Orphan of Creation (5 page)

Barbara stared off across the field, and felt a cold weight in her stomach. “I think it means that damned old Colonel Gowrie tried to import gorillas or chimps to work alongside our ancestors, and it didn’t work. Then Great-Great-Granpa Zebulon remembered them as more manlike than they really were,” Barbara answered, her voice hard and cool. “Does that make sense to you?”

Josephine knotted up her mouth for a moment and thought. “When I was just a young child, there were stories, the sort of thing you might tell around a campfire to throw a good thrilling scare into a body. All about wildmen lurking out by the river and in the hills, ready to gobble up bad little girls and boys. When I was a bit older, I remember Papa saying that there was something to it all, but even back when he was a boy, no one would ever talk about it.”

Barbara turned back toward her great aunt. “Maybe the stories were about the creatures Zebulon saw.” She almost shuddered and her voice softened. “Brrr. Can you imagine, wild gorillas wandering free around Gowrie? The poor things would be frightened out of their minds, and sick from weather they weren’t used to, but they’d still scare
me
. But—Aunt Josephine—the truth behind legends isn’t what I’m interested in.”

“What
do
you want, child?”

This was it. The bull by the horns. Barbara felt her shoulders tense, the cold weight in her gut tighten. None of the older generations of her family had ever altogether approved of her chosen profession, and now she had to put them face to face with it. To a family of hard-edged black Southern Baptists, even to Baptists who wanted no truck with what the white fundamentalist preachers had to say, there was something clearly sacrilegious about the whole idea of digging too deep into the past. And Barbara knew only too well their attitude toward what many of them still referred to as “Evil-oution.” Aunt Josephine had been teasing, mostly, when she had called Barbara a grave robber, but Barbara knew that many in the family felt she was just that, nothing better, and possibly something much worse.

It was only the Jones family’s rock-ribbed, unshakeable faith in the value and dignity of education and book-learning that made Barbara socially acceptable. She was a Doctor, and Doctors were to be respected.
That
was the tack to take. “I’m a paleoanthropologist, Aunt Josephine,” Barbara said, hoping the long word sounded impressive and learned. “That journal says the gorillas, the chimps, whatever they are, were buried by the crossroads. If that’s true—well, it could be very important. It could say a lot about how our people were treated, how slaves were regarded. If it’s true, it implies whole chapters in history—
our
history—that no one even knows about. Who traded for them? How? Was this the only place they tried it? Now, I know you won’t like it, but I want to dig for them, prove it all really happened.
If
you’ll give your permission.”

The old woman turned and looked out toward the old burial ground, gazed out on the whitewashed marker stones turned golden ivory by the light of the rising sun. She seemed preoccupied, as if the history she held in her hands and the dead whose graves she looked upon were far more interesting than anything the present and living might offer. “I suppose those are good reasons for
you
. It might make you famous, let you announce a big science discovery. And it would be good to learn more of the history around here. But if you’d stop thinking like a fancy Washington
scientist
and started thinking like a member of the Jones family of Gowrie, you’d know
I don’t want some herd of monkeys buried out there right next to my relations.
So you go right ahead and dig up your monkeys. They’re too close to where our kin lie. Just clean it up when you’re done, and don’t bother me with it if you don’t have to. I’ve got more important things to spend my thoughts on. Like my grandfather’s journal.” She reopened the book, found her place, and recommenced her reading, dismissing Barbara with a wave of her hand.

Barbara had thought
this
would be the moment she would stop being afraid. It wasn’t. She felt a chill wind blow across her soul, colder than any November. She was getting close to the fear, but she was not there yet.

She suddenly realized how much she needed some advice. Without another word to Aunt Jo, she headed inside toward the phone.

Chapter Four

Barbara sat by the phone in Aunt Jo’s lavender-scented old lady’s bedroom, her address book at the ready, her bits of paper with her personal long-distance codes, so the call wouldn’t be charged to Aunt Jo, scribbled on them, her note pad and pen handy to jot down any advice she got. But for the life of her, she could not think of whom to call.

It was not really
advice
she needed, although it would be welcome, as much as she needed a bit of hand-holding, some words of encouragement before she went off and spent time and hard-earned money on chasing an old family legend. She finally admitted to herself at least part of what was bothering her: The idea of gorilla or chimp slave-laborers dead and buried in Aunt Jo’s backyard had seemed a lot more believable in the middle of a driving midnight rainstorm than it did in the clear light of day.

But that was just the problem. Who could she dare call at eight in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving to talk about such a crazy idea?

She thought first of her husband. But it was safe to say that Michael would not be at his most supportive today, after spending Thanksgiving patching up people in the ER. Besides, they were separated now, and it wasn’t right to go to him for advice. Her boss, Jeffery Grossington? A kindly old man, but a very careful, conservative one. He was the one she would call if she wanted to be talked
out
of doing the dig. Besides, she would not
dare
call him at this hour, and she did not want to waste any part of her brief digging daylight waiting for what Grossington would think of as a civilized hour for the phone to ring.

