Burials

by Mary Anna Evans

  “Roy Cloud. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  ***

  Bleck had made quick work of searching the wooded area where the shooter had hidden. It was a sizeable patch of trees covering a low hill surrounded by pastures and row crops. The patch of trees was big enough to get lost in, so it was certainly big enough to hide a scary person with a gun. Faye worried for the officers searching it.

  Bleck’s famous nose had found no trail, and neither he nor his partner had found bullets or casings to prove that anyone had ever shot a gun there. Faye, Kenny, and Carson sat with the chief in his SUV and tossed around ideas about what exactly had just happened.

  “There’s three of you that heard the shots. I know for a fact that Kenny and Carson have good sense. Doctor Faye, you look sensible, too. If you three tell me somebody was out there, I believe you. From the sound of it, I’d say that someone was shooting at you people. What exactly are you doing out here that might upset somebody that bad?”

  Faye watched Carson push his hair back from his face so he could look the lawman in the eye. His hair was too short for a ponytail and too long for a man whose job required him to lean forward for hours on end. The sun had put premature wrinkles around his mouth and burned the ends of his brown hair to the color of ash. Carson was a massive man, heavy with muscle but not fat, yet he didn’t have the look of a bodybuilder. He looked like a man who moved dirt and rock, day in and day out, using a body that was built for his work in a way that Faye’s was not.

  He also looked to Faye like a man who didn’t often sit still. She could tell that the time they had spent hiding behind his truck, motionless, had been hard on him.

  “We’re starting an archaeological excavation today,” Carson said, gesturing at Faye, himself, and two technicians who had arrived after the shooting stopped. “That backhoe is costing me a lot of money,” he said, nodding his head at a machine so big that it hardly needed pointing out. Carson’s workers were standing in its shadow. “Those people are costing me a lot of money, too. How soon can we get started?”

  “You sure you don’t want to call it a day?” Cloud asked. “Send your people home and let their nerves settle down?”

  Faye looked across the grassy area being used as the parking lot for this rural archaeological site. Two of Carson’s field technicians were standing with the backhoe operator, a slender dark-skinned man who was leaning against his truck and looking impatient.

  Faye knew that Carson’s work plan for the afternoon was critical to keeping the project on schedule. He was not going to want to send everybody home just because they were nervous.

  “No, I don’t want to call it a day,” Carson said, proving that Faye already knew her client pretty well. “The last time work was suspended at this site, it stayed suspended for twenty-nine years. You just told me that nobody’s lurking in the woods, so okay, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s time to get to work.”

  “You sure about that?” Cloud asked.

  “I’ve got some security guards coming to help me make sure nobody shows up and starts shooting again. What else do you expect me to do? If I hold off work today, will we somehow be safer out here in the woods tomorrow?”

  “Can you really get security guards here that fast? It’s not like we’re sitting in downtown Tulsa.”

  “I know some people who work security at the casinos. They’ll be very happy to spend their time off earning an extra paycheck.”

  Roy grabbed hold of the passenger headrest, using it for leverage so that he could turn and get a better look at the people in his back seat. “You got the budget to pay security guards all summer? I don’t even have the budget or the personnel to assign anybody to stay here with you today. I’ll make sure somebody drives by and checks on you several times, but that’s all I got.”

  “I can pay the security guards for a while. We’re going to have to take this thing a day at a time. But know that I am not going to be intimidated into shutting down my project. I’ve worked too long and too hard to make it happen.”

  All eyes were on the backhoe, a massive yellow thing that looked angular and hard against the soft green of the trees. When it started digging, the project would officially begin.

  Carson was still talking himself into doing what he wanted to do. “I’m not even sure there’s anything to be afraid of. It was pretty scary at the time, listening to those gunshots, but maybe it was just hunters. Really, really stupid hunters. And maybe we were so scared that it seemed like the shots came whenever we moved. Your officers checked out the woods. I hired the guards. We’ll be fine.”

  “Can any of you think of a reason somebody wouldn’t want this project to happen?” Cloud asked.

  “Carson’s the tribal archaeologist for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation—” Faye began, but her explanation was cut off by a hurry-it-up nod from the police chief who knew the business of most everybody in his little hometown. “So you know that,” she said, and her train of thought came to an abrupt halt.

  She started again, hoping she might be able to tell Roy Cloud something he didn’t already know. “The tribe will be building a park here, once Carson finishes this project that’s designed to make sure that the construction won’t be disturbing cultural remains. The park will offer fishing, swimming, boating, camping, playgrounds, an archaeological museum,” Faye said. “You’d think the community would be in favor of that.”

  “You’d think,” Carson said, “but people can get touchy about archaeology when it’s their own history that’s being disturbed.”

  Roy Cloud looked like he was thinking something that he wasn’t saying.

  They were interrupted by a racket that started loud and got louder. All the people present—Faye, Carson, Carson’s employees, the backhoe operator, two security guards just getting out of their vehicle, and Chief Roy Cloud—whipped their heads toward a black van that was approaching fast enough to raise a dust cloud off the dirt road leading into the woods from the highway. People were hanging out all its windows, hollering something unintelligible.

