ONE

"My back's broken," I said. "I'm too old to sit in a cotton field in the middle of the night."

We'd hunkered down behind an irrigation standpipe for what seemed like hours. Investigative journalism, Maxie Harper called it.

Lifestyle was my beat at The Pearl Outrider, and there I was, sitting in the dirt...chill air seeping through the closely woven fibers of my sweatshirt and jeans.

Maxie gave me a small kick with her boot. "I can't ignore a tip that eighth graders are doing devil worship out here. I have to check it out."

"You get that tip every time there's a full moon. I must have been out of my mind to let you talk me into this."

"Stop whining." Maxie shifted her position to look down at me.

I could barely see her face. The night was pitch black, with low clouds blanking out the moon. The field smelled dank, like rusted iron and wet rope, but the air felt bone dry. I settled myself flat on the ground, digging the heels of my tennis shoes into the dirt.

Maxie was built for stakeouts -- short, wiry, collapsible. I was more regal, a former star of stage and screen...okay, eighth grade talent show...Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Penny Mackenzie...I stood in the spotlight wearing bangs, a skinny black dress and long white gloves,pretending to be Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Awful.

But I was medium-tall and thin, with big brown eyes...not quite so thin now, but still medium-tall and big-eyed, staring down middle age, sitting in a cotton field...

"Where the toot are they?" Maxie stood up to peer over the top of the standpipe. "If they don't show in five more minutes, we'll call it off."

I struggled to my feet and tried to rub the crick out of my back,listening for a human sound, straining to see something besides shadows and black holes.

On a cloudless summer day Digger Potts's cotton field was a thing of beauty. Dense and green, with bits of white fluff popping out of the bolls, it stretched from Peach Orchard Road to a line of cottonwood trees overlooking a dry slough.

On a dark night, it was just plain scary.

Looking toward the far end of the field, I could make out Digger's old two-story house, its front porch light glowing like a small yellow eye. The light was half a mile away, straight up the cotton rows, but from where I stood it looked like the ends of the earth. I thought longingly of Maxie's red Saturn sports coupe parked on the road that ran past the house.

Maxie elbowed me in mid-whimper, dropped to her haunches and yanked me down beside her. A blade of light sliced through the darkness,wobbled, and wavered off through the trees.

A sudden breeze picked up errant sounds that became muffled voices and smothered guffaws trailing the light. Shapeless shadows I took to be big-footed gangbanger wannabes in blousy-legged pants with pockets down to the knees.

Maxie dug a boot into my hip as she tried to climb up for a better view. I clutched my shoulder bag -- a good blunt instrument, if it came to that -- and squashed myself against the standpipe, trying not to breathe. I slid my face along the pipe and took a one-eyed peek at the devil worshipers.

The flashlight lay on the ground, beaming through the trees toward the slough. Shapes and voices ebbed and flowed around a huge tree stump. Were they chanting something? I strained to hear.

"What are they doing?" Maxie whispered.

The breeze brought a whiff of marijuana.

"Next question." I wriggled my nose, and then pinched it hard. "I hate that smell." All this trouble to catch kids doing pot instead of human sacrifices. I got on my hands and knees and poked my head around the edge of the standpipe.

Suddenly the light swung up and around, revealing a kid with a shovel. The shapes and shadows moved away from the tree stump toward the slough bank, and the kid with the shovel began to dig.

The noise level sank to a steady murmur. The stakeout settled into waiting. Waiting in the dark. Way past my bedtime. Close my eyes and sneak a few winks without Maxie knowing...

An odd sound, murmurs at first and then a kind of keening, rose choir-like from the dig site. Sudden silence. The shovel went flying and the light fell to the ground.

The boys faded into the trees. We heard crashes and oaths, mingling and trailing them up the slough in the direction of an access road.

When everything fell quiet, we got up out of the dirt in stages. We moved cautiously away from the standpipe, edging toward the trees, and made a run for the stump of the fallen cottonwood. Light beamed steadily from the abandoned flashlight.

Maxie snatched it up and clicked it off. "No use letting the whole world know we're here."

"What world? Look around. We could be on Mars."

"What's this?" She retrieved a penlight from her fanny pack and moved it over the top of the stump. The beam of light came to rest on a small plastic cream cheese tub. The tub rattled when she picked it up and pulled off the lid.

"Big hairy deal." I peered at some tiny clods. Dirt of some kind. Ugly little rocks. Flakes, chips...

"Gold," Maxie said. "They were digging for gold."

I stared at her, my mind trying to process that piece of news.

California's Gold Country is two hundred miles north. The town of Pearl -- population 14,000 and counting -- is in the middle of the state, in the dead center of the San Joaquin Valley, farm country. Cotton, grapes, almonds... "There's no gold here," I said.

