Artifacts (3 page)
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Excerpt from the journal of William Whitehall, 15 May, 1782
My Woman—that is to say my Wife, for we are as Married as two people can be in the absence of proper Clergy—demonstrated true courage today, whilst I cower’d in the meadow alone, except for my pipe & my tobacco. After the hard labour of the day had been done by others, I stood—hat in hand—outside my own home and humbly begged permission to enter in. The Creek midwife acknowledged my presence with a bare nod, as is her way, and I stumbled into a house of miracles. As I thanked the Almighty for this hale and healthy Child, that most precious of gifts, the Sun lay lightly on my Susan’s flush’d cheeks, and she lifted the Infant toward me so gently, so slightly, that the motion was hardly visible. I seized the invitation & I seized the child. “A girl,” my Susan murmur’d. I would have known the Baby was female merely by the shape of her dainty face.
I search’d that face, endeavouring to assess the shape of the eyes, the colour of the skin, tho’ unaware that I did it. Then Susan, who has attended the births of Creeks and of Whites and of Half-breeds like herself, said, “All Babies look the same, puffy and red. After a time, you will see whether she looks like you or like me, but you will have to wait.” She looked strait in my eyes & I was shamed.
The original roof on the big house at Joyeuse was made of slate, but it had been replaced with tin when Faye’s grandmother was a girl. The patter of raindrops on tin was loud enough to disrupt conversation, but Faye lived alone, in silence. She found the chattering noise companionable, especially on nights like this when she couldn’t sleep. It drowned the voice of the dead woman whose earring rested on a rafter in the cupola, high above her. It overpowered the melancholy voice of William Whitehall. And, if she put some effort into it, she could let the calming raindrops cover the voice of her conscience, which was aghast at the ethical boundaries she had violated.
The sound of the rain lulled her asleep so slowly that when she awoke to a cloudless morning, she was shocked to find that she had slept at all.
“I guess we were more tired than we thought last night, Sam,” said the red-haired girl. “We’d better pull this last row of flags up and start over. Everything needs to be right when Dr. Stockard and the rest of the crew get here.”
The boy regarded the long row. “Damn, Krista. Before breakfast?”
She grunted and he set to work.
Slack, lazy workers wouldn’t have gotten up at dawn and they wouldn’t have noticed that the surveying flags weren’t quite where they were supposed to be. Suspicious people, on the other hand, might have wondered how the flags could now be misplaced when they had been so certain of their measurements the night before.
Their diligence and their accuracy and their naiveté were their undoing. The young woman slid the last flag into the exact place it had stood the day before under the ancient oak.
The young man approached with a shovel. “Let’s get started now, while it’s still cool.”
His shovel hovered over the sandy soil, preparing to uproot something better left undisturbed. The vulgar noise of gunfire shocked the silent island and both budding archaeologists dropped to the dirt.
Faye was eating her usual Wednesday morning breakfast, a peanut butter and honey sandwich. Life at Joyeuse was a lot like camping. Refrigeration was a continual problem, so cereal and milk were out. Also, bacon and eggs.
Joe cooked supper every night, and he’d been known to flip a Saturday morning pancake, but the rest of her meals were peanut-based. Fortunately, Faye rather liked peanut butter. She’d been awake since sunup, but since it came early in August, she could linger over breakfast and still be at work by eight. Joe occasionally lingered with her, but early morning was prime fishing time. Usually she breakfasted alone and she didn’t mind. Fried fish for supper was worth it.
On her way to the inlet that sheltered their boats, she met Joe, who proudly brandished a full stringer of fish. “I’ll have these cleaned and in the ice chest, waiting for you until you get back.”
Faye cranked the motor on her mullet skiff, opened the throttle, and pointed the craft toward Seagreen Island. The island, usually occupied only by Magda’s archaeology crew, was a three-ring circus when she arrived. Some of the excess people were obviously reporters with their camera crews. Faye guessed that the others were campaign personnel and political hangers-on. All their attention was fastened on a man surrounded by television cameras and holding one hell of a press conference.
