Sharyn McCrumb - Lovely In Her Bones

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 MOONSHINE MASSACRE (Collected from Jake Adair)

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.”