Elisha’s Bones (3 page)
My only thought is for the team I left down below, and the run across the hot sand is a blur. I’m two decades younger than Jim and so I leave him behind. By the time I reach the tomb entrance, the first of my team are exiting from the earth’s darkened maw. The clinical part of me notes that the doorway is intact; there are no new fissures along the limestone and shale layers to indicate an earthquake. The plebes are coughing; they’re covered in dust. One of the
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guys is cradling a broken camera.
I see Brown come out. He’s coughing but he gives me a small wave. “We’re fine,” he manages.
Despite his assurances, I do a head count. With everyone moving around, I have to do it twice before I’m reasonably sure that everyone’s accounted for. And it is this relative assurance which makes me feel better about what I ask next.
“Is the sarcophagus okay?”
Brown, who is still hacking up dust, gives an emphatic nod. “It’s fine. The structure held; everything’s fine.”
The fact that the team is all right, coupled with our good fortune of the tomb still being intact, elates me, and it takes a bit of the edge off of the urgency I’m feeling. When Jim reaches us, his breathing labored, he takes his own turn ascertaining the health of his charges and then runs a clinical eye over the dig site. The sun is directly overhead and there are no shadows in the valley, yet his eyes are hooded. Sweat beads on his forehead. He looks like a big-game hunter out on the savannah, surveying the vast terrain. Images like this are what I juxtapose against the more common mien of the academic that is his normal skin.
“What was it?” Jim asks.
The question gives me pause. I know it wasn’t an earthquake, and Brown insists the tomb is intact, which precludes a cave-in. And what kind of cave-in would have been felt across the hundred yards separating the tomb from the RV anyway? Could it have been a whole subterranean cavern collapsing in upon itself?
“I don’t know,” I finally say.
I half acknowledge that one of the
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cameras is snapping again, and I feel a bit like the emperor sans clothes. I’m hoping that this part will wind up on the cutting-room floor, but that’s wishful thinking. More than likely, there will be an inset with a picture of my face, complete with poignant caption.
Jim doesn’t say anything but I see him doing the same thing I am: ascertaining how an event we can’t qualify has affected us. There’s a very real hope that it hasn’t. Our team and our site appear to be unhurt. This last thought hangs there, teasing me with something I can’t quite put my finger on. I stand there, hands on hips, still catching my breath and squinting against the sun. I’m looking at the faces of these people I’ve come to know over the last few months, and it seems like a long time passes before it hits me that the face that should be most familiar is missing.
“Where’s Will?”
The question falls on deaf ears. Most of them are milling about, content to let others determine what happens next. Jim is busy talking with Brown about the contents of the opened sarcophagus. The
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guys are snapping away. It then occurs to me that neither of the two excavators assisting my brother is here, either. I smile and shake my head; it’s just like Will to ignore the unanticipated movement of the very earth into which he’s digging.
I don’t realize I’ve left the group until I’m already halfway around the hill. I’m not sure what it is that makes me uneasy; I only register that I’m no longer smiling. That’s when it hits me: I can’t hear any noise coming from the auxiliary dig site.
I break into a jog and it’s just as I’m about to round the last bend separating me from Will’s team that I hear the first cries.
I now start to sprint, and as the last of the rock shifts out of my line of sight, I catch a first glimpse of Will’s dig, with fear now my only reality. Where there should be straight grid lines and pin flags and a clean trench leading to an ancient wall interred in the earth, instead there is a chaos that looks like the aftermath of an explosion. The trench is gone, covered in with sand, dirt, and a large chunk of the adjoining hillside. Particles of sediment and pulverized rock hang like a haze in the air. I’ve stopped running, frozen by what I see. It’s as if I’m experiencing all of this through a fog, and the only thing that seems to reach me is something sounding like an insistent buzzing. When the noise resolves into a man’s weak voice, my eyes track to movement in the trench.
