Interesting. Nina had dodged the question a second time. Faye decided to let a little silence happen. Sometimes, a person would say whatever popped into her mind to make the silence go away. Nina’s stiff body language and guarded voice told Faye that the woman had something to say. Soon enough, she said it.
“Shelly liked everybody,” Nina repeated. “Matt was family, so I guess she loved him. But she did say he was weird.”
Faye had managed to salvage the rest of the workday by propping Nina up and telling her not to think, just to screen soil. Faye had always found repetitive, slow work quieted her mind. She considered it a form of meditation. This was a good thing, because a lot of archaeological work could be described in just that way. Repetitive and slow.
Much of Faye’s life had been spent cleaning dirty little pieces of junk. No, make that dirty little pieces of
fragile
junk. Even in the field, where it was sometimes necessary to move dirt by the cubic yard, encountering an important find changed everything. When her excavating work called for precision, she was sometimes reduced to moving dirt with a sable-haired paintbrush, to avoid destroying something irreplaceable. Archaeologists who were capable of turning off a nattering brain and letting the work take its own pace were happy archaeologists.
Nina already looked less sad and stricken, as she ran soil through a screen designed to catch tiny artifacts that might otherwise be overlooked. Nina had shown a lot of talent for doing detailed work with her hands. Screening soil often made impatient Faye want to scream, but Nina seemed to be content enough, settling in for some quiet time with a pile of soil.
As Nina concentrated, she hummed quietly. Faye paused when she heard a familiar melody. Yes, the young woman was humming jazz standards. Nowhere but in New Orleans would Faye expect a 37-year-old to know “Basin Street Blues.”
***
The big excitement of the afternoon came when Dauphine uncovered several good-sized shards of pottery with an especially pretty Blue Willow design. The work team’s voices carried across the flat, silent battlefield, drawing Joe from his explorations of Rodriguez Canal, which had traversed this ground for so long that it was already old when the War of 1812 roared through.
Even this find left Faye feeling distracted and depressed. All over town, Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing floods had left deposits of broken china and glass and…well, pretty much everything…that were slowly being covered over and forgotten. One day, archaeologists were going to treat that layer of soil as casually as, say, the people who had excavated blackened rocks at the ruins of Troy.
“Look!” the archaeologists had said as they peeled back another layer of Troy’s history. “The city was destroyed by fire in thus-and-such a year.”
Each scrap of new information on the fire had been published, proving one scholar’s theory while obliterating another’s. Much effort had been spent and many journal pages printed, arguing over the historical significance of the charred city, but the personal significance of the fire to the people who survived it had been almost completely overlooked by the scholars filling those pages.
The survivors had lost family members. They had lost friends. They had lost homes and possessions.
They had lost everything.
Faye was glad she wouldn’t be around when scholars in another age started debating the question of what had really happened during the deluge that consumed New Orleans.
***
Faye’s workers had left, but she was still lingering in the work trailer, straightening her office and putting her thoughts away for the day. She wasn’t a bit surprised to see Jodi at the door.
Hardly raising her head from the odious clerical task of the moment—filing—Faye said, “I bet you are madder than a wet hen.”
“Yes. Are you going to tell me why, so I don’t have to make myself madder by saying it?”
“No problem. Glad to be of help. You’re peeved because Shelly has been missing for years. There’s a file on her at Missing Persons. We now know that people—we don’t know how many people, but some—saw her alive during the rescue effort after the storm. Yet nothing in that file shows that Shelly survived Katrina, and you didn’t have a clue until you found that raggedy newspaper clipping in her pocket.”
“That pretty much says it all.” Jodi sank into the low chair across from Faye’s desk. “Now, does it necessarily mean that the investigators didn’t do their jobs? Nope. Communications were wrecked for months. People were scattered all over the country. It’s completely possible that the people who saw Shelly were never questioned. It’s even possible some of them died that week, too. Nevertheless, now I’ve gotta try to track ’em down, years after the fact. Crap.”
“Nina probably knows some people—”
“You trying to tell me how to do my job? Nina already gave me a list of folks who might know folks who saw Shelly before she died. One of them is a guy named Charles Landry.”
Faye shrugged. “Is this the Charles that’s Nina’s ex-boyfriend?”
“Maybe you
should
try to tell me how to do my job. You got that information mighty fast.”
Faye shrugged again.
Jodi shook her bangs out of her eyes. “Never mind. I can tell that you ask the right questions, because you think like an investigator.”
She gestured around Faye’s office at the clean trowel resting atop the bookshelf, the labeled boxes of finds, the reference books on the shelf, and the laboratory requisition forms stacked on the corner of her desk.
“You
are
an investigator. You just pack a shovel and a Ph.D., instead of a gun and a badge.”
“No Ph.D. yet—” Faye started.
Jodi dismissed that detail with a waved hand.
“I couldn’t possibly care less about whether you have a Ph.D. or not. What do you know about geographical techniques—GPS, aerial photograph analysis, stuff like that?”
