Reading the Bones Read online

  READING the BONES

  A Peggy Henderson Adventure

  READING the BONES

  A Peggy Henderson Adventure

  Gina McMurchy-Barber

  Copyright © Gina McMurchy-Barber, 2008

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  Editor: Michael Carroll

  Design: Erin Mallory

  Printer: Webcom

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  McMurchy-Barber, Gina

  Reading the bones / Gina McMurchy-Barber.

  ISBN 978-1-55002-732-7

  1. Coast Salish Indians--Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  PS8625.M86R42 2008 jC813’.6 C2007-905732-2

  2 3 4 5 12 11 10 09 08

  We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  Printed and bound in Canada.

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  For Dave, who always urged me to follow my dreams. And for Aunt Betty, my favourite teacher.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank Victoria Bartlett, a true friend and the Queen of Commas; the Semiahmoo Band for permitting me to learn from their ancestors when I was an archaeology student at Simon Fraser University; Kit Pearson and Mike Mason for their wisdom and encouragement; and my editor, Michael Carroll, for his vision and support.

  PROLOGUE

  Talusip wipes tears from her face. Her soft skin is creased and ruddy as red cedar bark. Several of the village men lower the body of her husband, Shuksi’em, onto a bed of crushed mussel and clam shells. Now he will lie among his old friends and the young who did not survive.

  “Shuksi’em suffered greatly near the end of his life when the sun left the village for many days,” whimpers his wife to those near enough to hear. “He never complained, but I know his bones screamed with pain when the rains fell and winds blew. And his back — bent like tall grass heavy with seed — gave him so much trouble he no longer took his daily walks down to the shore to watch the men bring in the salmon. With the days of winter almost upon us, he dreaded what his life would become.”

  Now that Shuksi’em is dead, though, his crooked old spine makes it easier for the men to place him on his side like a sleeping baby. Talusip puts Shuksi’em’s tools beside his curled body. She knows he will need them in the next world. Then she tucks a large piece of fresh smoked salmon near his head and hopes it is enough to tide him over.

  The villagers huddle together, backs against a light rain. Some of the women howl with sorrow into the wind. Others whisper in agreement how much the old man will be missed.

  “We thank the spirit of Shuksi’em for leaving us many fine storage boxes made from sturdy cedar, each finished with our family’s crest — the Bear,” says the clan elder. “And for our giant feast dishes carved from the yew tree. And when the men fish at the river’s mouth with his prized bone harpoon points they will send thanks to his spirit.”

  The young ones remember the times they sat on their mothers’ knees listening to the stories Shuksi’em told them. Sometimes his tales were of wisdom or courage. Others, like the one about Quamichan, the flying wild woman who eats children, frightened them so much that they never roam too far from the village.

  Talusip recalls the day before death took Shuksi’em how he struggled to finish a wooden ceremonial bowl embraced by the arms and legs of a great frog. It is a gift for her granddaughter’s wedding. Talusip’s son, Q’am, wants to keep it, but she is afraid of the thing. She has decided to trade the bowl with the Chinook the next time they come to the village.

  Taking the large butter clam filled with a paste made of red ochre and fish oil, Talusip begins to spread the mixture over her husband’s lifeless body. Her hand trembles and her heart stings. Now she is satisfied that all has been done to prepare her mate for his journey. She steps away and watches the men cover Shuksi’em with a blanket of broken shells, sand, and seaweed in the way her people have done since the Great Spirit created them. Here his body will stay, a short distance from his village, near the shores where he netted fish, close to the forest where he once hunted. Here he will stay forever.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, life throws you a curveball. That’s what my mom, Elizabeth Henderson, said when my dad died seven years ago. And she said it again when she lost her job last winter after Arrow Communications, an advertising firm, went out of business. When she couldn’t find anything close to home, she decided to leave British Columbia and go to Toronto to look for work. Then zing! That’s when life threw me a curveball and I found out I would have to live with Aunt Margaret and Uncle Stuart until Mom found a job and sent for me. But since then I’ve learned that sometimes life’s curveballs actually work out to be more like — well, let’s just say, interesting opportunities. That’s what happened one day when I helped Uncle Stuart in the garden.

  I had stopped weeding to come and admire the pond hole he was digging when I noticed what looked like a large round stone emerging from the dark, speckled earth. It was smooth and yellowed with age. I bent down and brushed the dirt off with my hand. Then I dug around the sides with my fingers to make it easier to pull out. But as I was about to pry the object loose, my hand flashed my brain an image and I hesitated.

  “Hey, Uncle Stu, I think this thing might be a skull.” It almost felt silly to say, especially after Uncle Stuart grinned and started stomping around the yard, wailing like some lame ghost. But when he finally stooped closer to peer at the thing in the dirt, I watched the smirk melt from his face.

  “Peggy, don’t touch it. Get out of there!”

  Was he just making more fun of me?

  “Go get your aunt right now!”

  Okay, maybe not. But now my gaze was mesmerized by the shape in the ground.

