Mighty Old Bones (9 page)

“Not really. I think the Lord was sending him a message to quit being so mean. Didn’t work out like that. Gerald kind of absorbed the shocks and got meaner. Like a battery being recharged.”

“Goodness. You certainly have an interesting family.”

“Honey, you don’t know the half of it.”

We walked to the base of the tree, the heart of the lightning strike. A black rectangle approximately three feet long and perhaps a foot across at its widest point covered the tree’s side. Phoebe put her hand over the blackened bark, rubbing it back and forth, then both hands, prying into the cut and studying it from all angles.

From where we stood, we could see a slight indentation in the ground beside the huge upturned root ball, just beside the rock overhang to which Cal referred. I took out one of the photos he had taken of the area to compare. Phoebe looked over my shoulder.

“Looks like the place. Except now the hole in the ground is a whole lot bigger.” She touched the photograph then pointed. “Now you can see that rock that’s jutting out better.” She walked toward the overhang. I had no idea it was so large from the photograph. Nor had I grasped the amount of engravings. They covered virtually the entire front slab that faced the downed tree.

“Hey, Jane.” I looked over to see Phoebe at the far edge of the cleared area that sloped upward. “Over here. I bet this is it.”

I caught up with her and followed her gaze down into a small hollow. She pointed her finger and moved it across. “Tree. Or it was. Bushes. Indian stuff. Hole in the ground. Maybe there’s a cave down in there somewhere.”

Several flat rocks lay spaced just so between the tree and the overhang. I saw more on the other side of the huge tree trunk, following the line from the overhang to where the clearing was covered entirely with more flat rocks.

Phoebe wouldn’t let me walk on the flat stepping stones until she had used a fallen branch with its leaves still attached like a broom to sweep them clean of wet leaves.

“We don’t want to fall and break our hips and then have all my friends call me feeble. That would be the pits.”

“Quite right.” With ginger steps across the slippery floor of mud and leaves, we made our way to the overhang, forming a small cave-like space beneath. Its underside was above my head with perhaps another five feet of room to spare. Phoebe and I used our fingers to wipe away dirt and pieces of leaves that covered some of the “Indian stuff,” which was revealed as three lines of many symbols each, and a fourth shorter line of different markings, all wondrously strange and completely undecipherable.

The cool air, the earthy smells of wood and smoke, the warning chips of territorial chickadees, the ancient wonder beneath my hands as I wiped moss and wet dirt away, all blended together in a heady mixture, akin to draughts of strong incense, that transported me above the ground and into another world. I was in heaven.

Phoebe brought me abruptly out of my reverie. “Are you feeling all right, Jane? You’ve got a freaky look on your face. You’re not about to have a heart attack or anything, are you?”

“No, dear. Quite the opposite. This glorious place makes me feel euphoric.”

Phoebe stared at me, her eyebrows raised, her head of red curls leaning closer to my ear to whisper, “It’s a rock, Jane. Covered in mud. The wind is going to give us both earaches, and that bird that just flew over missed splattering my arm by less than an inch. Euphoric, it ain’t.”

I laughed. “Oh, stop teasing. You’re not fooling me, my girl. You can’t tell me these etchings don’t interest you. Not with your love of all things Native American.”

Her face changed in a snap from incredulity to smiling mischief. “Ha! Okay, I give you that. I do like the writing.”

Once done, we saw two rather nice petroglyphs nearer the broken wall of rocks. The rock drawings were small ones that Cal had indicated on the map with arrows and a notation of only one word: “Carvings.”

While Phoebe walked slowly around and under the overhang, I took out my notebook to jot down my observations about the two rock carvings, then we photographed them. One was the familiar circular spiral often seen in many ancient sites throughout the world. The other required more concentration in my rendering, several lines containing a number of native symbols that would require one of Cal’s Cherokee dictionaries to decipher.

Despite her usual revulsion for being outdoors for very long, Phoebe certainly enjoyed the carvings, going back and forth from one to the other. “Here, take a picture of me next to this one,” she said as she wrapped her arm around it.

I obliged then set the timer for a shot with both of us in the frame. We also posed by the charred hole in the fallen tree. We moved farther down the tree and skirted the great upstanding roots carefully to explore the “hole in the ground” they had enlarged.

“Hey, take a picture of this here,” Phoebe said. “It can be like an art picture, like they show in fancy galleries.” She held her arms out straight, her hands squared as if she were a movie director framing a scene. “Right like that. See how the roots look?”

“Yes. An excellent idea. I like that. I wish I’d brought a camera with black-and-white film.”

