Relics Read Online Free PDF Page B

potter’s wheel, a shovel, and buckets full of mud, or something very like it. “Looks like she throws pots. Are you sure that’s her profession and not just a hobby?”
    “Trust me, the Sujosa don’t have the time and money to waste on hobbies,” said Carmen. “More likely, she stays home with little Zack all week while Leo works at the mine, then she sells her pots at craft shows on Saturdays.”
    Faye conceded Carmen’s point. Then, just to show that her powers of observation weren’t completely overshadowed by Carmen’s, she pointed at a satellite dish that stood in the Smileys’ front yard like a metallic mushroom kicked on its side by a petulant kid. “Looks like somebody in this house likes television.” Gesturing toward a brand-new box labeled Satellite Dish—This End Up she added, “And they just got real happy.”
    Leaving Carmen to her writing, Faye took a few steps to the side of the house. Looking deeper into the Smileys’ back yard, she spied a large woodpile and, beyond that, a massive stack of mottled bricks. The pattern of mud on the lower bricks, splashed there by rainstorms, said that the brick pile had stood in the yard for quite some time.
    “Reckon the Smileys were planning to build a new house when they bought that pile of bricks?” she asked Carmen. The idea made Faye sad, as if she were looking at an abandoned dream. Perhaps time and bad luck and the vagaries of low-wage employment had killed the Smileys’ hopes for a modern home.
    Carmen nodded and continued. “I also know the Smiley marriage is not a model of domestic bliss.” Her head was still bowed over her work, but Faye caught her peeking mischievously through her bangs as if to see what Faye thought of her clairvoyance.
    “She said nothing of the kind. You’re making that up.”
    “Not exactly. Check your copy of the transcripts. I interviewed Leo Smiley last week and Ronya apparently knows nothing about it. That doesn’t make them sound like one of those couples that sits at the supper table, chatting about every single minute of the time they were apart, now does it?” She grinned, picked up her briefcase, and headed for the next house.
    ***
    Ronya Smiley had heard that the Martinez woman never stopped working. Jenny Hanahan said that most evenings, while she was tallying up her cash register and locking her grocery store for the night, she saw the historian trudging out of her office, heading back to the house that the government people were renting from Amanda-Lynne Lavelle. And Jenny stayed open until nine.
    Ronya respected hard work, but she didn’t see how spending day after day just talking to people counted as hard work. Talking didn’t earn any paycheck that she’d ever heard about, and it surely didn’t buy groceries.
    Elliott and Fred and Jorge had gotten good-paying jobs from those government people. They didn’t have to do anything all day but dig some holes, and not many of them, and none of them very deep. They weren’t clear on why they were digging. It wasn’t like their old jobs at the mine where everybody knew what was supposed to come out of the ground.
    Ronya had her own ideas about that Martinez woman, the one who was always asking people questions about their grandparents’ stories, who wanted to know who was born in the settlement and who was an outsider. She’d even been known to ask who had slept with who. And now there was this new woman archaeologist, who was sure to be wanting to dig up everybody’s old garbage pits and privies. No respect for privacy, there.
    Well, everybody had secrets, and Ronya didn’t know why these people thought the Sujosa should give up theirs. What would they gain from spilling their guts to these outsiders who asked so many questions?
    Brent Harbison had promised the Sujosa that the project would be good for them, and she believed he’d meant it. He’d thought the government money would come rolling in, money to open a clinic, patch roofs, and buy