Them Bones Read online

  One of them was covered with armor – breastplate, shinguards, epaulets. He wore a copper helmet with a long plume, and he had a shield. A kahuna of some kind. He came right at me. He took the point of my javelin with his shield and twisted it away. His club came down and knocked the spear from my hands.

  Larry’s club came across and caved in the front of his helmet. His face looked like something from a Warner Bros. cartoon covered in ketchup.

  Somebody got behind Larry and had his hands on his chin. I hit the hands, then Larry’s shoulder, then the hands, then farther up with my club. Whoever it was let go and ran off.

  A spear butt got me in the head. Blue-green stars covered the tunnel in front of me. I swung. The tunnel went away. Larry was standing on a Huasteca’s chest, beating his head as hard as he could.

  ‘Sonofabitch!’ said Larry with each blow. ‘Sonofabitch!’ We were in a lull. Waves of men were crashing and roaring into each other with tin-can sounds. A horn blew close behind me. I jumped, looked around for my spear, found it.

  Larry was through with the guy. He and I stood, heaving and panting, trying to see what was going on in the heat and dust.

  Then the second wave of Huastecas ran over us.

  *

  I don’t know how much later it was when we were back on our bluff. Dust still hung over the flood plain. It was hot. I was so dry my tongue hurt. I could taste blood. I didn’t know whether it was mine or someone else’s.

  Another rain of arrows came out of the dust. ‘Heads up!’ yelled Moe. They sailed into our position, pinning a few guys to the ground.

  ‘Sun damn them all to hell!’ said Sun Man. He had been wounded in the side and the arm during the battle. Two of our people were holding him up.

  Took was watching across the plain. The dust was beginning to settle. We could see weapons, clothing, drums littering the ground. There were no bodies. We had taken our wounded and dead, and they had taken theirs. They had also taken about fifty prisoners.

  We hadn’t taken any.

  I was getting my breath back. I was covered with grit and dust mixed with sweat, blood, and grease. There were cuts and bruises all over me. There was a wet pain low down on my back. My javelin was a third of a meter shorter than it used to be. My club was gone. My knife was in my hand, dark red.

  There were two human heads at my feet.

  I didn’t remember where they had come from. I didn’t remember anything but the endless fighting and the thirst worse than any I had ever had.

  The Buzzard Cult people were starting one of their chants.

  ‘Apocalypse stuff,’ said Took.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘The Huastecas have quit playing by the rules.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, Yaz. Things are changing. Maybe the Buzzard Cult people are right.’

  ‘You better believe we are,’ said Hamboon Bokulla, the Dreaming Killer, as his people finished their song. ‘And you better get with it, or be left behind,’ he said to Took.

  Tired, bruised, beaten, we picked up our heads all along the line and started home.

  Over on the other bluff, the Huastecas were already gone.

  *

  Next day, three kilometers or so away from the village, I realized what I had done.

  We were passing a small creek. Our wounded were leaning on other warriors. Almost everybody was gimped up in some way. I walked to the creek and stood on its bank.

  One after the other, I threw the heads as far as I could downstream. The last one’s eyes stayed on me in its flight toward the water as if it were a ballerina and I were its turning point. Guilty, guilty, the air whistling past the head said. It hit with a splash a few meters behind the first and sank immediately.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Took, standing behind me.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘They were pretty good heads,’ he said, and rejoined the struggling file of the Woodpecker people.

  THE BOX VIII

  DA FORM 11521Z 11 Nov 2002

  Comp: 147TOE: 148

  Pres for duty

  142

  Killed in action

  3

  Killed in line of duty

  1

  Missing in line of duty

  for: S. Spaulding

  1

  Col, Inf.

  Total 147Commanding

  by: Barnes, Bonnie

  Cpt, ADC

  Adjutant

  DA FORM 11402 Z 2 Dec 2002

  Comp: 147TOE: 148

  Present for duty

  131

  KIA

  7

  KLD

  2

  MIA

  6

  MLD

  For: S. Spaulding

  1

  Col, Inf.

