Rome

by Matthew Thayer

  Sal made allowances when they were helping dig Neanderthal graves down by the river. Plan was, they’d tend fires and watch his back all day and he’d give them chunks of flint, off-grade jewelry and tools. That lasted about a day and a half. Suckers split and left him to deal with a pack of hyena.

  Now all they do is hang around camp all day, eating our stores, poking through our gear and mucking the place up. We’re both sick of it.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Jones: “Didn’t hafta do that to his hip.”

  Bolzano: “Circumstances moved beyond my control.”

  Jones: “Ya lost your cool, man.”

  Bolzano: “I certainly did.”

  From the log of Salvatore Bolzano

  Chief Anthropologist & Master Vintner

  Have you ever noticed how much you can tell about a person by the way they care for their fingernails? Are they bitten to the quick? Ringed by half moons of black grime? Exquisitely trimmed and polished?

  Back in the old days, the future, I had friends who spent ungodly amounts of money having their nails coated with electronic wizardry, lights and games. To their simple minds, whoever spent the most on the latest gizmo won. I never got caught up in that competition. The last thing a thief needs is glowing fingertips.

  My nails were serviced only once a week, usually by the family manicurist, but also in boutiques when I was out and about. La Monica’s in the Galleria was a favorite. Not only did the owner have the sexiest women tending her laser trimmers and microbuffers, she herself was a wellspring of the latest and juiciest gossip. Moni pampered me with flutes of wine and canapés as we traded slander tit for tat. Mother had an account. I always signed off on a nice tip.

  Fingernails are on my mind for several reasons, not solely due to the splinter wedged beneath the nail on my right index finger. I have been thinking about the filthy Mammoth Killers. They have probably never cleaned their nails, not even once. Can you imagine such a thing?

  On our first meeting along the coast, the sorry state of their claws marked them as low class slobs. Nothing they have said or done since has given me cause to alter that opinion. If not for Flower and the bond she and Capt. Jones have formed, their odorous company would not be tolerated.

  As roommates go, the clods are proving to be the worst of the worst. They steal our food, refuse to pick up after themselves, foul the landscape and make noise at all hours. The harmony we’ve spent years developing atop the Palatine has been butchered. If picking and eating boogers were Cro-Magnon sports these imbeciles would be world champs.

  We started out cajoling and asking nicely that they void their bowels and bladders in the designated stream, even tried shaming them into respecting our rules. Despite the increasing tenor of our warnings, they were surprised when the lid blew off my teakettle this afternoon.

  I returned from the Neanderthal dig site dirty, tired and looking forward to a long soak in my bathtub, only to find it fouled with human excrement inside and around the rim. Jones and Flower had been kind enough to spend the day with me in the sun, shooing away animals and feeding the fires while I concentrated on unearthing the fifth and most interesting grave to date.

  Sadly, while we cats were away, the mice rose from their lethargy to play. The camp looked as if it had been struck by a rocket bomb. I was not yet aware of the destruction they wrought within my cave when I grabbed the black-haired hunter we call Shitter by the scruff of the neck, doubled him over and shoved his face into the nearest pile of poop. Bending his arm high behind his back, I directed his nose right in the pile and held it there until he had to open his mouth to breathe.

  “If one of you Mammoth Killers shits in my camp again I am going to kill you!” I roared in trade dialect.

  “Incoming!” Jones barked. “On your right.”

  Releasing Shitter and rolling left, I heard the whoosh of Pisser’s club riffle the air above my head. Springing as he turned with a grunt of dismay, I grabbed the barrel of his club with my left hand and used my right to hammer his nose. The zit-covered honker made a wet, cracking sound as its cartilage crumpled.

  Jones did not tell me until afterwards why he prefers delivering body blows. “Punch a guy in the head, ya run a chance of breaking your hand or gettin’ cut by his teeth.”

  I wish he shared this wisdom sooner. Both of my paws are bruised and swollen to nearly twice their normal size. It is hard to say what goes through one’s mind in the heat of battle, but I believe I wanted Pisser’s club. He would not let go, and therefore, I would not stop attempting to punch a tunnel through his face. Once I finally wrested the heavy rod from his grasp, I resisted the urge to bash him over the head and flung it two-handed into the valley below. Jones said I looked like an Olympic hammer thrower.

  Panting, slowly returning to my senses, I found the remainder of the Mammoth Killers gathered not far away, armed to the teeth, but studying me and Jones with wary eyes. The Captain had a bolt nocked in his atlatl and the rest of his quiver stuck point first in the ground. If the Killers respect anything in this world, it is the power of his special spear-throwing weapon.

  Suddenly I was wading knee-deep in Mammoth Killers. This is not how Capt. Jones had choreographed my return to the top of the pack. I was to challenge the men later in the evening, one at a time. Enraged beyond control, I took them all on at once.

  It was the smarmy grins on their stupid faces. We had reached an impasse. That was obvious. Equally obvious was the fact that nothing was going to change. I could see it in their silly looks. They had no intention of altering their behavior. My dander had risen far too high to let bygones be bygones.

  “Merde!” I shouted as I reached Dirt Bag and pushed him two-handed in the chest so hard he flew four meters before touching down and rolling against the trunk of a pine tree.

