The Blue Corn Murders Page 8

  “You want to show respect?” she asked them, looking directly into their young, attentive faces one by one. “Then enter the ruins with respect. Move around—with respect. Touch—with respect. Speak of the living and the dead tribes—with respect. Believe me, if you do only that much, it will be an improvement over the way they have been treated by our cultures in the past.”

  Then suddenly she smiled broadly at them.

  “You ask wonderful questions. Important ones. Absolutely top of the line. Please take these important questions with you on your trip. One day it will be your generation’s turn to make these decisions. So if you see things that bother you, go ahead and let them bother you. Feel them. Think about them. Talk and argue about them. Find out what you really think about things like archaeology and restoration and American history. That’s what education is all about, learning how to think for yourself while at the same time considering the effects of your thoughts on the whole big picture.”

  She turned and gave Jon Warren a friendly shove.

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t take his word for anything!”

  Laughing, he asked the group, “Does anybody have a question that’s more interesting than pancakes and waffles?” Not a single hand shot up. “I thought so. Time for breakfast. You’ve earned it. Be packed and ready to board the vans, right down there in the parking lot, by ten o’clock sharp, or we will leave without you. Your teachers and I will be waiting for you.” He grinned at them. “Sixteen kids to three adults? Now there’s a ratio you ought to be able to work your way around. I have a feeling we’re going to have our hands full with you smart guys.”

  The kids grinned back at him, pleased at the flattery.

  On the bottom steps their teachers looked over at each other.

  “Now, on your marks, ready, set, go!”

  A mad rush into the dining room ensued, and Genia realized that she’d made a tactical error: Now she’d be last in the cafeteria line, following the great ravenous eating machines called “teenagers.”

  Still, it was worth it, because she had received her first solid clue about the identity of the prehistoric tenants of her land. And she thought she’d detected another interesting clue as well: a clear flash of mutual attraction between the pretty young archaeologist and the handsome young assistant director.

  It was only when she walked up behind the teachers on the veranda that she realized they were arguing, in low, furious tones, with Jon Warren.

  Eleven

  “What do you mean three adults?” The male teacher was right up in Jon’s face, keeping his voice quiet but in no way hiding his obvious fury. The kids had all gone inside, but Genia could not avoid the scene; they were blocking the door to the dining room. “You said there’d be at least two student interns going along with us on this trip. I have the letter from your director, saying that. We counted on that, we told the parents—we promised their parents—there would be approximately three adults present for every five kids.”

  “Naomi wouldn’t have said—”

  “I beg your pardon,” the woman teacher interrupted icily. “You want to see the letter?”

  “I have seen a million letters just like that,” Jon responded, obviously trying to keep his composure and to encourage them to find theirs again. “And it’s always the same ratio of grown-ups to kids. Look, we can go to her office and find her copy. I know she wouldn’t have said—”

  The male teacher was already squatting down on the veranda and opening his briefcase. He quickly pulled out a sheet of white paper, stood up, and thrust it at Jon.

  “I’ll save you the trouble. Read it.”

  Jon took it and read it through. Genia, who had walked farther on down the veranda and was trying to appear to be looking at the scenery, glanced over and saw him frown and then shake his head when he reached a certain point in the letter. He looked up at the angry teachers. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s easy. Say you’ll give us two more adults.”

  But he looked frustrated and embarrassed and spread out his hands as if appealing to them. Genia didn’t feel too bad about eavesdropping, since they were blocking her way into breakfast. She heard Jon Warren say, “I can’t. I mean, we’ll go find Naomi and ask her, but I know what she’ll say. There isn’t anybody free this week who can go.” He tried smiling at them. “Look, is it really such a problem? These seem like great kids. The three of us can handle them easily, don’t you think?”

  “The parents expect—”

  “This is outrageous, completely irresponsible.”

  “I’m tempted to say we ought to cancel the whole camping trip and haul them back home.”

  “Jesus, don’t do that. Think how disappointed the kids would be.” Jon handed the letter back. “Look, there’s got to be a way to handle this. Let’s go find our director and talk it over with her.”

