She made her decision. “A drive would be lovely. Give me ten minutes.”
Not for the first time, Faye was grateful that her short hair dried exceptionally fast.
The car and Ross were a perfect match. It was sleek and stylish. It was also small, as fabulous sports cars tend to be, yet it still managed to be perfectly proportioned to his substantial frame. It fit him as if it had been manufactured to his measurements, just like his clothes, and it was obvious that neither clothes nor car had come cheap.
Faye was relieved when he opened the passenger door for her, not because she required old-fashioned displays of chivalry, but because she was afraid she might leave a fingerprint on the door’s coal-black paint job. He bent over her solicitously as she lowered herself into the low-slung car, and she suffered a last-minute pang of apprehension.
What was she doing? What would she say to a woman friend who was prepared to crawl into a car with a man she hardly knew?
Probably nothing. No matter how many times a woman met a man for lunch, talked to him on the phone, or met him for drinks, there still came a moment when she chose to let herself be alone with him. Alone and vulnerable. It wasn’t necessarily a good plan, but the western world had a name for this risk-taking behavior. It was called “dating.”
She buckled her seat belt and waited to see where Ross intended to take her.
With a push of a button, he lowered the convertible top, and Faye’s animal instincts relaxed just a bit. She wasn’t actually going to be sealed up in a car with a man she didn’t know. If disaster loomed, she could just hurl herself out of the moving car. (Why did this thought cheer her?) Besides, it was her impression that serial killers rigged their car doors so that victims couldn’t open them from the inside. Lowering a convertible top would spoil that plan. It was time to put her paranoid thoughts away and simply enjoy the ride.
Ross drove with speed and control, and his car ate up the miles. Faye had never ridden on a toboggan, but she imagined it felt like this, skidding smoothly just above the surface of the land. When their speed suddenly slowed, Faye glanced over at Ross, who gestured out her car window. The curve of a Ferris wheel rose above the trees, and multicolored lights twinkled through their branches. A teeming hive of humanity milled among the colorful cabins that stood between them and the Midway.
“I thought it might be fun just to pull the car over and have a glass of wine while we watch the big wheel turn. But now I think that’s probably a bad idea. We’re too close to the Fair and all its traffic. Too many cars. And there’s no shoulder on any of these backroads.” A pickup truck whooshed past, proving his point. “Somebody might sideswipe us if we stopped here. Besides, we’d have no privacy at all.” He took his eyes off the road to look at her sidewise.
“I know just the place,” Faye said. “But we’ll need a flashlight. Do you have one?”
“Are you kidding? This thing has a trunk the size of a breadbox. The bottle of wine barely fits. But I’m sure we can scare up a flashlight somewhere.”
Two convenience stores later, Faye and Ross had acquired the necessary flashlight and she was giving him directions.
“Go slow. I think we’re getting close.”
“What are we looking for? Cows? I don’t see any cows, because this is the darkest road I’ve ever been on—”
“Hence the flashlight.”
“Praise God for the flashlight. And for my halogen headlights. Anyway, the cows may be hiding in the dark, but I recognize pastureland when I see it. Even in the black of night.”
“And I recognize a state park when I see it,” Faye said. “Pull over into that parking lot. Right there. See it?”
“Barely.” He shut off the engine and silent darkness dropped down on them. “I have never in my life seen stars like those.”
“Let’s see. You said you grew up in Brooklyn. Now you live in Atlanta. I’m surprised you’ve ever seen stars at all.”
“A few of the bright ones poke through the haze. Even in Atlanta.”
“The bright ones are usually planets, so we still can’t be sure you’ve ever seen an actual star.” Faye reclined her seat a couple of degrees. “Look there. See the three bright stars overhead? That’s the summer triangle. Vega. Deneb. Altair. Deneb’s part of Cygnus the Swan. See that cross? The long line is the body of a flying bird. The short line crossing it is the bird’s wings.”
