Sacrifice THE FIRST PART OF A TWO-PART FICTION SERIES by Dave Sherwin image by Dave Sherwin The jeep bounced over ruts. She clenched the seat belt for support. Richard sat next to her. His thin brows. Eyes the color of mustard. His cologne smelt of sweat. The reader. The ever-present, never-satisfied reader. Do I have a story to tell. The proper question might be why am I here? which is just as valid as why are you here? or why do you care what happens to me? Don't feel I misled you. I am the only one you can trust. If you can believe that. Wind scraped her face, dry skin born into new wrinkles. From heat. One hundred twelve degrees. At least. Blue obscured by wispy clouds. Drawing each breath unconsciously. This story begins with a dead body. I want to say This story ends with my dead body. In the realm of probability, anything goes. Remember to keep drinking, Richard said. Cheap Egyptian beer coloring Sarah's mouth like dirt. They sifted through the third level, uncovering what seemed to be a wall. She reached down, nails scraping the surface, wet alluvium kissing her hand. At one point she was alive. We knew why she was alive. We had no reason to suspect her innocence. There is a certain vicarious appeal in destroying the ones we love. It doesn't seem right, she thought, the jeep engine backfiring. The driver creaked in his starched tan uniform, face pocked like cheesecloth. Stains rode his armpits. Halfway down the tributary, floods destroying everything. She shifted her body, floating off her seat. Dissipating history at the roots. There used to be a river. Used to be is the key. Sarah carried her awkwardness like a disease. Outlines of a narrow hut, she wrote. In the center of a desert. Once farmland, now dried into an underground map of the past. They weren't supposed to dig. Only scout the land. But after what the government had done, they felt guilty. They needed to salvage their morality with acts. She felt the notes jammed into her back pocket. Sure they were still there. Often she woke with a foreknowledge of how harsh the sun would feel against her closed eyes. I'm being vague. Bear with me. * * * * * * I am trying to speak directly to you. I don't know who built this tiny hut. Try to think of events. Incontrovertible moments. As if I could catch fish with my bare hands. I am burning the hut. So I can find it. Strange. How cold the river runs. And air so hot it writhes. Neighbors left food at their doorstep: rice flavored with savory meat, pebble gray and stringy. Richard, his dark toupee; Sarah, ankles thinner than her wrists; the geologist collecting samples for carbon dating, ignoring his full plate. His wristwatch caught the open fire, throwing dappled violet across their faces. They ate without thinking. They excavated beneath an abandoned enclave. The government paid the villagers to leave, but they spent the newfound money on housewares, kitchen tables and chairs. Soldiers gave them notice. The archaeologists sat on their bags, watched. None of them could speak up. We have grants, Sarah thought. That was the first step. Now they needed to find what was underneath their feet. Trodden. Hold it up to the light. Exclaim after weeks scraping with a rusted trowel. This means something. Gunshots ricocheted through the air. Soldiers dragging the villagers outside. Screaming. Young children dragging their toes through the dust. They shook. Survey. Digging holes every few feet. Ash surrounding the entire site. No eruptions documented. No volcanoes for a two-hundred mile radius. No fault lines. No lava flows, steam vents, locations where the earth belched flame into the open air. Little evidence of people-made fires. What looked like a wall. Hard-packed mud and straw. No theories yet. Every three weeks a government official glanced over their work. The archaeologists displayed their sherds as if they were diamonds. Richard's nose shone in the noon-day sun. All of them were sweating. They shook hands with the dark-suited, dry-eyed officials. Then they washed their hands. Immediately. Perhaps they burned the structures, the geologist said, scratching his ideas into a green spiral notebook. The words sounded rash amid the continuous noise: graduate students digging deeper than approved, cleaving time and space, risking the loss of important data. The students lived in their own house about a mile west of the site, chattered about stable work opportunities after their funding ran out, their papers were written, published, forgotten, canonized. The smell of basmati rice was cloying. The noon landscape bleached yellow, like mounds of ginger. Perhaps they cooked the building so they could eat it, she