ABOVE THE CAPITANS, SOUTH OF CORONA, NEAR ARROYO DEL MACHO

Windblown grass has always reminded me of hair, smoothed down with the sweeping motion of a vast, invisible hand; it has this way of rippling, like water coursing over and through the strands, so that some lie flat, while others shift and sway.

That the color of the grass was so similar to the shade of Eduard Addison’s hair was a poignant reminder of him. Under these circumstances, as I sat cross-legged on the still-warm hood, letting my own hair glide over my face and shield my eyes from the past-noon glare of the sun, I wasn’t surprised that these grasslands would invoke memories of the man who’d once visited them. Perhaps the same circumstances which had brought me here had also lured Eduard to pause and reflect upon the almost immeasurable vastness of this patch of protected ground—maybe even after a short time of labor here.

But, of course, I couldn’t ask him if my musings about this place, about the way the wind-blown grass looked, or about so many, many other things were in any way close to what he must have been thinking on that afternoon when he came this way, all those years and years ago—

* * * *

Even after the passing of more than a decade, the gay rights and UFO people were still sending sign-carriers to stand quietly before the front gates of the Federal Correctional institute in Seagorville; sweating, SPF-85 slathered and facial pierced, the trio of young men held neatly-lettered placards which read: FREE PROFESSOR ADDISON! LIFE TERM = DEATH SENTENCE! And IMPRISONED FOR A CRIME OR FOR SEXUAL MISADVENTURE? While the duo of earnest-faced, sun-weathered women in flip-flops and sunglasses sported sandwich boards emblazoned front and back: HOW IS WHAT HE DID DIFFERENT FROM THE AREA 51 COVER UP? And WAS WHAT ADDISON DID ANY WORSE THAN ROSWELL?

During the years I’d spent in Europe, then in Malta and Gaza, I’d kept up with the Addison protestors, thanks to CNN’s overseas coverage; while the days of the vociferous, gesticulating picketers were long past (around the time even Amnesty International lost interest in Addison’s albeit self-inflicted cause), I still felt a pang of weary nostalgia as I watched the five people and their mute vigil. Pulling my rental car up close to the gate, I kept thinking of those early days, when Eduard Addison was first brought to this place, shackled and handcuffed, in that bus whose passage was all but blocked by the crush of yelling, screaming people who tried to prevent his incarceration by brute force.

That protest was cut short with a few tear gas bombs and swarms of National Guard troops armed with stun guns…but the presence of those five people, with their carefully-lettered signs and their stoical indifference to the hard-baking Texas sun, made me realize with an almost savage intensity that my former colleague’s impulsive act on the equally-hot August afternoon in New Mexico twelve years ago still resonated within the American psyche, though somewhat selectively, somewhat less-stridently.

* * * *

By the time I was escorted to the small, bright room where my meeting with Addison was to take place, I’d been subjected to a pat-down search, a few indiscreet passes of a hand-held metal detector, and two different guards had examined the tape recorder I’d been given not long after I received Eduard’s invitation to come visit him—and was finally granted permission to actually do so, under certain conditions. Said conditions consisted of the tape recorder and ninety-minutes-to-a-side double-length tape which I had hidden in my canvas carry-all bag. Not an outright gift—the people who “requested” that I carry it made it quite clear that it was the property of the United States Government and as such I was merely obligated to turn it on prior to my meeting with Eduard and leave it running while we spoke.

For a firm ninety minutes, Eduard and I were to have no more relatively unsupervised time together—the guard who waited outside the glass-paned steel door would make certain of that.

And under no circumstances was I to let Eduard know about the contents of my oversized purse, nor was I to rewind or even touch the cassette player—unless I wished to remain stranded in the United States for good, my passport invalidated, my ability to pursue my career as a forensic anthropologist forever hobbled.

(Not that I didn’t sputter initial protests of my own; but…with those undergraduate drug charges on my record, not to mention those ostensibly-dropped resisting arrest and obstructing a police officer charges which, “might reappear on your records—you know how computer glitches can be,” I realized that Eduard’s innocent invitation for me to speak to him could and would affect my entire life, let alone my career.)

While I was being searched, I began to sweat, despite the double layer of antiperspirant I’d rolled under each arm; the stifling heat in the prison had been reason enough not to put a wire on me, lest it possibly short out. Trying to take my mind off what I was about to do—or what the individuals who’d contacted me days ago hoped I would be able to do—I tried to imagine what Eduard was going through, prior to his admission to our harsh-lit, table-and-two-chairs meeting-place. I doubted the passage of more than a decade could lessen the indignity of body cavity searches—regardless of Eduard’s sexual orientation. I’d known him long enough to remember his acute need for privacy, both in his personal life and in his work.

How he’d managed to keep his secret secret in the face of such an on-going and ceaseless lack of privacy was beyond my comprehension. The Eduard Addison I’d known never would have stood for such repeated assaults on his dignity—

But, I reminded myself, the Eduard I knew would never have purposely tainted the results of a dig…let alone stolen the artifacts themselves.

“Wait here.”

The guard steered me through the doorway of the visiting cubicle, not waiting for me to even turn around before slamming the door shut behind me.

