Probably more media,” I said, getting up to answer the door. “Want to come with me? You can certainly tell them more than I can.”
George’s knee began twitching again. “No, I’ll stay here.
Look, I’d rather you didn’t mention anything about what we’ve been discussing, okay? Or the fact that I’m here.”
“Why, my dear George,” came a man’s deep voice from around the corner of the verandah. “What has happened to the pre-eminent paleoanthropologist Dr. George W. Schmidt that he is afraid to show his face to his favourite audience?”
The baritone voice had prepared me for a large man. What I saw instead was a rotund elf, the top of his bald head a shiny pink, his round nose a perch for his Ben Franklin glasses. He waddled towards us, completely oblivious to Sergei nipping at his heels. While his brow dripped with sweat from the heat, his brown eyes reminded me of a Cheshire cat, inscrutable and smugly amused.
“Why should I not be surprised that you are here with this charming lady, eh, George?” For the first time I noticed the slight intonation of a French accent. So when he finally introduced himself, I wasn’t totally taken by surprise.
“Dr. Claude Meilleur, at your service, Madame Harris.” He gave my outstretched hand a firm but sweaty shake. “I do not mean to interrupt this quaint tête-à-tête, but the purpose of my visit is no doubt the same as the good Dr. Schmidt’s, n’est-ce pas?” He smacked his lips gleefully.
I could feel George’s guarded stillness beside me. He’d said not a word. His only movement the now violent shaking of his leg. Other than responding to Dr. Meilleur’s greeting, I decided not to say anything. Clearly there was something going on between the elf and the football player. It would be more interesting to let them hash it out without my intrusion.
“I see you have found your way to Madame Harris’s house. Curious. I do not remember giving you this small detail,” said Claude Meilleur.
I turned towards George in time to see him turn a brilliant red, which, unlike his colleague, I doubted was caused by the heat. Then I watched him squirm. “How ya doing, Claude, little buddy? Long time no see. Knew you were busy with that Gaspé dig, so thought I’d start the ball rolling on this one. Can’t afford to keep the, ah…” he paused. “DeMontigny Lady waiting, can we?”
“DeMontigny Lady?” Claude pursed his lips in consternation.
“Yeah, that’s right.” George straightened back into his chair and crossed his arms, as if to say “so there”. “Meg named her, which is only fitting. After all, she found this ancient lady…” he looked squarely at Claude “…on the shores of the DeMontigny River.”
As I watched the anger spread across the francophone archeologist’s face, I had an inkling about George’s real reason for visiting me. He’d wanted the location. Apparently, Claude hadn’t passed this crucial bit of information on to his anglophone colleague. Why not? Competitive rivalry between two archeologists?
“Eh bien, mon ami, you are too impatient. I was planning on inviting you to join me on my next trip to the site. Quebec has need of your assistance.”
And while the elf ’s flushed face broke into the kind of smile not even a mother would trust, I knew I’d just heard the answer to my question. Though professional rivalry was no doubt involved, Quebec nationalism was more likely its root cause. Couldn’t have an anglo, especially one that worked for the federal government, getting top billing for such an important history-making discovery. Still, it did make me pause to consider Claude’s initial question. One sure way of ensuring one’s name was tagged with the find would be via the media. So why had George been so reluctant to face them?
“Mais, mon cher collègue,” George replied, revealing a truly atrocious accent, “now that I know where more bones can be found, I don’t need you.”
Claude smiled sweetly. “One small matter you overlook. The site is on Quebec government land, and, as you well know, only a Quebec-registered archeologist has authority to work the site. And I of course am that archeologist. Also, I have the DeMontigny Lady’s skull and other important bones. I doubt a few ribs or metatarsi would get you the Clovis Chair. So please, I propose we make this a collaborative project.”
“You turned me down first time around, Claude. What’s forcing you to change your mind now?”
“Let us just say, we can be mutually beneficial to each other.”
George gave him a hard once-over, almost as if he were trying to see beyond the Quebec archeologist’s cherub face to his underlying motivation. Finally, he said, “You’re on, but I get first authorship on this.”
“You know that is not possible. Since my government is funding this initiative, my name must come first.” He removed the glasses from his nose and began cleaning them with the lessthan-clean edge of his cotton shirt. After a second or two, he glanced back at George. “That is, unless…”
A smirk spread across George’s face. “Your government hasn’t coughed up enough, has it? You need my link to federal money,” he crowed.
Claude’s left eye twitched.
George continued, “I don’t know. Money’s tight these days, what with the current freeze on spending. I’d need to offer them something good in return. Like top billing on this project. You know how the feds are. On any joint venture with Quebec, Canada’s name’s gotta be up front and centre. So what do you say, little buddy? Top billing for me, and I’ll get us the cash.”
“On the English version only. My name will need to be first on the French version, otherwise my government will not even give me the authority to go ahead with this dig, let alone provide funding.”
The anglophone clamped his large hand onto the francophone’s small fist and shook vigorously. “You’re on. Now let me go back to what I was telling Ms Harris about the real significance of this find. In fact, mon cher ami, you may want to listen in on this, too. It’s something that I hadn’t gotten around to mentioning. Something that’s going to secure me that Chair.”
