She and Oka Hofobi and his mother joined the rest of the archaeological crew in the Council Hall, a room that would have held a much bigger crowd. Sheriff Rutland walked in a moment later. Mr. Nail had chosen a chair in the far back corner of the room. If anybody was going to sit beside him, Faye judged that it would be because they walked across the room and sat there on purpose.
Twenty seconds after Faye made that judgment, Davis sauntered in and did that very thing. He nodded at Mrs. Nail, but never even glanced at his brother.
The array of chairs reserved for council members was a trifle intimidating. At precisely seven-thirty, the members filed in and the Chief called the meeting to order.
“The extraordinary events of the past few days give us cause for concern. The mound that Carroll Calhoun tried to destroy is not on tribal land. Neither is the site being excavated by Dr. Mailer’s team. Carroll Calhoun was not killed on Choctaw land. We have no jurisdiction over these issues, but I think it is obvious that they concern us. If we can assist in your murder investigation in any way, Sheriff, please ask.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now. Our Council has a committee on tribal culture that is best suited to discuss our concerns related to archaeological activities. I’ll let their chair speak.”
A handsome woman in her mid-forties took the floor. “Sheriff, can you clarify the law related to the mound on the Calhoun property? We consider it an important part of our heritage. What are our rights if his widow decides to finish what he started?”
“I’ve had some lawyers checking out that very question, and you won’t like the answer.” As the sheriff rose and spoke, she looked at each council member in turn. “When human remains are found, some extremely restrictive laws kick in to protect the burial and the artifacts found with it. This is not the case here. There is no evidence that this is a burial mound, so your rights are quite limited, and so is my jurisdiction. No,” she said, looking back at the Chief. “That’s not exactly true. Our rights are not limited in the case. The truth is that we have no rights. If the new owner of that property, Mr. Calhoun’s widow, decides to bulldoze that mound, then she can do it.”
The councilwoman leaned to her right and conferred with a younger man, before turning her attention back to the sheriff. “That’s what our lawyers tell us, too, but it doesn’t seem right,” she said.
The sheriff nodded to acknowledge her point. “Here’s how it was explained to me. If I owned an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, it would be mine to do with as I pleased. I could put an ad in the paper, stating my intention to stand in my driveway tomorrow and set it on fire, and nobody could stop me. Now, people could try. They could get some historical society to offer to buy it from me. The newspaper could run a scathing editorial trying to shame me out of the idea. Nevertheless, I am free to destroy my property if I see fit. Short of having the mound declared a Mississippi Landmark, or proving that there are human remains buried there, or ramming a last-minute law through the legislature—which might or might not even be possible—the Calhoun mound is his to destroy. Well, now, it’s his widow’s mound to destroy. It may not be right, but it’s the law.”
“We are not without political power,” the woman reminded the sheriff.
“Then use it. I don’t want to see that mound destroyed any more than you do.”
Turning her attention to Dr. Mailer, the councilwoman continued. “I understand that you’re in the county because you were contracted to do an archaeological survey for a proposed road construction project.”
“Yes. The highway department would like to straighten a dangerous curve, but there might be cultural materials in their way. My co-investigator, Dr. Nail, has documented some pretty good evidence that your ancestors used that spot as a lithics manufacturing site. Our preliminary work appears to confirm his suspicions.”
Another council member, an elderly man, laughed. “Sounds like we Choctaws have been big into manufacturing for a long, long time.”
Faye saw the tension in Mailer’s shoulders ease a bit. He laughed, too. “You could say that. We’re just sifting through the trash they left behind—flint chips left over from knapping stone tools—but my flintknapping specialists tell me that your ancestors were very good at what they did.” He nodded at Joe and Chuck, as if to acknowledge their expertise.
Faye noticed Neely’s eyes follow Mailer’s gaze. She didn’t like him calling the sheriff’s attention to Joe’s special skills.
The elderly man chuckled again. “If they weren’t, then they didn’t eat.” He grew more serious. “Oka Hofobi. You realize that you must be our representative in this.”
The younger man nodded in assent.
“It always concerns us when our ancestors’ possessions are uncovered and studied. It has not been so long since their bones were treated the same way. How do you think your colleagues would like it if their grandmothers’ bones were on display in museums?”
Faye cast a glance over her shoulder. Davis was leaning forward in his chair, intense and focused. His father’s eyes were glued to him.
“It’s my job to ask my colleagues that very question. I ask it often.”
Toneisha and Bodie nodded vigorously to confirm Oka Hofobi’s words.
“I’m deeply interested in my culture,” the young Choctaw continued. “I love it. That’s why I chose to do what I do.”
“We aren’t against archaeology, only its misapplication,” the Chief interjected. “In 1981, this Council drafted a resolution asking the Corps of Engineers and others planning to develop our historic lands to hire archaeologists to survey land before development destroyed our people’s historical record. We urged everyone involved, the government included, to apply pressure to make sure this was done. I would like to think we made a difference. You, Oka Hofobi, are young. You are in a unique position to make a difference for a very long time. Do not throw away this opportunity. Do not shame us.”
