Wharton said, “Whoever put the barbed wire up overlooked those.” He, too, had seen them. “They may be the oldest graves, but there are no dates on them.” As he climbed on up the dirt trail he said over his shoulder, “And there are no doubt totally unmarked graves.”
In the center of the graveyard stood a single structure, made of what appeared to Runcible to be either marble or granite. The square of stone had become so dirty and weather-stained that he could not tell what it had originally looked like. Set in each side was a stained glass window, and as he got closer he discovered that the glass depicted a scene; an angel praying. On the side facing the trail a black iron door could be seen, locked with chain and padlock. On each side of the door was a stone vase with dry stalks of plants poking from it.
Lettered in brass across the top of the structure were the words: ANGELO BASTIONI, and then farther down on the sides, and smaller, were the words: THEA BASTIONI, TULIO BASTIONI, ANGELO BASTIONI JR, LUCIANO BASTIONI. MARIO BASTIONI, GIA BASTIONI.
Obviously, this had once been the burial place for this one well-to-do family. Other lesser dead had crept in furtively, perhaps when the surviving Bastionis were not looking. He did not recognize the name. As far as he knew, no one by that name lived in the area, now. In fact he had not encountered it before this.
Wharton said, “The Bastioni family owned tracts of land here, deeded to them from the Mexican government. Original tracts, very large. Embracing most of this area.” He tossed his shovel down beside the trail and knelt down to retie his boot lace.
Ahead, Sheriff Christen had reached the gate of the barbed wire fence. He unhooked it and dragged it aside for the others to pass through and into the graveyard.
The vet said, “Over to the right. The weeds are trampled down.”
To Runcible, Dudley Sharp said, “This is fascinating, this little old abandoned graveyard.” He called to Wharton, “What is the oldest stone here, to your knowledge?”
“About 1800,” Wharton answered. “I’ll show it to you.” He led the anthropologist and the vet along a gravel path overgrown with oats, up a slope to a terrace at the higher end of the graveyard. There, the huge, wild rosebush had put out its canes over a broad area; a number of marble headstones had become concealed by it.
Seth Faulk said, “I’ve seen roses from the road, this bush. I always wondered what was up here.”
“You should have looked,” Runcible said. He left Faulk and strode on up to join the others.
Following after him, Faulk said, “There’s no news out here, not usually.”
The sheriff had gone on by the rose bush; with his heavy boots he smashed down canes of the bush and got through to the far side. There, brambles joined the rose bush and formed a wall under which, Runcible saw, the barbed wire fence had tumbled down. Raising his shovel the sheriff hacked and cleared a way until he disappeared from sight, beyond the wall of thorny growth.
“They could put the dirt back,” Wharton said. “But probably not the weeds. So look for bare earth.”
The vet, Seth Faulk, and Wharton all went off together to the far right; it was not possible to see down the slope on that side because of the angle. Runcible and Sharp remained near the center of the graveyard, by the Bastioni crypt, each man holding his shovel.
“I should have come out to this area a long time ago,” the anthropologist said. “What else is here?”
“Everything you could want,” Runcible said, preoccupied. He had noticed exposed earth, and he started in that direction.
Beyond the Bastioni crypt he found an open grave. A mound of dirt had been flung up out of it, but tufts of weeds were growing in the mound and he realized that it had been there a long time. The grave was empty, and its sides were so regular, so square, that he knew that this was a formal grave, one dug but never used.
“I thought we had it,” he said to Sharp, who had followed.
From far off they heard the sheriffs voice.
“He wants us,” Runcible said, and started in that direction. By taking the route through the brambles and rose canes that the sheriff had made he was able to get over the broken barbed wire. Under his shoes the rusted wire yielded and snapped; he tramped it down for the anthropologist, who followed, holding the canes aside gingerly with his hands. A smear of blood could be seen on his right wrist; either a barb from the fence or a rose thorn had cut him.