“Eduard, what in the hell did you get yourself into?” I whispered into the windowless room. Gently, I placed the canvas bag with the tape recorder in it on the table, making sure that the microphone side was close to where Eduard would be sitting. Behind me, I heard the muffled shuffle-clink! of someone in shackles being escorted down the bare hallway, and—as I snaked one hand inside the bag to press the Record button—I asked myself, Never mind Eduard…what the hell did I let myself fall into?

The metal-on-metal rasp of the door opening behind me made me start; never, ever, would I be able to get used to such a sound.

“You have exactly an hour-and-a-half to spend with the visitor—after that the door is opening and you’ll come with us.” The guard’s voice was close to mechanical. Then: “Thank you…I’ll be ready to leave by then.”

It was and it wasn’t a voice I’d heard so many times before, back when we were both members of the West Texas State University archeology/anthropology departments…the near-lack of a Texas accent was the same, as was the precise, yet somehow casual diction, but yet, there was a resigned, almost tired undercurrent of acquiescence in those few words which made hot tears pool under my closed eyelids.

The same shuffle-clank! I’d heard through the door was now close, unfiltered by the slab of steel, as that same known/unknown voice said—just as I imagined the clear strip of the cassette tape winding past the recording heads—“It’s been too long, doll…too damned long—”

The warmth in that voice forced me to blink back the unshed tears and turn around in my chair.

Fluorescent lighting never makes anyone truly look good under even the best circumstances…but as I let my gaze travel upward, past the rumpled, faded prison-issue pants and cotton shirt Eduard wore, up, up, toward his face, I realized the most tender incandescent lighting would not have softened the visage before me. Or masked the obvious. The cinched-in waistband of his pants was a tacit warning, but as my eyes met Eduard’s, I silently prayed that he wouldn’t be able to see the shock which shot through my body like a snapped whip.

Professor Eduard Addison was dying.

The last time I saw him, before that foray of his into the New Mexico hinterlands, and the trial which quickly followed, he’d been a large man, not fat, but muscular over big bones, with straight thick hair the color of long-ripened grass, a golden tan, and slightly narrow, crinkling hazel eyes. The face which hovered above my own surely couldn’t have belonged to the Professor Addison I’d known.

Under the greenish-white glare of the overhead lights, his skin shone with a greasy slickness, which only accentuated the furrows in his brow and long the crescent-shaped juncture between his cheeks and his lips. Beneath his partly-unbuttoned shirt front, I could see the chest hairs there stood far away from the dark-mottled flesh below, the irregular splotches of purplish-maroon vivid against the surrounding waxy beige.

He no longer looked like the forty-one-year-old man he was; his disease had not only robbed him of his looks, but it had stolen something far less tangible…not so much his youth, but his confidence, his élan.

“Eduard,” I finally whispered, as I half-rose to greet him. After glancing through the small square of double (triple?) pane glass in the door, and not seeing the guard’s head, I leaned into Eduard’s chest as he bent down to embrace me, while hugging him tight against me with arms that still shook from the remembered violation of that pat-down search I’d endured minutes earlier.

I could feel his aorta beat through his chest, a hard, steady thump-thump that reverberated through me. He smelled like soap and…something piquantly medicinal.

“When was it that we last saw each other, humm? You had to leave for that damned dig in Bosnia…I was already in custody, wasn’t I?”

Eduard’s large, flat hands were gently patting my back, then moved over to rest on my shoulders, as he stepped back and smiled down at me, while I sniffed and said, “I think it was that jail in Corona—some damned place. Before they transferred you to Texas, I do remember that. I tried to write, but you hadn’t included me on your list of visitors and correspondents…I couldn’t find anyone at the University who was on the list.” Eduard let his hands slide gently, asexually, down my shoulders and finally to my hands. Grasping them, he moved over to the chair opposite mine, still squeezing my fingers as he sat down across from me.

I think he did that so I wouldn’t notice the leg irons clanking against the tile floor with each step.

Giving me a wan smile which revealed his still fairly-white teeth, Eduard said, “They weren’t on there because I didn’t want them to go through any of this—” he let go of one hand to wave his own nonchalantly at the surrounding cell. “—or to see me in this state. I thought it best…to let them go on with their lives—”

“But everyone wanted to talk to you, to help,” I insisted. I reached over to cover his free hand with my own. “Everyone I called while I was overseas was worried sick. And your lawyer wasn’t much help—”

“Nor was I to him, I’m afraid.” He smiled. “After all, there wasn’t much he could do for me, given the circumstances of everything that happened out there that day—”

(“He’ll probably want to get his off his chest,” the man from the government had told me in my hotel room the day before. “You’re the first person he’s asked to see, and considering his health, our profilers figure that this is something he needs to share with a trusted colleague before—”

“Before he drops dead in his cell, right?” I’d snapped.

“Something on that order,” came the benign reply.)

“—and my admitting to enough of it to get me a room in this establishment,” Eduard finished, with an unsettlingly merry wink in my direction.

Reflexively, I glanced at my wristwatch; he’d been in the room with me about four or five minutes. A lot of very tightly-coiled tape was waiting to unwind in the cassette player before him.

Harsh sunlight, golden white in color, beat down on my unprotected skin; its heat reflected against my crossed thighs and buttocks by the hood of the four-by-four, but the increased warmth did little to displace the lingering chill I carried within me, for so many miles, after my last visit to Eduard. That sterile brittle coldness of the prison, despite the ostensible warmth of the room itself.