Oka Hofobi, his mother, his father, his brother—all of them kept their eyes fastened on the Chief’s face. Perhaps it was out of respect for him. Or perhaps it was a convenient way to keep from looking at each other.
Faye had come straight to the council meeting in her work clothes. Given a chance, she would have changed, but staying for dinner with the Nails had forced her to make do with cleaning up at their bathroom sink.
She hadn’t been especially dirty. It had been a week since Neshoba County had had much rain, so the dry red dust had mostly brushed off her clothes. Still, she hadn’t dressed to be on television.
Why was she surprised to find that the council had called a press conference? A business entity that, like the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, had 9,000 employees would be well-versed in handling the media. And, when summoned by the Choctaws, the media had turned out in their honor.
Or that’s what Faye had assumed until she saw the shock on the faces of the Council. This was not a pre-rehearsed press conference. Someone had alerted the media to this informal meeting and caught the Council members flat-footed.
Who would have done it? As always, the answer to that question was buried in another one. Who stood to gain from this publicity?
Not the archaeologists, whose client would prefer they kept a low profile. And not the Council, who were muttering among themselves, trying to regroup. Perhaps one of the farmers who had shown up at the mound to defend Mr. Calhoun’s property rights wanted some public attention to that cause.
Or maybe one of the Choctaws wanted more attention paid to the tribe’s grievance. Faye sneaked a glance at Davis. His expression was remote, shielded. He seemed like a man who would become impatient with the Council’s deliberate approach to an issue that, in his view, should arouse action and passion. Faye would bet money that it was Davis who called in the reporters.
Television stations from as far away as Jackson had sent camera crews. Someone was there from the state public radio network. Newspaper reporters shuffled forward, hoping for a quot
e. Gathered on the sidewalk outside the Council Hall, they converged on the Chief, who hadn’t lived his life in politics without acquiring some media management skills. Thinking on his feet, he spread his arms to encompass them and said warmly, “Thank you all for coming out tonight. We’ve had a most productive meeting.”
A sandy-haired young man thrust a microphone in the Chief’s direction and asked, “Is this about the murder of Carroll Calhoun? The tribe can’t be happy with his attempt to bulldoze that mound.”
A young woman, either the chief’s press secretary or just someone with good instincts, stepped forward to take the question, standing between her boss and controversy. “Mr. Calhoun was found in a place where…well, where illegal activity was going on. The fact that he was killed just after he threatened to destroy an important piece of history may have been just a coincidence. We grieve with Mrs. Calhoun for her husband’s untimely death.”
The microphone holder lunged even closer. Sheriff Rutland moved forward to a spot where she could insert herself between the reporter and his prey with a single step.
“They say that Calhoun was killed by a Choctaw arrowhead,” the reporter continued.
Chuck caught everyone concerned off-guard by reaching over the reporter’s shoulder and grabbing the microphone right out of his hand. “Could you try not to display your ignorance? An arrow is a projectile. The man’s throat was cut, so if the killer had any sense, he would have used a single-edged blade to keep from cutting his own hand off with the other edge. And I’m guessing a crime lab doesn’t have anybody qualified to assess whether it was made by Choctaws, so why don’t you leave that line of questioning alone, too?”
The expressions on the faces around Faye were comical. Every last one of the council members seemed to be wondering who in the heck this guy was. The reporters looked overjoyed, because anything unexpected is news. Besides, Chuck had all the earmarks of somebody who might say absolutely anything.
Faye could almost hear the gears in the sheriff’s head turning. She was asking herself, Who is this guy who knows so much about a murder weapon he hasn’t seen?
And Mailer had the terrified expression of a man whose client was not going to like reading the morning papers. His client, a huge firm contracted by the highway department to conduct pre-construction tasks, expected subcontractors to get to the site, do the job, deliver a bill—preferably a small one—then leave, so that nothing got in the way of getting the road built. Publicity was a bad thing. Publicity could stop a road construction project dead.
“Can you tell me who you are, sir?” the reporter asked.
“My name is Chuck Horowitz, and I’m a lithics analyst with the highway project west of town. We’re working for SGM&T.”
Faye’s heart sank. He’d just mentioned their client on TV. In the context of a murder investigation. Poor Dr. Mailer.
Chuck plunged deeper into ticklish political territory. “We’re just trying to do our work, but the Choctaws here don’t think we should. They think human history should just stay buried, so that their tender sensibilities can be protected. Why? So that, eventually, some idiot like Carroll Calhoun can destroy it?”
Great. Now he’d spoken ill of the dead. And the entire Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
“There’s so much history here. So much. Every flake of stone, every chip, tells a story. I could sit all day every day, and let those chips talk to me. In a big pile of flakes like this,” Chuck held out his two cupped hands, “there might be two that fit together, but it’s worth spending a week to find them, because it’s history. Somebody broke that stone apart hundreds of years ago, and I’m putting it back together. I don’t have time for people who want to stop me.”
Even better. Now he sounded crazy. Their client would be thrilled.
Was Chuck crazy? Could he have killed Calhoun because of his threat to the history that Chuck found so sacred? Faye wavered. She barely knew the man, but she didn’t want to think so. It was as if some primitive instinct wanted her to believe that no one in her personal circle of acquaintances could ever pick up a sharpened stone and slice a man’s throat with it.
