Orphan of Creation Read online

  There wasn’t a lot of substance to occupy a reporter in Gowrie. State and national news, what little the Gazette ran, came off the wire. City Hall and county seat stories were big news when they came, but they were few and far between. The police beat was usually sleepy as well. School board was considered a major beat. There were three full-time reporters to handle it all. Like thousands of reporters on thousands of tiny local papers across the nation, Pete wanted a shot at a real paper, in a big town, working up stories that meant something—the thrill of the chase after quarry worth pursuing.

  So now here he was, staring in fascination at the busy crew of diggers. He pulled his camera from its case and took a few shots. Were they burying something? What could be big enough to require a hole that big? No, not burying, digging something up. Look at how careful they were of the dirt, the people clustered around that frame thing. Livingston, a black woman, two white guys, one young, one old. They were sifting through the dirt, looking for something. What? The old cliché answers from the Hardy Boy books of youth popped into his head. Buried treasure? Prospecting for gold? What could it be?

  Then, suddenly, there was a shout, a flurry of commotion from one end of the huge hole. He could hear a voice shouting out, “Another one! Another one!” The figures around the sifting gizmo dropped their tools and hurried over to the edge of the pit. A youthful figure stood up inside the hole, holding something. Pete quickly switched lenses on his camera, attaching the telephoto for use as a spotting scope. The figure in the pit handed the something up to the older white man. Pete put the camera up to his eye, twisted the enlarged image into focus—and suddenly remembered he was in a graveyard, even as he clicked the shutter.

  The ‘something’ was a skull.

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  There are perhaps a thousand Dew Drop Inns across the nation, the vast majority of them well south of the Mason-Dixon line. One of them, almost inevitably, was in Gowrie. Its interior was seedy; cheap-pine-paneling-nailed-over-cinderblock. The fake wooden ceiling beams made out of painted styrofoam were threatening to collapse down on the patrons, who huddled up around the mismatched tables randomly scattered across the scruffy grey linoleum floor. The lighting was dim and brown, and there was a whiff of something in the air that suggested that dried patches of spilled beer might be found in some of the darker corners. The speaker on the jukebox had something terminally wrong with it. At the moment, it was sobbing out a muffled rendition of Bing Crosby and White Christmas. A string of wizened old Christmas lights was nailed up over the bar, but there were no other concessions to the season of the year. The Dew Drop was a place for a man to get beer and get drunk if he wanted to, alone or in groups, quietly or noisily. There was no nonsense, no pretense about the place.

  The Dew Drop was also the closest watering hole to Gowrie House, which was what drew Peter Ardley to it. He wasn’t a regular by any means, which made the waitress suspicious; he ordered scotch instead of a beer, which stunned her; and he told her to bring and leave the bottle, which astonished her. Beer they served in an endless torrent, but the Dew Drop went through less than a bottle of bar scotch a night—most of it consumed by the bartender.

  Pete poured three stiff fingers into his semi-clean shot glass, lifted it to his lips, and knocked back the whole thing in one wretched gulp. He made a face and looked at the label. Terrible stuff. But maybe it would settle the nerves enough for him to think.

  Murder. That was the thought that came to mind, the idea that popped up into his imagination. Buried bodies, private exhumations. What else could it be? But they were taking the skull out of the ground. It didn’t make sense. He had photos. Maybe it was already time to go to the cops—but why exhume the bones? And why treat them so carefully? He had seen them wrap the skull as carefully as any babe, seen them carry it across the yard and into the house. He had seen lights go on in the basement, then a constant stream of bones carried into that basement. They were doing something to those bones down there. What? And what the hell did the Smithsonian have to do with it—or a hundred-thirty-year-old newspaper?

