Relics

by Mary Anna Evans

  Ronya had been meditatively fiddling with her red clay snake, but Faye’s question seemed to rouse her. “Honey, let’s show Miss Faye how many letters you know.” She wiped her hand across the dirt, consigning a whole herd of tadpoles to oblivion. “What’s this letter?”

  “A.”

  “And what’s this one?”

  “Q. I like Qs. They have funny tails.”

  “Like tadpoles?” Faye asked.

  “Yeah, like tadpoles.” Zack’s laugh was silvery in the cool air. “Draw my name, Mama. Okay?”

  Ronya inscribed “Zack” on the creek bank, making the “Z” oversized, with a tail that underscored the other three letters with a flourish. She rose and grasped her yoke. “Now it’s really time to go, son,” she said, balancing the load on her shoulders. She turned to Faye. “Miss Dovey can probably watch Zack most days, but could I bring him to work now and then, if she’s busy? He’d entertain himself, just like today. I promise he won’t get in the way.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t be any trouble,” Faye said, admiring the way the boy’s neat haircut threatened to erupt into curls at the nape of his neck. Yes, she liked Ronya—very much—but she was halfway in love with Zack already. “Bring him any time you like.” Zack took Faye’s hand and the three of them headed up the path.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ronya led the way back to the settlement by a different route, because even she couldn’t haul a heavy load of clay up the nearly vertical bluff face. Their homeward route followed the stream running through the clay pits and beyond, until it reached the Broad River, where it swung south and paralleled the bank for a few hundred yards. Faye trusted that Ronya knew her way through the backwoods, even after her own sense of direction failed her. She was utterly lost, but she was enjoying pleasant company, and the woodland path was lovely, in its stark and wintry way.

  At a spot marked only by a good-sized oak tree, Ronya turned away from the river. If there was a path through those untouched woods, it was hidden beneath leaves and pine needles. There was almost no underbrush, so the three of them could walk shoulder to shoulder, parting only to pass on either side of an obstructing tree. Faye scanned the area for any landmarks that might lead a traveler through this trackless thicket. There were a few—a lightning-scarred tree here, a copse of glossy-leafed magnolias there—but Faye decided that Ronya had traveled this route since she was Zack’s size. It was part of her. Landmarks would have been superfluous.

  When they emerged from the woods onto a well-traveled path, Faye tried to get her bearings. “Great Tiger Bluff is that way,” she said, gesturing to her left. “So is the Montrose house.” She pointed ahead. “Your house is that way.”

  “Not bad for a city girl.”

  Faye, who had abandoned Tallahassee (not exactly a tremendous metropolis) to live alone on a gulf island, was bemused to find that she seemed like a city girl to Ronya. “I started out this afternoon to get a look at the mound on Lester’s Hill. Do I go that way,” she said, pointing left, “and just follow the path I was on earlier, the one that skirts Great Tiger Bluff?”

  “Yep. The mound is on some high ground past the bluff. Look for the first trail on your right past the rope bridge. If you see Elliott’s house, you’ve gone too far.”

  “Can I get there and back before dark?”

  “Probably. But that trail crosses DeWayne Montrose’s land, and the Indian mound itself is on it, too. You don’t want to walk DeWayne’s land without permission. He’d shoot you as soon as look at you. If he saw you.”

  Faye heard the challenge in Ronya’s last statement. “I’d heard he owned the land, but I thought the trails around here were treated like community property. Could he stop me from walking past the mound?”

  “If he had a gun.”

  Faye saw her point. “I get the impression that Mr. Montrose doesn’t stir far from his TV.”

  “The man hasn’t ever walked his own property, I don’t think. He doesn’t even hunt.” The tone of Ronya’s voice said that DeWayne Montrose was the only man, and maybe the only human, that she knew who didn’t hunt. The sporadic gunfire that Faye had heard every day since she first crossed the Broad River reinforced the impression Ronya gave: Practically everybody in the settlement hunted.

  Faye affected a casual tone. “I believe I’ll just take a walk past the bluff and see what I can see.”

