by Molly Macrae
“Good. That’s what it takes. Were you really looking for me earlier? You said you were going to ask me something.”
“When I put the program handbooks together, I saw that you’re talking about signature quilts.”
“Signature quilts and crazy quilts. We’ll work with the students to piece a quilt combining both forms, although I don’t know how far we’ll get in two weeks.” When Nadine had described her plans for Hands on History, an enrichment program for high school students, I’d told her it sounded ambitious but exciting. Then, when she’d asked me to be one of the volunteer instructors, and told me I could introduce the kids to nineteenth-century textiles—my professional area of expertise—I could hardly say no.
“I’d like to sit in on the quilt discussion, if you don’t mind,” Grace said. “Or if you have room for extra hands, I’ll be happy to help with the quilting. I’ve done a few small pieces of my own. Nothing fancy, but if nothing else, I can thread a needle.”
I laughed. “And that’s not always a given. Sure, if you have the time, TGIF will be happy to have you.”
“Teaching who?”
“Sorry. T-G-I-F—Thank Goodness It’s Fiber. It’s the needlework group that meets at the Weaver’s Cat. Some of the members are quilters, and they’re going to do most of the work with the students on the quilt. I’m just giving the kids historical background.”
“Oh, right. Just,” Grace said. “Nadine told me about your background in textiles and museums. It’s very cool. Did you consider applying for the assistant director job here? I know you still get your hands on fibers and textiles at the Weaver’s Cat, but they aren’t historic. They don’t have the stories.”
“The timing wasn’t really right.”
Grace shook her head, maybe thinking I lacked drive or ambition. I could have told her about the personal and professional pain of losing my dream job at the Illinois State Museum because of massive state budget cuts. But there wasn’t time to tell that sad story—what I’d come to think of as my professional yarn—before we caught up to the tour. I didn’t feel the need to justify my professional and personal decisions on such short acquaintance, anyway.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “You’re a heck of a lot more unassuming than Phil’s ever been. As soon as he saw the position posted, he owned it.”
“How long have you known him?”
“You could say I’ve been there and done that, too. He’s my ex-husband. Look, he sees me. See the look on his face? Now watch this.” She waved her whole arm and called over to him. “Hey, Phil! Honey, I’ve got a straggler for your tour.” She nudged me again with her elbow. “He hates that I’m volunteering here,” she said, with a wicked chuckle. “And he hates being called Phil. See you later. Have fun.”
Chapter 2
“Limbs lost and battles won are of no particular consequence to Ms. Rutledge,” Phillip said when I caught up with the group at the barn. “A textile conservator doesn’t need to know that Carter Holston, patriarch of the esteemed family, fought in the Battle of Kings Mountain and left his left arm behind.”
The students hung on Phillip’s every macabre word. He sounded scolding, but then he raised his hat and smiled, and I decided his tone wasn’t personal. It might be a lingering effect of seeing Grace.
“It’s nice to have you with us, Ms. Rutledge.” To the students, he said, “Don’t let her mild manner fool you. Ms. Rutledge is a highly skilled professional when it comes to matters of life and death.”
The teens turned to look at me, and I did my best to appear more impressive than the average, short, thirty-nine-year-old woman.
“That’s the life and death of carpet beetles, clothes moths, and various fungi,” Phillip explained. “But pest and mold control isn’t a trivial issue for historic sites and museums. Ms. Rutledge will introduce you to quilting during Hands on History and, because you’re very lucky, she’ll let you in on the secrets of linen production.”
“Which will introduce you to the smell of retting flax,” I said. “That’s something you’ll never forget and kind of goes along with Mr. Bell’s garbage-dump theme.”
“Rancid and rotting,” Phillip said. “Excellent. All right, time’s wasting. Next stop is the garbage dump. We’ll take a shortcut through the barn and stop to meet our heritage breed livestock.”
