Vic Daniel 6 - As she rides by by David M Pierce

on his part. He looked to be a man in his forties, very fit, with a brown, pockmarked face, round steel-rimmed glasses, and black hair swept straight back from a pronounced widow’s peak. What he saw was a man also in his forties (just), fairly fit, all things considered, with a broken-nosed puss hastily assembled from a few spare parts and some leftover scar tissue. As I only wore my wretched specs for reading, he got the full force of my world-weary hazel eyes, those once-bright orbs that had seen it all once too often.
    “And what can I do for you, Mr. Daniel, if anything? If you’ve just come in for a few moments’ peace, please don’t let me disturb you.”
    “Well, there is something, Father,” I said. “They’re planning to put up a porno house down the road, right next to my office, maybe you’ve heard?”
    “I have indeed,” he said, folding his hands. “I cannot say I am overjoyed at the prospect.”
    “Me neither,” I said. “And my dog’s not exactly wagging his tail over it either.”
    He smiled. “The question is,” he said, “can anything be done about it?”
    “Well,” I said coyly, “I did get this little idea earlier today when my dog was digging up what I was afraid might be chicken bones. I said to myself, what if he dug up a bone that wasn’t a chicken bone, but a people bone? What if, I said, he’d uncovered the remains of, say, a burial ground or some old cemetery? Then that vacant lot would be hallowed territory and maybe we could stop construction on it.”
    “Hmm,” the father said. “Most interesting.”
    “So OK,” I said, “who could have been buried there? Who was there before us white trash came along? Who else but Mexicans, I said, who only built missions all over these parts, and if you got a mission, you probably have a cemetery right next to it, or at least you could have.”
    “You could have indeed,” he said. “And, often, you did have. Unfortunately, what you cannot have is a mission where you would like there to have been a mission.”
    “Oh?” I said.
    “Because,” he said gently, “the first mission built by our church was in San Diego , in the year 1796, and the last one, in Sonoma , in 1823, if I recall correctly.”
    “How about in between?” I said.
    He shook his head. “Without being an expert, even I know the location of all our California missions, and, alas, there was none within fifty miles or so of your dog’s beloved playground.”
    “Among other things,” I said.
    “Records,” he said, “were kept of everything, as the Mother Church oversaw every detail of those early missions; indeed, as she still does, for better or worse. Every peso spent had to be accounted for, details of construction had to be submitted for approval, all births, baptisms, first holy communions, confirmations, weddings, and deaths listed, and these documents still exist, I can assure you.”
    “Oh, shoot,” I said. “So much for that bright idea.”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” Father Romero said, smoothing down the front of his robe. “Our races were not the only ones to settle in these parts.”
    “Too true,” I said. “Look at all the Chinese they brought in to build the levees and the railroads. Then, of course, you’ve got the Armenians.”
    “I was rather thinking,” he said, “of your native American Indians. Were they not here before us?”
    “Sure were,” I said.
    “Did they not bury their dead? Surely some tribes did.”
    “You bet your beaded moccasins they did,” I said. “At least they did in the movie I saw.”
    “And there seems to be rather a lot in the newspapers these days about Indians asserting their rights and land claims and what have you, does there not?”
    “Father,” I said, “does there not indeed. Why, only yesterday I was reading about those Mohawks in Canada who’ve barricaded some bridge or other as a protest because some golf club wanted to add a few more holes to its course on Mohawk