“Hey,” I said. “He’s wearing clothes!”
They all turned and stared at me. I said, “If the skeleton’s as old as you said, wouldn’t they have rotted away by now?”
“Oh, shit,” David said, and reached over and snatched the picture out of my hand. “Bob, why’d you have to bring—”
“Shut up, David,” Maddy said. “Raymond, come here.”
I walked around the table and stood in front of her. She took both my hands in hers and looked right into my face. “Raymond,” she said, “you wouldn’t do anything to hurt us, would you?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. My throat had tightened up till I could barely talk. “No, Maddy.”
“And if you knew something that could cause trouble for us, you wouldn’t tell? I don’t mean anything bad or illegal,” she said quickly. “Just something that could make a lot of trouble.”
“No.” I didn’t know what she was talking about but I would have agreed with anything she said.
“Then come on,” she said, standing up and picking up a big battery lantern that was sitting on the table. “There’s something I want to show you.”
David stood up too, fast. “You will like hell!”
“Don’t be stupid, David,” Maddy said without looking at him. “And for once in your life try trusting someone.”
“Raymond’s a smart boy,” Mr. Donovan said. “He’ll cooperate, once he understands.”
“Oh, all right,” David said, throwing up his hands, “why not? Hell, let’s hold a press conference. Call the White House, invite Truman for a look. Bring in the damn United Nations.”
“Watch your step,” Maddy said as we started across the dry creek bed.
It was a long hard walk up the hollow to the cave, and hot even in the deep shade under the trees. By the time we got there, I was wishing I’d brought the rest of that Coke along.
About halfway up the hollow Maddy turned left and started up a steep slope, covered with big loose rocks, to the foot of the bluff. “Here,” she said, and I saw what Sheriff Cowan had meant. If I hadn’t known there was a cave there I’d never have guessed.
“It’s a little rough getting through the brush,” she said, “but we didn’t want to advertise the location by clearing it away.”
She walked around to the side of a gray boulder, big as a good-sized car, that rested against the face of the bluff. She switched on the battery lantern and pushed aside some bushes and disappeared behind the boulder.
“You know,” Mr. Donovan said as we started after her, “I believe this must have been sealed off until recently. Look at all that loose rock and earth down below. There’s been a slide, not too long ago. Maybe that last big rainstorm in May set it off.”
“You could be right,” David said. “There’s hardly any animal sign in the cave.”
I pushed through the brush and found myself in a narrow little space, dark except for the light that was coming from off to my right. “You’ll have to get down and crawl a little way,” Maddy called back. “It’s not too bad.”
It was as far as I was concerned. The light from up ahead helped, but it was still a scary place, and going through the tightest part I could feel the whole world pressing in on me. The air was cold, too, with a creepy dead smell. I wanted to yell but I choked it down because I didn’t want Maddy to think I was a coward. Then the hole got bigger and the light got brighter and there I was in the cave.
“Sorry about the light,” Maddy said as I straightened up. “We usually use carbide lamps, which are brighter. But they’re a pain to get started and I don’t feel like fooling with it.”
It wasn’t a fancy cave like the ones in the books, with stalactites and all. It was just a kind of room, about the size of a one-car garage. It looked even smaller because of all the stuff stacked and piled over by the walls—shovels and trowels, big round screen-wire dirt sifters, boxes and bags and a lot of things I didn’t recognize.
In the middle of the floor, a space had been marked off with wooden pegs and lengths of twine. Inside that, the ground had been dug or scraped down for a foot or so, and in the dug-out space lay the skeleton.
It didn’t look much like the ones in the Halloween decorations. It looked more like a bundle of loose sticks, till you got a good look. It lay on its left side with its knees drawn up part way, and its left arm flung out straight. The right hand was out of sight up near its chest.
And sure enough, it was wearing clothes, and they didn’t look like Indian clothes to me. It was hard to be sure, but it looked more like some kind of one-piece outfit, like the coveralls my cousin Larry wore when he worked at the Texaco station in town. Maddy held the light up higher and now I saw it had on shoes, too. Or rather boots, with big heavy-looking soles. Actually, I could only see one, because the left foot was still buried.
