Birthright

pushing away, fell off his lap and right on my face. Made my nose bleed.
    “Mom picked me up, holding me, rocking me. I knew everything was going to be all right then. Mom had me and she wouldn’t let anything happen to me. Then she started screaming, and I looked down. You were gone.”
    He took a long drink. “I don’t remember after that. It’s all jumbled up. But that memory’s as clear as yesterday.”
    Three years old, she thought again. Terrified, she imagined. Traumatized, and obviously riddled with guilt.
    So she handled him the way she’d want to be handled. She took another sip of beer, leaned back. “So, you still scared of fat men in red suits?”
    He let out a short, explosive laugh. And his shoulders relaxed. “Oh yeah.”
    I t was after midnight when Dolan moved to the edge of the trees and looked on the site that he’d carefully plotted out into building lots. Antietam Creek Project, he thought. His legacy to his community.
    Good, solid, affordable houses. Homes for young families, for families who wanted rural living with modern conveniences. Quiet, picturesque, historic and aesthetic—and fifteen minutes to the interstate.
    He’d paid good money for that land. Good enough that the interest on the loan was going to wipe out a year of profit if he didn’t get back on schedule and plant the damn things.
    He was going to lose the contracts he already had if the delay ran over the sixty days. Which meant refunding two hefty deposits.
    It wasn’t right, he thought. It wasn’t right for people who had no business here telling him how to run Dolan and Sons. Telling him what he could and couldn’t do with land he owned.
    Damn Historical and Preservation Societies had already cost him more time and money than any reasonable man could afford. But he’d played by the rules, right down the line. Paid the lawyers, spoken at town meetings, given interviews.
    He’d done it all by the book.
    It was time to close the book.
    For all he knew, for all anyone really knew, Lana Campbell and her tree huggers had arranged this whole fiasco just to pressure him to sell them the land at a loss.
    For all he knew these damn hippie scientists were playing along, making a bunch of bones into some big fucking deal.
    People couldn’t live on bones. They needed houses. And he was going to build them.
    He’d gotten the idea when that smart-ass Graystone had been in his office, trying to throw his weight around. Big scientific and historical impact, his butt. Let’s see what the press had to say when it heard some of that big impact were deer bones and ham bones and beef bones.
    He always kept a nice supply in his garage freezer for his dogs.
    With satisfaction, he looked down at the garbage bag he’d carted from the car he’d parked a quarter mile away. He’d show Graystone a thing or two.
    And that bitch Dunbrook, too.
    The way she’d come to the job site, swaggering around, blasting at him in front of his men. Brought the damn county sheriff down on him. Having to answer questions had humiliated him a second time. He was a goddamn pillar of the community, not some asshole teenager with a can of spray paint.
    He wasn’t going to let that go. No, sir.
    She wanted to accuse him of vandalism, well, by God, he’d oblige her.
    They wanted to play dirty, he thought, he’d show them how to play dirty. Every mother’s son of them would be laughed out of town, and he’d be back in business.
    People needed to live now , he told himself as he hauled up the bag. They needed to raise their children and pay their bills, they needed to hang their curtains and plant their gardens. And, by God, they needed a house to live in. Today.
    They didn’t need to worry about how some monkey-man lived six thousand years ago. All that was just horseshit.
    He had men depending on him for work, and those men had families depending on them to bring home the bacon. He was doing this for his community, Dolan thought righteously as he crept out of the woods.
    He could see the silhouette of the trailer sitting across the field. One of those dickwads was in there, but the lights were off. Probably stoned on pot and sleeping like a baby.
    “Good riddance,” he muttered and shone his little penlight over the mounds and trenches. He didn’t know one hole from the other, and had convinced himself that nobody else did either.
    He had to believe it, with the bank breathing down his neck, with the extra crews he’d hired coming by to see