Come In and Cover Me (11 page)

So she did not explode another pot. She paid very close attention to the feel of the clay in her mother's hands, rolled it and pressed it in her own hands, feeling how it stuck to her skin, but not too much—it must not stick too much. It needed the correct balance of slick and slide and stick. Add the water splash by splash to the powder and watch the color of the clay darken with the water. (This moment of darkening reminded her of how Spider Woman took great handfuls of the dirt itself—black, red, white, and yellow—spat on them, and with this wet clay made the First People. The colors of the clay could still be seen in hair and eyes and bone and teeth and skin, all brought to life when Spider Woman blew on her first clay dolls.) She learned how much water to add by the feel of the clay in her hands. After the water came the temper, the pieces of the present needed to anchor the idea of the clay. She crushed broken bits of pottery on the grinding stone, smashing them fine as salt, and added them to her clay, smooth and cool as river moss. Pound and mash and smooth and stroke and smooth and mash.

Then, for a small bowl, big enough for only powdered herbs or a drink of water, she would measure out a clump that filled both of her hands without spilling over and roll it into a long worm, then start the coiling, making the worm curl around itself, laying one rung flat on top of the next until the entire worm was asleep, neatly wrapped.

Her mother roasted rabbits stuffed with sage and saltbush, and the two of them could eat an entire rabbit. (All rabbits and deer and fowl came from her mother's brothers, since her father had died in her eighth year. One of the big cats on the ridge had knifed his leg with its claws before many spear points killed the cat. Her father's leg filled with thin clear liquid and thick yellow liquid and swelled as wide as a fat turkey before he died.) She and her mother would sit on the roof, pulling the rabbit apart, snatching their fingers back from the hot meat, pulling it from the bones in hot, dripping strings. And then for hours her fingers would taste of salty juice and clay, and she could see her mother's lips shine with fat.

In the blurry sharp memories of early childhood, she recalled the dripping fat and burning-hot meat as being familiar. Treasured, but as reliable as finding a painted beetle in the low shrubs by the creek. She could walk through the creek a dozen times a day and see no beetles, but sooner or later, inevitably, she would see a round, yellow back with black paint marks on it. She would grab it and let the bug crawl across her palm. No matter how many trips she made without seeing one, if she waited long enough, a painted beetle would come. And so would rabbit meat.

By the time Non came, beetles were much more common than rabbits. The rain dances were even more common, and the men would grow hoarse singing for the crops to come. Sometimes, as with corn, the singing and dancing would take days at a time, an elaborate courtship to woo each ear.

The dances. Her feet knew well the feel of the plaza stones, smoothed by years of pounding soles and smacking hands. Because she was her mother's daughter, she had been asked to perform at an early age. She had been a cloud girl, face painted with white clay, only eyes showing through, hair powdered white, blossoms from the cottonwood tree woven in a belt around her waist. She had danced to welcome the first rain of summer, her feet hitting the stones like raindrops, while the rattle of gourds and shells brought thunder and lightning. There were handfuls of meal thrown over her and the other cloud girls, sprinkling down, sticking to the bottoms of her feet. (It brought good luck, her mother had said, to eat the cakes made from the meal off a cloud maiden's feet.) One fall she had been the moon—always a role for a girl who had not yet come of age—wearing a blanket of yellow that scraped the ground. Her feet were painted white, and crescent moons were painted on both cheeks. This was a dance of harmony, where the small moon and a tall sun and many stars would move in circles, their paths looping around each other but never touching, as with the sky. The sun lifted his face proudly, but the stars hid their faces, always looking down, so the eagle feather points on their heads could shine. Six dancers, a dozen dancers, then—as more and more stars joined in—twice that many moving around the plaza. Then would come the Bitter Spirit, which always sought to break circles. The spirit was always male, and he would leap onto the plaza, body painted dark red, with a gourd snout filled with sharp snapping teeth, and horns curving from his head. No matter what the red spirit did, the sun and moon and stars must stay on course, must not be frightened out of their paths, or bitterness would replace harmony in the seasons to come.

