Artifacts (18 page)
It was full dark when Faye awoke, lying on her bed, shirt sweaty, pants bloody, boots sandy. Her leg throbbed. If her memory could be relied upon, she’d gotten home sometime mid-afternoon, secured the boat, and hauled herself up two flights of stairs before collapsing into bed. She was hungry, dehydrated, and too depressed to appreciate how lucky she was to be alive.
If word of her black-market activities ever got out, she’d take the rap for everything those pothunting thieves had done to Water Island. She would lose her home, for sure. She’d go to jail, too, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part would be knowing that people thought she was guilty, that she’d looted a site that might have yielded knowledge about the very first Americans. People would believe that she desecrated the past for money. People would think she was lower than dirt.
Wishing for a bit of the adrenaline that had powered her escape, she raised her carcass up out of the bed and lit the lantern. Her watch claimed that midnight was approaching. Slowly peeling off her rank clothing, she checked herself out. Some part of her had been bleeding and it might be an important part.
Faye’s right leg was indeed important; she was attached to it. Three purple-black blotches and a not-insignificant cut, small but deep, decorated her thigh. Several flying pieces of the water pump must have struck her when the sniper shot it to bits. There was no money in her budget for medical treatment, so she found her first-aid kit in the dark.
Wet-wipes took off most of the blood. She couldn’t think of anything to do for the laceration except treat it with an antiseptic. It was good that Joe was in bed, because she could just hear him saying, “She’s treating a puncture wound with Bactine. And they call me stupid.”
Using about twenty wet-wipes, she gave herself a spit bath, then put on a clean nightgown and fell back into bed. Bone-tired, but not sleepy, she could feel every speck of sand her filthy body had deposited on the sheets, so she got back up and fetched some clean linens. Still not sleepy after re-making her bed, she reached for the journal. Faye had nobody living and breathing to keep her company, but at least she had Mariah Whitehall LaFourche.
***
Journal entry by Mariah LaFourche, recorded 15 May, 1832
I am fifty years old today. It seems a proper time to assess my life. The journey from my childhood home to this island is the only journey I have ever made. My human associations have been limited to my parents, assorted traders, my son, his wife, his slaves, the rich planters in his social circle and, finally, the father of my only child.
My father was never able to pronounce the name of Henri LaFourche in a sentence that did not also include the term “blackguard”. This is almost fair, but not quite. My father was aware that I have always been hardheaded. I would not have yielded unwillingly to Henri. I was a strong, sturdy girl brought up in a wilderness; he could only have taken me by the most brutal force, and this was not the case. His dishonor lay only in his willingness to let me think he cared.
Henri’s blood and his dishonor both run true in his son. Andrew showed his character long ago when he chose to keep slaves, but he shows the cruelty of his heart every day in the treatment of his wife. I do not know Carole well. She has, probably wisely, cleaved completely to Andrew. Befriending me would suggest that she was choosing my side in my constant disagreements with Andrew.
Still, I have eyes. I see that she is in every way the gracious lady that she was reared to be. Her grooming is impeccable, whether she is greeting guests or tending a slave dying of pellagra. I have never heard her raise her voice, not even when Andrew insults her in the presence of others, as he is wont to do. She lowers her eyes in the face of his spite, but her head is high and her back is straight.
He treats her so because she has not borne him children and, as men will, he assumes that the fault is hers. I grieve with her. I have reached an age at which I would treasure grandchildren, but it is not to be.
Journal entry by Mariah LaFourche, recorded 25 December, 1834
It is Christmas Day and my son has paid me a dutiful visit. To be fair, I should admit that his visit is more than dutiful. I do believe he loves me. Alas, this love is the only tender spot in an increasingly calloused heart and I do nothing to heal those callouses when I reject the largesse his riches allow him to bestow. But how can I do otherwise when his gift is a human soul?
Andrew stood there, holding a young mulatto woman by the hand. Plainly written across his face was a naked desire for me to spread my blessing over his sin. I had never seen such untrammeled rage as he displayed when I rejected his gift. He wheeled around and fairly jerked the girl off her feet. Fearing that he would break her arm, I called for him to stop. “Give me the girl,” I said. “I will take her.”
I stood between them. I believe she would have crouched down and covered herself in my skirts if her dignity would have allowed it. I asked her name. Her quavering voice was clear enough, but she said only, “Julia.”
“Julia,” I said, “you belong to me now. I set you free.”
It is a perverse tribute to my son’s love for me that he did not strike me. He merely bellowed, “She is yours to use as you like, but she is not yours to free. You know that, Mother,” and walked out of my home. The Christmas sun shone on the golden curls that still tumble down his neck like they did when he was my little boy.
Journal entry by Mariah LaFourche, recorded 3 February, 1840
I know now why Julia has had so little to say over these past months. A woman’s moods are not predictable when she is with child, particularly if the father is absent. After all these years I remember that. I would have shared Julia’s heartache, but she would not even tell me the man’s name. Andrew owns so many slaves now that I could not begin to guess the culprit.
