"Thanks for the update."
"Not a problem. Now it's time to work the phones and talk to some guys in St. Pete. You feel like a Florida trip anytime soon?"
"Could we get to Cape Canaveral?"
"That's on the other damn coastline."
"So it is. So I guess I won't," I said. "Besides, I've got things here to do while you're reconnecting with your godfather or whomever."
He laughed. "I'm sure you do. Talk to you later."
After hanging up the phone, back into the cellar I went, after a late afternoon lunch of a grilled tuna fish and cheese sandwich. I was excavating one part of the cellar, recalling what Jon had told me. It had seemed simple, but I quickly saw how hard the work was, staying on one's knees, digging gently not to break any possible objects, and then sifting the dirt through the old colander, the rain of dirt making a whisper like noise as it fell back to the cellar floor. When I had started the other day, it had seemed magical, peeling away the layers of dirt that represented months, years, and decades of history. But after a while of moving dirt, boredom started setting in. I always had the imaginative thought of what being an archaeologist was all about, of digging for a few days and finding treasure or the Holy Grail or a shinbone from a T. Rex, but face-to-face with the fantasy, reality was settling in for a long stay. Each little spoonful of dirt, which earlier seemed to represent something magical, with lots of potential, eventually ended up being just another spoonful of dirt. Soon my wrists felt stiff, and then they started to ache, matching the ache in my chest.
I dug for about an hour, slowly moving across one side of the cellar, and when the old lightbulb hanging up by the furnace flickered, flared, and died, I took it as a sign from some greater power. I dropped the colander and spoon and, with some difficulty, tapped my feet free of dirt, and started up the stairs. It was now dark out and cooler, and I guess I should have thought about dinner, but I wasn't particularly hungry. The first floor of my house was unlit, and I moved quietly through the kitchen and out the sliding glass doors to the rear deck.
I went out without a coat, which was fine, for I didn't want to spend too much time out there. It was just past seven p.m. and night had already fallen. Part of me felt that little twist of melancholy, knowing that in a few days' time, when the clocks changed from Daylight Savings Time, this dark part of the night would be six p.m., and soon enough, it would be pitch black at four-thirty.
I leaned against the railing, looked out at the lighthouse on White Island, at the Isles of Shoals, out there on the Atlantic, and noted the lights up and down the coastline, from here in Tyler, down to Falconer, and up to North Tyler and Wallis and Porter. A few ships' lights were apparent as well, out on the dark ocean, and up in the night sky was the sound of a whisper-jet and its red and green running lights. I squeezed the railing tight, wondering what it must have been like, about a thousand years ago, to be out here in the ocean, far away from home, in a longboat with sails and oars, exploring a forbidding coastline, looking for treasure, for wood, for furs, knowing you were part of a brave tribe, the Norsemen of history and sagas, and out here, there would be no lights, no signs of home and hearth. Just the darkness, just the woods, and maybe, just maybe, the quiet glances from the inhabitants of this rough coastline, looking on with maybe awe and a bit of hate for the strangers in their midst.
It must have been something, to have been here a thousand years ago, but unless I was quite skilled and quite lucky, the evidence to prove they had actually been here, the evidence that my friend Jon had found, would remain lost for another ten centuries.
Chapter Six
The University of New Hampshire is in a small town called Durham, about ten miles up from Tyler, inland and near the Oyster River. Starting out in the middle 1800s as a typical state agricultural school --- it still has barns and horse stalls and dairy equipment at one end of the campus --- it has grown, through luck and the good fortune of having influential friends in Washington, into a respectable university. It dominates the center of Durham, with old brick buildings and some newer construction, and a moving mass of students who clog the sidewalks and the wide lawns of the campus between classes. Paula Quinn had gotten her degree at UNH and said to me once, "I can't even recognize the place anymore. Every time I go back there, either they're building something up or tearing something down."
