Rebel Betty Page 6

  Despite the chilly water, it took a long time before his body subsided enough to allow him to work, and his thoughts continued to be distracted by the memories long after he abandoned the site for the day and lay in his bed, trying to read by the illumination of a small overhead lamp. Knowing that she was there, only a few hundred yards away, was an almost irresistible temptation.

  As much as he hated to admit it, the social worker had been right to be cautious about him staying at the farm for the summer. The forced intimacy of the situation was playing hell with his better judgment. He should never have kissed her, because having done so, he couldn’t imagine stopping.

  Chapter 8

  Several days and another rainstorm passed before the work of the excavation actually began.

  As he set up the grid, marking off the meter squares that would define his explorations, he continued to dwell on the mystery of his hostess, and he was increasingly sure that there was a mystery. The various facets of it churned through his mind as he took pictures and recorded details of the soil type, vegetation, and elevation on the clipboard he kept close at hand.

  First of all, Lara Foster was lovely, possessing the kind of "girl next door" charm that had seduced generations of men. Her beauty was of the earthy, natural sort that needed no artificial augmentation. Perfect skin, lightly tipped by age, wholesome but delicate features, and a body well suited to blissful night spent in bed. Why there was no ring on her finger or guy safely installed in a permanent relationship was odd and intriguing, though he was glad of it.

  Mackenzie was certainly part of the reason she did not date, but it could not be the only one. The most likely thing was that she was just coming out of a long term relationship that had left her with emotional baggage and the complication of having a toddler and a looming court date made it easier for her to avoid emotional entanglements.

  The other perplexing thing was her history.

  Lara loved talking about her family, but never herself. Will, her father, various grandparents who had once peopled the area were often brought up often in conversation, but the few times he had asked about her specifically, she had changed the subject. Not that she was ever rude, and he never had the sense that she was lying to him. Rather, there appeared to be a block of time in her life that she had elected to forget.

  And then there was the undeniable fact that Lara was rich.

  When he had been conducting research on the area, searching for other mounds, he’d run across plenty of farms like Lara’s, and several of them had been for sale. All had price tags edging towards a million dollars. And the Foster Farm was pristine. No board was out of place, even on the barns and the chicken coop.

  All in all an intriguing mystery exactly like the woman herself.

  The day had dawned exceptionally hot for the time of year, and after only an hour, he was so covered in sweat that he discarded his collared denim shirt , comfortable to work in his jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt he had purchased at a concert decades before. Not having to worry about what he wore was another added bonus of working his first solitary dig. Normally, he was very conscious of needing to maintain a professional image. The time he had spent in uniform had taught him the power of appearances. But here, alone on the farm, he could strip down and not have to worry about appearing on a social media site half naked.

  And it was also pleasant not to have to worry about the constant stream of flirtatious students and volunteers who invariably clogged up a site. As a healthy man, he was not averse to the attention, and he had been tempted more than once to take them up on their offers. He was not vain, but he knew that he was a decent enough looking guy. The Gilbert boys all looked alike, and the amount of attention his brothers received from women had been always been a family joke.

  But men who abused their authority had always been a sore spot with him. From snatches of overheard conversation, he knew that his mother had been molested as a child. After her death and needing to find as much information about them as possible, he had gone back and located the records, discovering in the documents a family history that shocked and horrified him. Years of abuse had been uncovered when his mother became pregnant at 13 years old. His grandfather, a prominent businessman in St. Paul, had died in prison, the victim of a prison population who considered child rapists to be the lowest of the low.

  The knowledge of what his mother had endured and her early death colored his relationship with women. Years of bad relationships and a divorce had finally taught him the futility of always trying to rescue the women he dated.

  Jesse had been one of the women he had thought to save. Tiny, pixie-faced Jesse, who bounced from one thing to the next, always looking for the next cause to embrace, the next battle to fight. Her passion for protecting the environment had drawn them together when he had excavated a site near where a protest was being staged. They had met for coffee one day, and he was bailing her out of jail the next.

  He was so consumed with thoughts of Lara that her sudden appearance, walking over the field, made color flood his face; he hoped it was disguised by the heat of the day.

  “You’re coming right along,” Lara said, handing him a tall glass of homemade lemonade, complete with thin slivers of lemon and ice.

  “Yep,” he agreed, draining the glass in a single long swallow and then handing it back to her with his thanks. “Now comes the fun part.”

  Lara’s face was skeptical. “Shoveling? I can see where that might be fun for about an hour, but then your back starts to hurt.”

  "The excavating is the fun part. It's what makes all of the research and documentation worth it. We take it down, layer by layer. The shovel is only for the top, and then we get out the trowels and brushes and picks.”

  “What about the top layers, though? Couldn't there be things in there that you miss?”

  Her quick grasp delighted him. “That’s why everything goes through a sieve or a screen.” He nodded at the large sieve that he’d set up, a rectangular frame supported by a thick steel tripod. "Some of it might go through the water screen I have next to the trailer."

  Her nose crinkled. “It seems very inefficient to take the dirt back to the trailer. Why can’t the water screen be set up here, using the creek water?”

