Excavation

Chapter 23

It was the fourth day that Reed had been carefully, methodically excavating the land around his old home-place. Keeping a calm mind, holding back any premature conclusions, meticulously examining the evidence. So far he had stayed away from the house itself.

Being careful: that was what he was doing. Being scientific. But at the moment that didn’t seem much different from being afraid.

The cold was back, worse than ever. It was a fire inside his head, inside his chest. He thought he might have pneumonia. But he couldn’t stop; there seemed so little time. And he had to keep his Uncle Ben from stopping him, only meaning him well.

He had come out here every morning, intent on his work, eating breakfast at his uncle’s as quickly as possible so that he could get an early start. He met his uncle’s questions concerning the progress of the dig with bland, noncommittal statements, and twice he had had to discourage Ben from coming out here with him. When Reed got home at night, everyone else was in bed. Martha always had something waiting in the oven.

He didn’t have to get in that late; he had to quit digging around sunset anyway, when the dusk shadows started confusing him, showing him discolorations, evidence of features that weren’t really there. And every shift of the darkness in the woods seemed a large animal. He’d climb into the truck he borrowed from his uncle and sit there for hours, watching the shadows spread and the dark creep out from the trees, and try to recapture his lost feel for the place.

Hiding… he needed to think the word, for that was what he was really doing. For all his excuses about getting to know the site, educating himself on the lay of the land, he was hiding. He was beginning to sense a panic beneath the easy exteriors of the citizens of Simpson Creeks, even in his uncle. Things had been happening to the town since before he got here, but they seemed to have intensified after his arrival, as if he had carried some sort of disease into the valley with him.

Things were going subtly wrong in the Creeks. No one thing so obvious, but the accumulation of little events…

A couple of days ago Jake Parkey had found his wife wandering out in the woods with her clothes half torn off, babbling nonsense. Jake had beaten her badly before Charlie Simpson happened by and pulled him off. Then they discovered water seeping into parts of the Nole Company stripping operation and they had to shut down. Reed couldn’t care too much about that, but no one could explain how such a thing could happen. The water had stopped for a time, and Mr. Emmanuel had sent for geologists from the main office to study the matter. They’d be sending a staff of lawyers too, Reed knew. They’d want to cover themselves in case of possible damages.

His uncle said people were recalling the big flood, but they weren’t talking about evacuating. Of course, there’d never been flooding caused by a leaking sinkhole before, at least not that he’d heard of.

And so Reed had stayed by his excavations, reviewing his notes and studies, feeling too guilty to talk to anyone. Afraid to talk to anyone. He had been so sure that careful inquiry and analysis would protect him from the traumas of the past. But they were breaking through the dam he’d erected; they were clamping their jaws around the back of his neck.

Suddenly he wanted to forget about all his careful methodology, hire a bulldozer or backhoe, and strip it out as if he were mining here. Rake at it with bleeding fingers if need be. Mine his past, dump the debris out of him.

He had gotten down to topsoil in several of the squares, topsoil that made a rising curve on the soil profile. The small mound that used to be east of the house. Now he found himself going deeper, digging out the rich, dark earth.

As he went deeper, Reed discovered that the soil layering was mixed, perhaps indicating an artificial structure, the soil brought in baskets from a barrow pit. Then traces of charcoal, sharp stones in the top layers. Traces of red paint, here and there, and then Reed could tell the disturbance was oval in shape. A black layer of soil and then, as expected, the first traces of bone.

Clavicle, sternum, thorax, bits of rib. Then the skull nearby, with a partial closing of the cranial sutures. Some wearing down of the teeth. Obviously a young adult, anywhere from twenty to forty years old. But not from the flood. He’d dug into an ancient Indian burial mound.

They had lived by the mound all those years; he wondered if his father had known. No doubt he had. His father had been fascinated by burials, had always wondered what it would be like to dig into one one day, but had also been nervous about it. Grave robbing was the word for it, and Reed’s father wouldn’t have any part of that—more, Reed suspected, out of superstitious dread than any sort of reverence, although maybe there wasn’t much difference.