“Seagreen Island is pristine. There are precious few unspoiled spots on Earth and, when they are gone, there will be no more. Florida doesn’t need another resort.” State Senator Cyril Kirby spoke eloquently for one so recently drawn to the environmental movement. In his years in the legislature, he had supported his land development backers to the hilt. There was a time when it could be said that Cyril Kirby had never met a swamp he didn’t want to drain.
“Let south Florida bury itself under pavement and strip malls,” he continued. “We here in the Panhandle understand quality-of-life issues. Saving Seagreen Island will be an uphill battle against shadowy figures and their bulging bankbooks, but we must fight it. If we do not concede defeat, we can have this idyllic spot annexed into the national wildlife refuge, where it will be protected forever.”
Senator Kirby delivered this ringing challenge directly into the maws of the television cameras belonging to three local broadcast channels. He had not even announced his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives and already he looked to Faye like a politician that plenty of voters could get behind. Time would tell, but his recent reversal on environmental issues might prove to be his shrewdest move yet, except maybe for recruiting Douglass Everett as a major campaign contributor.
Faye noticed that Everett was carefully positioned just inside the perimeter of the cameras’ range. Senator Kirby was the star, but nobody could mistake the power of the man in the wings. Douglass Everett was the most influential African American in north Florida. He had accomplished much in his life, but then a man who managed to finish high school while helping his daddy sharecrop a few acres of sand is no stranger to accomplishment.
Douglass Everett owned a lucrative construction business, but he never forgot his roots. He was a deacon in his church. He provided sole funding for a homeless shelter. He had the black vote in his hip pocket and he was a handy man for any politician to have around. Faye noticed that Senator Kirby never missed an opportunity to share a camera with Everett.
Their mutual admiration society had kept local movers-and-shakers scratching their heads for years. Whatever their original motivations, the two gentlemen had both benefited from their relationship. Everett, who started life with exactly nothing, had amassed considerable wealth through state contracts. Kirby, an upwardly mobile redneck who was now a viable candidate for Congress, could count on his friend to deliver the black vote, no matter what. Their opposition to the resort on Seagreen Island was getting them media exposure worth more than all the paid political announcements that mere money could buy.
Faye leaned against a tree to watch a seasoned campaigner perform. Douglass Everett tried to catch her eye. She ignored him, even though he was her best customer. Rather, she ignored him
because
he was her best customer. Some of her best finds were on display at his privately owned Museum of American Slavery; he was willing to acquire unprovenanced artifacts with shady histories and he was willing to pay well. Her chronic need for money meant that she needed to talk to him soon—this week, actually—but that conversation would have to wait. This was no place to talk about the things they needed to discuss.
Faye was idly watching the cameramen dismantle their equipment when she saw Dr. Magda Stockard approaching at great speed for someone with such short legs. Faye steeled herself. It was early in the day to be chewed out for lollygagging.
The older woman’s words caught Faye off guard. They were not, “Get your sorry self to work!” Instead, she said, “Sam and Krista aren’t here,” in a tone that made Faye feel as if she should do something about it.
“Settle down, Magda. I’m sure they’ll show up.” Faye spoke quietly to avoid being overheard by her fellow workers or the television crews packing up their equipment. “They’re usually so responsible that we forget they’re just kids. Maybe they overslept.”
“Just because it’s early in the morning is no excuse for being stupid, Faye. If they overslept, then they’d be here. They slept here last night, remember?”
“Well, they were supposed to.” Faye made an effort to add something intelligent to the discussion and came up with, “Is their camping gear here?”
“Yes, and their sleeping bags were obviously slept in. Everything’s here but Sam, Krista, and the small workboat.”
“Well, then, there you have it. They got up early and decided to boat in for breakfast at Wally’s. They’re undergrads, not even old enough to buy a legal beer. Wasting an hour for a stack of bad pancakes probably sounded like an adventure to them. Come to think of it, Wally would sell them a beer to wash their breakfast down.”
