Them Bones

Bessie VII

The day was overcast, humid and hot, and it was just dawn.

Bessie sketched the depressions around the mounds. They were there on the flood terrace, one west, one north, one eastnortheast. She drew in the bluff line. The mounds occupied the center. There were shallower areas around them. She flipped over the pages of her field book. Perhaps this had been a village site? But they’d found no post molds yet, no typical village structures. Maybe it had been a temporary habitation site, used only while the mounds were being raised.

Perch and the others arrived with the muddy sun. This time Perch was in work clothes, his tiny frame lost inside them.

They waited for him to get out of his car. Over at the trucks, the photographer and artists were getting out their equipment. Down below, the work crews were taking off the tarps from the mounds.

‘Governor’s still not back,’ said Perch. ‘Won’t be for two, three days. There seems to be a small mutiny in his party machine. Also’ – he looked down at the bayou – ‘we’re in for rain, lots of it. They’ve closed the gates downstream and opened the ones above. It’s raining like hell in Shreveport, and all up the Mississippi. They think this one might be as bad as the spring flood two years ago. I figure we got five, maybe six days.’

‘What about a coffer dam?’ asked Kincaid.

‘We can use part of the crews to work on it. I’ve sent to the University for maintenance crews with some tractors. I tried to get a hold of the highway department, but nobody’s doing anything until the governor gets back and they see who’s on top.’

‘That’s probably why he left,’ said Jameson. ‘Giving ’em enough rope.’

‘That’s why nobody’s answering their phones,’ said Perch.

‘Where do we put the dam?’ asked Kincaid. He opened the survey map. ‘Along the line of the old terrace?’

‘That’s way too big,’ said Jameson. ‘We’re going to have to decide whether we save Mound One or not. I say no.’

‘Bessie?’ asked Perch.

She looked at the far mound, totally typical, left unopened and alone with its grid markers. ‘We can’t take a chance on losing Two A and Two B,’ she said. ‘Oh, hell, what if it’s just as full of stuff as this one?’

‘Kincaid?’

‘Oh, hell with it. Put the dam here, just below Two A. Bring it back around to the bluff on each side, maybe dig drainage over here, if we can.’

Bessie looked at the grid map.

‘Dr. Perch, can we bring it out another ten feet, over here?’ She pointed past the eastnortheast shallow depression. ‘If we’ve got time, I want to dig here.’ She stabbed the map with her finger.

‘We won’t have time,’ said Jameson.

She told them about Basket and the flood legend.

They all looked at the shallow spots. ‘They could be nothing but burrow pits,’ Perch said. ‘That what you want to save?’

She had a moment of uncertainty. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Call up the crews,’ said Perch. ‘The three of you get down there, go straight in and down on the mound. Find out what happened here. I haven’t been out in the woods for a long time, but I still know how to make dams.’ They had the dam outlined and shovels started to fly.

In the platform of Mound Two B, they found the first of the human skeletons by midmorning.

It lay, feet outward, directly below the test trench. William found the feet, and called Kincaid over. Slowly they removed dirt from the bones, to the pelvis, the ribcage, the shoulders.

There was no skull. The neck ended abruptly.

Kincaid dug to the right and left.

‘Bessie,’ he said, ‘get the shellac and come in behind me and coat the skeleton. We’ll leave it in situ. It’s brittle. There wasn’t any covering; this skeleton was just lain on the original ground line and the mound raised over it.’

Bessie dolloped thick globs of shellac onto the paper-soft bones, then slowly spread it with a fine brush.

‘Look at this,’ said Kincaid.

The left arm of another skeleton lay exposed to the right of the first.

‘Right about there, I’d say,’ said Bessie, pointing to the left of the first skeleton she worked on, ‘and up a little.’

‘Just what I was thinking,’ said Kincaid. He began to dig where she had pointed. Soon he had the right arm bones of another skeleton exposed to view.

‘Jameson,’ he called softly.

Jameson came around from his work on the other side of the mound’s test trench. He had his hat off, but his eyes were bright like a squirrel’s. He smiled.

‘It’s a trophy mound, isn’t it?’ said Jameson.

‘I think so,’ said Kincaid. ‘I surely do think so. How many skulls have you found yet?’

‘None. They don’t have heads.’

They both looked up at the conical burial mound which sat atop the platform mound. It was untouched as yet, except for the two-foot profile cut.

‘I vote we go in there,’ said Bessie.

‘Get the photographer and artist down there on those skeletons,’ said Kincaid.

Thunder rumbled. ‘Shit!’ said Jameson.