They found Sheriff Christen standing at the edge of a shallow trough, poking with the blade of his shovel. Bits of Grey broken wood, termite-eaten, lay strewn here and there in the dirt. The weeds had been cleared back. Someone had dug here recently.
“This looks like it,” Christen said. He pushed the blade of his shovel into the dirt and it sank down. The soil was loose.
On the far side of the rose bush Wharton appeared and called to them. “We found recent digging outside the fence.”
“Here, too,” Christen said. He continued to explore with the blade of his shovel. At last he gripped the shovel handle with both hands and, pushing the blade down with his heel, lifted dirt up and aside. “Want to help me?” he said to Runcible.
Together, the two men dug. Sharp had gone a little way off to investigate a wooden cross still standing. “I wonder if I should let this alone,” he said to them. “It looks to me like it’s been dug up and then put back.” Kneeling, he tugged at the cross; after a moment it came up, free, and he set it aside. “They’ve been here, too,” he said. “They probably opened a number of graves. Once they got started it wouldn’t be hard. These little graves are closer together, probably touching.”
The sheriff and Runcible had dug several feet down; it was not difficult because others had dug so recently. But now their shovels reached adobe. They found themselves slowed down; they had to cut the adobe with the sharp edges of their shovels, wiggling the blades back and forth and pressing down with their full weight.
“Maybe they started here and gave up,” Runcible said.
They removed all the loose earth. No bones emerged. Either the grave robbers had taken all the remains from this spot or they had stopped short. There should be caskets, Runcible thought. That would be necessary in a burial; even in 1800 they didn’t just dump the corpse into a hole. It’s only Indian corpses that were treated that way. And these are not Indian corpses; these are the graves of the white farmers who came over Mount Tamalpais and settled here.
“It’s interesting to see which graves they ransacked,” Runcible said to the sheriff.
“Yes,” the sheriff said. “The poorest graves. They probably figured those were fair game. No one would care. Or if they did, they couldn’t do much. They were smart enough to stay out of the big crypt in the middle.”
It did not seem as if they had anything where they were now digging, so they restored the dirt and returned to Heyes and Wharton and Faulk. The other three men had exposed a wooden casket; they had put down their shovels and were examining it.
Wharton said, “If it hasn’t been opened, should we open it?”
“I think it has been opened,” the vet said. He tugged at the top, and it lifted a crack. “Setter set yourselves,” he said. To the sheriff he said, “Do I have official permission to go ahead?”
“Go ahead,” Christen said.
Together, Faulk and Heyes opened the casket. In it lay a skeleton intact. On its left hand they saw a gold ring, evidently a wedding ring. And, in the casket, were the metal remains of shoes, a belt, snaps of clothing, a pile of what had been leather.
“May I see?” Sharp said, putting his hand on Runcible’s shoulder. Runcible moved aside, and the anthropologist peered intently.
“Anything?” Faulk said.
“No,” Sharp said. “As far as I’m concerned you can close it.”
“But they did look in here,” Runcible said.
“It’s hard to tell,” Wharton said. “This old casket has deteriorated quite a bit. It wasn’t much to start with.”
They dug further. By clearing the soil to
their right they came onto a wooden cross buried and almost destroyed; they could not read the carving on it or make it stand. Evidently it had fallen over at some far-distant time in the past and become lost, probably during the winter rains.
A half hour later they found in the loose soil a jumble of bones.
“This seems to be where they got the skull,” the vet said. No skull could be found, although all six men continued to dig.
Sharp laid the bones out on a canvas sheet. He paid no attention to the other men for a long time; absorbed in his work, he let them go on digging.
“What do you think?” Christen said.
“Well, the skull is gone,” Sharp said. “I suppose this could have been a headless corpse tossed here. I’ll tell you what I’d be more interested in finding.” He rose to his feet and again picked up his shovel. “I’d like to see an intact skeleton that has deformations along the lines that I’ve run into. And one that hasn’t been worked over in a machine shop. Especially the skull.” He had a tense expression; his forehead had become wrinkled with concern.