  “As you like.” Giving Faye a quick nod, Ronya led Zack home. Faye lowered her head against the late afternoon wind and walked in the other direction.

  Skirting the lip of Great Tiger Bluff gave her another chance to goggle at the multi-colored clays decorating its face. She kept an eye out for a trail that branched to the right.

  The woods were denser in this area of the settlement, and she wondered if the land had ever been cleared. Not far past the bluff, she came unexpectedly on a fifty-five-gallon drum emitting a plume of smoke. The sight made her wonder whether the settlement had any garbage service at all. If not, then the woods surely hid garbage dumps, even if the clearing behind Hanahan’s store hadn’t turned out to be one.

  There were two men hovering around the drum, as if hoping to warm themselves by the heat of the burning garbage. One of them was Leo Smiley and, when the other one raised a carrot-topped head, she recognized Jorge.

  Jorge yelled, “Keep walking. Folks around here don’t take kindly to people snooping in their backyards.” Leo, content to let Jorge do the talking, fastened his eyes on hers.

  A sudden flare of anger seized Faye. She was not the one who was stomping all over social boundaries. Her feet had never strayed from the footpath that everybody in the settlement treated like their own. She had not paused and goggled into someone else’s private domain. Her eyes had made one casual sweep across an easily visible clearing.

  She stopped to glare at them. The two men turned toward her and, in three long strides, they were standing shoulder to shoulder at the wire fence that defined the property’s boundaries.

  Leo bared his teeth in the perversion of a smile and said, “Hey, Jorge. Do you hear DeWayne’s dogs barking? Reckon somebody forgot to shut the gate again?” Jorge threw his head and howled like a slavering hound.

  “Better be careful. A little thing like you could disappear out here and nobody’d ever find you,” Jorge said in a voice that had dropped the blustery edge she’d heard during her brief tenure as his supervisor. It was a voice that spoke facts and expected the hearer to understand and obey, or accept the consequences. “Don’t mess with me. Don’t mess with anybody here. There are places in this settlement where even the law’s afraid to go.”

  Faye backed away and kept backing until the wooded shadows absorbed every trace of Jorge’s fiery hair. She still intended to visit the mound, despite DeWayne’s contrariness and Jorge’s threats, but prudence suggested that she wait for another day.

  ***

  Joe’s hands shook as he dipped chili from the crockpot where it had been simmering all day. The afternoon had gone poorly. He’d screened a tremendous pile of soil, and there’d been a good handful of plain gray potsherds in it, but he hadn’t found a single one with the glimmery finish that Faye had said was important. He dearly hated to disappoint her. Ordinarily, he would have kept working past quitting time, hoping to find what Faye wanted him to find, but he had an important appointment to keep. And he was nervous about it.

  He wished he’d left the newspaper alone that morning, but he did like to know what was going on in the world. Reading, for Joe, was a slow, laborious process. That’s why he’d never gotten his driver’s license. How could he expect to read any road sign that came whooshing up at seventy miles an hour? Sometimes, when he tried to read a book, the letters seemed to squirm and flip themselves around. If he concentrated and took his time, he could make them put themselves back in order, but if he missed an important road sign because the letters wouldn’t settle down and behave, he could kill somebody. That’s why he liked pilo
ting a boat. No signs to read.

  It embarrassed him to know that his difficulties were so obvious. After a few minutes of watching him squint at the newspaper, Laurel had limped across the room and handed him a sheet of notebook paper that she’d folded into a long, narrow shape, like a ruler.

  “If you hold this underneath the line of text you’re reading, it’ll help you focus on just that line.”

  He’d tried it, and she was right. Then she’d said the words that had thrown him into a quandary that had lasted the whole day. “Would you like to come by my classroom this evening after work? I know some other little reading tricks that could help you a lot.”

  Joe had said, “Yes,” because she was so nice to want to help him—and because he wasn’t in the habit of saying no to ladies—but he felt shriveled inside when he thought about looking dumb in front of Laurel. He knew that tutors charged money and had offered to pay her, but she’d said, “Oh, no, no, let’s just keep this between friends.”

