“Yes, yes. Like that. Like . . . communing with the dead, almost. Amazing.”
“Sounds amazing.” Jeff’s voice came from just behind me. He’d followed me into Peggy’s office, and he leaned around me now, into Jenny’s field of view, waving. “Hi. I’m Jeff. His son.”
“Jeff, this is Jenny Earhart,” I said. “An artist. She’s doing a facial sketch for me—that girl whose bones we found on Labor Day up at the strip mine.” I turned back to her. “Why don’t you come into my office, where there’s a little more room, and show me what you’ve got?” I nodded toward the doorway, and she stood. “Give us a few minutes, son.”
“Why don’t we take her to lunch instead?” Jenny stopped in the doorway and turned to look at him. “You’re an artist,” he said. “That means you’re starving, right? Metaphorically speaking,” he added, flashing her a smile. I stared at him; was my son flirting with my forensic artist? And since when did he say things like metaphorically speaking? It must have worked, because she smiled back at him. “We’re walking over to Calhoun’s on the River,” he hurried on. “You got time to go with us?” She looked at me; all I could do was shrug, leaving it up to her. “I’m super-interested in art,” Jeff added. He caught my dubious glance. “Forensics, too, of course.”
“That’s good to know, son,” I said. “We’re putting a big wooden fence around the Body Farm. You can come help me paint it.”
CALHOUN’S ON THE RIVER was a five-minute walk from the Anthropology Department. Jeff, Jenny, and I took the stairwell down to the bone lab, exited at the base of the stadium—down at field level, near the south goal line—and angled across parking lots and four lanes of Neyland Drive to the big, barnlike restaurant perched on the north bank of the Tennessee River.
Calhoun’s was a Knoxville landmark, noted for its barbecued ribs, its unsurpassed view of the river, and its proximity to Neyland Stadium; the place was nearly always hopping, but on days when the Vols—the Tennessee Volunteers—were playing at home, it was mobbed. People arrived by car, on foot, even by boat. A small wharf adjoined the restaurant, and on home-game weekends, boats would begin arriving days ahead of time, some chugging upriver all the way from Chattanooga or even Alabama. The tradition had begun with a single small boat back in 1962, but in the thirty years since, it had taken off, turning into an immense, floating block party: tailgating, Knoxville style. The first few boats would tie up to the wharf; subsequent arrivals would tie to them, and so on. By kickoff time, a vast flotilla—yachts, houseboats, pontoon boats, even runabouts—extended halfway across the river. To get to and from the shore, people clambered from vessel to vessel, bobbing and weaving from the combined effects of the river and the revelry. “The Vol Navy,” this ad-hoc armada had been christened, and as an anthropologist, I found it a fascinating case study in social structure and cooperation.
On this day—three days before a much-anticipated match against the Florida Gators—a half-dozen early arrivals rocked gently in the water. Dangling high off the stern of one of the vessels, the reptilian eyes Xed out with black electrical tape, a ten-foot-long inflatable alligator swayed from an oversized hangman’s noose. Here’s hoping, I thought. The Vols looked promising this year.
The hostess seated us at a corner table overlooking the river—overhanging the river, in fact, as part of the restaurant extended above the water, supported by pilings. The windows on the river side extended from the floor to the ceiling; we sat down just in time to see a towboat and a load of empty barges, riding high in the water, making their way upriver. The headwaters of the Tennessee were only a few miles beyond, at the confluence of the Holston and French Broad Rivers. Both tributaries were navigable beyond Knoxville, but not for long, at least not for heavy traffic. A limestone quarry lay just above the confluence, on the French Broad—half a mile upstream from the UT pig farm—and my guess was, the barges were headed up there to take on a load of gravel. As the wake from the churning towboat reached the advance squadron of the Vol Navy, the boats rocked and heaved in the water.
“So,” Jeff intoned dramatically, “you two are probably wondering why I called you here today.”
“What?” I said, turning from the window. Jenny laughed.