about haploid X and the Solutrean theory and Beringia. “How are you holding up after your mom?” She asked. I smiled. “Do you want to share one of those coconut shrimp baskets?” What I didn’t say was this. Around thirteen thousand years ago a mother gave birth to a baby and it died. Maybe it was sick, or there was simply no food, or it just wasn’t cut out to live. And even in that alien land populated by gigantic hairy elephants and ravenous cats with spear-like fangs dripping blood, the mother and whoever else walked with her loved the baby. And when the baby died they took the things they’d made, their tools and their arts, and gave them to the earth along with the little body on the little hill. They took red ochre, like violent death or equally violent birth and they sprinkled it on the baby’s corpse. Then they piled the place with wildflowers, leaving a shower of ancient pollen to mix with the red ochre, to coat the stone points, to work its way down to the brittle bones that turned halfway to dust while thousands of years went by and everything that lived in the world the baby was born into died and changed until it made me. But I wasn’t going to think of it that way. I got into the habit of inviting the archeologists in for a drink every night before they packed up. They liked whiskey, which I usually hated, but I bought it and learned to make a variety of mixed drinks so that I could get them to come in a talk to me about the baby. Some of the team were graduate students and they were particularly talkative about what they were doing out in my yard. One of them was a short, pinkish girl named Liz who seemed to be something of a functional alcoholic but loved 44
to share her theories about Paleo-Indian archeology. At first I had imagined them as Indian Jones figures who spent their days breaking into ancient tombs or detecting secret patterns that led them to hidden cities. Instead, much of what they did seemed to be sifting dirt and deeply analyzing pieces of rock with an impressive variety of chemical and microscopic techniques. And frequently they came back to the subject of the tree. “It’s just so unfortunate,” said Liz, leaning back in her chair and shaking the ice in her drink, “those roots completely fucked with the stratigraphy. If it weren’t for that tree, the skull probably would have eroded out years ago.” “Weird place for a tree to grow, too,” remarked one of the male students. “Maybe we could use the dendrochonology somehow,” Liz mused, “it could help with the timeline.” “It’s less than a hundred years old, Kinney, barely a sapling,” remarked one of the professors with slight scorn. “My parents didn’t even build the house here until forty eight,” I said, interjecting quietly, but another discussion over something called coprolites that everyone seemed to find very funny had begun instead. Suddenly I missed Atlanta and realized that I should go home. “Goodnight everyone,” I said, standing up and shooing the archeologists out of my living room. I was too drunk to stand, but I stood. The room looked trashed, debris still lying wherever the windstorm had thrown it and I was suddenly embarrassed. The single-minded drunk compulsion urged me to clean everything in sight. Before I went to bed, I crept out to the grave again. It was