I was greatly saddened by Julia’s mental state, because her companionship has been a treasure since Andrew had the audacity to give her to me. Julia and I quickly dispensed with the nonsense of ownership. Somewhere there exists a paper giving Andrew absolute power over her existence, but my position as his mother shields her from this, or so I thought.
In our fantasy life here in my cabin, we are two women of independent means, free to live as we choose. We do up the housework together and if Julia, with her younger body, has found that her share of the burden was heavier, well, I hope she has found the learning I give her to be appropriate recompense. Her reading is improving apace and, though she is not yet ready to begin reading French, she speaks it quite prettily.
I looked forward to the birth of Julia’s child, because I felt assured that she would be herself again once the necessities of maternity were behind her. And yes, I longed to hold a sweet-smelling infant again. My son is more than forty years old and I have been too long without a baby to love. I caught Julia’s daughter with my own hands today, cut the cord, wiped her squalling face, and I knew. In the curve of Cally’s cheek and the shape of her tiny hands, it was clear that Andrew had at last given me the grandchild I have so long desired.
It would be no easy Thursday morning task to find Faye—she was a very bright woman and she didn’t want to be found—but Magda had made a career of finding things. She flipped thoughtfully through the archaic filing system in the departmental library, an activity that was perversely appropriate. Archaeology was by etymology the study of the archaic, now, wasn’t it? No quick computer search would answer her questions, but Magda had always found value in the kind of slow, mindless research that freed the mind to ponder more important things.
This was the wisdom of a woman who had done her time shoveling sand and sifting it for tiny clues. She had learned never to waste the minutes spent waiting for sand to fall through a fine screen. At such times, the mind opens wide like a loom opening to receive the next thread. Intuition is released and it can no more be crushed back into its home than Pandora’s troubles can be replaced in her box.
Faye dropped Abby’s necklace into a jar of dilute formic acid, hoping it would soak clean without too much rubbing. She’d hate to scrub off a layer of silver with the dirt. Douglass’ father’s pocket watch hadn’t cleaned up easily, either. Maybe a visit to the library would enhance her jewelry restoration skills and she’d have better luck, or then again, the watch might already be as clean as it would ever get. After thirty-something years underground, dark and pitted corrosion might now be its natural state.
She filled a bucket with gloves, a hand trowel, a small sieve, and assorted dental picks and paintbrushes. She hadn’t earned a cent in days and, while her leg throbbed and she felt awful all over, she couldn’t afford to take the day off. Digging for the jackpot, the choice artifact she could sell for big bucks, was her only hope to avoid bankruptcy. Every turn of her spade was like entering the lottery and, on days like today when she couldn’t get to her regular hunting grounds, she liked to buy lottery tickets in her own back yard.
There was no question that Joyeuse was well picked over. She’d found the old privies and retrieved all manner of goodies from them: broken bottles, whiskey flasks, even an unbroken tobacco pipe she imagined someone dropping as he buttoned his drawers.
Years before, Faye had stood at the back doors of the house, and the kitchen, and on the foundations of the slave cabins, and tossed a collection of cans, bottles, and apple cores into the woods. She marked the spots where they landed—the most likely spots for refuse pits—and spent an entire summer digging up Joyeuse’s trash piles.
Despite the work she’d done in the past, there was still digging to be done on her island. Today, she planned to check out a shallow depression in front of the house where the gardens had once been. It might be the remains of a fish pond. It might even be the site of the old spring, the one her grandmother had heard about but never seen.
Either way, she would bet money on finding something there. In the days before weekly trash pickup, people were always looking for places to throw their refuse. A hole in the ground, a pond, a latrine seat—any of these places would be attractive to a litterbug looking to do some littering or to someone with a treasure to hide.
Every time Faye dug into a damp hole in the ground, she remembered her grandmother saying that Cally sank the family valuables in a water hole somewhere on Joyeuse to save them from the Yankees, then never found them again. This would be an excellent time for such a treasure to turn up.
Faye decided to treasure-hunt until noon, then quit for the day. Cyril was taking her to The Pirate’s Lair tonight and, given her current bedraggled state, it would take all afternoon to make herself presentable.
Magda reviewed the list of titles that Faye had checked out in the decade since she had left school, paying particular attention to the interlibrary loans she had requested, because they were evidence of information she needed most. Most titles were predictable. Faye had read dozens of books on Native American cultures of the southeastern United States. She had also showed a distinct interest in archaeology conducted on old plantations, particularly in areas occupied by slaves.
An interesting and less predictable subset of her reading was in architectural preservation, actual how-to-do-it guides on the restoration of antique wallpaper and murals. Faye had researched methods for cleaning painted woodwork. She had even tracked down formulas for authentic paints and varnishes.
What in the world was she up to? No, that was the wrong question. The answer was obvious. Faye was attempting a do-it-yourself project of Biblical proportions.
