Touching Stars (40 page)

He parked and found Travis screening dirt with two of the campers. “I thought I’d find everybody sitting around,” he said.

Travis shredded a lump of clay over the screen as one of the campers shook the frame. “No, they’ve all been so involved, they’re not ready to let go yet. They still might find something exciting.”

“Where do you want me today?”

“With me.” Travis reminded the boy to put on a glove before he started breaking up lumps of dirt; then he stripped off his own and dropped it in a bucket. At his signal, Cray left a conversation he was having with Jared about twenty yards away and came over to supervise.

Eric raised his hand to his son. Jared did the same and sent Eric a perfunctory smile before he strode quickly to the other side of the site. Eric suspected he had just gotten the brush-off. Ever since he had told Eric that Brandy wasn’t pregnant after all, Jared had made a point of avoiding his father. Eric figured he was embarrassed by the whole episode.

“Here’s the thing,” Travis said, as they walked to the excavation unit that was closest to the river. “We may have a difficult situation developing here, a combination of unfortunate factors.”

Eric felt a stab of excitement. “I’m all ears.”

“You know we’ve stumbled on the foundation of the farm workers’ house.”

“Eb and Cora.”

“Among others over time, I’m sure. We’ve been digging in what was probably originally their fruit cellar, but I didn’t realize that until we found the foundation of a chimney. Since then, it’s become clear there was a cellar on the other side, which would have been directly under their house.”

“The river must have really moved in this direction since then. They wouldn’t have built so close to it, would they?”

“Rivers are living creatures. Floods erode the riverbank, the river settles into the new channels and causes more erosion as it rises and falls.”

“So what’s the problem today?”

“The problem is that we’ve opened a can of worms. I thought we were going to be sifting through a trash pit. Instead, we’ve uncovered a foundation.” He paused. “And not just any foundation.”

“Something you didn’t expect in terms of building materials?”

“With small houses of this era, you expect to see almost anything. It wasn’t uncommon for a cabin to perch on four piles of rocks, one at each corner. I’ve seen some so rickety the Three Little Pigs probably did a better job with straw and mud. But this one’s not that way. The cellar wall’s two feet thick, and I don’t know how deep it goes. Stacked stone—and expertly done, by the look of it. If Eb and Ralph built it, they were real artisans. But I’m guessing it was built earlier, that maybe this was even the original farmhouse.”

Eric waited for Travis to get to the point. So far, he couldn’t see the problem.

“No matter how good somebody is at stacking stone, there are always nooks and crannies,” Travis said. “Little pockets between them.”

“Of course.”

“Good hiding places.”

Now Eric was paying closer attention.

“You know Carin and I put together the Duncan story from flimsy evidence. The tale that a man who might have been John Wilkes Booth was on this farm right after the assassination is strictly anecdotal, passed down through the family and some of their acquaintances. I’ve been talking to the kids about scientific method, historical record, pure fiction. We’ve made sure they understand the play is fiction.”

Travis seemed to realize he’d been lecturing. He smiled a little. “Anyway, you’ve been to the campfires.”

“I’ve been impressed.”

“Glad to hear it. While we were doing the research, we found out something else about Miranda Duncan. As you know, she lived a long life. Toward the end, things began to disappear from her house. One of her great-granddaughters told me that after the funeral, her mother looked for some family mementos and never found them. She mentioned a set of Shakespeare’s plays and some silver.”

“Thoughts on what happened to them?”

“The family just assumed visitors or some of the locals they’d hired to look in on her had taken things, or Miranda had thrown them away by mistake. She was old, her eyesight and hearing had suffered. Some people thought her mind was going at the end.”

“So what have you found?”

“I’ll show you.” Travis retrieved a bucket that was sitting under a nearby tree and returned with it. He lifted out a plastic bag. “Isn’t this a beauty?”

Eric took the bag and held it up to what passed for the sun that morning. Inside was a small fork. He whistled. “Real silver, do you think?”

“If it is, it was made before 1860, because the word
sterling
isn’t stamped on it. I’ll be able to tell more once we clean it up and check the reference books.”

“Do you think Miranda put it here?”

“Maybe when she got old, or maybe it was simply overlooked when she retrieved the silver she’d hidden during the war.”

“That’s got to be the find of the week.”

“You can imagine every kid wants to dig for treasure right here. And I can’t let them.”

Eric understood why. No matter how well trained they were, the kids weren’t going to be patient enough to do this the right way. He understood their feelings. Even he was itching to get in and dig to see what else Miranda had hidden.

Travis put the fork back in the bucket. “I’m tempted to fill in this hole until I can round up some experienced adults, but that’s going to create problems, too. We could destroy valuable artifacts or, at the least, move them out of position. And there’s the question of time. We’ll lose more of what’s here every time the river tops its banks.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I thought you and I could work with a couple of the most patient kids.”

“I’m assuming you don’t mean Dillon.”

Travis laughed. “Afraid not. But Caleb can do it, and maybe a couple of others. I want to see what we can find today and tomorrow morning, so we need to move the dirt quickly but carefully. Then we’ll decide what to do. If I think it’s safe to fill the unit back in, we will. Or maybe I can get some archaeologist wannabes out here to do a proper job of finishing it next week.”

“I’ve got the whole day. I’m waiting for supplies for the garden shed.”

“Terrific. Thanks. There’s just one more thing.”

Eric was already looking for equipment. “What’s that?”

Travis lowered his voice. “Just so you know. Miranda may not have been the only one to hide things on the property. You’ll hear more about that tonight, and I don’t want to spoil Dillon’s final speech. I’m just telling you now, so you’ll know what could be at stake.”