With its growth meant an apparent disappearance of parking spaces, and I had to leave my Explorer at a small shopping plaza almost a half-mile from my appointment. I had to walk quickly to make my way to the anthropology department, which was located in a cube of a building called the Horton Social Science Center. The tile floors were worn from thousands of feet over the years, and bulletin boards flanking the glass doors were festooned with multicolored flyers offering everything from guitar lessons to memberships in the vegan food cooperative. Up on the fourth floor, near the east corner, was a series of offices, each with a black metal door. The one I sought was half open, with a little plate on the outside that said O. HENDRICKS. Below the nameplate was a sign-up sheet for student conferences, each conference lasting fifteen minutes.
I rapped on the door and said, "Professor Hendricks?" and a woman's voice came right back with, "Come on in."
The office may have been good size at one time, but now it was packed and cluttered. Walls on the left and right were filled with overflowing bookshelves, and before me were two wooden chairs, a large wooden desk, also cluttered with books and papers, and behind the desk, a woman in her mid-fifties, with short brown hair, wearing a light green sweater. She stood up, smiling, and I figured I would have enjoyed being a student in one of her classes. She had horn-rimmed glasses and simple gold-hoop earrings, and I held out my hand and she gave it a quick shake.
"Mister Cole, from
Shoreline
magazine, am I right?"
"Yes," I said, sitting down across from her. "Sorry I'm late. Parking here is ---"
She laughed. "Years ago, believe it or not, I was a student here, and I worked for a while at the student newspaper. I won't tell you how long ago, but let's just say our president had just announced he wasn't a crook. One day, just for the hell of it, I went through the previous twenty years of the bound newspaper, just poking around, and you know what? One constant story, year after year, was parking, or the lack thereof. The great thread linking years of history here at UNH. Where in hell can we park our cars?"
I smiled at her in return as she sat down, and I saw that behind her was a built-in radiator and picture window, overlooking a small wooden ravine. On one side of the radiator was a small coffee machine, and on the other side was a black and white cat, sitting on a tan pillow and curled up in a ball, who stared at me with an equal mix of curiosity and disdain. She noticed with some amusement that I was looking at her cat, and she said, "My muse and boon companion, Oreo. Named for a certain black and white cookie."
"People mind having a cat in your office?"
She shrugged, folded her hands across her stomach. "If they do, they keep quiet. It's part of the image, I suppose, Eccentric professor and all that. Besides, he's nice to have around. Quiet, well-groomed, not too demanding. Lots of other faculty have done worse. It also helps relax some of my students. Makes me seem less fearful. So. Enough of my choice in companions. What can I do for you, Mister Cole?"
I took a breath, thinking again of how many times I had gone down this path, trying to elicit bits and pieces of information from different people, all by letting them think that they were doing me a favor. Not a pleasant task but one I had done before, and would no doubt do again, but at least this time, it was different. The spirit of Jon was back behind me somewhere, watching me as I worked, and I had to do what was right.
"I write a column for
Shoreline
, called 'Granite Shores.'"
A nod. "I know. I've seen it."
I guess there was shock on my face, for she laughed and said, "You look quite surprised."
"Well, it's not often that I meet people who've even heard of my magazine. Not to mention my column."
"Well, I like to keep up with the history of the region, Mr. Cole. That's my specialty. And I remember reading something you did last fall, about the start of shipbuilding in New Hampshire. Not bad."
"Thanks."
"So. Your column this time?"
"About an acquaintance of mine, an amateur historian, who died last week."
"Oh. I'm sorry. And how can I help?"
I took another breath. "It seems you met him a couple of weeks ago, before his death."
"Ah." She unfolded her hands, leaned forward, moved some papers around and then revealed a desk calendar. "Here it is. Jon Ericson. From Tyler. Am I right?"
"Yes, you're right."
"Sure, I remember him. Vikings." She shook her head. "Sorry to hear he's dead. What happened?"
"He was murdered."