Urgency unlocks my legs, and I rush toward the man half buried in debris while at the same time reaching for the radio at my waist. I’m shouting something, but I can’t decipher the garbled sounds of my own voice. Then the radio is on the ground and I’m on my knees, pawing at the dirt. It’s Steve Connelly. The clinical part of me is trying to determine his condition as I work to free him; it’s that part of my brain that I need to use right now, instead of the portion that knows Steve has been married for seven years and has two kids waiting for him back in Minnesota—the part that knows there were other people out here when this thing happened.
There is a flash of movement behind me and then there are several pairs of hands alongside mine, loosening the earth’s hold on Steve. When we are able to pull him up, he’s limp, but breathing. I let others move him away from the trench because it’s becoming difficult to keep my irrational side in check. The activity behind me falls away as my eyes flit over the site. There is no movement, no flashes of color. There’s a thin barrier between me and true panic, and I’m not sure how long it will stand up. The only thing I can tell myself is that I don’t even know Will was down there.
Except that I know.
There’s a shovel by the rebar that is the auxiliary dig’s focal point. In what seems like slow motion, I walk over and pick it up, my eyes never leaving the trench. The first shovelful of dirt is like sand, and it runs off, spills over the side. I plunge the tool in a second time, then a third. I lose myself in the task, a growing urgency adding speed with each thrust. At some point, others frantically join me in the digging. I feel Jim there, although my eyes don’t leave the worn surface of the shovel.
I don’t know how long we dig, how much earth we move, or how many shovels take their turn. We’re four feet down and it seems as if we’ve been digging a long time. I’ve stopped sweating. And then I hear something—a sound that doesn’t originate amid the fevered exertion of at least a dozen men and women abandoning themselves to the work. It’s a sound that seems to come from far away, a muffled voice. I stop. I stop for the first time. I listen. And I hear Will’s voice, coming from below; he sounds so far away. With something close to a snarl I bring the shovel up and plunge it into the ground, and the abused implement breaks at the shaft.
Tossing the useless thing aside, I go to my knees, pawing at the red earth. “I’m coming Will!” I shout. My hands are bleeding, fingernails ripped away, but I don’t feel any of it.
I catch sight of Sarah, who is now digging next to me. The privileged Connecticut girl, covered in grime, blood on her fingers, and tears streaming down her cheeks. Her eyes find mine and, in that instant, I know that haunted look will remain with me forever.
EVAN STON UNIVERSITY, ELLEN, NORTH CAROLINA ,
PRESENT DAY
M
erry Christmas,” Duckey says as he slides a rectangular box wrapped in red foil across the table. His manicured fingers stay on the present for a few seconds, long enough to let me know that whatever is inside is something he would want for himself, even as the thousand-dollar watch peeking out from under his shirtsleeve assures me he probably already has several of whatever it is.
“Thanks, Ducks.” I pick up the gift, a sticky film of syrup on the bottom, and shake it a little. I can hear something shifting around inside, but it is not heavy and does not seem breakable. “You want me to open it now?”
He waves off my question with his fork, then sinks the implement into a multilayered wedge of pancakes. “Your call. Just make sure you treat them with the care they deserve.”
I consider doing the deed here, on the lacquered wooden table in the Student Union, but there is something that seems wrong about that, especially if I am right about what is inside. With a nod of thanks I set the package to the side, careful to avoid the largest of the sticky spots, and reach for my coffee cup.
Jim Duckett, Dean of the Schools of Anthropology and Archaeology at Evanston University, finishes his pancakes and moves on to the last two sausage links on his plate. It still amazes me that he can eat like he does, at an age when the metabolisms of most men begin to slow and an extra layer of fat starts to build above the belt line. I’m convinced that no man should have a thirty-four waist at age forty-five. True, I wear the same size, but I’m still three years shy of forty. And I do eschew the elevator for the six flights of stairs in my apartment building.
“So you’re staying here for the holiday break.”
“Nowhere I’d rather be,” I say.
Having exercised his privilege as dean to forgo the last week of the semester, Duckey and his brood will leave for Denver in the morning to visit his in-laws. The children will have two weeks of doting from their grandparents, and Duckey and the missus will haunt the ski slopes with guiltless abandon.
