The 13 th tribe

[14]

By the time Jagger had reached the first pit, Tyler was running around the next, uppermost dig to reach its shallow end. The boy hopped in and disappeared. Jagger waved to the dozen workers in the first hole. Several nodded in return, their hands occupied by a shovel and a trowel, a wood-framed screen and a camera. He passed Bertha, crossed the ground between the holes, and stopped at the edge of Annabelle’s deep end. Twenty feet below, Oliver, Addison, and Tyler crouched around a small lump protruding from the floor. Oliver brushed at the object while Addison made notes on a clipboard. Tyler was leaning close, as though inspecting a new kind of insect.

“Playing in the dirt again?” Jagger said.

Oliver cranked his neck to look at him and laughed. “In grad school I had a T-shirt with those very words. How’re things, Jag?”

“All quiet on the Middle Eastern front.”

Oliver flashed a big smile. “For now,” he said. He turned back to his brushing.

“Expecting trouble?” Jagger said.

“I hope so,” Oliver said without looking. “When we find what we’re looking for, the looters will descend like vultures. And the anarchists. Then you’ll really earn your keep.” He glanced up. “Not that you don’t now.”

“Something like this?” Tyler said, leaning closer to the protruding clump. “Is it special?”

“Probably not,” Oliver said. “Just a piece of pottery. Not even from the right era.”

“Then why are you being so careful?”

Oliver leaned back onto his heels and sighed. “Because you never know.”

Addison nudged Tyler with her elbow. “Some villagers in Jordan once found what they thought was a headstone,” she said. “They broke it up to sell pieces to tourists. Turns out it was an ancient memorial celebrating a Moabite ruler’s victories over Omri, king of Israel.”

“The stone mentions the House of David and Yahweh, the Jewish name for God,” Oliver added. “It pretty much shut up some groups who said there never was a King David.”

“People said that?” Tyler said.

“Anything to disprove the Bible.”

“But why?”

Addison shrugged. “They think religion is stupid, I guess. They want to live by their own rules, not God’s.”

Jagger squatted at the edge of the hole and set down the lunchbox. “We talked about that, Tyler,” he said. “That’s why Dr. Hoffmann’s digging here.”

Tyler chimed in. “’Cause some people say there was no Moses, right, Ollie?”

“They specifically deny the Exodus, that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt.”

“Even that the Red Sea parted?” Tyler said.

“Especially the miracles,” Oliver agreed. “Just too crazy for them.”

Tyler looked out of the hole at the mountain rising above them. “Or the Ten Commandments?”

“They don’t believe any of it,” Oliver said. He stood and brushed dust off his khaki trousers. “Thing is, no one has found any proof that the Israelites were ever here, which is sort of amazing, considering how many of them there were.”

“Like… how many?”

“Oh, about two and a half million,” Addison said.

“Or twenty thousand,” Oliver said, “depending on whom you listen to. Either way, it was a lot of people. They should have left some evidence that they were here.”

Tyler stared at the find Oliver had brushed. “Like what?”

“Bones, a gravesite. When Moses came down from the peak with the first tablets God had given him and found the people worshipping a golden calf, he had the Levites kill three thousand people. The bodies have to be somewhere.”

Tyler made a face. “They just killed them?”

“For disobeying God. The rest of them had to wander in the desertthis desert-for forty years, until most of them died off. God wanted their children to inherit the Promised Land, not them.”

“Wow.” Tyler turned a horrified expression toward his father.

Jagger said, “And you think a spanking is bad.”

Oliver continued: “Normally, archaeologists would look some distance away from encampments or settlements for gravesites. But scholars believe Moses would have had the slain buried right here at the base of the mountain, to warn the others of what happens when they sin against God. Plus, here’s where we have the best chance of finding other evidence… like jewelry, lots of it. Moses said they didn’t deserve to be decorated with ornaments, so the Israelites stripped off all their jewelry before leaving this place.”

Tyler started to say something, but Oliver held up his hand to stop him. “Oh, and what if, just what if, we found”-he raised his hands and gaped theatrically at Tyler-“the holy grail of the Old Testament?”

“ What?” Tyler exclaimed. “The real holy grail, like in that old Indiana Jones movie?”

Oliver laughed. “No, no. My holy grail, the greatest discovery I can imagine.”

Tyler just stared.

“A piece of the original tablets,” Oliver said. “A shard of the tablets that Moses broke when he saw the Israelites worshipping the idol. Written in stone by the finger of God himself.”

“Really?” Tyler said. He looked at the walls of the dig. “Here?”

“If anywhere,” Oliver said. “Can you imagine?”

He looked up, and Jagger could see on Oliver’s face the wonderment that children display so easily and adults rarely rediscover. He realized it was what kept the man digging in the dirt, and he hoped it was never lost under too many potsherds and bottle caps.

“How would you know?” Jagger said. “If you found it… how would you know it’s really from the tablets?”

“I think,” Oliver said, furrowing his brow. “I think we’d just know. I mean, they couldn’t be just rock, could they?”

Jagger smiled. “You don’t sound much like a scientist.”

“I’m a Christian first, Jagger,” Oliver said. “I believe in miracles.” He shook his head vigorously, as if shaking his dream out of his mind. “Besides, I’ll settle for any evidence: a trinket… the gold dust Moses made them drink after grinding up the calf… coprolite.”

“Copro-what?” Tyler said.

Addison grinned. “Poop.”

“Huh?”

“Human waste,” Oliver said. “There were a lot of people; they had to go to the bathroom somewhere.”

Tyler stood quickly and studied the ground where he’d been kneeling. “What’s it look like?”

“Like lava rock,” Addison said. “It’s rare, though. It usually dissolves into the ground. Sometimes you get lucky.”

“Lucky?” Tyler said. “To find poop?”

“Proof,” Oliver corrected.

“Still want to be an archaeologist?” Jagger said.

Tyler looked at Addison, who nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Yeah.”

Oliver slapped the boy’s back. “You want to help unearth the potsherd?” He handed him a tool.

Tyler examined it. “This looks like a chopstick.”

“It is,” Oliver said. “I’ll show you how to use it.”

Tyler smiled up at his father. Jagger checked his watch. He said, “Go for it. I’ll make my rounds and swing back in a little while.”

He stood and ran his fingers around the inside of his waistband to tighten his shirt. The stream of tourists had vanished from the front of the excavation site. He turned to see the last of them struggling up the mountain. The peak was out of sight, beyond the first towering slabs of rock.

At the place where Moses had encountered God now stood a tiny chapel. The monks had told Jagger that under the chapel’s floor, in the surface of the stone mountain, were the perfect imprints of two knees, left there by Moses as he knelt before God.

In the pit, Oliver was gently scraping the potsherd with the chopstick as Tyler watched, waiting for his turn.

“And, Ty?” Jagger said. “If it’s poop, don’t bring it home.”