This was a bona fide opportunity.
Another flash filled the sky, and the wind picked up, bringing a rich resinous essence to Sophia’s nose. She scanned the area, looking for Paul, and finding him still gone, she closed her eyes and tried to identify each of the olfactory notes: desert earth, juniper, pine, and a hint of her mother’s perfume, something of the Persian part of her. A splintering crack of thunder startled her and sent her eyes racing around the amphitheater.
She had been taking photos for nearly an hour. She returned to the cliff to check on the storm and saw it moving across the far end of the valley floor. Twenty miles, maybe more. She felt one or two drops of rain on her forearm and decided to pack her gear away.
As she finished the second granola bar, Paul came through the sage, saw her, and waved like nothing at all had happened. “Did you find the water okay?” he asked. She pointed to the bottle at her feet. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I kind of wanted to sleep, so that’s what I did. Slept. It felt great.”
“That’s good.” Paul looked aroun
d and gave her a crooked smile. “So, how about this place?”
“It’s good,” she said, wondering how long this fake conversation would carry on.
“This is one of those sites people don’t like to talk about. They figure it’ll turn into a circus like Moon House or the Citadel. I’d heard about it for years, but nobody would give me a location. People don’t trust the government much around here,” Paul said.
“Can’t blame them,” Sophia said. She wondered why he was pretending like yesterday hadn’t happened, but she knew.
“About that . . .” he said.
“Yeah, about that,” she said, taking her opportunity. “You know what you’ve done to this site? It’s not just me talking. There’s laws.”
“Thoreau said sometimes you’ve got to let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine,” Paul said.
“You are the machine, Paul.”
“Cluff got the bowl when this land was private. The law lets him do that.”
“Everyone’s an archeologist, I guess,” Sophia said.
“Everyone’s a ranger, too, apparently,” Paul countered.
“Democracy sucks sometimes.”
“Speaking of democracy, let’s talk about what we should do next. Our circumstances have changed a little.” Paul walked over to the cliff edge and motioned for Sophia to follow. It was an abrupt, graceless transition. “That storm is going to cross over to here, then bump up against the mesa we’re on right now. It’ll drop a lot of water so it can climb over, and that water needs to go somewhere,” he said, tracing the path down the talus slope and into the maze of rock they had come through yesterday.
Sophia nodded. She could see how it would gather.
“I think we should stay here another night.”
Sophia’s face twisted into a shape of disapproval.
“I’ve hauled bodies out of those canyons. When they go in, it’s dry. Hot. Blue sky. Then all hell breaks loose.”
Picnic in the Ruins Page 15