Out here, with wind-caressed grass rippling all about me, there was precious little that didn’t seem to speak of openness, of unlimited, unending warmth and sunshine, of the potential for never-ending summer and growth, and the eventual ripening of all that lived and thrived. All those natural things Eduard used to live for.

All those things he deliberately turned his back on, after that one extended jaunt to the countryside.

I pulled my upper lip between my teeth for a moment before moving my hand off Eduard’s and gently patting the table top with the flat of my palm. Releasing my lip, I swallowed and said, “That’s something none of us at the University could really understand—your saying as much as you did about all of this. God, Ed, your state-of-mind wasn’t the most…stable. And from what we heard on TV and in the papers, you were legally drunk when you came back from…where you’d been that day. I mean, all the while I was working in Bosnia, trying to identify those war crime victims the peacekeeping troops found in the ravine, your case was all my team could talk about. It was macabre, really…brushing the dirt off skeletons while discussing what you’d dug up—speculating on what all of it really was and why you were being so severely punished for…doing whatever it was you did with it—”

Eduard rested his hand over my reflexively moving one; with that outlet stilled, the tension coursing through my body moved up to my eyelids, making them blink convulsively, but not so rapidly that he couldn’t see which direction my eyes kept looking in…or figure out why. Taking his other hand off my still-curled fingers, he made a forefinger-up ssshhhing motion before his dry lips, then reached over to lift up the free end of the canvas bag, exposing the end of the cassette player. Then, just as quietly and as gently, he let the fabric drop, before saying in a voice unaffected by what he’d just verified, “I suppose the gag order on the trial made things worse, no? I heard that even the transcripts are still considered Top Secret—although one of the other prisoners here told me that a reporter for The Advocate was working on obtaining them through the Freedom of Information Act.”

Eduard leaned back in his chair.

“What all was in the papers about me? After my arrest, I didn’t get to read much, or see too many TV broadcasts—my lawyer and the government types were constantly questioning me, grilling me, what have you. Did you realize they tried sodium pentothal on me? With my tacit permission, of course.”

“No. I trust it didn’t work.” I smiled thinly.

“I guess not. There was a good part of a twelve-pack in the back of my truck. Left over from the construction crew who’d been putting up that fence behind my place. I think most of them were illegals, but damned if they didn’t do a good job. The foreman wanted cash, after all…but I got the better of the deal.” Here he leaned toward me, his eyes mischievous. “His truck broke down and I lent him mine for the last day of the job—he forgot a post-hole digger in the back. It must have slid under one of my tarps. Along with the remains of the beer. I guess he figured the loss of the stuff was worthy my silence about the illegals. I still hadn’t heard from him a week after the job was done, the day I got the call from Hathaway—”

I doubted that the people who would listen to the cassette later on would have any trouble figuring out who Hathaway was. Dr. Brian Hathaway had testified at Eduard’s trial, after all. Not that he was the one who found the artifacts in the first place, out in the middle of nowhere above the Capitans, south of Corona, near Arroyo del Macho. One of Hathaway’s students, some beer-swilling dirt-biking nonentity with no regard for the ecosystem, happened upon the buried items when he’d gone back to try and find his girlfriend’s sorority ring. He’d been wearing it on a neck chain that had broken somewhere out there. The girl had discovered the missing chain before he did, so he hadn’t the time to simply go have a duplicate of the ring made. Instead, she rented him a metal detector and insisted he go find the thing. Or else.

Thanks to it being the August dry season, the kid was able to find his tracks easily, and proceeded to scan the area for the lost ring. Probably had visions of getting laid by his grateful sorority sweetie when he heard the detector ping—

“—all excited because one of his students had called him with the news of some really ‘strange’ stuff buried out in the hinterlands of New Mexico. I suppose it was Hathaway’s enthusiasm that made me throw my equipment in the back of my truck without really thinking this thing through—I’ve never told anyone this, besides my lawyer of course…for that defense of his which didn’t work anyhow…but when Hathaway’s call beeped through on my Call Waiting, I was on the line with one of those places where you send off your little number-coded blood samples to…the same place I’d called dozens of times over the years, my fingertips still stinging from where I’d pricked them to get the blood samples for those test cards…only, that day, the person on the other end didn’t tell me I was fine, have a nice day, blah-blah…I should’ve known, right after I gave her my latest code number, just from the sound of her voice as she said, ‘Let me see…number 54-42-41-84-25 slash 85…I’m—’ and she didn’t have to get to the ‘sorry’ for me to know.

“It’s the response they never show on those commercials…oh, I had the possibility in the back of my mind ever since I began testing myself, but always, you keep thinking, if you’re careful enough to test yourself every time, what can go wrong in between? And if you’re just plain careful, or think you’re being careful.…

“Anyhow, she managed to get out the rest, you know, ‘sorry, but your test indicated you’re HIV positive; we suggest that you go to your doctor—’ and all the rest of that happy horseshit, but by then, I heard the Call Waiting sound and just thanked the woman and switched over to the other call.