Eric whistled softly. “You think something to do with Booth might have been hidden here?”

“Apparently Miranda liked this spot. Maybe Robby did, too.”

“Come on, you don’t really think Blackjack was John Wilkes Booth, do you? It’s great entertainment, but there must be stories just like it all over the country. The Elvis sightings of that generation.”

“I’ll be talking about this tonight, but in a nutshell, some people are still convinced Booth escaped. The most popular tale says he made his way to Enid, Oklahoma, took the name of David E. George and committed suicide some years later. Before he died, he told at least two people he was really Booth.”

“How did he explain that? The army shot and killed somebody they thought was Booth and buried him. And wasn’t the man they killed carrying Booth’s identification?”

“This George fellow said the man who died in Port Royal was somebody who’d gone to retrieve his effects from a marsh. That’s why the guy they shot had all Booth’s identification with him. Some people in Oklahoma were so convinced by the story, they refused to bury George’s body. They embalmed it and presented the mummy as a sideshow attraction until it disappeared. Nobody’s sure what happened to it.”

“Are you saying you think Booth really
was
here before he ended up in Enid?”

“Me? I think John Wilkes Booth died after he was shot in a barn in Port Royal. Just the way history tells us. But there’s nothing like a good mystery to give kids a lifelong interest in the past.”

Eric heard more in Travis’s tone. “And?”

“And I guess I’m not above enjoying one myself.”

Because it was the last campfire, Gayle and Travis had decided to splurge on barbecued chicken with all the traditional trimmings. She spent the day pre-roasting chicken quarters so they could cut the cooking time at the site. Travis had promised to ask the kids to dig two long trenches near the campfire, and by the time she arrived, hickory logs were burning down to coals. She had borrowed five-foot grills from the church, and she flagged down two sturdy-looking boys to help Noah take them to the pit.

She was just loading her arms with grocery bags when Travis appeared to help.

“Looks like a feast.”

She twirled and piled the bags in his arms. “You order a feast, you get a feast. Nobody goes hungry tonight. And I’ve got a surprise. Homemade ice cream. I borrowed hand-cranked churns from my church. But we’ll need to get a start right away so it can set up once it’s thick.”

“You’re hired for the rest of your life. “

“Uh-uh, we take this one year at a time, buster. I’m going to sleep for a week starting tomorrow.”

He didn’t look worried. “We’ve worked the campers hard today. Maybe cranking the ice cream will finish them off. Which would be a good thing, since it looks like serious rain later tonight, and I don’t want kids wandering around outside their tents in the mud. Wandering’s more or less a last-night ritual. I never get any sleep.”

“I hope the tents are waterproof.”

“I thought about sending the whole kit and caboodle home after the campfire, but a change in schedule’s too complicated. Some of the parents have probably made other plans. I guess the little darlings will just have to get wet.”

“It’s gone well this summer?”

“The usual problems. But yes, if we end with the head count we started with, I’ll be happy.”

She laughed and grabbed two more bags for herself. “Let’s get this stuff over to the tables.”

On the second trip to the truck, Travis and Gayle corralled a couple of girls to help carry the ice-cream makers to the eating area. Among them, they also carted sacks of ice, the ice-cream mixture Gayle had prepared and rock salt. Gayle showed the girls how to layer the ice and salt, and fill the canisters with ice-cream mix.

Satisfied, she stepped back. “I made chocolate chip and fresh peach. Two of each. That ought to do it. When you get tired, just mention to somebody how much fun it is, and they’ll take over. It worked for Tom Sawyer.”

She went back to the car for a stockpot filled with baked beans to set beside the chicken but was delighted to find it had already been carried to the grill.

Travis was pulling out the last of the supplies. “Fresh corn?”

“Lots of it. I’m going to show the kids how to roast it over the coals.” She peered inside the truck. “You already got the rolls? The macaroni salad?”

“Everything’s all set but the corn.” He gave a sharp whistle to summon two more kids and handed them grocery bags filled to the top with bright green husks.

Gayle stretched, then she put her hands in the small of her back and leaned away from the pickup. Travis lounged against it and watched her. The kids were carefully avoiding them now, as if they’d seen that getting close meant more work.

“Tough day?” he asked.

“Just a complicated one.”

“I don’t think it’s camp that’s wearing you out.”

She started to rub her nose, then laughed at herself. “Whoops.”

“Need a listening ear?”

“I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Eric?”

She wondered how Travis knew, and he smiled a little, as if he understood. “I’m not a mind reader. He keeps staring into space.”

“Let’s just say it’s the last day of my thirties, which calls for some navel-gazing. And Eric and I are rethinking our lives. And I’m not sure I understand why.”

“Maybe it’s just been a long time coming.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you want to go on the way you were? For the rest of your life?”

“What way was I going?”

“I guess you have to figure that out.”

Impulsively, she put her hand on his arm. “Am I nuts to be considering getting back together?”

“
Are
you considering it?”

She wasn’t sure her thoughts were that well formed. The idea had been broached, but she thought she and Eric had both backed away at more or less the same speed. Still, now that the possibility had been put out there, she knew it could no longer be ignored. And whatever they decided was an ending of sorts—as well as a beginning.

“I don’t know how seriously.” It was as much of an answer as she had.

“When Chloe died, I thought the world had ended. But once the worst of the grief passed, I could move on. She was gone, and it was irrevocable. It’s different for you. Eric’s always there in the background. You share your sons. You’ll always have a part in each other’s lives.”