  Total 147Commanding

  by: Barnes, Bonnie

  Cpt, ADC

  Adjutant

  DA FORM 11702 Z 24 Dec 2002

  Comp: 147TOE: 148

  Pres for duty

  111

  KIA

  13

  KLD

  2

  MIA

  11

  MLD

  For: S. Spaulding

  1

  Wounded, hosp.Col, Inf.

  9Commanding

  Total 147by: Barnes, Bonnie

  Cpt, ADC,

  Adjutant

  Smith’s Diary

  *

  December 24 (Christmas Eve)

  Today we sent out an eleven-man patrol to try to reach the location of Baton Rouge and go far south from there, the only direction we haven’t tried.

  I don’t know what they’re supposed to find. Help. Frenchmen. Some of de Soto’s conquistadors. Ponce de Leon? Maybe they can convince some other Indians to help us, or get a treaty with the ones we are warring with.

  They continue to snipe at us. Two more wounded today, in spite of the bunkers. I never knew arrows could carry so far – they send them up out of the woods; you can’t see where they come from. By the time you see the arrow, it’s on the way down. You duck for cover, trampling over everybody else. One of the wounded today was already down flat, behind the bunker wall, against the sandbags, and the arrow came down straight and stuck him to the ground like a pin through a beetle. Fortunately, it only got him through the meaty part of the thigh.

  Private Dorothy Jones wasn’t so lucky – she got one straight in the ribs, this one fired from the nearest clump of brush about a hundred meters away.

  We returned fire in both cases. In the first, we laced the area where the arrow came from with small arms and LMG fire. We won’t know what happened there till we send out the usual patrol.

  We do know what happened with the second. As soon as Jones was hit, two of the bunkers cranked up. They fired about 200 rounds each into the bushes the arrow was shot from, tearing them flat, destroying small trees and the ground.

  When they stopped, an Indian stood up, dropped his breechcloth and mooned us, then jumped back flat to the ground.

  Major Putnam ordered the heavy machine guns to cease fire after another minute. The target area was unrecognizable. There was nothing more than a few centimeters high in the beaten zone. It was like a photograph retouched by a clumsy person, like a picture of the woods with a blank swath taken out.

  The Indian jumped up out of the middle of it and ran into the woods.

  Putnam wouldn’t let anybody fire.

  Spaulding, who fought on Cyprus, says there could be two Indians a day sniping at us, or a hundred, and we’ll never know.

  The eleven-man patrol left at dawn after we laid down some grenades in the direction they’d travel. It must have been okay: we didn’t hear any shooting.

  They reported in okay three hours later over the radio. They were twenty klicks south and had seen nobody. They would report every two hours. Not that we could help if they needed it. They had all volunteered.

  Meanwhile, we’re all digging
in further. Arrows go through tents. We can’t cut wood. So we’re digging in, like moles, making ourselves at home.

  There are important things we should be doing, somewhere, sometime. Here we’re useless. We should be changing the world, not hiding from people with bows and arrows and spears.

  We didn’t mean to kill them. It wasn’t our fault. We took precautions against bringing any diseases back with us.

  The medic says it’s probably something we only notice as a sniffle or a sore throat. To them, it’s death in two days flat.

  We tried to help, to let them know we’re sorry. They just don’t understand.

  Meanwhile, while we dig, we have music. I find my body moving to the rocking rhythm of Roger Whitaker. We’ve been here too long.

  Leake IX

  ‘Antiquity held too light thoughts from Objects of mortality, while some drew provocatives of mirth from Anatomies, and jugglers shewed tricks with Skeletons.’

  –Browne, Urn Burial

  There was a new sound on the River.

  Part metallic clang, part wooden knock, it came from the bend of the River.

  Guys with conch shells on the lookout mounds began to blow them. Everyone took off for the canoe landing.

  Took was in the hut. Sunflower came around from the garden patch. She brushed dirt from her hands.

