by Mindy Klasky
“So, what’d your scan say?” Tim asked. “It tell you I was dying of cancer?”
Touchey shook his head. Crumb replied, “You are fine. However, you were also correct earlier.”
“What do you mean?” Tim asked.
“You are not like the people who attacked your friend Vi. You are not like your friend Vi. You are not like any other human we have encountered.”
Tim was in the middle of a swig of Budweiser when Crumb finished. He spluttered beer all over his chest. “What? Well, who am I like, then?”
“Do you really want to know? These things are unimportant to us. But we have learned that such things hold importance to humans,” Touchey said.
“Yeah,” Tim said, thinking a moment. “Yeah, I do want to know. I mean, I guess I always knew I was a little different. My family wasn’t like nobody else, for the most part. My dad ended up in prison. Don’t know where my mom got to. Got me a brother lives up by Lone Pine. He don’t much like other people, either.”
“Socially, your family does not fit in,” Crumb said. “I am paraphrasing your language.”
“Yeah,” Tim said. “You figure out why with that alien body scan?”
“Possibly,” Crumb said.
“Tim,” Touchey said, popping a whole handful of mints and chewing noisily, “The other people we’ve encountered in our travels are all the same. The human word for them is Homo sapiens. The human word for your genotype is Homo neanderthalensis.—”
“I know what that is,” Tim said, starting to laugh. “That’s what my girlfriend used to call me. A Neanderthal. Damned if she wasn’t right.”
“This is all very interesting,” Crumb said, “but we might have gotten off track. We were here to ask about your friend Vi.”
“Vi? Oh, yeah,” Tim said. “You say she’s down in the dumps.”
“Yes. She is not young. We can heal her body,” Crumb said. “But we can’t give her the will to live.”
“We’re afraid she might just give up,” said Touchey.
“And die,” Crumb added.
“Yeah,” Tim said. “She’s tough, but this might break her. Like an old prospector, realizing his mine’s just full of fool’s gold.”
“Ah, the mining metaphor,” said Touchey.
“We want your thoughts on what we can we do to help,” said Crumb. He really was the healer of the two.
“Get her started digging again,” Tim said. “That’s all she ever gave a damn about. That’s why she gave you that stuff to sell on eBay in the first place.”
Touchey and Crumb grabbed handfuls of mints, chewed, and nodded.
“P’Lod,” Crumb said, addressing his partner by his tabloid alien name.
“Don’t,” said Touchey/P’Lod. It was bad enough a notorious tabloid had once obtained a grainy photo of the two of them years earlier during the Iran-Contra scandal, and had been re-using it ever since. As if they were supposed to explain to anyone who asked that in reality, the scandal had been a complex international tariff transfer allowing increased mint production to benefit the war in Iran, with nothing whatsoever to do with selling contraband weapons to South American rebels or cocaine to inner cities?
“Sorry,” Crumb said. “I was thinking about Vi. It is sad. I thought I’d make you laugh.”
“I can’t right now,” said Touchey.
They sat a moment, saying nothing. The only sound in the Prius was the faint slurp of Crumb sucking on a handful of mints.
“What could it hurt?” Crumb asked.
Touchey shook his head.
“Want a mint?” Crumb inquired.
Touchey shook his head.
Then his long, gray fingers reached out. Crumb put four mints in the palm of Touchey’s hand.
Touchey popped the mints in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “I guess it really can’t hurt. They’ll never find out.”
“This will be somewhat difficult,” Crumb said.
“What they believe or learn—it makes no material difference.”
“It won’t be cheap,” Crumb said after a moment.
“That’s material,” Touchey said.
“Who should we ask?”
“You wonder?” Touchey asked.
“Yes, I do wonder,” Crumb snapped.
“Caleb the Bonebreaker!” Touchey said. “Who else?”
“Oh, right,” Crumb said. “That guy. But he’s never done anything remotely human.”
“How hard is that?” Touchey asked.
“Right—only three billion chemical base pairs in human DNA.”
