Read Online Floodgates by Mary Anna Evans - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mary Anna Evans
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government paid very well.
Dr. Magda Stockard-McKenzie, Faye’s graduate advisor, had listened carefully to Faye’s arguments for taking a couple of semesters off from school. The job paid well. The work could strengthen her dissertation considerably. It paid well. A job as principal investigator would look just beautiful on her résumé. It paid well. Good performance on a federal job could open doors that would affect her entire career. And it paid well.
Magda agreed that it made sense for Faye to take the spring and summer semesters to manage this job, then re-enroll in the fall. Actually, she had said, “Shit, Faye. I don’t see a down side to this idea. Why are you asking me? If you were stupid enough to pass this up, you wouldn’t want me on your dissertation committee. I’d vote you down in a heartbeat.”
So Faye was on her own, without Magda or the university to back her up, and she was giddy with the power of it…when she wasn’t queasy over the idea of screwing up a project this important to her career.
Monday’s work hadn’t been nearly as efficient as she’d hoped. The morning had gone well, but she’d lost the afternoon to tragedy. Well, not the whole afternoon. Dauphine had gotten a lot done, while her boss Faye was busy talking about possible murder with Detective Jodi. Nina, too, had been busy doing other things, like exercising her First Amendment right to rally the populace with incendiary words.
Faye glanced around a park that would be deserted until mid-morning when the first steamboat disgorged a load of sightseers at the levee. There was a real possibility that her team might get some work done today.
Matt, whose ranger job didn’t seem to give him a lot to do when he wasn’t conducting tours of the battlefield, ambled over to watch them work. Faye was gratified to see that having a spectator didn’t affect her workers’ pace a bit.
“Got any idea what y’all are looking for?”
Faye tried to answer without slowing her own pace, hoping to set a good example for the others. It didn’t work, so she set her trowel aside and gave Matt her full attention. The events of the day before had been hard on him, and they clearly still weighed on his mind.
“You know where they found the foundations of the Rodriguez house, back in the eighties?” She pointed to an open piece of ground nearby, set in an L-shaped grove of ancient live oaks. “We have some drawings of the house from the time of the battle or just after it—”
Matt was nodding his head as if he wanted her to get to the point.
“I’m sorry, you already know that. You’ve got copies of the drawings in the visitor’s center. You know Latour’s and Laclotte’s drawings? They’ve been really useful. Those two guys headed up Jackson’s field engineers and, in those days, there wasn’t much difference between an engineer and an architect. When they drew a picture of a house, they got the details right. If only they weren’t such good draftsmen…”
Faye was still crouched in her unit, because she figured that standing up to talk would be too comfortable, and she wanted to finish quickly and get back to work. Also, she was hoping the park ranger would take the hint and go away.
Matt, ever-anxious to learn more about this spot of ground where he spent his days, didn’t seem to have an endless amount of work like Faye’s. Or if he did, it wasn’t calling him.
He squatted down to hear her better. “How can being a good draftsman be a bad thing? There’s no other way to get the kind of detail those guys could draw, not when you’re talking about a time before photography.”
“Yeah, but I wish they hadn’t been so persnickety about perspective. Both of them drew the Rodriguez house from a spot between the house and the river, because these houses always faced the river. That means that the house itself obscures most of the area behind it. We have eyewitness accounts and some other documents that may not be
Dr. Magda Stockard-McKenzie, Faye’s graduate advisor, had listened carefully to Faye’s arguments for taking a couple of semesters off from school. The job paid well. The work could strengthen her dissertation considerably. It paid well. A job as principal investigator would look just beautiful on her résumé. It paid well. Good performance on a federal job could open doors that would affect her entire career. And it paid well.
Magda agreed that it made sense for Faye to take the spring and summer semesters to manage this job, then re-enroll in the fall. Actually, she had said, “Shit, Faye. I don’t see a down side to this idea. Why are you asking me? If you were stupid enough to pass this up, you wouldn’t want me on your dissertation committee. I’d vote you down in a heartbeat.”
So Faye was on her own, without Magda or the university to back her up, and she was giddy with the power of it…when she wasn’t queasy over the idea of screwing up a project this important to her career.
Monday’s work hadn’t been nearly as efficient as she’d hoped. The morning had gone well, but she’d lost the afternoon to tragedy. Well, not the whole afternoon. Dauphine had gotten a lot done, while her boss Faye was busy talking about possible murder with Detective Jodi. Nina, too, had been busy doing other things, like exercising her First Amendment right to rally the populace with incendiary words.
Faye glanced around a park that would be deserted until mid-morning when the first steamboat disgorged a load of sightseers at the levee. There was a real possibility that her team might get some work done today.
Matt, whose ranger job didn’t seem to give him a lot to do when he wasn’t conducting tours of the battlefield, ambled over to watch them work. Faye was gratified to see that having a spectator didn’t affect her workers’ pace a bit.
“Got any idea what y’all are looking for?”
Faye tried to answer without slowing her own pace, hoping to set a good example for the others. It didn’t work, so she set her trowel aside and gave Matt her full attention. The events of the day before had been hard on him, and they clearly still weighed on his mind.
“You know where they found the foundations of the Rodriguez house, back in the eighties?” She pointed to an open piece of ground nearby, set in an L-shaped grove of ancient live oaks. “We have some drawings of the house from the time of the battle or just after it—”
Matt was nodding his head as if he wanted her to get to the point.
“I’m sorry, you already know that. You’ve got copies of the drawings in the visitor’s center. You know Latour’s and Laclotte’s drawings? They’ve been really useful. Those two guys headed up Jackson’s field engineers and, in those days, there wasn’t much difference between an engineer and an architect. When they drew a picture of a house, they got the details right. If only they weren’t such good draftsmen…”
Faye was still crouched in her unit, because she figured that standing up to talk would be too comfortable, and she wanted to finish quickly and get back to work. Also, she was hoping the park ranger would take the hint and go away.
Matt, ever-anxious to learn more about this spot of ground where he spent his days, didn’t seem to have an endless amount of work like Faye’s. Or if he did, it wasn’t calling him.
He squatted down to hear her better. “How can being a good draftsman be a bad thing? There’s no other way to get the kind of detail those guys could draw, not when you’re talking about a time before photography.”
“Yeah, but I wish they hadn’t been so persnickety about perspective. Both of them drew the Rodriguez house from a spot between the house and the river, because these houses always faced the river. That means that the house itself obscures most of the area behind it. We have eyewitness accounts and some other documents that may not be
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