Phoebe stood aside, moving her framed palms out to find more potential art subjects. “Get this, too,” she said with her director’s frame held down to the ground. “See that? It looks like an arm, kind of. And a hand, with little fingers on the…Yaaaaah!” She screamed as she leapt backward, grabbing my arm in the process and dragging me away from the tree roots.

“Your foot! Your foot!” she yelled.

I looked down at the spot she had forced me to vacate. At first, I couldn’t make sense of what was before me. A slight indentation in the wet, brown earth was all I saw. Judging from Phoebe’s agitation, I’d thought she must surely have seen a snake. Instead, what I saw held no danger, yet chilled me through and through just the same.

Within the bare patch where the tree’s giant root-ball had been, a pattern of small yellowish white cylinders protruded from the wet brown dirt.

“It is!” Phoebe said. Her voice trembled in a higher pitch than normal. “Tell me it isn’t, but I know good and well it is.”

They were bones. No question. Nor was there any doubt they were human bones. One eye socket of a skull peeked at us from out of the mud.

Phoebe didn’t move, only stared at our discovery. “Well, Jane. I cannot believe we have gone and done it again. Except this body is a whole lot deader than that last one.”

J
ane had shivered all over her body like a herd of possum had run over her grave.

“Are you all right?” I said after we both realized we were looking at somebody’s bones. Unlike me, Jane is the delicate type. I worried that she’d faint or have a heart attack or, worse, go all bananas on me like she did that last time we found the dead guy.

“Of course. I’m fine. I’ve seen many a bone in the ground in my day.”

“Huh.” I looked her up and down. She put on a good act, I give her that. “I suppose you have. So now what do we do? You want to have another one of those Indian ceremonies?”

“Perhaps that would be a good idea later on.”

“Because I’ve been thinking about it for a while, in case we ever needed to do one again.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Yeah. This time, I want us to smoke something. Like in a powwow. With a peace pipe. I don’t have a real one yet. But I do have some of my granddaddy’s old pipes. We could use one of those, if it’s an emergency bone thing.”

Jane squatted to have a closer look. “I’m not sure what to do next,” she said. “I suppose the first thing to do is call the police.”

“What for? Whoever it is, he’s not on the missing persons list. He’s been in the ground a while. The police don’t care about nothing from ancient times. Besides that, the writing over there on the wall is probably like the tombstone, don’t you reckon? So it was an official burial. Whenever it was.”

“Possibly. Probably so.” Jane knelt beside the bones, eyeballing them all over, left and right. She didn’t touch them, but she did put a fingertip on the dirt at the edge of the hole left by the tree trunk.

“What we’ve got here is an Indian cemetery. Only, I don’t think this is like the trees where we did the smudging,” I said. “This body isn’t right up under the tree. See, it’s too far away. Unless he had his arm way back like this.” I reached backward as far as I could like I was doing a backstroke in the air.

Jane nodded. “I believe you’re right. He, or she, was most likely buried farther out in the tree’s shade. Though the bones could have moved into strange positions. See how the roots have grown and shoved those aside.”

I bent down beside her. “What is that sticking up over there?” I reached toward a bump but Jane stopped me.

“Don’t touch it. We must leave everything as it is. Everything must be documented, just as it lies. Both for the police and the state.”

“The state?”

“Yes. The state archaeology office. We will want a full dig.” She looked up. Her face looked like a kid’s at Christmas.

“Wait. Don’t tell me,” I said. “You’re euphoric.”

Jane laughed and said, “Yes, my dear, I believe I am. I think I’m going to cry.”

Lord, give me patience and perservatives. I gave her a hug and patted her back. “You just go right ahead, hon. I understand. I know how you like dirt and trees and old dead bones. And now you got some of your very own. Go ahead and blubber, I won’t tell anybody.”

We took a lot more pictures before we headed out of the woods and back to Jane’s house. Homer went on ahead of us like he thought he was leading the way. I have to say that, for a dog, Homer is pretty smart. He got the message quick that I did not want him slobbering all over me. He has kept his distance ever since the first time I met him.

As soon as we got in, Jane went to the phone that hangs on her kitchen wall to call the police. “Oh, bother,” she said. She tapped the button a couple of times. “Not working.”

“I thought you got that fixed?”

“I did. More likely the phone company is still catching up after the storm.” She hung up the receiver and got her cell phone.

I hung around at Jane’s house until the police got there. They came a lot quicker than I expected. They were already out on other business, due to the storm damage.