“So he can practically do it by hand!” Touchey said. “I think Tim could do it by hand.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Crumb said.
“But we have to do it right,” Touchey said. “If it’s too perfect, she’ll suspect.”
“Don’t you think she’ll suspect anyway?” Crumb popped mints and chewed.
“Perhaps,” Touchey said. “But it seems as though we ought to try.”
Objects purchased from Caleb the Bonebreaker came in nano-alloy cases suitable for many other re-uses. At Caleb’s prices, he had better supply something in addition to the goods.
It took some traveling—several jumps and a nearly-closed wormhole—to find Caleb. He was never in the same space twice and never anywhere quite solidly. He thought it funny that Touchey and Crumb spent so much time in one continuum, and beyond that, in one location: Earth.
They tried to explain the concepts of mining, consignment, and commerce to Caleb, but the creative gases swirling in Caleb’s big purple gas-filled body just didn’t comprehend.
He did comprehend what they wanted and told them quickly how easily he could age their artifact.
Touchey turned to Crumb and said, “Come to think of it, we could do that with newer ‘antiques’ from Earth also.”
“Yes, but if we’re discovered, we lose our reputations—and our perfect ratings are all we’ve got,” Crumb said.
“Don’t talk behind my back,” Caleb snapped. Of course, he didn’t precisely have a back.
Caleb built the skull from the cells up, and threw in a few vertebrae, two ribs, and a toe bone. They all looked shiny and new until he put the whole lot into the recursive wormhole so they’d come out properly aged.
Then Touchey and Crumb took the bones back home in the nano-alloy case and went to visit Tim.
After a festive repast of Budweiser for Tim and mints for them, the trio delivered the artifact to the Early Man site. Tim showed Touchey and Crumb the place he thought Vi and the others had last been digging.
“I heard them talking,” Tim said. “You bury it about a foot down and it’ll seem perfect.”
Touchey and Crumb looked at each other. They handed the shovel to Tim.
“Gravity,” Touchey said.
After a moment’s hesitation, Tim started digging.
“Now, wait a second,” he told Touchey and Crumb when they lifted the artifacts from the box. “This here’s all in one piece. I never seen no fossils that weren’t a little bit broken.”
“Oh,” Crumb said. Then he lifted the skull and crunched off a few chunks with his sharp, pointed teeth. “Is that better?”
“I guess so,” Tim said. “Man, you’re one crazy dude.”
Then, he buried the bones deep.
Vi sat on her porch, thinking about lighting her corn-cob pipe, when Tim’s ancient Rambler rattled down the street. She watched the desert rat get out, and her eyes widened as she saw the big bunch of pink roses that he held.
“Brought you some flowers,” he said, sitting beside her in a plastic chair.
“Thanks,” Vi said. She took the flowers and put them on the plastic table beside her rocking chair.
“Brought you something else,” Tim said, after a while. He reached in his overall pocket and drew out a dusty, ivory object about as big as the nail on his forefinger. “Hold out your hand.”
Vi held out her hand. Tim dropped the object into her palm.
Vi knew what it was right away. Her heart began to pound. It was an ancient tooth, obviously hominid.
“Went back out there,” Tim said. “Been looking for Peg-Leg’s gold all these years. Guess I found something else.”
“Where?” Vi practically screamed, leaping to her feet.
“Oh, ’round about where I seen you guys the last time,” Tim said.
“I love you,” Vi cried. “Tim Baker, you are the finest man I’ve ever known.”
Two weeks later, the dig team had still found nothing. Tim was about to shoot himself in frustration.
Touchey and Crumb had to physically restrain him from running into the pit and screaming, “Here! Dang it! Right here!”
“Just wait,” Touchey said. “If they don’t find it their way, all of our work will be for nothing.”
“Awww,” Tim said. “They’re digging all around that spot. What’s wrong with them?”
“I say,” Crumb said, peering through a pair of binoculars at the site. “Isn’t that a Hula Girl in the back of that Buick?”
Touchey took the binoculars from his partner, gazed at the car, then nodded. They grinned at each other.