  Thad scratched his chin. He’d thought of it, but asking her to allow him to set up a generator and pump had seemed grasping. She’d already been so helpful and kind that he did not wish to test her goodwill, and a generator made a lot of noise. “I’d need another person to operate it.”

  Excitement flickered in her eyes. “Could you teach me? I mean, I know that I don't have a college degree or anything…”

  “A lot of volunteers don't have degrees. But are you sure? What about Mackenzie?”

  An enthusiastic grin was stretching across her face. “I could come out in the afternoons. Kenzie doesn't usually take naps, but she will play in her room while Maria is cleaning.” She looked down, and her expression darkened. “It helps if we have a break from each other.”

  A second person would make the dig go much faster, and he would jump at the opportunity to spend more time with her. “Whenever you can get away, I would love the help.”

  Though he had not meant to suggest that she should start immediately, Lara excused herself and went back to the house. An hour later, the rumble of a Diesel engine brought his head up from where he’d been crouching.

  Lara was atop the Farmall, a small wagon hitched to the back. When she drew up at the base of the mound, he went to help her unload. She had loaded his water screen, along with coils of hose, its bright green plastic like the smooth undulations of a serpent. There was also a large industrial generator and a pump.

  Her cheeks were bright pink with exertion. “Maria is taking Kenzie and her grandson to the movies, so I thought I could get started.”

  During the next days, Thad discovered that working with Lara at the site was infinitely preferable to the quiet mornings by himself that had seemed so enticing. She w
as everything he could have desired in an assistant: bright, intelligent, and fun to be around. And unlike some of the volunteers he had dealt with over the years, she worked. Hard.

  Her bright, inquisitive eyes revealed a million questions about the methodology of his excavation, and he encouraged her to voice them. After that the stream of talk between them had few interruptions. While digging through the layers of soil, he explained about the different types of artifacts, evidence and soil stratification, and how the pieces they were collecting fit together.

  "Why do you write everything down so many times?" she said, seeing the bulging field notebook he used to record his findings before also entering them into the computer.

  "Documentation is the heart and soul of archaeology. Without it, we would just be looting."

  "So you think my dad was just looting by collecting the things he found?"

  Thad turned to look at Lara. Although she tried to conceal it, he could tell that the idea troubled her.

  "Of course not. This place is a part of the history of your family." The frown was still in place. Thad put down his notebook and waved her over. "Look at this," he said, pointing at the small white shard that he had been bagging. "What do you see?"

  "A broken piece of pottery."

  "Once it was cleaned off, do you think you could distinguish it from a broken cup that someone bought at the local thrift store?"

  Lara picked it up and examined the piece, bringing it close to her eyes in order to see it clearly. It was thicker expected, and the outside lip had a pebbled texture, as though it had been roughened during the firing process. "Probably not."

  "Exactly. The documentation that we take will tell us where this object was found, at what level in the soil, and about the other objects found nearby." He laced his fingers together. "We can paint a full picture of the past by assembling all of these pieces. Archaeology is not about finding treasure, or adding another arrowhead to a collection. It's about the people who lived here, their lives and experiences."

  Lara pressed her lips together and seemed to have difficulty containing laughter. "Apparently you can take the archaeologist out of the classroom, but you can't take the classroom out of the archaeologist."

  Her teasing, and the hand she had laid companionably across his thigh, made him smile. "Teaching is something I love to do. You would be a good teacher too, Lara."

  She snorted, and returned to bend over the layer of earth that she was brushing away with a paintbrush, painstakingly exposing a darkened depression. "Hardly. I was a terrible student. I don't have the brains to be a teacher."

  He cocked his head in surprise. “You struggled in school? Why? You are obviously intelligent. Stop shaking your head at me, Larry; it’s my profession opinion, based on years of working in education.”

  “I am severely dyslexic, and when I was younger, I was one of those annoyingly hyperactive children who their teachers hate. I can’t tell you the number of times they begged my father to put me on medication.”

  “Good for him, that stuff is poison.”

  She snorted. “Maybe. But in my family, I got the mechanical aptitude and Will got the brains. It always seemed backwards to me.”

  "Hey," he reached over and touched her hand, "You need to stop talking like that."

  "Like what?" She asked, wiping sweat away from her forehead. They were so close that he could see the line of moisture that was gluing her shirt to her spine. Her hair was pulled back in a red bandanna, and the soft strands brushed against his hand as he leaned it.

  "Like you think you are mentally deficient. People learn in different ways, and we all have different strengths. I know plenty of people with Ph.D.’s who are incapable of something as basic as changing their own oil or balancing a checkbook. You may roll your eyes, Larry, but it's true. And being a good teacher is not about being a genius. It's about loving your subject, and being able to share that with others."

  Lara carefully did not meet his eyes; her voice was constricted. "Some of the teachers thought that I was, you know. That stupid Foster girl. I heard it so many times."

  "And you are old enough that their opinions should no longer matter. And more importantly, you have a little girl who looks up to you. If she hears you talking like that, she will come to see it as acceptable behavior."