Strange how layers of earth and bones and memories were all mixed together here, all commingled in the earth, which did not differentiate. One becoming another, endlessly throughout time. Grave robbing. Thinking that, Reed felt the strange excitement that had led him to archaeology in the first place, and was surprised and a little alarmed that he could be feeling it here.

He looked at the falling-down matchbox of a house he’d grown up in, the barely visible second story now leaning crazily toward the woods as if pulled there. A plant drawn to the light. There was one square measured off directly in front of a second-floor window, the window of his old bedroom. He would be excavating that square, he knew, when the sun rose in the morning.

Charlie Simpson closed up early that afternoon; the men had exhausted all that could be said of recent events—Doris Parkey’s new craziness and the flooding of Willy’s sinkhole—and no one had been in to buy all day. He might have missed them during the morning; like all the others he’d gone up to examine the sinkhole, to search for clues to the water’s source, to speculate about what might happen.

“Groundwater seeping into the limestone,” one old man had said. “Go away when the heat rises.” They’d all nodded sagely, and it had sounded good at the time, but Charlie had no idea in hell what it was supposed to mean.

They’d all hiked around the slopes looking for weak spots, looking for damp areas, listening for bubbling, all acting as if they really knew what they were doing, Charlie included. Then they’d walked back to the store and sat around exchanging theories.

“Same thing made that water made Doris Parkey crazy,” Tim Colmano had said, and they’d all just looked at him. Charlie had wondered if they all felt as uncomfortable as he did when Tim said that.

Charlie had pretty much isolated himself the past few days. Suddenly there was an agitation in town, for the first time he could remember since the year following the big flood. Of course, there had always been a slight tension after the flood to mar the natural peacefulness—because of what people had done or hadn’t done at the time—but nothing like this. They were used to controlling things here; you could always send a troublemaker away until he cooled off, or the preacher could set straight a domestic quarrel.

But you couldn’t affect this kind of tension; everybody was feeling it.

He had always been an outgoing man, but he couldn’t pretend right now. All his easy talk and comfortable manner had been stripped away from him. He was all sinew and bone and blood vessels now. And fear.

A shadow appeared at the yellow-shaded front display window. Large and bulky, walking unsteadily on its hind feet. Charlie reached under the counter for his gun.

Then he saw red plaid flannel through a crack in the shade and halted his reach. There was a sudden pain in his arm that made him wince. But he kept the groan to himself. He leaned back and gritted his teeth. There was a knock at the door but he didn’t answer.

The store was dark, but a comfortable dark. He’d spent a large part of his life in this one room; some of the displays were arranged virtually as they were when his father had run the business. Old tonics and oils no one except an occasional old-timer bought anymore, but he kept them on the shelves just the same. A large scale for weighing grains, the same one his father had had, an old-fashioned coffee grinder, counters stacked high with every size of blue jeans imaginable, racks of cotton dresses, hardware of every description, a rotating, glass-fronted case full of thread spools a tourist had offered him eight hundred dollars for one time (“Then where would I show off what thread I got?” Charlie’d asked), all manner of canned goods, fresh meat in the freezer he bought regular from Tim Colmano, and all kinds of stuff on the back and top shelves he never would sell, like the silk and lace baby coffin left over from the flu epidemic of 1917.

He’d hate to lose any of it. But he might just lose it all, oh Lord… he knew he might if things took the wrong turn. Like back during the flood, after the Creeks jumped bank—only a few degrees of turn this way and that along the course of the racing waters had spelled the difference between narrow escape and death and destruction.

And some of us maybe didn’t deserve to be saved.

He’d tried twice in the past two days to talk to Reed Taylor out at his uncle’s, but apparently Reed had been spending almost all his time out at his father’s place. “Digging the past up and filling himself with the memories” was the rather poetic way Ben had described it. Charlie had broached the idea of maybe going up to see Reed there, but Ben had emphasized that the boy had wanted to be alone. Probably thinking of all we didn’t do for his family, Charlie thought.

