By G. M. Donley
Devin Carlson set out for the southeast corner of Georgia with visions in his mind of the ancient fragments arranged geometrically across a large area of the swamp in a way that alluded to their original setting in the Mekong delta. He had heard the rumors for so long that they had retreated into the back of his mind as probably just some fabricated myth-making perpetuated by other curators and anthropologists who had too much time on their hands and too many beers in their blood after too many bullshit sessions down at the university tavern after work. But then, suddenly, a firm lead showed up out of nowhere. A niece of a colleague had stopped in a local all-you-can-eat lunch place after a boat tour in the Okefenokee Swamp, and reported that a chunk of a statue was sitting up on shelf behind the fryolator, and that the proprietress of the place had stories about it.
Around 1970 sometime, a platoon made up mostly of local boys from around there found themselves stranded somewhere in Cambodia. Nobody knew exactly where because the brass never shared any of that, but it was flat and wet and crawling with things that could bite you—not unlike home for those boys, Devin mused. They had come under fire and part of the platoon had stumbled onto some higher ground where they found themselves among the tumbled stones of an ancient ruin. They hid behind those stones and fired back, and when the skirmish was over, they discovered they were the only ones in their group to have survived. Convinced that the ancient fragments had looked over them and saved their lives, each man stashed a piece of carved rock into his pack and, despite the extra weight, hauled it with him. Then hauled it back home.
With such spotty information, Devin could not be sure where the soldiers had been exactly, but it seemed likely from his research of the war and his knowledge of the temples that they had been near one of two sites. The Khmer Rouge had devastated much of the area in the decade after the US had pulled out, severely disrupting many sites, and in the years after that a black market of international trade in artifacts had further decimated what was left. So it was quite possible that these fragments might have real significance. It was just a matter of convincing the owners to part with them—and before that could happen, to divulge the current locations of those fragments.
They were not just souvenirs, he suspected, but symbols of the whole traumatic experience, possibly even of survivors’ guilt. When he had contacted Antoinette, the proprietor of Treat’s Restaurant, she had graciously invited him to come visit in-person. “Of course, my daddy can’t talk to you now,” she had said. Another casualty of the war whose long shadow kept reaching and reaching.
Past Savannah, traffic on I-95 thinned out and his mind was free to conjure more images. The photos he’d seen of Okefenokee with its black water and lily pads melded with his memories of research trips to Angkor Wat and other ancient sites in Cambodia. It was intriguing to imagine how these two settings—literally on opposite sides of the world from each other—could have so much in common, could be such a natural home to the temple statuary.
The restaurant was about 25 minutes off the highway. The parking lot was nearly full. He went in and decided to eat before tracking down Antoinette Treat, but she instantly spotted him as an outsider and accurately guessed exactly who he was. “Y’all will be Mr. Carlson I expect,” she said.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“Right now ain’t exactly the time,” she said.
Perhaps she was having misgivings about discussing the fragments. “I understand,” he said, formulating a follow-up sentence that would keep the topic alive.
“Let me get through this lunch rush,” she said. Antoinette was dark-skinned and wiry and tall, while nearly everyone else in the place was not wiry. The black patrons were generally dressed up, the white people mostly in cargo shorts and casual shirts. “Help yourself to the buffet. I got some fresh chicken coming out in a couple minutes.”
Across the room, Devin saw the stone fragment up on the shelf. He’d get a closer look later. He loaded up a plate and sat down at a small table by a window. Scrubby pines and dense undergrowth formed an opaque wall beyond the parking lot. Somewhere out there was the great temple at Okefenokee.
The fried okra, biscuits, greens with chunks of ham, fried chicken, fried catfish, sweet potatoes, pulled pork, cole slaw, sweet corn, hush puppies, and banana pudding hit the spot like a shotgun fired at a soft-boiled egg. Devin’s eyelids were about half down when Antoinette sat down across from him. “Wake up, sonny. Brought you a coffee.” She placed a cup in front of him.
He took a sip. “Thank you.” He decided that, rather than jumping right in to discuss the fragments, he would first ask about her father’s story, about his life after the war.
“Well,” she said. “When he got back he had a hard time. The country was not that friendly for Vietnam vets and especially not for a black man, and any war leaves scars on a person. He scrambled and found this and that, took some college on GI bill but never finished--but he did marry my mama.”
“Yes,” Devin said. “I think a lot of vets went through hard times, especially with the guilt of surviving when so many of their peers didn’t come home.”
