could be described in just that way. Repetitive and slow.
Much of Faye’s life had been spent cleaning dirty little pieces of junk. No, make that dirty little pieces of fragile junk. Even in the field, where it was sometimes necessary to move dirt by the cubic yard, encountering an important find changed everything. When her excavating work called for precision, she was sometimes reduced to moving dirt with a sable-haired paintbrush, to avoid destroying something irreplaceable. Archaeologists who were capable of turning off a nattering brain and letting the work take its own pace were happy archaeologists.
Nina already looked less sad and stricken, as she ran soil through a screen designed to catch tiny artifacts that might otherwise be overlooked. Nina had shown a lot of talent for doing detailed work with her hands. Screening soil often made impatient Faye want to scream, but Nina seemed to be content enough, settling in for some quiet time with a pile of soil.
As Nina concentrated, she hummed quietly. Faye paused when she heard a familiar melody. Yes, the young woman was humming jazz standards. Nowhere but in New Orleans would Faye expect a 37-year-old to know “Basin Street Blues.”
***
The big excitement of the afternoon came when Dauphine uncovered several good-sized shards of pottery with an especially pretty Blue Willow design. The work team’s voices carried across the flat, silent battlefield, drawing Joe from his explorations of Rodriguez Canal, which had traversed this ground for so long that it was already old when the War of 1812 roared through.
Even this find left Faye feeling distracted and depressed. All over town, Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing floods had left deposits of broken china and glass and…well, pretty much everything…that were slowly being covered over and forgotten. One day, archaeologists were going to treat that layer of soil as casually as, say, the people who had excavated blackened rocks at the ruins of Troy.
“Look!” the archaeologists had said as they peeled back another layer of Troy’s history. “The city was destroyed by fire in thus-and-such a year.”
Each scrap of new information on the fire had been published, proving one scholar’s theory while obliterating another’s. Much effort had been spent and many journal pages printed, arguing over the historical significance of the charred city, but the personal significance of the fire to the people who survived it had been almost completely overlooked by the scholars filling those pages.
The survivors had lost family members. They had lost friends. They had lost homes and possessions.
They had lost everything.
Faye was glad she wouldn’t be around when scholars in another age started debating the question of what had really happened during the deluge that consumed New Orleans.
***
Faye’s workers had left, but she was still lingering in the work trailer, straightening her office and putting her thoughts away for the day. She wasn’t a bit surprised to see Jodi at the door.
Hardly raising her head from the odious clerical task of the moment—filing—Faye said, “I bet you are madder than a wet hen.”
“Yes. Are you going to tell me why, so I don’t have to make myself madder by saying it?”
“No problem. Glad to be of help. You’re peeved because Shelly has been missing for years. There’s a file on her at Missing Persons. We now know that people—we don’t know how many people, but some—saw her alive during the rescue effort after the storm. Yet nothing in that file shows that Shelly survived Katrina, and you didn’t have a clue until you found that raggedy newspaper clipping in her pocket.”
“That pretty much says it all.” Jodi sank into the low chair across from Faye’s desk. “Now, does it necessarily mean that the investigators didn’t do their jobs? Nope. Communications were wrecked for months. People were scattered all over the country. It’s completely possible that the
Much of Faye’s life had been spent cleaning dirty little pieces of junk. No, make that dirty little pieces of fragile junk. Even in the field, where it was sometimes necessary to move dirt by the cubic yard, encountering an important find changed everything. When her excavating work called for precision, she was sometimes reduced to moving dirt with a sable-haired paintbrush, to avoid destroying something irreplaceable. Archaeologists who were capable of turning off a nattering brain and letting the work take its own pace were happy archaeologists.
Nina already looked less sad and stricken, as she ran soil through a screen designed to catch tiny artifacts that might otherwise be overlooked. Nina had shown a lot of talent for doing detailed work with her hands. Screening soil often made impatient Faye want to scream, but Nina seemed to be content enough, settling in for some quiet time with a pile of soil.
As Nina concentrated, she hummed quietly. Faye paused when she heard a familiar melody. Yes, the young woman was humming jazz standards. Nowhere but in New Orleans would Faye expect a 37-year-old to know “Basin Street Blues.”
***
The big excitement of the afternoon came when Dauphine uncovered several good-sized shards of pottery with an especially pretty Blue Willow design. The work team’s voices carried across the flat, silent battlefield, drawing Joe from his explorations of Rodriguez Canal, which had traversed this ground for so long that it was already old when the War of 1812 roared through.
Even this find left Faye feeling distracted and depressed. All over town, Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing floods had left deposits of broken china and glass and…well, pretty much everything…that were slowly being covered over and forgotten. One day, archaeologists were going to treat that layer of soil as casually as, say, the people who had excavated blackened rocks at the ruins of Troy.
“Look!” the archaeologists had said as they peeled back another layer of Troy’s history. “The city was destroyed by fire in thus-and-such a year.”
Each scrap of new information on the fire had been published, proving one scholar’s theory while obliterating another’s. Much effort had been spent and many journal pages printed, arguing over the historical significance of the charred city, but the personal significance of the fire to the people who survived it had been almost completely overlooked by the scholars filling those pages.
The survivors had lost family members. They had lost friends. They had lost homes and possessions.
They had lost everything.
Faye was glad she wouldn’t be around when scholars in another age started debating the question of what had really happened during the deluge that consumed New Orleans.
***
Faye’s workers had left, but she was still lingering in the work trailer, straightening her office and putting her thoughts away for the day. She wasn’t a bit surprised to see Jodi at the door.
Hardly raising her head from the odious clerical task of the moment—filing—Faye said, “I bet you are madder than a wet hen.”
“Yes. Are you going to tell me why, so I don’t have to make myself madder by saying it?”
“No problem. Glad to be of help. You’re peeved because Shelly has been missing for years. There’s a file on her at Missing Persons. We now know that people—we don’t know how many people, but some—saw her alive during the rescue effort after the storm. Yet nothing in that file shows that Shelly survived Katrina, and you didn’t have a clue until you found that raggedy newspaper clipping in her pocket.”
“That pretty much says it all.” Jodi sank into the low chair across from Faye’s desk. “Now, does it necessarily mean that the investigators didn’t do their jobs? Nope. Communications were wrecked for months. People were scattered all over the country. It’s completely possible that the
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