Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

where Faye was digging. It was time to investigate them.

    It was full dark when Faye awoke, lying on her bed, shirt sweaty, pants bloody, boots sandy. Her leg throbbed. If her memory could be relied upon, she’d gotten home sometime mid-afternoon, secured the boat, and hauled herself up two flights of stairs before collapsing into bed. She was hungry, dehydrated, and too depressed to appreciate how lucky she was to be alive.
    If word of her black-market activities ever got out, she’d take the rap for everything those pothunting thieves had done to Water Island. She would lose her home, for sure. She’d go to jail, too, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part would be knowing that people thought she was guilty, that she’d looted a site that might have yielded knowledge about the very first Americans. People would believe that she desecrated the past for money. People would think she was lower than dirt.
    Wishing for a bit of the adrenaline that had powered her escape, she raised her carcass up out of the bed and lit the lantern. Her watch claimed that midnight was approaching. Slowly peeling off her rank clothing, she checked herself out. Some part of her had been bleeding and it might be an important part.
    Faye’s right leg was indeed important; she was attached to it. Three purple-black blotches and a not-insignificant cut, small but deep, decorated her thigh. Several flying pieces of the water pump must have struck her when the sniper shot it to bits. There was no money in her budget for medical treatment, so she found her first-aid kit in the dark.
    Wet-wipes took off most of the blood. She couldn’t think of anything to do for the laceration except treat it with an antiseptic. It was good that Joe was in bed, because she could just hear him saying, “She’s treating a puncture wound with Bactine. And they call me stupid.”
    Using about twenty wet-wipes, she gave herself a spit bath, then put on a clean nightgown and fell back into bed. Bone-tired, but not sleepy, she could feel every speck of sand her filthy body had deposited on the sheets, so she got back up and fetched some clean linens. Still not sleepy after re-making her bed, she reached for the journal. Faye had nobody living and breathing to keep her company, but at least she had Mariah Whitehall LaFourche.
    ***
    Journal entry by Mariah LaFourche, recorded 15 May, 1832
    I am fifty years old today. It seems a proper time to assess my life. The journey from my childhood home to this island is the only journey I have ever made. My human associations have been limited to my parents, assorted traders, my son, his wife, his slaves, the rich planters in his social circle and, finally, the father of my only child.
    My father was never able to pronounce the name of Henri LaFourche in a sentence that did not also include the term “blackguard”. This is almost fair, but not quite. My father was aware that I have always been hardheaded. I would not have yielded unwillingly to Henri. I was a strong, sturdy girl brought up in a wilderness; he could only have taken me by the most brutal force, and this was not the case. His dishonor lay only in his willingness to let me think he cared.
    Henri’s blood and his dishonor both run true in his son. Andrew showed his character long ago when he chose to keep slaves, but he shows the cruelty of his heart every day in the treatment of his wife. I do not know Carole well. She has, probably wisely, cleaved completely to Andrew. Befriending me would suggest that she was choosing my side in my constant disagreements with Andrew.
    Still, I have eyes. I see that she is in every way the gracious lady that she was reared to be. Her grooming is impeccable, whether she is greeting guests or tending a slave dying of pellagra. I have never heard her raise her voice, not even when Andrew insults her in the presence of others, as he is wont to do. She lowers her eyes in the face of his spite, but her head is high and her back is straight.
    He treats her so because she has not borne him children and, as men will, he assumes that the fault is hers. I grieve with her. I have reached an age at which I would treasure grandchildren, but it is not to be.
    Journal entry by Mariah LaFourche, recorded 25 December, 1834
    It is Christmas Day and my son has paid me a dutiful visit. To be fair, I should admit that his visit is more than dutiful. I do believe he loves me. Alas, this love is the only tender spot in an increasingly