said, wiping her mouth, searching her soiled shirt for cigarettes. Sobraines. God, I wish I had Dunhills. You're brilliant, Sarah, the geologist said, scribbling in his small notebook. They were baking the walls. An experiment, like pottery. House as kiln. He looked at her anxiously. Moving too fast? she said. We've got one household. One little site. She tapped the tobacco ash. We still haven't finished surveying the area. There might be a better place to dig. The geologist tapped his pen against his khaki-lean leg. At least we've got something to look for. And what is that? She tugged down her hat, inhaling tar. Answers, he said. He went back through his notes, dotting i's and crossing t's. I used to think that writing stories was a waste of time. Leading nowhere. Now I need to understand how stories affect me. How my pulse consumes every moment. Ultimately, it makes me stronger. Or so I think. I keep seeking an opening. The facts arranged in a new order. My path out of this trap. Only you can bring them to life, I think, staring at the blank page. I put these dead impulses to rest. Carbon analysis places the ash about one thousand B.C., the letter said. Postmarked a month ago, watermark gleaming. Richard closed his fist. Crackling sound. He selected the Ziploc bags full of sherds smaller than toes. They all seemed the same substance. Give this to Sarah,he said, batting his khakis with knobbed hands. His eyes squinted, veins pulsing along his forehead. We can't take them out of the country, he said to one of the students. Whose name he continually forgot. Customs law. We might as well try to reconstruct the pattern here. Before we're out of time, money, or patience. Sarah sat under the cotton tarp stained tan with spilled tea. She shut her eyes, gripping the sickly cold Thermos. Colors burst across her vision, a spastic synaptic dance. One moment to relax. She couldn't control what she saw when there was no light. Approaching footfalls, good luck, a snicker. Pottery sherds clanking on the table. Gravity grasping each minuscule piece, tugging them earthward. When her eyes opened, she saw the horizon edged with gray smoke, two wiry students sifting, shaking wire screens, detritus spilling into neat airy piles. Her specialty. Five college years memorizing every pattern in the books. Then ten in the field. Two minutes and she could pinpoint place, age, substance. Easy, she thought, shards spilled across the tabletop pitted with knots and gnarls. Their enameled surfaces peeking through husks of encrusted soil. A child's game. She went outside, grabbed a battered plastic bucket, filled it with a film of water. An assembly line. Wash, clean, photograph next to a checkered ruler, label in her notebook grid locations, possible origins. Well made ... not prehistoric? she jotted, gritting her teeth. The dates are all wrong. Too new to be this old. Snapshot: five hundred puzzle pieces scattered across the tabula rasa. She recalled the earthy smell rising from her mother's oven, curling into the living room as she sneezed into scented tissues, mucus the color of grapes shot through with blood. Her mother dashing the jigsaw box upon the green-glass endtable. The living room expanding like a balloon. At least be constructive with your cold. Castles, puppies, fifty brands of gum sprawled randomly across the surface. The scenes were never worth the effort. She sought places where blue edges elided. Hours slipped past, the rough squeak of wood hinges punctuated by talk: look at this stone ladle. Slow connections. The first match near dusk: curves connecting at jagged corners. The jar was so well preserved you can see where their fingers scooped food. The sky grunted, echoed, fighter planes doing combat maneuvers. A hand clasped her shoulder. She leaped. It's you, she breathed, sighing. Richard traced his finger between the inert fragments. The rough wood grain. You expected someone else. No, she said. She released the word from her pursed lips, followed by: I don't think this can be done. Look who's balking, he laughed. You know this period better than any of us. After a moment he frowned, began to pace. Clasped hands behind his back. Kept them occupied. Get a specialist. Someone who does it full time. I need more evidence than this. She took off her hat even though the sun waxed less solid each moment, scratching her milky neck. No matches in any of our books. Maybe we dated it wrong, she continued. We should contact the lab. She felt his breath on her eyebrows. She couldn't see what he was doing. She turned, Don't look, he said. Just don't. Oxygen caught in her throat. She heard a crinkling noise, Richard's nose hissing