Effigy Head Part 1

THE EFFIGY HEAD – a novel in two parts

1.

            The plow’s last furrow bisected the dead man.  His feet and hips had been scattered by earlier cuts in the loam.

            Ross had been walking the plow, leaning the blade into the earth.  Walter held the mule’s lead and was guiding from the plow’s right side.  Sweat was in Ross’ eyes and so he hadn’t seen the bones.  It was Walter who saw the dead man’s dirty brow-bone and the gape of his jaw. 

            They stopped the plow a few steps beyond the skeleton.  Walt tinkered with the clevis and the mule’s harness.   It wasn’t too far to an old hickory standing at the fence-line with Doc Freiheit’s place.  Walt lead the mule to the shade and told Ross to see if he could find the Doc.  He sat down next to where the mule was dipping her head in the tall grass and the dogweed.  The sun was molten yellow and seemed just overhead, at the height where a man might reach for a light-bulb or the string from a light bulb.  The heat had settled the wind and the insects also and even the horseflies that liked to etch marks in the flanks of the old jenny mule were hiding in the green drifts of weed. 

            Walt stretched his legs and rested his eyes a bit.  He took off his old panama hat and untied the bandana over his ears.  He set the bandana on the fence post to dry and put the hat back on so his head wouldn’t burn. 

            Out across the flat delta land, in a fan of sun-shot blue mirage, a pick-up was coming down the section road kicking up a tail of brown powder.  Beyond, a levee smooth as a baby’s behind confined the river and the land beyond where an old bluff crouched shaggy with oak and spikes of pine.

            It wasn’t too long before Doc Freiheit come up along the fence-line striding through his cotton as if it were the shallows of great, green, knee-deep lagoon.  Ross was ahead of him and behind one of Doc’s planters was following with a shovel and a burlap sack flapping around his waist.  This was Willy.  Willy had a straw hat and gum boots and he had a trowel tucked in his waist-band like some sort of Moorish dagger.

            Doc looked right and left like a man about to cross a busy intersection.  Then, he lifted one leg at a time over the fence-line.  Walt nodded at Doc and the vet tapped the brim of his hat.

            “Found one of them old Hebrews you likes so much,” Walt said.

            “Ross told me,” Doc said.

            Ross crossed the stubble of the unplowed field and knelt by the dead man’s skull.

            “Right here,” he said.

            Willy and Doc followed him.  Willy squatted down in the plowed furrows and lifted a few yellow bits of bone, thumb-sized and dangling muddy root tendrils. 

            “You cut him up pretty bad down below his ribs,” Willy said.

            “The top half’s good,” Doc said.  “But the femur’s been all busted up.  So he don’t prove nothing.”

            Ross picked up a orangish shard of pottery.

            “There’s lots of broken pot,” Ross said.

            “That’s typical in these burials,” Doc said.  “Grave-goods.  Just a lot of old crockery.”

            “Lots of pieces,” Ross said.  He shook his head.

            “Willy, you gather up the bones – at least, the skeleton parts that the plow didn’t damage,” Doc said.

            Willy spread out his burlap bag and with his trowel began to spoon rib bones up onto the fabric. 

            Ross handed a few pieces of pottery shard to Doc.  Doc held the broken ceramic up to his face for a moment.

            “Nothin’ interesting,” he said. “You don’t need to bother with the pot shards.”  He spilled the fragments back into the furrow. 

            “Will you look at this?” Ross said.  He pointed with his trowel.  Something iridescent, like a spill of oil on a puddle or like a bottle-fly’s wings glistened in the cut earth.  Yellow-white stalks were scattered through the gleam in the soil.

            “It’s a chieftain’s shawl,” Doc said.  “I’ve seen it before.  They wove it from feathers, the brightest feathers they could find.  You see, the old feller’s got it under his shoulder blades.”

            “Pretty,” Ross said.  “I mean pretty as can be.”

            “Better look at it now,” Doc said.  “I’ve unearthed these things before and the air, the sun and the air – it just turns ‘em to dust while you’re watching.”

            Walt had come over to look at the feather shawl.  He saw a flicker of color in the soil, green and blue, like eyes in the earth momentarily looking up at you.  Then, the color faded and the rainbow glisten in the mud sank back into the soil.  Nothing remained except the comb of quills, lying in the black muck. 

            “There ain’t nothin’ you can do,” Doc Freiheit said.  “You see how it shined for a moment and, then, turned to dust.”

            “Turned to dust,” Willy said.

            “Ashes to ashes,” Walt replied. 

            Willy lifted a section of backbone onto the burlap.  It was like an ox’s tail after it’s been boiled to make soup. 

            “So, I’s behind, gotta get a acre and a half under the plow today,” Walt drawled.  “Need to get old Mag back in harness.”

            He pointed to the mule cropping the flowering dogweed at the fence-line.

            “I’ll make it worth your time,” Doc Freiheit said.

            “It’s like a treasure,” Walt said. 

            Ross was picking up more pieces of pot and shoving them in the pocket of his overalls. 

            “Just an old Hebrew that no one got’s any interest in but me,” Doc Freiheit said.

            Before becoming a veterinarian, Doc had been a famous college football player for the Razorbacks.  That was back before the Great War.   Doc’s face was red as a boiled crawfish and a smell of old bourbon came out of the creases in his neck and folds in his cream-colored suit.  Butting his head into other young men had permanently flattened his face and he had the nose of a boxer or a fullback, just a crushed wedge of flesh separating his small, pinkish eyes.  A great mane of silver hair encircled his head – it was as if the moon were always rising just over his scalp. 

            “But we’s on John’s land.  I mean there ain’t no doubt,” Walt said.  “Yonder’s the fence-line and this old ‘ebrew’s right here.  Ain’t they mostly dug up on your place, Doc?”

            “Almost all, that’s for sure,” Doc said. 

            “It’s John’s ‘ebrew,” Walt said.  “I spose we ought to...”

            “John got no interest in these antiquarian matters,” Doc said, interrupting him. 

            “Still it ain’t yours,” Walt said. 

            “Finders keepers,” Doc answered.

            “But I’m the finder,” Ross said.

            Willy had the skull loose from the soil that seemed to be trying to suck it back under the earth.  The bone came up, hollow-eyed, mouth full of dirt.  He put the skull on the burlap and tapped it gently so some of the dirt slid away.  There was a topknot of greyish hair still embedded in the back of the skull. 

            “You’all still plowin’ with a walking plow,” Doc said.  “You know, that ain’t the way to go, not now in ‘48.”

            “Walking plow lets a man set the furrow depth just so,” Walt said.  “I ain’t never had no bad harvest.”

            “I got an old sulky plow up at the place,” Doc said.  “You ride the son-of-gun just like a buggy.  Hell, that’s plowin’ in style.”

            “I never thought much of them sulky plows,” Walt said.

            “Ask Ross,” Doc said.  “He’s the poor bastard cuttin’ the furrow.  You’re just leading the mule.”

            “That’s right,” Ross said.

            “Here’s what I reckon I’ll do,” Doc said.  “I give you that sulky plow, it’s right as rain, good McCormack-Deering merchandise.  You’ll do three acres a day, I guarantee, if you do one.  And I get this old Indian chief.”

            “I don’t know,” Walt said.

            “It sounds fair to me,” Ross said.

            “I get the Indian, you take the plow, just as good as new,” Doc said.

            Walt nodded.  His big brown head and face was expressionless as the trunk of tree in the forest. 

            “Maybe,” Walt said.

            Willy was hunting for finger bones with the trowel.

            “But I got’s to ask Mister John,” Walt said.  “It’s his bones.”

            “I’ll deal with him,” Doc said.  “Let me make it fair and square with him.  You don’t need to talk to him.”

            “So what you give me to keep mum with Mister John?” Walt asked.

            “We got our deal,” Doc said.  He squinted in the bright sunlight.

            “Not all of it,” Walt said.

            “I give you two dollars,” Doc said.

            “Five.”

            They shook hands over the breastbone of the dead man.  Doc took out his wallet and peeled out five one-dollar bills. 

            “You old son-of-a-gun,” Doc said grinning at Walt.

           

             

2.

            Walt and Ross plowed around where the dead man.  Willy took the top half of the skeleton away in the burlap bag.  Ross found a piece of lathe by the fence-line and shoved a stake into the earth between the split wings of the skeleton’s pelvis. 

            Later, after dinner time, they hiked up to Doc Freiheit’s place and, with Willy’s help, loaded the sulky plow into the back of one of the vet’s pickups.  Willy drove down to Walt’s cabin and they lugged the sulky plow into the old, beat-up chicken brooder where the mule was kept. 

            The evening was a little cooler and a wind that smelled of earthworms and lightning came from the west where big storm clouds were punching their fists up against the night sky.  Ross took his son, Dodge, and his little girl, Betsy, out in the field to pay their respects to the dead man’s lower half.   Uncle Walt didn’t want to go.  “I had enough of that old ‘Ebrew today,” he said.  “It’s bad luck messin’ with them old Indians.

            The storm was coming quick, like a freight train dashing up sparks from the tracks. 

            They stood over the bones. “It was a man just like you and me,” Ross said.  He took off his hat, but put it on again when the first big, cold drops of rain began to fall.  Betsy didn’t want to look and hid her eyes behind her fingers.  Dodge looked into the dead man’s smashed hips the way a man looks into a well. 

            Betsy said: “I see’s an eye.”

            “What are you talkin’ about?” Ross said.

            “I see it too,” Dodge said.

            A bolt of lightning shot down and smashed a tree of Doc Freiheit’s slough.  The tree flamed up like a torch and the water in the pond boiled.  They felt a shock through the earth.

            “We gots to get out of here,” Ross said.  And he took his children by the hand and they ran through the rain and wind to the road and, then, the house. 

           

            Dodge could put things together.  His mind was different from the other children.  If someone had a busted watch, they gave it to Dodge.  He would take the watch apart and spread out all the pieces on the kitchen table atop a towel to keep them from slipping and sliding.  Then, he would look at the pieces for a long time, studying them, humming some song that didn’t seem to have any words nor much of a tune either.  Then, after a half hour or an hour, he would move the pieces, carefully with his long, brown fingers, as if he were moving checkers on a checker board.   He could make the watch work again, but never for more than a couple days.

            Sometimes, Dodge would find a squirrel or a chipmunk drowned and swollen in the mule trough.  He took his pen-knife and disassembled the squirrel out on the porch, staring at its entrails for a long time.  Dodge’s mama didn’t let him try to put the dead thing back together again.  She shooed him off the porch with her broom and made Ross throw the disassembled squirrel out on the offal pile. 

            Ross said: “That boy is a natural-born tinkerer.  If it’s broke, he can fix it up...”  He was going to say “just as new”, but paused, because, strictly speaking, that wasn’t true: the things that Dodge fixed looked complete but something was missing from them or something had been added.  They were either not quite right or, curiously, better than before they had been broken. 

            The day after the thunderstorm, Dodge walked to the cabin of a conjure-woman who lived under the smooth, grassy slope of the levee.  He traded her an alarm clock that he had salvaged from garbage pit for a Triple S Toby charm.  It was in a little chamois bag, tightly sewn shut, on a leather string.  Dodge put the Triple S Toby around his neck and went home to find a pail. 

            Then, he went into the field where the dead Indian lay.  At first, he started to pick up the Indian’s toe bones and heel.  Then, he saw the ceramic eye again – indisputably an eye made of orangish pottery.  He poured the bones out of his bucket and began to collect the fragments of pottery.  Some of them were as big as the back of his hand and he could see that the shards had figures etched into them.  There were lips and a nose and another eye.

            Dodge worked for a long time.  The sun was hot and the wet earth steamed. 

            He found an ear with the lobe all distended so that a hoop of jewelry could be suspended there.  Then, for a long time, nothing came out of the muck.  He scratched and clawed like a chicken looking for bugs to eat.  The sun made the sweat run down his back and sides.

            A few feet away, he stubbed his toe on the other ear.  He put the piece of pottery in the pail and went home for lunch.  All the way home, walking across the field, Ross kept looking over his shoulder.  He thought he heard footsteps behind him. 

            In the evening, Dodge asked his mama for some glue.     

            “We got nothin’ but Elmer’s,” she said.

            “That’ll work,” Dodge said.  

3.

            Don’t deceive yourself.  Pretty much every one of you is one or, maybe, two missed payments from catastrophe.  Friends, that’s just the way it is.  And so, when you hear my story, I want you to be brotherly about any judgments you might form, and keep the thought in mind that you too could be walking in my shoes.   

            Properly presented, I guess, it began with the referral on the surgeon’s home.  But that’s probably too abrupt and doesn’t take into account other matters of importance.  So let me revert to the real estate crisis – that’s where the story ought to begin when I was flying high and earning handsomely.

            I never much liked the practice of law.  It’s too abstract, too ghostly, too much about the relationship between relationships.  I’m more of a jigsaw-puzzle man, someone who knows how to put deals together, someone who can assemble the parts, human and monetary, to make a transaction successful.  If you drive down to south Memphis, there’s four or five housing developments on the bluff that ought to have my name on them – those are transactions that I put together.  And there’s a half-dozen strip malls too, out by the airport and in West Memphis – I’ve got an Arkansas license too, came out of law school the same year as Bill Clinton except he was at Harvard and I took my degree at Fayetteville – you can see those strip malls, some of them prosperous right now, and others less so, of course, and know that I put the deals together, got the land platted and subdivided, paid off the zoning commissions to get the conditional use permits and nudged the General Contractors and squeezed their balls if necessary to keep them on task, and handled the punch-lists, wrote the leases, got the tenants, and, even, managed the properties if the client was willing to pay me for that service.  See, I’m pretty much full-service and I like to dabble in the deal from the raw land beginning to the finished mall full of teenage girls at the end.

            This was good business and profitable, but, then, real estate crashed.  We all know that story and I got hit as hard as the next guy.  I had a Russian wife bought off the Internet and she left me when times turned tough and took the kid too – good riddance, I thought, because we had never got along all that well anyhow and she was a fair weather friend, loyal when the going was good but not when things went south.  I never understood her anyway – maybe, it was a language barrier, maybe, just gender, I could never figure it out exactly.  And so I had to recalibrate as President Obama is fond of saying, reinvent myself and find a new direction.

            Mr. S – I won’t use client names – runs chicken farms out in the country.  He was an old and dependable client.  When things were slow, I could always call him up and ask outright if he had anything for me, and damned if Mr. S- didn’t, then, more often than not, throw me a bone:   a foreman with an unhappy marriage, or an adoption, or the incorporation of, yet, another LLC holding company one atop the other, a huge dizzying tower of Babel built shell upon shell to keep the shit from falling down on Mr. S- and his loved ones.  S- was no-union, minimum wage, right-to-work, O’Reilly factor Republican and he had trouble keeping help at his chicken plantations and so, needless to say, some of his workers ended up requiring representation in the Federal Courts on immigration and naturalization matters.  This was beyond my purview – at least, back then – and, when that particular bomb burst, real estate was still thriving and so I referred S- to a buddy of mine, an immigration specialist downtown. 

            My buddy, Derek McDonald, was in court all the time, federal venues from Galveston to St. Louis.  His specialty was representing foreigners, mostly Indians and Africans, whose visas had expired or whose green cards were running out of gas.  Derek used to say to me: “What do you think it’s worth for some African kleptocrat to keep his nice house in Nashville and his white wife and his big car and not have to go back to that Sub-Saharan shit-hole that to stand trial on theft and treason?”  Derek grinned mischieviously.  He obviously knew what it was worth.  “You end up with the house and the car,” Derek said.  “The white wife vamooses or you’d end up with her too”  He paused: “There’s only one problem.”  What’s that, Derek?  “You can’t win, no one wins, in the end the poor guy gets deported, they all get deported, and I suppose thrown to the crocodiles.  All you can do is stall for time,” he told me.  We were drinking at the time, having a few beers in one of those downtown places that’s busy with the sandwich trade at noon and crowded for happy hour until about seven p.m. when everyone goes home or toddles down to Beale Street.  It was 7:30, getting lonely, and the fake Irish music on the soundtrack was grating at me.  “I got a million ways of stalling for time,” Derek told me, “but not one way to win.”  He paid for the drinks.  After all, I had referred S- to him.

