Ben had been talking about Reed’s father, and what it had been like growing up together in these woods.
“A man can get lost pretty quick out here, so, as you might imagine, an inexperienced boy can get lost a lot quicker. Your granddaddy used to let the two of us boys loose in these woods just to see who’d get back. I’d be stubborn, wouldn’t play along, and as a result I wouldn’t wander too far afield. Now your daddy, he took all that real serious, saw that as a test his daddy was givin’ him that he needed to pass, and so he’d break into a run trying to be the first one back, and most times he just got lost worst than ever.”
Off to their left was an overgrown area full of bright pink rhododendrons, the clumps spreading all over the edge of the woods, obscuring fully the first half of the shadowed trunks. A number of ridges fell back from the one they were on, like great green ocean swells. The boughs and leaves were so tightly packed here that Reed couldn’t see a spot of ground. He knew the undergrowth must be just as thick and impenetrable.
Stands of forest looking much as they did when the first pioneers came into this valley—it never ceased to amaze him.
The view here made Reed remember one of the few good times he ever had with his father and grandfather. It was shortly before his grandfather died. There were four of them: grandfather, Reed’s father, Uncle Ben, and Reed. They’d gone up on some old forgotten patch of land his grandfather owned on the Big Andy. It might be this very one, in fact. After all these years it was difficult to tell.
Reed had been suspicious of going; he didn’t trust his father and grandfather. But things had really worked out okay.
They’d been planting red cedar on a bare slope next to some older trees. They had worked since sunup, which had been too much for Reed, but his grandfather—who was always in charge of any such group activities—had allowed him to rest on some limestone outcroppings. Later he’d pointed out to Reed the nearby black locust and cedar, giant trees over fifty feet high. “Trees won’t ever be that tall again,” his grandfather had said, and Reed could still remember the bleak feeling that had left him with. Even back then you could see the devastating effects of stripping four ridges away—the mountain there was bald. Now that particular ridge didn’t even exist anymore.
In most parts of the woods here tulip poplar and red oak had driven out the cedar. Cedar requires a lot of sun, and once the poplars come, needing lots of shade, they soon take over. After a time the poplars themselves grow so large they darken and crowd out their own seedlings, leaving room for the beech and hemlock that eventually take over the forest.
His father and grandfather between them had taught Reed all those things on that one outing. He’d remember them a lifetime. How an old forest invites new plants and animals. How the waxwings destroyed good fence post wood. How woodpeckers nested in knotholes softened by fungus. How a catbird can eat its weight in bugs each day.
For dinner that night the four shared a rabbit Uncle Ben had caught, and slept underneath the oldest cedar in the forest, maybe the oldest in the state, grandfather had said. It had been a good day.
Reed and Uncle Ben started back down the ridge around sunset. A few times Ben stumbled, and with a pang Reed realized his uncle—who had always seemed impossibly youthful—was getting old. After a time Reed put an arm around his uncle’s waist to help him.
Ben smiled and patted his nephew’s hand, and didn’t take it away.
Chapter 22
Reed rested in the shade of an earth wall running midway between the cliff and his old homeplace. He’d been working since sunup, and it had been good work; he’d found far more artifacts over the past five hours than in all the time before.
Funny how he was able to maintain a professional attitude through it all. Without a professional attitude, you missed things, or jumped to false conclusions. He couldn’t afford that on this particular dig. So he kept all the proper paperwork, spending a couple of hours each day on it. Archaeological site and survey records: owner’s name and address, physical description of the site, location of the nearest water, area of the site, physical condition of the site, artifacts discovered, sketch map. Daily field records, feature records, archaeological stratigraphy record, archaeological field catalog, archaeological photo record. Directions for reaching the site, vegetation, depth of deposit, surrounding and site soil, possibility of additional destruction. Site is partially damaged or inaccessible through: a) buildings on site, b) roads on site, c) cultivation, d) wind erosion, e) water erosion, f) vandalism.
Reed thumbed through the reports. Meaningless, finally. How had it happened here? How had his family died? How did they feel? Was there much pain?
Stop it… stop it. Getting emotionally involved was a trap. Dr. Simms had said that too. The “spirit of the place.” Make yourself open to it.
The spirit of this place had been a harsh one, no question about that. But there really wasn’t much in what he had found to indicate as much.
Slope west to east with a gentle fall of 4.3 feet in 100 feet… baseline X staked out along the crest of the long axis from the south edge of the front door… lines crossing the base at right angles lettered A through H, starting at the wood’s edge… square designated right or left as one faced the house… fill to the left and right of X removed by blocks and the profile of the exposed face of the transverse line was drawn…
Reed woke up from his earthy dream, the back of his skull cool where it had rested against the dirt wall. He shook his head and small clay particles drifted over his shoulders. Dig and dig and dig, and what was he finding?
Miscellaneous pieces from a set of blue china, along with several silver forks and a spoon. They hadn’t had such things that he could remember. Maybe they belonged to some other washed-away dwelling. Or maybe they came from his mother’s, maybe even his father’s side of the family, tucked away in storage for a special occasion that never came. Brushing away some of the dirt, he could clearly see the blue cupids that danced around the border. Hideously ugly stuff.
Decaying copies of Pilgrim’s Progress and Paradise Lost. No doubt they had belonged to his grandfather, who had been far more intelligent than he pretended to be. Miscellaneous pieces of decaying cloth and a shattered trunk lid. His mother had kept her finer things in there.
A few rusted iron skillets, an iron pot, cast-iron trivet. His mother had gotten those from her mother. Empty bottles of medicine for his mother’s aches and pains and general “women’s complaints.” She got them from an old peddler who came by once a year, in June. Reed doubted that they had any real value as medicine, but he was sure their alcoholic content had made his mother feel better. She’d never take a legitimate drink of liquor.
A few yards of rotted ribbon, some empty spools from her sewing box, the glass handle of the sewing box itself, a few odd needles he caught in the sieve, a glass doorknob, some rusted coat hangers, some foreign coins a relative had brought back from the war, coils from the refrigerator.
He found other parts to the Philco later—it must have hit some rocks, or logs, as it had been virtually ripped apart by the force of the waters. For the first time he realized how savage those flood waters must have been. Nothing but this debris.
Reed found himself thinking about the trash mound at Badger House in Mesa Verde. A way of life reduced to just so much garbage.
But there was a certain kind of peaceful satisfaction in this work. Counting artifacts, sorting them, fitting all the different pieces together. A gigantic jigsaw puzzle. There were items that had become so distorted through age and trauma they weren’t recognizable at first glance. He’d spend a great deal of time examining them, playing the game of fantasizing what their original form might have been.