Lovely In Her Bones

that’s all.”

“Oh, Lord. Why don’t you take your girlfriends to dances like everybody else? Stop blushing, Milo! I didn’t say no. It’s all right with me, but you’ll have to put up with her. I don’t want any Christmas tree angels on this dig not wanting to get dirty, not wanting to get sunburned, not-”

“She’ll behave.” Milo grinned. “She’s not the delicate type. Did I tell you she brought a skull home last week?”

“This makes the third time, Milo. Look, go ahead and ask her to come along. Make sure she has a trowel and a sleeping bag-”

“I know, Mary Clare, I know.”

“And remember, if she turns out to be a prima donna, she’s your problem. I don’t know why anthropologists always get tangled up with women who become millstones around their necks, like-” She caught herself and looked quickly at Milo.

“I know,” said Milo quietly.

When Milo left the office, it was past six o’clock but still sunny. He cut across the upper quad, avoiding the parameters of an impromptu softball game, and took the path that led past the duck pond, sheep barns, and across the highway to Brookwood. His apartment was a fifteen-minute walk from campus, but he was in no hurry to get there. He lingered near the duck pond watching the campus waterfowl, fat from begging, glide across pools of sunlight. At the water’s edge a boy in a football jersey was throwing a Frisbee over the head of a frantic Labrador retriever. Milo sat down at a concrete picnic table to think.

Because he was a comfortable-looking fellow with a kind word for everyone, people tended to confide in Milo. Perhaps they meant to compliment him with their display of trust, but his uneasiness always outweighed his gratification. “If I wanted to hear personal problems, I’d have been a psychiatrist,” he told himself. “I’m a forensic anthropologist, for God’s sake! I don’t understand people who aren’t dead.” He had not mentioned the paper he found in the hall to Mary Clare, because he sensed the makings of a disaster in it. He didn’t even want to think about it himself. His greatest fear was that Lerche, knowing that he’d seen it, would feel obliged to give him some sort of explanation. This, Milo felt, would be very awkward for everyone. He had done his best to play dumb when he’d returned the paper; he hoped his show of innocence had convinced Lerche that he knew nothing. Mary Clare had been about to tell him something back in the office, but he had managed to forestall that, too. If this dig was going to be the backdrop for a soap opera, Milo didn’t want to know the details.

Milo got up and started on the path toward the sheep barns. The sun was lower in the sky now, making the tin roofs glow red and turning the sheep into shadow pictures. He didn’t want to think about Lerche’s troubles any more. He wouldn’t blame the man for getting involved with Mary Clare, he decided. Anybody could see that Mrs. Lerche was the Junior League type, and probably a pain in the ass as a scientist’s wife, but all the same, Alex ought to be careful. Her idea of revenge might be to play the part of a woman scorned on the carpet in the dean’s office. He shook his head. Maybe Mary Clare was right; maybe he was crazy to be asking Elizabeth along on the dig, but at least he’d find out what type she was before they got too involved.

Having made this resolution, Milo spent the rest of the walk home planning the fine points of inviting Elizabeth. Should he make her buy her own trowel or give her one of his old ones?

When he reached the door to the apartment, his reverie had reached the stage of imaginary dialogue in which he said bright and clever things to which Elizabeth responded with dazed admiration. He was somewhat surprised to open the door and find that she was actually there.

“Hello, Elizabeth!” he stammered. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“You won’t be when you taste dinner,” Bill warned him.

Milo sat down on the couch beside his roommate thinking about the meals he would be having for the next few weeks in Sarvice Valley. “Maybe we could send out for a pizza.”

“Very funny,” said Elizabeth, who had returned to the kitchen. “Why are you glad I’m here?”

“Well, I have some interesting news. Can you leave that stuff and come in here?”

“That’s right. Distract her.” Bill lunged for the telephone book. “Pizza… pizza.”

Elizabeth adjusted the dial on the electric skillet and came back into the living room, making a dive for the phone book. Bill dodged the attack and called out Lombardi’s number to Milo.

Milo picked up the phone, and then, remembering his manners, told Elizabeth: “I have a good excuse for this. I’m going to have to be eating garbage for the next couple of weeks, so I can’t afford to waste any meals right now.”

“Very diplomatic,” Bill commented.

Elizabeth glared at him. “Do as you please.” She had intended to make this her exit line, but as she turned to leave, the implication of Milo’s explanation struck her. “What do you mean you’ll be eating garbage for a couple of weeks?”

“Prison, I expect,” said Bill. “He and Lerche are probably laundering bodies for the Mafia. I’ve suspected it for months.”

“No, as a matter of fact, I’ve been captured by Indians,” said Milo.

“Does this have to do with why you were glad to see me?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes. You remember when you found the skull in the woods, and you said that you’d like to go on a dig sometime? Well, today Dr. Lerche decided that we’re going on one up in the mountains, and I’ve arranged for you to be able to come along.”

Elizabeth looked puzzled. “I don’t know anything about archaeology.”

“You don’t have to. Only the supervisors have to be experts. You’ll be one of the field crew. It’s sort of like-”

“Ditch digging,” suggested Bill.

“I was going to say ‘gardening,’ ” said Milo. Elizabeth looked less than delighted, so he hurried into a more enthusiastic account of the project. He explained the Cullowhees’ problem, and the general assignment: to excavate the oldest section of the burial ground to gain clues about the tribe’s origin. “And besides that, Elizabeth, it will be a chance for you to be part of a team establishing new data for anthropologists. Remember the discriminate function chart I told you about?”

She nodded. “The one that enables you to tell males from females and blacks from whites? The skeletal remains, I mean,” she said hastily to forestall Bill’s next remark.

“That’s right. The point is: there is no discriminate function chart for Indians. That’s what Dr. Lerche is working on right now. It’s going to be a pretty major contribution to the field. Most of the data for the chart has already been compiled from Dr. Lerche’s work in the Southwest, but he’s going to add the Cullowhees in to widen the sample.”

“How do you mean, add them in?”

“We’re excavating the old burial ground, right? Okay, when we exhume a body, we take the skull measurements, and so on, and add the data to the statistics we already have.”

“It sounds very exciting, Milo, but what’s the catch? I still haven’t forgotten your remark about the next couple of weeks being difficult.”

“That’s right, Milo,” said Bill. “Skip the part about grave robbing and get down to the rough stuff.”

Milo, who was used to his roommate’s repartee, ignored this remark. He had been about to give Elizabeth a carefully edited version of life on a dig, minimizing the discomforts and tedium, when he remembered what Mary Clare had said about anthropologists burdening themselves with unsuitable women. If he lied to Elizabeth about the rigors of fieldwork, surely he was inviting the same kind of maladjustment in the future. He wanted her to go very much, but it had to be for the right reasons. If she went merely to humor him, it might be all right this time, or even the next dozen times, but sooner or later problems would arise.

Milo sighed. “Okay, here goes. We’ll be camping in the Sunday school room of a little Baptist church in Sarvice Valley, so we’ll have electricity and an indoor toilet, but the showers will be rigged up outdoors, and the cooking will be strictly hot plate or campfire. And you can forget about clean sheets: we’ll be in sleeping bags. We will usually work a ten-hour day, because there’s not much time left in the summer to do this job, and you’ll spend most of the day on your knees grubbing in hard red clay. There’s no salary, and you pay your own expenses. Now, do you want to come or not?”

Elizabeth blinked. “Well, of course I want to come, Milo. I told you I wanted to learn how to read bones the