            S- had a different set of problems.  His workers were expendable, identical brown-skinned cogs with Mexican last names.  He didn’t care about keeping them.  They didn’t want to stay very long anyway.  The fumes in those chicken houses were poisonous, a stink of ammonia so strong it seemed to eat off the surface of your eyes, a million chickens and the chicken shit and the heat and clamor – it was all too much for anyone to stand too long.  S-‘s problem was getting people into the country who wanted to work.  He had some headhunters down in the Federal District of Mexico City and they had been a good pipeline for him, but, now, there was a crack-down and things were slowing up.  So I put S- with Derek McDonald, Esquire, my good friend, and continued, as it were, to perfect the art of the deal in my real estate practice.

            Later, as I have said, things got a bit dicey for me.  I had some heavy expenses.  A couple of my developments were pretty much underwater, I had to cash-out the Russian, and the bank was calling-in my notes.  I got a hold of S- and said I was in dire straits: “do you have anything, friend?”  S- told me he had a couple things and we met in an Applebee’s by the freeway to St. Louis in West Memphis.  First, S- told me that he was disappointed with McDonald, the immigration attorney.  “The guy never gets anything done,” S- said.  “He just bills me and bills me.  Christ, can that guy bill!  But he never gets anyone into the country.”  S- sipped his raspberry tea.  Sometimes, I thought I could smell the ammonia and rotting chickens on his clothing, on his big square-tipped boots, for instance, or in the collar of his polo shirt.  “I know people who know people,” S- said.  “The way McDonald does things is super-legalistic, if you know what I mean.”  Well, he’s a lawyer, I said.  “But it’s awfully formal,” S- said.  “Very , very formal.  Court hearings and such.”  I suppose, I said, there ought to be simpler way.  “Well, there is, of course,” S- said. “And I know the people who know the people.  You know, I just don’t want the exposure.  It’s like my holding companies.  I don’t want the shit to come rolling back down on my head.”  I was done with my raspberry tea.  The girl came and gave me another.  I was feeling pretty thirsty.  “You gave me bum steer,” S- said.  “Not that I blame you or anything.  But that fellow specializes in keeping people in this country.  I don’t give a shit about that.  I need to get them across the border.  I gotta have a different kind of specialist.”  I said that I understood.  S- gave me some names of people who knew people.  He had the names written in a little moleskin that he carried in his hip pocket.  “I’m gonna pull the book of business from McDonald,” S- said.  “Can you be my contact on this?”  Sure, I said, I can be your contact.  “Attorney-client privilege,” he said.  “I just don’t want the shit to come rolling down on my head.”  I nodded: done deal. 

            S- brightened up.  He made jokes and teased the waitress.  A burden was lifted from his shoulders.  He told me that he had a good golfing friend who was an orthopaedic surgeon.  “He’s the best fucking orthopaedic surgeon in west Tennessee,” S- said.  “He was in Desert Storm and put together people who had been blown into a jigsaw puzzles of themself.  When my daughter got her knee and thigh-bone busted up skiing at Aspen, I had him on the job.  She runs and dances – God can that girl dance! – without any limp at all, nothing.”  S- told me that he had retained the surgeon to do adverse opinions on some of his work comp claims – at least the ones involving skeletal injury.  “ This is a very workable guy,” S- told me. 

            So what can I do for your friend?  “Here’s the deal,” S- told me.  “The man lives down in Southaven.  He’s got a house worth three-quarters of a million, probably more.  And here’s the deal, the place leaks.  It’s got a worthless roof and siding that just sucks in water and traps it against the sheathing and studs.  The whole place is rotten, it’s rotten to the core.”  Okay, I said.  “So he needs a good lawyer and I figured  —“ S paused.  I can meet him, I said.  “Well, I thought maybe you’d know a good lawyer,” S- said.  Very funny, I said.  “Well?”  You’re sitting with a good lawyer, you son-of-a-bitch, I said.  Hah-hah-hah, S- says.  Just Hah-hah-ha.  It’d be complex, I said.  Since Southaven’s over the border, down in Mississippi, I’ll have to gear this up for Federal Court, I was showing-off a little but who cares...and it’ll need first-rate experts, I’ll have to get your surgeon buddy to lay-in about 25,000 dollars for experts, get that in my trust, and, then, another ten G or 15 for a retainer.  S- didn’t blink.  “This guy’s very, very prosperous,”  S- said.  “Money won’t be an issue.”  Well, then, have him call me.  “If you think you can handle it,” S- said.  Of course, I can handle it.

            It was my pride, of course, my foolish pride.  I didn’t really like going to Court.  Who would?  Only fools and egomaniacs like going to Court.  It’s a zero-sum game.  You go to Court and, every time, someone wins and someone loses.  Not a good thing.  I like deals where everyone brings something to the table and everyone walks away with a little taste – that, my friends, is the art of the deal.  You put people together with people, you mix and match – a good deal’s got secret handshakes, transfers of bags of money in parking lots late at night, enough conniving and plotting and scheming for a couple of mystery novels, but, in the end, the puzzle gets put together and everyone walks away satisfied.  Court is completely different.  Someone is elated; someone ends up murderously angry.  That’s the only outcome.  Sure, I had no trouble going into court to shake-down insurance companies for a little money on old lady fall-downs and dog bites, but major litigation – I tell you, that’s for fools and egotistical monsters, no one else in their right mind does that kind of work.  But I was at low ebb and the surgeon was a big, square-jawed, broad-shouldered likeable kind of chap, like Dudley Do-Right of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police – his handshake was bone-crushing and he had blue eyes and blonde hair to boot -- and he didn’t blink at the retainer and wrote the check to my trust for the $25,000 without so much as a tremor to his pen-hand...but, then, I guess, steady hands are a prerequisite for his kind of work.  The surgeon, I’ll call him Dr. X, was just an all-around, all-American boy-wonder kind of doctor and I believed the stories that I had heard about him reattaching severed arms and legs and rebuilding crushed spines so that people in wheelchairs could walk again.  And his house was awful – I took the tour and there was carpet drenched in several corners and almost sprouting mushrooms, and a vague smell of mildew like the bad breath of a hundred cockroaches concealed right behind the drywall.  So I thought this is it: this is the ticket. 

            Now the problem with this kind of case is always the statute of limitations.  Wet houses have an absurdly short fuse – two years from the date of discovery.  As a public service, let me admonish you each and every one: if your manse is leaking, hire a lawyer, and bring your case within two years of the date that the water began to drip – otherwise, you will be out of luck.  And it seemed to me that the scope of the devastation at the surgeon’s house was well beyond what would have accrued within two short years.  According to the Deed, the doctor had owned the house eight years and it seemed pretty unlikely to me that the leaks were less than twenty-four months old.  So, of course, it was necessary for me to sculpt my surgeon’s testimony with some care.

            It’s unethical and, also, unseemly to tell someone to lie.  It is also gratuitous – a reasonable outcome can be achieved by merely making unmistakable the implications of the applicable law.  At our first conference, I was careful not to ask for a chronology of events.  Why create a box of dates and facts that might be inconvenient later?  Rather, I merely announced that if the water penetration had been discovered more than two years before our date of filing the lawsuit with the Court – something not yet accomplished, of course -- the case would be dismissed.  The surgeon’s wife was a pretty, anorexic wraith and my comments on the limitations period seemed to make her nervous.  She chewed on her lip and glanced sideways at the big  boulder of her husband.  He stuck out his chin, looked determined, and stroked the back of one of his huge, sensitive hands with the other.

            – Is that a problem, doc?  “Not at all,” the orthopaedic surgeon said.  The pale wisp of wife looked relieved.  – Who knows the most about this? I asked.  Usually, of course, it is the hausfrau and, in fact, the little woman began to stutter something.  “I’m the one with the most knowledge,” Dr. X said decisively, interrupting her.  So be it, I thought.

            I deposited the retainer and put the projected expert expenses in my trust fund escrow and had the complaint on file in Federal District Court a couple days later.  An old buddy from law school who had knocked-around the insurance defense industry for a quarter century put in the Answer on behalf of the General Contractor.  He called to congratulate me on the case.  “These files all have limitations problems big time,” he said, “but if you can get over that problem, the carrier will want to settle this as soon as possible.” 

            So far so good.  We exchanged interrogatories and documents.  The surgeon didn’t have anything bearing on the limitations period.  All of his repair invoices and carpet cleaning charges were within the last two years.  The General Contractor didn’t know anything to the contrary.  There hadn’t been any complaints from the surgeon or his wife since the day they took possession of the house. 

            Law is slow and the more money at stake, the slower the process.  It took the Contractor’s lawyer almost eight months to schedule the surgeon’s deposition.  I took the lawsuit’s deliberate pace as a harbinger of a good pay-day.  The insurance carrier was going to have to slowly adapt to the notion that it was going to pay a quarter-of-a-million or more on the case.  That was fine with me – the slower the pace, the more fee I could justify. 

            My friend defending the case set the deposition of both the surgeon and his wife.  In fact, he noted the wife’s deposition to begin at nine am in my office with the surgeon scheduled for 11:00 that same day.  I called the other lawyer and said that the surgeon’s busy operating schedule required that he testify first, before his wife.  “No problem,” my friend told me.  “I just need to get this testimony in the can on the statute of limitations problem.”  “Okay,” I said.  “No problem by me either.”

            I spent two hours preparing my clients to testify.  I didn’t meet with the surgeon’s wife separately, but, rather, kept her in the conference room as I grilled her husband.  “Is there anything before the two-year date?”  I asked him.  “No,” he said.  His wife wrung her hands.  She looked out the window at the parking lot of the strip mall and the Chinese buffet across the road.  Big black crows had gathered over the dumpster next to the Chinese Buffet and they glared at the highway and the grey, rainy sky with a baleful aspect.  “You understand what will happen if you say that you knew water was coming in before the two-year date --Doc, do you understand that?”  “Of course,” he said, rigid as a stone wall, “we lose the case, the whole shooting match.”  “Indeed,” I said, “ and you, maybe, pay their expenses as well.”  The surgeon’s wife looked like she was going to burst; her face was red and congested.  “But, but, honey...” she began.  “Listen, dear,” the surgeon said, “ the question is not when water began to leak through the roof and walls – that was years ago, that was from the very first day, I’m afraid – the question is when I was aware.”  “When you were aware?” she asked.  “That’s right,” he said.  “But we had water –“ she started to say.  “Are you an expert in water infiltration in houses?”  I asked.  “No, of course not,” she said.  “Then, don’t guess, don’t speculate, don’t assume,” I said.  The surgeon puffed out his chest and made his shoulders broad as a bridge – he was inviting her to climb aboard and cross over his huge, muscular back to the promised land.  “Don’t guess,” he told her.  “Don’t speculate, don’t assume.”

            The next morning, the surgeon testified.  It was as I had expected.  He was granite, a rock, an immoveable object.  The other lawyer chipped away at him until noon.  The surgeon’s wife sat at the end of the conference table, pretending to knit, with her head down.

            Outside, it was a pretty day, good for golf.  The other lawyer was not wearing a suit, but rather a sport coat over an pale blue shirt with the name of a country club embroidered over the shirt pocket.

            The Court Reporter swore in the doctor’s wife.  Her name was Emma X.  In an ingratiating manner, my old law school buddy asked Mrs. X if he could call her by her first name, Emma. 

            “Of course,” she said.  Emma X looked as if she were about to burst into tears.

            “Have you ever been deposed before, Emma?”

            “No, never.”

            “Were you present in this room when your husband testified?”

            “I was.”

            “Did you hear any mistakes that he made in his testimony?”

            The other lawyer glanced at me to see if I would object.  I pretended to be tallying up some numbers on my yellow pad.

            “No, it was pretty much like I remember it,” she answered. 

            “Don’t be shy, Emma.  If there’s something you need to correct, let me know.”

            “Nothing.”

            “Well,” the other lawyer said.  “I don’t have any questions.”

            I waived the reading and signing of the deposition.  Emma X looked like an animal that had just been released from a cage.  She stood up and yawned, babbling something about the nice weather. 

            “Too nice to be holed-up in here,” the other lawyer said.

            He began to compare notes with the surgeon on tee-times at various country clubs.  Before leaving my office, the lawyer for the Contractor asked me to talk with him confidentially.  We went outside and stood in the bright sunlight.  The air smelled of flowers and egg rolls frying in oil. 

            “Nice witness,” my buddy said.

            “A real straight-shooter,” I said.

            “Well, you go on and get me a reasonable settlement demand in the next few weeks and I think we can get this thing wrapped-up,” he winked at me.

            “Will do,” I said.

            The week after the deposition, I met with a contractor and told him that he could have the “fix” on the surgeon’s house in Southaven.  He was enthused.  Business was slow.  He gave me an estimate for the repairs that was breathtaking.

            There was a bonus.  The case was going to settle without expert testimony.  I had the contractor’s estimate for free – he assumed that he would get the repair job.  I decided that I could refund the $25,000 in my trust retained for hiring experts.  I placed a call to the surgeon but was told that he had gone to a seminar on hip replacement in Puerto Vallarta.  “I’ll call in a week,” I said.

            A couple days later, S-, the chicken farmer, called me.  He asked me to meet with him and several investors at Harrah’s in Tunica.  “I need you to put a deal together,” S- said.

            The other investors were burly Big-box store executives.  The meeting was in the Silver Dollar Board Room overlooking a steel pier thrust out into the river where there was a petting zoo and a little ferris wheel – when the sun set, the ferris wheel shone with amber lights that spun in circles within circles.  A waitress in a casino tunic brought plates of steak and shrimp scampi.  The Big Box executives cleaned their plates dutifully.

            S– knew someone who knew someone else.  The rumor was that the zoning authorities on the opposite shore – across the river in Arkansas – were going to approve pari-mutual dog-track gambling.  The idea was to acquire a sliver of property in Tunica and use that as a launch for hydrofoils to and from the Arkansas dog-track.

            “You can’t lose on this,’ S- said.

            He asked me if I wanted a piece of the action.  “I’m cash-strapped right now,” I told him.  S- looked at me sadly.  It was as if I had spoken in a language not merely foreign but quite possibly dead – as if I were communicating in Latin or Sanskrit merely to annoy him. 

            “You don’t have anything to contribute?”

            “I’ll do the legal work.  Piece the jigsaw together.  I can waive some fees,” I said.

            “You’ll do that anyway,” S- said.

            S- paused.  He looked out the window at the big black river and the whirling gold wheels of the little amusement park.  In the spinning rays of the ferris-wheel, I could see a forlorn-looking camel gazing across the vast still Mississippi to a ribbon of faint green and white lights in Arkansas. 

            “How’s the wet house case going?” S- asked.

            “Great, “ I said.  The Big Box executives had talked themselves into the deal.  They were celebrating with tulip-shaped glasses of over-priced champagne.

            “I guess I got $25,000 I could invest,” I said.

            “Now, you’re talking,” S- said.

            Just like that.  I didn’t even ask him about the turn-around time. 

            On the drive home, I thought that I could still renege.  I hadn’t written any checks yet, hadn’t looted the doctor’s money in the trust account.  My crime was potential still, just a matter of evil intent – I hadn’t yet even made the attempt to transfer the money from trust. 

            But, somehow, the street lights seemed more vivid.   The weather had an edge that I hadn’t noticed before and the air smelled sweet and every wind whispered its expectations to me.  I stopped at Marlowe’s for ribs and the beer was ice-cold and the meat had regained its flavor.  I suppose it was the adrenalin coursing through me. 

            I intentionally ran a red light and accelerated through a speed trap near my apartment.  Nothing happened.  I suppose the cops were on vacation. 

            The next day, I took my last two-thousand dollar from the office checking account.  I took off the afternoon and went down to Tunica to play blackjack.  I had resolved that if I won, I’d take the risk and draw down the trust account; if I lost, it was a sign that I should call S- and pull out of the deal.