“I barely had time to say ‘hello’ before Hathaway began rambling on and on about something a student of his located, out in the middle of just about nowhere in south-eastern New Mexico. About twenty or so crow-flies miles from Roswell. I remember, when he mentioned Roswell, I was staring out my living room window, out at my truck parked near the mailbox, and for some reason, I imagined trussed-up little aliens stored under my tarp, all lined up in the truck bed. Just waiting there, all mummified and grayish, under that big paint-splattered tarp.…

“God knows why I’d think that…I suppose it was just having learned that I’d soon be in a similar condition, I mean…the aliens and Roswell part I could understand, it’s virtually Pavlovian by now, but somehow, I couldn’t top picturing dead little bodies, stacked like cordwood in my truck. Even after Hathaway made it clear that his boy found something metallic, buried underground. Not bodies. Artifacts. Something…strange enough for the kid to have had the good sense to rebury after brushing the top layer of soil off of it.”

Eduard paused to run one palm over his left cheek, the sound of his slight stubble too loud in the close, still room. Lowering his gaze to the tabletop, and the canvas bag, he finally went on, “Remember when that farmer in England found that cache of Roman treasure? When he was looking for a hammer or screwdriver or whatnot out in his field? Can you imagine how he must’ve felt, after hauling out the first few handfuls of coins and jewelry? Besides the rush of touching all that gold and silver, can you really put yourself in his place? Just think, knowing that no one has seen you find any of this, that it’s just you and the money and the baubles—

“England has that law, remember, about reporting all buried treasure? I’m sure that was foremost in his mind—”

Eduard let out a dry, almost hacking bark of a laugh, before waving both hands in my face and saying, “Places like this wouldn’t exist if everyone paid heed to the laws of the land…oh, you’re right, of course, he knew the law, and obeyed it…but think. He stashed enough of it in his trunk to almost fill the damned thing—I saw the footage of his vehicle. Now, knowing what he did, that all of this rightfully belonged to the Crown, why do you suppose he started to take so much out of that hole? When there was no one around to see him take it out in the first place? What really would’ve stopped him from going to the black market? Or just hoarding it?

“Don’t you think—” he leaned closer to me, eyes growing larger, “that the farmer was swept up in the sheer euphoria of his find? That was a pretty deep hole full of loot…and it had to be old. Can you just imagine it, doll? For those minutes he spent pawing through the dirt, pulling out handful after handful of precious metals, he was the sole owner. He knew, and he had it. Because it was so obvious that whoever had buried the things wasn’t about to come back for them. Every coin, every spoon of it, every last ring and bracelet was his now.

“And can you imagine the let-down, when the realization sunk in? That it couldn’t really be his after all…not unless he wanted to spend his whole life constantly waiting for that invisible tap on the shoulder, and the crisp order, ‘Please come with us, Sir.’ But that realization still couldn’t negate the initial moment of discovery. Those minutes when it was all his.”

He leaned back resting his head in the hammock of his intertwined fingers, and closed his eyes. “Hathaway wanted me to come right away, which I then thought a blessing. Something to take my mind off other things. It was only about an hour’s drive from my place near Farwell…only took me a matter of minutes to load my sifting screen, tools and work gloves into the truck then I was off down the highway.

“Once I was about twenty miles from my trailer, mental autopilot kicked in, and my mind began replaying all the Area 51 and alien autopsy shows I’d ever seen on TV. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how anything could’ve been overlooked by the government for over sixty-some years after the initial crash of the ship or balloon or crash dummies or whatever it was that landed. So I figured, whatever the dirt-biking little punk found had to be either more modern, like some air-crash debris or whatever, or more ancient, perhaps an example of early metal working. Or something the Spaniards lost, from the Conquest.

“Hathaway had told me to use my cellular phone once I passed the upper arm of the Arroyo del Macho, a few miles south of Ramon on Highway 285, because the exact spot wasn’t on any map. He told me to take State Highway 42 west about twelve miles or so, then it was more or less get out of the truck and walk, which is what I did, phone in hand. Hathaway had done the same—his truck was parked not far from mine.

“I couldn’t yet see either Hathaway or his student, but I knew I was sorry I hadn’t taken the time to change out of my dress boots into something easier to walk in. Lots of desert willows, cottonwood, some mesquite, but still a lonely spot of land…undulating ground, but for some reason it wasn’t soothing, like rolling hillocks sometimes can be. As I followed Hathaway’s directions—south, then west past this or that rise—I started to feel this…sort of cold apathy toward the place. Like, I had no business here, which was insane; I’d spent virtually my whole life in the southwest, including some years in New Mexico while getting my BA…about the only extended period I’d been gone was when you and I and Hathaway joined that dig in the Russian Steppe region, remember, those ice tombs—”

I nodded my remembrance of the dig; neither of us were prepared for the remarkably cold summers in Siberia (Hathaway had been raised in Pennsylvania, so he was far less affected), nor were we emotionally ready for what we found in the sunken wooden tomb our group unearthed—it was a child’s tomb. The boy couldn’t have been more than eight-years-old when he died. I could still quite easily picture the small knife and wooden animal his people had placed near him in his tomb…small, bright objects, made shiny in the weak sunlight by the residual coating of ice which covered their surfaces. The same ice which made the boy’s bones appear somewhat gelid, almost soft—

“—but that’s close to how I felt that afternoon, despite the sunshine beating through my shirt and jeans…like I had back in Siberia. Knowing that that was not my place, even for the time I spent there. Feeling wholly alien in that land, not knowing the place or even wanting to…once I saw the two men waiting for me, I thought that sensation of not belonging would abate, but it didn’t. Switching off my phone, I shoved it into my back pocket and put on that smiley-face I’d wear when facing my freshman archeology students each fall.

