“The only thing Uncle Gee said on the subject was when he told ’em,‘Be careful now,’ he said. ‘Just ’cause you don’t understand something—or even believe it—that don’t mean it ain’t true!’” She suddenly laughed.“He was always smilin’ and happy. An’ he was always doin’! Didn’ never slow down. I learned that from him. I don’t slow down. I see all these people sixty, seventy years old . . . young people! They actin’ all creaky and sad. Not Mae Mae!
“Uncle Gee—ever’ letter he wrote me—he talked about bein’ a example. And that’s what Mae Mae still tries to be! ’Cause people are watchin’ and learnin’—specially the chirren—and they gon’ do what you do! Every day I think, What kinda world would this world be . . . if ever’body in it acted just like me?
”
“Say that again, Mae Mae,” Dorry said and wrote it on the front of her notepad as the old lady repeated the words slowly.
Just then, Mark reappeared as the waitress put the food on the table. “Got him,” Mark declared as he held up the cell phone.“Fax is away.As soon as they get it,Abby’s gonna look at it and they’ll call us back.”
As they ate, Dorry and Mark continued to pepper Mae Mae with questions about her famous uncle. Both were fascinated that the object belonged to a person who had accomplished so much and that the relic itself seemed to somehow be a part of that achievement.
After finishing their meal, the three drank coffee and talked until, at last, the cell phone chirped. Raising his eyebrows, Mark said, “Here we go!” He opened the phone. “Mark Chandler.”
Mae Mae whispered to Dorry, “He answers the phone like the police, don’t he?” Dorry stifled a laugh, but was intent on the one-sided conversation she was hearing.
“Okay with me,” Mark said.“So it was clear enough? . . . Yeah, we’re here with Mae Mae right now . . .” Mark laughed.“That’s right, we call her Mae Mae . . . Sure. Fine as far as I’m concerned. Do I need a pen?” Dorry began scrambling in her purse, but Mark held up his hand. “Okay,” he said.“Tell me.”
Dorry and Mae Mae watched Mark closely as he listened. They saw his mouth drop open.“No way,” he said. “What? What?!” Dorry demanded.“What does it say?!” Mark, listening closely to Dylan, but looking Dorry in the eye, put his finger forcefully to his lips and turned away from her in the booth.“Dylan, say that again.” He paused. “You don’t have any idea how unbelievable that is. When do you get home?”Another pause.“Okay. Us too. We have a midmorning flight out of Memphis tomorrow. Can you and Abby just plan on being at our house tomorrow night? . . .Yeah . . .Yeah, I think she needs to be in on it . . . It would take too long to explain and I’m not sure I understand anyway. Listen, is nine o’clock too late? That’ll give us some time with Michael and we can have him in bed by the time you two get there . . . If you don’t mind . . . Good! Okay, see you then . . . you too. Bye-bye.”
As Mark slowly turned around to face Dorry and Mae Mae again, he closed the phone and placed it on the table. Dorry couldn’t tell if her husband was stunned or bewildered . . . or both. “I’m assuming Abby translated it?” she asked finally.
He didn’t move a muscle, but said,“Uh-huh.”
Dorry glanced at Mae Mae, who seemed somewhat amused. Then, taking a deep breath to calm herself, she asked,“Mark? What does the script on the food stone say?” As if a trance were broken, Mark looked first at Dorry, then Mae Mae, and leaned forward. Quietly he said,“Abby said it translates to—are you ready for this?—By your hand, the people shall be fed. ”
Mae Mae popped her dentures back and forth as, for a long moment, the three stared at each other in astonishment.“ Well,” she finally said in her soft drawl,“I tol’ you it was a food stone.”
Once the initial shock wore off, Mae Mae dug the food stone out of her handbag and laid it on the table in front of her, fanning the leather cord out in a circle.“I brought it wif us,” she said simply. Touching the object’s surface with her fingers, Mae Mae said to Mark,“Say them words again.”
“By your hand,” Mark said slowly, “the people shall be fed.”
Mae Mae picked up the object and held it close to her face, staring intently as if to somehow see into it. “The people shall be fed,” she murmured. “Lord, Lord. How many people did Uncle Gee feed wearin’ this?”
