Read Lovely in Her Bones Online
Authors: Sharyn McCrumb
Lovely in Her Bones (7 page)
The room was unusually quiet. He had them now.
“Now, nobody knows anything about those first Indians. Not their name, their language—nothing. The only traces of them are some bits of pottery made of limestone and crushed quartz. Anthropologists have divided up the Southeast into different regions according to the tribes which occupied them. This area is Zone Six, and these people are known simply as the Zone Six people because nobody knows what else to call them. They are a complete mystery.” He paused for effect. “I think you might be what’s left of them.”
Elizabeth thought that the cheering and applause might have gone on for half an hour, but for the quelling effect of a late arrival. Like the bad fairy at the christening, she later described it. She had been wondering how to waylay Comfrey Stecoah after the meeting to ask about Amelanchier, when the sudden silence brought her back to the present. All heads were turned to the doorway, where a wiry little man in gray work clothes stood scowling at them. Although he was not particularly large or powerful looking, the man’s malevolence chilled the room.
“I reckon anybody can address this prayer meeting,” he remarked to no one in particular. He looked around as if waiting for a challenge, but received none. “Don’t nobody bother to give me the minutes of the meeting, because I know what’s going on. The people of this valley stand to make good money by cooperating with the mining company—and there’s going to be jobs, too! But prosperity wouldn’t suit certain people.” He looked meaningfully at Comfrey.
“Guess some people think poor folks is easier to boss around. And they’re willing to do some mighty ugly things to get their way.” He pointed at Lerche, who looked confused and embarrassed. “Now I don’t know what kind of Indian curse will befall those who do not respect the graves of our ancestors, and I don’t know what the penalty for grave robbing is in this state, but I aim to find out. And in the meantime, I advise you outlanders to remember the Moonshine Massacre. We don’t take kindly to meddlers up here, no sir.”
As he turned to leave, he walked past the table where the slide projector was set up for use later in the lecture. Before anyone could stop him, he had stumbled—or lunged—into the table, sending the machine crashing to the floor. With that he was gone.
Elizabeth saw that the stout woman who planted love vines was seated in the row behind her. “Shouldn’t somebody call the sheriff?” Elizabeth whispered.
The woman shrugged. “He’s in Laurel Cove. All we got up here is a deputy.”
“Well, couldn’t you call him?”
The woman permitted herself a grim smile. “Honey, you was just a-looking at him.”
Dear Bill,
They can’t arrest archaeologists for graverobbing, can they? Could you check your law books and get back to me on this?
Ditchdigger’s hands may be the least of my problems on this dig. Night before last some guy named Bevel Harkness crashed Dr. Lerche’s lecture (and his slide projector) and threatened us for interfering in this land business. Mr. Stecoah told Dr. Lerche that this Harkness guy owns property next to the land the mining company wants, and he thinks he can sell out to them and make a fortune. You should see him. He’d make your skin crawl. To top it all off, he’s the deputy sheriff for this part of the county! I thought the deputy would be Mr. Stecoah, if anybody; but it turns out that he’s only been back from the service a couple of years (career Army), and Harkness’ term doesn’t run out for another year. They’re in some sort of power struggle for tribal leadership, I guess. The Stecoahs are respected because of Amelanchier (I was right about Comfrey; he’s her son!), and the Harknesses’ claim to fame is the Moonshine Massacre. (I’m coming to that.)
We’re settled into an old wooden church near the gravesite, and there are six of us staying here: me; Milo (who is so businesslike you wouldn’t recognize him); Dr. Lerche and his other grad student, Mary Clare (there may be something between them; I’m not sure yet—I
know
it’s none of my business; shut up); and two undergrads, Victor
Bassington and Jake Adair. Victor is a creep who does nothing but brag about how much money his family has, how important his father-the-diplomat is, and what an expert
he
is because he worked on a dig in England when his father was stationed there. He is
so
boring! We fight not to have to sit next to him at meals. Jake, the other guy, is all right. He’s from Swain County, North Carolina, and he doesn’t talk about himself, which is a welcome change from Victor, but he knows a lot about this area. Last night he told us some mountain ghost stories and about the Moonshine Massacre. (I’ve written that up separately so I can keep a copy in case I take another folklore course. It’s enclosed.)