“Well, I could see right off that the lummox hadn’t done much damage at all to the site; he’d started to dig down maybe two, three inches, until whatever he’d been using hit the surface of the artifact. Then he’d used his hands to fritter away the top dusting of soil over the upper region of the first item, just enough to reveal the lettering on it. He was a big kid, like a dressed-out side-of-beef, but I suppose not quite as addle-pated as he looked. Terrible haircut, though, half-scalped, with this fringe around the bottom. Anyhow, Mr. Hockey-Hair tells me, ‘I didn’t think that there was regular writing’ or something equally erudite, before I hunkered down next to Hathaway to get a better look in the hole.

“The kid was right…it wasn’t ‘regular writing.’ Not hieroglyphs, cuneiform, not Greco-Roman print…yet, it was so much like all of them to make the hairs stand at attention on my arms. I could tell from Hathaway’s expression that he was thinking more or less what I was thinking…strange lettering, not quite Egyptian, but not unlike it either, silvery-bright metal, a smoothly-rounded shape—this thing was too much like the descriptions of the debris from the Roswell crash to be anything but more of it.

“Hathaway had the presence of mind to shoo the kid off; told him he’d done the right thing to show us this find, and that I was an expert in artifacts of ‘this time period’…the kid had come out that way to find something else, so he decided to keep on looking for it, once Hathaway kept lying through his teeth and assured him that we’d be sure to put his name on the little card next to the artifact once it was safely on display in the Roswell Museum and Art Center.

“We puttered around the site for a while until the punk got back on his bike and roared off toward the Arroyo…neither of us wanted him watching the actual excavation. Or knowing how much more might be in there.

“Before unearthing anything else, we sifted through the soil that had already been disturbed, but the kid had been careful. No loose debris, nothing broken off…Hathaway staked out a small square around the hole, then divided the square into quadrants. I was in charge of mapping out the find, drawing the position of each piece as it was revealed. I’d finish each drawing while Hathaway sifted the dirt from each successive layer of soil…but the artifacts were quite intact. Judging from the actual crash site—which Hathaway reminded me had occurred somewhat closer to Corona than to Rowell per se, something I hadn’t realized before—these items would be beyond degradation. I’d heard the witnesses who’d touched other artifacts say that the metal couldn’t be burned or torn, despite it being so delicately thin it could be balled up in the palm of one hand.

“Whoever buried them had certainly chosen the perfect spot—no heavy traffic, no major flooding, just dry, arid soul. Something else occurred to both of us as we continued the excavation—whoever placed the items in the ground had been digging by hand. The ultimate depth of the hole was 10½ inches by 8¼ inches in circular width, the way you start digging in the soil from the middle outward, scratching deeper and deeper until you have an earthen bowl before you. Just enough of an indentation in the earth to hide a few small things.

No matter how brilliant the sunlight, its daily length, its seasonal accumulation, the earth below is ultimately cold. No matter where you go. Sometimes, you must dig deep to reach that frigid core…other times, the cold is close beneath each step one takes over ostensibly warm, sunlit ground.

The waving, rippling grassland before me suddenly belied that waiting chilliness; surely such expanses of pale gold could only speak the silent language of radiant plentitude, of living, light-feeding warmth. But men like Eduard, men and women who pry away the earth’s turfed flesh from the underlying musculature of soil and sand and rocky bone…they know the truth of the earth.

After many an earthen autopsy, men like Eduard Addison have a certain feeling for what is normal, and to be expected…and what lies dormant, cancer-like, within the soil’s tight-packed torso, that which is not of the body, and does not wholly belong—

“It took us only two hours or so to unearth all that was there…I wish I still had the drawings I made of the things, although I suspect they’ll eventually be declassified. If that reporter from The Advocate lives a very long, long life, and,” he added with a grin, “doesn’t do something foolish, like I did.

“The uppermost artifact resembled a small pocket kerchief. Not much bigger when it was flattened than…oh, a cheap paper plate. But it could be crumpled…not that either of us did it on purpose, but when it was lifted off the things under it, it went somewhat limp. While I was brushing it off it draped around my other hand, and, reflexively, I wadded it up—remembering what one witness said about being able to ball up the material. I’ll never forget how beautiful it was as it unfolded in the afternoon sunlight…the way the sun shone on the raised lettering, and the smooth places between. I copied what it said on there too, as best I could. The lettering was…not really bas relief, but appeared to be. Somewhat like holographic printing, but not that, either. It didn’t actually change images or shapes so much as recede…which is why I’m not quite sure what I copied down was right or not. It was like spectacle blur, when you take out contact lenses and put on your glasses—things couldn’t come into focus fast enough.”

I noticed for the first time that Eduard wasn’t wearing his glasses, nor did his eyes seem to be covered with contacts—perhaps there wasn’t much he wanted to see all that clearly anymore.