After a minute I said, “I don’t get it.”
David said, “Welcome to the club, kid.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Maddy said. “Neither does anyone else.”
David went around and squatted down by the hole and reached down and touched the right sleeve. “You asked a good question, back there,” he said. “Fabric should have rotted away a long time ago, but just look at this stuff. Oh, it’s deteriorated badly, it’s brittle and flimsy, but it’s still in a hell of a lot better condition than it should be. Than it can be.”
“But then,” I said, thinking I got it now, “it must not be as old as you thought. Must be, uh, modern.”
David nodded. “That would be the logical conclusion. The condition of the bones, the partial fossilization, well, there might be some other explanation, chemicals in the soil or something. The Clovis point you saw could have been here long before this guy arrived. But there’s just one other thing.”
He moved a little to one side and motioned to me. “Come look at this.”
I went over and hunkered down beside him, though I didn’t really want to get any closer to that skeleton. He said, “Hold that light closer, Maddy. Look here, Raymond.”
He was pointing at a big long rip in the material covering the right shoulder. He pushed the cloth aside with his fingertips. “See that?”
I saw it. I’d seen one like it a couple of weeks ago, lying on a bed of cotton in a little box on the table by the creek.
“And so,” David said, “what we have here is a man in modern clothes with a ten-thousand-year-old Clovis point embedded in his shoulder. Which, of course, is flatly impossible.”
“Modern is right,” Maddy said. “I cut a tiny little piece from the cuff and studied it under the microscope, and it’s not any natural fiber. In fact it’s not exactly woven fiber at all, it’s more—I don’t know what the hell it is, that’s the truth, I’ve never seen anything like it and textiles are a specialty of mine.”
“The boots are synthetic too,” David said. “And the fasteners are some kind of hard plastic.”
I thought it over for a minute. “But that’s—” I remembered, then, a story in a science fiction magazine I’d had, before Daddy took it away from me and told me he’d whip me if he ever caught me reading that crap again.
I said, “You think he was a time traveler.”
“Did I say that?” David made a big show of looking around. “I didn’t hear anybody say that, did you?”
“Now you see,” Maddy said, “why we’re having to keep this secret for now. David’s got to be careful how he handles this, because a lot of people are sure to call it a fake. It could destroy his career.”
There was something sticking out of the ground just behind the skeleton’s lower back, a dark object about the size of a kid’s book satchel. Or that was my guess, though you really couldn’t see much of it. I said, “What’s this?”
“Once again,” David said, “I’m damned if I know. Looks like some kind of pack he was carrying, but what’s in it I couldn’t tell you. Maybe his lunch, maybe his spare socks, maybe something we wouldn’t even recognize.”
“Like,” Ma
ddy said, “whatever got him here. From wherever—whenever—he came from.”
“I didn’t hear that either,” David said. “Anyway, I haven’t looked inside and I’m not going to. Not even going to dig it out so it can be opened. If and when it gets opened, it’s going to be by somebody of absolutely impeccable professional standing, with a bunch of other respected paragons on hand for witnesses.”
“Have you got anyone yet?” Mr. Donovan asked.
David shook his head. “Everybody’s out on digs right now. Most of all I want Dr. Hoban of the University of Pennsylvania, but he’s in Iraq for the rest of the summer.”
“That old bastard,” Maddy said. “You know damn well he’ll steal all the credit for himself.”
“I wish I had your optimism,” David said. “More likely he’ll denounce the whole thing as a fraud and me as a lunatic or worse.”
“Of course,” Mr. Donovan said, “if the government gets wind of this, and somebody thinks there might be something in that pack with possible military applications—”
“Oh, my God,” David said. He put his hands up to his face. “I hadn’t even thought of that. Marvelous.”
