Говард Уолдроп: Them Bones

‘This is going to turn into the major dig. How are we for food?’

‘Fine for us. How many people coming?’

‘The other crews will have their own supplies. The office staff will come. I think they’ll bring the big tent.’

‘We can stretch it, I guess,’ said William. ‘We have to reprovision the end of next week anyway. Might have to move it up a few days.’

‘Well, let me know when the mound is secure. We can figure out what to do from there.’

Bessie walked beside Kincaid up the bluff to the sorting tent and sat down at the table. The first horse skull with the bullet hole in it stared at them like a three-eyed monster.

‘It’s not like you not to talk,’ said Kincaid, taking off his hat and lighting his pipe.

‘Well, this is where our reputations go on the line, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘I mean, there could be some explanation that makes some sense.’

‘I can see it now,’ said Kincaid, smiling. ‘Someone dug a hole, filled it with dead horses, shot them with a new rifle, put the cartridges in the pit, filled it up to the level of the horses, put in Coles Creek grave goods, finished off the mound and planted a tree on top of it.

‘And they did all this at least sixty years ago, when the first metal cartridges came into general use, so they could pull a good one on some poor damn fool university professors in the year of the Lord 1929.

‘That’s the obvious explanation,’ he finished.

‘Are we going to leave it like this until the Director gets here?’

‘Mound 2B anyway. As soon as William gets the tarp on, and I finish my pipe, let’s go start trenching 2A.’

Bessie walked to the open tent flap, watched the men covering as much of the small mound as they could. She heard the snick of Kincaid’s match, the puff of his pipe.

He was staring into the eyeholes of the horse skull as if they could tell him something.

She looked back at the large mound, which loomed over the other like a small fort. Her knees shook.

‘Damn,’ she said quietly.

Kincaid looked at her through his thick glasses. ‘Ditto,’ he said.

They were trying to feed my horse meat.

The man’s name, he said, was Took-His-Time, because of the extraordinary pains his mother had when he was born.

I asked him where he had learned to speak Greek. He said that when he was a boy, some mean Traders had taken him away from his people and made him interpret for them. He had escaped, but still spoke Greek because the Traders now, much nicer ones, still came back each year to do business.

He asked if I was a Trader or a Northerner.

‘No.’

‘We didn’t think so’ – he indicated the crowd who had come out of the stockaded village – ‘because your dong isn’t whacked.’

I blushed.

‘All our men are,’ said Took-His-Time. ‘So are the Northerners and the Traders, even though their customs are nothing like ours.’

‘Uh, where am I?’

‘Right here,’ said Took-His-Time.

‘No. I mean, what is that river?’

‘Mes-A-Sepa,’ he said. ‘That means Big River. That’s what we call it.’

I watched the skittish crowd putting down clay dishes of meat a few meters from my tethered horse. It was getting nervous.

‘Could you tell them it eats grass?’ I said.

He looked at me with his dark eyes a moment, then said something in his own language. They looked at him, then some of them ran back inside the walls.

‘They think it’s a big dog,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘A horse,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ he said, looking at it a moment. ‘So that’s what they look like! I always thought they had wings.’

‘You know what they are?’

‘I know of them, the name,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it was all the Traders talked about among themselves. All the time they talked of their homes across the sea, and their horses. But I’ve never seen one. They run fast?’

‘This one doesn’t,’ I said. ‘Would you like to touch it?’

‘Looks dangerous to me,’ he said. He said something in the other language. I noticed a subtle change in six or seven of the guys with spears and clubs. They began to watch me instead of the horse.

‘I have to ask you this, old custom,’ said Took-His-Time. ‘Do you mean us any harm, or are you a thief?’

‘Huh? No, I don’t want to hurt anybody. I’m lost.’

Took-His-Time said something to the others. They smiled and turned back to watching the horse.

‘If you’re lost, can we help you find the way?’

‘I hope so. Have you seen any others like me?’

‘Guys with their dongs not whacked riding horses? I’m sure you’re the first.’

‘Some of them might be women. But they’d be riding, too.’

‘That would scare the average guy to death,’ said Took-His-Time.

Somebody rolled the horse a cabbage-looking thing. It reached its neck out and began to nibble at the leaves.

‘Ooooh,’ said the crowd.

‘Have you fallen down recently, or anything like that? Excuse me,’ said Took-His-Time. ‘I forgot to ask your name.’

‘Madison Yazoo Leake,’ I said.

‘Yazoo is a name I can say,’ he said. ‘Well, Yazoo, would you like to come to my house for supper?’

‘Will the horse be all right?’

‘I guarantee nobody’s going to touch it,’ he said.

He took me to his wattle and lath hut, which looked just like all the others. A very pretty woman, about eight months pregnant, was cooking inside.

‘This is Sunflower, my wife,’ he said. ‘We are going to have a child soon.’ He said something to her, she answered him, and smiled. There was a pot cooking. In it was a stew, corn, beans, and meat of some kind. The pot wasn’t over the fire. Round clay balls, glowing red-hot, were heaped in the coals. Occasionally Sunflower would lift one and drop it into the stew. Soon it was boiling. It smelled wonderful.

The room was dark, covered with skins. Around the corners were various kinds of stone, sticks, carvings of some sort. I looked at one. It was a small raccoon with a fish in its paws – you could see each band in the raccoon’s tail, every scale on the fish.

Took-His-Time picked it up. ‘Not very good,’ he said. ‘Now, my dead uncle, he could really carve a pipe.’

‘Is that what you do?’

‘Carve pipes? Yes’ – he looked down at the floor – ‘they say I do.’

‘These are nice,’ I said.

He smiled and said something to Sunflower. She looked at me and smiled, then laughed.

‘Supper will be a little while,’ he said. ‘Would you like a walk around the town? Perhaps it will help you remember your way.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

The village, which overlooked the fields and the river, was laid out around a central plaza. On each end of the plaza was a large mound. On the rounded one was a hut, just a little bigger than the others. Opposite it across the hardpacked plaza was another mound, like a flat-topped pyramid. On top of it was a long low building made of big trees. On each end and in the middle was the carved effigy of a big crested bird with a long beak.

‘That’s our temple,’ said Took-His-Time. ‘Not much, but we like it.’

‘Who lives over there?’ I asked, pointing across the plaza.

‘Well, if we stay around a few more minutes, you’d see. That’s where Sun Man lives. He’s the chief. Every morning he yells the sun up, and he cries out in anguish every night when it goes down. All the Sun Men do that.’