Dr. Stockard picked at a ragged hangnail and said, “Yeah. Sounds plausible. Or maybe Sam finally decided to put the move on Krista.”
Faye laughed. “Sam’s scared of Krista. And it hurts his dignity that her biceps are bigger than his. But you have a point. Maybe they are right this minute sharing an intimate morning-after breakfast.”
“Over a bad stack of pancakes.” Magda’s short bark of a laugh erupted once. “Okay, you’re right. I’ll drop my mother hen routine—although it’s my most ladylike side—and go back to being a slavedriver. Get to work.”
Faye found the area around the equipment shed filled elbow-to-elbow with student archaeologists gathering machetes, wheelbarrows, dustpans, trowels, brushes, dental picks—whatever it took to complete their assigned task for the day. The disarray drove Faye to distraction. She moved among them, helping this one arrange her tools in a plastic storage box, checking that one’s field notebook to make sure he understood his assignment. She was an entry-level, minimum-wage employee like the others and, like them, she had completed less than four years of undergraduate study, but she was ten years older than any of them and advanced age gave her words the hard glint of authority.
As she organized her team for the day, Faye kept one eye on Senator Kirby and his ever-present friend, Douglass Everett. She had known Douglass for years, but Senator Kirby was an unknown quantity and she needed to learn more about him. Like so many politicians, the senator was tall and tan and his facial features were bold. Telegenic people are easier to elect than ordinary folk. It was startling to see him here, when she had an appointment that very Friday to meet with him in his Tallahassee office. If she hadn’t already waited weeks for the appointment, she would have strode right over to him and, as a taxpayer and a voter, requested a few minutes of his time. Considering her appearance—olive-drab twill shirt, baggy khakis, ratty boots, shiny-bare face—it seemed wiser to wait until she looked older than twelve. He would take her more seriously when she was dressed like a thirty-four-year-old upstanding taxpayer. Not that she ever paid any tax she could avoid.
Keeping the senator in her peripheral vision, Faye herded her team toward their day’s work. Most of her field crew preferred large-scale tasks: surveying, digging, and hauling away the dirt. Faye was glad, because she liked fine work. She loved to run a shovelful of soil through a sieve to see what stayed behind. The pottery sherds, flakes, and arrowheads that were frequently left resting on the top sieve would be exciting for anybody but, to Faye, even the small bones, seeds, and shells caught by the finest mesh were fascinating.
She was content to spend hours with a pair of forceps, separating scraps of bone from plant trash. Such work gave her time to think, or to listen to the other workers talk. Despite the fact that she listened more than she spoke and that they spent more money in an average weekend of club-hopping than she spent on food for a month, Faye had come to consider them friends.
She’d been lonely most of her life. Being born biracial in America in the late 1960s had naturally had that effect. She usually liked to hear what her new friends had to say, even their inconsequential nattering.
Today, she wished they would be quiet and leave her alone.
“Can you believe that Douglass Everett?” exclaimed Beth Anne, a tiny girl with her hair in cornrows. “He took me aside and asked if I had any artifacts to sell.”
“Me, too,” drawled slow-moving, quick-thinking Ted. “I think he tried it with all of us. He must think we’re all common pothunters.”
Faye couldn’t shake her grandmother’s old saying from her mind.
The hen that cackles laid the egg
. Being a certifiable pothunter herself, the safest course of action was to stay out of this conversation, but apparently her grandmother was right. She felt compelled to cackle.
“Maybe he’s wrong to ask us to procure artifacts illegally, but look at the good his museum has done. He doesn’t profit from his Museum of American Slavery, and think of the history he’s passing on to people who’ll never read an archaeology journal.”
No one could refute her statement but, comfortable on the moral high ground, they resumed their condemnation of pothunters in general and Douglass Everett in particular. Ears burning, Faye picked up a paintbrush and concentrated on brushing sand from the design stamped into a pottery sherd, whether the task required her undivided attention or not.