  “Now, Peggy, now!”

  Aunt Margaret and I were back in minutes, standing next to my uncle.

  “What do you think it is, Margaret?”

  She bent down and examined the object more closely. “My goodness! Is it human?”

  Uncle Stuart nervously stroked back his hair. “That’s what it looks like to me.”

  Aunt Margaret’s complexion seemed as pasty as uncooked dough. “We’d better call the police, Stuart.”

  Twenty minutes later the place was swarming with police cars — well, okay, two police cars. But to the dozen or so people gathered across the street from the house, it must have looked like a major crime scen
e. When Uncle Stuart opened the front door, one of the four men introduced himself.

  “Hello, I’m Officer Pratt. I’m a forensics specialist. This is our coroner, Dr. Forsythe. Are you the owner of the house?”

  Uncle Stuart nodded anxiously. “Yes ... yes, I’m Stuart Randall. I’m the one who called.”

  “I understand you’ve uncovered what appear to be human remains in your backyard. Is that correct?”

  “That’s correct, Officer,” Uncle Stuart croaked as he tried to clear his throat. “Come through here and I’ll show you where it is.” Officer Pratt and the other men followed Uncle Stuart through the house to the backyard. I nipped through the living room and out the French doors just in time to see my uncle point to the spot where the skull lay embedded in the earth.

  Dr. Forsythe and Officer Pratt knelt and examined the skull without touching it. Then Dr. Forsythe took out two small tools. The first was a tiny paint brush, kind of like the one I had used earlier that morning when I painted a picture of my aunt’s cat, Duff. The second was a sharp metal tool, like the pointy hook a dentist uses for cleaning teeth. He began gently brushing away the dirt with the paint brush. Just when I thought the waiting couldn’t get any worse, he switched to the dental pick and started to remove tiny grains of dirt from the crevices. Finally, he nodded at Officer Pratt and stood.

  “It’s just what we thought it would be,” Dr. Forsythe said, speaking casually while Aunt Margaret and Uncle Stuart hung back like crime victims. “What you have here is not a recently deceased individual.”

  “Oh, right, so now we’re supposed to be relieved?” Uncle Stuart said. “Good news, honey. It isn’t anyone we know!”

  Dr. Forsythe and Officer Pratt smiled. “I take it you haven’t lived in Crescent Beach long,” Dr. Forsythe said. “You see, this entire peninsula was once a prehistoric Coast Salish village. By the looks of this skull, I’d say you have the remains of someone who lived and died on this land more than fifteen hundred years ago.”

  “Or even as long as five thousand years ago,” Officer Pratt added. “Unfortunately, accidental disturbances to ancient burials like this one have happened often over the past century in Crescent Beach.”

  Aunt Margaret’s face was still ashen, and now Uncle Stuart’s right eye was twitching. While they looked miserable, I felt as if I’d just won a lottery. Finding a dead guy in the backyard — well, that just had to mean something cool was about to happen. About time, too. I was starting to feel like Little Orphan Annie stuck in the middle of nowhere.

  “You know, everyone has a few skeletons in their closet, but we’re the only ones that have them in the backyard, too!” I quipped.

  Officer Pratt chuckled, but Aunt Margaret wasn’t amused. “Peggy, that’s not an appropriate remark to make at a time like this.”

  Actually, I thought it was totally appropriate. Lots of people use humour to release tension at stressful moments.

  “Oh, I just had a dreadful thought, Officer,” Aunt Margaret said. “Do you think there are more dead ... ah, bones or skeletons around here?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s possible there are more prehistoric human or cultural remains in this area. But I hope you’re not planning on digging them up.”

  “Certainly not, Officer Pratt.” My aunt looked shocked. “But tell me, just what are we supposed to do now?” Her initial alarm had now turned to irritation.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Randall,” Officer Pratt said. “Now that Dr. Forsythe and I have determined that this matter isn’t a concern for contemporary forensics, we’ll contact the Archaeology Branch in Victoria. They’ll be glad to hear we have your assurance there will be no further disturbance to the remains until they can send someone to deal with all this. I’m sure the Archaeology Branch will also want to contact the nearest First Nations band.”

  “Did you say First Nations band? Why do the Indians need to get involved?” Whenever Aunt Margaret’s voice got edgy like that, I made sure to stay out of her way.

  “It’s out of respect, ma’am,” Officer Pratt said. “Any accidental discovery of human remains of aboriginal ancestry needs to be reported to the local First Nations people.”

  Uncle Stuart’s face had turned red, and as he spoke his voice was a little jittery. “Sounds like we’re getting into a lot of red tape. What happens next?”

  “Well, then an archaeologist will come and determine what to do next,” Officer Pratt said. “I guess in the future you might want to think twice before digging up your backyard.” He grinned, but Aunt Margaret and Uncle Stuart didn’t find him funny.

  “So what were you making, anyway?” Dr. Forsythe asked.