            I left the casino with 2800 dollars.  I put eight-hundred back in the office account and deposited the other two-thousand in the Trust Account.  The State Bar monitors trust accounts for overdrafts and I couldn’t afford to show up short on their radar.             

            Then, I wrote the check to S- and delivered it to him personally. 

4.

            I guess I’m just a victim of love.  I don’t mean to be sentimental.  But that’s the way it is.

            On advice of counsel, I’m not going to tell you my real name.  You can call me “Rodney Smith” – that’s approximately correct and close enough.  I took a bad turn and almost had an adventure.  Here’s my story.  I hope you’ll learn from it. 

            I come from New Madrid up in the boot-heel of Missouri.  That’s where the big earthquake happened, when the river ran backward for a day and salt volcanos busted-though the black dirt to leave big white licks all over the place.  You can still see them today and they’re good places to set up a deer-stand in the brush and do some hunting.  My daddy was a truck-driver and he used to take me shooting and fishing too;  sometimes, we used to trawl for catfish just on the other side of the levee.  I recall once when I was in High School: the sun was shining on the river so big you could scarce see across it.  “What do you want to be when you grow up?” my daddy asked.  I said I didn’t know but I wanted to do something so that I could always be outdoors because I’m restless by nature and like to work under the sun and sky.  “Get yourself a good education and be your own man,” that was my daddy’s advice to me. 

            New Madrid’s not much of a place.  It used to have trees but boring beetles killed them all, even in the cemeteries, and, when the trees had to be cut down, it was like stripping the town naked.  Then, you could see that New Madrid was nothing more than a bunch of shotgun shacks with wrecked cars around them and little four-room bungalows just a step up from the shacks and just a few streets of two-story places with peeling paint down by the levee, all the larger houses standing around six or seven old-time mansions built by the French with great, big, white-washed porches wrapped all around them, and two of them, I think, were whorehouses.  Then, there was the brick schoolhouse with an old steeple like a church and and a dozen brick churches that didn’t have steeples at all, but were just like double-wide trailers with stone veneer and a cross set out in front  and a couple of cafes on Main Street and a place selling second-hand clothing but no bars and taverns, not even close to the levee and boat launch, because it was, then, and, probably still is, a dry county.  If you didn’t work the cotton fields or live off  those who worked them, or manage the tractor repair or the gin or the grain elevator, there wasn’t much to do in New Madrid.  A lot of the men were like my daddy – they drove truck for a living and, on the weekends, you’d find the trucks still hitched to their semi-trailers parked outside the little houses and those vehicles with their loads, glinting in the hot sun, were bigger than the places where the truckdrivers and their families lived.

            Things didn’t work out for me.  I got my High School girlfriend pregnant and so one day I graduated and the next week got married and, then, I went to work in a place where chickens were slaughtered.  I didn’t like the job but had to stick with it to support my wife and kid.  I took to drinking a lot.  My wife left me and took my son.  She moved to St. Louis and re-married.  I guess I was bitter.  I let another man adopt my little boy.  I was still drinking a lot at that time.  Good-riddance, I said, then, although, now, I think about my little boy a lot  and, always, imagine him when he was just a two or three, a toddler on unsteady feet.  Now, I suppose he’s half-grown.

              A couple of my hunting buddies had gone back to school to get their college degree.  I decided I would try to make a fresh start for myself.  I did a two years community college, working nights butchering chickens.  The job made school seem easy and refreshing.  I lived cheap with a couple of buddies and saved some money.  After finishing at the community college, I went up to Cape Giradeaux and enrolled in the Wildlife and Forestry Management program at the four-year college.  It was ridiculously easy to get student loans so that I could attend school full-time.  The classes were easy for me and I graduated with honors.  I worked for a summer, doing a park service internship at Bryce Canyon up on the Colorado plateau in Utah.  It was strange to stand among those rock pinnacles all the color of flame and feel the sun burning your skin while the wind whipped off the snow fields hidden in the pinyon pine on the north-facing slopes and chilled you right to the bone.  It was the very first time I was in the high mountains and, on my time off, I climbed some of those mountains, hiking by myself and just walking up the ridges until I came out of the trees and, then, sidestepping the snowfields until I had strolled all the way uphill to the peak – I tell you that was the best time of the life.  In the Fall, I went to the University of Arkansas in Monticello and started working on my master’s degree – I was enrolled in classes in the Forest Recreation program. 

            I was back on track and focused as could be.  My life was like an arrow shot toward a target .  I was older than some of the students, but more determined and had nothing to encumber me.  I was on track to get my Master’s Degree in only two-years.

            But that was when I met Lupe.  Some guys are crazy for female companionship.  They’ll do anything for pussy.  But I’m not that way.   I can take it or leave it.  And, after my marriage, I pretty much vowed that I would leave it – at least, until I was established in my profession, working as a forest ranger somewhere in Montana or Idaho.  Where I was going, I didn’t think most women would want to follow anyhow.  And that was okay with me.  But, then, that was before I met Lupe.

            It was my last semester.  I was teaching two classes in introductory ecology, carrying 12 credits, and working with my advisor on statistical analysis of a questionnaires to campers we distributed on the weekends in the state parks up in the Ozarks.  (Rate your camping experience – on a scale of ...) I had plenty to do and so, in the evenings, after supper, I went to my cubicle on the fourth floor of the library and worked grading papers or reading for my graduate classes – I did this pretty much every evening.  It was better than watching sports on TV, alone with a case of beer or surfing the ‘net for porn.  Lupe was on the janitorial crew that came to clean the toilets and empty waste baskets and mop the floors after ten o-clock at night.   Around 10:30, I had to take a leak and so I left my books and papers and went to little lobby by the stairs and elevators where the rest rooms were located.  A yellow folding barricade was set in front of the open entry to the Men’s Room and I could hear a woman’s voice, chirping in Spanish, inside.   The song seemed to imitate a bird call and I heard her throaty warble lifted, and intensified, by the mirrors and tile floors.

            I peeked around the corner and saw a small woman leaning over a mop.  The floor was wet and glistened.  The woman sensed that I was watching her and turned to face me.  Lupe is very stylish and elegant – even wearing the slacks and shapeless blouse of the janitorial crew, she seemed fresh and bright, made-up as if she were going out for a night on the town.  Her ears were pierced and she wore gold hoops in them and the make-up around her eyes made them seem very large to me, glistening, like the eyes of an animal that is active mostly at night.  She was small and alert as a mouse.

            “Oh, you’re cleaning,” I said. 

            “Just a second,” she said.

            “No problem,” I replied.

            “No one’s around,” Lupe said.  “I already cleaned the ladies.  Just go on in there.”

            “I don’t need to,” I said.

            “No, go on in there,” she said.  “I’ll keep a look out for you.”

            I didn’t understand how she was going to act as a sentry from within the Men’s Room.  But, I nodded and went across the lobby to the Ladies’ Room.  It was very tidy and smelled of perfume.

            When I emerged from the bathroom, something drew me back around the door leading into the Men’s Room.   Lupe was no longer singing.

            Lupe was down on the floor scrubbing something and her haunches were raised up toward me.  I froze in my tracks, a little embarrassed by her posture, but I didn’t withdraw.

            “You again,” she said, when she heard me breathing.

            Unashamed, she turned around and stood up.

            “Thanks,” I said.

            “For what,” she asked.

            “For keeping watch,” I said.

            “Oh I kept them out good, that’s for sure,” Lupe said.  “There was a whole line of ladies wanting to use the toilet, but I kept them out.”

            “Sure,” I said.

            I went back to my cubicle and sat amidst the sprawl of papers and books.  It was useless.  I was distracted and couldn’t do anything.  I put some work in my briefcase and walked to the stairs. 

            Lupe was emptying a waste-basket into a bin on trolley-wheels that she was pushing.

            I nodded to her.  “Good night,” she said cheerfully.

            The next evening, I dressed better and wore shoes that weren’t so scuffed up and dirty.  Lupe must have had the night off.  But I saw her the next evening and the night after that as well and, both times, I spoke to her, just a greeting and a few words.  Then, it was the weekend and, allthough, I thought it was strange, I missed her. 

            By the end of the next week, I knew when Lupe took her breaks and, a couple times, I happened to be in the cafeteria when she was drinking coffee with the other Hispanic janitors or eating a doughnut.  Unlike some of them, I never saw her good outside to smoke.  She nodded to me in the cafeteria and even spoke to me, asking how my work was going.

            Another week passed.  I brought pastries from Dunkin’ Doughnuts and pretended that they were leftover from a faculty meeting.  I put the doughnuts on the table when the janitors were taking their break.  A couple of the older women sensed that I was courting Lupe and they discreetly withdrew from the table where she was sitting so that I could be near her alone.  Lupe looked a little confused when the older ladies left, but she was friendly to me and we talked. 

            I’m not the sort of man who is attractive to women.  Whenever a lady takes an interest in me, I’m surprised.  People might say that I’m “heavy-set” or “burly”, but that just means overweight and I have the kind of face that doesn’t reveal my true nature – people think I’m angry or proud, when, really the set of my eyes and jaw just shows that I’m thoughtful about something.  I’ve got whiskers growing out of where there shouldn’t be whiskers and little lumpy legs that look too skinny to support my weight.  There’s nothing to be done – that’s just how I am.  If a woman takes an interest in me, I suppose that it’s utilitarian – that she needs something from me or that I have something in a tangible way to offer her.  No one would just like me for myself.

            But Lupe seemed to like talking to me.  She told me about her previous marriage and her childhood.  She said that she was from Texas, near the border in the Red River Valley – Rio Bravo del Norte, she called it.  Her parents had worked picking lettuce and fruit in the valley.  Sometimes, it wasn’t clear to me who was alive and who dead in her family.  I didn’t always understand her exactly.  It seemed that members of her family had died from cancers caused by chemicals used to kill bugs in the crops.  But it wasn’t really clear.  Often, she talked about dead people as if they were still alive and living folks as if they were dead.

            Most of the time, we talked in the cafeteria, sitting a little apart from the other workers.  Sometimes, Lupe would bring me cookies or cupcakes that she had made.  When it was nice and cool outside, with the stars burning in the autumn skies, we left the stuffy library on her break and walked among the trees on the quadrangle.  Once, I took her hand, but she quickly withdrew it from me.

            Near the end of the semester, Lupe slipped on a wet spot on the library steps.  She fell and hurt her back.  She was off work for a few days and, then, came back part-time, working a couple hours a night to empty waste-baskets.  Because she finished before the rest of the crew, Lupe needed a ride to the apartment she shared with three of the other women – they had only one vehicle among them.  I offered to drive her home when she was finished with her light-duty work.  She didn’t have much alternative – the buses didn’t run after midnight and her apartment was too far for walking.  At first, she seemed a little suspicious, but, after a couple trips, Lupe became used to riding with me.  Sometimes, we stopped for a bite to eat or a beer at a tavern or she would ask me to take her to K-Mart or Walmart, some twenty-four hour places, so she could do a little shopping before going home. 

            Lupe was seeing a chiropractor during the afternoons – three times a week for adjustment of her spine where she had fallen.  I drove her to the chiropractor appointments, waiting outside in the car for her to finish and come to me.  She was grateful.  One night, after her shift, she leaned over to me in my dark pickup and began kissing my lips and chin and nose.  I was happy that she had taken the initiative – otherwise, I would never have dared touch her like that. 

            On the weekends, Lupe came to my apartment and stayed with me.  She would make love to me, then, stretch like a cat and rub her belly saying she was hungry.  Then, she would go into the kitchen, sometimes half-naked, and cook dinner for us.  Making meals for me seemed to be important to her.   When I drove her to my place on Friday night , we always stopped at the grocery store and Lupe would bustle about buying supplies for our weekend meals.  I pushed the cart.  Mexican couples looked at us suspiciously.  During the week days, she stayed with the other ladies, at their apartment above a Mexican hair salon in the poor part of town. 

            It wasn’t long before I told Lupe that I loved her.  I said that I wanted to marry her.  She giggled and told me that I was crazy.  When Lupe said that I was crazy, she called me “Mr. Ronald.”  “What is happening between us?”  I asked her.  “We are having fun together,” she said.  Her back hurt her a lot during the week but it was mostly better on the weekends.  I continued to drive her home when she finished her shortened shift, and, during the afternoons, I took her to the chiropractor, now two times a week.  Things slowed down with my studies.  It looked like it might take me an extra couple months to finish my requirements for the Master’s Degree.

            The other Spanish ladies didn’t seem to like me.  I heard them whispering and snarling among themselves when I sat with Lupe on break and stroked her wrists.  And the people that I knew also were hostile to the relationship.  On Tuesdays, I bowled with my faculty advisor,Tom, the Lumberjack (we called him that because of his flannel shirts and his huge shoulders and forearms), and several other members of the graduate faculty in the Forest Resources department.  One night, at bowling, Lupe came to the alley and sat with us, drinking beer and teasing me about my poor form.  I was pretty proud of her.

            “What do you think of Lupe?”  I asked Tom, when she had gone to the ladies’ room.

            “She is a very pretty woman,” Tom the Lumberjack said.

            William, one of the other grad students, said: “She’s with you?  Your girlfriend must be blind.”

            “Yeah, it’s funny, the two of you,” Tom the Lumberjack said.

            Lupe came out of the bathroom on the other side of the bowling alley and smiled at us.

            “I know what you’re getting out of the relationship,” Tom said.  “But what does she want?”

            “Me,” I said.

            “Fat chance,” Tom the Lumberjack said.

            A couple weeks later, I told Tom the Lumberjack that I had asked her to marry me.

He sat among photocopies of photocopies in his cluttered office.  Tom looked at me carefully, as if he were scrutinizing some specimen of bird new to the Ozark forests. 

            “Do you know what you’re getting into?” Tom asked me.

            “I’ve been married before,” I said.

            Tom shrugged: “The triumph of optimism over experience.”

            “I doesn’t always have to be the same,” I said. “I’m sure of that.”

            “There are lots of different ways to be unhappy,” Tom said.

            I was angry.  I stood up.  “Tell me it’s none of my fucking business,” Tom said.  “It’s none of your fucking business,” I said.  “Then, sit down so we can talk about the questionnaires – have you got the statistics done on those?”

            I sat down.  “I’m working on it,” I said.  We talked about the study. 

            At the end, Tom the Lumberjack said: “Rod, you are a very focused individual.  I can see you with a doctoral degree.  You could easily accomplish that.  But you need to stay focused.”

            “I’ll try,” I said. 

            Lupe moved in with me.  We were very happy.  It was the two of us against the world.  She began to talk about marriage, but in a reluctant, ambiguous way.  I asked about her relatives.  She said that she was pretty much an orphan, although she had some cousins and aunts in Mexico.  There was no one that she wanted to invite to the wedding.  “None of them will understand,” Lupe said. 

            The apartment was too small and we needed to buy another car for Lupe to use.  When I had my Master’s Degree, I told Tom the Lumberjack that I was going to ask for a “leave of absence” for a couple years from the graduate program.

            “I’m against that idea,” Tom told me.  But, nonetheless, he wrote a letter and placed it in my file – I had twenty-four months to return to graduate school if I wished to pursue an advanced degree in Forest Management. 

            I had to find a job and that’s how I came to work at the Freiheit State Historical Park.

            Arkansas had opened the new State Historical Park a few miles east of the interstate highway to Memphis.  The preserve was only a few acres, down in the delta, at the outskirts of a village where there was a convenience store and an old cotton gin and an irregular scatter of old whitewashed shotgun shacks with white hens and little red bantam roosters behind chickenwire tacked to old lathe.  There were some big plantation houses out along the old State Highway, butting their stone walls with lions squatting on them up against the road’s right-of-way and, past those gates, cast in an French Quarter arabesques of iron,  gravel driveways meandering between flowering trees to the bleached square-timber columns of the mansion-places.  The mansions had convertibles parked next to their austere colonnades and there were big boats for river-cruising on trailers and, even, a little four-seat airplane, now and then, in a stall next to the stables.  The land was flat as a billiard table, carpeted in cotton, or sometimes glistening with shallow lagoons for rice and, at the far horizon, where the sun rose, there was a shaggy bluff overlooking a bend in the river and a green curb of trees hiding an oxbox lake.  It was a lot like New Madrid, even down to the semi-trucks and trailers parked among junkers in the side-yards of the more prosperous bungalows in town. 