“How many people is he still feeding?” Dorry asked. “Think about that!”
“Mae Mae?” Mark began. “When we were at your house, you said that your grandfather wore this and that it was known as a food stone long before George Washington Carver became . . . well, George Washington Carver . . . know what I mean?” She nodded.“Anyway,” he continued, “do you have any idea who might have had it before your grandfather?”
“No,”Mae Mae answered.
“What are you thinking?” Dorry asked.
“I don’t know, really,” Mark replied.“I am barely getting my brain around this.” He shook his head in quick little jerks. “I mean, this thing came from Africa . . . right?” He threw a questioning glance in Mae Mae’s direction. She nodded. “In Africa, it was already known as a food stone . . . though we can make the assumption that the translation had been lost or forgotten years ago. So somehow, this piece acquired a reputation of having something to do with producing food or feeding the hungry . . . and this reputation was perpetuated by people who did not know what the writing said! That makes no sense.”
Mae Mae broke into a full-fledged grin. “You thinkin’ maybe it’s magic, aintcha?”
“No,” Dorry said.“Of course not.” She paused. “I don’t think. I mean, that’s ridiculous, right?”
“Let me say it like this, baby,” Mae Mae said.“They may or may not be magic in this here food stone. But Mae Mae knows for sure . . . there is magic inside you.”
“I don’t—,” Dorry started to say.
“What Mae Mae’s sayin’ is, they may be all kind of magic in this here rock, but you set there waitin’ for the magic to happen and do nothin’? Tha’s exactly what you gonna get. Nothin’! On the other hand, you choose to do somethin’ special? You gon’ get somethin’ special.” Having made her point, the old woman sat back, crossed her arms, and said,“There ya go. Tha’s it.”
Pausing in their conversation as the waitress poured fresh cups of coffee, they were aware that the restaurant had almost emptied its lunch crowd, but no one seemed to mind their continued presence. As the waitress walked away, Dorry said something to Mae Mae that had been on her mind. “Earlier today, you called the food stone ‘an inspiration’ for your uncle. Is that all it was?”
Mae Mae thought for a bit, then spoke. “I’m sure it meant a lot to him ’cause it was from his daddy, but mostly it was a reminder of the choice.”
Mark and Dorry looked puzzled, as if they’d missed something.“I don’t understand,” Mark said.
“Let’s put it this way. You think my Uncle George Washington Carver made a difference in this world?”
“Of course. Absolutely,” they answered.
“You’d be right. Now, let me ask you this. Do you think they’s some people that never make a difference in this world?”
Mark and Dorry hesitated, then answered yes, that they believed that to be true.
“And tha’s where you’d be dead wrong!” Mae Mae said as she pointed her finger.“Everybody—every single body— makes a difference! But there is a choice that determines what kinda difference you will make. Most folks don’t see how important they are . . . how much they matter to all of us. So they never choose to do somethin’ special wif their lives. And not makin’ a choice? That is a choice . . . a lost one.”
“Wow.” Mark opened his eyes widely and looked at Dorry. “I never thought of it that way, but it’s true.”
Dorry opened her purse and, after rummaging through it, removed the first relic and placed it on the table beside the food stone. Except for the food stone’s leather cord and slight variation in shape, the two were almost identical. The major difference, they already
knew,was in the inscription. “By your hand, the people shall live,” Dorry said and looked up. “Mae Mae, was there a choice involved with this one, do you think?”
“Yes, baby, I do.An’ I think they was just as many choices wrapped up in that one as this one.”The old woman picked up the food stone by its cord and, holding it aloft, said,“The difference here is that we know some of the history. An’we know that Uncle Gee understood about the danger of a lost choice.Tha’s why he pushed folks to make one.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mark.
“Uncle Gee would put this stone on a person and ask ’em, ‘Do you pledge to do somethin’ special with your life?’ He’d make ’em answer. I know he done it lots of times ’cause Dr. Patterson—that’s the man was president at Tuskegee when Uncle Gee passed—he wrote me a letter and told me so. He said Uncle Gee put this ’round his neck many a time and asked him that very question. He told me that wadn’ a day go by that he didn’ strive to live up to the choice he made.”