His broad grin was joined by Claude’s ironic smile as the francophone realized he hadn’t been the only one holding back.
On the table in front of us, George placed two photographs; one of a frontal view of the skull I’d found, and another a side view, showing the jagged hole. Next to each he placed frontal and side views of two other skulls.
“Notice any similarities or differences between these three skulls?” George asked.
I shook my head. They were just cracked old bones to me. The only differences I could discern were the variations in damage and colour. Claude, on the other hand, studied them carefully. He pulled out a tape measure, a pen and notepad and began taking measurements of various aspects of each of the three different skulls.
After several minutes of numerous measurements and calculations, he turned a querying eye to George. “These two skulls have many similar characteristics.” He placed the photos of the DeMontigny Lady beside those of one of the other skulls and moved the third set further away. “These two have similar characteristics, such as the forward placement of the face, with the braincase angling further back and a considerably narrower jaw. Not sure what you are trying to tell me here, George.”
George smiled enigmatically.
Claude continued, “It is evident that the DeMontigny Lady and this second one have the same origin, Amerindian. But I’m not sure of your reason for including the third skull, whose structural characteristics suggest a different race.”
“Come on, Claude, put those anthropological skills to work.” George pulled out a fourth set of skull photographs. “Compare this to the other three.”
Claude picked it up. “This is mine. Taken from the St. Louis de Ha-Ha cemetery site. Seventeenth century European female. Whereas DeMontigny Lady is an eleven-thousand-year-old paleo-Indian female. There is no relation between the two.”
“Compare.” George still wore that strange enigmatic smile. This time Claude didn’t bother to use his measuring tape. He simply gazed intently at the four sets of photographs. When finished, he placed his seventeenth century female skull beside DeMontigny Lady. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say many of the features of this Caucasian female are also present in the paleofemale skull. But it can’t be. Where is this other similar skull from?”
George turned the photo over to reveal the words “Kennewick Man—solar calendar age 9,500—discovered near Kennewick, Wash.”
Claude’s jaw dropped. “Mon dieu, I forgot about this Kennewick Man.”
“That’s why you need me, eh, Claude?”
“But I thought the research was suggesting that he cannot be an ancestor to modern day Amerindians because his physical characteristics are closer to the Caucasian features of Polynesians and Europeans than the Asian characteristics of Amerindians. Surely you’re not suggesting that the same applies to this DeMontigny Lady?”
“Tell you the truth, at this point I don’t know what to think, but I do know that this DeMontigny Lady has the same skull structure as Kennewick Man. Shit, you picked it out yourself.”
He flipped over the third set of photos, the ones of the dissimilar skull, to reveal the tags. “As you can see, this set comes from your own forensics lab. They’re of a murdered Mohawk that was found a few years back. I’ve also compared the DeMontigny Lady skull to other Amerindian skulls. Same result. More differences than similarities.”
George leaned back into his chair and continued, “I’m afraid you’d have a tough time convincing me there’s a link between the 11,245 year old DeMontigny Lady and today’s Amerindians.”
Dr. Meilleur’s eyes glowed. “Mon dieu! Can it be true? Such a momentous discovery. C’est incroyable.”
Feeling a little like a moron, I asked a question that had been nagging me for some time, “So what’s the big deal?”
They both cast surprised looks in my direction, as if suddenly remembering I was there.
George was the one to answer. “As you probably know, the long held theory is that this continent was originally populated by Northeast Asians crossing the Bering Strait land bridge during the last ice age, about thirteen thousand years ago.” He held up the photo of the DeMontigny Lady. “This little lady refutes all that. The only way her Caucasian ancestors could’ve arrived on this shore was by water, probably followed along the edge of land and ice, either from southern Asia or even Europe.”
Claude beamed. “Something I’ve always dreamed of. To be involved in such a history-making find.”
“Yeah, maybe we’ll even have a university chair named after us.” George let out a loud guffaw.
The Frenchman cast him an exasperated glance. “I do not care for such honours. For me the real honour is to be able to hold and analyze such unique and rare artifacts. But, mon ami, we must not be too impatient. We must carefully study all the artifacts from the DeMontigny site before we announce our findings. Now I understand your reason for not speaking with the media.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Surely you’ve got enough info now. Looks pretty obvious to me. Besides, wouldn’t it help in getting the money you need to continue the research?”
Both archeologists looked at each other. Finally, Claude answered, “There is a complication.”
But before he could tell me what it was, I heard footsteps on the gravel walkway and looked over the railing to see Eric’s dimpled grin shining up through the twilight. He’d plaited his thick heavy mane into two long braids, no doubt to provide some relief from the heat.
I rushed to welcome him back from his trip. By the time I returned to the archeologists with Eric in tow, the photographs had disappeared from the table, and both men were sitting upright with polite smiles planted on their faces.
I had no sooner introduced them to the chief of the Migiskan than the two men hastily offered their excuses and departed, but not before reminding me to keep our topic of conversation a secret until I heard from them.
“What was that all about?” Eric asked as we watched the two cars disappear into the growing twilight.
Believing he had a right to know, I told him about the momentous significance of the bones we’d found, and in so doing discovered Claude’s complication.