LC 02 - Questionable Remains

by Beverly Connor

  "Having problems?" he asked, looking at the precarious position of her vehicle.

  "I had a blowout," she said.

  John looked at her and at her tire. "Are you all right?"

  "A little frightened," she replied. "I swerved into the other lane and almost hit a car, then ... well, you can see."

  He went to the back of his truck and took a chain out of the bed. "I'll have to pull you away from the edge," he said as he proceeded to hook the chain to the rear of her Rover. He attached the other end of the chain to his truck, linking the vehicles together. He walked to the front of the Rover near the edge of the precipice and looked underneath the vehicle. He gave it a hard shove on the side, as if testing its stability. He grunted, looked up at Lindsay with a smile, raised an eyebrow, and said, "I don't think it'll go over the edge. Get in and try to hold it steady as I pull."

  She did as he told her. The chain jerked as he started pulling, but her Rover gradually moved away from the precipice. He unhooked the chain, and she drove slowly to the pull-off just ahead, her blown-out tire wobbling and bumping.

  "I'll change the tire for you," he told her.

  "I appreciate it." She gave him her key and he opened the back to get the spare and tools. He stood the spare tire against the side of the Land Rover and laid the tools on the ground.

  "I'm lucky you happened along," she said.

  "I didn't just happen along. Emily said you were going to stop at Caleb's. I was on my way to catch up with you there."

  Lindsay watched him as he sat on his haunches beside her tire. She observed his tall frame, his long thighs and broad shoulders, how his raven hair flowed over his back, his very brown skin. He was like one of the skeletons fleshed out and animated. She squatted beside him as he jacked up the vehicle.

  "Why were you trying to catch up with me?"

  "I want to talk to you."

  ? "Why?"

  He took the lug wrench and began removing the lug nuts from the wheel. "You're the enemy. A strong enemy. I want to get to know you."

  Lindsay was surprised. "I'm not your enemy."

  John West stopped what he was doing and stared at Lindsay, as if trying to see inside her. "You're the most dangerous kind. One who speaks straight and persuasively. We Indians can have our say and convince your people that what you do hurts us, hurts our soul. Someone like you gets up and makes your side sound more wise. Many people will be persuaded by you and will agree with you because they think you will really do what is best for us, for our history, and for our future, and because they value what you value, and don't understand what we consider sacred." He turned and continued taking the nuts off the wheel. He removed the ruined tire and laid it down in the grass and put on the spare. "At least they are ignorant. You understand what is sacred to us, yet it means nothing compared to your research questions." He said "research questions" the way some people would say "profit." She supposed answers to questions were the profits of science.

  "What is it you want?" she asked.

  "How does it make you feel to know that I hate what you do?" he asked, looking at her, his black eyes glittering with his indignation.

  "Frustrated," she answered.

  He stopped, making no movements for several moments, then looked at Lindsay again. "You feel frustrated? Why?"

  Lindsay sat down cross-legged in the grass and took off her sunglasses. "I'm not sure you would understand."

  "You think I'm stupid?" he asked, returning to his work on her wheel.

  "No. You know that is not true," she said.

  "Tell me then," John insisted.

  "It's hard to explain to anyone how I really feel about it." She hesitated. "I'll try. The ancient villagers are not really dead to me. They are just not of my time. They can tell me things about themselves, and you want to stop them. I find it frustrating."

  As Lindsay spoke, it seemed that John West's movements as he bolted the spare tire in place became fast and jerky. He waited until all the nuts were in place and tightened before he spoke. He turned to Lindsay, still sitting on his haunches, his forearms resting on his thighs.

  "They are dead. They lived once, and now they're dead. They don't talk to you. You examine the marks on their bones and make educated guesses about what their lives were like. But that's all they are-guesses."

  "You're guesses right, of course," Lindsay said.

  He stood, reaching out to Lindsay, bringing her up with him. His hands were strong and firm as he gripped hers. For a moment he kept her hands in his, looking at her light skin contrasting against his brown. Then he let go.

  "Thank you for changing my tire," said Lindsay. "Can it be repaired?"