Faye’s thoughts strayed to Mr. Calhoun’s mound. She had been so sure she saw wings stretching out on either side of it, but the human brain is conditioned to read patterns as familiar forms. Two dots and a line are invariably interpreted by a normal brain as the two eyes and mouth of a human face. Two lines of unequal length, crossing each other at right angles, could be interpreted as a bird or a human torso or a religious symbol, but those lines were rarely perceived as random. What had the builders of that mound intended it to be?
“Do all archaeologists know as much about stars as you do?”
“There’s actually a branch of the science called ‘archaeoastronomy.’ Ancient people often oriented their monumental architecture to the sun and moon and stars.”
“Like Stonehenge.”
“Right. And like those Mayan pyramids that do funky things on the solstice. Some of them make shadows that look like their snake god is slithering down the pyramids’ steps. I’d like to see that someday.”
“But I take it that archaeoastronomy isn’t your specialty?”
“Um, I’m still trying to choose a specialty. I just can’t seem to narrow down my interest in archaeology. All of it fascinates me. But to succeed in academia, I have to pick one thing and learn all I can about it. That won’t leave much time to explore all the wonderful questions that fall outside my specialty.”
Faye touched her finger to her lips, silencing herself. A first date was a poor time for a woman to parade all her insecurities. She redirected her musings toward something innocuous. “Astronomy, on the other hand, is just a hobby for me. I live on an island, so I’m in charge of all the lights. When I want it dark, I just turn off the generator. Some nights, there’s nothing to do but look at the stars. I keep thinking maybe I might get a telescope, but there’s always someplace else to spend my money. That’s the trouble with owning a two-hundred-year-old house.”
“Ouch. I bet my new townhouse is cheap by comparison.”
Faye would have bet her ancient Pontiac Bonneville that it wasn’t.
“You don’t live on that island all alone, do you?”
“No. Joe lives there, too.”
She thought of trying to explain her relationship with Joe, but she didn’t know how. Was he like a brother to her? No. More like an exceptionally hot first cousin—interesting to look at, but off-limits.
“But he’s okay that you’re here with me?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Actually, he dated someone seriously last winter, and he’s still getting over it.” Casting about for a less intense subject, she remembered why she’d brought Ross all the way out here. “I bet you’re wondering why we needed a flashlight.”
“And I bet you were wondering when I was going to haul out that bottle of wine.”
Ross retrieved the bottle from a trunk that was indeed about the size of a breadbox. Faye trained the flashlight on the bottle and saw that the writing on the label was in French.
“You seemed like a Bordeaux kind of woman,” he said, pouring a generous slosh into a glass and handing it to her.
Faye knew that if “Bordeaux” meant “expensive”—and she reckoned it did—then nary a drop of it had ever crossed her lips. She rolled a sip over her tongue and let it trickle down her throat. It sure tasted expensive.
She remembered something. “Hey! Did you bring this all the way from Atlanta? Neshoba County is dry.”
“Which calls into question whether I was lying when I said you looked like a Bordeaux kind of girl. You’re thinking maybe I just carry a bottle of the stuff around, then tell random unsuspecting women that they make me
think of Bordeaux. Nope. I confess to buying the wine earlier in the evening, before I called you, because I was hoping I could convince you to see me tonight. But I promise I didn’t bring it with me all the way from Georgia. And I can prove it.”
He pointed the flashlight beam at her wine glass. Engraved on the side were the words Pearl River Resort. “Surely you’ve noticed that they sell liquor at the casino. I found the souvenir glasses in a gift shop, but I couldn’t find a liquor store, so I just ordered the wine from room service. The Choctaws are a sovereign nation. The rules are different for them.”
“And you resent them for it.”
“Not so much. I’m glad they’ve had their opportunity for success. If anybody should have a shot at the American dream, it should be the Americans who were here first. But what about our people, Faye?”
Faye was strangely stirred by his use of the phrase “our people.” With bloodlines that reached back to Europe and Africa and North America and probably other places, too, she’d never felt right about claiming any one people as her own.