“I’ve got a GPS that I use every day that I’m in the field. It makes my life a heckuva lot easier than it was just a few years ago. Before GPS, I had to use surveying equipment to keep records of my sampling sites. GPS is
so
much easier. As for aerial photos, I’ve taken two graduate classes on aerial photograph analysis. I’m trying to figure out a way to shoehorn that into my dissertation topic, somehow. It’s not all that pertinent, but I really enjoy the work.”
“Perfect. You’re my new consultant. Expect me back here tomorrow, paperwork in hand.”
Faye noticed that Jodi didn’t ask her whether she wanted the job, nor whether she even had time to take it on.
Jodi kept talking, answering Faye’s questions before she asked them.
“I just want to pick your brain right now. That’s what a consultant’s for. I won’t mess with your work schedule, unless I just can’t help it. We can talk after you quit work for the day or at lunchtime or whenever. I’m not so sure I have much need for your friend Joe, as much as I’d like more chances to get a look at him, but—”
Joe showed impeccable timing by sticking his head in the door. “Faye? You know how the drainage around here’s been bothering me? The way the water flows
away
from the river?”
“Is that why you’ve been pouring water on the ground and watching it run? I thought that was strange.”
Jodi’s chair was more or less behind the open door. Joe clearly hadn’t noticed her there, because Faye had never seen him talk this much in front of anybody but her.
“It
is
pretty weird,” Joe said, not realizing that she’d been calling
him
strange, not the poor helpless water. It was probably better for domestic harmony to let him think so.
He brandished a text on the Battle of New Orleans.
“This book says that surface water around here has always drained away from the river, toward a swamp that used to be back there.” He waved at the park boundary that paralleled the river. “You’d think water would have run right into that big old river over there, but it never did. I don’t know why it didn’t. That’s just the way it is.”
“I wondered where you went this morning. You’ve been to the bookstore?”
“Library. I drove by a couple of pumping stations while I was out there, too, and I drove right past a levee that some engineers were fixing up. You should see it, Faye. Big ol’ machines driving big ol’ slabs of sheet metal into the top of a big ol’ levee, so they could make it even taller. And it was pretty darn high to begin with.”
Two years before, Joe would have preferred an hour with a bear to an hour with a book that had the heft of the one in his hand. Now he’d just finished his second semester of college coursework. It was amazing what a few tutors could do for a man blessed with plenty of brains, but cursed with learning disabilities the size of boulders. A little healthy curiosity didn’t hurt, either.
Faye had wondered why Joe was so worked up over the way water worked in New Orleans, until she gave the question a minute’s thought. Joe was accustomed to intuitively understanding the way the natural world worked, but there was nothing intuitive about New Orleans’ relationship with water. The city seemed to be founded on the proposition that water could be made to flow uphill.
He stood in the open door and waved at the reconstructed earthworks behind him.
“They built the rampart right next to that canal, because the water just made it that much harder for the British soldiers to get to the top of the big pile of dirt. Slowed ’em down. So it was that much easier to shoot them. Before that, the canal was a mill run. That has to mean the mill was turned with water coming
out
of the river, ’stead of into it. Musta been a sluicegate in the levee, or something. Then the water headed out there, toward that swamp that ain’t there no more.”
He pointed again at the stand of trees between them and St. Bernard Highway, but he never stopped talking.
“The canal and the earthworks went way into the swamp, back when Andrew Jackson was alive, but that end of the canal has been gone for years. Still, you know, I think I see something back there on this satellite picture. Earthworks, maybe. I think you and me should take a walk back there this evening and see what we can find.”
He handed the photo to Faye, then he noticed Jodi. Within seconds, Joe had greeted her with a polite nod, excused himself, and left. Just because Joe had gained some confidence in his abilities didn’t mean that he’d ever be comfortable talking shop in front of strangers.
“Okay,” Jodi said. “So the pretty man thinks like an investigator, too.”
She peered over Faye’s shoulder with an expression that said she clearly saw nothing intelligible on Joe’s small-scale photo. “It also seems that he’s very, very good with aerial photograph interpretation. That’s the last thing we know Shelly did. Also, the people who knew she was alive after the storm were all sitting side-by-side with her, using that self-same expertise. I think I can use Joe. Early tomorrow, I’ll bring paperwork for both of you to sign.”
She stood to leave, then turned back to Faye with a wolfish grin. “How do you think you two will blow those consultant’s checks?”
Faye made a mental inventory of her to-be-bought list. It was long.
“My property taxes are due. I need to replumb my cisterns sometime. Those pipes are only, oh…200 years old. They were built to last forever, but forever may have come. Oh, and I’d like to buy some more solar panels.”
“Cisterns, taxes, solar panels…you know, none of that stuff sounds like any fun. Necessary, but not fun.”
It had been so long since Faye wasted money on something fun, that it took her fifteen seconds to understand Jodi’s point.
“I suppose you have some idea of how I should spend my ill-gotten gains?”
“If I had a boyfriend that looked like yours, I’d have a few ideas. Unexpected money should be spent on something fun, darlin’. Those checks that the department will be cutting you and Joe would pay for a long weekend in a very nice room in the Monteleone. Maybe not the bridal suite, but close.”