“Tim,” Touchey asked. “Do you suppose you could do a trade for us? Some pyrite crystals for that hula dancing doll?”
Tim shook his head, then shrugged. “I guess I’ll try.” He trudged away toward the parking lot.
“They should find it any moment,” Crumb said.
“Hard to say,” Touchey said. “One might think. Just keep watching!”
Below at the dig, sweat ran down Vi’s face in rivers. She had only the single tooth that Tim had found, and only his confused word that they were digging in the right place. There had to be something more there.
She brushed at the earth with a paintbrush, then half-heartedly started clearing more dirt with a tiny pick. She couldn’t afford to miss a thing.
Something gleamed dully under her pick. Another tooth? Excited, she cleared dirt as fast as she could. She wanted to call out for the others, but at the same time, she wanted to find it herself—after all these years, no one could deserve it more.
Little by little, she cleared more earth.
It was not a tooth. It was an entire cranium!
Vi didn’t dare remove any more by herself. At last, certain of what she’d found, she called for the others. Whoops and cries filled the pit.
Tim was in the parking lot, trading two chunks of pyrite to the ten-year old daughter of the owner of the Buick and the Hula Girl.
“My dad won’t care,” the girl said. “That’s just an old doll we’ve had in the car forever.”
“I like Hula Girls, honey,” Tim said. They both looked over to see what the commotion was at the pit. One of the volunteers came running, his horn-rimmed glasses askew, T-shirt dappled with sweat.
“We’ve found him!” he cried. “We found Calico Man!”
“Well, I’ll be,” Tim said. He nearly added, “and you’ve got Neanderthal Man, too,” but that would have been a bit much.
Two weeks later, and the cranium, ribs, and other bones emerged from the dry desert earth.
Calico Man. Bones that were indisputable proof that early man had walked beside primeval Lake Manix some hundred thousand years before the present day.
Neither Homo erectus nor sapiens nor neanderthalensis, Calico Man was an entirely new species. Some features were primitive, while others were advanced.
At age 73, Vi Elliott became the most famous archaeologist in the world.
National Geographic had done a photo shoot at the end of the day. The photographers drove off as the sun was setting behind the mountains. A few stragglers sat chatting in the upper pits. Vi stood near where they’d found Calico Man. A miracle: an almost intact specimen, save some curious, predator-like damage to the cranium.
The last light of day caught something glinting bright and shiny near where Calico Man’s location was carefully marked. Another tool? Perhaps one he’d been using at the very moment he’d fallen? It couldn’t be—But yet—
Vi leaned over, her back cracking. She looked harder at the bright spot. She saw something that was very white—too white for bone. And then, a small flash of red.
She brushed at it with her finger. She cleared more dirt away, and the squared edge of a red and white metal tin revealed itself.
The very type of tin that held curiously strong peppermints, found in every convenience store and market these days. Oh, the find had been a miracle all right. Her heart beat with anger, then confusion, then finally, a kind of strange peace as she thought the whole thing through.
She stood still, hunching over the pit.
Her back was to the stragglers loitering above her. At that moment, she decided.
With a sharp movement of her trowel, she eased the tin from the dry desert earth. Then she looked around—just once.
The others were still talking. They hadn’t seen a thing.
She never saw Tim, standing a hundred yards off, half-hidden by a man-high boulder. She did not see his look of worry, then the sudden smile as he watched her slip the mint tin into the pocket of her Pendleton shirt. She didn’t know that he saw her pull out her corn-cob pipe, take out some tobacco, tamp it down, and for once, light the pipe. She didn’t know that Tim was watching as she walked away, puffing softly and whistling into the fading desert sunset.
Even if Tim had been inclined to talk, it wouldn’t have made any difference.
Who’d believe a Neanderthal over the world’s most famous archaeologist, anyway?
Tumbling Blocks
Mindy Klasky
I’m hiding in a ditch, waiting for the moon to rise. It should be full tonight. Round. White.
