Painted Horses
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She finds herself pleasantly shocked by the Israeli government, which goes out of its way not only to accommodate but also to fund and promote the excavation. They have the time to work with care and the manpower to work with efficiency, and over the course of the next two years the site unwinds layer by layer, like the pages of a history read in reverse, index to epigraph.
In the summer of 1962 a feature in L— magazine heralds the completion of a major dam project south of Billings, Montana, near the Crow Indian Reservation.
The same magazine runs a long story on archaeology in the Holy Land, with a human-interest sidebar on a dig conducted by “two young relic hunters of the fairer sex, unearthing scrape-by-scrape the mysteries of a Pagan shrine . . .”
A black-and-white photo shows Catherine, herself holding a camera, looking down a series of stone steps that emerge from the earth around it. Her hair is pulled back into a bun with a pencil jabbed through it, one sprig come loose and hanging along her face and though she looks disheveled she can also see why the picture was selected, no doubt by a man.
She studies herself a long time when she is first alone with the magazine. It’s a silly article, true. But in the picture, she does not look out of place.
Months later after she has returned to the States a weatherworn envelope follows by airmail, its surface covered with cancellations and postal forwardings—New York, Damascus, Tel Aviv, back to Damascus, and then back again across the ocean—so much so that it takes a moment to determine the point of origin. Someplace called Elko, NV.
She pays the additional postage to the carrier and laughs with him, saying this better be good, and when she tears the envelope and extracts the contents she catches a flash of color and sits on the parquet tiles in the Tudor’s foyer. She unfolds the page with quivering fingers and looks into her own floating eyes, unmistakable for their color and the kohl like a shadow line of seduction, a vestige of her own ancient past. A splash of light in one pupil, line of hills below. No words but a date. July, 1956.
From the backyard she hears the cough of the mower as the engine turns, the pop of a backfire and a stall and her father’s usual half-comic barrage. The mower fires anew and its noise recedes as she pulls herself up the banister to her room, recedes again when she shuts the door.
She writes him back.
Acknowledgments
A number of people helped to shape and inspire and vet this book.
My parents, Curt and Marie Brooks, and my brothers, Christian Brooks and Aaron Brooks, all watched me scribble and peck away years before anyone else. My sons, Cole and Ethan, now give mightily of their own due time for the same cause.
Anne Brooks, John Bateman, Nick Davis, Ben “Yukon” Kuntz, and Stephen Bodio read the earliest drafts, and each brought a distinct eye and encouragement to the process.
Clay Scott and Dr. Christopher Anderson essentially wrote the French dialogue in “Elixabete.”
Randy Rieman, as elegant a horseman and as superlative a wrangler as ever existed, provided advice and input on all things equine. Any flights of the magical or the fanciful are entirely my own.
Wilfred Husted and Lionel A. Brown shared adventures and stories from the early days of River Basin Surveys and provided invaluable background and color.
Tim Sandlin allowed me to sign on late to the Jackson Hole Writers Conference. By lucky chance or shrewd design he foisted my pages on Tina Welling, writer and probable angel, who took me literally by the hand and introduced me to Kirby Kim, who would become both my agent and my friend.
Amy Hundley, my editor, has a holographic view and laser vision. Within five minutes of meeting her I knew she could make the book better than I could on my own. The end result is as much hers as mine.
Many, many thanks to Morgan Entrekin, Deb Seager, John Mark Boling, and Judy Hottensen for making Grove Atlantic feel less like a house than a home.
Eternal gratitude to Stan and Erin Nyberg, for kinship, literal shelter, and more, and to Jennifer Waltz for an expert ear and flawless advice.
Thanks as well to Paula Cooper Hughes, whose editing suggestions on a micro level allowed me to see parts of the whole in surprising new ways.
And to ACW, who made the line into a circle.
Table of Contents
Cover
Painted Horses
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Painted Horses
Catherine
John H
Relics
John H
Rites
John H
Glyphs
Pieces of God
Stone House
Elixabete
Horses
Power and Light
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Back Cover