Maxie moved the light away from the stump, looking for the shovel,found it, and slowly swung the light back and forth. Next thing I knew, we were looking down at a foot, a skeletal foot.

"Yeecch!" I said, when I got my breath back. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"

Maxie squatted down for a closer look, brushing away dirt with one end of the penlight. The fine sandy loam fell away easily, exposing a longer bone.

"I don't think so." She stood up suddenly and snapped off the light. She jiggled the plastic tub thoughtfully.

I made the connection. "Grave robbers! Let's call the cops."

Maxie laid a hand on my arm. "Wait. It's not like this is an emergency." She looked down at the bones. "I mean, that has been there a while. The cops will tromp all over it and post it off limits and ruin any chance I have of getting the devil worship story."

I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. "Are you nuts? Let's get out of here."

"Jeez, I'd just like to snoop around first," she said. "Check out old issues of the Outrider for stories about suspicious disappearances. Nose around the PD for unsolved crimes. I have a source at the PD..."

"I don't care if you have a DNA kit. Those kids are way ahead of you. They'll blab it all over town. Let's go!"

We didn't bother with the access road, but took off at a trot straight up the furrows, stumbling, twisting left and right to avoid cotton plants clutching at us from either side, kicking dirt in all directions. By the time we reached the road we were gulping air.

"Coffee, my place," I gasped.

Maxie blew out her breath, panting like a dog. "Aren't you even curious?"

"It's a job for the cops. I just want a bubble bath and my bed."

"Sheesh...come on, Cinderella, let's see how fast this pumpkin will go."

She spun the Saturn off the gravel shoulder onto the road and turned it toward town. As we sped through darkened, tree-lined streets, I closed my eyes and let my thoughts drift to headlines. Reporters Tell Bizarre Tale...nah...Cotton Field Gives Up Skeleton, Gold Nuggets...Police Baffled...big deal.

The gang at the Pearl Cafe might buzz about it for a couple of days. If the Outrider ran true to form, the story might fill up an inch under Briefs...unless our new editor was made of sterner stuff than our esteemed publisher, who looked at the world through rose-colored glasses.

Personally, I hoped it was a nothing story that the wire services could ignore. I did not need fifteen minutes of fame. I couldn't imagine getting up at three o'clock in the morning to appear on Good Morning America.

Maxie slowed for the turn onto Lovers Lane and rolled to a stop in front of the old Colonial-style house where fate apparently meant for me to live out my days. Lights shone upstairs and down.

Not that my mother waited up for me. No, she would be in the kitchen, rehashing the day's events with Barney Press -- our neighbor, the chief of police.

No matter the hour, Barney always stopped by for coffee with Tess.

"I'll skip the coffee," Maxie said.

I climbed out and walked around to the driver's side.

Frowning, Maxie leaned her head out the window. "Promise you won't open your yap." Her face darkened.

I hesitated. We'd been friends forever, and I didn't want to tangle with her, but this was not a secret that could be kept. While she'd never been a model for sweetness and light, lately she was snappier than a turtle on steroids. I wondered if it could be the onset of menopause. I didn't dare ask.

"Aren't you even curious about those bones?" she demanded.

"Probably Indian remains. Let the authorities handle it."

"Indians didn't camp here. They stayed in the foothills. Listen, all I want is one big story, something the wire services can jump on, and I'm outta here."

"Goodbye and good luck," I said. "I'll stay where I am, thank you very much."

"Why not? You've got it made, with your mom paying the bills and waiting on you hand and foot."

"Hey," I said sharply. "I do my share."

Maxie ignored that. "The paltry sum I make at the Outrider barely covers my car payments. I'd sell my house if I could get a real job somewhere else." She paused. "Indian remains, my eye."

"You're going back out there, aren't you?"

"First thing in the morning."

I knew better than to argue further.

"We'll see what our new editor's made of when he hears about this." Her fingers drummed the top of the steering wheel.

I don't think he's a guy who makes waves."

"We'll see," she said, and off she went.

Shivering in the night air, I watched the Saturn's taillights disappear down the street, then turned and walked slowly up the sidewalk.

The front door was unlocked, as usual. I let myself in quietly, pausing at the foot of the stairs. Light streamed down the hall from the kitchen. I listened for a moment to the murmur of voices before slipping upstairs to my bedroom.

Anything to keep Maxie happy. I wanted a cup of coffee, but bypassing the kitchen meant I wouldn't have to answer anyone's questions.

News of the skeleton would be all over town by sunup. I just didn't want anyone pointing to me as the source.

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Full Circle by Pat Browning

Copyright © 2001 Pat Browning