Point and Shoot, FL (YU)—During
the school year, the crew from the mound at Panacea went on weekend digs at the
St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, at the Firetower site. They were digging a Santa Rosa-Swift Creek midden.
The
burial mound they dug at Panacea was a Santa Rosa-Swift Creek burial mound, so
the two sites were related, at least by cultural period.
At
least by pottery type.
At
the Firetower site, near the midden they were digging, was a later site, where
Chief, and John Griffin, had found a piece of gold from a Spanish
shipwreck. The Southeastern Indians
didn’t have gold, and they didn’t trade it with other Indians, before the
Spanish started carrying it back from
Scrib
was later to write a book set at the Firetower site, THE SOLID GOLD PECKERWOOD.
The
previous summer, on the mound, the crew had been looking for an ivory-billed
woodpecker.
There
weren’t any ivory-billed woodpeckers left in
Anyhow,
looking for woodpeckers was a leitmotif of the dig. A continuing theme.
The
crew had worked well together the summer before. Had bonded.
Had high morale. Esprit de corps.
Normally
promotion was from within. Crew members
would be promoted to crew chief.
This
year, the principal investigator (PI) brought in a second-in-command, a sort of
an executive officer (XO) to his commanding officer (CO), to help him run the
program. In his book, now, Scrib was
calling the XO the Subordinate Investigator (SI).
The
weekend digs at St. Marks, the SI exerted his authority, over the crew.
He
was a hands-on micromanager, telling them how to do things they already knew
how to do, or knew how to do better than he did. He lacked experience, actually digging. Managing was his forte. You didn’t have to have experience shoveling
and using a trowel, per se, to manage a bunch of WPA workers, shoveling, and
using a trowel. That was proved during
the WPA. For every so many people
shoveling, and using a trowel, you had so many supervisors, supervising them.
Or
course, during the WPA, the supervisors were archeologists, not business majors
who thought they should be a bossman instead of a grunt.
The
SI thought he should be a bossman, not a grunt.
Not
all of the grunts agreed. Some of the
grunts thought he was unqualified.
Green. A dude-ranch dude. An artificial insemination baby, look like he
been strained through a sock.
The crew called the SI things like Captain Pee Wee, and The Puerile Poltroon. This was before The Pee Wee Herman Show.
But he acted like Pee Wee Herman, doing his pee-pee dance.
A poltroon is a coward, but also a fourflusher. Someone who buys his balls. An impostor. A counterfeit.
One time one of the Gillis Brothers called the other one a dordil.
“You don’t even know what a dordil is.” “Yes I do—a fake dick.”
Captain Pee Wee was a dordil.
He wore Ross Allen snake-proof boots.
He wore a pith helmet. With an A on the front. Supposed to stand for archaeologist.
To the crew, it stood for asshole.
The SI would show them it stood for antichrist.
He would be their worst nightmare. He would jump in their shit.
He would single one of them out, the biggest one, and ride him until he collapsed. Ride him into the ground. Knock his dick in the dirt.
Next summer, the second summer on the mound (not to give the plot away: The Summer of the Mutiny), the PI was going to Europe, midway through the dig, to deliver a paper to a scientific Congress, and to see the sights, afterwards, and was going to leave the SI in charge, in his absence.
The SI was getting the crew ready for that. For him running the show. Next summer.
He was shaping things up for the coming summer, letting people see how the wind was blowing, the lay of the land, the climate of opinion, the zeitgeist.
The mise-en-scene.
The situation. The status.
What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
He was showing the crew what the frequency was going to be. They could tune in to his wavelength. He was setting the frequency.
They could tune in on him.
Follow his lead.
Get with the program. Minor chord.