I curl my fingers into fists and press them against my belly. Some time in the last twelve weeks, I’ve perfected that gesture. It’s angry. Rebellious. Strong. Not at all what you’d expect from a girl named Faith.
Not a girl.
A woman.
A woman named Briana. I’ve changed my name. I’m Briana now.
By the time we started our freshman year at Trump High, Prudence Miller was the unquestioned leader of all us girls. It wasn’t because her family had founded Millersville generations back, before the factory farms Tipped. It wasn’t even because her father was the preacher at First Evangelical Church of Christ. It was because every girl in town wanted to be like Prudence.
Like when we were in second grade, and Prudence decided red gingham would be flash. I was the only person in our entire school who knew Prudence’s mother had run out of pocket money and had to sew spring clothes out of her old kitchen curtains. After that, though, Old Man Sutton couldn’t keep gingham in stock at the General Store.
In fifth grade, Prudence decided school lunches were flash, too. Government cheese and dry crackers were perfect reminders of Christ’s last supper with His apostles. She turned every twenty-five minute lunch period into a prayer service, starting off with grace and ending with a Bible verse. Every girl in town was ashamed to show up with apples, with cookies, with anything that smacked of showing off.
In seventh grade, Prudence created the Brides of Christ. I was the first Bride she chose, the first to swear the secret oath. That’s because Prudence and I had been best friends since kindergarten, ever since she knocked over my tower of wooden blocks and hit me on the head with one. I knew all her secrets.
I knew she’d stolen Baby Jesus from the living crèche outside First Evangelical, sneaking out after midnight when she was eight years old. I knew she’d torn out two rows of hated crookneck squash from her mother’s garden and then blamed the destruction on her brother Ezekiel’s driving. I knew she’d cheated on the last history test of junior high, copying the date of Noah’s flood off Charity Cutler’s paper.
So, Prudence let me be the first Bride of Christ. Together, we set the rules for all our sisters.
A Bride must be pure of body. Of course every girl in Millersville took the Abstinence Oath.
But our requirement went further. A Bride couldn’t kiss a boy, not until she was married. Hope Wilson was kicked out of the Brides when she kissed Adam Harper’s sprained wrist, pretending she could “make it better.”
A Bride had to be pure of thought, as well. We’d all memorized hundreds of Bible verses. We could pass notes in class, just by citing chapter and verse. Hebrews 12:11 meant “I know you can stay awake tonight, cramming for your Exceptionalism test.” Mark 5:34 meant “Yikes! I hope your cramps aren’t too bad.”
Most importantly, though, a Bride needed to keep secrets. We initiated new Brides every Christmas Eve. Over the years, we’d perfected the ceremony—we’d sneak out of our homes and meet at the living crèche, at the very stroke of midnight, after Mary and Joseph and all the wise men and shepherds had found their way home.
Each new Bride knelt beside the cradle in the very center of the manger. Over the frozen doll of Baby Jesus (long since returned by Prudence), our new sister in Christ told us her greatest secret, the most shameful thing she’d ever done.
If the secret wasn’t shameful enough, Prudence pushed for more. We learned about hidden crushes, about a secret stash of romance novels hidden under a mattress, about cousins who’d once kissed on the lips.
But if the secret was too disgusting, Prudence denied membership. Temperance Marsh told us she was helping her sister murder an unborn baby. Temperance had gathered wild carrot, digging roots out of the frozen ground. She was praying with her sister every night, asking Christ Jesus to take the unborn innocent into his arms.
Prudence declared that Temperance was too wicked to be a Bride. By sunset on Christmas Day, everyone in Millersville knew exactly what Temperance had done. She never came back to school, just stayed at home, babysitting her crazy old grandfather. And her sister disappeared. No one knows where Constance went.
I sat next to a Bride in every class except Home Science. It was simple bad luck that I’d ended up with third period Home Sci. All the other Brides were in fourth period, after lunch.
It was a little scary to sit in the classroom by myself. Well, not by myself. There were nineteen other girls in the room. But all of them were ordinary. All of them were boring. If they had secrets, I didn’t know. I didn’t care.