  He pulled a wadded-up sheaf of papers from his jacket pocket and smoothed the pages out on the table top. It was almost impossible to read in the crepuscular gloom of the Dew Drop, but Peter peered hard at the pages and managed to make out the old-fashioned type. It didn’t help that he had had to set the copier to reduce in order to fit a whole page at a time. He downed another—and smaller—dose of the bar rotgut and puzzled his way through the photocopy of the old paper. Could the disinterment be related to some genealogical question? That was the usual reason for combing through old newspapers. But certainly no event in a slave’s life would have been reported. Were the black Joneses trying to find some family link with the white gentry of the time, a dalliance between master and slave that had resulted in a child? It certainly would not be unusual. White or black, the average American likely bore genes from both races, admit it or not—and that was doubly so in the deep South.

  But there just wasn’t anything there. No earth-shattering event was reported that would be important today, or even anything that would have been of interest a week later. No obituary, no social note, no engagement or birth or death announcement. Nothing but the idle gossip of a sleepy southern town, and the quaint old wordy advertisements of another age.

  The ads . . . His stomach knotted up, and it wasn’t the work of the scotch. Grossington, Smithsonian, anthropology. It fit. He read over the ads again, suddenly stone-cold sober, and sincerely wishing he was not. That slave-sale ad on the front page. He fumbled for it in the near-darkness. A new breed of African, superior in every respect to the breed offered heretofore . . .

  Sweet Jesus. It fit. It fit all the facts. But it was just too wild an idea.

  He had to get a look inside that cellar.

  Chapter Eleven

  Livingston looked out across the wintering sky. Christmas was only a few days away now, and that was a deadline for everything. It was unspoken, obvious, that Aunt Jo would want her house back by then. Besides, everyone was eager to get home themselves. The plan was for the team to be packed out, lock, stock, and bones, by the 24th.

  Grossington had declared the job of excavation complete, and no one was ready to argue. They had: a single one-hundred percent complete skeleton, Ambrose; three skeletons with only one or two bones each missing and presumed decayed away; and the last, Tail-End Charlie, seventy percent complete, most of his leg bones apparently destroyed when the road gullied out and a flash flood washed into his grave decades before. There was nothing left to find. The first of the grads and ‘terns were already heading back home—each of them sworn to secrecy, each a potential leak. That was the pressure now, for digging up bones was just the first step. Livingston looked over his shoulder, back at the house and the cellar full of bones. They were still deciding in there, the place full of tension and frayed tempers. Liv was glad that checking on the ‘terns gave him an excuse to get out into the fresh air. But after so many long, angry nights, they seemed close to some kind of conclusion.

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  Rupert stared intently at the super-massive cheek molars protruding from Ambrose’s maxilla, or upper jaw, as if he were memorizing every feature of the overgrown teeth. Then he turned equally intent concentration on Beulah’s somewhat smaller teeth, on Trio’s, on Mr. Butler’s, and Tail-End Charlie’s. The skulls might properly be referred to as Gowrie Exhumation Project #1-5, but the nicknames had already stuck.

  Barbara and Jeffery watched Rupert every bit as closely as he examined the skulls, weary and hopeful that the long fights and debates were over. If they had finally convinced Rupert, then it was all going to be all right.

  Rupert picked up his precious calipers and rechecked three measurements, compared them against the printout and the glowing display of his portable computer, and grudgingly conceded a minor error. Then he set the spreadsheet through its paces once last time, running a series of statistical tests that flashed and flickered across the screen. Fi
nally, a simple bar graph appeared on the screen, a range of values, a mute, simple statement of the facts, a display of values from every australopithecine specimen ever found. And the Gowrie samples fitted in perfectly right where they should have.

  Rupert sighed. “Okay, Boisei is a valid taxon, and these guys are Australopithecus boisei, not a new type. No question about it. Ambrose looks mighty different, and some of his measures are outside the established range—he was a big, mean dude—but obviously, he has to be conspecific with the other four skeletons found with him; and none of them are outside the extreme range of what we know about boisei. It’s just that they are so well preserved that they don’t look like the bashed-up, weathered, crumbly boisei we know from all previous fossils.”