  Carson mumbled, “Oh, for the love of all that’s holy,” as he jumped out of the SUV and jogged toward the spot where the van had parked. “This is just like 1987 all over again.”

  “You thought she was going to take it lying down this time?” Cloud said as he and Kenny jogged after him. Carson just shook his head and kept running.

  Faye hustled to catch up with them, wondering what had happened in 1987 that involved a van full of people making a lot of noise. She also wondered who “she” was.

  As they passed the workers, Faye saw one of them turn his eyes to the approaching van and say to Kenny, “Would you look at that? You’d think thirty years hadn’t gone by.”

  Kenny didn’t respond.

  A half-dozen young people boiled out of the van. In less than a minute, they were lined up beside the van, holding neatly hand-lettered signs. The slogans ranged from a Crazy Horse quote—“One does not sell the land people walk on”—to Chief Joseph’s “My heart is sick and sad.” Faye had to admit they’d chosen some of her favorites. The apparent leader’s sign was larger and he had used his own words to make his point: “Let our ancestors rest in peace. Archaeology is an assault on our culture.”

  The driver pulled a handmade drum out of the back of the van and handed it to one of the protesters who immediately began a pulsing rhythm. Some of the protesters used rattles to add to the beat. With an initial shout from the leader, they began singing a call-and-response melody with a visceral power that made Faye want to stop and listen.

  Carson looked at Roy Cloud. “Can we do anything about this?”

  “This is tribal land. The people have a right to assemble.”

  Carson closed his eyes and let out an explosive breath. “All right. Let them protest. There is nothing they can do to stop this excavation. I did a mountain of paperwork to get it appr
oved. It’s legal. The tribe didn’t just approve the work. They’re paying for it. Everything we do here will be conducted with respect for the past and for their ancestors. And she knows that.”

  “In cases like this, she doesn’t really respect government approval. Nor tribal approval. Nor any paperwork. That can’t be a surprise to you.”

  Carson stood with his fists on his hips. He answered Cloud with a simple shake of his head.

  “The press will be here any minute,” Cloud said. “You know she called them in plenty of time to disrupt the beginning of this dig.”

  “Of course she did.”

  “And you know that the news about the gunshots you heard this morning will get out. Kenny will tell Mickey, because he tells Mickey everything, and Mickey is constitutionally incapable of keeping his mouth shut.”

  Carson was too upset to answer Cloud with anything but another headshake.

  “I’ll meet with the press,” the police chief said. “It’ll keep the rumors down.”

  “Good. Because I don’t intend to give any interviews. I lost the whole morning and I have work to do this afternoon.”

  “Fine,” Cloud said, “but I have to ask you this. Is it possible that she had something to do with the shots you heard this morning? Could she maybe have been trying to shut the project down?”

  Carson’s free-floating anger found a focus in Roy Cloud. “No. No! She wouldn’t have risked hurting—” He stopped for another explosive sigh. “She wouldn’t have risked hurting anybody. She would never hurt anybody at all.”

  Chapter Four

  Faye wished that the earnest young man wearing two long braids and a long-suffering expression would quit banging on that everloving drum. She rather enjoyed the voices of the singers, but the drumming had wormed its way into her nervous system and stayed there. He’d been beating that drum for nearly an hour straight. He’d drummed through Cloud’s efforts to speak calmly to the newspaper reporter who showed up to cover the protest. He’d even drummed while the group’s leader was giving the reporter an interview.

  This seemed counterproductive, since the point of a protest was to let the public know about a cause. How was the reporter supposed to write about the protest if he couldn’t hear what the demonstrators had to say?

  When Cloud had mentioned the “media,” Faye had pictured someone, and maybe several someones, speaking seriously into a video camera. Plus a few newspaper reporters angling for an interview. She’d forgotten that she was in Sylacauga, Oklahoma.

  Maybe if somebody had actually been shot, a TV crew from Tulsa or Oklahoma City would have driven out for the afternoon. As it was, the press coverage was limited to a single reporter for Sylacauga’s weekly newspaper. Roy Cloud gave her an interview, then left after telling Carson to call him if he needed anything. The reporter followed him down the dirt road that wound through trees that obscured the main road and made Faye feel like she was further out in the wilderness than she actually was.

  Shortly after noon, the backhoe operator was finally poised to take a literal bite out of this project. Soon enough, Faye and Carson would be doing the work they loved. It would be accompanied by singing and chanting protesters and clattering rattles and the constant dull banging of a small handheld drum, but things could be worse.

  “When I got the e-mail from Joe saying that he was coming home for a visit and bringing his archaeologist wife,” Carson said, raising his voice so she could hear him, “I had no idea he’d married Faye Longchamp. Your paper on archaeology/community interaction during your work with the Sujosa people in Alabama was amazing. My dissertation advisor said that every archaeologist planning to work on tribal lands here in Oklahoma should read it, and she was so right. Since I’m doing this project for the Muscogee Nation, your analysis of the Sujosas’ interactions with your project team is totally on-point.”

  Carson turned to look at his field technicians, who were waiting patiently for him to give them something to do. Shouting over the protesters, Carson said, “I’ve just got three workers here in the field now. We’re not doing an extensive excavation. Ordinarily, three field techs would be plenty of people with shovels but, frankly, these three worry me a little.”

