Water had begun to trickle in through the sandbags. Kincaid sent the work crews to fill more and stack them.
The crowd of onlookers squealed and moved back on the bluff. Their cars, trucks and wagons clogged the highway turnoff. Rumours ran through the crowd ten times a day – they’d found a mound filled with gold, with giants, with elephants, with a wagon made of silver. Washington brought the latest gossip from the crowd to them every hour or so.
‘How that stuff starts, I don’t know,’ said Bessie.
Thompson was studying a long piece of rust. ‘This could have been a sword,’ he said.
‘Or a rifle,’ said Bessie.
Thompson looked at her. She flipped her field notebook, making sure each specimen was catalogued by its proper grid mark. She put the book down on the camp table.
‘Dammit! We don’t know any more than we did the first day!’ she said.
‘You’ve got the chief, and the ID tags.’
‘That’s not the answer. That’s more the question,’ she said. There were oohing noises outside. Then yells near the mound. She stood up. She opened the tentflap. The skies were gray and rainswept. Down near the horse mound, several of the diggers were running back from the dam. A small jet of water curved out from it.
‘Pull the tents,’ yelled Kincaid nearby. ‘Get everybody up here!’ He stepped in, wet as an otter, his eyes red-rimmed. He slung his wet raincoat off.
‘It’s all lost,’ he said to Bessie. ‘We’ve got everything we’re going to find down there. The dam’s going. We’ll lose a few horse bones, some skeletons, maybe more grave goods. But there’s no answer down there. We’ll have to piece one together from what we’ve got here.’
‘I’ve come to the same –’ she began.
There were whoops and hollers down the bluff. Kincaid stepped into the rain, yelled. ‘Get those kids outta there! The dam’s gonna go! Hey you! Troopers! Get –’ He began to cough, great coughs that turned into ragged sobs.
Bessie held him while he cried.
‘Jameson, I need a drink,’ said Kincaid after a moment. ‘People let their goddam kids down there. They want them killed, I guess. I’m going to have a big drink and watch the dam burst. Coming with me?’ He and Jameson left.
In a minute, she heard ‘Potato Head Blues’ crank up on the phonograph.
She turned. Thompson had his head turned at an odd angle. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
He went to the table, turned her field book right side up.
‘Oh, I see. It’s the tents. For a minute, I thought you were drawing a defense perimeter.’
Something went through Bessie like it had the night Bob Basket disappeared in the storm.
‘What did you say?’
‘I see now. Nothing.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Your notebook. I looked at it upside down. It looked like a defense perimeter, a pentangle. Center command post, five bunkers around it. For defending ground like this. I see now it’s the mound, and two of the tents on the bluff, and these three things marked “shallow pits”.’
‘If you were in one of those, and wanted to hide something, where would you put it?’ she asked.
‘You mean in combat? Under siege?’
‘Yes.’
He looked at the page a moment. ‘One of the bunkers. Under a bunker wall. They’d go by it on the way in. They’d search your command post with a fine tooth comb.’
‘Grab your shovel,’ said Bessie.
They could hear the water, up higher than their heads. They were in the one shallow pit beyond the mounds inside the dam wall. The dam loomed like a frozen wave, its sandbagged top like bad teeth.
The crowd watched them expectantly. There were kids’ footprints all around where they dug.
‘Little hellions,’ said Bessie.
‘Uh, I don’t like that breach in the wall over there, Bessie,’ said Thompson. The small gurgle was now a steady dirty flow. Rain fell into their faces. The top of the bluff was a mushroom bed of umbrellas and sheets with faces under them.
‘What are we looking for?’
‘Anything,’ she said. ‘We won’t find it. Give a yell when the wall gives way.’
‘Before then,’ he said.
They worked on in the rain. ‘Potato Head Blues’ floated from the camp, made them work faster. The drainage pit the highway people dug was filling. Soon the water would rise and creep into the pit where they dug.
‘How will we know when we find anything?’
‘You’ve been digging through post mold for the last five minutes,’ she said. ‘Lots of it, more than for a wall.’
There was a scream from the bluff. Some sandbags slid down the inside of the dam wall. Water sheeted in behind them.
‘Bingo!’ said Thompson. He put down his shovel. ‘Keep digging,’ said Bessie. He picked his shovel back up, dug in the wet earth.
There was a crash behind them.
They lived there for a year, Basket had said. They raised crops.
‘Look out!’ yelled a state trooper from above. They heard the dam tear.
They thanked the catfish and the crow, he had said.
Her shovel scraped something.
‘Help me,’ she said.
Their shovels scraped. ‘Help me!’ she said.
She found The Box.
They grabbed at it, lifted. It cracked. Water sloshed into their legs. They held the box together and ran. Water hit the backs of their knees.
‘Kincaid,’ she yelled. ‘Help!’
The dam burst.
The trooper’s face was all eyes and mouth. Bessie fell. Something pulled her by the feet, upside down, up the bluff face. She didn’t let go of her hold on the box.
A million gallons of water smashed the bluff face below her head.
Upside down, she saw skeletons and horse bones flying around like tumbling dice.
There was a small sign, too, that said SEE ROCK CITY.
Leake XVII
‘Some bones make best skeletons, some bodies quick and speediest ashes.’
The village was quiet and there were no guards out.
Then I saw the buzzards, some flying low, some sitting still in the trees nearest the walls.
Then I heard a low chanting coming from inside.
I rearranged Took on my shoulders and walked in through the west gate.
The smell hit me then. Death.
A small group of people danced in the center of the plaza. The rest of the huts seemed empty, or places filled with the dead.
I went to the dancers.
They were Buzzard Cult people, and Moe was in there with them. They continued to dance in the bright sunlight as I walked up to them, still in the woodpecker skins.
Moe left the group and came to me.
‘Where are the others?’ I asked. ‘Did the Huastecas attack again?’
‘Those that are left are across the River,’ said Moe. ‘They have abandoned the village. They carried their gods with them,’ he said, pointing to the temple. The woodpecker effigies were gone.
‘It wasn’t Huastecas,’ Moe continued. ‘Hamboon Bokulla was right. Look around you,’ he said, sweeping his arm over the still village. ‘Death came, a disease, while we were gone. We found the last of them. They sneezed and coughed up blood. Their skins burned to the touch and had turned purple with spots. They raved and they died yelling for water. It was not nice. You can look if you want. We only found the last few, and one old man who lived through it. The others are all east of the Mes-A-Sepa, starting over.’
‘Are there any canoes left?’
‘Take mine,’ said Moe. ‘I won’t need it any more.’