The students crowded after Phillip, except for a tall, thin boy I recognized as the smirker who’d mentioned cemeteries. He’d stayed behind, looking toward the mountain ridges to our east. He wasn’t wearing one of the lanyard name tags the students had been given, but the end of a lanyard stuck out of his pocket.
“I love that blue in the mountains,” I said, “and the way it deepens with each receding ridge.”
“I love the way this town recedes in my rearview mirror every chance I get.” He kicked at a pinecone and trailed the group into the barn.
I followed, wondering about Nadine’s assurance that the teens in Hands on History were avid, eager overachievers looking forward to working alongside professionals. Maybe this guy was having a bad day. Or maybe an overeager parent had applied to the program for him. He did join the group, though, gathered around Phillip in the barn.
“Mules have a long and glorious history in Tennessee agriculture,” Phillip said. “This is Alice.” Alice pressed her long nose into Phillip’s hand. “And Fred is standing over there in the corner with his back to us. He’s jealous.”
“What’s the pig’s name?” a sandy-haired boy at the front asked.
“The pig is a sow.” Phillip shifted his attention and ours to the pen where a large black pig suckled her piglets. “This is Portia. She’s an elegant example of a Poland China, an American breed dating back possibly as far as 1816. The exact date is disputed and isn’t important. More important is understanding that ‘facts’ sometimes change, and . . .” Phillip paused, and it was interesting to see that the students turned from watching the captivating pigs to look at him. “And more on facts later.” He smiled, pleased with either the students’ attention or his own magnetism. “And for a treat, if you come back during our fall harvest festival, you can have a portion of Portia’s piglets. They’ll be a good size then and delicious when roasted with sage and apples.” There were a few gasps and a few squeals. “The Holstons living here in the 1850s didn’t keep pigs as pets,” Phillip said, “and neither do we. Shall we move on?”
The tall, thin boy lagged behind the others again, stopping at the barn door. I stopped beside him.
“Now you know the mules’ names, the pig’s name, and my name,” I said, “but I still don’t know yours.”
With a toothy, insincere smile, he made a show of pulling the lanyard out of his pocket and dropping it around his neck.
I liked him for that smile. “Zach Aikens. Nice to meet you. Shall we join the others?”
Without so much as a grunt, he slouched after them.
Phillip was crouched, talking to a man who was standing chest deep in one of four squares laid out for excavation. Presumably this was the archaeologist Nadine had recruited for the garbage pit project. He would have been more obvious in an Indiana Jones-ish hat, but the hat he did wear looked well worn and often washed. Judging from the smear of dirt down his nose and the elbows of his shirt planted in the dirt at the edge of the square as he talked to Phillip, he was wise to go with washable. He didn’t appear to feel at a disadvantage carrying on a conversation while standing in a hole up to his armpits.
To my textile-loving eyes, the symmetrical and crisply defined excavation squares looked like quilt blocks. They measured a good six feet by six feet each, and they were laid out to make a larger grid of two and two. The squares were separated from one another by a yard or so of untouched grass and soil—like borders of quilt sashing—and the squares’ sides were outlined by wooden stakes at their corners with string wrapped around the stakes and pulled t
aut between them. One square—behind the currently occupied square—hadn’t been dug yet; it was nothing more than an outline of stakes and string in the grass. The next square over had been stripped of sod, and the fourth square was dug evenly to a depth of about a foot and a half.
“I kind of thought it would smell,” a boy said.
“Up to our waists in waste?” the man in the pit said. “Sometimes it works out that way. But you find that more often if you go rooting through a Dumpster or your neighbor’s trash bags. Do you know what that field of study is called?”
“That’s a study?” the student asked.
“It’s garbology, dude,” Zach said. “It’s cool.”
“A golden garbage bag to the dude on the end,” the archaeologist said. “Nice job. So, what we have here, by contrast, is a good clean site.” He stood up straight, spread his arms, and inhaled slowly and deeply through his nose, closing his eyes and expanding his chest. When he exhaled, he opened his eyes, the satisfied look of a connoisseur of soils on his face.