Ignoring the discussion didn’t help. Every comment jangled a different nerve.
“What kind of museum would display unprovenanced artifacts, anyway?”
“How could anybody buy a piece of somebody else’s culture?”
The comment that drove Faye to the edge came from the privileged lips of a girl who drove a BMW to class. When she stated that some things were just more important than
mere money
, Faye, who had taken her first after-school job at fourteen to help pay her mother’s medical bills, found that she needed to take a walk.
Seagreen Island lay shrouded in the canopy of an oak hammock, and the Gulf of Mexico was a stroke of seafoam green, barely visible through the trees. It drew her like a melody. Within seconds, Faye could no longer hear the students’ incessant yammering, only the wind rushing through live oaks and cabbage palms. Someone had slashed a path to the water through the lush undergrowth just days before, but already the greenbrier reached for Faye as she passed. Intent on drawing peace from the ever-present Gulf, she pushed on.
Before she fought her way to the turquoise water she craved, she caught a glimpse of something hard, reflective, magenta. It was the color of Magda’s workboat, and there was nothing that shade to be found in the natural world. Beached on a sandbar about a hundred and fifty yards off the coast of Seagreen Island, it rocked slightly with each passing wave. There were no passengers that she could see, although who knew what was lying out of sight on the bottom of the boat. Faye began to run before she let that thought crystallize.
Anthony Perez was renowned as a reporter with a knack for being in the right place when news broke. He never tried to figure out how he did it, because dissecting his gift of intuition felt rather like cutting open the goose that laid the golden egg, just to see what was inside.
His cameraman was working hard, knocking down the equipment and loading it onto a small boat that Senator Kirby had provided for the press. Anthony could have helped him, probably should have helped him, but he felt like taking a walk on this unspoiled island before somebody built a resort and spoiled it.
He paused under a tremendous oak tree to study how its dripping Spanish moss absorbed the sunlight. The stuff would be hell to photograph. The fact that he was standing still and alone and making absolutely no sound made the sudden frenzied crashing even more shocking.
It did not take a newsman of his celebrated intuition and undisputed good looks to infer that anything stimulating such activity might be newsworthy, so he followed his ears. A small, dark woman, dressed like one of the archaeologists, was running full-tilt for the water. His instincts were so good that he had already noted her singularly photogenic bone structure before he turned and ran for his cameraman.
Faye slogged through the swampy muck separating Seagreen Island from the Gulf, trying to come up with a happy ending that fit the facts. There, beached on a sand bar and surrounded by calm water dappled in more shades of aquamarine than even Monet knew, was the boat that should have been carrying Krista and Sam back from their pancake breakfast. If they were in it, then they were lying out of sight in the bottom of the boat.
Not liking that image, Faye tried another. Sam had fallen overboard, Krista jumped in after him, and the boat sped away out of control until it beached itself here. Two needles floating in a saltwater haystack—Faye liked that image even less.
The boat wasn’t far away. She could swim that far. Hell, she could probably walk that far on the submerged sandbars peppering the waters around the Last Isles. Again, this did not bode well for Sam and Krista; they could have walked ashore as easily as she could walk to them. She let the gooey muck ringing the island suck the boots right off her feet and strode into the water.
Faye ran hard through the thigh-deep water until she hit a deep spot and plunged in over her head, driving saltwater into her sinuses. Aiming for the patch of water that was the greenest and therefore the deepest, she struck out swimming, using a flailing, slapping stroke in a futile attempt to minimize contact with the shallow bottom.
She swam until her knees scraped bloody on the sand, then she stood up and ran again. She had repeated this cycle three times before she reached the boat and dragged herself aboard. By this time, Anthony Perez and his cameraman had been standing in the muck for at least five minutes, filming every step of her race through the water and across the sand. They waited, ready to record her moment of discovery.
Faye disappointed them by finding the boat empty.