His plate empty, Duckey leans back in his chair and reaches for his breast pocket. It’s a reflex. I see his fingers slide over the smooth metal of his cigar case and then fall away. We’ve been eating a late-afternoon meal, a breakfast-for-dinner thing, in this place—usually the same booth—a few times a week for the last two years, and he has never been able to break himself of the habit of reaching for an after-meal cigar. At least twice he’s gotten as far as selecting one, clipping its end, and lighting up, with me watching in amused silence before the student manager of the grill could come over and remind him that “This is a no-smoking facility.”
He watches me for a minute in silence, his appraiser’s eye flitting over me and, apparently, finding something distasteful. During this perusal, which I bear with stoic good nature—this being just the most recent of many such evaluations—I return his look with a smug smile. Around us, the sights and sounds of a semideserted student hangout run their courses.
“If you were anyone but you, I’d say you were itching for someone to ask you to spend the holidays with them,” Duckey says. “But I know better. It wouldn’t surprise me if you don’t leave your apartment for days.”
“I’ll still have to check the mail.”
“If you don’t make it out of the building, it doesn’t count.”
“The life of a hermit is underrated.”
“You’re an odd human being.”
“That may well be true, but I’ll be the one walking around in my underwear and watching ESPN all day.” I effect a faraway look and a blissful smile. “And I won’t shower, and I’ll eat frozen cookie dough right out of the wrapper, and I’ll sleep in a fort made out of sheets.”
“All right, Peter Pan, I won’t feel sorry for you. But one of these days you’re going to die in your apartment and no one will know until your stink drifts out from under the door. And I’ve smelled your place, so it may take some time for someone to notice the difference.”
“You’ll come looking for me when I don’t show up for dinner.”
“Don’t count on it.” Duckey looks at his watch—a luxury afforded by the books he’s written. Some of them have even avoided the derision built into the peer review system, although I’d never give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that. “I’ve got to get going, Jack. We still have some packing to do and you know how the airport’s going to be.”
“Have a good trip, Ducks,” I say. “And thanks.” I gesture at the unopened present.
“You’re welcome. See you in three.”
After he’s gone, retreating with the near-silent footfalls that are among the last vestiges of his CIA days, I finish my lukewarm coffee and then gather Duckey’s tray as well as my own and deposit them on the grill counter on my way out. I’ll miss Duckey, but he’s right; I’ll be content here by myself, cloistered with old books and good cigars. With that thought in mind, I begin tearing the red foil paper away from the present, until I see it’s Cubans. Duckey orders the cigars from a shop in Spain and he slips me a box now and again, though usually they’re the lower-end ones. But these are Hoyo de Monterrey Double Corona, arguably one of the best, and probably running somewhere near six hundred dollars. I stroke the gift lovingly as I step outside.
It is a good cold that hits my face and fills my nose as I traverse the uneven sidewalk between the university and my apartment building. Even though it’s still Friday and there are officially two more days left in the semester, I feel an impending liberation—a freedom from any responsibilities more involved than watering my single plant. And since that’s a cactus, I can even be forgiven that one duty. True, I will likely get to work grading four classes’ worth of term papers sometime during my first week of vacation, when boredom comes calling, but for now I can enjoy the anticipation.
I hold my briefcase in one hand and cradle the present from Duckey in the other. It will be nice to relax with a book, to throw myself into some light reading. I have a new text that details the excavation of an ancient civilization on the Yucatan Peninsula, which I’ve been looking forward to starting as soon as the semester ended.
Carter Village, my domicile, is composed of a single building, rising six stories above the sleepy college town of Ellen, North Carolina. Those six stories make it the highest structure for sixty-three miles in any direction, besting the Mendel Science Center by three floors. My apartment occupies the southeast corner of the fifth floor, and from one of my windows I can look down on the whole of the college campus, a comparatively small hamlet of learning in the center of a baser geography. There have been many nights in which I have stood at that window and looked down on the campus, its walkways lighted to keep the student body inviolate from the wild darkness, and wished a plague down on the entire thing: a single fell swoop of Old Testament wrath that would level the place and set the survivors to grappling with something pragmatic instead of academic. Of late, those instances happen with less frequency, and the jury’s still out on whether or not that’s a good thing.