“What are you proposing? Should we get to build a few casinos, too?”
“What? You’re not inspired by the thought of the South Central Los Angeles Gaming Emporium? You don’t think we should build racetracks in Harlem or downtown New Orleans?” He allowed himself a small chuckle at the thought, and Faye liked the sound of it. “No, I’m talking lump-sum cash grants for Americans of African descent. Not a fortune, but enough to boost hardworking people into the middle class. Enough money to put a down payment on a house. Enough money to make an education possible for anyone who wants it. We’re the richest nation in the world, Faye. We can afford to make recompense for millions of hours of unpaid labor. And the government will be repaid eventually by the taxes those new middle-class citizens will be paying.”
Faye’s overly analytical brain usually dismissed such schemes as pipe dreams. Who would decide who got the money? How would they prove themselves to be the descendants of slaves? How many drops of African blood would it take? How much money was fair payment for the loss of an entire lifetime of freedom? More to the point, who would decide the answers to these questions?
Faye was never sure of her political opinions, because she was so good at poking holes in the logic of ideologues from either party. Tonight, though, it was refreshing to be in the company of someone who knew exactly what he thought.
“I pity the politicians who try to argue with you,” she said, taking another drag on the wine, which did, indeed, taste more expensive by the sip. “You’re such a good talker that I still haven’t told you why we’re here.”
“Or why we needed a flashlight.”
She took the flashlight from his hand and led him across the narrow road to a large sign that proclaimed the site to be Nanih Waiya State Park. Then she waved its beam back and forth over the mound of Nanih Waiya itself. It was so massive that she could only illuminate it a piece at a time but, as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they found that starlight and the flashlight’s tiny beam were enough to give them a sense of its presence.
“The Choctaw believe their race was born here. This is their most sacred place,” she told him. “In the 1840s, government representatives came to deal with the Choctaws who had refused to go away quietly to the Indian Territories. Elderly Choctaws told them that they were born at Nanih Waiya. Not the tribe, but the individual Choctaws themselves believed that they were born here. They said that she was their mother and that they would not quit this land while she stood. It’s a miracle someone didn’t call out the troops to raze it.”
“Do I read that sign right?” he asked. “If this is a state park, does that mean the state owns it?”
“For the moment. The state’s been talking about shutting down this park, among several others. There’s no money for maintenance.”
“Maintenance of what?” He held out the flashlight and turned in a full circle. “I see a fence around the mound. A couple of small buildings. Some beaten-up picnic tables. A parking lot that nobody’s wasted any pavement on in a long time. Maybe never.”
“Somebody’s got to mow the grass and pick up the trash. And there’s another part of the park about a mile away, centered on a mound with a cave running clear through it. I tried to get a look at it but the gate’s locked. Closing that part of the park saved them the money that would be spent on cleaning the bathrooms and patching up the picnic pavilion. Maybe the park people want to spend their money on parks that get more use. We are way out in the sticks here.”
“No kidding. But if they’re going to close this place, why don’t they give it back to the Choctaws?” Faye could tell by his tone of voice that Ross’ political sensibilities were aflame. Perhaps the Choctaws were about to acquire themselves a new lobbyist. “I bet they’d take care of it. You said this was their most sacred place. How did the government get it away from them in the first place?”
Faye took a deep breath of the Bordeaux’s aroma. “Same way the Dutch got Manhattan, I guess. The Chief has said that the state should give Nanih Waiya back to the Choctaws, but I’m not holding my breath. Will New York give Manhattan back? Will the museums of the world empty themselves of mummies and return them to Egypt? It’ll never happen. I don’t begrudge the Choctaws a few casinos.”
Ross held the wine bottle out by its neck and waggled it at her. “Shall we have another glass and finish this thing off? I’ll warn you. I am a strict observer of DUI laws. If I have another drink, I’ll have to give my liver an hour to process it before I’m willing to get back behind the wheel.”