By process of elimination, that left her with Rupert Maxwell. Smiling to herself, she realized he was the one she had wanted to call all along. She shared office space with Rupert and two other paleontologists at the Smithsonian. Rupert was the new kid on the block, just arrived at the Smithsonian from his previous job at UCLA. He had named their jumbled-up, overcrowded office the Diggers’ Pit the day he had moved in, and the name had stuck. Rupert was that one person in every workplace who knew instinctively which rules he could safely ignore, who somehow got away with flouting the tribal laws without ever actually annoying anyone.

Barbara and Rupert had had a few long lunches commiserating over each other’s divorces. Their talks had been the sort of personal discussion that was easier with a stranger in the same boat than it was with a close old friend. On the subject of unhappy personal lives, they spoke the same language. Maybe, Barbara hoped, they would also speak it when it came to work. Besides, Rupe lived his life off to one side already. He would surely lend a sympathetic ear to Barbara’s off-the-wall problem.

She grabbed the handset off its cradle and dialed.

<>

The phone rang, or more accurately gave off a small electronic
bleep
. Rupert looked up at the wall clock, noted the time, marked his place in the book he was reading, hit the PAUSE button on the VCR to freeze the action on the football game he had taped yesterday—he had bet and won money on the game and wanted to analyze the plays for future betting reference—turned down the compact-disk player that perched atop the VCR, shutting off Bartok’s string quartet in mid-note—he was watching the game with the sound off—and reached around the mouse cage behind the computer—which was dormant, for once—to shut off the answering machine before it could cut into the call. Chairman Meow, snoozing atop the mouse cage, woke slightly to see what was going on, then closed his eyes again to dream of catching the mice once more. Rupert shoved the computer keyboard out of the way and pulled the phone forward, front and center. It was a crowded desk.

“Hello, Rupert Maxwell.”

“Rupe? Barbara.” The voice came through the miles, clear but slightly faint.

“Hey, Barb!” Rupert grinned. “Happy Turkey Day or so. But I thought you were home visiting family.”

“I am, Rupe. But something’s come up. I need your advice.” To Rupert’s ear, she sounded a bit hesitant about asking for it. “Nothing personal, this time,” she added with a note of hurry in her voice. “Professional advice. Digger to digger. Hey, I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “Been up for a while, just puttering around. So talk to me. What’s up?” Rupert opened a desk drawer and fished out a pen and paper. He liked to keep notes on conversations related to work.
FRIDAY 8:03 A.M. Barbara M. Re: pro question. B. sounds embarrassed.

“Well, I found something, Rupe.” She quickly told him how she had come across the journal, and what she had read in it. Rupert started listening more and more attentively, taking more and more notes, speaking only to ask an occasional question on one detail or another. He immediately noticed that she was only telling him what she had discovered, not what she was
doing
about it.

“Anyway,” Barbara concluded, “what with schedules and money and whatever mood Aunt Jo gets in to change her mind, what it really comes down to is that this weekend might be my only chance to do the dig and see what’s down there.”

“And you’ve got permission to dig if you want to?” Rupert asked, doodling with his pen.

“That’s right.”

Rupert made a sort of harrumphing noise into the phone, tossed down the pen, and thought for a minute. “Well, it’s a real interesting story,” he said, in a studiously neutral tone.

“But what should I do about it?” Barbara’s voice asked, sounding almost querulous over Gowrie’s tinny, small-town phone lines.

Rupert knew what to say, what she needed to hear, what
he
would need to hear if the roles were reversed. But he paused once again, not sure of
how
to say it. “Look, Barb. You and I are diggers—grubbers in the dirt in search of all the old truths, walkers on the past, whatever you want to call it. Call it something grand, call it grave robbing, it’s what we do. And we do it because we’re
curious
, no other reason, in spite of what we tell each other about history or knowing ourselves or whatever. You know and I know you
want
to dig those old ape bones up. What else could possibly occur to you when you stumble on a story like that? What you really want to know from me is if it’s worth the cost, the risk to go for it. Right?”

There was a silence on the phone line for a long moment. “Well, yes, I suppose,” Barbara answered.

Rupert sighed and stretched out a long arm to scratch Chairman Meow behind the ears. “Well, you know as well as I do, you’re the only one who can answer that question. But, look, you and I— we’re associates, just met, not bowling buddies or best friends yet. I don’t know you so well. Something’s bugging you here, I can tell that, but I don’t know what. So let me ask, try and save some time: You afraid of being wrong or being right?”

“Huh? Why should I be afraid of being right?” The voice on the phone sounded surprised, a little defensive.

Aha
. Rupert raised his eyebrows, picked up his pencil, and began a small, tight patch of doodling on his note pad. “‘Cause what it sounds like to me, to make a quick prelim dig might cost you a few hundred bucks in equipment and labor. That’s cheap for knowing, one way or the other, every morning when you wake up for the rest of your life, that you did the right thing. And if I’m not getting too personal, if you take a chance and it costs more than that and you get a bit in debt—right
now
, no one else gets hurt. Take it from a fellow ex-married type—it’s much safer to take chances when you’re single. It’s no one else’s money, or time, or problem. So it’s no great shakes, really, to be wrong. You’d blow your weekend making a big damn useless hole, and maybe look a bit silly in front of your relatives. Are you afraid of that?”

