Come In and Cover Me (34 page)

Silas. He was there ahead, drinking water from a Gatorade bottle.

“Hey,” she called.

“Hey yourself.” He wiped his mouth.

“You have water?”

“You don't?” He handed it over to her. “What kind of morons come up here with no water?”

“I barely remembered to put on pants,” she said. She cut her eyes at his expression.

Something in the canyon had erased the pain from Lynay's face. Whatever she had left behind her at Crow Creek, she had brought along the pain. Maybe it was the husband or the children who had siphoned out the sadness. Maybe it was miles and years. Maybe she poured the loss and the pain into the pottery itself until it all drained out of her, or perhaps the unfamiliar soil soaked it up and channeled it into succulent roots and cactus spines.

These were fanciful thoughts, Ren knew. She would not get an answer to this question. Not just one certain answer. She hoped she would see Lynay smiling again, running or laughing or tossing sun-warmed parrots. She hoped she would learn more of her stories. But she would not try to raise the ghosts from the ground—they could come to her if they liked.

“I missed you,” Silas said.

She rubbed her hand along his shoulder blades and kissed his chin. The sweat mark on the front of his shirt was shaped like a cat.

She wondered if Lynay had ever asked Non to remind her of Crow Creek, to tell her stories of days she was too young to remember. Ren could see a picture of them, of Lynay and Non, one that was much less concrete than the visions that had walked and talked in front of her. She pictured the older Lynay, the one she had just seen, with children of her own around her, children she could lift with one arm so they could wrap their legs around her waist. She saw the children sleeping as Lynay leaned against Non's side, and the fire caught the gray in Non's hair. Lynay would lay her head on Non's lap, and Non would stroke her hair and run rough-soft fingers over her forehead and tell her stories of the things that used to be. And Lynay's face would show that there was a pleasure to those stories after a while. She would listen to the stories, and she would start to see patterns, multiple patterns, designs she had not seen at first. The patterns were not simple, but they were beautiful. The television would cast a shimmering light on her face as her mother touched her hair. She would lean into the sleepy-safe feel of her mother's hands, and she would wish desperately for this to go on and on for always.

Ren lay her head against Silas's arm, and she meant to speak of Lynay. Instead she slid her fingers against his and saw that her hands were long and elegant, like a pianist's hands or an artist's. She thought how much she would like to taste her mother's orange rolls, and how Silas could scrape the icing from the pan. She thought of sitting with him on the back porch swing.

And she told him, “My mother's name is Anna.”

acknowledgments

First and foremost, I'd like to thank Karl Laumbach, archaeologist and storyteller extraordinaire. I'm convinced there is no detail about New Mexico archaeology that he does not know and no story that he cannot spin. Without him, there would be no Cañada Rosa in this story, no Lynay and Non, no intersection point between Mimbres and Northern Pueblo cultures. I went to Karl as a blank slate, and he resurrected a world for me. Thanks also to Toni Laumbach, who knows everything anyone could ever want to know about ceramics. Karl and Toni both answered endless questions with patience and amazing detail. They astonish me. The archaeological knowledge here is theirs, not mine. Any mistakes are mine alone.

Important bits and pieces of this story came from a variety of people and places. Thanks to John Fitch, another expert and a charming character in his own right. To Earthwatch and all the archaeologists and staff in the excavation at the Cañada Alamosa: Michael Wylde, Morgan Seamont, Dean Hood, Marc Bacon, and Delton and Mary Lou Estes. To Denny and Trudy O'Toole—your hospitality made all this possible. John Herzog gave a lesson on Ruth and Naomi at just the right time. The Reverend Shannon Webster complicated the story of Ruth in interesting ways. Sandra Sprayberry helped point me in the right direction on Native American legends. I found myself thinking fondly of Santina Lonergan, a lovely lady whose name I borrowed for a canyon. My dad, Donny Phillips, will notice that I've purloined a story or two of his, and I appreciate my brother Dabney's letting girls write on him in middle school.

As helpful as all the living, breathing sources were, I found these published works to be crucial:
Mimbres Society,
edited by Valli S. Powell-Martí and Patricia A. Gilman;
Mimbres Classic Mysteries: Reconstructing a Lost Culture Through Its Pottery
by Tom Steinbach, Sr.;
The Chaco Meridian
by Stephen H. Lekson;
Collapse
by Jared Diamond;
Painted by a Distant Hand: Mimbres Pottery from the Southwest
by Steven A. LeBlanc;
Anasazi America
by David E. Stuart;
Book of the Hopi
by Frank Waters;
Navajo Folk Tales
by Franc Johnson Newcomb; and
Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands
by James F. Brooks. I found the following articles particularly relevant: “A Mimbres Burial with Associated Colon Remains from the NAN Ruin Ranch, New Mexico” by Harry J. Shafer, Marianne Marek, and Karl J. Reinhard,
Journal of Field Archaeology
, vol. 16, 1989; “Prehistoric Macaws and Parrots in the Mimbres Area, New Mexico” by Darrell Creel and Charmion McKusick,
American Antiquity
, vol. 59, 1994; “New Interpretations of Mimbres Public Architecture and Space: Implications for Cultural Change” by Darrell Creel and Roger Anyon,
American Antiquity
, vol. 68, 2003; and “Social Organization and Classic Mimbres Period Burials in the SW United States” by Patricia A. Gilman,
Journal of Field Archaeology
, vol. 17, 1990.

Thank you to Fred, who reads everything I write first and last. Much appreciation to my agent, Kim Witherspoon, for her insight and for making business calls much more enjoyable than they should be. To my editors, Sarah McGrath and Sarah Stein, who, thank goodness, saw the things I didn't. Thanks to Rose Marie Morse for her editorial scalpel, to Jamie Roberts for her sharp eyes and smiley faces, and to Debbie Ashe for not trying to be nice. And extra thanks to my friend Ceridwen Dovey, who reads as brilliantly as she writes.