“We’ll have to root around in more caskets, then,” Faulk said.
“Yes,” Sharp said. “If we may. If it’s permitted.”
“You can go ahead,” the sheriff said, after thinking about it.
For an hour they dug. Once they had got the hang of it they found it possible to go from one casket to the next without having to lift the intervening dirt; they located the caskets quickly, got them open, and then went on. Sharp inspected each skeleton with care.
At three-thirty in the afternoon they came onto a casket that had fallen almost to bits. As they opened it the lid came apart in their hands; fragments of rotten wood, as soft as cloth, tore loose and rained down into the soil.
“Either very old,” Christen said, “or badly built, or both.”
Dirt covered the skeleton; dirt had seeped through the wood during the years. They blew and brushed the dirt away until the skull was visible. At once they all gasped; all of them saw the difference. The deformity that the anthropologist had been searching for.
“I guess our friends didn’t see this one,” Sharp said. “Or they would have used it.” As he bent down he said, “It would have saved them a lot of effort.”
The jaw of the skull seemed to Runcible enormous. And yet it had little or no chin to it. And the teeth. As if they were all molars, he thought. Massive and square, unlike anything he had ever seen, except in the skull that he and Wharton had dug up in his own eucalyptus grove.
All at once he said, “Listen. This could be a fake.”
They glanced at him. “Of course,” the vet said. “That would really be clever. They’d know we’d be coming here looking.” He stood up, away from the open casket.
“No end to it,” Wharton said in a jerky, hectic voice.
“We can tell,” Sharp said, running his fingers over the cheek of the skull.
The brow, Runcible said to himself. Yes, he thought. It does look like a Neanderthal skull. And yet it is not. He had seen so many photographs of Neanderthal skulls, in the last weeks. This was different. Even though there were so many Neanderthal types, even mixtures of Neanderthal with true men, this could not be called one; he looked down at a deformity, not the manifestation of a special race. Glandular, he thought. Like that wrestler. What was it—thyroid? Iodine lacking in early life, or something like that.
“I wonder how he ate,” Seth Faulk said.
“It does make you wonder,” the vet said.
Sharp said, “I can tell you right now; this is a Homo sapiens skull. Don’t get excited.”
They all nodded.
“He was a short man,” Sharp said. “Probably didn’t walk quite upright. And the overhanging brow. And the jaw. His speech must have been affected.”
Runcible said, “The Neanderthals are supposed to have mixed with true men.”
“Yes,” Sharp said. “At least, it appears as if that was so. From the remains we’ve found since the war.” He inspected the leg bones. “You mean, possibly this could be an—offspring of miscegenation. Of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens stock.” After a time he said. “None of you have ever seen anything like this before? In this area? Any people living here, born here? With this sort of deformity?”
They all said no.
Sharp said, “Who would the oldest people in the area be? Is there some backwoods part, here? The boondocks? A farm left over from the old days, up on the Ridge somewhere, maybe?”
“Let’s see,” Sheriff Christen said. “There’s the old town.”
“What old town?” Sharp said. His face lit up as if with fright.
Wharton said, “There was a previous town of Carquinez. Not where the present one is, but on the other side of the Ridge. On the ocean side.”
The vet said, “On the estero.”
Sharp said, “Does anybody live there now?”
“A few people,” the vet said. “Very poor run-down people. It’s almost in ruins, now.”
“Abandoned,” Runcible said. “Just shacks.”
“They still live by oyster fishing,” Wharton said. “The way the Indians did before them.”
“Let’s go out there,” Sharp said. “They may have old paintings and daguerreotypes. Back country people usually have.”
The vet said, “Yes, I’ve seen them, in one of the shacks I was in. On the mantel.”
“Did you notice anything?” the anthropologist said.
“Just faces,” the vet said. “Ugly old people wearing black clothing. Frowning. You know.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Sharp said. “Maybe I don’t know.”