Faye found herself entertaining some interesting ideas, in spite of herself. She told her miserly conscience to shut up so she could hear the woman talk.
“I’d eat at a different restaurant every night…if I were you…and I’d stick to the ones so old that they’re haunted by the ghosts of dead chefs. Galatoire’s. Antoine’s. Arnaud’s. Places like that. And I’d save one night to eat room service in that big old bed with that big young man.”
Faye’s attention was officially distracted from the threadbare condition of her pocketbook.
Jodi gave a quick nod, as if she were finished dangling temptation in front of her new employee, before delivering the
coup de grâce
almost as an afterthought.
“And I’d make damn certain sure I didn’t drink any champagne that hadn’t spent some time in a cave in France.”
Faye found herself deeply committed to doing something financially rash.
***
After Jodi closed the door behind her, Faye slumped back in her chair and thought of the unfinished work represented by every item in the office. She had an excavation to manage, data to interpret, a report to write…how was she going to do all that, while being at Jodi’s beck and call? But how could she say no to this consulting job if it might uncover information that would bring Shelly’s family peace? Or if it promised to bring her a weekend in paradise with Joe?
Faye could see that she’d be losing some sleep over the coming days—and nights—but she didn’t mind. She loved her work. She also felt a real need to find out what happened to Shelly Broussard. And, come hell or high water—a terrible metaphor, given the situation—Faye intended to enjoy her time with Joe during his short visit.
Excerpt from
The Floodgates of Hell, The Reminiscences of Colonel James McGonohan
1876
It is a peculiarity of the human mind that we envision people from the past as quaint. It is difficult for me to imagine that men of my grandfather’s time, in their powdered wigs and kneepants, carried the same sentiments in their hearts that I have carried in mine over this long life. And someday, far into the twentieth century, my little grandson will be wearing his whiskers and waistcoat in a fashion that I cannot imagine, and I will seem no more real to him than a painted portrait.
A man cannot hold a mental image of his parents in a romantic embrace without wincing. The idea that his grandparents might once have burned with passion…why, that idea is incomprehensible.
As an engineer, I have an engrained need to understand how things work. Some of my colleagues limit their thirst for understanding to gears and pulleys and machines. I am a bit unusual in that I am drawn to the human machine and to history. (My dear wife would say that I am a bit unusual on the whole, but I have not invited her to contribute to this memoir.)
I am happiest when I stumble upon something that increases my understanding of people and things and of the ways they relate to one another. I truly want to understand my grandparents as human beings, rather than think of them as feeble folk who were never once young.
As an engineer in the exceedingly damp city of New Orleans, I find that my desire to understand the people of the past extends to the ways our fair city was raised out of the muck. I have done much reading on the schemes our forebears concocted to keep their feet dry. Our city was designed back in 1718 with ditches cut around every city block, in hopes that these small canals would keep the land drained. Alas, they merely served as stagnant receptacles for refuse—and worse—and the unpaved streets remained mud wallows.
While a young man, I listened to stories of life in our fair city during those long-ago, damp days. The citizens of New Orleans have always been intent on the enjoyment of pleasant society. Mere mud could not keep our convivial citizens from their balls and galas.
Before each such fête, I am told, the ladies donned their petticoats and ballgowns and delicate slippers. They displayed their finery in their own ballrooms for the gentlemen of their family to admire…then they doffed those delicate slippers and handed them to their servants. Next, they reached down and hiked their petticoats and ballgowns up above their knees, preparing to wade through streets that were often too muddy to admit a horse and buggy.
Trailing their servants and their escorts, these bare-legged ladies paraded in public in a condition that, at any other time, would have rendered them unfit for polite society. Even worse, it would have rendered them unmarriageable.
Upon achieving their destination, they were greeted with basins of water in which their grimy lower limbs were bathed snowy-white again. After a quick moment spent tidying themselves in a bedchamber, the belles re-emerged, resplendent, to be duly admired as if mud had never been invented.
Ah, if only yellow fever were never invented. If mud and swamp miasmas and insects and putrefaction did not bring disease, then I could have made myself content to send my daughters into the night with mud caking their unshod feet. Alas, I have seen too many friends bury their daughters to reconcile myself to that state of affairs.
If the desire for cleanliness and comfort had not been enough to interest me in the science of keeping my city dry, yellow fever alone would have been sufficient. No man could ever forget walking, time and again, through the deserted streets of a city emptied by people fleeing pestilence. And no human being could ever forget the bright-hot glow of fever in the eyes of a cherished friend in his last hours of life.
I am near eighty years of age. During my long career, I have designed canals and levees and drainage machines, and I have watched them take shape. I have seen my machines hold back floodwaters, and I have also seen them fail. But if I could have accomplished one goal, it is this one: to rid my city of pestilence. The day will come when women will not grow pale at the sound of the words “yellow fever.” The day will come when children do not know the meaning of those words.
I would give anything to see that day.