Bones
Wendy Thornton
I never meant to freak out the Indian. He’s just a kid who works for me in my (very) small construction firm. We’ve been fishing a few times. I’ve never known him to be especially deep. Most of the time he’s pretty quiet, or I wouldn’t take him fishing. He’s a good worker, steady, cooperative. And he certainly never seemed that attached to his heritage, not till I moved the bones.
I, of course, am very attached to my heritage. I’ve lived here all my life and my daddy before me and his daddy before him. There aren’t too many people in Florida who can say that. The bumper sticker on the back of my truck says, “Home Grown,” and we’re not talking my side business. Daddy is an environmental engineer for the Water Management district and Granddaddy was an alligator hunter in the Okefenokee Swamp. Last year when it burned, you could see the fires as far away as Orlando and Atlanta. I hear tell the volunteer fire fighters in Baker County were so desperate to put out that fire, they even used Grandaddy’s old Ford truck to haul water to the area.
Turns out Mic’s grandfather was an alligator hunter, too. And I guess one of his great-great-however-many-times-great grandfather was an Indian chief, which mine wasn’t. So, I guess that makes him even more of a local than I am. But he never mentioned any of this before I found the bones.
He did tell me he was named after the town of Micanopy, and I knew the town was named after an Indian chief, but, call me stupid, I never made the connection. Anyway, he went north to college instead of going to the state university and the bumper sticker on his beat-up old Toyota has a picture of the earth and “Citizen of the World” printed on it. So it’s not like he made himself known as a Seminole rabble rouser. He didn’t even seem very interested in my arrowheads.
Collecting arrowheads is my hobby. These aren’t like what you would think from seeing TV Indians riding wild mustangs on a wing and a prayer, zipping off zingers at the invading wagon trains full of potential settlers until the cavalry comes in and massacres them all. John Wayne never pulled one of these suckers out of his bloody side. These are made of limestone, hand-hewn and rough, and the points aren’t sharp enough to stab anybody. But I guess they worked well enough for killing animals.
On Saturdays, I go out with my thigh-high waders into the muck at the edge of the lakes and drop handfuls of mud into my home-made sieve box. I shake out the mud and trash—you would not believe what people throw in these lakes—and come up with the triangular pieces of stone that are so rough most people don’t even recognize what they are. Some have edges that look like fingerprints pressed into them, and now, since the night of the bones, I like to imagine some brightly clothed, brown-skinned kid holding the piece as he chips away at the point with another rock and his fingers leave permanent marks in the soft stone.
I take them home, clean them up, mount them in shadowboxes lined with velvety-looking material and covered with glass. I have the boxes all over the walls of my house instead of pictures. I like to throw in some sharks’ teeth, even though they’re common in these parts. The teeth impress women more than the arrowheads.
Once a friend of mine brought some hot-shot grad student from the State Museum to buy pot. He was flabbergasted when he saw my collection. Even tried to buy it from me. I said no way. He said he could have me arrested for stealing archeological artifacts. I told him I could get him fired for buying pot. Fucker! Then I threw him out empty-handed. I kind of understood his concern, though. Used to be, I was the only one sifting through the silt for treasures, but now there’s a whole gang of people out there on the edge of the lakes every afternoon.
By profession, I’m a roofer. Got my own company and it’s pretty successful. My secret is, I put bids on roofs when the buildings are at the foundation stage. My dad, before he had his stroke and was mercifully unable to talk, told me I was contributing to the “Miami-ization” of North Florida. This really hurt me. I thought he’d be proud of my success. But it’s not the kind of success he wanted, not like my brother, Bob, who’s a historical preservationist in St. Augustine, or my sister Rose, who’s a wildlife biologist in the Everglades. I myself never finished college. I went for a couple of years, but didn’t really enjoy it. I like working with my hands, which is something you’d think my old man would appreciate. But he says, “I didn’t pull myself out of the swamp so my kid could play with tar.” Or he used to say that.