Then what was the right question? Where was she working or, more specifically, where was the unrestored house that Faye was tackling by herself? Magda cackled, a habit she saved for times when she was alone, because she didn’t like to reinforce her students’ perception of her as an old hag. Far down the list of Faye’s interlibrary requests, borrowed so recently that she had probably returned it on her last visit, was the book title that would give her Faye’s home address.
Magda jumped up and hurried to the stacks. She didn’t need the book to reach the next conclusion. She was just a bibliophile who wanted to hold this one in her own hands.
The book’s loose binding spoke of years spent on a library shelf, jammed between other volumes on equally specialized topics. Knowing that the audience for this book was small but dedicated, its publisher hadn’t wasted money on expensive cover art. People who needed this volume would not be seduced by a jazzy book jacket.
The cover read
Architecture of Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Tabby Dwellings
. It wasn’t an exciting title, but it told Magda what she needed to know.
Cyril returned to the legal briefs. The story of Faye’s great-grandmother fighting for her land fascinated him. His life was bound up in the coastal area around the Last Isles, yet he never knew about this travesty. And the tiny little woman who took her losing battle to the newspapers was his key to understanding Faye—her reticence, her self-reliance, and her pain.
A random line jumped off the newsprint. “Mrs. Courtney Stanton Wells still owns and maintains her lifelong residence on Joyeuse Island. Ownership of Joyeuse is not in question.”
There was no way on God’s green earth that the descendants of a woman like Courtney Stanton Wells would let that land go. He would have his people check the property assessor’s records, but he knew what they would read. Faye still owned Joyeuse. She had to. It was so useful to know the secret things that drove a person, especially a person you hoped to know very, very well.
Liz didn’t like Wally’s friend Nguyen, not even a little bit. Wally had a long list of crooked friends and, generally, they were charming people. Up to a point. They rolled into the marina and fastened their “please, like me” smiles on Liz. They admired her biscuits. They flattered her pretty red hair—which was dyed, for God’s sake, and they knew it—and flirted until Wally appeared, then they forgot that she existed while they convened with Wally to discuss mysterious things in urgent whispers.
Nguyen was different. He had drawn Wally into many a corner booth for many an urgent conversation, but he had never once acknowledged that Liz was a human being who would appreciate at least a “Good morning.” She knew he was a diver, because he always brought air tanks for Wally to fill, and she knew that he and Wally were up to something, because Wally never charged him for the refill. In fact, even if she’d never seen him near a tank, she’d still have known he was a diver by the way he walked, like he was wearing flippers. Something in the look of his motionless black eyes made her wonder whether Wally was stingy with the oxygen when he filled Nguyen’s tanks.
Today was an extraordinarily unpleasant day in the marina, not just because Nguyen was visiting, but because about twenty hungover teenagers were sitting in her grill having their breakfast at noontime. The residual alcohol in their bloodstreams left them both loud and obnoxious.
“Sure there’s a Wild Man. My cousin Bill saw him when we were kids,” said a young blonde man perched at the bar.
“Well, my granddaddy says
his
daddy saw him when he was a kid. How old could this Wild Man be?” came the rejoinder from a young woman with the face of someone not to be messed with.
“I hear he’s probably about seventy by now,” the blonde at the bar replied. “They say a young mother took her twin boys for a walk in the woods near here and didn’t get home before sundown. They were little, maybe two or three, and got too tired to walk, but she was too afraid of gators to stop and rest. So she’d carry one a ways, set him down, then go back up the path and get the other one, figuring she’d just leapfrog her way home.”
“I’ve heard this,” interrupted a young woman in a Sopchoppy High School T-shirt. “One time, she went back for the boy left behind and he wasn’t there. Before the week was out, everybody in these parts had stomped through the swamp looking for the poor lost boy.”
Liz sighed. This tale had been the catalyst for way too many drunken forays into snake- and gator-infested territory.
The blonde guy regained control of his story. “But they didn’t find him. Not that day. Not till twenty years later, when the lost boy’s twin brother went bear hunting and found himself face-to-face with him. He was naked and his hair hung down past his butt and his fingernails and toenails looked like bear claws, but the two men had the same face. Every hunter there saw it. Then the Wild Man followed two black bears into the woods.”
“They say the bears raised him,” came a voice from the corner. It was Nguyen’s. “I’ve never seen him, but I’ve seen his tracks.”
Wally looked at the man standing at his elbow as if he’d said the sun was blue. Nguyen’s black eyes were cool and they said quite clearly that he didn’t care what Wally or anybody else thought. He repeated, “I saw his tracks, just last year.”
Nguyen scanned the kids’ faces. “Aren’t you folks about the same age as those kids that were shot last week? I’ve been wondering. Reckon the Wild Man can shoot?”
His question drew no response, so he continued speaking in his oddly deliberate way. “The Wild Man’s tracks looked ordinary, like the footprints of a good-sized man, except you could see where his claws cut into the soil. Gave me the willies.”