“So…we set the round flat artifact aside and studied the next one. It seemed to be some sort of decoration, either personal or meant to hang from something else. The hole in the top was unmistakable—just think, whoever created the thing, no matter where he or she came from, solved the problem of how to hang something from a cord or a chain the same way we would, just make a hole in the top and slide the chain or whatever through it. The artifact was 2⅝ inches long, an inch and three sixteenth inches wide, and ⅛ plus a fraction thick. I was the one who did the measuring…it was cold when initially unearthed, but the more I handled it, the more tactile it became…not actually much warmer, but…I suppose I’d have to say flesh-like. The surface was burnished, a silvery grayish metal with fleeting hints of washed-out indigo, but there was such an appealing texture to it. Like running your fingers over the flesh of someone’s inner arm, between the elbow and the wrist…just incredibly pleasant, almost sensual. I don’t know which side of it was supposed to be the front…there was something scratched into both surfaces.

“Not imprinted, or carved, mind you, but literally scratched in and over it, very imperfect, very…hurried. As if whoever had done it was working quickly, or with unwieldy implements. The scratches were quite faint, nearly wrinkle-like against the surfaces of the item; they were so sloppy and imprecise that it was difficult to reproduce them. The…writing, if that’s what you’d want to call it, was somewhat similar to the printed lettering on the round limp artifact, in the way that bad handwriting can be marginally linked to the typed or printed word of a given language. I copied a few of the groupings of symbols, but as I said, they were so shakily done…I never did take the time to polish those drawings.

“I suppose I began to actually think about these…belongings, as I was drawing the next one; the may’ve-been-solid sphere-like thing with the deep indentations running along its outermost circumference. It was a mottled bluish silver, like sterling silver that’s been handled too much between cleanings…and I don’t know if it was the pattern of the discoloration, or the smallness of the thing, how well it fit within my cupped palm, but a notion just struck me, out under that deepening gold sun, and wouldn’t let my brain be; whoever or whatever had owned this thing had touched it. A lot. Had perhaps placed it close to its body, in a pocket or a pouch or perhaps even inside its garment. It just had that worn look, that extra level of softness around the indentations in the surface. And considering that it wasn’t that heavy—according to the scale Hathaway brought, it was only thirty grams—I wondered if it might be hollow. And if something could be placed inside of it. Or had been sealed for good within.

“And the saddest thing was, there was no common point of human reference, of human need or want or understandable emotion by which I could even begin to guess the purpose, or the significance, of that small silvery sphere. With humans, even ancient humans, guessing the meaning of a heretofore unknown artifact can be done with a modicum of certainty—after all, a small figure of a human is a literal representation of a person. Be it a doll, or a fertility symbol, or a religious icon. You can at least start with the shape, the nature of the representation then move outward, to place it within a context—find it by a small skeleton, and it’s a toy. Unearth it near a grain bin, a grinding stone, or farming implements, and it could be a fertility totem. Discover it close to an altar, perhaps near the bones of sacrifices, animals or people, and it becomes a holy relic.

“People, at least, haven’t changed so radically that they have stopped sharing certain needs, certain modes of inbred behavior…perhaps we have to guess about certain human artifacts, but we can be reasonably sure that our guesses might be right, or might later be proved right. Pending other excavations, other discoveries which will link the first artifact to the second, and so on.

“But this…thing—it was a complete enigma. No way of ever ever knowing what it might represent. A sphere can be so many things, in so many different contexts…and we’d found it in a hole, dug quickly in the earth.

“The last of the artifacts was perhaps the saddest thing of all, to me at least. Hathaway was all but dancing about by then, sometimes hugging himself with glee, like the kid who finds the whole filled Easter basket during the egg hunt and doesn’t want to tell anyone else. Anyway, that last…item…was resting in the very nadir of the pit. As if whoever put it there wanted it to stay hidden the longest. Or…just happened to throw it in first, although considering how neatly stacked everything was, perhaps it was meant to go on the bottom. Why? Who knows? The sides of the hole sloped down to a rather sharp point.…

“But for whatever reason it was at the bottom, the last artifact seemed incomplete…as if it was broken off of something else—there was a raw, semi-iridescent side to it. It was a many-pointed object, a bit like a burr, only with rounded tips. It could’ve been part of anything, I suppose…but that raw end bothered me. Had it been broken on purpose? By accident? It was heavy, almost as heavy as the sphere, despite being half again as small…so I assumed it was solid. In itself, it was virtually complete-looking, as far as small roundish things with multiple quarter-inch long protrusions can appear to be complete. But that flattish end niggled at me.

“The rest of whatever it was obviously wasn’t in the hole…and if the kid’s metal detector didn’t pick it up during the many passes he made over this spot, chances were whatever it was wasn’t here. So…either the being who buried these artifacts no longer had the rest of the thing, or he or she or it had removed it from the larger (or whatever-sized) item for some reason. Like taking a hood ornament off a vintage car, perhaps. Or copping off a piece of rock from a castle wall, as some archeologists are wont to do on the sly.

“It was just such a…sentient thing to do, holding on to a broken-off piece of something or other. And then putting it—hiding it really—in the ground, along with other unbroken things.