“Or came home broken,” she said, nodding. “Anyway, they ended up taking this place over from my mama’s papa, and that was a living, at least. As you can see, still is.”
Devin nodded.
“Once he had a little extra, papa got him a motorcycle. Then a faster one. Then traded that in for an even faster one, and that’s when, one night—” she paused.
“I’m so sorry,” Devin said.
“Ha!,” she laughed. “I ain’t sorry! That was the night Mama told him she was pregnant, and that child was me. So he traded back down that motorcycle for a slower one, and he still rides that one some. Only on pretty Sunday afternoons.”
“He’s still alive?”
“Alive? I hope so! He’s my head cook. You want to say hello?” She pushed the chair back.
Devin stood up. “Yes, please.”
“You gotta yell at him since his hearing got wrecked in ’Nam. That’s why he won’t talk on the phone.” She walked back toward the kitchen, Devin following. “Best wait a minute,” she said. “He’s cleaning up.”
Devin saw the man from the back, tall and wiry like his daughter, leaning over the grill in a cloud of steam.
“Here’s what you’re looking for,” said Antoinette, pointing up at where the stone fragment, about the size of a loaf of bread, rested on the shelf. “You’re welcome to pull her down and have a look.” She smiled. “Just be polite about it since I still have customers around.”
Devin reached up and lifted the piece, about 25 pounds he guessed, and placed it on the counter. Imagine carrying this all over Cambodia in a backpack. The red granite surface that had been facing the room was rough and hard-edged from where the stone had been split from a larger piece, but the other side was polished smooth and curved, his hand could feel. He turned it slightly and realized that it was a breast. He pulled his hand away, noting the fine and precise incisions that the artist had used to define the nipple.
Antionette laughed. “See?”
“Wow,” Devin said. “And this has just been perched up there all these years?”
“Papa’s goddess of protection,” she said.
There was no way he could take this from them, Devin thought. He had an idea, a little ruse. “Have you got a little white vinegar and some salt?” he asked.
Antoinette promptly placed a salt shaker and a plastic quart bottle in front of him.
He dabbed a napkin with vinegar and wiped the edge where the stone had broken, then sprinkled some salt on the same spot. He looked very closely as if putting vinegar and salt on a piece of granite would tell you anything. “Hmmm,” he mumbled. Everything about the piece, from the delicacy of the carving to the color of the stone, to the patina, suggested it was sculpted in the 8th century in a region of what was now northwest Cambodia. “Hmmm,” he mumbled again, dabbing with the napkin.
“Well,” he stepped back. “It’s lovely but I think it’s a mid-20th-century pastiche of early Hindu sculpture, probably carved by a Frenchman.” “Is that right?” Antoinette said. “Amazing what you can do with a few simple household items.” She opened the kitchen door and caught her father’s attention. The man washed his hands and walked out. He had a gray-flecked moustache and watery brown eyes.
He held out his hand. “James,” he said.
Devin shook hands. “Devin Carlson,” he said loudly.
“No need to shout,” said James. “I’m right here. Toni told me you was coming.”
“He says it’s probably a fake,” Antoinette said.
“Not a fake,” said Devin. “A replica, recently made.”
“Well then somebody took a M-F lot of trouble to go half-bury a pile of fake broken statues way out in the middle of a godforsaken death swamp,” James said.
Busted. Devin pivoted. “Can you tell me about how you got it? Your platoon got ambushed?”
“Not a whole platoon, just a squad. Sad story, like most every other story over there. Squad was on foot and we come under fire. Group got split and some of us found this high ground—when I say high I mean like four feet higher than the swamp—and when we hunker down in there we see it’s a pile of broken up statues and wall bricks. I hit the deck and look over and there’s this stone sticking out right next to me. It takes me a minute to figure out what it is, you know, that it’s a lady’s, you know, a boob. Anyway, how it worked out is our squad had eight black men and seven white. The sergeant, rest his soul, was always riding us black boys hard and so we was out in front when the firing started.”
“He was white?”
“No he was black, trying to win over the white boys who didn’t trust him to be fair to them.” He shook his head. “Anyway Sergeant Perkins and all but one of the white men got pinned down in close-range fire with no cover, maybe 75 yards away. We took a couple grazes but that was it. Sarge and them took out a few of them, and then we fought the ones that were left back from our high place. All that stone saved us I’m sure. You can see a bullet ricochet mark on the rough side of that piece of stone right there if you look close. That one mighta had my name on it. We called in the platoon and medics and got ourselves out of there but by the time we got down to Sarge and the other boys there was nothing left to do. They all took multiple hits, some bayonets. Some of them sights I still can’t get out of my mind.”