There were patterns to the dances, as intricate and subtle as the patterns in the clay. You could not always see the design when you yourself were stomping your own rhythm on the cold plaza stones. But she was a part of it, even if she could not see it.

Seeing the patterns was only one part of her gift, her mother told her. You had to bring them to the surface. You had to show others what you could see lurking in the clay.

five

We know relatively little about the social contexts reflected by the burials and secondarily by the pottery contained in them. . . . Hereditary elites should be set off from nonelites by the presence of certain emblems or badges which, varying in form among societies, should be recognizable by their exotic materials, large labor input, and visual distinctiveness.

—From “Social Organization and Classic Mimbres Period Burials in the SW United States” by Patricia A. Gilman,
Journal of Field Archaeology
, vol. 17, 1990

The wind outside was whipping through the trees, and Silas listened to the whistle of the air as he stared at the rise and fall of Ren's rib cage. Her head was on his shoulder, hair spread over his chest, and he'd lost all feeling in his arm. He wasn't ready to move it yet.

He couldn't sleep.

There was a soft thud outside the window, and he listened for any animal sounds—snuffling or pawing or grunting. Ed's and Paul's tents weren't nearly as sturdy as the walls of the bunkhouse. But there was no sound of life beyond the bed. He considered that if he needed to scare away a wild thing, his gun was in his own room, with the bullets in the bedside table: He spent days and nights by himself in strange, untraveled nooks of the state, and the pistol was a precaution. Right after college, when he had long hair and an earring, he was slightly concerned about running into cowboys, but now he worried only about wild animals.

The birds were starting to stir. He and Ren needed to be awake and ready to head up the mountain in no more than three hours. He tried to close his eyes.

He had felt her certainty yesterday when Ren asked to dig in a different room. He knew she had seen something. He had seen it in her face. He felt the same certainty when she told him about her daydream of the Mimbres girl—he knew it cost her something to share it. And because she'd shared it, he knew she must feel something for him. Plenty of times since she'd come to the canyon, he'd felt like he'd said something ridiculous, done something ridiculous. Touched her leg the first day she was here, for instance. Stupid. But last night he had known it was the right time to knock on her door.

Certainty. As Ren's leg slid against his, he wondered if he'd been sure about her from the moment he'd seen her speak in Albuquerque. She'd been wearing a brown skirt and heels that showed off the muscles in her calves, and even a sedate paper reading couldn't hide the excitement in her voice.

He did not trust certainty. It did not last.

She had held an apple in one hand at lunch yesterday, waving it as she said that of course the first thing to do when butchering an animal was to remove the intestines. He wondered if she normally fell for academics who debated in faculty lounges and hypnotized grad students.

“I don't flirt,” he whispered. In case she was asleep. “Ed's been teasing me about that for months, ever since some waitress gave me a free coffee.”

Ren pushed herself more tightly against him.

“Sure you do,” she said sleepily, her hair dragging along his skin. She turned toward him, and he took the chance to move his arm. He could see the white of her teeth as she settled onto the pillow.

“Well, with you,” he agreed.

“I get the feeling you've had practice.”

“None,” he said. He considered. “Like pick-up lines. I've never had a good one. Once I went up to this cute girl sitting by herself at a bar, and as I was saying hello, I spilled my drink on her table. A full beer. It was pouring into her lap, and all I had in my hand was a slice of pizza. So I started sopping up the beer with the pizza, and she said—before I'd ever even said my name—“You're pathetic.” So I walked back to my own table. That's how smooth I am.”

“Why did you have pizza in a bar?”

He ran his tongue along his front teeth. “I have no idea.”

She propped herself on her elbow and traced one of his eyebrows. He leaned in to her touch.

“You share every single thought in your head,” she said. “You think it, and it just falls out of your mouth. You'd think that would make you easy to figure out.”

“Oh, I can be easy.” He kissed her shoulder. “But in my vast experience, women like the unpredictable.”

“Maybe.”

He lowered his face close enough that he could feel her breath. His eyes were millimeters from hers. His vision blurred.