  Sun Man and a delegation stopped outside Took’s hut.

  ‘The ones on the River are the ones you want to see,’ Took said to me.

  He stood, pulled on a bright feather mantle, then picked up the rolled bag of pipes he had been working on all winter.

  I went out with him, stood behind some of the minor nobles, then we all walked through the village, out the river gate and down toward the water.

  Half the village was standing and waiting there already. A plume of smoke rose up through the trees downriver. I felt we were in the old Currier and Ives print, ‘Waiting on the Levee.’

  It appeared around the bend.

  It had been so long since I’d seen any machinery I’d almost forgotten what it was like. The prow appeared, broad, flat and low. Then the front of the second deck, then the third. All painted bright red with yellow stripes like a hot dog covered with mustard. There were tall fair figures on the deck.

  They had horns.

  There was the long blast of a whistle, then the roar of a foghorn. The people onshore jumped and held their ears. The ship turned in toward the canoe landing, the figure on the prow casting a plumbline again and again before him.

  The craft had two paddlewheels amidships. Above the upper deck flew a pennon with a red scimitar on a white field.

  The figures in the pilothouse wore bright red robes and turbans.

  There was another blast on the horn and a long release of steam from somewhere amidships. The paddles stopped, reversed, backed water. The ship, as big as the temple mound, slid quietly into the landing, as stately as a hotel.

  The front of the ship, a drawbridge type ramp, arced over slowly and jerked down to the ground of the bank.

  There was another piercing whistle and the people of the village began to cheer.

  A short man in a robe and turban, followed by others dressed in robes or leather pants and jerkins, carrying arquebuses and blunderbusses, stepped to the top of the ramp.

  ‘Took, my old friend,’ he said in Greek. ‘Tell Sun Man and your people hello and that we come to trade, even up, sky is the limit, for whatever and how much?’

  Took turned to the people, nodded to Sun Man, made a short speech.

  The people yelled wildly, jumped around, began laying their wares, skins, weapons, art and food out onto their blankets on the ground.

  The men came down the planks, all smiles, holding their hands out to hug Took, and bow to Sun Man. The deckhands, some in loose pants and fezzes, others in their horned and beaked helmets, began unloading the trade goods of the ship into the open area above the landing.

  ‘This,’ said Took, ‘is Aroun el Hama, king of merchants.’

  ‘And this,’ he continued, ‘is Madison Yazoo Leake.’

  ‘Hello,’ I said in Greek.

  He looked at me. He was small, with hard dark eyes, a coal-black beard and salt and pepper mustache. A small scar went from his left eyebrow to his missing left earlobe.

  ‘By Ibram,’ he said, ‘are you a southerner gone wild on us?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘much farther away than that, I fear.’

  ‘Your accent,’ said el Hama. ‘You learned the language nowhere I know.’

  ‘I’m sure you two will want to talk tonight,’ said Took. ‘Aroun, they’re going to kill us all if we don’t get some trading done.’ People were yelling and pointing to their goods all up and down the landing.

  ‘Yaz,’ said Took. ‘Give us a hand, will you?’ He pointed over to where one of the guys with a horned helmet was arguing in one language with a village woman arguing in another.

  I went over to help. It took a while, what with my trouble with the moundbuilder language, and the accent of the northerner, a big red-headed dude, to find that they had argued the price both up and down and had passed the price they had both agreed to long before.

  It was going to be a long hot day.

  THE BOX IX

  DA FORM 11614 Z 01 Jan 2003

  Comp: 147TOE: 148

  Pres for duty

  115

  KIA

  13

  KLD

  3

  MIA

  11For: S. Spaulding

  MLDCol, Inf.

  1Commanding

  Wounded, Hospby: Atwater, Willey

  42Lt, Arm.

  Total: 147act. Adj.

  Bessie VII

  The day was overcast, humid and hot, and it was just dawn.