  Genia admired the way he managed to get them in the door and off the porch. She waited a couple of seconds, then followed her grumbling stomach into the dining hall. She saw the three of them marching off toward a door marked “office,” while she made a beeline straight for the source of the delicious aromas.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, six members of the Women’s Hike into History were lingering over their breakfast dishes, arguing happily with one another about what had really happened to the Ancient People who abandoned their dwellings by 1250 A.D. Genia had started it all, by repeating for them the brief history lesson she’d heard Jon Warren give the teenagers.

  “Drought?” guessed Teri Fox, her hazel eyes eager in her brown face.

  “Overpopulation,” asserted Judith Belove, her resonant voice giving her slightest opinion the aura of fact, “which depleted the agricultural capacities of the land.”

  “Disease?” Teri countered. She and Judith both were dressed for hiking in boots, socks, shorts, and T-shirts, with windbreaker jackets laid to the side while they ate. “Like a thirteenth-century AIDS epidemic?”

  “War.” Judith made that, too, sound definite,

  “There was a lengthy drought,” Lillian Kleberg contributed, obviously speaking as the voice of experience at the Wheel. She looked cool and composed in her neat plaid shirt and loose trousers, Genia thought, with no sign of the tears she’d shed the night before at the Talking Circle. Genia’s heart went out to Lillian. One of the hardest things about losing a child, she had always suspected, was that people might never look at you the same way again. You might always be, forever after, the parent whose child had died, and an object of secret pity in the eyes of other people. That fact alone might be enough to make you want to start over again, anonymously, somewhere where nobody knew you. What was it Lillian had said before she burst into tears? Genia tried to recall: Something about wishing she could walk away from her past and never look back? Genia thought she could understand that longing, although wouldn’t that mean giving up memories of the lost child, too?

  “They may well have overused the land above the cliff dwellings,” Lillian was saying, with one finger in the air as she made her point. “But those factors alone are usually not considered sufficient to account for such a complete and permanent exodus. There aren’t many signs of armed conflict, so most archaeologists think war is an unlikely cause of the abandonment. And there aren’t any indications that rampant disease wiped them out. They weren’t wiped out, anyway; they just moved south.” She grinned. “Aren’t you impressed by how much I know?”

  “I certainly am.” Genia smiled back at her.

  “Aliens,” said Madeline Rose, and they all laughed—even Genia, who’d heard more or less the same joke from Jon Warren.

  At the side of the dining hall, where she was seated on the sill of an open window, Naomi stared outside, watching for a car to arrive. Some people might have thought that her morning couldn’t possibly have gotten any worse, but she knew better. Indulging a masochistic urge, she was just going to sit there and wait for it to arrive.

  She
was also half-listening to the women talking.

  At the Talking Circle last night, she had thought Teri and Judy seemed like nice people. Madeline Rose could prove to be a pill—one of those people who joined a group only to make a point of not participating in it. But she seemed to be getting along with everyone this morning. She certainly looked like a catalog-order fashion plate, safari jacket and all. Naomi recalled Madeline’s response to the Talking Circle, but thought, trying to be fair, that instant self-revelation wasn’t for everybody. Eugenia Potter seemed pleasant, too. Interesting, about her finding those artifacts at her ranch. Hohokam, no doubt. She must be tougher than she looked, to be a cattle rancher. Would cows, Naomi wondered as she stared unhappily out the window, be any easier to herd than tourists? Or trustees?

  God, those Texas teachers!

  What a mess.

  Between Naomi and Jon, they’d been able to appease the angry teachers somewhat. Enough, at least, for them to agree to continue with the trip. Now they were eating their breakfasts, a little apart from their teenagers, and talking together with an intensity that made Naomi feel nervous just to look at them.

  How could I have made a mistake like that?

  Naomi felt bewildered. She honestly didn’t remember writing the letter that way. What in the world could she have been thinking? Her problems felt like such a vicious circle: Typically, she was accused of giving orders (or writing letters!) that she didn’t remember issuing, and then her frustration over that left her so preoccupied that she made other mistakes.