I haven’t had time to see Amelanchier yet, but Mr. Stecoah said it would be all right to visit her after work sometime. Maybe I’ll go this afternoon, since it isn’t my turn to do supper today.
We haven’t made any discoveries yet, unless you count the sore muscles we didn’t know we had. The first few days of an excavation consist of shoveling off topsoil and sifting it through a screen to check for bones, arrowheads, etc. When we get to the graves, my job will be to measure the skulls. Dr. Lerche taught me how on a lab specimen he brought, but he says it’s tricky and he’ll double-check my work. I haven’t seen much of him or Milo. They’ve hooked up a microcomputer in a motel room in Laurel Cove, and they’ve spent most of their days tinkering with it while I’m out in the hot graveyard listening to Victor pontificate and Mary Clare run on about how wonderful Dr. Lerche is. I’m looking forward to the skulls. At least they won’t talk all the time.
Martyred in the Name of Science,
Elizabeth
The Cullowhee Indians of Sarvice Valley had never been a particularly law-abiding group, and they were known for moonshining. Because of the prejudice against Indians in those days, the deputy sheriff in charge of Sarvice Valley was never a Cullowhee, but always a local resident appointed by the county sheriff. This practice changed after the Moonshine Massacre of 1953.
The deputy sheriff at that time was a Korean War veteran, just back from overseas. One afternoon he was driving down one of the dirt roads in Sarvice Valley and he passed a weathered old mountain graveyard. Two miles down the road, the deputy realized why the image of that graveyard was still stuck in his mind: it hadn’t been there before he went off to war. When he went back to investigate, he found that none of the names on those old stones were familiar to him either. Suddenly he noticed convection currents coming from a fencepost beside the cemetery. A few minutes’ examination revealed the secret of the old graveyard: it was an elaborate cover for a moonshine operation. One enterprising Cullowhee had gone north with his truck (probably on a moonshine run) and had seen an old cemetery being broken up for a building project. He’d bought a truckload of old tombstones and set them up on a hillside in Sarvice Valley on top of an underground distillery. The vent pipe was disguised as a fencepost. Unfortunately, the deputy did not live long enough to report his discovery.
The moonshiner saw him sneaking around the graveyard and shot him in the back.
When the deputy did not report back to the sheriff’s department, searchers were sent out to look for him, and they didn’t come back either. The moonshiner had decided that the best way to have a convincing cemetery was to provide a body for each tombstone. He buried the deputy under one of the headstones and was looking forward to furnishing the rest of the graves with likely passersby. This exercise in verisimilitude was finally halted by the Cullowhees themselves. The sheriff had called off the investigation due to lack of volunteers for further search parties, when a member of the Harkness family showed up in Laurel Cove and volunteered to bring the moonshiner to justice in exchange for the job of deputy. Harkness later claimed that his reason for doing so was the fact that the next grave to be filled was that of a small child, and he was afraid that the moonshiner might be a stickler for accuracy. Some of the Cullowhees claim that the Harkness’ tendency to bully people was also a factor in their desire to become the law in Sarvice Valley.
After that the deputy job stayed in the Harkness family until 1972, when an obstinate sheriff insisted on appointing his nephew as the deputy of Sarvice Valley. Two weeks later the nephew disappeared and was never found. The Harkness family resumed the job and has kept it to the present day.
“Here’s another skull for you, Elizabeth,” said Jake, adding a carefully tagged specimen to the wooden crate in front of her. The rest of the remains were placed in separate cardboard boxes to be reburied later when the study had been completed.
The tag ensured that the skull would be reunited with the correct set of bones.
“I don’t suppose it could be Victor’s,” grumbled Elizabeth, setting down the one she had been measuring.
Jake laughed. “What’s he done now?”
“The usual. We were talking about folk medicine, and he said that his great-grandfather invented penicillin in the 1880s but never bothered to market it.”
“Well … it
could
be true.”
“Oh, sure, it could. And Princess Diana might have babysat for his little brother; and he might have had a dream about a body walled up in a church tower and told the authorities about it, and they investigated and found one—”
“He said that?”
“He did. He says he has the pictures at home to prove it. They’re in the same album with the snapshots of his white pony with the horn in its forehead.”