“You have one giant cyclops eye,” he said, unblinking. He ran his hand down her side, pausing at the curve of her hip. “And many other fine parts.”

She stroked her palm along his triceps. “I appreciate your parts as well.”

He drew back, allowing both of her eyes to come into focus. He felt deeply tired and deeply content.

“So who does that skirt belong to?” he asked.

She sat up. “That's what you want to talk about? You want to talk work?”

He tried to read her face.

“She's not my artist,” she said in a rush, dark eyes shining. “I don't think. There's no reason a woman couldn't be both a potter and a macaw handler, but if we agree there were specialists who crafted the most impressive pottery—and what we found at Crow Creek definitely counted as impressive—then I don't think she would handle macaws, too. It makes sense that both roles were too important for one person to do both.”

“What if the skirt was a mark of prestige?” he asked. “Not a mark of her role.”

“So they give a master artist a skirt of macaw feathers as a gift?”

“Maybe,” he said. “A gift from someone of power? As a tribute to her own skill? Or was it unrelated to anything she did? Was her husband or mother or father someone who worked with macaws? Because, again, we haven't found any macaws here.”

She shifted positions. “You actually believe I saw her, don't you?”

“I do,” he said. “I believe you saw something. But can I make a suggestion? For now, can we try to analyze this based solely on what we've found? I feel the need to narrow it down a bit. What would you think if you'd found that skirt yesterday with no context other than the archaeological record?”

She kicked off the covers, and he lifted his head to look at her legs. The planes of them, the curve of muscle, the inside of her thighs soft. Strong.

“Valuable. It must have belonged to someone of importance,” she said.

“And I would tend to think it didn't come from this area, since we haven't seen other feathers,” he said. “I'd say it was made somewhere else. Which might make it even more valuable.”

“No one would leave that apron behind,” she said softly. “You wouldn't cave in a room around it like it was a broken jar or a heap of ash. It's too precious. You'd take it with you. If you could. Or.”

She breathed the end of her sentence rather than speaking it. He heard the words anyway.

“You'd bury it with the owner,” he finished.

“We've got to get back to the site. We've got to take down the rest of the level.” She sat up, her feet hitting the floor.

“I know,” he said, wrapping his fingers around her wrist. “But we can't go in the dark.”

“I know,” she said. She fidgeted, swung her legs back onto the bed, her feet landing near his head. “I know. But she's under there, isn't she?”

“Come here,” he said, holding out his arm. She turned herself around, her head fitting against his shoulder.

Normally burials took place under floors, or sometimes in the fill of a collapsed room. Those were the traditional ways to honor the dead, to aid their journey. It was the routine, the way of taking time and care with those lost. What Silas didn't say, didn't see any need to say, was that sometimes the routine was shattered. Theft or war, invasion and panicked departure. No time for thought or effort. Sometimes things were lost or left behind in unexpected ways.

Paul and Ed were ready to leave early. The exhaustion hadn't hit Ren yet, although neither she nor Silas had drifted off for more than a few minutes. She could feel the adrenaline pumping, shoving away the need for sleep. It was a buzz from Silas and the feather apron and the potential of the burial. Anticipation.

It was not altogether a pleasant anticipation.

They walked, single file as always, up the elk trail, first Ren, then Silas, then Paul and Ed. It had been a mostly silent walk up the hill—the possibility of human remains had dampened the usual chatter. She didn't look at Silas, didn't touch him. He had not touched her in any way with the others watching. He had not put a hand on the small of her back or rubbed his leg against hers under the table.

As they approached the site, they could see the flap of the blue tarp from across the plateau. It had pulled partially free from the rocks they set on the edges. They squinted from the dust in the air and the sun in their eyes, and they walked toward the flash of blue.

Before they could see what lay under the apron, they had to move the apron itself. It was a slow process of frequent photos and small movements, lifting and scraping and brushing. When the apron was free, Ren and Silas used trowels and a flat piece of cardboard to scoop up the apron, cushioned with plenty of extra dirt. Silas lowered the cardboard piece full of dirt and feathers, inch by inch, into a large box for safe transport. His arms were taut: She could tell he was trying to avoid a single tremor, a single jolt.