  Jeffery Grossington reached over the trestle table and patted Rupert on the shoulder. “Thank you, Rupert. I’m glad, very glad that I couldn’t convince you—that it had to be the evidence, the bones on the table, that did that. I was wrong to try and browbeat you.”

  Rupert shut down his computer, stretched his arms to get the kinks out, then folded down the cover of the portable computer. “So let’s get the hell out of here, get home, get that descriptive paper written, and give them something to attack.”

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  Everyone was startled by the speed with which they managed to take things apart and pack them up. As the specimens had come in from the dig, each had been placed in its own special niche in its own special box, so even the laborious job of packing up the precious bones of Ambrose and company went rapidly. Within forty-eight hours of shutting down the excavation, the team was ready to break up.

  Barbara watched Livingston’s old Dodge pull out of the driveway from her tiny bedroom window as she packed. He was taking another batch of ‘terns into Gowrie to meet the Greyhound. The bus would take them up Route 61 to Jackson, to the airport, where they would scatter to the four winds, home for Christmas.

  She folded up the last of her own clothes and sighed. She looked about the tiny room and felt once again that dread of going home, of seeing Michael again, especially at this time of year. She pulled out his letter and started reading it again.

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  Aunt Jo made her way up the stairs to the room Barbara was using, and gave a gentle tap came at the door before she turned the knob and went in. “Just about packed up, child?” she asked. “Got any of your bones stuffed into that suitcase of yours?” Aunt Jo sat down on the bed and smiled at her niece.

  Barbara laughed in spite of herself and shook her head. “No, Dr. Grossington is taking care of all that. Believe it or not, there’s nothing but clothes and books in there.” Barbara sat down next to Aunt Jo and threw her arms around her. “Oh, Aunt Jo, I’ll miss you.”

  “Heavens, child, you’ve been so busy rooting around in my back yard I didn’t even think you’d noticed I was still here.” Aunt Jo wrapped Barbara up in a big bear hug and rocked her back and forth. “I noticed the return address on that letter you got the other day. Another one from Michael?”

  Barbara released her aunt from the hug and waved the letter she still had clasped in her hand. “Yes. I was just rereading it. He says such lovely things in it—”

  “And don’t you go believing a single one of them,” Aunt Jo said firmly. “Michael has already hurt you so much I don’t see how he could do any more damage—but I’d bet he’d be willing to try. Are you thinking of giving him another chance, or some fool thing like that?”

  “Yes,” she answered simply, plainly not trusting herself to speak further. Barbara’s face was buried in her aunt’s shoulder, and her voice was muffled, but still Aunt Jo could hear the sadness in it.

  Aunt Jo went on stroking Barbara’s hair, rocking her back and forth, humming quietly to herself. It was amazing to her. This little slip of a girl was going to go off and turn the entire scientific world upside down, and that didn’t worry her one bit. And a no-account, cruel, petulant man-child could break her completely to pieces. “Now you listen to me, Dr. Barbara Marchando,” she said in her most severe voice. “This is no way for you to be acting. This is schoolgirl stuff. You’re a grown woman. You’re supposed to know what you feel inside. It’s downright wrong to let this man mess you up so bad.”

  “I know, I know, I know,” Barbara said, sniffling a bit as she sat up to reach for a Kleenex. “But I don’t even know how I feel. I tell myself I don’t love him anymore, but his letters come and they’re so beautiful, and then I want to go back to him—even though I know it’d be just like before. Then I look at myself again, and realize I do still love him.”

  “Child, loving him isn’t the solution, it’s the problem. He is what he is, and that’s what he always will be. People don’t change, not on purpose. He might tell you otherwise, might even mean it, but he is always going to manipulate you, twist your words to suit himself, use his own helplessness to make you take care of him.”

  “All of that’s true, Aunt Jo, but it’s not all there is to him. You’ve never seen him at his best, at the hospital, caring for people, curing them, taking charge, doing everything right, saving lives.”