I was looking at the skull. It wasn’t “grinning,” as they say. The jaws were open and it looked like it was screaming in pain. I shivered. It really was cold in there.
I said, “It was the spear that killed him, wasn’t it?”
“Looks that way,” Maddy said. “Looks as if he dragged himself in here—maybe for shelter, maybe trying to hide—and simply bled to death. That’s got to have been a terrible wound.”
“Wonder what happened,” Mr. Donovan said. “To cause them to kill him, I mean.”
“Maybe he broke some local taboo,” Maddy said. “We found a few small objects, that apparently fell out of his pockets—another point like that one you saw, a bone scraping tool, a kind of awl made from deer horn. Evidently he was doing some collecting. Maybe he picked up something he shouldn’t.”
“Or maybe they just killed him because he was a stranger.” David looked down at the skeleton. “Poor bastard, you sure wound up a long way from home, didn’t you?”
“How’d he get buried?” I asked.
“Flooding,” Maddy said. “Silt and sand washing in. This cave’s been flooded several times in the distant past.”
“The floor of the hollow would have been a lot higher back then,” Mr. Donovan added. “Say, that’s another possible dating clue, isn’t it?”
“Maybe.” David shrugged. “When you get right down to it, the date doesn’t really matter now. If this burial is even a hundred years old, we’re looking at the impossible. Christ, fifty.”
He stood up. “Come on. Raymond’s seen enough. Probably wondering by now if we’re crazy or he is.”
By the time I got home it was nearly supper time. Daddy came in a little bit later, while I was sitting on the couch in the living room trying to think, and right away he said, “Raymond, you been hanging around with them college people, down at the creek? Don’t lie to me,” he added before I could answer. “Two different people said they saw you on your bicycle headed that way.”
I said, “Tobe Nelson said it was all right, Daddy. I asked him and he said it was all right, long as I close the gate.”
“That’s Mister Nelson to you,” Mama said from the doorway.
Daddy said, “I don’t care if General MacArthur told you it was all right for you to go down there. I’m the one says what you can and can’t do, and I’m telling you to stay away from them people. I don’t want you having nothing to do with them and I don’t want you going down there as long as they’re there.”
I said, “Why?”
“Because I say so,” he said, starting to get red in the face, “and you’re not so big I can’t still whip your ass if you don’t mind me.” I started to speak and he said, “Or I can do it right now if you keep talking back.”
So I didn’t say any more. I wasn’t really afraid of him—he hadn’t laid a hand on me since I was six, he just liked to talk tough—but I knew he’d get all mad and stomp and holler around, and Mama would start crying, and I didn’t feel like going through all that right now. I had enough on my mind.
I did stay away, though, for the next couple of days. I figured David and Maddy didn’t need me coming around, with all they had to do and think about.
Wednesday, I decided to go into town to the library and see if they had some books about archaeology. I told Mama where I was going and she said, “You’re not going down to the creek, are you, to see those people? You know what your daddy said.”
“Just to the library,” I said. “Promise.”
“You be careful, then,” she said. “I don’t really like you riding that thing down the road.”
It was only a couple of miles into town, but the weather was still hot, so by the time I got there I was pretty sweaty. Going by the Texaco station I slowed down, thinking about getting me a cold drink, and then I saw the red Mercury parked out front.
David Sloane came out of the side door as I pulled up. “Raymond,” he said, raising a hand. He looked at my bike and said, “Hm. You get around pretty well on that bike, don’t you? Wonder if you’d consider doing me a big favor.”
He got out his wallet. “Five bucks,” he said, “if you’ll go tell Maddy that I’m stuck in town with car trouble, and I’ll probably be coming in pretty late.”
I hesitated for a second. Daddy would be really mad if I went down there again. I was taking a big enough chance just standing here talking to David.
But I was too embarrassed to tell David about Daddy, and I really did want to see Maddy again. And if it came down to it, I could say I was doing a Christian duty by helping someone. There wouldn’t be much Daddy could say to that.