“While I was trying to sketch that last object, I remembered what that cache of treasure that farmer found in England looked like once it was all cleaned and polished and arranged by category in the museums…although it had been buried in a wooden chest, so it had probably been packed to some degree before being buries, I couldn’t help but think about what sort of stuff was resting in the top layers of the chest, and what was below. The farmer found some money first then the personal items.… I remembered how one bracelet had a woman’s name on it. Latin for ‘Julia.’ Not that this Julia did the burying of it—could’ve been a servant, or someone who knew her, or of her, or…someone who just remembered her.

“I realize now that my state of mind was maudlin because of what I’d found out over the phone before Hathaway called…but at the time, memories of the English treasure, and the one item with a real person’s name on it, just kept coming and coming in my mind. And another thought: What would you bury if you had to? What would be so sacred to you, so utterly important, that you couldn’t consider letting anyone else see it, or have it, or just plain know about it? I didn’t need to ask how I’d bury it—I’d use the same hands which had unearthed those once-hidden things.

“And as I sat with that smallest artifact balanced on my knee, while trying to draw it on a pad of paper balanced on my other knee, it hit me—Hathaway telling me how this place was fairly close to the Roswell crash site, oh not the exact spot, but considering that there was supposedly debris scattered for miles on that ranch, plus those little aliens if the more detailed accounts are to be believed, and some people claimed that at least one alien was walking around. How do we know that the being fell to Earth right where it was found? Or stayed in that exact spot after the crash? There was just no way to know really…that rancher came upon the site long after the actual crash itself. If at least one being was alive, right after the craft touched down, there’s no way to know exactly what it did, or where it might’ve wandered…all I knew was that something had deliberately buried these artifacts. They weren’t wedged in the ground as a result of blunt force impact. Hastily-executed, but still an action conducted with forethought. With intent. With…reason.”

Eduard took a deep breath;

“For whatever reason it had, the being who buried these things did not want anyone or anything to see them…probably if it was captured or were to die. Everything was small enough to conceal even on a tiny body—that they were buried indicated that the being doing it had somehow decided that they would not be in its possession much longer. And none of them seemed to be overtly important—at least nothing, aside from maybe the little knobby thing, appeared to form a part of something mechanical, something like a weapon, or a means of transport or communication.

“Remember, darling, the kerchiefs those Japanese Kamikaze wore? The square of silk with messages from their loved ones written on them? I’m not saying that that was what we unearthed that day, but…how can anyone say it wasn’t?

“Touching those items somehow made me feel like a grave robber, like someone who plunders for the sake of profit. Like despite my education and my expertise, my experience and all my care and concern for the artifacts I’d dug up in the past, I was simply doing something very, very wrong. These things could never have any true meaning, not in the sense any human artifact could in our modern eyes. There was no point of cultural reference, no…Rosetta Stone, if you will. Even if there had been spaceship debris collected back in ’46, it wouldn’t say enough about these beings to put these artifacts into any usable frame of reference…all these things would ever be were mere curiosities, something to stare at, speculate about, and all the while, their true meaning would never be fathomed. And what if that meaning was something sacred? Or something just too damn personal to be speculated about?

“And as Hathaway bounded about the dig, all silly grins and self-congratulatory jabbering, I felt myself grow sick and cold inside…this was a circus to him. He’d have his damned fifteen minutes of fame, his name splashed all over the TV and Internet and papers and…and mine would be there, too. Hathaway was going on and on about how ‘we’ would do this and say that once we brought this stuff to the attention of the world, and while he was rambling on, I heard this sound…it took a while to realize it was me. Crying.

“The soil we’d been digging through had some rocks in it, not big ones, but if you picked up a couple and placed them in a bandana, then wound the loose ends tight…Hathaway was heading for his truck, pulled-up stakes in hand, when I whomped him on the back of the head. Hard enough to draw blood, but by then, the sight of blood didn’t bother me anymore, not like it had when I used to prick my finger for those HIV tests…I made sure he was breathing before I left him, and rolled him onto his side in case he vomited.

“I unwound the bandanna, dumped out the rocks, and scooped up the artifacts…I suppose I should’ve grabbed my sketch pad too, but like I said, my mind wasn’t really right…and then I walked back to my truck. When I hit Highway 285, I could see some dark green vehicles driving cross-country toward the spot where we’d been digging…little hard shiny trucks, gleaming in the sunlight, like beetle backs. That’s about the last thing I do clearly recall, aside from opening can after can of beer—I’d grabbed them from the back of the truck bed before heading out.…

“Supposedly, I didn’t come back to the trailer until the next morning—not that I had the time to do much more than enter it and start to unbutton my shirt before the door was battered in by all those cops and military types. I vaguely recall the door slamming down flat, like whoosh!—then the place filling with people. I do recall that I had cuffs on me when they led me out of there. But I was too damned hung-over to really care at that point.”

Eduard crossed his arms over his chest, and after glancing over at my hidden recorder, said, “Needless to add, Hathaway’s cell phone conversation had been monitored all along…but it wasn’t until that damned punk told some of his friends about what he’d found and they told their friends, and pretty soon the military heard of it, that everything hit the fan. They arrived on the scene in time to find Hathaway starting to come to…I’d high-tailed it away long before he was able to tell them that he’d had company. Apparently the kid neglected to mention me to his friends. Hathaway didn’t know immediately what sort of truck I had…and my driver’s license and registration wasn’t much help since I’d bought the damned thing only a couple of weeks before, second-hand. Initially, they’d headed back to the border, to my trailer then realized that I’d driven to parts unknown. With the goodies.”

