Amy Cross - The Purchase

“Now, boy!” Levant roared angrily. “Where are your sample bags?”

“Inside, but—”

“What are they doing inside?”

“I put them down when I was—”

“And you just left them there?”

“Well, I—”

“Go and get them, boy! Now!”

Clark hesitated, caught like a rabbit in the headlights, before mumbling an apology and climbing down from the rear of the cart. He tried to force a smile as he picked up the piece of bone, but he couldn’t help noticing Levant’s very deliberate, very audible sigh. Mumbling a few more apologies and promises to do better, Clark scurried into the cabin to fetch his sample bags, leaving Levant standing alone next to the cart.

“Students,” Levant muttered, rolling his eyes as he turned to look more closely at two withered bodies “For every one that’s half-decent, there are another nine who don’t know what the hell they’re doing. It’s a wonder any—”

Before he could finish, his attention was caught by something glinting in the low light. He reached over, struggling to extend his hand far enough, but he was too old these days to start climbing about. Straining even more, he was finally able to move some of the rotten limbs aside, and to his surprise he saw what looked like a gold coin. He scraped the coin along the cart’s wooden board, drawing it closer and then picking it up, and then he examined it in the cold midday light.

“Now this is interesting, he murmured, turning the coin over between finger and thumb. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen…”

For a moment, he could only stare in wonder at the coin, trying to determine its provenance. More than anything else at the site so far, this coin had really attracted his attention, and he was engaged by the fact that he genuinely didn’t know what he’d found. As an expert in many areas, he wasn’t much used to coming across something that seemed so unusual, and he couldn’t help wondering whether the coin might prove highly significant. Certainly it was unusual, being both rather large and rather heavy. Since such matters were an area of particular interest to him, Levant felt a flicker of jealousy at the thought of young Ms. Chandler getting all the credit for what amounted to a major stroke of luck.

Glancing back at the bones, he was about to ponder the unlikely nature of his discovery when – suddenly – he spotted what appeared to be a second such coin.

After checking to make sure that he still wasn’t being observed, he reached over and slid the second coin out, and sure enough he found that it was very similar to the first. He checked yet again that he was alone, and then he quickly looked for any more of the coins. Not finding any, he looked down at the two specimens in his hand and felt a flicker of curiosity in his chest. After all his years of teaching, it had been a very long time indeed since Levant had felt the kind of pure, unbridled burst of intrigue that he felt right now. To stand on the verge of a new discovery made him feel vital again. Young , again.

“Leave the discoveries to the younger generation,” one of his colleagues had told him a while back. “We’ve done our work.”

He hadn’t shown it at the time, of course, but that comment had bristled terribly. Why, he thought, shouldn’t he still make a few breakthroughs? Why should a man – or woman – be shuffled off the stage, just because he or she had hit some arbitrary age that was deemed to be too old?

Nonsense.

A few seconds later, hearing Clark returning from the cabin, Levant had only a brief moment to make a decision. And in that moment, for better or for worse, he chose to slip the coins into his pocket.

“I got the bags,” Clark said as he climbed back onto the rear of the cart. “Sorry again, Doctor Levant. I remember you saying how important it is to always have them with us. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

“I certainly hope not,” Levant said with bluster, although he was already wondering whether he’d done the right thing with the coins. Still, there was no turning back now. He just hoped there weren’t too much crumbs and pieces of fluff in his pocket. “I taught you to be better than that, Mr. Clark. Much better. Any mistakes on your part are a poor reflection of my abilities as a teacher.”

“I know. I’m really, really sorry. I really just—”

“Well, stop making excuses,” Levant continued, well aware that he was blustering more than usual but – crucially – unable to stop himself. Deep down, he was worried that someone might have seen him pocket the coins after all, although he was certain this was not the case. “Get to work.”

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

Levant stepped back and watched as Clark slipped the errant finger bone into a bag, and then he saw him peer more closely at the bodies. He had no idea how Clark had failed to notice the two coins earlier, but they would surely have been discovered soon, and then what? Levant had a strong suspicion that they would have been cataloged and forgotten, ignored by students who wouldn’t have recognized their potential interest. Or perhaps lost. Or, perhaps, even stolen. He reasoned, therefore, that he had done the right thing by liberating the coins. Let the students have their site, there was more than enough for them to work with. Reaching into his pocket, Levant felt the two coins and allowed himself a faint smile as he turned and headed back to his car.

So many of his colleagues mocked him and accused him of being irrelevant to modern study. The coins, he was starting to believe, would put him back on the academic map. He’d show them all.

“Hello,” Catherine Chandler said as she knelt down in the cabin, in front of the dead body on the chair. “My name’s Catherine and, if you don’t mind, I’m just going to take a quick look at you. Is that okay?”

She looked at the withered, semi-exploded face that stared back at her, and then she turned and saw a fellow student, Muriel Robson, watching her from the far side of the room.

“What?” Chandler asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re giving me a funny look.”

“Do you always talk to dead bodies right before you examine them?”

“I’m just being polite,” Chandler replied, although she allowed herself a faint smile. “This was a living, breathing human being once. I should introduce myself, at least.”

“Sure.” Muriel hesitated. “And… ask them questions?”

“It was rhetorical.”

“Okey dokey,” Muriel said, turning and getting back to her task of examining the mysterious box she’d found on the floor. “Whatever you say. I still can’t make out what this thing was for, though.”

Chandler looked over and saw that the box looked crude, perhaps homemade, and that it had a slit on one side.

“A child’s toy, perhaps?” she suggested.

“You really think there were children out here?”

“No, but I don’t have any other guesses.”

Muriel leaned down and sniffed the box, and she immediately scrunched her nose as she pulled back.

“Not nice?” Chandler asked.

“It smells like something died in there.”

“A trap, maybe?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It looks homemade,” Chandler pointed out. “It must have served some purpose.”

“Maybe it was used for hiding things,” Muriel suggested. “Or maybe it was some kind of makeshift bird feeder. I don’t know. I’m really stumped.”

Chandler turned back to look at the dead man’s face. For a moment, she stared at the empty eye socket on the undamaged side, and then she looked at the strands of hair that clung to thin patches of skin on the skull. There was just enough extant material to allow her to hazard a guess as to the man’s general appearance, and she imagined a sturdy, late middle-aged gentleman with perhaps a touch of old-fashioned nobility. She reminded herself that she might be wrong about this, of course, but deep down she had her impression and it wasn’t going to get dislodged just yet. Not without some evidence to the contrary.