            The ground was black and soggy and, when it rained, the the delta air smelled of earthworms, millions of earthworms.   The Historical Park had a picnic table under a cottonwood tree and some brightly-colored barrels that were always full of beer bottles left there by the local kids.   A couple of Indian mounds blistered the low ground along a drainage canal full of murky water about a hundred yards from the picnic table and a long ridge that looked like it might have been built to carry railroad tracks, but, then, been abandoned, curved like a parenthesis around the site.  Some backyards where laundry was always drying on sagging cord lines bounded the park on a the west and north.  Near the county highway, a little pool of asphalt had been poured next to a double-wide trailer that served as a museum for the artifacts that had been clawed out of the mounds and the snake-back of the ridge.  The cotton gin was across the county highway on the south and, when I came to interview for the site superintendent job, trucks were backed up along the road and a couple were even occupying half of the parking lot next to the museum.  Steam was rising from the gin and the machines made a spectral clanking like the chains beating together.  In the heavy, humid air the clanking sounds could be heard for miles.     

            “What about the trucks? “ I asked the woman who interviewed me.

            “It’s a small town,” she said.  “Live and let live.” 

            The job involved protecting the mounds from pot-hunters, keeping the local kids from partying too hard in the picnic grounds, and collecting admission – five dollars a head – from people who wanted to come into the museum and inspect the exhibits in their gloomy, low-lit glass cases. 

            “You’ll need to read up on the culture that produced these artifacts,” the woman from the State told me.  I nodded.  “It’s not that difficult.”  

            “Why is the position open?”  I asked.

            “It’s a relatively new State Historical Park,” the woman told me.  “The last superintendent – let me just say – he wasn’t a good fit.”

            I toured the collection with her.  It wasn’t much to see.  There were some glass display cases with arrowheads in them and pots made of smooth, reddish ceramic.  The pots had animals for handles and spigots shaped like the beaks of birds.  In one case, there was an exhibit of different kinds of corn and gourds that the ancient Indians had grown – lots of printed placards around little dwarf ears of corn that looked brown baby-teeth falling out of a busted jaw and shriveled, mummy-squash.  There were a lot of lance-tips and some perfectly round stone disks used for some kind of a game that the old Indians had once played and, in a corner, a small diorama showing tiny brown people squatting around fire-pits in a landscape of pimple-shaped mounds – a fist-sized thatched hut stood atop a small flat-topped pyramid and naked toy children were playing on the grassy slopes below the hut.  A rake and a hoe and a tattered basket occupied another case.  And, in the center of the room, atop a pedestal, there was a ceramic head about the size of a small pumpkin, glaring malevolently out of its glass cage.  The head represented someone dead – that was clear from the closed eyes sculpted in the ceramic -- and the lips seemed sewn shut, although sufficiently parted to exhale a stink that you could almost smell in the air around the case.  Tattoos represented by incised lines covered the corpse-head’s cheeks and brow.  Big spools weighed down the dead head’s earlobes.

            “That’s a nasty-looking thing,” I said.

            “It’s a masterpiece,” the woman from the State told me.  “One of only four or five effigy heads known throughout the Southeast.”

            “It looks very, very dead,” I said. 

            “The head was taken as a war trophy, and, then, commemorated in this special pot,” the woman told me. 

            The lips of the pottery corpse were split into a vague smile.  The dead man saw something that was invisible to the living and it amused him.  His nose was flat and broad and whatever he saw that made him smile had to be inside, within the dark cavity of the pot, for his eyes were sunken and ruined. 

            The woman told me that it was the Freiheit collection, so-named for an old gent that once displayed the pottery with other archaeological finds along the old State Highway to West Memphis.

            “He was a well-known local vet,” the woman said.  “The ceramic head was part of his roadside attraction.  That’s what he had -- a little menagerie and a curiosity shop –a roadside attraction, I suppose you’d say.  If you get this job, you’ll often meet tourists, folks passing through, who recall old Doc Freiheit’s roadside attraction.  It must have been quite the place.”

            “Very memorable,” I said.

            The woman smiled.  “I guess so.”

            The job was offered to me and I took the position.  Freiheit State Historical Site was a half-hour drive from the edge of West Memphis and so Lupe and I found an apartment on the outskirts of that city.  I bought her a car and she found a job translating in the human resources office at a factory where chickens were slaughtered.  I wanted some kind of ceremony for our marriage, but Lupe was against that idea – “everyone will just try to persuade us to not do it,” she said.  So we went to the town hall and were married by a judge. 

            A week-and-a-half after we said our vows, Lupe received word that one of her aunts was very sick in Durango, Mexico.  She told me that this woman had raised her when she was a little girl. 

            “You see, my mother was always ill with TB, and so Aunt Rosalie came to take care of me,” Lupe said.

            “In west Texas?” I asked.

            “Of course,” Lupe said. 

            “She came from Durango?”

            “Yes, that was how it was.”

            Lupe called Mexico and was on the phone for a long time.  I didn’t understand anything that she said, except several times she said “thousand dollars” in English.  Finally, she hung up and told me that she had to go to Durango to see her aunt. 

            “I will drive down there,” she said.

            “But that’s a long drive,” I replied.

            “Is nothing,” she said.  “I do it all the time.”

            “I had better go with you,” I said.  “But I’ve just started this new job, and – can we wait a couple weeks?”

            “Not enough time,” Lupe said.  “She is dying.”

            I shrugged. “But what about your job,” I asked. 

            “Oh, they need me,” Lupe said.  “They’ll get mad and fire me, but they’ll hire me right back when I get home.  I know that for sure.”

            “I could go with you over the weekend,” I said.

            “No, you have to stay here,” Lupe said.  “I just need to say goodbye to her.   Then, I’ll come right back.”

            It seemed that she wanted to go right away.  The next morning, I gave her a check for two-thousand dollars.  Lupe called me at work from the bank in West Memphis. 

            “They won’t cash the check,” she said.  “They don’t trust me.  They don’t believe we’re actually man and wife.”  She was crying loudly, but they were tears of rage.

            I hung up my “Temporarily closed” sign and broke a lot of speed limit laws driving to my Bank in West Memphis.  The teller was a Hispanic woman herself.

            “She won’t let me cash the check,” Lupe said.  She dabbed at her eyes with a perfume-smelling piece of tissue paper.

            “It’s fine,” I said.

            “Are you sure, sir?”  The Hispanic woman asked me.

            “Of course,” I said.

            Lupe said something in Spanish and the woman behind the counter stiffened.  She began to respond.  I put up my hand.  “It’s okay,” I said.  “It’s okay.”

            The teller handed me the money.  Lupe folded the bills and put them in her purse.  She kissed me on the lips.

            “When will you be back?” I asked.

            “Four or five days,” Lupe said.  “It depends.”

            “It depends on what?”

                                                                                                                        “Lots of things,” Lupe said.  “How my great-Aunt is doing.” 

            “Your great-Aunt?” I asked.

            “Rosalie,” Lupe said.  She pressed her fingers inside mine and said goodbye.

            On the way back to the State Historical Park, I was overcome with nausea and stopped to vomit.  Big storm clouds were sweeping across the delta and rain pelted me so that I almost lost the road and crashed in the ditch. 

              Grandparents sometimes stopped at the Freiheit museum with their grandchildren.  The old men were wearing Stetson hats and cowboy boots.  The children pressed their fingers to the glass and made smudges that I had to clean with Windex between visitors. 

            The old men always squinted at me suspiciously and asked: “Where’d the skeletons go?”

            I had read memos about the human remains and seen some of the legal pleadings in a big looseleaf notebook containing miscellaneous information that I kept on my desk.

            “Indian Graves and Repatriation Act,” I said.  “They were surrendered to the Choctaw people.”

            “But this weren’t a Choctaw village,” the old man would say first to me, and, then, to the child begging for the sugar-crystal candy that I sold from the desk where I charged admission.

            “I bet you got a couple of them hidden away some place,” grandpa said. 

            Grandma looked disgusted.  “Who wants to see them dirty old things anyway?”

            Grandpa winked at me.  It was the same conversation three or four times a day, with variations of course, but essentially unchanging.  I didn’t get younger people as visitors – just grandparents, it seemed, moseying about the countryside with their grandkids. 

            With Lupe gone, I didn’t feel like going home to the empty apartment.  The annual inventory was scheduled for next month anyhow and so I began downloading the State forms that I had to complete on the office compute.  A small workspace was located behind panel walls in a cubicle built into the corner of the double-wide.  The computer was in that office with a large specimen cabinet with sliding drawers.  The cabinet was a yard deep and contained more arrowheads, potsherds, and lance points, each bearing a tiny round adhesive patch on which a number was written.  There were seven or eight hundred specimens, most of them thumb-sized fragments of ceramic.  I usually kept a few of the less impressive shards in a wicker basket with a rabbit pelt and a snake-skin and some parched corn – that was my “touch and feel” display set on a folding table in front of the diorama of the ancient village . 

            I accessed a catalog that indexed the archaeological specimens by their numbers.  The text was a long list of numbers with descriptions.  It must have been prepared by a summer intern who had lost interest, apparently, around pottery fragment 350 or so.  A lot of the index entries after that number were jocular or meaningless, for instance: 389 – small clay whatzit?  Or 421 - undescribed trash or many entries above 600 – simply unknown.  My job was to locate each indexed item, verify that it remained within the collection, and improve the description, if possible, by providing better dimensions and specifications.  I had a caliper for the job and a centimeter ruler.  Larger pieces were supposed to be photographed and the picture scanned into the computer list. 

            With Lupe gone to Mexico, I spent several nights working late, measuring the little chunks of broken pottery and typing information into the computer.  Size was no guide as to importance – I found that some very small shards of ceramic had inscriptions on them, characters incised, it seemed, in some foreign writing or tiny pictures of birds with outstretched wings or men stooping under the pelts of monstrous animals.  Sometimes, I looked at a lattice of scratches on a piece of ceramic and couldn’t make any sense of it at all, and, but then, after looking away and back again, the little picture would come into focus – a bird man holding up hands to the sky, a thunderbird with four maidens standing at the creature’s four corners, crosses and swastikas, a droopy eye with tears flowing.

            Then, I thought of Lupe.  I stood up and wiped my own eyes.  The work had exhausted me.  I left the workspace and the empty cans of Mountain Dew lying around the computer and the printed index.  Outside, the air was tense with an approaching storm and I saw lightning ripping open the clouds.  In the distance, the world seemed to rumble but near at hand it was deathly still.  The convenience store with its pumps stood in a cube of white arc-light, bright as ice, across the road.  Chains were clanking in the dark by the gin.  I walked over to the C-store and bought a six–pack of malt liquor.  Sitting at the picnic table, I drank a couple cans and tossed them in the barrel with broken beer bottles that the high school kids had left. 

            My cell-phone was on the table in the cubicle and, when I returned, it was ringing.  I picked the phone up, but too late.  The call read Unidentifed Caller.  I accessed my list of contacts.  I had Lupe’s old phone number there, from when she lived with the other women cleaning at the College.  For some reason, I dialed that number and let the phone ring.

            A woman answered in Spanish.  I told her who I was.  She said that she didn’t speak English.

            “Oh yes you do,” I said.  “Dolores, I know you understand me.”

            “No, I don’t,” Dolores said.

            “Have you heard from Lupe?” I asked.

            “I don’t understand,” Dolores said.

            “I know you understand,” I replied.  “Did you hear from Lupe?”

            “You don’t want to know,” Dolores said.

            “What?”

            “She is back in Mexico with her husband,” Dolores said.  “You know, she was married before she came here to work.”

            “You are lying,” I said.

            “I don’t understand English that well,” Dolores said.  Then, she hung up.

            I put the phone in my pocket and went outside to drink the rest of the malt liquor.  When I was done, I came back into the double-wide.  It was hot and smelled of the warm computer and beer-breath and sweat.  I stood in front of the glass case confining the effigy head.

            “What do you have to say for yourself?”  I asked the head.

            The head’s dead smile seemed broader and I could see the filed teeth inside the grin.

            “Talk to me,” I said.

            I tapped the case so hard the pot vibrated.

            “Talk to me,” I said. “You useless son-of-a-bitch.”

            I locked up and drove home and turned on the television for distraction.  The little traces of Lupe in the house, around the room, on the counter in the toilet, and by the bed tormented me.  I fell asleep slouched across the couch with the television whispering to me. 

            Lupe didn’t come home on the fifth day.  She didn’t call.  It was a Monday and the Freiheit Site Museum was closed.  I bought another six-pack of malt liquor and drove backroads aimlessly.  All the dirt and gravel roads lead to the levee and, although I could not see the big river, I heard it groaning and straining behind the mounds of dirt. 

            Two days later, I had a collect call.  The operator said: “This is Juanita Hernandez, calling for you collect.”

            “I don’t know any Juanita Hernandez,” I started to say – but I paused.

            “I’ll accept the charges,” I said.

            Lupe’s voice was in my ear.  “I’ve had trouble,” she said.

            “What trouble?”

            “I’m in a detention center across the border from Eagle Pass,” Lupe said.  “The border cops wouldn’t let me into the States.”

            “Why?”

            “It’s complicated,” Lupe said.  “It’s persecution.”

            “Why didn’t you tell me you were calling?  The operator said some other name.”

            “I go under several names.”

            “What?”

            “Lots of Hispanic people have to do that,” she said.

            “I don’t understand,” I said.

            “I’m not documented,” she said.  “I was born in Durango.  I got caught in the States, before twice and been deported.  So I’ve got a record. I think they are felonies. They figured it out at the border.”

            “So what is your real name?”

            “It’s complicated,” she said.

            “You lied to me.”

            “I lied because I love you,” Lupe said.  “I want to be with you.”

            “You’re married to an American citizen,” I said.  “Isn’t that enough?”

            “Not with my criminal record,” she answered.  “And they don’t accept that the marriage is valid.  It wasn’t the right name for one thing and...”

            “And what?”

            “There are other complications and problems,” she said.

            She began to cry.  I was already crying.

            “What are we going to do?” I asked.

            “I’m getting out tomorrow.  But I’ve got no money, no place to stay, no way to get anywhere – I can’t even buy a bus ticket,” Lupe said.

            “Can you get a bus across the border?” I asked.

            “No, of course, not – I’m on some kind of watch list,” Lupe said.  “But I will need to get out of this border town, somewhere else, maybe Monterrey or Durango.”

            “So what can I do?” I asked.

            “Go to the Walmart and wire me a thousand dollars,” Lupe said.  “For God’s sake, please.”

            “Why?”

            “So I can get something to eat and rent a motel room,” Lupe said.

            “A thousand dollars?”

            “Whatever you can send,” Lupe said. “Then, you’ll have to get a good immigration attorney.  Hire someone who can get me home.”

            “Home,” I said. 

            “Home, I just want to come home,” Lupe said.  She was crying again.

            Someone spoke in Spanish and I knew the call was about to end.

            Lupe sputtered out the address of a Walmart in some Mexican town.  I wrote the address and wire information down on my hand.  Then, there was more conversation in Spanish and the phone connection was broken. 

            I closed the museum and drove to West Memphis.   In the Walmart, I told the Hispanic lady at the counter that I wanted to wire a thousand dollars to a place in Mexico.  With the surcharges and the wire fee, a thousand dollars ended up much less on the receiving end.  I had two-thousand dollars left in the bank.  What was my love worth?  I filled out the wire instructions so that Lupe would receive fifteen-hundred dollars in Mexico.  I felt good about that decision.  My heart was filled with pride.