  Naomi had never minded confessing to her faults, but she felt so damn innocent of most of them these days. Jon had been great with the teachers, she thought gratefully. He even told her, “I’ll bet I distracted you when you were writing the letter, Naomi. It’s really my fault.” Absurd but sweet, bless him. At least he wasn’t mad at her this morning. Bingo was, again, and Naomi didn’t know why, and Bingo didn’t seem to want to talk about it. And the housekeeping staff were ticked off, claiming they were out of toilet paper when Naomi swore she’d ordered a month’s worth only two weeks ago. Could somebody be stealing supplies? she’d asked them. That had only insulted and incensed them further, of course.

  It seemed she couldn’t win.

  A whispery voice recalled her attention to the table of women.

  “The Native Americans know where the Ancient Ones went, and they know why, too!”

  Reluctantly, Naomi turned her head to search out the source of the defensive-sounding whisper, and then she watched as Gabby Russell spoke heatedly to her tablemates. “I don’t know why nobody ever listens to them!”

  What Naomi knew, and what the tourists didn’t know, was that Gabby was infamous around the Wheel as a member of a dreaded tribe, the Indian Wannabes. This morning, Naomi saw, the ersatz Pocahontas wore her usual surfeit of symbols—beaded headband, fringed vest, turquoise earrings, squash blossom necklace—and that was merely what was visible from the waist up. Naomi wouldn’t have been surprised to see the girl stand and show off a turquoise belt buckle, her ridiculous fringed leather trousers, and, of course, those damn moccasins. The ensemble was worth about a hundred times more money than most real Indians could ever afford. Didn’t the girl ever stop to think how she must appear in their eyes? On top of which, Gabby exhibited one of the major propensities of Wannabes—a hair-trigger defensiveness on behalf of any Indian who had ever lived.

  Naomi had met tribal chiefs who didn’t spring to their people’s defense as rabidly as Gabby did; she’d met celebrated Native American revolutionaries and modern warriors, and not even they claimed that every single Indian was perfect in every way. It was only Wannabes who insisted on the romantic ideal of the “unspoiled native.” It was a dangerous obsession, Naomi thought, because idealists tended to get so furious when reality failed to meet their impossible expectations. They could go from “loving” Indians to hating them, the instant any real Indian behaved like a real person. Gabby was one of the most extreme versions of the breed that Naomi had ever encountered.

  At her perch on the windowsill, Naomi sighed. She was almost amused at the clear sound of martyrdom in her own breath. But Lord, Wannabes were such a pain in the ass. Generally she found them to be ignorant of their own culture, whatever that might be. They usually hated their own history without even understanding it, and so they wanted to adopt somebody else’s. But they wanted only the beautiful and noble parts of Indian civilization, not the dark parts like internecine warfare, slavery, human sacrifice, even cannibalism—all those nasty little habits that made the American aboriginals strictly human, just like everybody else on the planet at those particular stages of development.

  Naomi knew that Susan Van Sant—even more than most archaeologists—hated Wannabes, had no patience with them, considered them to be among the most annoying and silly creatures on the face of the earth. Unfortunately, this beautiful phony Indian maiden was a prime example of the species, and Gabby simply loved signing up for programs at the Wheel. Naomi thought sympathetically that Susan was going to have her hands full, what with Lillian’s fragile emotional state, Madeline’s sharp tongue, Teri’s avowed aversion to dirt and exercise, and Gabby’s tiresome earnestness.

  Naomi already felt so miserable that she might as well just really rub it in. So giving in to a wicked impulse, she called over to the women’s table: “So tell us, Gabby, what really did happen to the Anasazi?”

  “There’s a Navajo legend,” Gabby said—but then all of a sudden she stopped in midsentence. Naomi looked at the mulish, nervous expression on the girl’s face and came to the amazing conclusion that Gabby was afraid of her. Well, well, Naomi thought, and is that because of my supposed archaeological authority? Or is it because she foresees the entirely likely probability that I will think she’s a fool and an idiot?

  “Yes?” Naomi prodded mercilessly.