She held the food stone higher, studied it as it turned on the cord, then put it back on the table.“Come ’round here, son,” she said to Mark.
“Ma’am?” he asked, not certain what she wanted him to do.
“Come ’roun’ here to me and get down where I can see you.”Mark eased out of the booth and stepped to the old woman’s side.“Kneel down here,” she said and he did.
“I want to give this food stone to you.”
“Oh, Mae Mae,” Dorry gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth.“Are you sure? It belongs in your family.”
“Now then,” she said,“in one way Mae Mae ain’ got no more family. An’ in one way,we all family. Ever’body in the world. We sho’ enough touchin’ each other’s lives, ain’t we?” “Yes, ma’am,” Dorry said.
“Anyhow, Mae Mae’s almost a thousand years old, and I want you, Mark, to have this. It’ll be a gift for you to one day give that son of yours. Lean your head down here.”
As Mark lowered his head, the tiny old black woman reached up and placed the leather cord around his neck. She then cradled his face in her hands and said,“Mark, do you pledge to do something special wif your life?”
Mark reached up and covered her left hand that lay cool against his cheek with his right hand.“Yes, ma’am. I promise.”
She took the first relic in her other hand and reached across to Dorry. Mae Mae placed it in Dorry’s palm, but kept her hand there, interlocking fingers with the younger woman, holding the object between them.“Baby girl,” she said to Dorry, who now had tears in her eyes, “do you pledge to do something special wif your life?”
“Yes,” Dorry said.“I do.”
“All right then,” she said as she popped her dentures. “I’m gon’ expect it. Now take Mae Mae home. I love you, but I’m wore out.”
NINE
DENVER, COLORADO—OCTOBER
IT WAS TEN MINUTES UNTIL NINE O’CLOCK. Knowing that Dylan would be on time, Dorry was making a last-minute run through the house to be certain that everything was clean and in order. She had never met Abby and wanted to create a good first impression.
Their flight from Memphis had gotten in just before noon. Retrieving Michael, they had taken the time to eat lunch with Dorry’s parents and still were at home by two-thirty. It was a perfect fall afternoon, and Mark and Dorry had spent most of it outdoors playing with their son. Around six, Mark and Michael had cooked dinner while Dorry caught up on the e-mail deluge from work. She was, at least, relieved to see that there was nothing due by tomorrow morning.
Now Michael was in bed—already asleep—and Mark made a fresh pot of coffee as Dorry removed a Matchbox dump truck from between the cushions of the living room couch. “How many of these things does Michael have?” she asked as she walked to the kitchen and rolled the toy across the counter to her husband.
Mark deftly caught the truck when it fell from the edge and put it on top of the refrigerator. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ll tell you how many he’s gonna have if I step on another one with my bare feet in the middle of the night. I stepped on that little tank in the bathroom last week and almost killed myself!”
The doorbell rang.“There they are,”Dorry said.“You let them in and I’ll be right back. I want to check on Michael before we get started.”
Twenty-seven-year-old Abby Warner was tall and tanned. Her shoulder-length, light-brown hair was tied back into a ponytail. Blond highlights, combined with her clear, blue eyes, framed her effortless smile.
“Hi! Come on in,”Mark said as Abby, then Dylan, entered through the front door. Dorry arrived on the scene seconds later and hugged Dylan as she and Mark were introduced to the archaeologist who had become his girlfriend.
Moving the group into the living room, Dorry said, “Dylan, she’s beautiful!”
“Really? Do you think so?” Dylan responded, kidding. “I hadn’t even noticed that about her.” Mark and Dorry laughed as Abby rolled her eyes and blushed.
“Okay,”Dorry said,“let’s leave her alone until we get to know her—then we can tease her unmercifully.” Everyone laughed.“Abby, you come with me. We’ll get our coffee the way we like it and these two can just take what we bring them.” As the guys made themselves comfortable on the couch, Dorry and Abby disappeared into the kitchen. Mark winked at Dylan. They had both sensed that, for some reason, Dorry had instantly taken a liking to the younger woman.
In the kitchen, the two women did indeed bond immediately. Dorry showed Abby the pictures of Michael on the refrigerator and asked about Abby’s childhood. She was very interested in Abby’s choice of Dartmouth for college and learned that it was one of the only schools in the United States offering a degree in classical archaeology. When the coffee was ready, there had never been a lull in the conversation.