I had no interest whatsoever in going back out into the sticks. Besides, I had a lot of other stuff that needed doing, so I excused myself. It was good to see Detective Daniel Waters again, though. I’ve known him since he was a boy. I had him in my Sunday school class I used to teach for five-year-olds. He is a good one. His poor family never had two dimes to rub together, but they raised him right. Every time I see him, I feel so proud that he turned into such a fine young man and has made something of himself.

Right as I was telling Dan good-bye at the door, I heard Jane call out to us from the den. Her voice didn’t sound right. It was tight and higher than usual. Something was wrong.

We found her opening and closing her armoire and then the lids on her two antique trunks. She kept going around the room, looking up and down her bookshelves. When she got to her desk, she opened all the drawers and flipped through files.

“Someone has been in here. This morning. Since we left for our walk.” She spoke in a calm voice, but I could tell she was rattled.

Dan looked around the room. “Is anything missing?”

“Yes. A couple of primitive figurines from my shelf. And I can tell someone has looked through my desk.”

I looked at my watch. “We’ve only been gone an hour and a half. They must have been watching. They did quick work unless they’re still…Surely they’re not still here and hiding somewhere!”

Dan and Jane exchanged a look. Dan whipped his gun off his belt and said, “Stay here. I’ll check.”

In the time it took him to say that, Jane had already grabbed a mean handgun, had it in her hand ready to go, and was on the way to check the closet. “I’ll help,” she said as she jerked the door open and pointed the gun around inside the closet.

In no time, the two of them searched the house, upstairs and down plus the basement. You should’ve seen Jane. The way she walked and moved her gun up and down, her arms straight out, the way she went around corners. She looked like Emma Peel on a serious mission.

Nobody was there, thank goodness. Jane said nothing else was missing. When Dan checked the doors and windows, he didn’t find any of them jimmied.

“I usually lock the doors,” she said. “I don’t remember doing it this morning. I was too anxious to take our walk, I suppose.”

It didn’t sound like her. She’s pretty cautious about safety. But, we all mess up every now and then. It was just rotten luck that someone took advantage of it.

D
etective Waters and I walked outside to his vehicle, a forest green, mud-splattered Jeep Cherokee instead of one issued from the police department. A gentleman sat in the passenger seat.

“I brought our coroner with me. This is Dr. Mark Jenkins. Sorry it took us so long, Mark.” The doctor stuck his right hand out the window so we could shake. “We were on the same scene when you called.”

“A pleasure, Mrs. Thistle.” Dr. Jenkins had silver hair and looked about my age or perhaps younger.

Homer came bounding across the road from his old home, picking up speed when he saw the detective. As he did so, Detective Waters lowered himself to a squat and clapped his hands together, calling Homer to him.

While he scratched Homer’s ears and patted him, the screen on my front door squeaked open. Phoebe walked over, her purse in one hand and her car keys in the other.

“Hey, Mark,” she said.

“Phoebe. What a surprise to find you right in the middle of things,” he said with a laugh.

She put both hands in the air. “Don’t blame me. I haven’t done a thing. There’s your troublemaker right there,” she said, indicating me with a nod of her head. “May I go now? You don’t need me since Jane can show you out there, right? Because I have a lot I need to be doing today rather than traipsing around out there. And then wait and wait for Mark to say something like, ‘In my expert opinion, he’s dead and has been for a long, long time.’”

“That’s fine,” Detective Waters said in a light voice. “If I need to ask you something, I’ll come by your house. You don’t happen to have any of that good strudel made up, do you?”

Phoebe smiled. “Not lately. Come on, anyway. Anytime. I imagine I can rustle up something whenever you’re hungry.” Off she went, turning her car down Anisidi Road and waving good-bye out her window.

Detective Waters gave a few last pats to Homer’s side. He stood and stretched. “Let’s go have a look. From what you’ve told me, Mrs. Thistle, you’ve most likely come upon an Indian grave.” He put a hand to the back of his neck, rubbing and smoothing his hair. “Even so, if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep this as quiet as we can.”

“Certainly.”

He looked as if he had more to say on the matter. Whatever that might be, he kept it to himself for the moment.

I gave directions as we drove through the woods, making slow progress over the bumps and holes in the old road. “Park here. This is as far as we can go. We’ll walk from here. Up the ridge,” I said as I pointed up toward the clearing where Phoebe and I had found the bones.

When we crested the rise, we saw a family of squirrels chase each other around the fallen tree. They stopped to look at our little troupe before scattering away through the brush and up various trees to safety. Detective Waters walked across to stand beside the upturned roots and earth, two or perhaps three times his height.

He unbuttoned his jacket and hiked his pants at the knees to bend down beside the bones. As I mentioned, we could see part of the skull and part of a forearm and its once-attached hand and finger bones. Another dry whitened object about the size of a half-dollar also lay exposed perhaps a foot from the arm bones. If I were to guess, I’d say it was also bone, but with so little visible in the dirt it was impossible to say for certain.