Faye felt like another glass of Ross’ scrumptious Bordeaux would be an excellent idea. “In your car, I have a purse. And in that purse, I have a chocolate bar. We could have a picnic.”
While she fetched the candy, Ross set the flashlight on a picnic table with its beam pointing straight up toward the night sky. Viewed with the right attitude, it looked rather like a candle, which gave a nice romantic glow to their picnic. Ross plunked the wine bottle down beside their makeshift candle, then Faye tore the candy wrapper open so that it lay flat under the chocolate bar, like a flimsy plate. They settled themselves in for an hour—more than an hour—of talking about his years in law school and her dream of earning a Ph.D. She told him how Dr. Mailer was urging her to specialize in lithics, so that he could supervise her dissertation.
“Lithics work is intellectually interesting. I enjoy it. I would be employable with that specialization. But my passion isn’t there. All my life, I’ve dug up the bits and pieces my ancestors left behind on my island. I’ve probed around in the foundations of slave cabins so long that I feel a real connection with the people who lived there. My own house is nothing but a huge artifact of plantation culture. I know so much about how it was built and how its owners lived that I could probably write a dissertation without stepping out my front door. But I couldn’t work with Dr. Mailer. And I couldn’t work with my dear friend Magda, who really made my education possible. I’d have to step completely into the unknown. Can I find a professor who’ll take me on? Will I find a job when I graduate? It’s a hard choice.”
“I could make more money in private practice—”
Faye cast the sports car a skeptical glance.
Ross laughed. “Really, Faye. I could. But happiness has a real value and you have to factor it into your calculations.” He responded to her sheepish expression by saying, “You have to realize how obvious it is that you treat all your decisions like math problems. You weigh the pros and cons, then you force the equation to balance. Don’t forget to include the intangibles in your calculations.”
“Like sipping wine and stargazing? Are those intangible enough for you?”
She showed him the North Star, and they lingered over their picnic so long that even Ross’ unpracticed eyes could see that all the other stars in the sky wheeled around that one.
The Mother Mound rested just a few yards away. Courtship, like the other way stations in the cycle
of human life, was familiar to her, intimately so. While she watched, Faye and Ross sat under those spinning stars, eating cheap chocolate and washing it down with fine wine. Between sips, he kissed her, more than once.
The Spectre and the Hunter
As told by Mrs. Frances Nail
On a night lit by bright stars, a hunter named Kowayhoommah kindled a fire. He was proud and satisfied. His bow was well-formed and its aim was true. His dog was a fine hunter and a faithful companion who watched over their camp by night. His stomach was full of jerked venison. Best of all, he had pitched his camp in a spot thick with game. Deer tracks cut into the rich soil. Now and then, a “cluck” gave away the presence of turkeys deep in the thickets. Spreading his deerskin and his blanket, he dreamed of the kills he would make.
Now, sounds travel well under starlight. Surely you’ve noticed that. As Kowayhoommah laid there, a keen cry rose out of the night. It was human, but it was not. It might have been the cry of a lost hunter, but a true hunter is never lost.
The piercing cry sounded again, and the hunter felt his heart’s blood run cool. Before long, footsteps approached. Unable to look away, he watched a tall, gaunt figure shuffle toward him. Its robe was tattered, and its withered hand clutched an unstrung bow and a few broken arrows. Shivering, it stretched its bony hands toward the fire and turned its hollow gaze on Kowayhoommah, who was moved by pity.
He rose and offered his deerskin for the visitor to sit on, but the spectre refused, gathering up an armload of briers instead. He stretched himself on this thorny couch, saying nothing, but always staring at Kowayhoommah.
When its deepset eyes closed, the dog finally spoke. “Arise, and flee for your life. He is sleeping, but if you sleep, you will be lost. Run, while I stay and watch!”
Hunters spend their lives learning to move quietly. Kowayhoommah crept silently from the fireside, advanced a few hundred paces, then paused to listen. He heard nothing, so he began to run.
Effigies Page 17
