Magpie led the two people into the tent circle, set the drinks she carried on the ground, and said, “Aunt Hail, this is Dusty Stewart and Dr. Maureen Cole. Dusty and Maureen, this is my great-aunt, Hail Walking Hawk.”
Stewart removed his sunglasses, and knelt in front of Hail, putting himself in a lower position. “Thank you for coming, Elder.” He extended his hand, and Hail shook it, and smiled.
The Indian woman stepped forward and extended her hand, too. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Walking Hawk.”
Hail took her brown hand, and smoothed her knotted fingers over it. It felt cool, damp from sweat. She said, “What tribe are you?”
“My mother was Seneca,” Maureen Cole said.
“And your father?”
“Oh, he was a mongrel. A little English, some French, and a lot of Irish.”
“What do your people call you?”
Maureen smiled as though it pleased her to be asked. “Washais. It’s a knife we use for carving sacred masks. Kind of a drawknife—”
“Figures,” Stewart muttered under his breath. “I’m surprised they didn’t call you ‘Knife-in-the-Back.’”
Washais glowered.
Hail tried the name on her tongue, “Wah-sha-ees. Your mother must have thought you had a lot of Power to give you a name like that. Sacred knives are powerful things.”
Washais smiled again, and Hail saw a faint blue glow behind her.
“And the man?” Hail said, and pointed. “Who is he?”
Washais turned, looked at the green tents, and the desert, and asked, “What man?”
Hail drew her hand back to her lap, and fingered her blue dress. Some people reacted funny when she told them about the Spirits that walked along with them. Softly, she said, “He’s behind you. He has light brown hair, and green eyes. He …”
Washais’s face slackened. She stared at Hail as though a monster had just leaped from her mouth. The blue glow wavered around her, as if touching Washais to reassure her.
Dusty Stewart shot glances back and forth between Hail and Washais, then smiled broadly, grabbed Washais’s limp hand, and shook it hard, saying, “I should have warned you, Dr. Cole. This is definitely not Kansas. I do hope you brought your ruby slippers.”
Washais jerked her hand away. “Next time, Stewart, you’ll draw back a bloody stump.”
Magpie stepped between them, edging Stewart aside, obviously concerned about Washais. “Why don’t you sit down, Maureen. You look a little pale.”
“No, I—I think I’ll walk around, thank you. It’ll be dark soon. I’d like to take a look at the site. Would you excuse me?”
“Sure,” Magpie said.
Hail watched as the tall Seneca woman walked out to the square holes the diggers had made. She rubbed her arms as if they tingled.
Stewart leaned toward Magpie, and whispered, “See if your Aunt Hail can keep that up. Cole will be gone in no time.”
Magpie answered, “It’s my fault. I just assumed, since she’s Indian—”
“She’s Catholic.”
Magpie’s mouth fell open, and her dark eyes blazed. “Many Indians are Catholic! All of the marriages at Acoma are performed in the Catholic church. We take Power where we find it, be it in a rainbow or a cross.”
Dusty glanced away self-consciously. “I know that. Sorry. What I meant is that I think her brand of Catholicism is a little less open-minded than yours.”
Magpie lifted her brows. “No rainbows?”
“I doubt it.”
Hail gripped her chair arms and tried to shove to her feet. Her first attempt failed; she fell right back to the seat, but her second attempt worked. She rose and shuffled a few paces away.
Magpie and Dusty both ran to grip Hail’s elbows, supporting her.
Hail smiled, and said, “Magpie, where’s that walking stick you made me?”
“Oh, it’s in the truck. Hold on, Aunt Hail. I’ll get it.”
Magpie exchanged a look with Dusty, transferring the responsibility for Hail’s welfare from her to him, and trotted away.
Dusty gripped Hail’s elbow more tightly. He asked, “Elder, who did you see near the good doctor?”
Hail patted his tanned hand. “A man who loves her. Very much. Too bad, though.”
“Why is that?”
“Oh, these things are hard. His soul ought to be in the Land of the Dead by now.”
Dusty shoved sweat-soaked blond hair from his forehead and appeared to be on the verge of saying something unkind as if wondering how anyone could have loved Washais.
Hail said, “When he died, he left a hole in her soul.” She glanced at Dusty, blinking against her filmy vision to read his response. “You might think about that. And the hole in your own soul.”
“What hole?”
“The one your mother tore out of you.”
Dusty didn’t say anything, but he tilted his head as though to avoid her gaze.
Hail smiled. “You two are a lot the same. Maybe that’s why you rub on each other like sandstone.”
“The rubbing part is right. I’ll have to take your word for the rest, Elder.”
Dusty looked out across the square holes to where Washais knelt, frowning down at something in the bottom of the pit. She
had lifted the black plastic from the hole and weighted it down with a rock. The corner flapped and rattled in the breeze.
“I found it,” Magpie called, and trotted up with the fine oak walking stick in her hand.
Magpie had cut the branch, sanded it until it felt like silk, then attached a rubber foot to the point, and laid a piece of elk antler sideways on the top. A beautiful thing, Hail loved it.
“Thank you, child.” Hail took the stick and politely said, “I’ll be fine by myself now. You two go on. I’ll be right behind you.”
Magpie nodded to Dusty, and they both walked in front of Hail, but less than a pace away. Just in case they had to whirl around fast and grab her, she guessed.
Hail propped her stick, and studied the uneven ground. She made three steps and stopped to breathe, then took another two and rested. That miserable cancer throbbed in her chest, burning and aching. Every time she stopped Magpie turned.
“I’m still up,” Hail called.
“But you’re not moving,” Magpie said.
