Free Floodgates by Mary Anna Evans

real accurate, but we don’t really know whether any outbuildings stood here. There could’ve been a smokehouse or a privy or slave quarters in this very spot. Or there could’ve been nothing. We won’t know until we look.”
    A police car pulled into the parking lot, and Jodi got out. Matt rose to his feet, mumbling, “Thanks for explaining things, Faye.”
    He seemed to expect the detective to be looking for him, and he was right. Jodi slammed the car door, looked around, and started walking toward Matt without even stopping to talk to the rangers in the visitor’s center. The woman was clearly on a mission. She beckoned to Matt, and they found a private spot under a shade tree on the far side of the reconstructed rampart.
    Faye couldn’t hear them, and there was no reason for her to want to know what they were discussing, other than sheer nosiness. She stretched her legs for a minute, preparing to crouch down and got back to work, when Nina popped up out of her unit like a bespectacled prairie dog.
    “Know what I heard about Matt?”
    Was workaholic Nina actually offering to spread some gossip? Within the past twenty-four hours, Nina had sprouted an over-charming ex-boyfriend, passionate political views, and now an unsuspected appetite for dishing the dirt. And Faye had thought the woman was only interested in dirt from an archaeological standpoint.
    Faye was human, and there is a reason that people have been gossiping since somebody told Hera that Zeus was running around on her with a heifer. Other people’s frailties were endlessly fascinating.
    “What did you hear? Look at that man’s baby face. He hasn’t lived long enough to have a sordid past.”
    “Exactly. He hasn’t had time to build a career, either, but look what he does for a living.”
    “Um…he’s a park ranger. Am I missing something here?”
    “Park ranger jobs are hard to get. The pay’s good, and government benefits are amazing.”
    Faye knew what she paid for the shoddy coverage offered by her student health insurance policy. “Now I’m jealous.”
    “Yeah, me too. It’s not just the perks, either. Lots of people want to work in New Orleans. Rookies usually have to start at a park that’s three hundred miles from nowhere. And this job’s especially nice, because it’s not like Matt’s out hiking in the Rockies, hauling injured hikers off a mountainside. He gives short tours to lazy tourists who don’t want to walk far. There aren’t any hills to climb or wild animals to worry about. In between tours, he sits in the air conditioned visitor’s center.”
    “So you’re saying that people Matt’s age have to wait in line for a job like his.”
    “Yep.”
    “What do you think he did? Bribe somebody?”
    “Heck, no. He grew up in the same kind of middle-class neighborhood I did…well, it was middle-class before Katrina made it a flooded-out hellhole. You saw it. The same middle-class people are living there now, except they’re living in trailers instead of nice houses. Anyway, Matt’s people didn’t have enough money for a bribe, but it didn’t take money to get him this job.”
    Now Nina was messing with her. She was spinning this story for all it was worth, egging Faye on to ask for more rumors and innuendo. But like anybody else, Faye knew how to play the gossip game. To get the good dirt, you had to make the person who held it feel important. You had to make her want to give it to you.
    “So what did Matt and his people do? Did somebody sleep with a government official?”
    There. Faye figured that question ought to get Nina’s gossip-spreading juices flowing. And it did.
    “Yeah. Sort of. Married people sleep together, don’t they?”
    “Usually.”
    “Well, Matt’s father is related somehow to a woman whose step-daughter is married to Matt’s boss’ boss. Also, I think their ancestors served in the same Confederate regiment.”
    Only in some parts of the American South would this statement have made any