  Gabriella Russell set her jaw and carried on. “I’m writing an article about it.” She made it sound as if that fact alone proved its truth. “I’m going to get it published in a major magazine. Or maybe a newspaper syndicate will pick it up.”

  She looked satisfied to have all of their attention now.

  “Well, according to the legend, there was a great gambler who won all of the people and took them north into slavery. You’ve got to understand that I’m not talking about modern-type gambling; gambling was a sacred activity for the Ancients, as it still is for some Indians today. This great gambler was a cruel and powerful man, however, and he forced them to build all of the great houses at Chaco Canyon, which were actually fabulous gaming palaces for him. But finally, after the people had suffered a great deal for many years, another gambler came along, and with the help of the gods, he won the people back their freedom. And that’s why they left this area so suddenly, and moved back to their original homelands.”

  A few feet away, Dr. Susan Van Sant, who was just entering the dining hall, dropped her breakfast tray. Silverware flew. Hot scrambled eggs covered her sandals, but she didn’t flinch. Tomato juice ran like a thick stream of blood down her left leg. The clatter of the fallen tray echoed in the large room like gunfire.

  Twelve

  When Susan dropped her tray, Genia noticed several things about the moment, flashing pictures that she would vividly recall later.

  There was a look of shock on the archaeologist’s face.

  There was the alacrity with which Jon Warren jumped up to grab paper napkins and how he crouched on the floor to wipe off Susan’s bare legs and her feet in their sandals. Naomi also went over to help, although more sedately.

  There was the way everybody at her table jumped, and the way Madeline Rose then frowned and glared, as if the entire incident had been designed to annoy and offend her personally.

  And not least, there was the hateful glance that the executive director of Medicine Wheel had cast in the direction of Gabriella only moments before.

  But most of all, there was the dramatic entrance into the tableau of someone ent
irely new.

  “Well, Naomi,” said an elderly and elegant woman standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips, “I heard things were a mess, but I didn’t expect to find our director and our assistant director down on their knees cleaning the floor.” Her hair looked as black as Colorado coal, and it was stiffly coiffed to frame a face that had a stretched look around the mouth, as if a plastic surgeon had pulled the skin a bit too tight, or too often. Her voice, harsh and commanding, made Genia think of ravens and crows. The fact that she wore a black trouser suit only perfected the impression of a black bird. “Are we broke? Did you fire the maintenance people? And what in the world happened to you, Dr. Van Sant? Is that blood? Are you hurt? Did you cut yourself?”

  “No,” the archaeologist said slowly, in a hollow-sounding voice. She stood looking down at the heads of the people who were helping her. “I dropped my tray.”

  Naomi O’Neal, who was on her knees with scrambled eggs in both hands, flushed nearly as red as the tomato juice running down the archaeologist’s leg. “Martina,” she said, stumbling over the first letter of the name. “Hi.” She looked as if she knew exactly how foolish she sounded. “I’ll be right with you. Why don’t you help yourself to breakfast, while we clean this up?”

  Genia watched the haughty newcomer stride toward the cafeteria and was positive she heard the woman mutter, “It’s going to take more than a rag and mop to clean up after you people.”

  Judith Belove said to the rest of them, in her low vibrant voice that could carry across an auditorium, much less a dining room that had been shocked into silence: “Somebody please tell me that woman won’t be in our group.”

  Lillian grinned. “Sorry, she’s the empty chair. That’s Martina Alvarez, she’s on the board of trustees. I’m surprised she signed up. I’ve never known Martina to walk any farther than it would take to go from her limousine to her bank. And by ‘her bank,’ I do mean her bank. Just a little bitty modest thing in Colorado Springs that’s been owned by her family for three generations.” Lillian grinned and looked as if she were thoroughly enjoying the chance to gossip. To Genia, her hair looked as soft and natural in the morning light as Martina Alvarez’s had looked dyed, stiff, and unnatural. Lillian and Martina must be about the same age, Genia decided, although the haughty trustee might have the edge on being older. She certainly had the edge on trying to look younger. “She’s so rich, she could probably build her own ruins to live in.”