Detective Waters turned to me, laughing as he shook his head. “I’m amazed you found this place. Out of all the woods, you and Mrs. Twigg just happened to walk by here, right where you could find me another body.”

The three of us laughed. “Cal’s map led us here. To see this overhang shelter.” I showed them the crude drawing. They walked with me to the overhang to see its carvings. We walked further around toward the bluff and the pieces of stone, fallen now but surely once stacked on top of one another to form a long wall. The men gazed out across the valley for some time, marveling at the view.

We retraced our steps over the large clearing. At the site, the coroner took out his camera and began photographing the bones. He dug away some mud from around them but gently and only enough to see a little better. “I’d say they are well over the seventy-five-year range. I’ll email these pictures to Dr. Norwood. She’ll want to come out to have a look.”

I looked at Detective Waters. “Dr. Norwood works for the state. She’s our area’s forensic anthropologist,” he said. His black eyes, deep and sparkling with humor and intelligence, stared into mine. “Like I said on the way in here, I want to handle this exactly right, just as much as you do.” He explained he wanted to get the coroner’s opinion on whether the remains were of someone recently deceased or were, as we both suspected, much older. In that case, Dr. Norwood would take over. “She will make the final determination.”

Dr. Jenkins and Detective Waters told of many such discoveries in the area that, upon study, were found to be two hundred to three hundred years buried. This particular section of northwest Alabama was home to mainly three tribes, Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw, before the United States government removed most of them in the early 1800s. Bones uncovered in recent years were the parents and grandparents of those removed to the West.

Dr. Jenkins knelt and nodded his head. He ran a finger down the length of the ulna and tapped it a bit before speaking. “Old,” he said, looking up to the detective. “Like the last one we did over on McRaes’ place.”

He took a tiny recorder out of his pocket and spoke into it. “October twenty-eighth, in company of Detective Daniel Waters, on property owned by Mrs. Jane Thistle, approximately one half-mile off Anisidi Road and southwest of the Anisidi Wildlife Refuge. We find an area approximately eight feet by eight feet unearthed by roots of a large tree struck down in previous night’s storm. Within the area a skull, full ulna, and the bones of one hand lay exposed. Bone color and condition indicate the individual most likely lived over one hundred years ago. In close proximity is evidence of native burial as seen in previous finds of this nature. Suggest corroboration from Dr. Norwood before proceeding with reburial or extraction.” He clicked his recorder off and stuck it back in his pocket before standing to go.

Detective Waters also looked ready to leave. “I’ll let you know what Dr. Norwood says, Mrs. Thistle. Her office is in Huntsville. She tries to come out fairly quickly on something like this. We’ll see.”

“Certainly. Anytime is fine.”

He hesitated again, as if unsure and choosing his words carefully. “In the past,” he said, “we have had a few instances of Indian activists from out of state who get interested when this kind of situation comes up. I don’t want to alarm you. I’m just telling you so you’ll be prepared in case any show up.”

“Is that likely to happen?”

“Hard to say. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I’ll go out and talk to the local chief to let him know what’s going on.”

“There’s a local chief? I had no idea.”

“On the other side of the mountain. The north Alabama tribe is small, compared to North Carolina and Oklahoma. Good folks. You’ll like them. Dr. Norwood will notify the state Indian Affairs office. Sometimes that brings outsiders.”

“We’re talking about protestors?”

He nodded. “I’m just saying there’s a chance. One or two fellows have been known to come down and take it upon themselves to keep an eye on the white man.”

He looked deep into my eyes and gave a hearty laugh. And that was the first time I realized what was right before me. How silly of me not to have seen it earlier.

“That’s right. The protestors are usually whiter than me.”

It was so clear. His eyes, his strong native facial bones, the quiet calm in his movements and speech.

“As I say, they’re not bad guys or anything. Well, most of them aren’t,” Detective Waters said. “They only want to be sure full respect is shown. I want that, too. My job is to make sure the law is followed, and that the right thing is done all around. So don’t worry about anything. Especially that anyone in the police department will mess things up on the site. I’m not going to bring a jack-hammer out here and tear up a grave or anything like that.”

We laughed as we took a last look around. Detective Waters lingered at the overlook. “Those bones have rested right where they’re at for a long, long time. They’ll keep. Since they’re on your land away from town, and from what I know of you, I assume you also want a dignified re-burial, I don’t think the protestors or NAGPA will have anything to worry about.”