            I called some old buddies in West Memphis.  They referred me to a sleazy lawyer.  I talked to him by phone.  He didn’t want the case but referred me to a law school classmate who specialized in immigration law.  I made an appointment with that lawyer.

            The attorney’s office was in a tall building in Memphis.  His window opened onto the river and the pyramid that was glistening in the sun like a pile of molten lead.  Big barges crept by on the brown flood.  On the wall, the lawyer had posted a map of the world and it was stabbed through a thousand times by red stick-pins.  From the look of it, most of the lawyer’s clients came from Africa or India.  In front of the map, the lawyer had a big globe that was all blue and emerald green like a great gem. 

            The attorney told me that he thought he could help.  He needed five-thousand dollars as a retainer.  The lawyer was a little apologetic.  It was as if he cherished the notion that his services, in an ideal world, would be free – but that he had to make a living also, and support the pretty blonde woman in the gold-framed photograph on his desk.  “Surely, it’s worth that much money,” the lawyer said, “to explore what we can do?  After all, she is your wife.”

            “She is my wife,” I said. 

            Where was I going to find the five-thousand dollars?  You see, all of this has been preliminary to my real story, the tale about how I became a criminal. 

            I wracked my brain as to people who might loan me money.  I even called Tom the Lumberjack, but, when I heard his deep voice on the phone, was too ashamed to ask for the money.  Maybe, I could make the money, somehow, by overtime.  I went to work and continued the potsherd catalogue. 

            Then, as I was examining the fifth inscribed shard labeled unknown, an idea occurred to me.  Lupe used to buy and sell things on E-bay.  She had an account.  I picked out several nice flint arrowheads, a chert spear-point, and three or four unknown pot fragments.  I took some polaroid photographs of the artifacts.

            E-bay works great.  It’s easy as pie.  No questions asked. 

            In a week, I had five-thousand dollars.  I wrote a check to the immigration lawyer.  He looked at me proudly, as if I were his favorite client. 

            “This will get me started,” he said.

            And it was as simple as that. 

           

           

   

           

5.

            It turned out that the sulky plow wasn’t any kind of deal at all.  A week or so after Doc Freiheit gave Walter the riding-plow, he and Ross dragged it out of the old chicken coop and hitched it to the jenny at the edge of the sweet-corn patch.  It was just half-an-acre of stubble, the stalks all dried and crisp under the sun and some thistle showing foamy purple among the ruins of the crop.  The women had taken the ears and saved most of them for boiling.  Mason jars of canned corn were put up in the pantry and what was left had been hauled down to Highway 61 and sold in a roadside shack to the traveling men motoring along the two-lanes from Memphis to St. Louis. 

            It took Walt and Ross a while to figure out the clevis and harness fittings on the sulky plow.  Finally, Walt had the belly-band tight under the old jenny mule.  He tapped the mule’s flanks and, then, walked back to recline on the seat atop the plow.  Ross went to the side and made a kissing sound with his lips.  The old mule leaned forward but only took two or so steps before balking.  Ross made the kissing sound some more, but the mule wouldn’t pull the plow.  Walt shouted at the mule and Ross slapped the lead against the jenny’s shoulder, but nothing happened.

            “Mule won’t pull,” Walt said.

            The plow was sunk eight inches in the furrow at the edge of the corn field.  They took the sulky by hand, each on one side, and yanked the plow out of the suck of the earth.

            “Cuts too deep,” Walt said.  “I always said the share’s too deep in them sulky’s and can’t angle it up like with a walking plow.”

            They adjusted some screws and changed the tilt on the plow.  Dodge had come out from the cabin and was standing near the tumble-down chicken coop.

            “Boy,” Ross said, “you get on behind grandpa and give him a push.”

            Ross kissed the air and slapped the rein against the mule’s ribs.  The jenny brayed and took a couple steps and, then, balked again.  The plow cut into the dirt like butter but, then, sunk and was drowned in the muck.  Dodge kept pushing until his face was wet and his eyes all bugged-out  and, then, he dropped to his knees.

            “It just don’t work,” Walt said.

            They yanked the sulky out of the dirt and unhitched it.

            Ross said: “You know, daddy, when I seen Dover plowing with his sulky, he’s got a two-mule team.”

            “I ain’t got a two-mule team,” Walt said.  “I got one mule, that’s all.”

            “Sho’ is a shame,” Ross said.

            The school year had begun.  Dodge knew how to read.  He was a real good reader.  He lay in bed autumn nights turned upside down or cross-wise so he could read the yellow, fading newspaper tacked up to the walls of the cabin to keep out the cold wind.  The kerosene lamp made the old newspaper insulating the cabin shimmer as if they were a golden field, cut and furrowed with letters.  His lips moved a little when he read.

            Sometimes, before going to bed, Dodge worked on the head that he had plucked up in pieces out of the Mister John’s field.  Dodge sat at the table by the stove and, sometimes, at the end of month, when they didn’t have any money, he pieced the broken crockery together by the light of kindling burning in the belly of the cast-iron oven.  It took him more than two months because the head was broken into many pieces and some of them were missing which meant that Dodge would go out to the field where the crockery had been found and hunt in the stubble and weed with a little trowel for more pieces.  Almost always he came back with his pockets full and sometimes brought brown and yellow bits of bone like broken teeth also. 

            Dodge’s eyes glittered as he worked on the head.  He hummed to himself and whispered encouragement to the little shards of pottery.  He didn’t look for the face that was emerging as pot was mended, but, rather, his hand was guided by the fractures, by the broken bits, by edges that looked like they belonged together or by zigs and zags in the ceramic that could be joined.  The formation of the dead face with its slightly split lips baring pointed fangs and the tattoo pattern of the hawk and the turtle on the crockery corpse’s cheek and forehead didn’t really guide him.  Instead, he put the face and the head together using the fissures that had split and divided it. 

            The pottery head was complete before the Christmas pageant.  Dodge put the head in a hat box that his mother used to keep her Sunday bonnet.  He wrapped the head in newspaper and tissue so it wouldn’t be damaged and carried it to the Colored School.

            The pageant consisted of a Christmas manger scene with a little peach-colored doll playing the roll of the baby Jesus.  Then, there were some patriotic tableaus, students impersonating famous people from history while the choir sang spirituals and folk songs.  Dodge put on cardboard armor spray-painted silver and had a pot for his helmet.  He was Captain John Smith.  An older girl threw herself over his shoulders when the Indian Chief resplendent in a cape of turkey and chicken feathers menaced him with wooden club.  The dead man’s head standing between two candles sat in the middle of the wigwam where the tableaux took place. 

            Doc Freiheit always attended the Christmas Pageant at the Colored School.  After the program, he shook hands with the school teachers and commended them for their work and gave each of them a ham.  With his man, Willy, he distributed cigar boxes to all of the children full of pens, pencils, and candy canes.  Everyone thanked Doc Freiheit and said that he was a most generous man.  He also attended the Christmas Pageant at the White School and gave presents to the teachers and children there as well.  Doc Freiheit didn’t think the races should mingle but believed that everyone ought to be treated equally. 

            After handing out the cigar boxes, Doc Freiheit went on stage and inspected the pot shaped like a dead man’s head.

            “Where did this come from?” he asked.

            “Little Dodge, he found it all smashed to pieces,” the eighth-grade teacher said.  “He’s the most clever boy.  He glued all the broken bits back together and  – look what it made!”

            “Remarkable,” Doc Freiheit said.

            He asked if he could congratulate the lad in person.

            The teacher called Dodge up on the stage where the kids were milling around.  There were Civil War soldiers, freed slaves in rags with fetters on their wrists, pilgrims, and cowboys.  Dodge was talking to Abraham Lincoln.  His teacher tapped him on the shoulder and took him by the hand to where Doc Freiheit was stooping to admire the dead man’s head.

            “You done this boy?” Doc Freiheit.

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Where’d you find all that crockery?”

            “Over at Mister John’s by your fence-line,” Dodge said.

            “You don’t say,” Doc Freiheit replied. 

            He bent over again and looked at the dead man’s closed, sunken eyes.  The corpse-head seemed slightly amused. 

            “That sure is a wonderful thing you done here,” Doc Freiheit said.

            He smelled of booze and was a tiny bit unsteady on his feet.

            “Thank you, sir,” Dodge said.

            “You do know, I’m assuming, that I bought all the rights to this here artifact when I paid your daddy and grand-daddy for the bones,” Doc Freiheit said.

            Dodge didn’t respond.  He reached down, picked up, the pot and cradled it in his arms. 

            “By all rights,” Doc Freiheit said.  “This pot is already mine.  I bought title to it and all, you know.”

            Dodge held the pot tight as if it were a puppy.

            “I can talk to your daddy and your granddaddy, I know, ‘cause it ain’t right to transact business with a mere colored child, but...” he grinned.  “You know, I always treat everyone, regardless of color, fairly, scrupulously fair...”

            “I heard so,” Dodge said.

            “Of course, you heard so,” Doc Freiheit said.

            Ross and Walter were standing with the women, pulling on their winter coats.  Outside, it was wet and windy.  A sleet storm was coming out of the west.

            Willy whispered to Ross and Walter and they went across the assembly room to the little make-shift stage. 

            “Ross, your boy has got somethin’ that I think, maybe, belongs to me,” Doc Freiheit said.

            Ross looked at Dodge.  Dodge was still cradling the pot in his arms.

            “By all rights, I done bought that artifact when I paid you the sulky for the Hebrew’s bones last plowing season,” Doc Freiheit said.

            “We didn’t talk none about any pot,” Ross said.

            “Well, you know, it was on Mister John’s land anyhow,” Doc Freiheit said.  “I don’t know what that gentleman would have to say about who owns what.  But I distinctly recollect I give you five dollars and the sulky for it.”

            “That you did,” Ross said.

            “Well, then, by rights I got the title to the old Hebrew’s head-pot too,” Doc Freiheit said.

            “I ain’t gonna agree with that, Doc,” Ross said.  Walt tapped Ross on the arm.

            “You gonna make me go to law on this matter?” Doc Freiheit said.

            “I ain’t makin’ you do nothing,” Ross said.

            “Listen,” Doc Freiheit said.  “I’m not denying that your boy here has got a substantial amount of labor invested in piecing together this pot.  He’s done marvelous work and so I’m gonna compensate you’all.  You know I’m a fair man.”

            “You always been fair to me,” Walter said.

            “And we don’t want Mister John nosin’ around in this, do we?”

            “It ain’t none of his business,” Ross said.

            “How’s that sulky-plow workin’ out for you?” Doc Freiheit asked.

            “It ain’t,” Walter said.

            “Them plows work best with a two-mule team,” Doc Freiheit said.  “You still only got the jenny?”

            “Just the jenny,” Walter said.

            “I tell you this,” Doc Freiheit said.  “You give me the pot and I’ll get you two more mules, good john mules tame as can be, to pull that sulky.  And, for the boy, I give him ten dollars, right now.”

            “He wants twenty dollars,” Ross said.

            “I give him fifteen, and you’all get the mules,” Doc Freiheit said.  “Willy will deliver ‘em tomorrow bright and early.”

            “Okay,” Walter said.

            “So we shake on it,” Doc Freiheit said.

            And the whole time the men were discussing the dead man’s head above Ross and around him, tears were running out of both eyes and making a river on his cheeks and dripping down the floor.  His nose was running too.

            “The boy looks like he’s got a bad cold,” Doc Freiheit said.

            Dodge tucked the pot under his arm like it was a football.  For a moment, it looked like he was about to dart away from them.

            “Don’t be droppin’ my property, boy,” Doc Freiheit said.

            He extended his arms and Dodge put the ceramic head in them.

                                   

 

                       

6.

            Justice delayed is justice denied – you know, that’s what they always say.  And, if that’s the case, then, justice is pretty much always denied in this fair land of ours. 

            You see, the turn-around on the Tunica hydrofoil deal was supposed to be one year if no other investors offered to buy us out – six months, if the big money at the casinos got wind of the project and wanted the action.  So I figured I needed the float on the trust money from the orthopaedic surgeon for a year a most, probably only six or seven months since it was pretty clear that the casino operators would want the hydrofoil business for themselves.  To manage the float, I wrote a letter to the surgeon every month for half-a-year, telling him that we were trying to get a mediated settlement conference to resolve the moldy home case, but that the insurance company lawyer was dragging his feet.  In fact, I didn’t do anything with the case because I was waiting for trust money to be reimbursed on the Tunica deal. 

            The first four or five months, I got emails almost every day on the progress we were making on the hydrofoil business.  Then, the emails stopped.  A couple letters came assuring me that efforts were “still being made” to arrange the transaction.  Then, a Mississippi lawyer wrote to me and said that the Arkansas zoning authorities had refused to issue the CUP’s necessary to build casinos on the other side of the river.  “All proceeds invested in the lobbying and development process have now been exhausted,” the letter said.  The correspondence designated itself a “cash-call” for another five-thousand dollars from each investor to pay for legal expense and consulting fees.  The attorney indicated that the managing partners had directed him to dissolve the LLP as soon as the cash-call had been satisified and outstanding debts paid. 

            My eyes went a little blurry when I read the letter.  I threw it away.  Nothing more was coming from me.  All wasn’t lost, however – I simply needed to settle the house claim for  $25,000 more than my authority from the client, pocket the difference, and pay-off the delinquency in the trust account.  Sure, it would be dishonest, but I was in a jam.  You’d do the same I’m sure.

            I contacted my friend, the opposing insurance lawyer, and said that we needed to see if we could get the case settled.  “I’ll get the mediation going,” the opposing lawyer said.

            I didn’t like the idea of a mediation.  All the parties would be in the same room and I wouldn’t be able to dip my beak into the settlement proceeds if the whole deal were negotiated with the client present.

            “Let’s just do it the old way,” I said.  “Lawyer-to-lawyer.  We can save our clients the mediation fees.”

            “Sure,” the opposing lawyer told me.  “I’ll get back to you next week with an offer.”

            One day later, I had a voice-mail from the orthopaedic surgeon.  There was a little hitch in Dr. X’s voice, a stutter in a couple words too tautly stretched.  I didn’t like the sound and so procrastinated.  I watched people entering the Chinese buffet – mostly Mexican families with lots of children, little boys in baseball caps, little girls in pink party dresses.  There’s no one happier than a big Mexican family hopping out of their pick-up family to go to a Chinese Buffet.  But the crows on the dumpster warned me that all happiness comes with a price.

            I waited to call the surgeon until the next morning.  He was brisk and business-like.

            “Emma has left me,” he said.  “Very sordid.  It was an affair with a contractor who was building an addition onto the house.  Very, very unfortunate.”

            I took a deep breath.

            “So you need me to help with a...a...legal separation or maybe...”

            “Oh, no,” Dr. X said.  “That would be a conflict for you.  After all, you represent both of us with respect to the house.  Or you did...”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I’ve divorced the fucking cunt,” Dr. X said.  “The what-do-you-call-it came out yesterday.”

            “The decree?”

            “Yeah, the court order,” Dr. X said.  “I had to hire another lawyer since I knew you would have a conflict.  I didn’t waste your time with it.”

            “Okay, that was prudent.  So it’s all over and done with.”

            Dr. X sounded happy.  “Over and done with, amigo.  Copacetic.”

            “And...the house?”

            Now, he was positively gloating.

            “Awarded to me.  The cunt-bitch had to get out of Dodge.  So I got the house,” he said.

            “That’s good,” I said.

            “So you know what that means?”

            “I do,” I said.  “Get the thing settled ASAP and get you your cash.”

            “Sounds like a plan,” the doctor said.

            I was relieved.  The delay had actually been to my benefit and the benefit of my client.  Once more, I was a wise and prudent counselor at law. 

            Next Monday, opposing counsel on the house case called me. 

            “So are we ready to mediate and put this thing to bed?” I asked.

            He sounded vaguely apologetic: “Well, I’m afraid there is a complication.”

            “What’s that?”

            “How come you didn’t tell me that your clients were getting divorced?” he asked.