16
From his living room window Walter Dombrosio watched the caravan leaving Runcible’s house. First came Sheriff Christen’s car and then the vet and Seth Faulk in the vet’s special truck, then Runcible in his well-known Studebaker, and finally Wharton and Sharp in the school teacher’s station wagon. As the cars passed his house, Dombrosio saw the shovels and spades that were being carried along. The equipment with which to dig.
The procession seemed to him like some official party. He could never see the sheriff’s car without having a reaction to the seal on the door and the special license plate and the radio antenna. And here the car led the others, off to the graveyard. There was no doubt in his mind; he knew where they were going. Stepping out onto his porch he watched them descend the hill to the Chevron Station. At the highway they turned right, in the proper direction.
Even the newspaper editor, he thought. Who doesn’t even like Runcible; he’s got him, too. He’s got everyone who counts.
Along the highway the caravan of vehicles moved slowly until it disappeared out of sight beyond a grove of trees.
Hands in his pockets he went down the porch steps and out into the road; soon he was going aimlessly down the hill, taking long strides.
I’m his idea man, he realized. He’ll be famous forever. This area will be remembered because of his—his!—find, the way Heidelberg is known because of the skull found there.
This’ll either be the Runcible Skull or the Carquinez Skull, he realized. In any case, he will have this place in the encyclopedias. And himself along, too. And I’ll be like that chauffeur who found the Drake plaque. Nobody even remembers his name; he was just “the chauffeur who found the plaque.” A guy looking for something to get the battery of his boss’ car working.
And I can’t even follow them. All I can do is walk along here by myself. And who has my car? he asked himself. Who stole it? My wife.
He continued on down the hill, walking slower and slower but still going on. How can I go back into that house? he asked himself. Back to the old drawing board. For what? What little project? Quail traps? Cow suits? How now, brown cow, he thought. Have to keep hands, fingers busy or get into trouble; get bawled out. Shame.
The banality of his thoughts horrified him, the dreadful emptiness. And at a time like this. No, he thought. Must be a hardworking breadwinner, produc
ing away, like all other husbands. Keep family together. He jerked his hands from his pockets as he went on; he stared down at his hands, his feet, at the road—he did not look up.
A buzzing. Noise, across the valley. He did not look up. He listened. He shaded his eyes. He looked at his wristwatch. One-thirty in the afternoon.
It did sound like the Alfa. A red dot moved, far off, along the straight stretch of highway. She couldn’t be coming home so early. It’s probably someone on his way up to Point Reyes, he thought. He saw the car reach the Chevron Station, and it did not turn up the hill. It continued on. So it was not Sherry; he was right.
As he watched, the Alfa slowed. It turned at the next road, Bluff Road, which led up onto a rise of land and a few houses. None of them have an Alfa, he thought. Someone from town visiting. But he had never seen or heard any other Alfa around except his own, and this one moved so confidently up the road, so rapidly, that he could not believe this was the driver’s initial trip here. Strangers can’t make it, he thought. Not fast on these narrow blind roads.
For a time he lost sight of it; a hill cut off his view. But he still heard it. And then, presently, the sound ceased. The Alfa had stopped at one of the houses.
Who do we know? he asked himself. Who lives there?
I can walk down to the highway and then up Bluff Road in half an hour, he said to himself. And I have nothing else to do, because she has left me nothing.
He thought, Dolly Fergesson lives there. And they are sure great buddies, the two of them.
Taking great deep breaths, he quickened his pace.
When he turned the curve on Bluff Road and caught his first glimpse of the Fergesson house, sure enough; the Alfa was parked in front of it. And now he read the license plate. It was his car. His wife was inside with Dolly. Something has happened, he said to himself. Or she wouldn’t knock off in the middle of the day. Gasping, winded, he strode up the hill to the car.
In the car, lying on the front seat in plain sight, was Sherry’s big leather purse. He stood for a moment, resting his hands on the door of the car and getting his breath.