Thunderhead

fistful of grounds, and stirred the pot with her knife.

“Bonarotti would die if he saw you making that cowboy coffee,” Sloane said. “He’d brain you with his espresso pot.”

“Waiting for him to get up and make coffee in the morning is like waiting for Godot,” Nora said. While they were on the trail, the cook had always been the first one up. But now that they were encamped at Quivira and working a more routine schedule, Bonarotti had steadfastly refused to leave his tent in the morning until the sun could be seen striking the clifftops.

She put the pot back on the fire for a moment and stirred the grounds down. Then she poured them each a cup. Steam came off the surface of the coffee, filling her nose with the strong bitter scent. She inhaled it gratefully.

“Bet I can guess what you’re thinking about,” Sloane said.

“Probably,” Nora replied. They sipped their coffee a while in silence.

“It’s just so unexpected,” Nora found herself saying, as if they’d been conversing all the while. “We find this place, this enchanted and marvelous place. Filled with more artifacts, more information, than we could ever hope for. Suddenly it seems as if we’ll get all the answers, after all.” She shook her head. “But all we get is riddles, strange unsettling riddles. That kiva filled with skulls is a perfect example. Why skulls? What does it mean? What could the ceremony have possibly been?”

Sloane put down her coffee and looked searchingly at Nora. “But don’t you see,” she said in a low voice, “we are getting the answers. It’s just that they aren’t the ones we expected. Scientific discovery is always like that.”

“I hope you’re right,” Nora replied. “I’ve discovered things before. And they never felt like this. Something in my gut just doesn’t feel right. And it hasn’t felt right since I first laid eyes on Aragon’s Crawlspace, littered with those countless bones, thrown about like so much trash.”

She fell silent as dark shapes bundled out of the dark. Smithback and Holroyd came over and joined them at the fire. Black soon appeared out of the twilight and hunkered down beside them. The dark branches of the cottonwoods were just beginning to separate themselves from the night.

“It’s as cold as Lenin’s balls around here in the mornings,” Smithback said. “And on top of that, my valet neglected to polish my boots, although I specifically left them outside my door.”

“It’s so hard to find good help these days,” said Black, in a whiny imitation of Smithback’s voice, and poured himself a cup. He held it to his nose. “What a barbarous way to make coffee,” he said, setting the cup down. “And when are we going to eat? Why can’t that Italian fellow get himself out of bed a little earlier? What kind of camp cook is this who won’t get up until the crack of noon?”

“He’s the only cook I know who can make pommes Anna as well as the best chefs of Paris, but with a twentieth of the equipment,” said Smithback. “Anyway, forget breakfast. Only savages and children eat breakfast.”

They sat around the fire, all but Sloane grumpy in the predawn air, nursing their coffee and speaking little. Nora wondered if the discoveries in the city and the Great Kiva were casting a pall over them, as well. Gradually the rising sun poured more color into the landscape, transforming it from gray to rich reds, yellows, purples, and greens.

Smithback saw Nora’s eyes traveling around the cliffs, and he said, “Paint by the numbers, right?”

“What a poetic thought,” said Nora.

“Hey, poetic thinking is my business.” Smithback chuckled and fished some grounds out of his coffee with a spoon, flicking them into the bushes behind him.

Nora heard the whisper of footfalls on sand and looked up to see Aragon, bundled against the chill. He sat down and wordlessly poured himself a cup of coffee. He drank it off with extreme rapidity and refilled the cup, hands unsteady.

“Burning the midnight oil again, Enrique?” Nora asked.

It was as if Aragon hadn’t heard. He continued drinking his coffee and staring into the fire. At last, he turned his dark eyes to Nora. “Yes, I was up quite late. I hope I did not disturb anyone.”

“No, not at all,” Nora replied quickly.

“Still working on those bones of yours, I suppose?” asked Black.

Aragon took a final swig of his coffee and refilled the cup a third time. “Yes.”

“So much for ZST. Find anything?”

There was a long pause. “Yes,” Aragon repeated.

There was something in his tone that silenced the company.

“Share with us, brother,” intoned the oblivious Smithback.

Aragon set his cup down and began slowly, deliberately, almost as if he had prepared his words ahead of time. “As I told Nora when I first discovered it, the placement of the bones in the Crawlspace is exceedingly odd.” There was a pause while he carefully removed from his coat a small plastic container. He placed it on the ground and gently unbuckled the lid. Inside were three fragmentary bones and a portion of a cranium.

“Lying sprawled on top are perhaps fifty or sixty articulated skeletons,” he continued. “Some still have the remains of clothing, rich jewelry, and personal adornment. They were well-fed, healthy individuals, most in the prime of their lives. They all seemed to have died at the same time, yet there is no sign of violence on the bones.”

“So what’s the explanation?” Nora asked.

“It seems to me that whatever happened, it happened so suddenly that there wasn’t time to give the bodies a proper burial,” Aragon replied. “My analysis turned up no clear disease process, but many diseases leave no osteological traces. Apparently, the bodies were simply dragged, intact, into the back and thrown on top of a huge existing pile of bones.” His expression changed. “Those bones underneath tell a very different story. They are the broken, disarticulated remains of hundreds, even thousands, of individuals, accumulated over years. Unlike the skeletons on top, these bones come from individuals who clearly died of violence. Extreme violence.”

He passed his dark eyes around the group. Nora felt her unease grow.

“The bones from the bottom layer display several unusual characteristics,” Aragon said, wiping his face with a soiled bandanna. He pointed with a pair of rubber-tipped forceps at a broken bone in the tray. “The first is that many of the long bones have been broken, perimortem, in a special way, like this bone here.”

“Perimortem?” asked Smithback.

“Yes. Broken not before death, and not long afterward, but about the time of death.”

“What do you mean, broken in a special way?” Black asked.

“It’s the same way the Anasazi broke deer and elk bones. In order to extract the marrow.” He pointed. “And here, in the cancellous tissue of the humerus, they actually reamed out the center of the bone to get at the marrow inside.”

“Wait,” said Smithback. “Hold on. You mean to extract the marrow for—?”

“Let me finish. Second, there are small marks on the bone. I have examined these marks under the microscope and they are consistent with the marks made by stone tools when a carcass is dismembered. Butchered and defleshed, if you will. Third, I found dozens of fractured skulls among the litter of bones, mostly of children. There were cut marks on the calvaria that are made only by scalping: just like the skull we found at Pete’s Ruin. Furthermore, the children’s skulls in particular showed ‘anvil abrasions.’ When I reexamined the Pete’s Ruin skull, I found anvil abrasions on it, as well. I also found that many of the skulls had been drilled, and a circular piece of bone removed.”

“What are anvil abrasions?” Nora asked.

“A very specific kind of parallel scratch mark, made when the head is laid on a flat rock and another rock is brought down on it to break open the brainpan. You normally see it on animal skulls whose brains have been extracted for food.”

From the corner of her eye, Nora saw that Smithback was furiously taking notes.

“There’s more,” Aragon said. “Many of the bones show this.” He picked up a smaller bone with the forceps and turned it to the light. “Take a look at the broken ends with this loup.”

Nora examined it under magnification. “I can’t see anything unusual, except maybe for this faint sheen on the broken ends, as if they used the bone for scraping hides.”

“Not scraping hides. That sheen has been called ‘pot polish.’”