  "But Mackenzie is a brilliant little girl," Lara protested. "She already knows all her ABC's and can count..." She blew out a breath and the edges of a smile curved her lips. "Your point is taken."

  "Good. Now tuck in your shirt before I see that black lace bra one more time or I will not answer for the consequences."

  "Why Professor, are you planning on doing another type of excavation?" Her tone was a flirtatious, Mae West drawl that made him simultaneously wish to laugh and screw her senseless.

  "Not until August, but if you keep this up..."

  "I thought that was your job."

  He glanced at his lap. "Mission accomplished."

  By the end of the end of the week, he had reached a level of culturally sterile soil in the first section and was able to move to the next square while Lara back filled it with the dirt she had run through the water screen. The sight of her with mud spatters up the toned length of her arms never failed to make him smile, as did the emergence of a light spattering of freckles across her cheeks as her skin tanned in the sunshine.

  The second quadrant yielded more results almost immediately. It contained a depression that dipped down as it neared the creek, and after removing the first six inches of soil with the flat bladed shovel, he switched to the trowel and then the brush as a crumple of small objects became recognizable. When she came over to retrieve the five gallon bucket filled with soil, he called her over.

  “Look,” he said, pointing with his pick to the crumple of small objects.

  “What are they?” She asked, taking another pick and teasing away more of the soil.

  “Nut casing,” he said, excitement reverberating in his voice. “And here,” he pointed to a pointy object no bigger than a small coin though with jagged edges, “another pottery shard.”

  She looked at the small depression, her eyes tracing it back to the mound. "The water would flow down it like a drain," she mused. “It'll be like digging through a trash dump.”

  “That we should be so lucky,” Thad said, bending to brush away more dirt. After a few minutes, the sloshing sound of the water screen and the roar of the generator were interrupted by a hoot of excitement from Lara that brought him running. No more than a quarter of an inch long, the smooth wooden cylinder was marked with bisecting lines.

  "What is it?" She said, holding his arm and hopping up and down in excitement.

  "An arrow shaft," he said, looking back to where he had just been digging. He handed her the clipboard and the camera. "It's your find."

  Chapter 9

  Some things even a decade out of the Marine Corp could not change . Every morning, rain or shine, he ran three miles. The routine of it had been drilled into his mind during the weeks of basic training and it had stuck, along with a preference for good whiskey and a love of firearms.

  During the frigid Ohio winters, he resorted to a local health club, jogging next to busy millennials and fitness conscious soccer moms, but he preferred to run outside. The feel of plastic beneath his feet was never as satisfying as asphalt or, even better, a dirt road, bringing with it recollections of pounding the pavement in Paris Island, and later through the Middle East. The memories brought to mind by those runs were precious, of friends he had known and places he had seen, often with a blood alcohol level that would have gotten him arrested anywhere but at a military base.

  Too many of them were gone now, laid low by wounds in Afghanistan and Iraq. He had left the Marine Corp and begun college only weeks before the Twin Towers fell and had watched with helpless rage as his friends sacrificed themselves to average the attack. Even knowing how much it could have cost him, at times he still regretted listening to an advisor and s
taying in school rather than returning to military service.

  Thad paused at the half way point, chest heaving under the warm sun of a July morning.

  A breeze blew in from across the fields, bringing with it the scent of freshly cut alfalfa, sweeter to him than any perfume. The sun was beating down on the rocks, which soaked in the heat. It was going to be a scorching day. In the ditches that edged the roads, the water that had been left from the spring rains had finally evaporated, and he no longer heard faint animal rustlings from the tall cat tails and weeds as he passed. The heat of summer had brought with it clouds of voracious mosquitoes resistant to any form of bug spray. They buzzed in his ears if he stopped for too long.

  He increased his speed when the farmhouse came into view around the apple trees, and his knees beginning to protest the exercise. There were a dozen eggs waiting in the refrigerator and he was starving.

  Thad stopped at the end of the driveway. As he neared the back door, he heard laughter and splashing from the fenced-in pool area and changed course. From the dig site, he had heard the sound of the pool, but never seen it behind the screen of a tall, stockade fence. The gate was open now, revealing Lara submerged to her waist in a tiny black bikini that displayed everything her normal clothes hid. His pulse leaped in appreciation.

  “Jump!”

  Lara had her arms outstretched to Mackenzie, who hesitated. She wrote a pink Hello Kitty swimsuit and matching floaties. “Water not cold?” she asked, face deeply distrustful.

  “No, it's warm. Put your toe in.”

  Although tempted to continue watching them, Thad cleared his throat. “Good morning, ladies.”

  Kenzie ran to him and hugged his legs. “Wanna swim?” She rubbed her tiny nose into the dust and moisture that collected at his knees. “You sweaty.”

  The water looked inviting. Instead of the Spartan, chemically drenched pool, it reminded him of natural ponds formed by waterfalls. Green bottomed and crystal clear, it was surrounded by a native grasses that thrived in the small enclosure.