Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

Joe’s deductive powers. Fishers and hunters aren’t verbose people, but every day they outwit wild animals with millions of years of evolution on their side. “Courtney came home, duly educated, but adamant that she’d rather be who she was than sip tea with a bunch of vain, useless women. She married a field hand and they ran Joyeuse together until he died in the 1918 flu epidemic. With my grandmother’s help, she carried on without him another thirty years, but they say she really died that day in 1934 when the judge took the Last Isles away from her.”
    “Judging from the size of those trees out back, this land ain’t been farmed since then.”
    “My grandmother said the land was just worn out. When her mother died, she and Mama moved to Tallahassee and, being Cally’s and Courtney’s blood, they did just fine. Grandma was a secretary and Mama was a nurse, and we never had any extra money, but we never did without.”
    “Your father and grandfather—”
    Faye smiled down at her plate and chewed a minute. Once Joe started asking questions, he didn’t stop.
    “Daddy died in Vietnam. My grandfather just left.”
    Faye picked at her food silently and Joe stopped asking questions. Whether through death or abandonment, the men in her family had only stayed long enough to give their women a single child, then they left. Her mother had never hidden her craving for more children. Faye tried to imagine living as a family with a man who didn’t leave. How would she know when to stop having children? Sometimes her own baby-hunger was so bad she thought only menopause would end it.
    “You come from a long line of strong lonely women, Faye. No wonder you…”
    “No wonder, what?”
    “Nothing. Just nothing.”
    Joe stared at the old house, though there was hardly enough light to see it. His eyes narrowed and his lips moved for quite a while. Finally, though Faye was still mad at him for his “strong, lonely women” comment, she couldn’t stand it any longer.
    “What on earth are you doing?” she snapped.
    “I’m not good at arithmetic. I’m trying to figure out how much of your blood is white and how much is black.”
    “Cally’s mother was mulatto. Her father was white and so was her so-called husband. That makes Great-grandmother Courtney almost all white. All my other great-grandparents were black, as far as I know. That makes me about one-eighth Caucasian.”
    “You look whiter than that, Faye.”
    “Probably my father had some mixed ancestry, too. And my grandfather. Who knows? And who cares? I can’t reliably trace my ancestry back four measly generations and I’m an archaeologist. I live off the past. I have to think that it doesn’t really matter.”
    Joe leaned toward her with a conspiratorial look. “Faye. I’m not a hundred percent Creek.”
    Touched by Joe’s confidence, she stifled her amusement at his heart-baring revelation. Joe Wolf Mantooth’s eyes were as green as the clear Gulf waters lapping at the shores of what remained of Last Isle.

    Faye worked outdoors. She ate outdoors, she showered outdoors, she brushed her teeth outdoors, but she slept indoors. She loved her bedroom. Looking at its walls, festooned with painted wisteria, made her happy and ready for sleep. It was a safe place to commune with a dead woman.
    Faye waved a torch in the face of her guilt, driving it back into a corner. Abby was dead, she reminded herself. Abby’s father was dead, and her killer was long gone or reformed, for a forty-year crime wave would have been noticeable in this sleepy part of the world. It would be an injustice for Faye to lose everything tilting at an idealistic windmill. Even if her lance struck the mark, whom would it benefit?
    Though she had renewed her resolve to keep secret her discovery of Abby’s body, she still suffered a curious fascination with the girl’s fate. It was likely that clues remained in the grave. She hadn’t found Abby’s silver necklace. She hadn’t even found the other earring. Who knew what else might remain?
    Tomorrow, on the off chance a physical clue had survived years and years in the most hostile of environments, she would finish exhuming Abby’s bones. The idea would upset Joe, so she wouldn’t tell him her plans. Once she’d finished the ghoulish task and neatly reburied the corpse, she would confess her deed. Joe would come back with his ceremonial fire and herbs and tobacco, but he would be spared the grisly details of what she had