He was working himself into some kind of mood, he realized. But he couldn’t seem to help it. Before, he’d always had Buck to cheer him up when he got down about something, just being with the old dog, seeing somebody with a bigger hound-dog look than he could ever manage.

He wasn’t sure what he would say to Reed if he talked to him anyway. Probably nothing.

Oh, he’d rehearsed it enough times… hundreds of times over the past ten years. A speech for the friends and relatives of the dead. Not to obtain their forgiveness, but at least so maybe they could understand a little about why the town had done so little before, and after, the flood. When there were wrongs to be set straight, dead to repay. Why the Creeks had never changed.

He’d always been afraid somebody like Reed Taylor would ask him that question point-blank someday: “Why didn’t you people change? Why didn’t you get off your asses and get Nole coal?” He wanted to be able to come up with something more than “We were afraid,” but that seemed increasingly unlikely. They’d been scared to death of losing everything, all of them.

The town had been an accomplice to what the mine had done in the first place: survivors, victims, Charlie and Ben and Amos Nickles and Inez, Reed’s parents, all of them. They’d known for years that the waste dam was unsafe, but had stopped at the mildest sort of complaints. Because the Nole Company had their jobs, and kept the town alive with its money. People figured if the Nole Company pulled out there wouldn’t be any Simpson Creeks anymore. The lies had been simple ones: lawyers had ignored small aspects of the cases and neglected to do adequate research, merchants had rationalized the shoddy materials they sold, laborers had told themselves that the company bosses knew best, husbands had reassured wives that at least there was still food on the table, politicians made deals “for the good of the community,” local regulators figured the statutes discriminated against an important source of local income—but the accumulation had meant one enormous, dangerous falsehood.

The company had said the dam was safe… perfectly safe. The Nole people had been very reassuring.

And after the flood, after all the lives lost and all the property damaged, they still did nothing. Just talked and grumbled.

Charlie supposed that could have been excused for a time—people had lost friends, neighbors, relatives—but as the months rolled by and the Nole Company sent down their team of lawyers, offering them this and that, offering them the moon, the grumbling quietly ceased. People still felt used, cheated, but the dissatisfaction went underground. And the town of Simpson Creeks still had its sugar daddy.

No lawsuits were filed. No one was asked to investigate. The townsfolk continued to accept the jobs the company offered. And when the company finally did shut down most of its operation above the Creeks—the profits just weren’t enough anymore—people moved away, and most of those remaining just plain forgot.

A shadow at the shaded window again, hulking. Beating on the door.

It was Big Andy’s revenge on them all, Charlie was thinking as the glass burst inward. The dead, now part of Big Andy, would be repaid in full.

Mr. Emmanuel had been thinking over the problem of the sinkhole all day, examining it, worrying over production time lost because of it, and he was fed up. The Simpson Creeks operation was now only a minor cog in the Nole Company operations, and not worth the trouble. He didn’t know if the geologists would be coming down or not; the supervisor certainly sounded reluctant over the phone. But there might be legal problems with this one… and there was Simpson Creeks’ past history to consider. He didn’t think they’d want to take any chances. They’d send somebody, if only one lawyer.

He’d left work early to take a long walk outside town; the weather was nice, there’d be almost no one around this time of day, and besides he needed the exercise. He had never been one for athletics, but sitting all day in that hot aluminum mine office didn’t help his mood any.

He was walking across what Jake Parkey said was the old site of the town. Emmanuel supposed that could have been; the area seemed flat enough, and occasionally he’d stumble over a brick or two. It was much nicer down here, with the trees all around—a damn sight better than that hideous-looking slab. But these people seemed to be obsessed with their fears of flooding.

The trees made a curved green and brown curtain bordering the level expanse of grass. He imagined the area would make a good football or baseball field, if only enough young people stayed to make a team. The grass was wonderful here—he hadn’t seen anything like it since Pennsylvania. Deep blue green like a sea.