air. She clutched pitted fragments with her right hand. Good luck charms, she thought. Luck. Open your mouth, he said. She closed her eyes, shuddering a little. His hand snaked around, rough cotton sleeve brushing against her bare neck. A flat rectangular object brushed her lips. She registered nothing until he withdrew. Satin on her tongue. Chocolate. Came in with today's mail, he said. Swiss. He wandered towards the road trenched by their vehicles, boots, camels. Keep me posted. She swallowed, rubbing one hand against her pants leg. She watched him clamber into a jeep, curse, fall to the ground, his shirt caught on the door handle. A hole torn the size of her olive-green canteen. They purified their water by boiling. If you could get rid of one thing in your life, what would it be? the geologist said, whetting his shiny skull with lotion. Sweat greased his inner arms babyish with fat. The problem of money, she thought. Her ripped black camisole. People who expect confirmation of their fears. The dangers of smoking, she said. She turned her head, wiping her eyes clear of sand. Too easy, the geologist said. Fully protected, he roiled in the sun, scratched elephantine earlobes. Don't you want to get rid of the big D? He smokes too? The big D pays my bills. Why else would we be here, right now? We are paid to speak the language of the dead, Richard said, head horizontal through the tent slit. By the hour. Keep it snappy. The geologist smiled spaciously. Why study rocks? Sarah said, hunting her neutral-toned shirt for a chrome-encased lighter: breast pocket. White thread raveling from the buttonhole. Cigarette lit, she leaned back. Spat smoke towards heaven. They are permanent, the geologist said. They spare us. Patterns should tell us how they lived, she said. A time signature. Their artistic mark. Her audience was the night sky. Half of the vase reconstructed. Markings that looked like Japanese. But in Mesopotamia? Belly knotted. Rain scents in the desert tempered by kerosene. She watched Richard through the flap. Inspecting larger fragments. His hands tapered. Nails ridged, delicate, chipped by rocks. Someone else's hands. No design. Each of us thinks: no one else has thought this before. The reality: millennia ago, these words were written. And now they apply to nothing. Let me get this straight, Richard said. We dated everything we could find. And this one doesn't fit. Yes, she said. The carbon dating must have been wrong. She asked each graduate student to check her work. To make sure her professional opinion matched their school-bright eyes. Heads shaking in wonderment: Impossible to say. She could be right. Not ignorant. Unknown. The crux, she said to Richard, is age. I have two theories, he said. Clicking a ball-point pen furiously. First: Someone is playing a practical joke. In our camp. The tent-cloth rippled. Sand dashed, leaped. The question is-- why? No reason. We're just a survey team digging too deep. Overstepping our grant as a fund- raiser. I'm not comfortable here, Richard. She tugged itching eyelashes. More stress than I thought. You need to work. Classrooms just make you unhappy. It's a slow death, Rich. Tell me how to live my life. The second theory. Should I care? Richard touched her neck. She shrugged his hand off. Look at this. A handkerchief-wrapped object from his pocket. Deft unfolding. Know what this is? A gun, brilliant. He pointed it at her. Remember that old game? Someone asks you, do you love me? Places their gun to your head. The right answer? You play along, she said. Pupils smaller than pinholes. He dropped his arm. Leaned over. Whispered. We found this on the site. Handed her the clothed weapon. She turned it in her hands like a seashell. Almost pressed it to her ear. Serious, she said. Pretty rusty for a desert relic. American gun. 22-caliber. But here's the tricky part. The wear on the gun. Hundreds of years. At least. Faked? Even with chemical aging, we couldn't makeit look this old. She thought about parchment soaked in acid, yellowed, decaying. Children loitering the Capitol gift shop. Cheeks slick with sunscreen. Fighting over who gets the last copy of the Constitution. What looks authentic pinned to their bedroom wall. Sheets gleaming sickly as she turns. Her mother coughing gently from the next room. When everything was certain. She thought all these things. As he held her. We should forget this, she said to Richard. No light pollution. Stars burning the sky. Pretend we never found it. He stroked her knee. But what we might find, he said. The gun sat in a small safe until she was satisfied. [continued in Part Two]

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