  The walk from the bunkhouse to Laurel’s schoolroom in the church basement seemed overlong, and he walked it slowly so that the chili wouldn’t slop out of the bowls. She must have seen him coming, because she met him at the door.

  “If you won’t let me pay you, maybe I can at least make sure you get your supper on time,” Joe said. He tried to hand her a bowl but, with a crutch in each hand, she could hardly be expected to reach for it, so he pulled it back and hurried over to her desk to set it down. He felt dumb again, and awkward, too, and he wished he could be anywhere else in the world. Anywhere.

  “Oh, thank you, the chili smells so good,” Laurel said, moving quickly back to sit at her desk and sliding her crutches under her chair. How could she be so graceful when he, who had a perfectly useable body, felt so clumsy?

  She took a bite of her chili and said, “I thought we’d start with a few tests, just to see if you have some learning differences. Then we’ll try to figure out what they might be.”

  At the word “test,” Joe backed up a step toward the door. He remembered tests. They made smart kids feel smart, and dumb kids feel dumb. If a teacher wanted to teach somebody something, they should just do it, as far as Joe was concerned, and quit harassing people with their stupid tests.

  Laurel’s sweet voice cut through his panic. “Oh, don’t leave. We don’t have to do pencil-and-paper tests. My tests are almost like games.” She jotted something on a piece of paper and held it up. “What letter comes before this one?”

  Joe saw that she’d written down “C,” and was relieved to know the answer. “‘B’ comes before ‘C’,” he said quickly.

  “Great,” Laurel said, scribbling something on another piece of paper and holding it up.

  Joe recognized the letter “M,” and was surprised that he couldn’t come up with the answer quite so quickly. Chanting through the alphabet in his head, he got to “H,” “I,” “J,” and “K,” then triumphantly shouted, “‘L’ comes before ‘M’!”

  “Excellent,” Laurel said, holding up a third card. “This is the last one. What comes before this letter?”

  Joe knew the letter. It was “X”, but he couldn’t imagine what came before it. He tried to sing the alphabet to himself, but he was so nervous that he kept having to start over. This was taking too long. Laurel would give up on him when she saw how dim-witted he really was.

  “It’s okay, Joe,” she said, rescuing him from the thing he dreaded worst—that he might cry from frustration. “You know a lot of things. You know how to read all your letters and you know the alphabet in order. Your brain just stores things in its own way, and that makes it hard for you to remember which letters come first unless you sing yourself the alphabet song. Big deal. Nobody in the real world ever needs to know that W comes before X. Knowing how your brain works just helps me help you. That’s all.”

  Joe managed a smile.

  “We’ll start right now, if you like. And can you meet with me in the evenings after work? It won’t take us long to make some real progress.” She scooped up another spoonful of chili. “You don’t have to bring food every time you come, but you can if you want to. This is really good.”

  ***

  Faye dumped her muddy clothes in the washer and headed for the kitchen. A few minutes in the shower had soothed her temper. Slightly. The fact that Joe was nowhere to be found didn’t help matters.

  It bugged her that she’d returned to the settlement without following through on her intent to get a look at the mound, but continuing along the path would have put Jorge and Fred between her and all of civilization. Too many things had happened since her arrival in the settlement for her to risk that. The situation irked her, nonetheless. Ronya had said that the mound was on DeWayne Montrose’s property. Very well, she would beard the lion in his den. Remembering Adam’s words of warning, she would not, however, do it alone.

  Joe walked into the kitchen, set a couple of dirty bowls in the sink, and turned on the faucet.

  “I’ve got to make a business call. Can you come with me?”

  “Sure thing. Where are we going?” Joe said, swishing his hand in the soapy water to stir up some suds.

  “I found out who owns that mound you told me about. DeWayne Montrose.”