The Native American Grave Protection Agency often made the news in the archaeological journals I read. I knew their policies in a general way, but made a mental note to go online and read them carefully.

“They’ll want to make sure the remains are re-buried and the area left undisturbed,” the detective said. “You don’t plan on clearing any of this or building a set of condominiums out here, do you?”

I laughed. “No, of course not.”

“Well, then, there won’t be any problem.”

As we made our way back to my house, I explained that I’d like to undertake a full dig at the site myself. “I’d like to study it. Do a complete analysis.”

The medical examiner and Detective Waters exchanged glances. I told them of my previous experience and assured them that I would consult experts more knowledgeable than myself.

“Let’s see what Dr. Norwood says first,” Detective Waters said. “I’ll explain your situation. You two can talk about it when she comes out. Meanwhile, we need to leave everything untouched, okay?”

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll put a tarp over the pit to protect the area. I have a canopy I can rig over it as well. Just in case there’s more rain.”

I was relieved that neither Dr. Jenkins nor Detective Waters had an inclination to move or disturb the bones in any way. That would give me time to organize my thoughts. Already my mind reeled off the old digging and preservation procedures, trying to remember all the equipment I’d need, the order to do things.

And I needed help. While it’s true I had much experience on archaeological sites, I knew I was rusty after being away from that life for so long.

Once more, I considered the need for a confidante, an advisor upon whose judgment I could rely without question. This was an area of deep concern, one I’d turned over and over in my mind since acquiring this land. The decision of whether or not to trust another person, anyone at all, with its potential historical value as an untouched piece of wilderness, was not an easy one to make. Now, however, I knew that I must bring in a consultant, someone I was sure I could trust. I needed someone with a wealth of experience in excavations. Perhaps more importantly, someone who might be free, in respect to both time and what he might charge me.

Michael. He would be perfect. Now that he was officially retired, he might be interested, if he wasn’t working for someone else on a digging project. And if I could find him.

A half-hour later, Dr. Jenkins and Detective Waters said good-bye and left Homer and me to our chores. We went to the shed in my backyard where I found several plastic tarps. I gathered the tall poles and the large tent canopy I’d kept long after the Colonel and I no longer held outdoor parties. I placed them in my car then gathered other things I might need. With a hammer, several stakes, a ball of twine, a tape measure, my camera, my leatherwork belt, and a sketchbook in tow, we set out to cover the exposed bones.

Homer kept me company as I took more pictures. Once the tarp was in place, we moved our attention to the fallen tree and the overhang’s carved symbols. Homer explored while I sketched and made notes. The sun sank lower as I finished the last measurements between carvings and burial place. Even so, I found it hard to pull myself away, to stop staring in the near darkness at the area surrounding the fallen tree, the blackened, somewhat star-shaped wound where lightning had struck on the trunk, and the wide gash low near the roots.

I’m rather a skeptic. In spite of my experiences of a supernatural nature since moving to Tullulah, I found it unlikely that unusual recent events had happened coincidentally. Lightning strikes a tree, Cal’s box provides a map to it that very day. Unlikely in the normal world, yes, but not so upsetting here. This appeared to be Cal’s modus operandi, to send me explanations in some form to help me understand. Yet the two other coincidences worried me.

I find blood and a footprint on my land then a local woodsman goes missing. I had forgotten to talk to Detective Waters about the blood. I felt certain it was that of a deer, one an eager hunter bagged illegally. Still, I should consider the yellow highlighting of the newspaper article about Brody Reed. Did that indicate a relation to the blood?

The final coincidence had taken on a new twist. My purse was stolen then my house was burglarized. It’s true that the two items I reported as missing in my house were of little real value, other than sentimental. I bought them in South America while on a business trip through my part-time government work many years ago. The villager who made them wisely set his adorable little girl, about six years old, next to his wares to sell them. I couldn’t resist.

However, the burglar took something else that I did not report. I couldn’t. Though I didn’t purchase them myself, the Colonel owned many military-grade guns and other weapons that he collected over the years we were married. Now they were mine. Unfortunately, they were not all legal. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to tell the detective I hadn’t locked the antique trunk in my den that holds approximately forty handguns of all makes, as well as a variety of other tools from which our burglar selected the topmost item, an olive metal box that contains flash-bang devices and a small handheld flamethrower used by military personnel. They were probably all the thief had time to grab; perhaps we interrupted him, or much more would have been taken. Or perhaps he didn’t have time to look at the trunk’s contents and didn’t know there was still much of value there.

Now I would have to move everything and hide it all very well, just to be sure. How foolish of me to become lax at something so important. If the burglar had seen the other valuables, I could expect another visit.