Come In and Cover Me by Gin Phillips Page A

said yes. And he’d said, Okay, toss it. She wrapped both hands around it, and somewhere deep in her chest it struck her that other hands had wrapped around this same rock and fit it into the wall in the first place. The rock joined her hands to that set of unknown hands that had first placed the rock, and the simplicity of it had floored her.
    She’d chosen to specialize in ceramics because pottery intensified the connection to those who came before. The ceramics talked to her far more than a rock could. Each piece had a language, a message in pictures and design, or at least in form and composition. The pottery spoke with the voices of its makers. And she was eager to listen. If she decoded the right signals, she imagined she could disappear—for even a second—into those other lives, cross over the rock or the adobe floor or the ceramic dust and find herself living as another self, in another time.
    She reached into the water and came up with two handfuls of rocks, smooth and cool in her palms, then let them fall back into the water one by one. She could feel a pressure behind her eyes. This was when she could see things—when she got outside her own skin. And somehow also more deeply in her own skin. She opened herself and felt sun and air on her face. She sank into the sound of water.
    When she turned back toward the path, the landscape shifted. A thick wall of trees appeared where there had been a dirt path. A new grove of piñon stood in the distance. Swirling around her feet, the creek was deeper and wider. She could see it branch off, foaming, where seconds before there had been only dry land. She saw the imprint of bare feet in front of her. She heard a girl’s laughing and saw a flash of brown skin and bare feet and dark hair disappear into the trees.
    Then the forest was gone, along with the footprints. The creek had calmed. It was a beginning.
    The next day they began the serious digging. The soreness never sank in on the first day of a dig. And in a few days it would be gone. But now Ren’s body complained about the new routine. The entire length of her spine felt the strain of bending over the dirt, of scooping and shoveling on her hands and knees. The weight of the buckets pulled on her fingers and shoulder joint as she walked, and if she carried two full buckets, that ache spread to a strain across her shoulders.
    Clouds of dirt flew when Silas dug. He made soft grunts as he swung the pick. His rhythm seemed effortless, and when he stopped and laid the pick on the ground, Ren was surprised—and gratified—to see him breathing heavily. He rolled his shoulders one at a time.
    â€œFeeling it?” she asked.
    He winced as he stretched his arms overhead. “Like a wet sponge.”
    â€œOh.”
    When she took her turn hacking at the dirt, Silas stood, waiting for the buckets. A fringe of the juniper peeked around his knees and thighs, past his shoulders. He had a habit of breaking off tiny pieces of juniper and crushing them between his fingertips. She could smell the strong woody smell when the wind blew just right.
    Paul and Ed joined them later in the day. They chipped in with carrying buckets, chattering as they carried.
    â€œWhat did the Apaches make tiswin beer out of?” asked Paul.
    â€œJuniper, I think,” said Ed.
    â€œSilas, what was tiswin beer made out of?” Paul called more loudly.
    â€œSprouted corn,” answered Silas, without looking up.
    Ren screened the buckets of dirt. Since the dirt was no longer soft, she wore one glove—Ed told her she screened like Michael Jackson—so she would have protection against the sharp rocks but could still feel the texture of the dirt. Her hands felt as if they would crack like arid earth.
    â€œI thought they made something out of juniper,” yelled Ed. More softly, he said, “You’ve got to at least try to stump him.”
    â€œTurpentine,” Silas called back, before Ed