Besides, there was a lot I could do with five dollars. I said, “Sure,” and took the five and stuck it in my pocket and off I went, back up the road, standing on the pedals to get up speed.
When I got down to the creek things looked funny, somehow, and then I realized it was because I was used to seeing the red car sitting there by the trailer. Mr. Donovan’s jeep was there, though. Good, I thought, maybe he’d give me a ride back to town.
But I didn’t see him or Maddy anywhere, so I figured they must be up at the cave. I leaned the bike on its stand and started toward the creek, but then I stopped and looked back at the trailer. I really was dry from riding in the hot sun, and I knew Maddy wouldn’t mind if I got myself a nice cold Coke first.
The generator motor was rattling away as I walked toward the trailer. I went up the little metal steps and saw that the door wasn’t quite shut. I pushed it open and started to go in, but then I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye and I turned my head and saw them on the bed.
Mr. Donovan was lying on top of Maddy. Her legs were sticking up in the air and they were both sort of thrashing around. Neither of them had any clothes on.
I stood there for a minute or so, standing on the top step with my head and shoulders inside the door, just staring with my mouth open. They didn’t look around. I don’t think they were noticing much just then.
Finally I got myself unstuck and jumped down off the steps and ran, up the creek bank, not really looking where I was going, just getting away from that trailer. I felt sick and angry and ashamed and yet kind of excited too. My skin felt hot and not just from the sun.
I mean, I knew about what they were doing. I was thirteen, after all. But it just didn’t look at all like I’d imagined.
I got my bike and wobbled off up the road, nearly falling a couple of times. At the top of the hill I remembered David’s message, and the five dollars. So now he was going to think I’d cheated him, but I couldn’t help that. I wouldn’t have gone back down there for all the money in the United States.
Saturday night I woke up in the middle of a dream about Maddy and the skeleton—I don’t want to tell about it, it was pretty awful—and sat up in bed, listening, the way you do w
hen you don’t know what woke you. It seemed like I could hear the echo of a big loud boom, and then a rumbling sound dying away. In the next room, Mama’s voice said, “What was that?”
“Thunder,” Daddy said. “Go back to sleep.”
Next morning as we left for church I saw a lot of dust hanging over the road across Tobe Nelson’s pasture, and what looked like a police car heading toward the creek. The dust was still there when we came home, but I didn’t see any more cars.
Late in the afternoon while we were sitting on the porch Sheriff Cowan came by. “Afternoon,” he said to Daddy. “Wonder if I could ask your boy a couple of questions. Don’t worry, he’s not in any trouble,” he added, smiling at Mama.
Daddy said, “Raymond, answer the sheriff’s questions.”
Sheriff Cowan sat down on the edge of the porch and looked up at me. “I understand you’ve been spending a lot of time down by the creek lately. Been friendly with those friends of Mr. Donovan’s?”
“He was,” Daddy said, not giving me a chance to answer. “That’s over.”
“That right?” Sheriff Cowan raised one eyebrow. “Well, then I’m probably wasting my time. You haven’t been down there in the last couple of days?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“Oh, well.” He let out a big loud sigh. “So much for that. Sorry to bother you folks.”
Daddy said, “Mind if I ask what this is about?”
Sheriff Cowan turned his head and looked off across the valley. “Night before last, somebody broke into Huckaby’s Feed and Supply and stole half a case of dynamite. Last night they used it to blow up that cave.”
I said, “What?” and Mama made little astonished noises. Daddy said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Sheriff Cowan nodded. “Yep, did a pretty thorough job, too. The whole bluff’s all busted up and caved in, great big chunks of rock every which way.”
He took off his hat and scratched his head. “Tell you the truth, I can’t hardly believe somebody did that much damage with half a case of DuPont stump-blower. It’s strange,” he said. “Tobe Nelson claimed there were two explosions, too, a little one and then a big one, but nobody else heard it that way.” He shrugged. “Maybe some kind of gas in the ground there? Who knows?”
Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 Page 15