There was something at the edge of the wood.

He squinted his eyes, but the form was still blurry. Hard even to guess what it was. He needed to get his eyes checked if he ever got back to civilization. Or maybe he was just getting old. The thought chilled him slightly. He began walking, fixing his eyes on the object, trying to guess what it might be. For one thing, it seemed to be moving. Not very much, but slowly, gracefully. Perhaps it was a small sapling bending in the wind. But there was no wind.

Pale, pale skin… the head and hair looking bright, bright. On fire! No… no, just pale skin and unusually bright, glowing hair. Giggling. Swift movement behind a tree.

Slowly, anxious and excited at the same time, he approached the edge of the woods, the place where the figure had disappeared. Another giggle. Soft laugh. He pulled back the first branch and saw pale pink skin.

Doris Parkey was standing in the tall ferns by a willow tree. Smiling. Stark naked. She held out her arms to Mr. Emmanuel.

He stepped closer, hesitated. He squinted, even more skeptical of his vision. But it was truly she… Doris Parkey. And naked she had more softness, more curves than he had imagined from her drab, straight-seamed cotton dresses.

She was stepping closer, her lips parted. He felt himself pulling back…

And suddenly she was pulling at him, moaning, tugging his shirttail loose and undoing his pants. Tugging them down. She was raking at his groin with her long fingers, pulling at his pubic hair as he felt himself dropping to his knees, losing himself among the trees, in her mouth, down in the wet grass and dampened earth…

Inez had seen somebody enter the woods past the old town site, just across the way. Now… why would anybody be messing around over there? Most people were scared of the place… she guessed she was, too. But then she didn’t see the movement anymore, and thought perhaps she was just seeing things. She was tired… much too tired. Her brother Hector was driving her crazy. The town and all the goings-on there were driving her crazy.

She’d been in Hector’s room just now; her forearms still ached from the way he’d grabbed her, clutching like some kind of starving, desperate bird or something. Some old bird. Seeing things again. His eyes ready to pop right out of his skull. “Woman with her head on fire!” he’d screamed. That again. It was getting worse. She was going to have to commit him finally. It made her feel real bad, but he had no right! She was just going to have to commit him, be rid of him, and get on with her own life… get herself a husband and maybe even move away, maybe even leave the hills entirely, live on the beach or on a snowbank… anything be better…

There was a glow out by the creek.

Inez stared at it for some time before even questioning what it was she was looking at. Nothing like she’d ever seen. Maybe one of those balls of fog she was always reading about in newspaper fillers. But the way it moved… something odd about that…

Then she realized the glow was moving around the spot where Hector had almost drowned. She went downstairs and out the front door.

The glow seemed to brighten as she neared the creek, bobbing here and there, hiding itself behind a bough or trunk momentarily, and then reappearing. Then Inez was standing by the creek. And there was another woman standing on the other side.

“Why, Janie Taylor!” It just slipped out, automatically. She wasn’t that close to see who it really was. And Janie Taylor, one of her best friends in this world, Ben Taylor’s sister-in-law and Reed Taylor’s mother, had been dead, drowned, a good ten years now.

The way the woman’s complexion… shone. It was almost unnatural. Dark eyes, reflecting… what? The sun was almost down. But those eyes were virtually flashing out at Inez like a beacon. Delicate pink mouth and sandy-colored hair. But the hair was also… brighter than it should be. What was going on here? Who was this?

“This is… my property,” Inez said haltingly, her hands making trembling fists behind her dress. “I’ll have to ask you… your name… please.” She tried to smile at the woman, but couldn’t.

The woman said nothing. Inez stepped closer to the edge of the bank, careful not to step too far. The current seemed swifter than normal, and it made her nervous.

Janie… the woman looked so much like her. And my… didn’t they have fun in their teens! Riding down to the high school in Four Corners on the bus together, sleeping over, always falling for the same dark-haired boys… she might have been Mrs. Inez Taylor, in fact, if Poppa hadn’t got so sick after graduation, and she’d had to stay with him all the time. And by the time Poppa died it had been Mrs. Janie Taylor a good four years, and Reed was almost three years old. Of course, the way Alec turned out, she’d been lucky.