“Nooo. Not really. I wouldn’t like it, but I could live with it,” Barbara replied.

“Then,” Rupert said gently, “that leaves being scared of being right. Are you?”

“I—” Rupert listened intently. He could tell, from that one syllable, that she had been ready with a quick, unthoughtful “No.” But now she was pausing, reconsidering.

“Barbara,” he said quietly, “are you really prepared for the grand fuss and scare that digging up gorillas imported for slaves will produce? Especially if they’re dug up by a black woman? This won’t be some piddly little scientific thing, a few huffy letters in
Nature.
This could raise six kinds of hell and get every newspaper and television station in the world down on your neck. I was small-time controversial at UCLA, you know. Sometimes I wonder if the real reason I came back East was to escape the heat. Being at the storm center can get rough. You
ought
to be afraid of it. Are you?”

“Hell, of course I am!” she almost shouted back. “Who wouldn’t be?”

“Everybody
should
be afraid of it. You shouldn’t go into it lightly. Good. Then all you have to ask yourself is: Are you more afraid of not knowing the truth about this wonderful story for the rest of your life, or more afraid of handling the truth for the rest of your life?”

This time the silence on the phone lasted much longer. Finally there came a sigh, half resignation, half happy release. “Rupert,” Barbara said, “For a pain-in-the-neck know-it-all, you sure are a smart guy. I gotta go.”

“Just keep me posted, Doctor. That’s all I ask.”

They said their good-byes and Rupert hung up. He sat there and stared at the phone for a long moment, as if it held all the answers. Then he leaned forward in his chair, pulled a manila folder out of the desk, labeled it MARCHANDO DIG, and put his notes of the conversation in it. If anything came of Gowrie, he’d already have a start on a record of it.

“Let’s hope that file gets much thicker,” he said to the cat, who purred back in reply. One of the mice started to climb up the bars of the cage, and the Chairman took a hopeful but unsuccessful swat at it.

Rupert reached out a hand to switch his various machines on and get back to what he had been doing, but suddenly the football game, the music, and the book seemed a lot less interesting.

He looked around his too-quiet efficiency apartment, as crowded and tightly packed and necessarily neat as a submarine. He suddenly wished he could be down in Gowrie. Down where the action was.

<>

Barbara hung up at her end, and felt much better. Yes, she was still afraid, but at least she knew of
what
. There was a strange, edgy thrill to seeing the danger clearly, heading straight for her from a far horizon, rather than lurking in shadows. Now, at least, she knew what she was up against.

She also knew she needed help. Digging a real excavation, even a little prelim job, was no job to tackle single-handed. So who around here could she draft? Who around here would be any use at all?

Livingston. Livingston Jones was the one relative who could be of even the slightest help. She headed back downstairs and started hunting for him. By now it was 8:15 and the various members of the family were starting to filter downstairs in force, but no sign of Liv yet.

Barbara swore to herself. She needed time to think, to plan, but she was already suffering from the paleontologist’s greatest fear—losing the light. The days in late November were short enough at best, and an appreciable fraction of today’s working light was already gone—and she only had today and Saturday, and whatever tiny sliver of work she could get out of Sunday before it would be time to fly back. She knew that she could
never
get official permission to mount a dig on Smithsonian time—who outside the family would believe a nutty story based on the hundred-year-old report of an old man’s recollections, set down decades after the event?

It could be months or years before she had this chance again, and by then Great-aunt Josephine could have changed her mind, and whatever bones there were left would be decaying even further all the while. This brief Thanksgiving weekend was definitely the magic moment, and Barbara did not want to waste a second of it.

She tried the porch, the living room, and the dining room before getting smart and checking for Livingston in the kitchen. Bingo. There he was, digging into the bacon and scooping up big mouthfuls of scrambled eggs someone had cooked up. In the half an hour or so she had been gone, the kitchen had lost its air of quiet, domestic peace. It was a cheery madhouse now, with too many people cooking, laughing, talking, drinking coffee. The children were racing around, the littlest ones seemingly competing with each other to see who could put the largest fraction of breakfast on their faces instead of in their mouths. The sound of conversation now and again swelled up to a dull roar for a moment as half a dozen people raised their voices to be heard over each other, then faded away as fast as it had started once everyone talking had got his or her point across.

Barbara launched herself into the sea of bodies, steered herself in next to Livingston, and managed to find a seat next to him. “Hey, Liv, how’s it going?”

She had caught him with a mouthful of food, and he smiled and nodded at her in lieu of answering. She considered her younger cousin for a moment, sizing him up before making her sales pitch. He was twenty-three, and youthful-looking even for that age. He was big—six foot three, with a massive body, a wall of muscle. He was wearing a short-sleeved pullover shirt that threatened to burst at every seam, accentuating a solid, powerful body that didn’t need any accentuating. He looked as if he should have been playing ball somewhere. In fact, Liv had ridden a football scholarship to Ole Miss and played left tackle well enough to scare off plenty of guards.