“Yes, I am.” Hail took three more steps, and leaned on her walking stick. “I’m just moving like Tortoise, slow and smart.”
Stewart put his sunglasses back on and said, “I’m going to go see what Dr. Cole has found. Just yell if you need me.”
Magpie nodded. “Thanks, Dusty. I will.”
He went to kneel on the opposite side of the pit from Washais.
Hail could see him pretty well from where she stood, well enough to see his tanned forehead furrow. He propped a clenched fist on his knee and seemed to be waiting for Washais to say something.
Hail took three more steps, then two, gasped a few times, and made four good steps before she had to stop. She could almost see into the pit.
Magpie stood beside her. She murmured, “Are you sure I can’t help you, Aunt Hail?”
“I have to learn to make do for myself. You’re going to be gone soon, child.” She studied the fuzzy ground, put her stick down, and made her way to the edge of the long rectangular pit. She could see the bones. They resembled winter-bleached branches, but she
couldn’t make them out very well. A big flat stone rested to the side of the skull.
Dusty said, “So?”
Washais stared down for several moments. “Dramatic example of
hyperostosis frontalis interna.
She must have—”
“What the hell is that?” Dusty demanded, as if angry.
“It’s a scientific term that real anthropologists use, Stewart. I assume the rock is what cracked her skull wide open?”
“That was our guess,” Stewart said.
Washais stood up, and propped slim brown hands on her hips. “I won’t need to guess. When we remove the cranium, I can match the impact fracture to the stone. Scientists do that sort of thing. Please continue. You were saying?”
He gave her a cold smile. “I was saying it looks like the stone was thrown in on top of her. Now why don’t you explain this hypershit to me.”
Washais pointed to where the skull bones were crushed like an egg shell. “Do you see the thickening of the frontal bone of the skull? It’s called the
squamous
portion.”
“I do.”
“Despite the fact that the outside of the skull looks smooth, if you crane your neck, you will see that beneath that thickened area is a series of bumpy bone growths.”
Stewart braced a hand on the ground and climbed over the edge. He eased to the floor and crouched near the skull. “Hmm,” he grunted. “What does it mean?”
“It means the dead woman had an impressive endocrine imbalance.” Washais appeared to be thinking. “But usually cases like this are found in older, postmenopausal women. On the other hand,” she added, as if speaking to herself, “pregnant women often develop
osteophytes,
bone growths, on the
squamous
portion of the frontal bone, but they’re generally flat, and disappear after pregnancy.” She slapped her hands on her blue jeans. “I need to take a closer look at that skull, Stewart. Why has it only been partially excavated?”
“Because, my dear doctor,” Stewart informed her in an authoritative tone, “in these United States, we have something called the
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which require us to consult with native peoples before we excavate burial grounds.”
“Well, if you expect a scientific evaluation of what caused this woman’s death, I need to see her up close. I brought a few tools with me, a microscope, calipers, some other things. How soon can I start work?”
Dusty climbed out of the pit. “Elder Walking Hawk, what do you think?”
Hail shuffled over to stand beside Washais. Her long black braid fell down the back of her white T-shirt. “Washais, tell me what you see? My eyes aren’t so good anymore.” She affectionately took hold of Washais’s arm.
Washais returned the affection, squeezing Hail’s knotted fingers. “I don’t see too much either. But this woman was fairly young, in her early twenties. Her arms and legs are sprawled out, as if she were hurled face-first into the pit. I suspect that Stewart is correct that someone crushed her head with that stone and with as much force as he could muster. It takes a lot to crack a skull, especially one resting on sand. I also think—”
They all turned when a dust-streaked Jeep Cherokee jounced down the two track followed by a side-slipping cloud of dust that edged out into the greasewood to slowly fade into nothingness. After parking beside Dusty’s Bronco, a skinny young woman with a lean face and shoulder-length brown hair jumped out.
Magpie lifted a hand and waved. “Hello, Sylvia!”
“Hi, Magpie!”
Magpie turned back to Washais. “It might have been frozen sand,” Magpie said, “if this happened in the winter.”
“Yes,” Washais agreed. “Possibly. I’ll be able to tell from the nasal sinus.”
“Really?” Dusty asked with exaggerated politeness.
“How?”
“By the pollen, Stewart.” She brushed her hands off.
“I’ve never heard of that before.”
“I’m not surprised. You’re an archaeologist. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t ‘pulling a burial’ the technical term you people use? Do you have any idea of the amount of information you destroy when you ‘pull’ a human being out of the ground?”
“Can you really do that, Maureen?” Magpie asked. “Tell what time of year she died?”
“I can tell you the time of year. I can tell you if that rock really smashed her skull. I can probably even tell you her blood type.”
Stewart’s blond brows lowered. “Yeah, right, you’ve got all the answers. I don’t believe this …”
The words faded. Hail blinked her cloudy eyes, and turned away, listening. But not to the living. Somewhere close by a child wailed. Crying and coughing, as if he couldn’t get enough air.
Hail propped her walking stick, and walked eastward through the dry grass, and lengthening shadows, until the crying stopped. Hail tapped the ground, and the boy coughed again.
She whispered. “Don’t cry. I’m here.”
From behind her, Magpie called, “What is it, Aunt Hail? What did you find?”
“One of the Haze People.”
Steps patted the ground as the three young people surrounded her.
She looked up at Dusty Stewart’s reflective sunglasses. “Tomorrow, while Washais is looking at that woman over there, I want you to dig here.” She pointed with her walking stick.
Dusty frowned, and tilted his head as if vying with his own better judgment. “Elder, I don’t think I can. This is outside of the impact area.”
“Dig here,” she repeated. “You tell him, Magpie. This boy is sad.”