When Doyle closed his eyes, he could see the village, its rough houses and barns, its muddy streets, the meeting house. He could picture the women in their cloaks with baskets over their arms, men in their buckled shoes, chickens scratching in the street.
When he opened his eyes, Doyle could see only the familiar dig site, its area cordoned off with yellow tape, divided into squares for excavation and mapping. His latest project, the search for the early colonial settlement mentioned in letters from the period. He returned to his digging.
When Doyle reached for his bandana to wipe the sweat beading his face, he felt the envelope in his pocket, the torn piece of paper with his son's latest drawing. What was it? Ah, he could see now, a dog perhaps, in a six-year-old's enthusiastic scrawl. When he closed his eyes, he remembered his wife's end of a telephone conversation, overheard: "He is so caught up in his field work, he is almost never here as it is." He returned to his digging.
When he found the shard, he was thrilled. A piece of a redware bowl, much more significant than the collection of small animal bones and random beads he had found so far. A bowl suggested a settlement and domestic life. A bowl meant that this had not been a way station, had been a community. When he closed his eyes, he could see the village.
He had always been able to imagine life as it had been from a single fragment.