“Yup,” he said, “a clean site. We do have a layer of clay over the original dump that’s acted as a seal, of sorts, over what lies below. The clay might have been put down for that purpose when they quit using the dump. But it’s been an imperfect seal, and we get a lot of precipitation in east Tennessee, and water takes a toll on organic matter. That means most of what you’re going to find when you dig will be inorganic—ceramics, glass, metal. I’ll show you examples, but first I want you to watch something very important. This is not optional.”
He bent over, disappearing from view, and reappeared with a ladder that he leaned against the edge of the pit.
“When I climb out of this hole that I’ve dug myself into,” he said, “I’m not going to do it by showing off my arm strength.” He flexed an impressive set of biceps. “I’m not going to boost myself out of here like I’m in a swimming pool. I’m also not going to scramble up the wall by digging in with my fingers and knees and toes. I want to preserve the profile of each side in every square. And you do, too, as long as you’re here digging for me. Has everyone got that?”
The students nodded. Despite the fact that I wasn’t part of his new crew, I nodded, too.
“Climbing out of excavation pits is the whole reason ladders were invented,” he said. He climbed out and used his hat to beat the worst of the dirt from the knees of his jeans. When he straightened to his full height, it was immediately clear that if he’d been chest deep in the hole, the hole was deeper than I’d thought. The students nearest him stepped back.
“Come on over here.” He put his hat back on, tugging it low on his forehead, and headed toward the barn. Several long folding tables were set up against the wall, in the shade.
I fell in beside Phillip, walking behind the students. “That’s an impressive amount of digging you guys have already done.”
“Not me,” Phillip said. “Hicks and a herd of Holstons.” Then, in answer to my raised eyebrows, “Herd of Holsteins, herd of Holstons, get it?”
“I was wondering more about who you’re calling hicks.”
Phillip laughed. “The archaeologist. That’s Jerry Hicks. He works for the state. He supervised a group of Holstons here for a reunion a couple of weeks ago, and they were ecstatic about digging up the family’s petrified refuse . . .” His voice faded as something over my shoulder caught his attention, then it flared. “What’s he doing?” he asked.
“He” was Zach Aikens. He’d stayed behind at the excavation—surprise, surprise. He was in the yard-wide grass strip between the pit Jerry Hicks had climbed out of and the undug square behind it. He was on his stomach, lying at the edge of the hole, worrying at something he could barely reach, even by stretching his arm as far as he could down the face of the wall.
“Blasted kid,” Phillip said. “I don’t care if he does know what garbology is—didn’t he just hear Hicks telling everyone to leave the walls alone?” He shot a glance toward the barn. Hicks and the other students were engaged and apparently hadn’t missed Zach or noticed what he was doing.
Phillip started back to the excavation. I followed—whether to act as Phillip’s backup or as a buffer between the two, I didn’t know.
“I knew this one was going to be trouble,” Phillip said.
“If he falls in, he could break something.”
“His neck would be good for starters.”
Zach continued working intently at whatever he’d found in the wall. He didn’t stop or look up as we approached.
“It’s my fault,” Phillip muttered. “I shouldn’t have mocked him back there in the auditorium. He’s obviously overly sensitive. Hey, Cemetery Dude.”
Zach didn’t answer. Delicately, deliberately, he continued scratching, scraping, and brushing at something in the earthen wall. Phillip and I stopped on the opposite side of the square.
“Can you see what it is?” I asked, craning forward and squinting.
“No.”
I started around the square. Phillip took a shortcut. He climbed down the ladder, crossed the pit, and got to Zach first. The depth of the pit put them eye-to-eye.
“Hey, Dump Dude,” Zach said. “Check it out. I think I’ve found where your bodies are buried.”
Chapter 3
“I’m thinking elbow joint,” Zach said.