"Oh." She sat back in her chair. "Oh. That's horrible. I mean, well, I just talked to him, less than a month ago. Oh, how awful. And you're doing a story about ---"
I made a point of taking out my reporter's notebook. "About his life, about his quest. You see, he was convinced that ---"
"Yes, I know. Convinced that Vikings had set up residence here in New Hampshire, hundreds of years ago." She shook her head again. "Brrr. To be murdered. What a nice man... not your typical barefoot doctor."
"Excuse me? Barefoot?"
She flashed me an embarrassed smile. "Sorry. An academic secret. Please do me the favor of not spreading it around."
"All right, I won't."
"There. You've made progress all ready. All right. Barefoot doctors. You know anything about history, Mr. Cole?"
"Some." The phrase she had mentioned was now bouncing around in my memory, and when she said, "The Great Cultural Revolution in China, back in the Sixties, when Mao sent people into the countryside, and ---"
"Barefoot doctors," I said. "Trained peasants in basic medical care, went into the villages. Am I right?"
She gave me her best professor smile, and I was surprised that it made me feel good, like a student. Perhaps it was an old professor's trick, handed down from generation to generation. "Yes, that's right. Barefoot doctors. A noble idea, like so many of the sixties ideas, that absolutely failed in its execution. You see, there was a shortage of trained medical professionals in China at the time. So it was thought that one way to address the problem was to give rudimentary medical training to particularly bright peasants and send them on their way to remote villages. Like I said, a good idea that failed."
"And why did it fail?"
She shrugged. "The barefoot doctors thought they were graduates of Johns Hopkins, that's why. Instead of doing the basic treatments they were trained to do, they overreached. Thought they could do surgeries, cancer treatments, and so on and so bloody forth."
"Barefoot doctors," I said. "And how was Jon a barefoot doctor?"
Hendricks reached over and scratched Oreo's head. "Not in a pejorative sense, you understand. It's just that most professors here have had run-ins with amateurs --- bright, enthusiastic amateurs --- who believe they may have something to contribute to our fields of learning. For our math professors, it's amateurs who are convinced that either they've successfully found the answer to a problem theorem that's centuries old, or they've created an entirely new system of mathematics. For our physicists, it's the dump attendant from Lee who's figured out the unified field theory. And for anthropology professors, well..."
I made a note in my notebook. "Crazy tales about Vikings."
She smiled. "No, not entirely, In fact, I'd say Mr. Ericson was probably the most polite and well read of the barefoot doctors that I've ever met. I've had people in here with proof that the Druids inhabited New England for hundreds of years, chased out of the British Isles by the Romans, or proof that the missing tribes of Israel were the actual predecessors of the Algonquin and the Passaconaway tribes. Then, of course, I've had people in here, arguing with me that I was part of some great cabal or plot, keeping the truth away from the rest of society."
"And you said Jon was polite?"
Her hand was now gently rubbing the back of the cat's head.
"Oh, yes, quite polite. He started off by saying that he knew that from the start, I would pooh-pooh his theories, but he was still looking for information on pre-1500 visits from Europeans to New England."
"Did he specifically mention Vikings?"
She kept on stroking Oreo's head. "Not at first, but after I started asking him some rather pointed questions, he told me what he was after. He said he was confident that Vikings had made it down here to New Hampshire from Newfoundland and had set up a settlement for further exploration. Of course, he didn't have any proof, but that didn't stop his interest."
"What did you tell him?"
She shrugged. "What I've told others who have some specific group or person who they think got here before the English. That in many, many years of archaeological digs and research --- almost ten thousand excavations --- not once have we ever found one piece of evidence suggesting a pre-1500 visit. Not once. Oh, Basque fishermen probably ended up here occasionally in the 1400s, but there was nothing permanent. The first permanent European settlement happened here in 1623. Of course, there are pieces of evidence out there, from carved stones from a Scottish knight to a supposed Viking storehouse in Rhode Island, but that's all later been proven to be fake or otherwise misinterpreted."