Lionel, my mother’s boyfriend, is crouched on the packed earth of an open kiva, excavated only this summer, the floor of the cylindrical pit nine feet below the surface of the surrounding ground. Etched in the sandstone slab that makes up much of the kiva’s floor is a stick-figure depiction of a bent-backed man with a formidably erect penis who seems to be playing some sort of flute: Kokopelli, an ancient character, surely symbolic, that ’s still common among contemporary Pueblo people

“I’ve seen these on jewelry and in artwork,” Lionel says, turning up toward Harry, who stands high above him at the lip of the kiva’s wall, and me, sitting at its edge, my legs dangling into space, “but I had no idea they were as old as this. ”

“Yep. This character—whoever he is—has been around for a long time,” Harry tells him.

“ Do you normally find them in places like this? ”

“No. This is unusual. It isn’t earth-shattering or anything, but engraved kiva floors are pretty rare. ”

“And they mean . . . ?” I anticipate Lionel’s next question, and I know Harry ’s answer before he gives it.

Harry’s laugh is practiced, as is his response. “People think archaeologists ought to be able to explain things. I’m not sure I can, in this case, but we’ve assumed for a long time that Kokopelli probably has something to do with fertility, that cock of his being pretty imposing, after all. You find him painted on pottery, on plastered walls; occasionally you find a ceramic figurine. People argue about whether he’s a hunchback or if he’s carrying a pack. And the flute? Well, maybe he’s a kind of Pied Piper calling forth fertility of every kind—babies, game, rain, good crops. Or there’s always the possibility that he’s simply an erotic figure—pornography of a sort. Whatever, I’ve kind of always liked the fact that he seems to prove that these folks weren’t religious fundamentalists who would’ve been aghast at drawings of big-time hard-ons.”

Lionel chuckles as he stands up, grinning as he glances at me, and surveys the circular chamber. “And these kivas were ceremonial, weren’t they?”

“Well, presumably. As you can tell, I’m a little reluctant to get categorical. ”

“Yes. I’ve noticed.” Lionel begins to climb the aluminum ladder that leans against the kiva’s block and mortar wall. “Why?”

“Oh, I’m more than willing to make pronouncements about things we can observe, the physical stuff. I can cite you chapter and verse about unit-pueblo room blocks or types of projectile points or the range of a particular type of polychrome ceramics. Whatever the scientific process allows us to conclude, I’m happy to conclude, but all we’ve got to work with are those pieces of physical evidence.” Harry extends his hand and Lionel takes it as he steps up and off the ladder. “We find the knife stuck in the body, say, and there are enough pots and pans around that we’re pretty sure we’re in the kitchen, but that isn’t enough information to prove that the cook’s the killer.”

“Hercule Poirot gone prehistoric,” I suggest.

“ Precisely, mes amis.”

“And now no more tedious questions. I promise.” Lionel puts his hand on Harry’s shoulder and I see that Harry notes the touch. Despite what seems to both of us to be an eccentricity or too, Harry has liked my mother’s boyfriend from the beginning, and I thus far I think I do as well.

Harry wants to show Lionel a nearby site anchored to the absolute lip of the canyon, and because of the rough ground, I decline to make the short walk with them, yet the slab of rock that cups the place where they stop throws their voices loudly back to me where I remain at the kiva’s edge. I can hear that Lionel is stunned by the panorama I picture in my mind: the canyon cutting away from them in a series of sudden turns, its sides sheer-walled in places, the buff sandstone smooth and rounded by weather, the green-timbered summit of Ute Mountain looming high in the near distance, the air at the canyon rim rich with the smell of piñon pitch and sage.

“ Well, they did know how to pick a spot. I’ll give them that,” Lionel’s voice carries easily to me as he surveys this southwestern-most piece of Colorado. “I’d live here, given the opportunity.”

“In a second,” Harry agrees.

Then I catch a conversation they surely suspect I can’t. “Are you two happy, happy here?” Lionel asks, and now I want to be sure I hear every word.

“I am, sure. This is a great job, it’s important, and look where I get to work every day. This place isn’t Paris, but it suits me. I don ’t know if that compliments me or slurs Cortez.”

“What about Sarah?”

“Oh, gosh,” I hear Harry say, and I can tell he needs a moment to craft a response. “She didn’t want to move back here. The idea scared the shit out of her at first, but I was gung-ho and she was supportive enough that she ultimately agreed to it. Then before long, she was pleasantly surprised to discover this wasn’t precisely the same place she’d grown up in. And she’s enough of a nester, somebody who loves the security of a true home, that now she’s the one who’d have a hard time moving again. The MS, of course, is a huge thing to deal with, and she told me last week that sometimes she likes the idea of just going away, some place where nobody knows her, but I suspect that what actually would be her preference would be for me and a few of the rest of us to go away instead and leave her comfortably at home.”

It’s a bit of an effort to catch each of Harry’s words, but I want to hear them—and do—and although I want to shout that what I say is exactly what I mean, instead I have to silently acknowledge that Harry does know parts of me pretty well.

“I asked Sarah if I could go away with her when she told me that. She said no, I couldn’t, and it was strange. For the first time in all of this, I found myself wondering whether we might belong apart, whether that would be best for her.”

“Would it be best for you?” Lionel, bless him, asks exactly the question I want to ask from the place where I sit thirty yards away.

“I don’t know,” Harry says, his voice soft but still discernable. “I believe in the death-do-us-part stuff. But I also believe that people change, that they should change. What I don’t want is for either of us not to have the fullest life we can just because we’re afraid of what comes at us.”

“I suspect that what’s come at Sarah is something of a freight train,” Lionel tells the husband who—it seems certain from where I sit—is trying to find the simplest way out of a marriage that doesn’t make sense for him any more.

“Yes,” I hear Harry say, “ . . . and why her? Of all people, why should Sarah have to suffer?”
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Excerpted from The Sorrow of Archaeology by Russell Martin, Copyright© 2005 by Russell Martin. Excerpted by permission of the University of New Mexico Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.