“Old Victor has had an interesting life, hasn’t he?” smiled Jake.
“Probably not. I expect he’s had exactly the sort of life he looks like he’s had. He’s an overweight nerd with no particular talent who wants to be the center of attention, so he’s trying to be as interesting as possible. Instead of getting mad at him, I should feel sorry for him. But he is so exasperating!”
“I know. You can’t catch him in a lie. He once told me that Geronimo was Chief of the Seminoles, and I told him he was crazy. Finally I went to the library and photocopied the encyclopedia entry that said Geronimo was an Apache.”
“How could he argue with that?”
“I made the mistake of letting him read the article. It said that after the U.S. Cavalry captured Geronimo, he was imprisoned in Florida. Victor swore that the Seminoles made him an honorary
chieftain then. He claimed to have a book that said so.”
“At home, of course.”
“Of course. Naturally, he couldn’t come up with the title or author. I know what you mean about him. I wanted to strangle him that time. But you’ll get used to him. Pretty soon you won’t believe a word he says, and it won’t bother you at all.”
“Shh! Here he comes.”
Victor Bassington, blissfully unaware that he had been the topic of discussion, waddled up to Jake and Elizabeth for no apparent reason other than the possibility of hijacking a conversation. His round face had the look of damp cheese, and his squinting in the sunlight made him look even more piggy than usual. “Jake, is it your turn to cook tonight? I wanted to remind you that I’m allergic to onions.”
“I’m not likely to forget,” sighed Jake.
“I may also be coming down with sun poisoning,” Victor announced with mournful satisfaction. “Since Dr. Lerche has pitched a tent up here to store the finds in, and since he isn’t around to use it himself, maybe he’d let me work in it.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I were you,” Jake advised him. “Mary Clare’s the site manager, and you know how she feels about delicate fieldworkers.”
“She really is most unsympathetic. In England, when I worked with Heinrich Schliemann—”
“Ah-ha!” yelled Jake, pointing his finger disconcertingly close to Victor’s nose. “Heinrich Schliemann died in 1890. I’ve
got
you!”
Victor blinked innocently at the finger. “Of course he did, Jake. I was going to say Heinrich Schliemann III, who is with the Royal Archaeological Society. Very nice fellow. But you may be right about Miss Gitlin. I suppose I’ll have to brave it out until I drop.” Mopping his forehead with a rumpled white handkerchief, he ambled off in the direction of the water jug.
Jake was grinding his teeth. “Now, I
know
there is no Heinrich Schliemann III in the Royal Archaeological Society, but in order to prove it, I’d have to find a
Dictionary of National Biography
or a membership list, and by the time I’m in a position to do that, I’ll have forgotten the whole argument, or else he’ll swear he didn’t say it.”
“I thought it didn’t bother you any more,” said Elizabeth in a carefully neutral tone.
“I was plainly mistaken,” snapped Jake. “Someday, somehow, Victor Bassington is going to play Mr. Know-It-All to the wrong person, and he’s going to get nailed to the wall with the facts. I just hope I’m there to lead the cheers.”
“Good luck,” smiled Elizabeth. “By the way, I may be late for supper tonight. I’m going to see Amelanchier after work. What are you cooking anyway?”
“I don’t know, but there’ll be onions in it; I promise you that.” Jake picked up his trowel and headed back to the trenches.
Despite the painstaking precautions taken to filter the soil and check for unexpected finds, the work at the gravesite had gone unusually well. The four daytime volunteers were diligent workers who made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in experience. By the beginning of the third day, the site tent contained several boxes to be analyzed by Dr. Lerche, and Elizabeth had been able to practice her measuring techniques on eight new skulls. She was not convinced that her results were accurate, but her skill in using the instruments increased as she became accustomed to working with the grisly objects.
Elizabeth examined the latest acquisition—missing quite a few teeth for one as young as the cranial lines indicated—and decided that it was too late in the day to begin another measurement. This one could wait until morning. Perhaps by then Dr. Lerche would have finished his computer work and could double-check her original findings. If she hurried,
she would have time to find Amelanchier and get acquainted before supper, leaving the rest of the evening free to spend with Milo.