  “Merde!” I growled as Wanker and feces-stained Shitter rushed me from opposite sides. I must remember to thank Kaikane for insisting I join him in his karate and tai chi katas. I considered the forms mere exercise until today when defense and counterattack erupted from my body without conscious thought.

  “Merde!” Sidestepping, deflecting Wanker’s overhead spear thrust with a sweep of my forearm, I let his momentum carry him past my body to where he could shield me from Shitter and the three-kilo rock raised over his mangy head. Side kick to the kidney, chop to the neck, Wanker folded.

  “Merde!” I dove for Shitter’s legs as his errant rock sailed over my head. Kaikane also deserves credit for inserting his family’s dirty wrestling tricks into our classic forms. Crossing Shitter’s left knee over his right, I forced him onto his belly and just kept driving until his feet were next to his ears. I witnessed a fight in which the Hawaiian used the same technique with identical results. Shitter’s hip dislodged from its socket with the popping sound of a champagne cork.

  “Merde?” The gruesome injury, the way his limp leg jerked in my hands as he screamed and flopped upon the ground cooled the flames of my fury. Dropping the leg, I pulled back to let the Mammoth Killers lick their wounds.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Jones: “That a momma and a baby?”

  Bolzano: “And also a dog.”

  Jones: “Sal, what ya hope to accomplish here? Done 10 graves. Seems like plenty to me.”

  Bolzano: “Nine. I have only excavated nine.”

  Jones: “Same fucking thing.”

  Bolzano: “I understand that you have grown weary of archeology, but there are more than 60 graves.”

  Jones: “Ain’t just weary of archeology. I’m weary of sittin’ in the sun swattin’ flies. Weary of the lions gettin’ closer every day. Weary of leavin’ those fuckheads alone in our camp.”

  Bolzano: “I knew this moment would come. Your patience has been appreciated, my friend. I expected you to revolt three graves ago.”

  Jones: “Almost did, but held off. Know this is important to ya.”

  Bolzano: “What you say is true. I could spend years studying this find. In my haste I hav
e broken nearly every site excavation rule in the book. I am trying to extract as much understanding as I can before we depart. In a perfect world, entire teams would devote decades to each individual grave.”

  Jones: “So tell me, what happened here?”

  Bolzano: “I am able to make some deductions. As you can see, these are not haphazard graves. The dead have been buried with care and respect. Each has been sent on their journey with tools and trinkets to see them through. There has been some settling but all appear to have been buried face up, with their head pointed east toward the rising sun.”

  Jones: “They all die at once? A war?”

  Bolzano: “Only two of the nine show obvious injuries–one adult male with a bashed cranium and another with broken ribs. I think it is just a graveyard, one that may have been used for many generations.”

  Jones: “How old?”

  Bolzano: “Without modern instruments, the best I can do is hazard a guess.”

  Jones: “So, hazard.”

  Bolzano: “All right. I would say these graves date back to the apex of the last Ice Age, let us say at least 50,000 B.C. Sea levels would have been much lower, and even this far south, the climate would be considerably cooler and drier. The Tiber probably ran as it does now. I believe they lived in Lupercal and buried their dead here.”

  Jones: “You think they lived in your cave?”

  Bolzano: “Absolutely. Probably not full time, seasonally. It is a prime habitation site. If you and I can walk back and forth from the Palatine, there is no reason to think they could not do the same.”

  Jones: “Yep.”

  Bolzano: “You are correct, however, we have other duties to tend to. Please allow me to finish one more grave. We shall then call a halt to the dig, at least temporarily. You and I have work to do.”

  Jones: “Roger that.”

  From the log of Capt. Juniper Jones

  Security Detail II

  Securing a cave for long storage has been tougher than expected. Only a few of the spots marked on Team maps actually have caves and those have all been screwed up in some other way. Drainage is a common problem.

  Me and Sal spent the last three days scaling hills and hiking up valleys. We’ve found a few seeps where we refill our gourd canteens, but it’s dry country. Take off before dawn, tell Flower and the crew we’re leaving for the graves. Pretty easy walking in the bottomlands where all the swamps, ponds and streams have dried to cracking. Weird the way the animals cleared out. Looks like they just ate their way to the coast. Bushes and small trees are stripped bare. Not a blade of grass in sight. It just gets emptier and dustier every mile away from the Tiber we go.

  Got shut out today after spending all afternoon climbing a limestone ridgeline that looked promising. Goat track we followed petered out against a wall. Sweated our asses off, ran out of water. Must have been about 105 degrees. Found two shallow caves in the yellow rock, neither was usable. During a break on way down, Sal was scanning a far ridgeline through the magnifiers in his helmet and spotted a boulder field with a dark mouth in the middle. It was about two miles away as crow flies, but more like 10 or 12 by the route we’d have to take to get there. We marked the ridge’s access point with a pile of stones on our way by and plan to go back day after tomorrow to check if cave’s any good. Couldn’t see any fire pits or other signs man’s been there. Maybe we’ll get lucky.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Jones: “Got a new girlfriend, huh?”