The wind again—she kept noticing it. It blew hot and hard, lifting Silas's hat from his head but not quite dislodging it. His shirttails blew in the air behind him.

Ren allowed her focus to return to the dirt and to Paul. He was as eager as she was to find something, and she recognized in him the same desperate, hopeless desire she'd felt on her earliest digs: a craving to accomplish something important, to play a major role, even knowing you were too raw, too ignorant, to be trusted with the big jobs. So she'd told him he could start the digging. And she wanted to be sure he was keeping it gentle. She could see the nerves in his movements, in how his fingers shook occasionally. She'd been like that, too, the first time Ed let her uncover a collared adobe hearth. The boy deserved to play his part. She wanted him to know that she acknowledged he was a part of this. He mattered. It was important to know you mattered.

It was slow work, and the shadows shortened as the morning passed. The wind almost seemed to be helping, blowing the dirt up and out of the hole. The thick dust rose and spread like a nimbus cloud over their heads. They widened the hole, making it easier to maneuver. All four of them could fit into the pit at one time, their shoulders and heads above ground level. Paul and Ren worked at the east wall, while Silas and Ed worked at the foot of the west wall.

Paul was lifting a bucket of dirt to ground level when Ren caught her breath.

“Here,” she said. Her hair was blowing into her mouth; she whipped it back over her shoulder without touching it.

Silas stepped over a half-full bucket and leaned over her shoulder. She brushed the dirt away from the very center of the grayish bowl. Only a small segment was exposed, but the few inches were enough to show the outline of the kill hole. That jagged hole meant the bowl had been placed over the face of the dead: The hole was punched to let the loved one's spirit escape.

Even the wind was quiet for a moment. All talk had evaporated. Ren had always wondered if that was something as shallow as ingrained etiquette—speak softly when you walk through a graveyard—or if it was something more fundamental, some fear or acknowledgment of the inevitable, bones calling to bones. The probable body in the dirt made them step back slightly. As much of a sway as a step.

Paul swallowed and opened his mouth; Silas laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Shhh,” he said, softly, leaving his hand in place. Paul seemed grateful for the direction. Ren could remember that sense of not knowing how to act with a burial bowl—giddiness over the find warring with discomfort over the corpse.

After that second—two seconds, three seconds, four seconds—of stillness, Ren took the first step out of the pit, allowing the others room to move. Ed was already reaching for his camera, and the others cleared out of the space. Ed snapped photos from every angle; then he and Ren stepped back into the pit, reaching for brooms. Ed and Ren worked with quick flicks of their wrists to brush back the dirt from the bowl. They squatted on the balls of their feet, leaning onto their toes, touching the ground as little as possible. They pressed themselves close to the dirt walls, trying to avoid where the body might lie.

It did not take long. Soon the clavicles came into view. But one bone did not mean a body. Once Ren had felt confident she had found a burial at a site in the Mimbres Valley—she'd unearthed a toe bone, then, at the appropriate distance away, two leg bones, parallel. She'd stopped digging, called for photos. But a little more poking and prodding revealed that the tibiae were only two random leg bones, perhaps from some grave disturbed long ago, but lacking all requisite bits of torso and arms and head to create a proper body.

Since then, she liked to uncover the better part of a skeleton before she declared a set of bones to be a burial.

They found the hip bone next, only a few sweeps away, surfacing wide and curved in the dirt under Silas's broom. As they continued to take away the dirt, they revealed the entire outline of the body, lying on its back with knees drawn to the chest. It was surprisingly small, as bodies always were once they were condensed to a pile of bones.

Only the back of the skull could be seen. The bowl, facedown, shielded the woman's face. No, Ren reminded herself—they didn't know it was a woman. She couldn't be certain of that. But she felt certain. She couldn't shake the sense that she'd seen this face, seen the slashes of red paint on the cheeks and the proud tilt of the head. As she stared at the unseen face, she heard Silas say that the pelvis seemed to indicate a female. She felt comforted by the clinical, concrete feel of the pronouncement.