“Here we go,” Dorry said, lifting the tray of cups, cream, and sugar. Abby followed her into the living room where Dylan and Mark were already hovered over the coffee table. Dylan was examining the food stone with a magnifying glass.
“Make room, guys,” Dorry said as they quickly cleared the table.“You haven’t started talking without us, have you?” “No, just looking,” Dylan said, “but holy moly, this is really unbelievable.”
“Holy moly?” Dorry asked. Mark grinned. He could see that his wife was deciding whether or not to torment Dylan about his choice of words.
Sensing a challenge to the term, however, Dylan spoke first.“Holy moly is perfectly acceptable,” he said with an air of mock superiority. “In the dictionary, the expression is listed under M for ‘moly, holy.’ Its definition? ‘Holy moly— a degree of holiness somewhere between mackerel and cow.’ Look it up.”
“Okay, okay,” Mark laughed as Dorry and Abby rolled their eyes. “Let’s get to it. Dylan, tell us what you think is so unbelievable about this.”
Dylan slid off the couch and, on his knees at the coffee table, looked through his magnifying glass at the food stone again.
“Well, the similarities for one thing,” he said,“but those are obvious. Abby, you’re the expert—I’m out of my league here.”
The pony-tailed archaeologist crowded in closely. “Let me see.”
Dylan shifted to allow her room while Mark moved the tray with the sugar and cream to the dining room. He then transferred the lamp at the end of the couch directly to the coffee table. “That better?” he asked, and when they answered in the affirmative,Mark joined everyone else on the living room floor.
“I’m surprised the scripting is so clearly maintained,” Abby said.“There is wear, obviously, some fading, but these are beautiful pieces.”
Dorry, looking over Abby’s shoulder, asked, “Why are you surprised about the scripting?”
Without taking her eyes from the two objects, Abby answered,“I am assuming these are the same relative age— if not exactly the same age—because of size, color, degree of declension, and certainly because of the similar translations. But . . . in a relic this old, one would expect much more wea
r around the edges of the script cuts.” She held the objects up into the light for everyone to see. “Notice how sharply defined the carving is? If one were to view each separate indentation as a tiny canyon, the rim of the cliff is a sudden drop. It is not a smoothed or rounded edge as one might expect after centuries of exposure to the elements.”
Abby used the magnifying glass again. “I want to look at these under a scope, if you don’t mind my taking them to the museum’s lab”—she paused—“but what I see here . . .” She looked up and thought for a moment. Placing the pieces carefully back onto the coffee table, Abby continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “Two specifics catch my attention. One is the condition of the items—which is what we’ve been talking about. I know this one was found in or around water, correct?”
“Yes, correct,” the Chandlers confirmed.
“Just a cursory examination will tell you that this thing has not spent much of its life outdoors, forget ‘in the water.’ And both objects are the same in that regard. They are simply not eroded sufficiently to have been anything but . . .” Abby frowned.
“Anything but what?” Dorry asked.
“Personally protected.” Dylan finished the sentence for her. Turning to Abby, who still seemed deep in thought, he said, “That’s what has you thrown, isn’t it? You think they’ve both been personally protected—passed down like an heirloom—for two thousand or so years?”
Abby sighed. “But that’s absurd . . . right?”
“Weeeell,” Dylan drew out the word. “I think it’s stretching the realm a bit. I don’t know, Ab . . . to think an object might be intentionally transferred from person to person for two millennia? As empires are rising and falling? I mean, that’s longer than civilizations have lasted in that part of the world.”
“Logically, I agree,” Abby allowed. “And archaeologically, it doesn’t make sense . . . but look at them.” She placed the objects in Dylan’s hands somewhat defiantly.“You have to admit . . . you’ve seen Apache artifacts less than two hundred years old in worse shape than these. I don’t think this piece”—she indicated the one Michael found—“has been exposed to the elements for even a hundred years, much less two thousand. And this one . . .” Abby picked up the food stone by its leather cord. “This one is in better shape than the other! The only possibility I can imagine is that they have been protected in some way since they were cast.” Dylan nodded. “It’s strange, but I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said.”