“It doesn’t look like any lottery ticket I’ve ever seen,” Agnes answered, with a disdainful sniff. “Have some meat loaf and pass it before it gets any colder.”
“Agnes,” he said, not moving a finger toward the platter, “you don’t understand. I think this is very important. Very valuable. I found it today. Down along the San Pedro just south of Saint David.
There’s a place where one of last winter’s floods must have caused a cave-in. This pot was just lying there in the sand, sticking up in the air and waiting for someone like me to come along and pick it up.”
Agnes regarded the pot with a little more respect. “You think it’s old, then?”
“Very.”
“And it could be worth a lot of money?”
“Tons of money. Well, maybe not tons.” Oscar Barkley never allowed himself to indulge in unnecessary exaggeration. “But enough to make our lives a whole lot easier.”
“It’s just a little chunk of clay. Why would it be worth money?”
“Because it’s all in one piece, dummy,” he replied with certainty.
Agnes was so inured to Oscar’s customary arrogance that she didn’t even notice it, much less let it bother her.
“If you read
Agnes reached out to pick up the pot. She had planned on examining it more closely, but as soon as she touched it, she inexplicably changed her mind and pushed it aside.
“It still doesn’t look like all that much to me,” she said. “Now, if you’re not going to bother with the meat loaf, would you please go ahead and pass it?”
The grin disappeared from Oscar’s face. He passed the platter without another word. Agnes saw at once that she had hurt his feelings. Usually, just a glimpse of that wounded look on his face would have been enough to melt her heart and cause her to make up with him, but tonight, for some reason, she still felt too hurt herself. Agnes was in no mood for making apologies.
“By the way,” she said, a few minutes later, as she slathered margarine on a stone-cold potato, “Gretchen and Dolly Ann invited me to come up to Phoenix with them on a senior citizen bus tour the day after tomorrow. I told them I’d go.”
“Oh? For how long?” Oscar asked.
“Just overnight. Why, do you have a problem with that?”
“No. No problem at all.”
He said it so easily — it slipped out so smoothly — that for a moment Agnes almost missed it. “You mean you don’t mind if I go, then?”
Oscar focused on her vaguely, as though his mind was pre-occupied with something far away. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not at all. You go right ahead and have a good time. Just one thing, though.”
Agnes gave him a sharp look. “What’s that?”
“Don’t mention a word about this pot to anyone. Not Gretchen, not Dolly Ann.”
“This is yours and Jimmy’s little secret, I suppose?” Agnes asked.
Oscar shook his head. “Jimmy was a good half mile down the river when I found it,” he said. “I brushed it off and put it straight in my pack. He doesn’t even know I found it, and I’m not going to tell him, either. After all, I’m the one who found it. If it turns out to be worth something, there’s no sense in splitting it with someone who wasn’t any help at all in finding it, do you think?”
Agnes thought about that for a moment. “No,” she said finally.
“I don’t suppose there is.”
The meat loaf tasted like old shoe leather. The potatoes were worse. When chewed, the green beans snapped tastelessly against their teeth like so many boiled rubber bands. Oscar and Agnes picked at their food with little interest, no appetite, and even less conversation. Finally, Agnes stood up and began clearing away the dishes.
“How about some lemon pie,” she offered, conciliatory at last.
“At least that’s
They went to bed right after the ten o’clock news ended on TV.
Oscar fell asleep instantly, planted firmly in the middle of the bed and snoring up a storm, while Agnes clung to her side of the mattress and held a pillow over her ear to help shut out some of the noise.
Eventually she fell asleep as well. It was close to morning when the dream awakened her.
Agnes was standing on a small knoll, watching a young child play in the dirt. The child — apparently a little girl — wasn’t one of Agnes Barkley’s own children. Both of her girls were fair-skinned blondes.
This child was brown-skinned, with a mane of thick black hair and white, shiny teeth. The child was bathed in warm sunlight, laughing and smiling. She spun around and around, kicking up dirt from around her, looking for all the world like a child-sized dust devil dancing across the desert floor.
Suddenly, for no clear reason, the scene darkened as though a huge cloud had passed in front of the sun. Somehow sensing danger, Agnes called out to the child: “Come here. Quick.”
The little girl looked up at her and frowned, but she didn’t seem to understand the warning Agnes was trying to give, and she didn’t move. Agnes heard the sound then, heard the incredible roar and rush of water and knew that a flash flood was bearing down on them from somewhere upstream.
“Come here!” she cried again, more urgently this time. “Now!”
The child looked up at Agnes once more, and then she glanced off to her side. Her eyes widened in terror at the sight of a solid wall of murky brown water, twelve to fourteen feet high, churning toward her. The little girl scrambled to her feet and started away, darting toward Agnes and safety. But then, when she was almost out of harm’s way, she stopped, turned, and went back. She was bending over to retrieve something from the dirt — something small and round and black — when the water hit. Agnes watched in helpless horror while the water crashed over her. Within seconds, the child was swept from view.
Agnes awakened drenched in sweat, just as she had years before when she was going through the change of life. Long after her heart quit pounding, the vivid, all-too-real dream stayed with her. Was that where the pot had come from? she wondered. Had the pot’s owner, some small Indian child — no one in Westmont ever used the term Native American — been swept to her death before her mother’s horrified eyes? And if it was true, if what Agnes had seen in the dream had really happened, it must have been a long time ago. How was it possible that it could be passed on to her — to a rock-solid Lutheran lady from Illinois, one not given to visions or wild flights of imagination?
Agnes crawled out of bed without disturbing the sleeping Oscar.
She fumbled on her glasses, then slipped into her robe and went to the bathroom. When she emerged she stopped by the kitchen table, where the pot, sitting by itself, was bathed in a shaft of silver moonlight. It seemed to glow and shimmer in that strange, pearlescent light, but rather than being frightened of it, Agnes found herself drawn to it.
Without thinking, she sat down at the table, pulled the pot toward her, and let her fingers explore its smooth, cool surface. How did you go about forming such a pot? Agnes wondered. Where did you find the clay? How was it fired? What was it used for? There were no answers to those questions, but Agnes felt oddly comforted simply by asking them. A few minutes later she slipped back into bed and slept soundly until well after her usual time to get up and make coffee.
Two nights later, at the hotel in Phoenix, Agnes Barkley was down to nothing but her bra and panties when Gretchen Dixon’s irritated voice brought her back to herself. “Well?” Gretchen demanded. “Do you want a card or not, Aggie? Either get in the game or get out.”
Agnes put down her cards. “I’m out,” she said. “I’m not very good at this. I can’t concentrate.”
“We should have played hearts instead,” Lola offered.
“Strip hearts isn’t all the same thing as strip poker,” Gretchen snapped. “How many cards?”
“Two,” Lola answered.
Agnes got up and pulled on her nightgown and robe. She had followed Gretchen’s advice and started the game wearing as many clothes as she could manage. It hadn’t helped. Although she was usually a quick study at