Phillip Bell snapped his mouth shut on whatever he’d been thinking and moved closer for a better look. Zach was still lying in the grass. I stepped around him and got down on my knees. A knobby tree root was a more likely discovery than an elbow, I thought. I’d seen plenty of eerily bonelike roots washed clean along creek banks. Given the number of trees surrounding the farmyard and the complete lack of gravestones, a root made more sense, too.
Zach had scraped a small concavity in the wall. He reached his hand toward it again.
“Stop.” Phillip’s own hand was fast, but he stopped short of grabbing Zach.
“But look,” Zach said. “It’s simple anatomy.” He pointed without touching. “Ulna along here, ending in the olecranon.” He tapped his own elbow, then pointed back at what he’d uncovered. “Radius here, and humerus. If we dig it out more, I bet we see the lateral epicondyle.”
An ominous flush crept up Phillip’s neck.
Zach, apparently a savant in anatomy but not in the warning signs for impending volcanic eruptions, kept talking. “It’s an elbow joint, all right. Hey, maybe it’s that Holston dude’s lost arm and I found it for him. You think?”
“Is it?” I looked more closely at the “elbow,” an uncomfortable feeling oozing into the pit of my stomach.
“Carter Holston’s arm?” Phillip scoffed. “Of course not.”
“But is it an elbow?”
Phillip looked at the discovery more closely. “Yeah. I’d say it’s an elbow at least. Maybe a whole arm.”
“Told you,” Zach said.
“And if it’s an arm attached to a whole skeleton,” Phillip said, “wouldn’t that be a kick?” I’d been wrong about the flush on his neck. It wasn’t a sign of ominous threat. It was excitement.
“Cool,” said Zach. “So who is it?”
“At this depth and in this location,” Phillip said, “it isn’t going to be anybody who’s supposed to be here, that’s for sure. So, Cemetery Dude, that’s the multimillion-dollar question—who is it?”
“Geneva?” Her name popped out of my mouth, and in that instant I wondered if this could be her and why I hadn’t thought of that immediately. Or maybe I had and that was why I had the sick feeling in my stomach. But was this her elbow? Her body?
There was so much I didn’t know about the ghost in my life, starting with why she was in my life. Mine and no one else’s. But we’d met up here at the Homeplace, and she seemed to think she’d lived here. So, was she a ghost because she hadn’t been properly buried here? Because she’d been . . .
I felt cold and short of breath. But if I felt that way, how on earth would Geneva feel when I told her what we’d found? How on earth or . . . or wherever. How strange my life had become. I was crouched next to a spotty teenager who’d just made a fairly major archaeological discovery where he shouldn’t have been digging. I was thinking about the ghost whom only I saw, heard, or knew existed. And I was wondering how to tell that ghost—a scatty creature who wasn’t entirely sure of her name or when she’d lived or died—that I might know where her body was buried. People who said life in a small town was simple and straightforward had no idea what they were talking about.
All of that zipped through my head faster than it took to sigh the words “Oh, Geneva.” And those were two more words I wished I hadn’t said out loud.
“Who’s Geneva?” Zach asked. He and Phillip were looking at me.
I meant to say “No one.” But too many other thoughts were still racing through my mind and different words came out. “Any idea how old the bones could be, Phillip, or how long they’ve been here? And they’ll be able to tell if it’s male or female, won’t they? I mean, if there are enough bones left—” I stopped and shook my head.
“Hey.” Zach shrank back. “You aren’t going to hurl, are you? Because, you know, you can’t do that here. We need to preserve the perimeter of the excavation.”
He’s right said Phillip.
I started to move away from the edge of the hole. And stopped. “Wait a second. That’s all you’re going to say? He’s right? What about how he violated the perimeter of the excavation in the first place?”
“In light of his discovery, I think you’re being a tad harsh,” Phillip said. “Don’t you? She has a point, though, kid. Whether or not there’s more to this skeleton than meets the elbow, you’ve undoubtedly dug up a nest of red tape along with it. So let’s go get Hicks. He needs to see this. And he’s a stickler for people behaving, so you need to apologize for the trouble you’ve caused. Are you cool with that?”