  "No," he said. "When it blew, it did too much damage."

  Lindsay walked with him to his truck. He tossed the ruined tire into the back. The sign on the side of his truck said: West Builders.

  "Your business?" asked Lindsay, running her fingers over the sign.

  "Yes. I make a living for my family and myself, and I'm not an alcoholic."

  "I didn't think that you were."

  "Then you are in the minority."

  "I think you exaggerate."

  "Get another spare," he said. "You shouldn't travel without one." He opened the door, ready to get in. "Follow me to Caleb's. He'll take the tire off the wheel for you."

  "I don't want to be your enemy," she said as he closed the door.

  "Then stop digging up my ancestors."

  "Is there no compromise?"

  "No. Tell me, Lindsay Chamberlain. What if my ancestors 'told' you that they want to be left alone? What if you found something that made you know that they do not want to be dug up? Would you stop?"

  Lindsay was silent for a long moment. John watched her closely. "I would have to, wouldn't I?" she said finally.

  "One of their descendants is telling you. As pure an American Indian as they are, I'm telling you. You say that to you they are not dead, just living in a different time. I'm living in this time, and I'm telling you."

  Lindsay said nothing. There was nothing she could say; there was no argument to counter his. There was only this feeling in her heart of wanting to know about them.

  "Think about it, Lindsay Chamberlain. At least do that," he said.

  "I will." Lindsay laid a hand on the door between them. "Don't you want to know about them?"

  "I know what I need to know."

  "That isn't what I asked. Wouldn't you like to have the sites definitively connected to modern-day tribes?"

  "We are connected. Who else are we related to?"

  "You know what I mean. There are many tribes and many sites. Will you think about it?"

  "Fair enough. It is also fair that I tell you that I won't change my mind on this." He started his truck, waiting for her to get in her Rover before he drove onto the road.

  Lindsay walked to her Land Rover and climbed in. She had certainly made a lot of enemies in the past few months simply by doing her job. Maybe she was arrogant and manipulative. Maybe she should rethink her philosophy. Maybe bones didn't speak to her. Maybe she was wrong. She turned the key and followed John to Caleb's.

  Caleb's was a combination grocery, garage, and gas station. Lindsay bought gas, filled her ice chest, and picked up a few snacks for the road. John took her tire to the mechanic on duty for her.

  "Caleb has a spare tire that'll fit your Rover," John told Lindsay as she loaded up her supplies. "He's putting it on the wheel now. You need to get another one when you can, but this will do for now."

  "Thanks," she said. "I appreciate your help."

  John looked into her eyes for a moment, then at her Atlanta Braves baseball cap. He took it off her head and threw it into the trash. Lindsay stood openmouthed while John went to his truck and came back with a West Builders cap and put it on her head. He went back to his truck, climbed in, and drove off.

  Esteban Calderon had fled the massacre, stopping only to pick up the men who guarded the provisions and the last two of th
e valuable pigs they had begun with. He had pushed his men hard, wan ting to get far from the area, afraid that Piaquay might somehow send a plea for help to an ally village, that Indian reinforcements might attack and defeat his men in their weakened condition. Finally, Diego, an old family friend, had forced Calderon to stop and rest.

  "The men can go no farther, estan cansados," Diego implored. "They need to heal their wounds. You are getting a fever, Don Calderon. We'll be safe here in these mountains. I have found a shelter. There is water nearby. We can camp there and be safe."

  The rock shelter was like a small cave, ten feet by twenty feet, with a stream nearby. Diego cleared a place toward the cooler rear of the shelter for Calderon to rest while the men, wounded, hungry, and irritable, made camp. At least the mountains were cooler, but the thick green flora everywhere and the damp humus smell were suffocating. The cries of the birds were strange and eerie to their ears. Indians signaled to each other by mimicking the birdcalls, so the Spaniards were never sure whether the cries were from birds or from their enemy. Diego made the decision to kill one of their remaining pigs. Good food would calm their nerves and make them cheerful or, at least, not mutinous.

