Reading the Bones. Gina McMurchy-Barber

my aunt and uncle, I got interested in collecting seashells. It started one day when I was sitting by myself at the beach. Mrs. Hobbs and her old basset hound, Chester, came along, their heads pointed toward the sand. They seemed to take no notice of the nippy southwest breeze coming in from the Pacific. I watched as the silver-haired lady stopped and bent down to examine something more closely. After brushing at some tiny object in her hand, she walked up to me as though we had known each other for ages and said, “Have you ever seen a more perfect specimen of an Ophiodermella cancellata?”

      I had to agree that the white spiral-shaped shell with its delicate design was pretty, even though there was no way I could repeat its strange name.

      “Well, here you are, young lady.” Mrs. Hobbs placed the shell in my hand. “This can be the beginning of your collection. And the nice thing about shell collecting is it’s something you can do by yourself or with a friend.” Then she smiled and continued down the beach with Chester waddling along.

      After that I did start my own shell collection. And whenever Mrs. Hobbs and I found ourselves at the beach at the same time, we combed the sand together, looking for more unique shells. Crescent Beach was covered with limpets, and so far I had managed to find four different species. I also had five types of snails, two different butter clams, a Pacific gaper, and cockles galore. But my favourite so far was the Adanson’s lepton with its pearly pink centre and purplish-red fringe. I was planning to make a necklace with the shells for Mom when I collected enough.

      As soon as Aunt Margaret noticed I was interested in shells, she bought me a book called Shells of the Pacific Ocean. It had lots of beautiful pictures. At first I was excited about the book. But then I realized it was her way of taking control again — making shell collecting into a “learning opportunity.”

      “You should label the shells in your collection with their common and scientific names,” she suggested one day. “Then for fun you could look up their Greek and Latin origins.”

      Right! That sounded like about as much fun as watching twenty-year-old reruns of Mr. Rogers. Snore!

      Whenever my aunt interfered, I tried to remember she meant well. But I’d found the best thing was to stay out of her way as much as possible. So when I wasn’t down at the beach collecting shells, I wandered past the little shops and up and down the quiet streets. West Beach had lots of fancy houses, like the ones along O’Hare

      Lane. They had names hanging on signs out front like Swallow Hallow or Komokwa. I liked the name on the old Tudor house the best — Happy Haven. Sometimes there were garden parties with ladies in long dresses and men in suits drinking from tall, elegant glasses. No one seemed to notice when I stopped to watch.

      The houses in East Beach, where I lived, were smaller. Most were cottages, built long ago, when people only came to Crescent Beach for their holidays. My aunt and uncle’s house was nearly seventy years old and used to be a one-bedroom getaway. A previous owner added a second floor with three bedrooms.

      One morning Aunt Margaret got the idea I should come with her to the decorating store and choose the paint colour for my bedroom. But I wasn’t planning on living there for long and I certainly didn’t want anything to do with picking out paint colours. I snuck out when she was in the shower and made my way to the end of McBride and out to the beach at Blackie’s Spit. I liked early mornings on the beach the best. Hardly anyone was ever there.

      A startled blue heron lurched awkwardly into the sky just as I jumped over a log and plunked myself onto the sun-warmed sand. I watched two seagulls fight over a cracked open clamshell, while two more circled silently overhead. I wondered how long it would take for the emptied clam to become tiny bits of crushed shell scattered all over the beach. On the other hand, it might go home in some kid’s sand pail as part of a shell collection like mine, or become decorated with paint and glitter and sit on a windowsill.

      On that morning Mrs. Hobbs and Chester were out for a walk at the end of the spit. When she noticed me, she waved and marched in my direction. The wind whipped at strands of silver hair that had escaped from under her Tilley hat. And as the old dog waddled behind her, his tummy nearly dragged along the sand. Mrs. Hobbs lived on Sullivan Street, just down from Skipper’s Fish and Chips. She once told me Chester liked to spend his free time sniffing out leftovers by the dumpster.

      “Hello, Peggy. You wouldn’t believe the treasure I’ve been gathering this morning!” Mrs. Hobbs said, nearly out of breath. She opened her palm and presented several long, thin tubular shells that were almost translucent, except for their pattern of tiny flecks. “These are tusk shells. With the tide out I managed to find these few in the mud and silt off the end of the spit. The ancient Coast Salish traditionally used them for decoration and trading.”

      “Trading?” I knew a shrewd bargainer never appeared too eager, so I tried not to look excited. “I’ll trade you something for them.”

      “Hmm. What have you got that I might want?” Mrs. Hobbs’s eyes were smiling.

      “How about some of my best Adanson’s leptons?” The tusk shells would be perfect for the necklace I wanted to make for Mom.

      “That sounds pretty enticing. However, I was thinking more along the lines of, say, lawn cutting ... next Saturday?”

      “Sure. It’s a deal! Thanks.” I snatched the five delicate shells from her hand.

      The day I got those tusk shells from Mrs. Hobbs was the first time I’d ever heard about the Coast Salish people. After Uncle Stuart and I discovered the skull in the yard, I realized those shells were the first sign of a strange adventure.

      Now, since I couldn’t sleep, I crawled out of bed and pulled down my shell collection from the shelf. I rolled the long tubular tusk shells in my fingers and thought about the ancient people and what Eddy had said about the burial. For the first time I was glad I had moved to Crescent Beach with Aunt Margaret and Uncle Stuart. Still, it would take some time getting used to the idea of living over an ancient Native burial ground.

      Finally, I got back into bed and closed my eyes. I tried to imagine a time when the tiny peninsula was covered in trees and the only people were the dark-skinned Natives who lived by the sea.

      CHAPTER 3

      The next morning Eddy and I stood at the edge of the hole, looking down on the burial. She had already cleared away some of the dirt, and I could see a form beginning to emerge. It seemed more like a small child lying on its side, curled up in sleep. I felt a little weird staring at those fragile bones, bare of all life.

      “Okay, Peggy, when excavating a site, what’s more important at the time — the artifacts you find or the place you find them?”

      In some ways Eddy reminded me of Mrs. Hobbs, though not in the way she dressed. Eddy wore a goofy hat covered in souvenir pins from all over the world and a khaki shirt with little pockets holding lots of little things, like a plumb bob, a measuring tape, and calipers. Her hands were thick and tough — the kind used to hard work and getting dirty. But she was easy to talk to like Mrs. Hobbs and made me feel as if what I thought mattered.

      I searched for the words Eddy had used the day before. “It’s the artifacts in ... ah ... situ — that’s it! The artifacts in situ can tell you the most. That’s why an archaeologist never takes the stuff out until every bit of information around the artifact has been recorded.”

      Eddy smiled. “What kind of information are we looking for?”

      “Okay, I know this. How deep the things are from the surface ... ah, what other stuff is associated nearby ... um, and what the layers of soil are like. That’s the matrix, right?”

      “All right! You’ve been listening! Now that you’ve passed the test you’re ready to be my assistant.” Eddy’s round, wrinkled face smiled approvingly. Gently, she stepped over the string barrier she’d made and knelt by the bones. “Hand me the trowel and dustpan. I’m going to start by levelling this layer that you and your uncle started. Before we can remove the skull and bones, we have to see what else this burial can tell us.”