            “I didn’t know until last week,” I said.  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.  In fact, it simplifies things.  Dr. X is holding the deed.  He’s got a decree that awards sole interest in the house to him.  You aren’t dealing with Emma X any more.  I guess she’s out of the picture.”

            “Well...not really...”

            “What?” I asked.

            “There’s some bitterness, apparently...you know, it’s common in divorces,” the opposing lawyer said.

            “Of course,” I replied.

            “Mrs. X sent me a package of documents that I just opened this morning,” he said.

            “She’s communicating with you on her own?”  I asked.

            “You bet,” he said.  “I guess I should have got your approval first.  But, she wrote you weren’t representing her anymore.”

            “I guess that’s true,” I said.

            “So I opened the package and looked at the stuff...”

            “And?”

            “She sent me estimates and bids from about six contractors for the cost of remediating the water intrusion problem.”

            “So,” I said.  “She went out and got some more evidence about how fucked-up the house is.”

            “Not exactly,” the opposing lawyer said.  “You see, the bids and estimates are all old, really old.  Some of them are six or seven years old.”

            “That old?” I asked.

            “Yeah, they are that old,” he said.

            I didn’t know what exactly to say.  The silence became oppressive.

            Then, the opposing lawyer said: “It just appears – and don’t take this wrong – that there was some pretty heavy-duty perjury going on at that depo I took last year.”

            “Well, you aren’t accusing...”

            “I’m not accusing anyone.  I’m going to call the contractors and see if they verify the bids.  I mean maybe the ex-wife fabricated this shit on her computer – anyone can get up a template and make a fake document.”

            I tried to sound indignant: “Are you accusing me of...”

            “We’ve all had clients lie,” the opposing lawyer said.  “I’m not saying your scripted anything.  I’m just telling you that if these docs check out, your case is gone – the statute of limitations ran years ago.”

            “Well, can you get me an offer?  Anything.  You know, cost of defense,” I asked.

            “No can do,” the opposing lawyer said.  “I’d get my tit in the wringer.  If these estimates are what they seem to be, Dr. X- is gonna owe us costs, disbursements, and about $25,000 in attorney’s fees.”

            “25,000 dollars?” I said.

            “What can I tell you?” he replied.

            I knew that he didn’t have more than three-thousand dollars in time – for Christ’s sake, I hadn’t made him work at all – and, maybe, a court reporter charge of another fifteen-hundred.   And, now, he was talking 25,000 dollars. Everyone’s a crook in this business.  It’s disheartening. 

            I paused and tried to sound judicious.  “Well, let me talk to me client and see what we can do.” 

            “Sure,” the opposing lawyer said.  “Would you do that?”

            I looked at the telephone for a long time.  It was black with many numbers and switches. 

A little display told me the date and time.  Sometimes, the digital numbers for the time changed. 

            The surgeon called me before I called him.

            “The cunt-bitch!  The cunt-bitch!” he screamed into the phone.

            He said he wanted me to sue her.  He said he wanted the divorce decree and the court order shredded and stuffed up her twat.  He told me that he was going to kill her.

            “Well, is it true? “ I asked.  “I mean did you know about all those leaks six or seven years ago.”

            “I told you all about that, amigo,” Dr. X said.  “Check your file.”

            “You did not.”

            “You ordered me to lie under oath, amigo,” Dr. X said.  “Now, look at the fucking mess we’ve got on our hands.”

            “I did no such thing.”

            “You know what you did,” Dr. X said.

            He paused.

            “You know,” he said, “if I fucked-up a surgery like you fucked-up this lawsuit, and, if I left a patient brain-dead on the table, which is what you have done here, amigo, I would get my license lifted and be sued from here to kingdom come.”

            “You lied under oath,” I said.

            “You told me to,” Dr. X said.

            “I don’t think this is productive,” I said.

            “It’s productive as hell,” he said.  “Now, you get me out of this -- pronto!”

            “Okay,” I said.

            “And you get my twenty-five grand retainer or, whatever the fuck it was, back to me as soon as possible.”

            “Well,” I said, “there will be a little delay –“

            ”A little delay?”

            “It’s technical,” I said.

            “Get me out of this mess and give me my money back.  Not tomorrow.  Not next week.  Today!  You understand me?”

            “There’s a thirty day period on refunds on money held in trust account,” I said.  “It’s by law.  I can’t waive that.”

            “You fucking shysters,” he said.

            “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll get your money back.”

            I called opposing counsel.  He was magnamious.  He could afford to be.  His client was willing to stipulate to a dismissal with prejudice without costs and disbursements if I would agree to end the case without requiring a formal motion. 

            “No attorney’s fees?”  I asked.

            “If you do the right thing, they will waive the claim,” he said.

            He faxed me the dismissal and and I inked it. 

            Now what was I going to do?

6.

            When I got the first bill, I stopped calling the immigration lawyer every day.  Who would have known that he charged for phone calls?  In the first month, I wasted half the retainer on the telephone.  And Lupe was still in Mexico.

            Then, I limited my calls to once weekly.  The substance of the discussion was always the same: “These things take time.”

            A couple months passed.  In the first month, I received a copy of a letter from a government official justifying the decision to bar Lupe from entry at the border.  My lawyer protested and so, then, I got a letter from a government lawyer denying Lupe entry.  My lawyer sent several letters demanding a hearing.  In the third month, the attorney sent me a letter from immigration authorities refusing to schedule a hearing.

            Lupe was out of money and I wired her more cash.

            In the fourth month, the immigration lawyer filed a lawsuit and made a motion to the Court that a hearing be scheduled.  As I understood it, the hearing was about whether there should be a hearing.

            That proceeding occurred six months after Lupe had been denied re-entry at the Border.  The Judge ruled that no hearing was available. 

            I met with my attorney in the room with the map and globe.  The river was tugging a big barge down stream.  Lovers were walking with their hands intertwined on the levee.  The lawyer had a Questar telescope aimed down at the waterfront.  Some big white birds were bobbing on the current.

            “You know, the river and the delta looks just like the Nile,” the attorney said.  “That’s why it’s called Memphis.”

            “Does it look like Egypt?”  I asked.  “I mean have you ever been there.”

            “I have,” the attorney said.  “It doesn’t look anything at all like Egypt, that is, if you want my opinion.”

            That banter was dollars and cents in fees and I nervously tapped at the corner of his big desk.

            The lawyer told me that he could appeal the order that no hearing was available.  The issue was important, novel, and raised certain constitutional questions “of the first order” – at least, that is what he said.

            “Isn’t there another way?” I asked.

            “Is she pregnant?” he asked.  “Any chance of that?”

            “She’s been gone six months,” I said.

            “Shit happens, if you excuse the expression,” the lawyer said.

            The appeal would cost twelve-thousand dollars.  That was a lot of smashed crockery for sale on e-bay.

            “What are my chances on appeal?” I asked.

            The lawyer acted a little aggrieved.  The contact lenses in his eyes gave them a steely glint.

            “You don’t’ have much in the way of alternatives,” he said.

            “But will I win?”

            “I’m a lawyer, not a prophet.”

            “What are my chances?”

            “Slim, I suppose,” the lawyer said.  “But what else are you gonna do?”

            I drove to the Freiheit Museum and, after closing, inventoried my stock.  The little thumbnail-size shards with the incised designs on them were all gone.  I had deleted them from the computer record.  I rummaged around in the hawk-headed broken pots and jars.  There was a flute carved from a bone, but it was split in two.  Every time I touched the artifacts, I felt an unpleasant sensation like a shock coursing through my fingers. 

            I called Lupe.  A man answered.  I took the phone away from my ear and brought it back behind my shoulder, ready to pitch the thing across the green grass toward the little bud of mound that the old Indians had made.  The cotton gin clanked and rattled like chains being dragged over a steel floor and puffs of steam drifted over the metal siding and the tin roof.  Just before, I threw the phone, I heard Lupe’s voice.

            “Who was that?” I asked.

            “My grandpa,” she told me.

            She said that they were eating rice and beans.  “No money,” she said.

            “What did they eat before you showed up?”

            “I’m an extra mouth to feed,” she said.  “You don’t understand poverty.  These people are very poor.”

            “I have to get you out of there,” I said.

            “Please, please, please do,” she replied.

            “You aren’t pregnant are you?” I asked.

            “Don’t joke like that,” she said.

            “If you were going to have my baby, maybe, Immigration would do something,” I said.

            “Don’t talk like that,” she said.  She asked me for some money to tide them over. 

            I had some reliable buyers on e-bay.  One of them, in particular, didn’t even haggle over the price.  If that buyer wanted the object, Pay-pal sent me the money, no questions asked.  I sold the flute.  In the catalogue, the flute was described as “provenance unknown – possibly of modern origin.”  Then, I deleted the record.

            I called the Immigration lawyer.  “I haven’t got the money for an appeal,” I said.

            “That’s a shame,” he said.  But I thought he sounded relieved.

            “Is there anything else I can do?”  I asked.  “You know, anything else at all.”

            “Well,” the lawyer said, “there’s other ways to skin a cat.”

            “I know.”

            “Of course, I specialize really in keeping illegals and aliens in the country,” the lawyer told me.  “But I know a guy who is, maybe, better at getting them back in.”

            “Okay,” I said.

            “You don’t want to ask too may questions.”

            “Okay,” I said again.

            He put me on hold and, then, gave me a number and address in West Memphis.

            I called right away.

            The other guy sounded more hungry.  He said I could meet him after work the next day.

            I drove to West Memphis.  The lawyer had a storefront place in an old strip mall.  The sidewalk in front of the stores was all shattered and goldenrod was peeking up through the cracks in the concrete and the air smelled like the kind of grease you use to fry egg rolls.  Venetian blinds had been drawn across the front window into the lawyer’s office, but through the slits I could see a lamp like you might find in a funeral home, some wood-backed chairs, and a stack of magazines with their covers half ripped away.  An Arkansas department of corrections probation office was on one side of the lawyer’s office.  On the other side, there was a martial arts studio where I saw little boys in white togas slapping at one another on padding the color of a very bad bruise.  Gusts of mariachi music came from over my shoulder, and, when I turned to look in that direction, I saw pickups unloading Mexican families at a Chinese Buffet across the boulevard.   Some fast food places were down the street and when the surge of traffic controlled by stop lights had passed, it was so still that I could hear the voices of the kids taking orders broadcast through the drive-up speakers.  It’s always humid in the south, but this was one of those intersections where the humidity read as sodden, gloomy hopelessness.   I almost got back into my car.  

            The lawyer must have sent his secretary home.  He came from a room behind the counter when I opened the front door.  The air smelled of janitorial supplies and badly burnt coffee. 

            We went back into an office.  The lawyer had split the mountain of papers and files on his  heaped on his desk into two piles.  We made eye contact through a canyon parted between mounds of correspondence, blue-backed abstracts, and dog-eared court orders. 

            We talked for awhile.  The lawyer interrupted me.  “I understand the situation pretty well,” he said.  He told me that he had spoken with the referring attorney and, even, had a fax of the Court Order denying me the hearing.

            “Raw luck,” he said.  “Very unfair.”

            I asked him what I could do.

            “Do you have a five dollar bill?” the attorney asked.

            I rummaged in my wallet and found one.  “Hand it to me,” the lawyer said.

            I gave him the bill.

            “Now, we have an attorney-client relationship,” he said.  “You understand.”

            “I guess.”

            “No one can examine or interrogate us about what we discuss,” he said.  “That’s a result of the attorney-client relationship.  It’s the strongest privilege known in law.  Okay?”

            I agreed.

            The lawyer told me that he knew a man who knew a man.

            “What will it cost?” I asked.

            “$35,000,” he said.

            “Where do I get that kind of money?” I asked.

            “I don’t care,” the lawyer said.  “You’re asking me to take some significant risks.  I’ll try to help but it’s $35.000 non-refundable.”

            “A retainer,” I said.

            “A non-refundable retainer,” he said.

            “Well for that, I should get...” I began.

            “It’s not the top drawer,” he said.  “For sixty-thousand, I fly her to Atlanta and bring her to your doorstep in a chauffeur-driven limousine.  Just like a Russian mail-order bride.  But it’s acceptable.  I’ve never had a complaint.”

            “I don’t want her to get stranded in some desert somewhere or frozen to death in a refrigerated meat cooler or something,” I said.

            “What do you take me for?” the lawyer said.  “I could get distressed with you, sir.  I really could.”

            “Where do I get that kind of money?’

            “She’s your woman,” the lawyer said.  “It’s worth it to you to get this thing done.  Am I right?”

            “Yes, you’re right.”

            “Mortgage your house,” he said.  “Get a line of credit.  Sweet-talk your rich uncle.  Everyone’s got recourse to money in that range.  For Christ’s sake use your Master Card.”

            “I don’t know. $35,000 is a lot of cash.”

            “I know.  But what’s the safety and economic prosperity of this country worth to you?”

            “I haven’t got a credit card with a limit like that,” I said.  “I live in an apartment.  There’s no rich uncle anywhere in sight.”

            “You understand the risks,” he said.  “I’ve been told there’s a lot of violence in Durango, lots of drug-related murders.  It’s very dangerous down there.”

            “Where will I get the money?”

            He grinned at me: “Sell something.”  

                       

7.

            Remember how it was before the freeways?  You figured travel time by family sedan in increments of fifty miles – fifty miles equaled one hour.  The road was two-lane blacktop that sometimes writhed like a snake in the hot delta sun.  You put down all your windows and drove south scooping in the air so that the inside of the car was a scirroco of hot, spiraling winds – the highway air smelled of dead skunk and asphalt and it whirled around in your face and, sometimes, picked up the map and made a tent of roads and cities over your head or your sleeping little sister.  The little towns with rattling, smoky gins rose out of the rice and the cotton at twelve mile intervals – there was a crowd of unpainted shakes, some big houses with spooky-looking towers and gables, a courthouse where a boy soldier stood unblinking in the boiling sun, places to stop for gas and coke, or for a pie served on a blue plate. 

            You don’t need to know my real name.  I’m famous.  You could look me up on Wikipedia if I embedded too many clues in this memoir.  Just give me a last name like a cloud formation or a geological epoch or look at a Sherwin-Williams color chart and name me after one of the shades of blue listed there; for my first name, I’ll take the moniker of any character in Faulkner – that will provide a suitable southern resonance.  Picture me as prosperous, at the top of my particular game, living in LA or Mill Valley, a little baffled at my fame, or infamy, a regular guy, married or unmarried with a gorgeous girlfriend who would be a model except for my money and the fact that I want her on my arm always for parties, receptions, and premieres.  You get the picture. 

            But this particular story is about my childhood, when I was a boy growing up in Tennessee, with aunts and uncles up the road where Highway 61 pulled into old St. Louis.  It was seven hours, then, from Memphis – two stops on the way for the toilet or gas, after our first little rest, about an hour out of Memphis at the Pit of Death.  When I was a little I loved the place and, coming back, from St. Louis two or three days later, pleaded with daddy to stop there.  “But we were just there three days ago, “ Daddy would say as we motored past and I would bang on the car door and howl until daddy’s knuckles on the crown of my head put a stop to that.  Then, when I was in grade school, it hit me what we were seeing and, suddenly, I developed a horror of the place.  Then, I used to plead that we drive on past that roadside attraction.  Momma stroked my hair and said that I was afraid and daddy laughed at me and, sometimes, we stopped but more, often, just sped by so that I was panting with relief as the hot air danced and curled around me in the hot car.  In Junior High, I was interested again in the place, fascinated by the Pit of Death, and so we began to stop once more – but by that time, the place was in disrepair, shabby and a little disreputable, hanging on by a thread, it seemed, with the exhibits tattered and falling to pieces and the customers furtive, as if they were perusing some kind of pornography. 