  Calderon experienced more searing pain than lie had ever known. He sat under the shelter of rocks on a bed of leaves and blankets, wheezing the thick air of the deep forest, tasting the foul taste of the weeping, infected wound in his mouth. He had lost nearly all his upper back teeth, some at the time of the injury, others one by one, pushed out by the inflammation. The only merciful thing about his injury was that the arrow had miraculously grazed only the top of his tongue, rather than severing it. The aroma of a pig cooking met his nostrils and brought with it a new wave of pain as his mouth responded to the memory of succulent meat. He groaned.

  Diego brought a fresh warmed cloth to lay over his face. Diego's old hands were deft and gentle. The warmth soothed Calderon enough that he could concentrate on his hatred. Sacrilego pagano, he thought. These savages knew nothing of the value of gold and silver. They only knew to pound it into ornaments. Salvajes, estupidos. Valuing their gold trinkets more than their own families. He showed them. He wasn't finished showing them.

  Diego brought him a drink, an opiate for pain, something he had learned from the Indians in his campaign with Pizzaro. "Toma," commanded Diego.

  Calderon sipped the bitter drink as best he could. It was only a little better than the repugnant taste already in his mouth.

  "Es malo," rasped Calderon.

  "Necesitas cura de reposo," said Diego. "Rest."

  The drink helped the pain, and made him drowsy, but it also gave him enlightenment. Eso es, thought Calderon. Es claro. It was Roberto. I should not have trusted him. Roberto gave the savages the wrong message in order to stop me, Esteban Calderon, from getting my treasure. That was it. I should not have told him I married Cristina. That was a mistake. Roberto knows where the treasure is hidden. He has lived among them so long. He wants it for himself. But he's dead now, dead and rotting on the ground. Or is he? "Diego," he called out, and coughed.

  Diego rushed to his side. "LQue necesita, Don Calderon?"

  "Roberto," whispered Calderon in his garbled speech. ",Se murtio? Did you see hint die?"

  "No. He did not die immediately. He was injured. He is probably dead now."

  "Vive," Calderon whispered so lightly that Diego barely heard hint. El Sabe, thought Calderon. "He knows where the gold is."

  Lindsay bought a new tire in the next town before she resumed her drive into the mountains. The higher elevations brought cooler temperatures and some relief from the heat. She had turned off her air-conditioning and rolled down her windows to listen to the sounds of the mountains, the streams that flowed down the hillsides, the birds, the wind as she drove. She heard these things, but saw little of the holly, Cherokee roses, laurels, and magnolias that grew in great abundance in the mountains. Her mind was on the conversation she'd had with John West. She wondered if John would agree to having the burials excavated under his tribe's control or if his opposition was too deeply rooted in his religion. She didn't want to tell him she wouldn't stop excavating. She couldn't; she did not want to abandon the quest to discover as much as she could about the indigenous inhabitants of this continent. Maybe she could find a compromise.

  When Lindsay crossed into the national forest, she pulled to the side of the road to consult the map Jane had sent her. In about a mile and a half she should come to the dirt road that would take her most of the way to the site.

  Lindsay found the road. It had a chain across it with a sign that said the road was closed to the public. Jane's letter said to drive around the barricade. It was a tight squeeze, but Lindsay drove around and up the winding road. After five miles of rutted and washed road she spotted a university van, Alan's old '78 Chevy, and a couple of other vehicles parked under a grove of large trees. Lindsay pulled her Land Rover in between a Ford Explorer and a Jeep Cherokee. She slung on her backpack, hung the trowel on her belt, and started the two-mile hike up the trail to the rock shelter.

  The three-foot-wide, well-worn trail inclined gently and steadily into the forest. She breathed in the fresh air. It smelled good to her-no odor of exhausts or industry, only the smells of clean earth and vegetation; no sounds but for the twittering of birds and the wind in the trees.