  Bolzano: “Hmmmmm. Summer is a girl, and she is a friend. I suppose you are not entirely wrong. Though ‘female friend’ seems more apropos “

  Jones: “Heard it’s more serious than that.”

  Bolzano: “Serious?”

  Jones: “Sure. Didn’t ya hear? Summer Wind’s gonna marry you.”

  From the log of Salvatore Bolzano

  Chief Anthropologist & Master Vintner

  Why must I always show off? When a snuggle in the hay would have sufficed, I had to trot out the Kama Sutra’s greatest hits. I wonder if the breakup line “It is not you, it is me” has been used in the Paleolithic.

  Who can blame the woman for being enamored with my chiseled bronze body, or fascinated by my preeminent mind? Since stopping drinking and forsaking my sedentary, gluttonous lifestyle, I have shed at least 10 kilos. Grave digging and mountain climbing have sculpted muscles in places where I was not even aware I had muscles. What a shame it is we have no mirrors.

  Late one recent night, lounging in my tub beneath the Milky Way, Summer Wind and I engaged in our first carnal act. We had been discussing her family tree while taking a cooling dip. Her grasp of trade dialect is less slippery than the other Killers. Utilizing pidgin Trade and a smattering of northern expressions we both recognize, our conversations are very entertaining–with far fewer stops to find common ground than I endure with Flower and the others. It is also easier to be heard atop the Palatine now that four strutting roosters and one Mud Hen have returned to the coast.

  I expected Summer to hold my demolition of her clan mates against me. It has proven to be quite the opposite. She and Flower were tickled to see the boys earn their comeuppance. I am not the only person the filthy ruffians antagonized. Once we popped screaming Shitter’s hip back into place, I kicked the three hunters off the hill and gave Dirt Bag and his wife an ultimatum to either clean up their acts and do their fair share of chores or leave. Not surprisingly, the lazy fools opted for the latter.

  Winding down my rage, watching the disgraced chief lead his slovenly wife and wounded troops through the powdery dust of the serpentine trail, I realized the clan was missing two of its members. Turning, I found Summer Wind and Flower on their knees by the bathtub stream, corralling submerged turds with their bare hands.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning and repairing damage to our shade tarps and cooking areas. Before evening set in, Capt. Jones detached himself from the work detail long enough to amble down to the Trevi and harvest an antelope. With the women snacking on warm, raw liver and other choice antipasti as we worked, the antelope was quickly and efficiently sectioned into roasts and bite-sized cubes for stew.

  To celebrate our return to peace and quiet, I splurged by using nearly all of my remaining nuts and spices. To baste the outside of the roasts, I created a sumptuous glaze of honey, sea salt, diced radish and dried seaweed. The nuts were pounded into a paste before being added with my last onion to the antelope’s intestines and meat cubes simmering in a cook bag. It may not have been a seven-course dinner at the Ritz, but everything was seasoned and cooked to perfection. For this day and age, considering how slim comestibles are two years into a drought, it was a feast to remember.

  His birch bark plate licked clean and tossed into the fire, Jones took Flower by the hand and departed for their residence without saying good night. Earlier in this mission, I might have wasted time brooding over what I said or did to offend him. I have grown accustomed to his silence. Without needing to say so, Jones is aware I know the truth. He is happy.

  Women will do that for a man. Summer is nearly old enough to be my mother. Is that why it took me so long to submit to her charms? Or is it because she does not fit my vision of ideal beauty? Half a century takes a toll in the Paleolithic. Worn teeth, unfortunate scars, carbuncles: I would not have looked twice if this was the 2220s.

  And that would have been my loss.

  Summer Wind is well named for she truly is a breath of fresh air. Open-minded in both thought and deed, she has the rare capacity in this epoch to embrace new ideas. Cro-Magnons are curious devils, but by and large most are extremely stuck in their ways. To survive, clans develop particular standards and procedures for performing tasks and dealing with situations. Proven through the test of time, these protocols and traditions are handed down from one generation to the next.

  Living with me has convinced Summer that her clan’s traditions need to be reevaluated. Daily bathing, using fragrant cedar sticks to scrub teeth, eating good food prepared
well and savored along with enlightened conversation are a few of the things she is learning to appreciate. And the ravishing sex, of course!

  She claims she had no idea lovemaking could be spiced with such variety and joy. Dirt Bag’s father always took her from the rear and never once kept at it long enough to bring her to orgasm. I managed to squeeze two out of her in the first 15 minutes.

  Things started innocently enough. Though the sun had been down for hours, it was so stifling we sought relief with a midnight soak. Resting toe-to-toe in the muted light of the stars and planets, Summer Wind interrupted her life story with a simple question.

  “Do you want to rut with me? I do not mind.”

  With that, she heaved herself out of the tub and assumed a kneeling position in the loam. Summer Wind flinched in mild surprise as my fingers spread the folds of her labia majora. Tracing my way to a sheathed nub, I slowly circled the clitoris until it emerged rock hard. Moaning and growing slippery, unable to still the quivering in her hips, she ground against my fingers as she neared climax. Taking her to the brink, I teased by removing my hand and gently kissing the back of her neck. Returning to the task, I deftly granted the release she craved.