  “Far as I can tell, nobody around here has much good to say about Mr. Montrose.” He rinsed the bowls and set them on the drainboard. “You think he’ll let us excavate up there?”

  “Right now, all I want to do is look at it. He can’t object to that.” She pulled the keys to the truck out of her pocket.

  Joe dried his hands and hung up the towel. “Then let’s do it.”

  As she pulled into the Montrose driveway, the blue light of a television lit up the house’s front window. It seemed that DeWayne was home.

  Not much had changed since the previous Saturday, when Faye had been there with Carmen. Kiki rested, eyes closed, in a threadbare armchair, with her long slim legs stretched out on an ottoman. DeWayne had risen to answer the door, but he’d been in his customary place only seconds before, because the seat of the recliner still showed indentations from his body. Irene, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  DeWayne didn’t say, “Welcome. Come on in.” He didn’t even say, “Hello.” He just stood there and waited for Faye to speak.

  “Good evening,” she began. “I wanted to speak to you about your property on the far side of Great Tiger Bluff. I’ve heard there was a mound there, and I’d like your permission to take a look at it.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I thought you people were here to look into the history of us Sujosa. I imagine that Indian mound was here waiting for us when we walked into this valley. Why would you want to waste your time there?”

  Popular opinion may have been unanimous on the issue of DeWayne’s laziness and his surly nature, but nobody, Faye realized, had ever said he was stupid.

  “That’s why I just want to take a look at it. Sometimes settlers built their homes near—or even on—old mounds. If that’s not the case here, then I won’t need to bother you about it any more—”

  “But if they did build there, you’ll be back, wanting to trample over my land and tear it up, looking for something we both know you’re not going to find.” His voice rose to a bellow, and Faye suppressed the urge to take a step back, because that’s what he wanted her to do.

  The back door opened and Irene walked in with an armload of collard greens.

  Jimmie followed her, carrying an empty feed sack. “Gonna need some more dog food,” he said as he kicked off a dirty pair of boots and grabbed a clean pair waiting by the door. They both shrugged off their worn parkas.

  Irene’s lips were pursed, and Faye could tell that she’d overheard DeWayne’s outburst.

  “So,” Faye went on in a pleasant tone, “will you give me permission to take a quick look at the mound?” Make him say no, she told herself. Don’t let him get away with cheap intimidation tactics.

  “No,” he said qui
etly, switching to another tried-and-true bullying method. He spoke so softly that she had to hold her breath to hear him. “No, you may not set foot on my property. If you do, I will call the law. And don’t come back here again.”

  The door slammed in Faye’s face.

  They walked in silence back to the project truck. “So,” said Joe as they got in. “When do we go take a look at that property?”

  “Without the owner’s permission?”

  “I never noticed you asking for permission before.”

  Faye backed out of the driveway, venting some of her frustration by giving the truck more gas than was strictly necessary. “Things are different now. I’m working on a project funded by a government grant. I can’t just run around ignoring the law. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up. I’ve got a few ideas I haven’t tried yet.

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  ***

  Faye and Joe entered the bunkhouse through the back door, which brought them immediately into earshot of something Faye had heard before and would undoubtedly hear again: two academics trashing a third one who was not present to defend himself.

  “—Not much we can do about it. Raleigh’s in charge,” Bingham said.

  “But our names will be on the final report and on every half-assed paper he publishes afterward!”

  Faye had never heard Amory raise his voice before; he sounded like a man who was one step away from apoplexy.

  “Don’t be so naïve. Our names may be on those papers, if we’re lucky. Raleigh doesn’t have a history of being generous with publication credits.”

  Not liking the idea of being caught eavesdropping outside the kitchen door, Faye sauntered into the room and slid into a seat at the table beside Amory and Bingham. Joe, who tended to follow Faye’s lead, took the fourth and last chair.

  “So,” she said, “I’m not the only one who’s unhappy with the way Raleigh’s running the project. Who’s going to talk to him?”

  Bingham and Amory looked at her as if she’d proposed that one of them force Raleigh, at gunpoint, to abdicate his post.