Knowing that I’d be penalized if I didn’t ask, even though I had no real desire to put Eduard through this yet again, I ventured, “And you can’t remember what happened to the artifacts? Or where you…left them?

Eduard smiled at that, then leaned close and said in a loud stage whisper, “‘Left’ my ass, dear. I buried them. What else do you think happened? I couldn’t very well burn them, or dismantle them, could I? The problem is, I have no idea where the hell I buried them. I logged over 500 miles on my odometer, and I know I was in the wilderness for about eight hours or more…who knows how fast or how far I went? But…does it really matter where they are? I couldn’t have taken them, really…they were never mine to have.”

Rhetorically, I blurted out, “But Eduard…so much might’ve been learned from them anyhow, their composition, their age—”

Smiling sadly, Eduard grasped both of my hands in his and as he gave them a gentle, affectionate squeeze, said, “Dear heart, all that was necessary to know about them was known. Their owner didn’t want anyone to see them, to know of them. Their owner is dead. What more is there for anyone to know? If there was any meaning, any significance inherent in them, it had to have been too personal for anyone but the owner to comprehend.”

“But Eduard…” I began, my voice faltering. All he did was lift up my hands, dry kiss them in turn, then say, “I suppose you’re wondering why I finally did ask you to come. The doctors here tell me that this disease is spreading through me…the AZT and all that other crap can only work for so long. I’ve made out a will and you’re my executor—”

“I don’t think I want to hear this,” I whispered.

“My family has more or less disowned me…not that I have much worth after Hathaway’s lawsuit against me for wrongful assault and everything else. In the eyes of the government, I’m a traitor, a thief of government property…in society’s view, I’m either that damned faggot who stole the might’ve-been-alien-artifacts, or I’m the ultimate poster boy for Gay Rights Oppression. But I still have a few things in storage, books and whatnot. Some of them might even be yours; you lent me some back before all this happened—”

“You mean Hathaway actually left you something after the civil suit? I heard he was able to retire off you,” I tried to joke.

“Pretty much…but there were some things that even he didn’t want, things no one had much use for. But they’ll be yours. Okay? Don’t cry, doll…it had nothing to do with you. It really had nothing to do with anything.”

* * * *

That was the last time anyone from the University saw him alive. Three days later Eduard managed to procure a plastic bag from a fellow inmate. I suppose he didn’t want to wait for the inevitable, the grossly-painful and ugly, to happen. Or…perhaps he didn’t want to risk telling his story again, lest some small clue work its way into the narrative.

I handed over the tape to the men who came back to my motel room before I had a chance to check out that afternoon. They thanked me for my cooperation and for my service to my country.

If they found anything of value on the tape, it would surprise me.

But…after Eduard’s will was processed, and his meager belongings given to the pitifully few people actually named in the document (which included a couple of fellow inmates), I was left with a box of books, some of which were indeed mine. But the slip of paper left in the book about the Siberian Ice Tombs, the book which included photographs of me, Hathaway and Eduard in the middle section…that was never mine. I always loathed those little sticky notes, the squares of yellow paper Eduard used to use by the gross when working, teaching, or driving. I’d ridden in enough jeeps and land rovers with him to remember his habit of jotting down each road he went down, just in case we were to get lost.

He’d shoved the folded over bit of paper deep inside the book, far deeper than a regular bookmark might go. So deep it didn’t fall out when the book was paged through, or even shook open. As I’m sure the Government must’ve done. How they missed the thing, I don’t know. Perhaps they did see it, and discounted it as a mere scrap of paper. After all, he spent so little time alone that morning. The penciled marks on it were quite faint, and seemingly random. Just a series of numbers:

54 42 41 40 84 25/85

120 65 104 54 39 102

562 18 64/87 193 36

25/85 84 46 54 285 42

But I’d seen that first line—no, rather heard that first row of numbers, that day in the small room with Eduard. The number of his HIV test…or so I had thought. But the slashed numbers made me think of something else…not so much something to do with blood per se, but instead with lines which often had reminded me of veins and arteries.

The red and blue lines on a highway map.…

The route suggested by the numbers Eduard had jotted down that day was a wild, twisting one, but with a definite, even searchable, geographic region. I doubted that anyone had found the sheet before, or had understood it at all if they had seen it—not if they were still asking the help of civilians for clues about the artifacts.

Or maybe they didn’t think he had the time to actually hide anything during the brief minutes Eduard was alone in his trailer, before the door—and his world—was bashed in. But he’d done it anyhow.

Whether or not he did or didn’t remember doing it.

Stretching out for miles before me, the Kiowa National Grasslands are, perhaps, a far more fitting place for those alien remains than the site their owner chose out of necessity. At least Eduard had time, and a much better knowledge of the area, on his side…not to mention that post-hole digger which had been left in his truck.

True, I had no way of knowing for certain if this was, indeed, the place he’d chosen on his drunken flight, but it was a place he might have chosen, being a protected area, being something of a sacred place.

As I leaned back against the windshield of my four-by-four, I decided that it really didn’t matter after all. The man who jotted down that yellow rectangle’s worth of numbers was dead. The sheet was now buried in the soil of the grasslands before me, as deep as my fingers would allow.

That done, there was nothing more for anyone to know.