If asked to practice psychology without a license, Faye would have said that Chuck wasn’t crazy, but that he reminded her of the articles she’d read about autism and Asperger’s syndrome. She understood that empathy was difficult for people with those disorders. Chuck hadn’t seemed to understand that his leering made her uncomfortable and, right now, he seemed oblivious to the fact that he should pay some bit of respect to the recently dead. And to the elected leadership of a sovereign nation.
As she thought of it, Chuck’s chosen profession, fitting stone flakes together in a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with an unknown number of missing pieces, required a near-autistic attention to detail. Compassion stirred, and she wished someone would protect Chuck from himself.
Neely Rutland stepped up to the task. She took the microphone from Chuck’s hand so deftly that he didn’t have time to fight her for it, then she said, “The murder is under investigation, and discussing its details would jeopardize that investigation. There are no suspects as yet, and there is no reason to believe that the killer is Choctaw. Or white. Or black. Or anything else. We just don’t know. Thank you folks for coming out, but we’re going home now.”
The White People of the Water
As told by Mrs. Frances Nail
You ever walk out in the woods around here? Walk down one of our creeks? Well, if you get a chance, you should. There aren’t many places so pretty left in this world. Maybe in Heaven, but not here.
Most times, you’ll see brown creek water, clear brown water. It looks like tea. You can see right through it, down to the gravel on the bottom. That gravel is what’s left of the Devil’s body, but I already told you that story. This is safe water.
In some places, you’ll see thick, muddy water, and that’s okay, too. Not as pretty as the clear water, maybe, but it’s safe.
You need to watch out for the clear pools, deep and cold. Everybody wants to swim in those…until the day they meet up with one of the okwa nahollo.
Okwa nahollo means “white people of the water.” They look a lot more like white people than they do Choctaws. My grandmother saw one once, and she said its skin looked like the skin of a trout. So I guess it’s shimmery and smooth.
If you were to be so foolish as to swim in a pool where the okwa nahollo live, then they would swim up from the depths and grab you. They would pull you down to their home, where you would become one of them. It takes three days—only three days!—for your skin to go shimmery and white, like a trout. Before long, you would know how to swim and live just like a fish, but you could never leave the water and live in the air, never again.
Later, your friends might come to visit you. If they sat on the creek bank near your pool and sang, you could rise to the surface and talk to them. Maybe even sing with them. But you couldn’t step out of the water and sit on the dirt beside them, or you would die.
This almost happened to my grandmother. She was such a swimmer, good Lord. She could lay on top of the water like it was a bed and float right down the creek.
She wanted to swim in one of those clear pools pretty bad, and she probably thought she could get away with it, because the water was like a home to her. But a shimmery white arm shot up from the deep depths and grabbed her.
She was sinking beneath the water. The okwa nahollo were dragging her down, down. At the very last second, when she had opened her mouth to breathe in water, because there wasn’t nothing else to breathe, her friends grabbed her by the hair and brought her back into her own world.
You can go where you like and do what you like, but I wouldn’t go swimming in a clear, deep pool. Not around here. No, I sure wouldn’t.
CHAPTER NINE
Monday
Day 4 of the Neshoba County Fair
Faye was still hauling the day’s equipment out of the trailer when the sheriff’s car pulled up. Would th
e whole summer pass before she got a solid hour’s worth of work done?
Dr. Mailer turned to Chuck and said, “You know, I forgot to stock up on bottled water. Would you drive to the convenience store and get a few cases? If one of you had a heat stroke, it wouldn’t look good for me.”
Chuck nodded, striking out for his truck at top speed. It didn’t seem to occur to him to say, “Hey! Why don’t you send somebody without a Ph.D.?” And it certainly didn’t occur to him to dawdle. It seemed to Faye that Chuck was cooperative when asked to do something for a reason that made sense to him. She suspected he would balk if, for instance, Mailer insisted that Chuck use a filing system that he didn’t like, just because he was the boss.
“Smooth,” she said to Mailer. “You didn’t want Chuck and the sheriff in the same place at the same time?”
“If I’d been really smooth, you’d never have noticed that I was getting rid of Chuck. I wonder what the sheriff wants.”
It seemed that the sheriff wanted Faye. “You were going to show me some…was it ‘sickle shine’?”
“Close. It was ‘sickle sheen.’ Let’s go look at some rocks.”
Faye ushered the sheriff into Chuck’s domain, grateful that he wasn’t around to see them fingering his prized possessions. She shuffled through the storage boxes on the shelves that ringed his office, carefully avoiding the box full of Joe’s homemade weapons. It only took a moment to put her hands on some good examples.
She laid them out on Chuck’s desk. “Now, understand that we’re talking seat-of-the-pants work. To get real answers that’ll be defensible in court, you’re going to need analyses that your forensics lab probably can’t do. They should send the blade out to experts—”
The look on Neely’s face said that her murder weapon wasn’t going anywhere. “—or maybe you can bring some experts in. There are people who are wizards with a microscope. Judging by the patterns of use-wear, they could tell you whether a tool had been used to scrape hides or carve antler.”
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