They’d been best friends, but she hadn’t done a thing for Janie after the flood. Hadn’t tried to contact Reed and hadn’t made trouble for the Nole Company. Just like all the others. A coward. Hadn’t done a thing to make them pay for the murder of her best friend.

And Lord, Janie’s little girl… would’ve grown up to look just like Janie had when they’d gone to school together. Inez began to cry.

And felt… whispers… across her cheek. She looked up and the woman was smiling, her hair glowing.

“Janie…” Inez whispered. Inez felt an aching in her legs, an aching in her belly… from lack of child, lack of husband… suddenly she was thinking of things she hadn’t imagined in years: naked men, sweaty buttocks, and that secret thing they had… that she’d never understood, even taking care of her father in his deathbed, doing everything for him. She wondered if she’d even understand after she were married.

Inez was sweating profusely, stomach feeling queasy. She looked up, and the woman was right there, burning, burning…

Inez looked away, down into the cool, dark, now swift-running stream. And saw herself and her best friend Janie, the way it should have been, floating there with their eyes wide open, lips blue, hair trailing out and catching the debris like seaweed.

Charlie Simpson raised his gun at the great shadow stumbling its way toward him through the darkened store, shadow-arms sweeping items off counters, breaking bottles, the shadowy figure weeping. He began to squeeze the trigger.

“Dammit, Charlie! Don’t shoot!”

Charlie relaxed, and a very drunk Jake Parkey stumbled into view.

“What the hell you breakin’ in here for, Jake? I’m closed!” Charlie didn’t think he’d ever been so angry before.

Jake looked down shyly. “Need a gun, Charlie… need some protection.” Then he looked up, his eyes wide like an excitable little boy’s. “There’s a beast out there, Charlie; ain’t no bear! No bear was ever like that! Why, I can hear it out there at night, a-stalkin’ and waitin’ for me… for us! It’s waitin’, Charlie! I gotta get a gun ready for it. We all do!”

Charlie shook his head slowly. “Don’t know if I can sell you one, Jake… not the way you’ve been with Doris lately.”

Jake grinned crazily. “No harm… no harm, Charlie. Won’t happen again! Don’t care no more… she’s crazy, that Doris! Don’t even want her around! Drive me crazy if I keep livin’ with her. She’s out somewhere now… I don’t care if she never come back. No problem, Charlie, no problem. I’m through with that woman.”

Charlie stood silently, considering. Selling a man like that a gun… all hell to pay. Everything had just gone crazy; he wondered if he could see it to its end. Maybe they could just get all the craziness out of their systems… maybe the Big Andy would blow up like some volcano… get all that pent-up hate and long delayed revenge out of its system, and it would calm down some too.

He pulled the key ring out of his pocket and moved to the locked cabinet where he kept the guns and ammunition.

Mr. Emmanuel pulled away from the Parkey woman, rising up in a crouch over her sweaty, mud-slimed hips. Her eyes were closed, and she was still moaning, whimpering softly to herself. Like some animal. He was repulsed. By her and by himself.

His clothes were dirty. He’d throw them away. Burn them. He stood and pulled his pants up, zipped them and turned to walk… run back up to the town. What had come over him? Never… she looked and sounded like a pig. Moaning… moaning…

He raised his eyes and looked out over the grassy expanse of the old townsite. Deep blue green. Water green. Here and there mist rose from the shadows in the grass.

And brought the water with it. Climbing and climbing until he knew it would soon engulf him. People were screaming out there, whimpering. Dead animals drifted by, stench in their wake. People were drowning. Through the mist he could see the outstretched arms, the thrashing legs, the pale faces etched with desperation.

He squinted; he moved closer. But it was mist again: white, swirling mist. Fog filling in the shallow depressions of the earth, once sliding mud, that now covered the old townsite. A fine, impossibly wet, fog.