            You met the billboards coming and going: starting at New Madrid driving south, right on the other side of the river in West Memphis north-bound. See! The Pit of Death! And: Do you Dare!  See where Death is Chief!  Then: The Lost Tribe: See! The Pit of Death!   Then, farther along the road: Only ten miles to the Pit of Death!  And: Clean Rest Rooms! Souvenirs!  Indian curios!  See the Pit of Death!  Then: Three Miles Ahead on the RIGHT: See! The Pit of Death! Educational for the WHOLE FAMILY! Finally: Don’t Miss THE LOST TRIBE and the world-famous PIT OF DEATH!  A mile beyond the Roadside Attraction, there was a big red and yellow sign that said: WHOA! You missed the PIT OF DEATH!  Turn around NOW!  It was pretty much irresistible – either with excited anticipation or horror, you counted the tenth-mile markers along the roadside ditch.  Another and another in the golden rod and thistle, beer cans and wine bottles glinting in the sun, the buzz of insects, and another and another and, now, you are there, the whole place surprisingly small, just a couple of pole barns standing back-to-back in a cotton field with a half-dozen cars pulled up to park, someone always coming and someone always going, a big cigar store Indian standing next to the ticket booth with his arm raised in a salute like a Nazi soldier heiling Hitler. 

            Beside the ticket booth, a sign said that American Indians entered for free and that Servicemen and Orthodox Jewish Rabbis with proof of Identity paid only half-price.  A tape-recording of a drum pounding and Indians singing decorated the steamy air above the parking lot – the sound came from a speaker mounted like a big steel ear on a utility pole.  A skinny kid with bad acne took your money – there was a separate colored entrance around the side of the first pole barn. 

            Inside it was gloomy and smelled of dust and mildew.  Some hand-lettered placards said that Doctor Herman Freiheit owned the place and that he was both veterinarian and world -famous archaeologist.  When I was a little boy, Doc Freiheit was never around, but, later, he would meet his visitors in the dark hallway, among the big signs explaining the exhibit and lecture them in a loud voice like someone speaking with the artificial inflections of an actor on stage.  Freiheit was a big man with a puffy face and flat nose and he ambushed his guests wearing a cape like Dracula and, I think, part of the fear that I developed of the museum related to his appearance, the stink of bourbon and cigars on his breath, his huge hands like clubs, and the sinister eloquence with which he spoke.  Later, when I was no longer afraid of the place, Doc Freiheit was gone – I supposed that he was dead or living in a nursing home.  I missed him and his wild rant – the last time I went, I took some friends who were visiting from the East Coast, and, without the mad doctor, I must say the experience of THE PIT OF DEATH and THE LOST TRIBE had lost much of its savor.  But that was in the declining days of the attraction, when things were broken-down and the toilets stank so bad you couldn’t use them and the “Colored” entrance had been long ago boarded-up and, if not forgotten, at least ignored. 

            At its prime, you walked down a dim hall between billboards explaining that The Lost Tribe of Manasseh, one of the ten tribes given to Jeroboam had crossed into Arkansas from Canaan which was in Holy Lands, but also Georgia.  All of this was proven in First Kings 11:31.  The Hebrew Indians had fallen away from their ancestral piety and the faith of their fathers.  If Doc Freiheit were there, he would swirl his cape and point in a menacing way and say: “This is an awful example of what happens when a people turns away from the God-Given Faith of their Fathers.”

            Then, he would step aside and behind him, resplendent in a great war bonnet of eagle feathers, the skeleton of a mighty chief beckoned, fully articulated and raised up off the floor by a little dais and the spot lights on him showed his bear claw necklace all mingling with the soiled ivory of his rib cage, his breech-clout a knotted dangle of deer skin and, in his right hand, a great war lance, lifted up into the sky from which gory scalps dangled.  The scalps hung there like Christmas tree ornaments and you filed under them and, then, you were at the Pit of Death. 

            The Pit was a cedar-sided hole fifteen feet deep shaped like the foundations of a reasonably sized home.  The pit’s bottom was a clay-bed from which innumerable skulls and leg bones and arched rib cages were protruding.  Some hamburger-red pots were squatting among the bones which seemed to be emerging from the grey, featureless clay as if drawn upward by the dull suction of the lights and eyes above.  A drum beat sounded in the air and Indians sang melancholy dirges.  In some places, the clay had been scraped away to reveal a glittering bed of fractured clam-shell beads, iridescent and shining like mother of pearl.  The jaw bones of the skeletons gaped open and it was if the corpses, had they not been embedded in clay, would have tried to snap and bite and devour one another. 

            “Human sacrifice,” Doc Freiheit declared.  “Fallen away from the sacrificial altars ordained by the God of Abraham they took to sacrificing one another in devilish rites.”  He paused for effect and, then, with the tip of his cane, pointed out various fractures and dislocations in the skeletons.  Some of the skulls were bashed and throats had been cut so deeply as to slash grooves in the neck bones.  Ribs were dislocated and shattered as if some of the chests had been hacked open so as to expose the heart and lungs.  A smaller skeleton had been entirely dismembered and the bones fanned out across the bottom of the pit.

            We circled the pit, following the railing which was painted black and which concealed splinters.  The bones rotated beneath our gaze and the lights overhead were hot and, if you looked too long and too hard, you became dizzy and felt as if you were about to fall yourself, skidding downward into the Pit of Death. 

            An enclosed walkway passed from the pole barn sheltering the Pit of Death to another larger metal structure.  In the walkway, a rickety bitumen-smeared mummy grinned at us.  The mummy lay in the shell of his painted casket, peeled, on a bed of foul-looking bandages.  Death and decay had made him very skinny and the bony hands clapped over his groin somehow failed to conceal the lean, leathery tail of his penis.  Doc Freiheit had salvaged the mummy from some desolate county fair and the side-show advertising showing pyramids and the sphinx in daisy-yellow desert was posted along the walls. 

            The big room was lined with shelves where bits and pieces of skeletons were stacked.  Charts showed that the measurements of femurs and toe bones of the dead Indians matched the dimensions of those parts of Jews living in Russia and Eastern Europe.  Fragments of pottery incised with characters were placed next to graphs displaying neo-Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets.  Big books written in German stood at lecterns.  “They have measured the modern Jew from top to toe – the German scientists did.” Doc Freiheit said.  “It’s all written in these books.  The bones are the same.  They are Israelites.”  The books were full of anatomical drawings and photographs of hook-nosed men squinting at the camera.   “It’s all here,” Doc Freiheit said. “The proof, the proof positive.”  A mural compared the pyramid called Monk’s Mound in East St. Louis with the pyramids of Gaza.  War shawls of pheasant feathers and deer leggings and squaw’s dresses heavy with beads and bells hung from the joists overhead and the corners of the room were stacked with pots and jugs purchased at pueblos in the southwest.  The floor was a colorful with Navajo rugs all jostling one another and there were lances and colorful painted arrows and arrow heads, Anasazi flutes made of yellow bones, heavy war clubs and axes chipped from flint and peace-pipes with long beet-red stems, ghost-dance shirts, pistols and rifles, scalps, and a lock of General George Armstrong Custer’s golden hair. 

            And in the center of all these artifacts, in a glass box smeared with fingerprints, the red pottery head sat like a king, crowned with jug spout and handles.  The slits of his eyes were dark and empty and you could imagine that his eyeballs had retracted and were hiding like worms in the earth somewhere deep inside the hollow of the pot.  A swirl of hawk and talon tattoes covered his cheek and cut across the bridge of his triangular boar’s snout and his lips were slightly parted as if he was going to whisper to you or as if he had formed his face into an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile.  The effigy head was the deadest thing in the room, the most inert and corpse-like, and, yet, somehow, it seemed that terrible energies were gathered around it, taut inhuman powers coiled like mighty springs and about to propel the dead man into vivid, intolerable life. 

            The pot scared me more than anything else in Doc Freiheit’s roadside attraction.  It haunted my dreams.  I had this fantasy: one day, I would be a wealthy man and I would fly from Mill Valley or Santa Monica and have a chauffeur drive me to the Pit of Death and there I would confront old Doc Freiheit and tell him that he was a quack and a charlatan and, with a wad of greenbacks six inches thick, I would buy the pot and take it away from him and, somewhere, on the road to Memphis I would hurl it from the speeding limousine so that it would be dashed to pieces, utterly to pieces, amidst the smashed beer bottles and tin cans on the side of the road.

            The pot wasn’t for sale, of course.  Doc Freiheit sold little drums made from deer hide, tiny bow and arrow sets, feathered headdresses assembled in Taiwan, Indian maiden dolls, gourd rattles and small war clubs with a pencil tip opposite the bludgeon and the name of his museum on the shaft.  For adults he had M. M. Noah’s tract in a facsimile of the 1837 New York City publication: A Discourse on the Evidences tending to shew that the North American Indian is a descendent of Ancient Hebrews, particularly those of the Tribe of Manasseh..  There were books on Jewish culture and some miniature menorahs for sale.  At a shack in the parking lot, some local Negroes sold melons, squash, sweet corn, and hoar-hound candy.  Doc Freiheit’s special tonic for man and beast was also on sale.  Daddy used to buy a couple bottles for the road.  It tasted like flat root beer with an infusion of gin and ginger root. 

            Sometimes, I still dream about the place, although I know it doesn’t exist any more.  For a few years, I could find the place by the parking lot and the shacks where the local farmers sold produce.  Then, the parking lot was plowed under and the cotton fields stretched-out, flat and featureless, as far as the rim of bluffs where the river curved and had left some jungle around an old oxbow lake    The freeway was finished by then and no one took Highway 61 anymore unless you were looking for some home cooking and had relatives in the small delta towns scattered among the fields.  But, in my dreams, the Pit of Death is still there and, one day, I see it again – magically restored amidst bright, eye-catching highway signs and the cigar-store Chief salutes me and the hot breeze stirs his regalia and, inside its cool and smells of death.  Then, Doc Freiheit in his vampire cape sweeps toward me and I hand him my personal cheque (not a a mere “check”) and he opens the smeared glass case and puts the effigy head in my arms.  It’s heavy, surprisingly heavy, as heavy as my own head.  And I carry it to my car and drive to Memphis and I see ahead of me those bright lights and the big river and this time, I don’t think I’m going to smash the pot, no, I’m going to keep it for myself, all for myself... 

 

8.         

            Al Freiheit left Dallas before dawn and made the old Indian museum before noon.  The meeting with the tribal archaeologist and lawyer was scheduled for 1:00.  It had rained near

Texarkana, and, a couple times, Al drove through drizzle, but it was dry in the delta.  The sun was hidden behind grey cloud stretched taut between horizons. 

            Local farmers parked their tractors and harvesters in the museum lot and so the pole barns were half-concealed by the rigs standing there.  Al Freiheit and his mother, Doc’s second wife, had padlocked the museum about ten years ago.  One of Doc’s old sharecroppers, Ross, moved into a trailer across the highway from the pole barns so that he could keep an eye on the place.  He lived rent-free in the trailer, scared the local kids away from the barns, and collected small fees for the tractors and other farm implements parked in the lot.

            Al pulled his car up to the side of Ross’ trailer house.  Ross had told him that the museum was haunted.  He had a bottle tree next to his front door, every branch big enough impaling a wine or coke bottle.  Since there was no sun, the bottles drooped down, pulling the branches toward the ground without the sparkle and sun-splashed glitter that was supposed to attract spirits into the glass vessels.  Although Ross didn’t like going into the museum, he didn’t think it was haunted by the ancient Hebrews.  It was the parking lot that he didn’t like:   ghost cars full of tourists kept pulling up and honking their horns and, sometimes, Ross would see very particular ghosts – a heavy-set man with short hair searching for something in the parking lot, or a middle-aged man in wraparound sunglasses who arrived in a limousine in silvery moonlight – hovering across Highway 61 among the tractors and threshers.       

            Ross had a lean-to porch built up along the front side of his trailer house.  He came out and shook Al’s hand.  Ross’ hair had turned completely white but he still had a big, round belly and huge shoulders like wings.  Al asked him how he was doing.  “Just fine,” Ross said.  “How’s the family?”  Al asked.  “Doin’ reasonable,” Ross said.  Al knew that Ross had a much younger second wife.  He thought he saw her peeking out through the kitchen curtains from within the trailer.  “How’s Dodge doing?” Al asked.  “Not so good, Mr. Freiheit,” Ross said.  “Not good at all.”  Al shook his head.  “Well if there’s anything I can do for you’all?” he asked.  “I don’t think there’s anything can be done for Dodge,” Ross said. 

            Ross sat down in his rocking chair looking out across the gravel shoulder of the road, beyond the two-lanes of stained and crinkled blacktop, to the lot full of farm implements.  All of the brightly colored murals on the museum had been torn down.  Al saw them stacked face down next to the trailer with the old road signs.  It looked as if Ross were planning to make a chicken coop or maybe a rabbit hutch out of the old red and yellow-painted boards. 

            “You want somethin’ to drink whiles you wait?”

            “What do you have?”

            “I got some home brew and my wife done brewed some sun-tea,” Ross said.

            “That home brew will addle my mind,” Al said.  “The tea would be fine though.”

            Ross got up and ambled into the house.  He came back with two tall glasses full of ice and amber-colored tea.

            They drank the tea.  Highway 61 was very quiet.  Now and then, an old car rolled by, old farmers inside peering suspiciously over the dash at the crops in the field.  A pickup crowded with Mexican farm workers careened by, spraying loud oom-pah-pah Mariachi music in all directions.  Six or seven miles to the west the traffic running between Memphis and St. Louis on the four-lane interstate hummed by.

            Around 1:00, a van with Oklahoma plates eased by the museum parking lot, drove another hundred yards and made a u-turn on the highway.  The Van was marked on its side: CHOCTAW NATION OF OKLAHOMA – the Civilized Tribe.  Beneath those words, the van invited invited readers to “Sample the Hospitality of our Pearl River Casinos and Resorts”. 

            “Here’s my meeting, Ross,” Al said.

            “You want me to come with you.”

            “I don’t think so,” Al said.  “It’s legal wrangling.”

            “I got me a Triple S Toby in the house,” Ross said.  “You want me to borrow it to you.  For good luck.”

            “I’ll need it,” Al said.  “But no, I got to do this alone.”

            “I’m right here, Mr. Freiheit,” Ross said.  “Holler if them injuns get you down.”

            The van found an alley into the tangle of parked implements.  Al crossed over to meet them. 

            A woman wearing a business suit with red scarf around her throat stepped out of the van.  She had short black hair, brown skin, and was wearing bifocals dropped down on her nose.  The tilt of the bifocals gave her skeptical, questioning appearance. 

            “I’m Melinda Toussaint, archaeological consultant for the Choctaw Nation.”

            Al shook her hand.

            The driver of the van was a tall man with pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes.  His hair was shoulder length and her wore an embroidered sweat band stretched across his forehead.  Little dream-catcher earrings dangled from both of his ear lobes.

            “Billy McGregor, lawyer from Bartlesville – I’m legal counsel to the Choctaw Nation,” he said.

            Al shook his hand also.

            Melinda took a reinforced samsonite briefcase from the van, removed an elaborate camera, and slung it around her neck.  She carried a brown valise containing a clipboard.

            “We appreciate you letting us take another look,” Melinda Toussaint said.  “I hope we can reach an informal conciliation agreement.”

            “I’m sure that will be possible,” Al said.

            “I’ve got the tax records if you want to see them,” McGregor said. “I know you didn’t think the Museum took any federal grant money.  And you’re right about that.”

            “My daddy was pretty scrupulous on that point,” Al said.  “No federal interference.”

            “No dispute there,” McGregor said.  “But it looks like tax returns were filed – for, at least, a decade or so – treating expenses as deductible.  Your daddy had this set up as charitable, tax-exempt operation.  There’s no dispute about that either.”

            “Right,” Al said.

            “So we’re looking at an entity that has a solid, well-established history of operating tax-exempt with all that implies from a federal tax point of view,” McGregor said.  “Our position is that federal tax-exempt status, in itself, is sufficient to confer jurisdiction with respect to the NAGPRA.”

            “Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,” Melinda Toussaint said.

            “I got you,” Al said.  “NAGPRA.”

            “So we can petition the federal court, if need be, for repatriation.  And not only the human remains but, also, the mortuary goods.”

            “All funerary goods,” Melinda said.

