There are important things we should be doing, somewhere, sometime. Here we’re useless. We should be changing the world, not hiding from people with bows and arrows and spears.
We didn’t mean to kill them. It wasn’t our fault. We took precautions against bringing any diseases back with us.
The medic says it’s probably something we only notice as a sniffle or a sore throat. To them, it’s death in two days flat.
We tried to help, to let them know we’re sorry. They just don’t understand.
Meanwhile, while we dig, we have music. I find my body moving to the rocking rhythm of Roger Whitaker. We’ve been here too long.
Leake IX
‘Antiquity held too light thoughts from Objects of mortality, while some drew provocatives of mirth from Anatomies, and jugglers shewed tricks with Skeletons.’
There was a new sound on the River.
Part metallic clang, part wooden knock, it came from the bend of the River.
Guys with conch shells on the lookout mounds began to blow them. Everyone took off for the canoe landing.
Took was in the hut. Sunflower came around from the garden patch. She brushed dirt from her hands.
Sun Man and a delegation stopped outside Took’s hut.
‘The ones on the River are the ones you want to see,’ Took said to me.
He stood, pulled on a bright feather mantle, then picked up the rolled bag of pipes he had been working on all winter.
I went out with him, stood behind some of the minor nobles, then we all walked through the village, out the river gate and down toward the water.
Half the village was standing and waiting there already. A plume of smoke rose up through the trees downriver. I felt we were in the old Currier and Ives print, ‘Waiting on the Levee.’
It appeared around the bend.
It had been so long since I’d seen any machinery I’d almost forgotten what it was like. The prow appeared, broad, flat and low. Then the front of the second deck, then the third. All painted bright red with yellow stripes like a hot dog covered with mustard. There were tall fair figures on the deck.
They had horns.
There was the long blast of a whistle, then the roar of a foghorn. The people onshore jumped and held their ears. The ship turned in toward the canoe landing, the figure on the prow casting a plumbline again and again before him.
The craft had two paddlewheels amidships. Above the upper deck flew a pennon with a red scimitar on a white field.
The figures in the pilothouse wore bright red robes and turbans.
There was another blast on the horn and a long release of steam from somewhere amidships. The paddles stopped, reversed, backed water. The ship, as big as the temple mound, slid quietly into the landing, as stately as a hotel.
The front of the ship, a drawbridge type ramp, arced over slowly and jerked down to the ground of the bank.
There was another piercing whistle and the people of the village began to cheer.
A short man in a robe and turban, followed by others dressed in robes or leather pants and jerkins, carrying arquebuses and blunderbusses, stepped to the top of the ramp.
‘Took, my old friend,’ he said in Greek. ‘Tell Sun Man and your people hello and that we come to trade, even up, sky is the limit, for whatever and how much?’
Took turned to the people, nodded to Sun Man, made a short speech.
The people yelled wildly, jumped around, began laying their wares, skins, weapons, art and food out onto their blankets on the ground.
The men came down the planks, all smiles, holding their hands out to hug Took, and bow to Sun Man. The deckhands, some in loose pants and fezzes, others in their horned and beaked helmets, began unloading the trade goods of the ship into the open area above the landing.
‘This,’ said Took, ‘is Aroun el Hama, king of merchants.’
‘And this,’ he continued, ‘is Madison Yazoo Leake.’
‘Hello,’ I said in Greek.
He looked at me. He was small, with hard dark eyes, a coal-black beard and salt and pepper mustache. A small scar went from his left eyebrow to his missing left earlobe.
‘By Ibram,’ he said, ‘are you a southerner gone wild on us?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘much farther away than that, I fear.’
‘Your accent,’ said el Hama. ‘You learned the language nowhere I know.’
‘I’m sure you two will want to talk tonight,’ said Took. ‘Aroun, they’re going to kill us all if we don’t get some trading done.’ People were yelling and pointing to their goods all up and down the landing.
‘Yaz,’ said Took. ‘Give us a hand, will you?’ He pointed over to where one of the guys with a horned helmet was arguing in one language with a village woman arguing in another.
I went over to help. It took a while, what with my trouble with the moundbuilder language, and the accent of the northerner, a big red-headed dude, to find that they had argued the price both up and down and had passed the price they had both agreed to long before.
It was going to be a long hot day.
THE BOX IX
DA FORM 11614 Z 01 Jan 2003
Comp: 147TOE: 148
Pres for duty
115
KIA
13
KLD
3
MIA
11 For: S. Spaulding
MLDCol, Inf.
1 Commanding
Wounded, Hospby: Atwater, Willey
4 2Lt, Arm.
Totaclass="underline" 147act. Adj.
Bessie VII
The day was overcast, humid and hot, and it was just dawn.
Bessie sketched the depressions around the mounds. They were there on the flood terrace, one west, one north, one eastnortheast. She drew in the bluff line. The mounds occupied the center. There were shallower areas around them. She flipped over the pages of her field book. Perhaps this had been a village site? But they’d found no post molds yet, no typical village structures. Maybe it had been a temporary habitation site, used only while the mounds were being raised.
Perch and the others arrived with the muddy sun. This time Perch was in work clothes, his tiny frame lost inside them.
They waited for him to get out of his car. Over at the trucks, the photographer and artists were getting out their equipment. Down below, the work crews were taking off the tarps from the mounds.
‘Governor’s still not back,’ said Perch. ‘Won’t be for two, three days. There seems to be a small mutiny in his party machine. Also’ – he looked down at the bayou – ‘we’re in for rain, lots of it. They’ve closed the gates downstream and opened the ones above. It’s raining like hell in Shreveport, and all up the Mississippi. They think this one might be as bad as the spring flood two years ago. I figure we got five, maybe six days.’
‘What about a coffer dam?’ asked Kincaid.
‘We can use part of the crews to work on it. I’ve sent to the University for maintenance crews with some tractors. I tried to get a hold of the highway department, but nobody’s doing anything until the governor gets back and they see who’s on top.’
‘That’s probably why he left,’ said Jameson. ‘Giving ’em enough rope.’
‘That’s why nobody’s answering their phones,’ said Perch.
‘Where do we put the dam?’ asked Kincaid. He opened the survey map. ‘Along the line of the old terrace?’