Carved in Bone

soon. You’ve just got to let it simmer for a while.” He stood up. “Speaking of simmering, how about a cup of tea?”
    “Sure, if you’re having some, too.”
    O’Conner disappeared through the screen door, then emerged a minute later and handed me one of two pottery mugs, handmade, imprinted with the outlines of lacy ferns. “Nice mugs,” I said, remembering some of what Kathleen had taught me about shapes and glazes. “Local potter?”
    He smiled. “Local as you can get. Made ’em myself. Everything you’re holding in your hand came off this property—the clay, the ferns, the spring water, the honey, even the tea.”
    “You’re a regular one-man biosphere.”
    “I like being self-sufficient when I can. Meeting your own needs for food and utensils seems satisfying at some deep level, at least to me. Helps keep a man honest, somehow.”
    For a reputed outlaw, O’Conner was quite the renaissance man: philosopher, potter, beekeeper, tea farmer. I took a sip of the steaming brew and swirled it in my mouth, startled—it wasn’t like any tea I had ever tasted. Underneath the honey, there was a bitter, rocky tang to it. It tasted somehow of mountains and leaves and roots and springs. “That’s interesting. I think maybe I like it, but I’m not quite sure. What is it?”
    He bowed slightly, acknowledging the slight compliment. “Ginseng. ‘Sang,’ most folks around here call it. Makes you smarter, healthier, hornier, and more virile, if five millennia of Chinese and Native Americans can be believed. Those UT coeds better watch out for you tomorrow, Doc.” Visions of Sarah and Miranda flashed into my mind, and I felt myself blush. “See,” O’Conner said, “it’s working already.”
    I laughed, despite the embarrassment. “Well, I don’t feel any smarter yet.”
    “That doesn’t kick in till the third or fourth cup. It’s tea, Doc, not a miracle potion.”
    We rocked and sipped. Across the valley, a swirl of thick mist crept up the hillside. As it met the morning sun, which was slanting over the ridge behind us, the mist grew soft and wispy around the margins, then gradually faded to nothing. “Doc, you think we humans are anything more than a passing wisp of fog ourselves?”
    He wanted to talk about mortality? “All depends on how you look at it, Jim.” I pointed across the valley. “Before it evaporated, that scrap of fog drifted across that stand of hemlocks about halfway up that hillside. I’d say those trees will grow a little extra because of that. Maybe some ferns down around the base of those trees will, too. Dry as the weather’s been lately, it might be this morning’s fog that keeps those ferns alive. Next time a potter needs some fronds to press into a clay mug”—I wagged my cup for emphasis—“they’ll be right there waiting for him.”
    I took another sip, and found the taste growing on me. “I’ve had students tell me, years after they graduated and went on to work for medical examiners or police departments or museums, that I had a big influence on their career path. I think we all leave an imprint on the world, and on the people we cross paths with, sometimes in ways we don’t fully understand.” I traced the imprint of a fern. “I know my wife left a hell of a mark on me. When she died, it felt like a tree got uprooted from my heart. Still does, sometimes.”
    He looked away, and I guessed he was thinking of Leena. “Jim, as an anthropologist, I’m curious: what did you want to show me? Not just your pottery, I’m guessing.”
    “Not just the mugs, but they’re not completely irrelevant. You ever done any research on what a premium we humans put on finding the magic elixir, Doc? The biochemical fuel additive, you might say, that’s going to fix things for us? Mind-numbing things like alcohol and pot? Octane boosters like cocaine or meth or Ecstasy?”
    I nodded. “It is interesting. Not just humans, though—animals, too. Elephants gorge on fermented fruit to get drunk. So do orangutans and chimpanzees. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some pothead chimps somewhere in some California commune. I haven’t made a study of it, though.”
    “I have, sort of,” he said. “Not so much scientifically as financially. People will pay a lot of money for something that makes ’em feel good, or look good, or last longer in the sack. There’s people up here in Cooke County that ain’t got a pot to piss in, as my daddy used to say. But some of