            “You’re a lawyer, I know,” McGregor said.  “I appreciate that you understand these issues.”

            “Contracts for athletes, labor negotiation,” Al said.  “This is beyond my purview.”

            “Well, I’m sure you understand,” McGregor said.

            “Look, I’m here to make a deal with you today,” Al said.  “I don’t want to waste my life screwing around with stuff my obsessive-compulsive daddy collected.  I’m with you on this.”

            “So can we take another look,” Melinda Toussaint said.

            “Be my guest,” Al said.

            He took the key that Ross had handed him and unlocked the padlock on the door.  Inside it was dark and smelled of rot.  Some black, fat, hairy blow-flies cruised the dark air, buzzing loudly as they circled their faces.

            Al hit the switch and the lights flickered but stayed lit.  The blow-flies hovered like little whirring helicopters overhead. 

            “Check it out as long as you want,” Al said.  “I was raised by the security guard’s family over across the way and I’m gonna visit with them.”

            “That’s fine,” Melinda Toussaint said. 

            The tall Indian skeleton with the great, trailing bonnet had fallen apart.  The arm that used to be raised in salute to visitors was lying on the floor and it looked like some animal had gnawed on the scalps. 

            “Come across the highway to the trailer when you’re done,” Al said.

            The Choctaw archaeologist and her lawyer were inside the pole barns for about an hour.  Al sat with Ross on his porch and watched the day brighten.  The sun slit the clouds and, then, speared the distant cotton fields with shafts of golden light.  The air lifted from its leaden repose and became more lively – breezes made the flowers toss their heads. 

            Ross talked about old Doc Freiheit.  He recalled Doc’s first wife, a French woman, he had brought down to the Delta after returning from the Great War.  The woman longed for Paris and so, once a year, Doc took her to New Orleans, but that city just made her homesick.  She was moody and quarrelsome.

            “Daddy always said that woman was the most misunderstood woman in the delta,” Al said.

            Doc had two sons with his first wife.  One of them was killed at Anzio.  The other, a great sportsman and angler, died in a single-engine plane crash somewhere north of the Great Slave Lake in Canada.  After her second son died, Doc’s first wife left him and returned to France.  Ross said: “If I ain’t mistaken, she is living still.”  “I heard that too,” Al said.  “That woman is too mean to die,” Ross said.  “She is one-hundred and two.”

            When he crossed the highway to the porch, McGregor had tears brightening his big blue  eyes.  He was sniffling too.

            “The elders...” he stuttered.  “It hurts so much to see the elders disrespected like that.

            “Probably an illegal display of human remains,” Ms. Toussaint said.  “You know it’s against Arkansas state law to display human remains for a fee.”

            “The place has been closed for more than ten years,” Al said. 

            McGregor dabbed at his eyes. 

            Melinda Toussaint said: “It’s racist and degrading, but you have to accept that standards of conduct evolve.”

            “Of course,” Al said.

            “Your father probably thought he was helping native peoples by preserving evidence of their culture and by focusing attention on them,” she said.  “It was just misguided.”

            “That’s what we would say today,” Al replied. 

            Ross asked McGregor and the lady archaeologist if they wanted some sun-tea.

            “Not right now,” Melinda Toussaint said. “But thank you very much.”

            She said that some tribal elders would come in a couple weeks.  They would burn sage in the museum and perform a religious ritual.  Then, the bones on display would be wrapped in blankets and taken for interment on tribal land in Oklahoma. 

            “The pit is very interesting,” Melinda Toussaint said.  “It’s shameful to dig open the earth to show a thing like that, but, as an archaeologist... you see, even I feel conflicts sometime...it’s probably important.  We’re going to insist that site be covered over, buried.   But, you might – someone might, you know, want to challenge that...You could go to Court or, better yet, the State of Arkansas could go to court to enjoin damage to the site.  It’s potentially important...”

            “Listen,” Al said.  “I’m not interested in old bones or tribal artifacts.  You can fill it in with a front-end loader for all I care.  This place means nothing to me.  It’s a thorn in my side.”

            Melinda Toussaint shrugged.  She said that the Choctaw would cover the bones in the pit with a a ton of white sand, then, bury the whole thing under a bed of dirt and re-seeded wild flowers.

            “I’ll get plenty of photographs and measurements,” she said.  “Scholars ought to...you know...take a look at this.  But, for the general public, it’s —“

            ”Sacrilege and disrespect for native peoples,” McGregor said. 

            “There’s just a few mementos, pottery, and stuff, that I want to keep,” Al Freiheit said.  “My daddy purchased some of that stuff from the Navajos or in New Mexico at the old pueblos.  I remember seeing those places when I was a little boy.  Memories, you know.”

            “Most of it’s made for tourists,” Melinda said.  “Only a couple items need protection.”

            “You’ll take all the human remains?”  Al asked.

            “No,” McGregor said.  “There’s what looks like an Egyptian mummy in there and that big standing skeleton by the door –“

            ”It’s not Native American,” Melinda said.  “It’s Indian all right, but probably from Bombay or Calcutta.  For teaching, an anatomical specimen.  There’s an identifying tag on the humerus – some college of osteopathy in Pennsylvania. “          

            ”Will you just take those too?” Al asked.

            “Of course, not,” McGregor said.  “The Choctaw nation isn’t running a disposal service for dead bodies.”

            “We’re not equipped to handle those cadavers,” Melinda Toussaint said.

            “That’s your problem,” McGregor said.

            “Look, I’m being helpful and cooperative,” Al said.  “Is there any dispute about that?”

            “None at all,” Melinda Toussaint said.  “I appreciate your cooperation.  It’s just that we have certain religious issues and it won’t be possible for us to manage the disposal of the skeleton at the doorway and the mummy.” 

            Al nodded. 

            Ross was sitting apart from them.  As they had been talking, the pace of his rocking in his chair had increased.  Now, he was leaning back and forth quickly in the rocking chair and the floorboard in the porch under the rocker was squeaking loudly.

            “Ole Doc Freiheit took good care of them bones.”  Ross said.  “He paid attention to them like they was his relatives.”

            “Of course,” Melinda Toussaint said.

            McGregor sniffed at the air as if suddenly scenting a bad smell.

            “I don’t think we need to discuss most of the artifacts,” Melinda Toussaint said.

            “We just throw most of ‘em in the pit before it’s buried-up?”  Al asked.

            “Oh, no,” Melinda said.  “That would confuse the archaeological record.  You don’t want to commingle periods and different tribes.  It wrecks the integrity of the archaeological record.”

            “Who cares?” Al said.

            “Professional due diligence,” Melinda said.

            “Other than the bones,” McGregor said. “The only thing we need to recover is that effigy-head pot, the ceramic jug in the glass case toward the back.”

            “We need to repatriate that pot,” Melinda Toussaint said.

            “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Al replied.  “There might be problems.”

            “I hope not,” the archeologist said.  “The pot is very sacred.  My people would say that shows a specific man, represents his portrait, and that it is powerful medicine.  Important religious significance.”

            “You’re talking about repatriating the pot?” Al Freiheit asked.  “The dead man’s head.”

            “It’s a mortuary item and very, very powerful,” Melinda Toussaint said.  “It was inhumed with a high status burial.  We will need to arrange to take that pot back to Oklahoma.”

            “Right now?” Al asked.

            “No, when we retrieve the bones,” the archaeologist said.

            “Cause I think that pot has been identified as Caddo,” Al said.  “I don’t think it’s Choctaw at all.”

            “The Choctaw are the modern descendants of the Caddo people,” McGregor said. 

            “Well there’s a Caddo tribe in Oklahoma, west Oklahoma,” Melinda Toussaint said.

“It’s the same language group, but culturally a little different.”

            “I guess the Caddo have first dibs on the effigy head pot,” Al said.

            “I’d say it’s not Caddo but proto-Choctaw, about five-hundred years old,” Melinda Toussaint said. 

            “When I was a boy, I head a Chickasaw elder say it was a medicine jug in his culture,” Al said. 

            “It’s not Chickasaw at all,” Melinda said.  “The Chickasaw never developed that level of skill with ceramics.”

            “The Chickasaw are ancestral enemies,” McGregor said.  “There would be a whole lot of trouble if the pot were to find its way to them.”

            “You should just give it to us,” Melinda Toussaint said.  “We’ll make up a deed of sale and, since the tribe is accepting the pot as a charitable donation, you can take a sizeable deduction off your tax liability.”

            “Well, what’s the pot worth?” Al asked.

            “Oh, I don’t know,” Melinda Toussaint said.  “Not that much.” 

            “Well, let me think about that pot,” Al said.  “It’s been in my family a long time.”

            “Please do the right thing,” the lawyer, McGregor said.

            “You see,” Al said.  “If I remember rightly, daddy, may have acquired the pot in circumstances where the ownership was disputed.  I think it was found on a colored fellow’s land.”

            “That’s right,” Ross said.  “It weren’t found in ole Doc Freiheit’s field.  It been found on a neighbor’s place.  I knows that.  I was there.” 

            “You see,” Al said.

            “Well, possession is nine-tenths,” Melinda said.

            McGregor repeated: “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

            “It would be good thing if we could repatriate the effigy-head pot, a very good thing,” Melinda Toussaint said.

            “I need to think about other possible claimants,” Al said.  “Let me ponder this a little.”      “We’d like to repatriate it when we clean up the human remains,” Melinda Toussaint said.  “Talk to your tax man about a deduction for the donation.  We can make it worth your while.”

            “Sometimes, if we display artifacts – you know, at the tribal museum or in the casinos, we will make an attribution – the generous gift of Al... Al Freiheit.  How does that sound?”

            “I have to think about that Mr. Mc...what is it?...McGregor” Al said. 

            They talked about dates.  Al Freiheit took his pocket calender out of the jacket draped in the back seat of his car.  After shaking hands, the Indian archaeologist and the tribal lawyer walked back across the empty highway, now blazing hot, to their van. They eased out onto the two-lanes and drove south, toward Memphis.

            “They sho’ do want that jug made like a dead man’s head,” Ross said.

            “That they do,” Al Freiheit said.  “I’m gonna get it out of there right now.”

            “You ain’t gonna give it to them?” Ross asked.

            “I ain’t gonna give it to them,” Al said.

                                                                                                                        “By rights, it belongs to Dodge.  He put it together,” Ross said.           

            “Maybe that’s true,” Al said.

            “But he ain’t in no shape to provide safekeepin’ for it now,” Ross replied.

            “That’s too bad.  Ross, I mean that truly.  That’s too bad.”

            Al hustled across the highway.  The sun set off little burning detonations all around him on the asphalt and crossing the gravel and among the rusted metal and hot mirror reflections of the farm implements parked in front of the pole sheds.

            The padlock on the door was still askew and Al hurried inside.  The blow flies, big as bumble bees, droned around his cheek and ears.  He didn’t like the smell and so he opened his lips and tried to breathe through his mouth.  Light filtered down through some slits in the corrugated metal roof.  Al didn’t turn on the electric lights, but hurried through the gloom, past the pit and leathery mummy into the bone room. 

            The effigy pot stood in a puddle of flickering wan light bent through a rift in the roof where some tarpaper was twitching in the wind like a serpent’s tongue.  Al squatted to inspect the glass case.  The dead man’s head was shadowy behind a blur of dust, spider’s webs, and ghostly fingerprints smeared on the glass. 

            Al stood, circled the case a couple times, and, then, rapped on the glass.  The hollow sound was unpleasant and, it seemed as if the corpse head reacted slightly, lips parting into a broader smile and ears twitching. 

            “You old son-of-a-bitch,” Al said. 

            The corpse head seemed to be gloating at Al’s inability to open the glass box. 

            Al picked up a stone club and smashed open the back side of the case.  Glass draped the effigy head, shrouding the pot in vague, ambiguous reflections.

            “Come on out of there,” Al said.  He reached through the broken glass and pulled the pot toward him.  Something bit his hand where thumb joins palm.  The pot was surprisingly heavy, decked with shards of glass, and slippery under his fingers.  He shook the glass off, took the pot in his arm close to his belly, and, then, walked quickly through the shadows to the half-open door and the blaze of sunlight beyond.

            He was blinded for a moment.  Something warm was trickling down his arm.  The rusting implements were a maze that he had to thread to reach the hot, glaring strip of asphalt.

            The heat and the warm wind and the glare of light on metal and tar all seemed amplified.  Al looked down and saw that his hand was ripped open and that blood was running in a stream as wide as his little finger down his forearm and into his elbow.  The pot smelled bad, like rotten eggs and meat gone bad.  His ears were roaring.

            A white van was rushing down Highway 61, northbound.  It was the Indian lawyer and the archaeologist.  Apparently, they had turned around and were returning back toward the museum.        

            Al was embarrassed.  He was holding the pot under his breast bone, it’s dead face turned toward his body, and blood was dripping from his arm onto his shoes and pant leg.  He waved at the van with his free hand and stepped onto the highway, 

            The van slowed and it’s tire almost ran over his toes.  The van passed so closely that Al was afraid the mirror would catch his wrist and fling the pot down onto the asphalt.

            “Jesus Christ,” he said.  “Watch what you’re doing.”

            The van rolled to a stop in front of Ross’ trailer.  Melinda Toussaint rolled down her window.  Al was so close that he could hear the rushing sound of the air conditioning in the vehicle. 

            “We got turned around,” Melinda said.  Ross was still on the porch in his rocking chair and he was looking fixedly at the van.  “We got all turned around,” she said again.  “What’s the best way to get to the freeway?”

            Ross pointed: “A mile just in the direction you’re heading.  Then, take a left.”

            “Thank you very much,” Melinda said.

            The van rolled forward, accelerated, and Al watched it drive away. 

            He went to his car and put the effigy pot on the floor behind the driver’s seat.  Then, Al squeezed tight on his cut, wrapping his hand around the wound.  It hurt and Al winced.  He kicked the car door shut and climbed up on Ross’ porch.

            “You hurt yourself,” Ross said. 

            “I got cut getting that damned pot out of the glass case,” Al said.

            “You got to wash that out good and put on a band-aid or something,” Ross said.  He shouted for his wife. 

            She came out on the porch, looked at Al’s hand, and, then, went in the trailer for some Mercurochrome and gauze.

            “Those bastards almost run me over,” Al said.  “Did you see that?”

            “I didn’t notice,” Ross said.

            “Then, they ignored me,” Al said.  “They looked right past me.”

            “Ain’t too gentlemanly,” Ross said. 

           

            Later, Al stopped in Texarkana.  His hand was throbbing.  He wondered if it were infected. 

            As he drove, the pot rattled around behind his seat.  Engine vibration made it turn face to front, then, face to back.  Every time Al looked at the pot, it was rotated so that its dead eyes were aimed at him. 

            He found a WalMart with a post office.  Al bought a box and some newspapers.  He wrapped the pot in newspapers and put it in the box.  There was a yellow legal pad in the glove box and, on that paper, he wrote a note to the Department of State Archaeology at Fayetteville.  He said that his family was donating the effigy pot to Arkansas, wrote his father’s name, and approximate date when the pot was unearthed and, finally, named the county and township where Walt and Ross had discovered the ceramic head while plowing.  It took him another ten minutes, flipping through phone books at the Walmart service desk, to find the address for the Arkansas State Archaeology Department at the school in Fayetteville, but, at last, he wrote that information on the box flap.  The girl at the counter offered him some strapping tape and Al used that to seal the box. 

            Al insured the contents, using a credit card to pay postage.

            He bought a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew and some Extra-Strength Tylenol.  It had been a long day and his eyes felt tired and blurry.  Shooting pains stabbed from his hand wound clear to his shoulder.

            But he was glad to be rid of the effigy pot.  He drank the Mountain Dew, took some Tylenol, and found the freeway to Dallas. 

            The next morning, Al was feverish and purple streaks discolored his arm.  He was hospitalized with a bad infection for several days.  The intravenous antibiotics quenched the infection, but he had joint pain and suffered terrible nightmares for more than a month.  If I am not mistaken, he is doing well now.