  She stopped and took a swig of water and continued on, her hiking boots making a gentle crunching sound on the trail. After another half mile her legs and back began to feel the exertion. She stopped, adjusted her pack, and made a mental note to add a few hills to her jogging route when she returned home. She rounded a turn and came face-to-face with Grizzly Adams, or at least someone who looked like him, dressed in a dirty white T-shirt, cutoffs, and hiking boots. The shaggy brown beard and long hair made him look older, but Lindsay guessed he was actually in his midtwenties.

  "This trail is not open to the public," he said. "Can't you read?" He looked down at her belt and spied her trowel. He obviously thought her to be a pot hunter-here to plunder the site. She was opening her mouth to speak when he gripped her arm. "I'm going down the trail. I'll escort you back."

  Lindsay pulled her arm from him, stepped back, and held out her hand. "I'm Dr. Chamberlain. I believe I'm expected."

  He was taken aback for a second, then took her hand and shook it. "Oh, uh, yes. I'm sorry, Dr. Chamberlain, I thought you were here looking for artifacts."

  Lindsay smiled. "I am, and please, call me Lindsay. Is Jane close by?"

  "She's at the rock shelter," he said.

  "I'll go check in with her. What is your name, by the way?"

  "Gil Harris. I'm from the University of North Carolina."

  "Glad to meet you," she said and continued on her way up the trail.

  Nearer the site, Lindsay saw several more students scattered here and there, working in small excavations in the woods. The trail ended at a clearing below a rugged rockfaced bluff with a wide gaping hole in the side of the rock wall. The roof of the rock shelter was a weathered gneiss overhang that created a room about twenty feet wide and ten feet deep from front to back. Jane was inside near the rear of the shelter on her knees, working with her trowel. Lindsay saw that they had dug two intersecting trenches in the clearing outside the rock shelter. Each was about three feet wide and ten feet long, and a couple of students were working intently on something in one trench.

  "Hey, Jane," said Lindsay, walking up to the mouth of the shelter.

  "Lindsay, you're here!" Jane jumped up to greet her. "Did you have any trouble finding us?" Her blonde hair was tied in a ponytail. Despite the fact they were working in heavy shade, Jane's long limbs were tanned.

  "No, your directions were very good. What have you got here?"

  Jane's blue eyes glittered. "Some really neat stuff. Digging is kind of hard with all this vegetation, but using a little logic, we've been pretty lucky. We're excavating most of the cave," Jane said, then pointed out into the woods. "We went over the area with a me
tal detector and found some interesting things. We're turning up some good refuse pits."

  Lindsay laid down her pack by a tree and followed Jane inside the shelter. Against one wall were two wooden crates for transporting artifacts. Jane pointed to the boxes.

  "We haven't found a large quantity of stuff, but what we have found is kind of neat: lead balls, iron crossbow bolt tips, ax heads, and what we think is the trigger mechanism for a harquebus. In the lower levels of the trenches we think we've found some Archaic stuff."

  "Archaic and historic-nothing in between?"

  Jane shook her head. "From the looks of the trench cross section, the shelter was subject to periodic flooding over the years."

  "That's a neat collection of historic items. Where are you finding the things. In the cave or around it?"

  "I'm excavating a cache of bolt heads in the cave right now. The musket trigger was found about ten meters away in the clearing outside the shelter. We found the ax by accident. Mike, one of the student workers, was taking a leak in the woods. He had his metal detector with him and did a quick sweep."

  Lindsay smiled. "It would be interesting if that was how it was lost in the first place."

  "Wouldn't it? We're finding some bones, too." Jane looked suddenly grim. "A couple of human teeth, bones of a left arm, and a right leg."

  Lindsay raised her eyebrows. "Amputations?"

  "We think so," said Jane. "We thought you could have a look."

  "Sure. Sounds like a group of conquistadores resting up after a battle. Any indication of how many there were?"

  Jane shook her head, but Lindsay saw a faint smile on her face. "Not yet, but we suspect around twenty." Lindsay was surprised that she could come up with a number, but before she could ask a question, Jane pointed to a young darkhaired woman bent over an excavation just outside the shelter. "Over there we've found some bones of a pig in a fire pit. We don't know if it's a wild pig or domestic."