  Faye had been hired to review Carson’s work plan and assess whether his team needed extra training, so this was the most important thing he would say to her all day. “Why exactly do they worry you?”

  “They’re all older. Not elderly, just older, but a shovel bum’s work is hard on a body. Any body.”

  Faye squinted in their direction. She saw gray hair, but all three workers stood tall and moved with confidence. “I wouldn’t write them off because of their age, not at all. Maturity counts. Much experience?”

  “Some. Two of them are in their early sixties but they stay in shape. They’ve done a respectable amount of this kind of work. The other one did a bit of fieldwork, but it was long ago. She actually got close to earning a master’s in anthropology before she quit to get married. She was out of the workforce for a long time until her husband died late last year. After that, I hired her to be my assistant. She’s been real helpful in the office, but we haven’t done any fieldwork. That means she hasn’t held a trowel in her hand since I was in elementary school.”

  Faye gestured at the only other woman who wasn’t part of the irritatingly noisy protest group. She was tall, with dark brown hair cut short. “That’s her?”

  Carson nodded. “Her name’s Emily Olsen. She’s a good bit younger than the other two, maybe mid-fifties.”

  “You say she has some field experience? I wouldn’t have guessed it by looking at her.”

  Even from this distance, Faye could see the woman’s milk-white skin and soft abdomen.

  “Yeah, she has experience. Well, some. She worked on one excavation, a very long time ago, but she’s spent the years since then raising a son who’s grown now and lives in Tulsa. It seems her husband left her enough money that she doesn’t have to work, but she’s not the type to sit around and watch TV and wait for her kid to remember she’s alive. I like her. She’s enthusiastic and smart. I guess I’ll find out right quick how useful she’s going to be in the field.”

  “What was her early experience like? If she was working at a volunteer site in the Yucatan, that’s not much help to you.”

  “Actually, the location of Emily’s earlier work is the most interesting thing on her short résumé. Her one and only archaeology job was here.”

  “In Oklahoma?”

  “No, I mean right here at Sylacauga. She was part of Dr. Townsend’s crew back in 1987.”

  Now this was intriguing. Even after twenty-nine years, stories about the notorious Dr. Townsend still surfaced whenever American archaeologists gathered to drink and gossip. No one ever suggested that she wasn’t brilliant, and no one ever suggested that her early research wasn’t still cited for its meticulous approach. She had done good, solid work until the day she walked away from an unfinished project and never came back.

  This was that unfinished job, and Carson’s job was to salvage what he could of Dr. Townsend’s work. More specifically, he was the tribal archaeologist for the Muscogee Nation and he intended to finish what she had done for them here at the Sylacauga site.

  Actually, if Faye wanted to be official about it, Carson worked for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. The tribe’s legal name acknowledged both their traditional name for themselves and the not-too-creative name that Europeans had given them because they tended to live near creeks.

  The tension between those two names acknowledged the complex history of a civilization that had been forcibly packed up by the United States government and moved nearly a thousand miles west on the Trail of Tears. They had left a trail of graves holding people who didn’t survive the trip, scattering remnant groups like breadcrumbs all along the way. There were federally recognized Muscogee or Creek tribes in Alabama and Oklahom
a. There were state-recognized tribes in Alabama and Georgia. Faye knew of tribes without governmental recognition in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, and there were probably more.

  As best as she could tell, local practice was to use the European word “Creek” most of the time, and she usually followed suit. Joe called himself Creek, and her own family had always used “Creek” when referring to their distant ancestors. In legal issues, it made sense to use the official tribal name, but “the Muscogee (Creek) Nation” was bunglesome on the tongue. Faye had trouble deciding which to use, so she muddled along, inconsistently choosing one name or another.

  Whatever she called Carson Callahan’s employers, they had hired Dr. Townsend’s one-woman cultural resources firm way back in 1987, hoping that the Sylacauga site could be developed as an archaeological park. Instead, the woman had left them with an open excavation, uncatalogued finds, unpaid employees, unpaid bills, and no money left in the budget to finish the work.

  The tribe’s contracting department, inexperienced in dealing with archaeological work, had paid Dr. Townsend’s bills on the assumption that a bill for eighty percent of the work meant that eighty percent of the work had been done, but it hadn’t. Not even close.

  The tribe had hired another contractor to pick up where Dr. Townsend had left off, but their estimate of the cost for completing the work was far more than the Creeks had wanted to spend. To the tribal leadership, going forward with the project looked a lot like throwing good money after bad. What was more, it looked like a good way to get embarrassed again. They had already been embarrassed quite enough.

  Rather than trying to track down their runaway contractor, they had paid the bills and made sure that the employees got paid. They had paid another firm to fill in the excavation and make sure the artifacts found by Dr. Townsend’s crew were properly curated, then they had walked away from their losses.

  Carson, a Sylacauga native, had been fascinated by the failed excavation for his entire life. It had been a foregone conclusion that he was going to badger his new employers into reopening it. The only question had been how much time would pass before the day that he found a way to pick up where the 1987 team had left off.