  Bessie sketched the depressions around the mounds. They were there on the flood terrace, one west, one north, one eastnortheast. She drew in the bluff line. The mounds occupied the center. There were shallower areas around them. She flipped over the pages of her field book. Perhaps this had been a village site? But they’d found no post molds yet, no typical village structures. Maybe it had been a temporary habitation site, used only while the mounds were being raised.

  Perch and the others arrived with the muddy sun. This time Perch was in work clothes, his tiny frame lost inside them.

  They waited for him to get out of his car. Over at the trucks, the photographer and artists were getting out their equipment. Down below, the work crews were taking off the tarps from the mounds.

  ‘Governor’s still not back,’ said Perch. ‘Won’t be for two, three days. There seems to be a small mutiny in his party machine. Also’ – he looked down at the bayou – ‘we’re in for rain, lots of it. They’ve closed the gates downstream and opened the ones above. It’s raining like hell in Shreveport, and all up the Mississippi. They think this one might be as bad as the spring flood two years ago. I figure we got five, maybe six days.’

  ‘What about a coffer dam?’ asked Kincaid.

  ‘We can use part of the crews to work on it. I’ve sent to the University for maintenance crews with some tractors. I tried to get a hold of the highway department, but nobody’s doing anything until the governor gets back and they see who’s on top.’

  ‘That’s probably why he left,’ said Jameson. ‘Giving ’em enough rope.’

  ‘That’s why nobody’s answering their phones,’ said Perch.

  ‘Where do we put the dam?’ asked Kincaid. He opened the survey map. ‘Along the line of the old terrace?’

  ‘That’s way too big,’ said Jameson. ‘We’re going to have to decide whether we save Mound One or not. I say no.’

  ‘Bessie?’ asked Perch.

  She looked at the far mound, totally typical, left unopened and alone with its grid markers. ‘We can’t take a chance on losing Two A and Two B,’ she said. ‘Oh, hell, what if it’s just as full of stuff as this one?’

  ‘Kincaid?’

  ‘Oh, hell with it. Put the d
am here, just below Two A. Bring it back around to the bluff on each side, maybe dig drainage over here, if we can.’

  Bessie looked at the grid map.

  ‘Dr. Perch, can we bring it out another ten feet, over here?’ She pointed past the eastnortheast shallow depression. ‘If we’ve got time, I want to dig here.’ She stabbed the map with her finger.

  ‘We won’t have time,’ said Jameson.

  She told them about Basket and the flood legend.

  They all looked at the shallow spots. ‘They could be nothing but burrow pits,’ Perch said. ‘That what you want to save?’

  She had a moment of uncertainty. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Call up the crews,’ said Perch. ‘The three of you get down there, go straight in and down on the mound. Find out what happened here. I haven’t been out in the woods for a long time, but I still know how to make dams.’ They had the dam outlined and shovels started to fly.

  In the platform of Mound Two B, they found the first of the human skeletons by midmorning.

  It lay, feet outward, directly below the test trench. William found the feet, and called Kincaid over. Slowly they removed dirt from the bones, to the pelvis, the ribcage, the shoulders.

  There was no skull. The neck ended abruptly.

  Kincaid dug to the right and left.

  ‘Bessie,’ he said, ‘get the shellac and come in behind me and coat the skeleton. We’ll leave it in situ. It’s brittle. There wasn’t any covering; this skeleton was just lain on the original ground line and the mound raised over it.’

  Bessie dolloped thick globs of shellac onto the paper-soft bones, then slowly spread it with a fine brush.

  ‘Look at this,’ said Kincaid.

  The left arm of another skeleton lay exposed to the right of the first.

  ‘Right about there, I’d say,’ said Bessie, pointing to the left of the first skeleton she worked on, ‘and up a little.’

  ‘Just what I was thinking,’ said Kincaid. He began to dig where she had pointed. Soon he had the right arm bones of another skeleton exposed to view.

  ‘Jameson,’ he called softly.

  Jameson came around from his work on the other side of the mound’s test trench. He had his hat off, but his eyes were bright like a squirrel’s. He smiled.