  “None of that matters, and things aren’t always what they seem. Barbara, if you don’t mind my saying so, Michael is not the sort of man who cares about anything or anyone but himself. I’ve seen his kind before. Not in a hospital, not as a doctor, but I’ve seen them. Now, maybe he’s forever doing the best things in the world, curing the sick, whatever. It’s not good acts, but good will, good thoughts, good intentions that are important. It’s not enough to do good things—you have to do them for good reasons.”

  “Aunt Jo, Michael—”

  “Is such a good doctor because it’s good for his ego. He acts the way a good doctor is supposed to so he can prove himself. And then he comes home to you and acts the way all the men from his nasty little slum act, like they are God’s gift to the world and just showing up is reward enough for any woman. I’ve been around to this big city and that, visiting relations and so on, and I know how it works. His momma’s to blame for Michael, if you ask me. I saw the way she treated him when we stayed at their place for your wedding. Waiting on him hand and foot, doing everything for him. She taught him to be the way he is. That’s the way it always happens.”

  Hard, clear anger came into her voice. “And we’ve done it all to ourselves in the cities. We didn’t need any white man’s help to destroy ourselves. A man’s a rare thing in the projects, a man who isn’t in jail or run off or gotten himself killed. So the women pamper the ones they’ve got left, treat ‘em like the most precious little fragile things to be cared for and nurtured. It’s the women that have the jobs, the work, the money—and the men who take it all just as a bribe for staying.”

  Aunt Jo stood up and looked out the window. “You were brought up in the right side of town, and your father was a good father, a good man, a hard-working provider who brought you up right. The men you grew up around—uncles, teachers, your older cousins—they were brought up right. That’s all you ever really saw, so you didn’t really expect people to be any other way. That’s the kind of man you keep expecting Michael to be—but he never, ever can be that, not the way he was brought up!

  “A few years ago, after I retired from teaching, I decided to spend my summers working with the inner city kids up in Chicago. My church and some others ran some programs for them. I went up there—I saw what it was like. There aren’t any families left anymore. And I don’t care how far out of those slums you get, it scars you for good. Michael is a product of how he grew up, just as much as you are.

  “From Michael’s point of view, treating you wrong, and seeing you take it—that’s what proves to him he’s a real man! He’s not a good doctor to be good—he cures the sick to prove how clever he is. That’s why he does everything he does.”

  “What’s why he does everything?” Barbara asked. She wanted desperately to defend Michael, in spite of it all, even knowing that if she defended him, it meant he had won.

&
nbsp; “Haven’t you been listening at all, girl? I’ll tell you one more time, as clear and as clean as I can: You remember this one thing about Michael, and maybe you’ll be all right. Everything he does, everything he says, he does for the sake of his pride. Not self-respect, but pride. And that’s the dangerous thing about it, because there’s nothing stronger than self-respect, and nothing as fragile as pride.”

  Aunt Jo looked down at her niece and shook her head. It didn’t do any good to tell her these things. The only hope Barbara had was that she might finally learn them for herself.

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  Pete Ardley happened to look up from his desk and through the plate-glass of the Gazette’s storefront just as Livingston’s old Dodge pulled up in front of the Greyhound station across the street. He watched as suitcases, duffel bags, and sleeping bags sprouted from the trunk. So they were pulling out. Dammit.

  Ardley opened his file drawer and pulled out a slender manila folder. He opened it and flipped through the photos. The shots of the skull being taken from the ground. The little knot of figures examining the find.

  He flipped through the file and found the second series of shots, taken later that night through the basement windows of Gowrie House. That had been a spooky little assignment, made no less so by the not-so-steadying effects of Dew Drop Inn bar scotch. On the other hand, it seemed unlikely that he could have worked up the nerve stone-cold sober. He had made his way back around through the slaves’ burial ground and crawled the hundred or so yards from there to the house to avoid being seen, ruining his pants, muddying his coat, and earning a full set of scratches and bumps as he ground his knees into unseen rocks, fell into holes that shouldn’t have been there, and found a whole forest of brambles to scrabble through.