Michael Chabon - Werewolves in Their Youth

I knelt to untie the canvas tarp I had stretched across my digging of the previous day. I was endeavoring to take an inclined section of B-3, cutting a passage five feet high and two feet wide at a 30-degree angle to the horizontal. This endeavor in itself was a kind of admission of defeat, since B-3 was one of two mounds, the other being its neighbor B-5, designated a “null mound” by those who had studied the site. It had been thoroughly pierced and penetrated and found to be utterly empty; reserved, it was felt, for the mortal remains of a dynasty that failed. But I had already made careful searches of the thirty-four other tombs of the Miskahannock queens. The null mounds were the only ones remaining. If, as I anticipated, I found no evidence of anthropophagy, I would have to give up on the mounds entirely and start looking elsewhere. There were persistent stories of other bone pits in the pleats and hollows of the Yuggoghenies. Perhaps I could find one, a fresh one, one not trampled and corrupted by the primitive methods of my professional forebears.

I peeled back the sheet of oiled canvas I had spread across my handiwork and received a shock. The passage, which over the course of the previous day I had managed to extend a full four feet into the side of the mound, had been completely filled in. Not merely filled in; the thick black soil had been tamped down and a makeshift screen of ivy had been drawn across it. I took a step back and looked around the site, certain all at once that I was being observed. There were only the crows in the treetops. In the distance I could hear the Murrough trucks on the tortuous highway, grinding gears as they climbed up out of the valley. I looked down at the ground by my feet and saw the faint imprint of a foot smaller than my own. A few feet from this, I found another. That was all.

I ought to have been afraid, I suppose, or at the least concerned, but at this point, I confess, I was only angry. The site was heavily fenced and posted with NO TRESPASSING signs, but apparently some local hoodlums had come up in the night and wasted all of the previous day’s hard work. The motive for this vandalism eluded me, but I supposed that a lack of any discernible motive was in the nature of vandalism itself. I picked up my hand shovel and started in again on my doorway into the mound. The fifth bite I took with the little iron tooth brought out something strange. It was a black bandanna, twisted and soiled. I spread it out across my thigh and found the small, round trace of my own blood on one corner. I was bewildered, and again I looked around to see if someone was watching me. There were only the laughter and ragged fingers of the crows. What was Ed up to? Why would my rescuer want to come up onto the mountain and ruin my work? Did he think he was protecting me? I shrugged, stuffed the bandanna into a pocket, and went back to my careful digging. I worked steadily throughout the day, extending the tunnel six inches nearer than I had come yesterday to the heart of the mound, then drove home to Murrough House, my shoulders aching, my fingers stiff. I had a long, hot soak in the big bathtub down the hall from my room, smoked a pipe, and read, for the fifteenth time at least, the section in Miskahannock Surveys dealing with B-3. Then at 6:30 I went downstairs to find Dexter Eibonas waiting to serve my dinner, his expression blank, his eyes bloodshot. I remember being surprised that he didn’t immediately demand details of my day on the dig. He just nodded, retreated into the kitchen, and returned with a heated can of soup, half a loaf of white bread, and a bottle of Ring. Naturally after my hard day I was disappointed by this fare, and I inquired as to the whereabouts of Mrs. Eibonas.

“She had some family business, professor,” Dexter said, rolling up his hands in his tea towel, then unrolling them again. “Sad business.”

“Did somebody — die?”

“My uncle Ed,” said the boy, collapsing in a chair beside me and covering his twisted features with his hands. “He had an accident down at the mill, I guess. Fell headfirst into the impact mold.”

“What?” I said, feeling my throat constrict. “My God, Dexter! Something has to be done! That mill ought to be shut down!”

Dexter took a step back, startled by my vehemence. I had thought at once, of course, of the black bandanna, and now I wondered if I was not somehow responsible for Ed Eibonas’s death. Perhaps the incident in the mill yard the day before, his late-night digging in the dirt of B-3 in some kind of misguided effort to help me, had left him rattled, unable to concentrate on his work, prey to accidents.

“You just don’t understand,” said Dexter. “It’s our way of life here. There isn’t anything for us but the mill.” He pushed the bottle of Indian Ring toward me. “Drink your beer, professor.”

I reached for the glass and brought it to my lips but was swept by a sudden wave of revulsion like that which had overtaken me at the Chinese restaurant on my first night in town. I pushed back from the table and stood up, my violent start upsetting a pewter candelabra in which four tapers burned. Dexter lunged to keep it from falling over, then looked at me, surprised. I stared back, chest heaving, feeling defiant without being sure of what exactly I was defying.

“I am not going to touch another drop of that beer!” I said, the words sounding petulant and absurd as they emerged from my mouth.

Dexter nodded. He looked worried.

“All right, professor,” he said, obligingly, as if he thought I might have become unbalanced. “You just go on up to your room and lie down. I’ll bring you your food a little later. How about that?”

The next day I lay in bed, aching, sore, and suffering from that peculiar brand of spiritual depression born largely of suppressed fear. On the following morning I roused myself, shaved, dressed in my best clothes, and went to the Church of St. Stephen, on Nolt Street, the heart of Plunkettsburg’s Estonian neighborhood, for the funeral of Ed Eibonas. There was a sizable turnout, as was always the case, I was told, when there had been a death at the mill. Such deaths were reportedly uncommon; the mill was a cruel and dangerous but rarely fatal place. At Dexter’s invitation I went to the dead man’s house to pay my respects to the widow, and two hours later I found myself, along with most of the other male mourners, roaring drunk on some kind of fruit brandy brought out on special occasions. It may have been that the brandy burned away the jitters and anxiety of the past two days; in any case the next morning I went out to the mounds again, with a tent and a cookstove and several bags of groceries. I didn’t leave for the next five days.

My hole had been filled in again, and this time there was no clue to the identity of the filler, but I was determined not to let this spook me, as the saying goes. I simply dug. Ordinarily I would have proceeded cautiously, carrying the dirt out by thimblefuls and sifting each one, but I felt my time on the site growing short. I often saw cars on the access road by day, and headlight beams by night, slowing down as if to observe me. Twice a day a couple of sheriff’s deputies would pull up to the Ring and sit in their car, watching. At first whenever they appeared, I stopped working, lit a cigarette, and waited for them to arrest me. But when after the first few times nothing of the sort occurred, I relaxed a little and kept on with my digging for the duration of their visit. I was resigned to being prevented from completing my research, but before this happened I wanted to get to the heart of B-3.

On the fourth day, when I was halfway to my goal, George Birch drove out from his general store, as I had requested, with cans of stew, bottles of soda pop, and cigarettes. He was normally a dour man, but on this morning his face seemed longer than ever. I inquired if there was anything bothering him.