  “A pond,” I blurted. Then I glanced at my aunt and uncle, whose faces were drawn and pale. “Well, look on the bright side. At least we weren’t putting in a swimming pool!”

  CHAPTER 2

  The next morning I woke to the sound of voices coming from outside. When I glanced out the window, I saw a police car out front, along with a battered red pickup truck. A new cluster of people hovered on the opposite side of the street. I ran into my aunt and uncle’s room, which overlooked the backyard. Through the window I saw Officer Pratt talking to someone dressed in a khaki safari shirt and pants, and a fishing hat covered in collector’s pins.

  The night before, Uncle Stuart had gotten a call from someone saying an archaeologist would be coming to the house in the morning. I didn’t know much about what archaeologists did, except that they dug up old things. Once, I watched a movie with my mom called Raiders of the Lost Ark. She said it was a classic. The main character, an archaeologist named Indiana Jones, was always in and out of life-threatening adventures as he travelled around the world in search of ancient stuff for museums. But the chubby gnome standing in the backyard hardly looked like a daring treasure hunter to me.

  I ran back to my room, threw on my favourite ketchup-stained Vancouver Canucks shirt and some shorts off the floor, then dashed downstairs. Just as I got to the back door, Aunt Margaret came in. “Oh, there you are. I was wondering how long it would take you to get down here.”

  I grinned as I brushed past her.

  “Wait a minute! You’re not going out looking like that!”

  Too late — I was already leaping down the back steps three at time.

  “Ah, here she is, my niece, Peggy,” Uncle Stuart announced as I arrived at his side. “She was the first to recognize it was a skull. Peggy, you remember Officer Pratt from yesterday?”

  I smiled at the officer.

  “And this is Dr. McKay,” my uncle added. “She’s an archaeologist.”

  The stout figure bent over our pond hole straightened to greet me. “Please, just call me Eddy, short for Edwina. All my friends do.”

  My eyebrows were arched so high my forehead must have looked like corrugated cardboard.

  “Bet you were expecting Indiana Jones in a fedora cracking a long whip!”

  The adults beside me chuckled.

  “No, not really. I just wasn’t expecting you’d be an old lady.” I heard my aunt gasp from behind. Then Officer Pratt laughed again.

  “Well, I can understand what you mean,” Eddy said. “Most blue hairs I know prefer digging around in their gardens instead of old burials.” Then she smiled, and her warm eyes were like deep pools filled with unspoken words. She rested her hand lightly on my shoulder. “You seem to be a keen observer, Peggy. When I come back tomorrow, maybe you could help me excavate these remains.”

  “Sure,” I blurted. Then I felt a sting of guilt about having called her an old lady. “I’d like to help. I mean, really, just tell me what to do and I’ll do it!”

  My aunt’s voice cut through my excitement like a knife. “Well, now, just wait a minute. I’m not sure that’s the kind of thing a child should be doing. Peggy’s only twelve years old, Dr. McKay.”

  Aunt Margaret was my mother’s older sister. I used to think she was cool, but that was before I came to live with her. She didn’t have children of her ow
n, and I think she had unrealistic expectations about what kids were really like. She was always asking in a critical tone, “Is that what your mother lets you do?” Or said stuff like, “I can’t believe your mom lets you get away with that!” She didn’t like my hockey jerseys, she was always giving me “logical consequences,” and what was it with her and tidy bedrooms? And just because digging around in the dirt wasn’t her kind of thing, it didn’t mean she should stop me from having fun. Besides, they were just old bones; it wasn’t like a real person.

  “Maybe we should call Peggy’s mom and see what she thinks,” Uncle Stuart said. He flashed me a secret wink before Aunt Margaret shot him a piercing glare.

  We all followed Eddy and Officer Pratt out front where the neighbours were still gawking from across the road. Aunt Margaret mumbled something to Uncle Stuart, but I only caught the last word — embarrassing.

  “Okay, folks, there’s nothing to be worried about,” Officer Pratt said. “The Randalls have accidentally uncovered a prehistoric burial in their backyard and we’ve just finished securing the area. You should all go on home now.”

  After the officer’s announcement, most people drifted away. By the expressions on their faces, it wasn’t the kind of exciting news they were hoping to hear. Then I noticed this old guy leaning on the police car.

  “Hey, Pratt, got any idea what phase it’s from?” The man’s voice was as gruff and gnarly as an old tree.

  “Can’t tell much yet, Walter,” the officer replied. “We won’t know anything until Dr. McKay finishes excavating.”

  The man turned to Eddy and growled, “McKay.”

  Eddy nodded back but didn’t smile. “Mr. Grimbal.”

  Officer Pratt turned to Aunt Margaret and Uncle Stuart. “I’m surprised your new neighbour didn’t tell you that Crescent Beach was a prehistoric village and burial ground.”

  “It’s because we haven’t met yet,” Aunt Margaret said, holding out her hand. “I’m Margaret Randall and this is my husband, Stuart, and our niece, Peggy. We intended to get out and meet our neighbours, just not like this.”