“Did you feel like you were blessed or something? To have survived when they didn’t?” Devin prodded.
“In a way. Though I’m not proud to say it but I wasn’t sad to see a couple of those boys go. I feel like one of them was as like to take me out as the enemy was. I don’t like myself for thinking that way.”
“And you decided to bring this fragment home?”
“Well, after the medics cleared out the casualties, we walked back over there to sweep the site, make sure we didn’t leave nothing up there. And I looked down and I wondered just how heavy that stone is and I pull it free of the ground and—sorry Toni I can say this cause your mama ain’t here—it reminded me of my sweet Henrietta and so I pull it out and stuff it down in the pack. The man next me looks at me like I’m crazy which is probably true and I just say ‘for good luck,’ and he looks at me for a second and then starts looking around for a piece for him to take.”
“She’s gone?” Devin asked.
“Henrietta? Umm-hmm,” James said.
“She’s over at the boat concession. Restaurant work never was for her.”
“Oh. Maybe I can meet her,” Devin said.
“We can run right over there,” said James. He looked back at the statue. “So y’all don’t want this?”
“It seems special to your family.”
“Maybe so. But if it was more important to somebody else, I’m glad to see her go. I was always a little uneasy, not just about the men who died, but about how I wasn’t sad that some of them died. And also it don’t belong to me. It belongs to those people back there. But then again you say it’s a fake so I don’t mind much if she stays here.”
“It might be authentic,” Devin said. “The only way to be sure would be to take it in and let the conservators look it over. If it turns out it is real, probably it would be repatriated.”
“Sent back?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, you take it and see if it’s real. I still got my real Henrietta.”
“I’m glad to do that. Thank you.”
“What about the other ones?” Antoinette leaned in.
Her father nodded. “Have to go get them and bring stones to replace.”
“You have the other fragments?”
“The other boys,” James said, “one by one they come by and ask me if I can ask Henrietta to take their piece out into the Okefenokee. They don’t want it around the house no more. They want to move on. Even the white man who was up in there with us, he trusted me with that too when he heard some of us was putting the stones out there. Jimmy still lives over in Brunswick, comes in here from time to time. Good man.”
So it was true, Devin thought. The ancient temple was, at least in its rudiments, reconstituted in the swamp. “Okay,” he said. “The conservators could evaluate those pieces as well. Assuming they are easy enough to retrieve. I don’t want to put you to a lot of trouble.”
“Ain’t no trouble,” James said.
They loaded the six chunks of concrete, which had recently been curbing from a fast-food place that had been torn out because it got destroyed in the hurricane a couple years back, into bottom of the wide, flat boat. Henrietta waved them good luck and James piloted the boat down a long, narrow canal and out into the swamp. Devin imagined the landscape opening up like the Mekong delta, with temple sites located along a vast grid that was invisible except from far overhead, or by some calculation of the ancient people who had lived there. James followed a channel that wound lazily among the trees until a branch channel appeared on the left. At the intersection was a pole with a sign indicating with an arrow that the main route turned that way. James cut the motor and the boat drifted up to the sign. He looped a rope around an adjacent tree as a makeshift mooring, then stepped over the side and onto the trunk of a huge fallen tree.
“Watch that gator, would you?” He pointed over to a small inlet fifty feet away, where a log-like form lay submerged except for protruding eye sockets and a bit of snout and back. He lifted a stone from alongside the base of the signpost and handed it to Antoinette, who rolled her eyes at the carved breast and placed it at her feet, then handed her father a piece of concrete of roughly equivalent size. In five minutes, the task was complete, each stone bracing the pole replaced by a piece of concrete. James climbed back in, undid the bow rope, and restarted the motor. The alligator disappeared. Devin pulled out his pocket notebook and a pencil and took an inventory of the six fragments that were now arranged in a 2 x 3 grid in the bottom of the boat: part of a breast, a muscular calf, an elegantly curved shoulder, a cocked chin, a navel with a fine chain running underneath it, an angled hip with delicate incisions of a diaphanous skirt.
This story appears in The Virtues of Alignment, a collection of short fiction available as a print paperback and ebook. See the Miscagon Publishing Project page for more information.
Contact: info@gmdonley.com