I went to the basement where my father kept his skulls.I stood before the metal utility shelves. Skulls to the ceiling.I looked into the eyeholes. I looked into a cranium’s tomahawk hole.Down there, it was nothing but his lab. I heldthose skulls like empty pots. What did I know about Indian pots?Some days, we went to the bars. I swung my legs from the barstooland drank my Coke. Some days, he dug the fields.Then it was skulls in the sink, skulls in the drying rack.The fields are full of skulls. You have to know where the plowsturn them up. What did I know, then, about digging?The dark inside the eyeholes. He wrote his notes on themin indelible ink. 2.7 pounds. 2.5. The fields are full of pots.It’s true. He told me, packing his shovel into the Volkswagen.What did I know about Indians? He kept a lab in our basementbecause the university was too cheap. I went to the basementwhere he kept his skulls. I looked into their eyeholes. I lovedtheir weight, but what did I know? When I lay in bed,they glowed down there. It was many years ago. I closed my eyesand the skulls talked in the basement. Indian pots. Teeth.The noise of sex from his room. At the bars, farmers told himwhat their plows turned up. I drank my Cokes. Cheap universitywithout a decent lab. The skulls spoke a language no one knew.Look at this, my father said, rinsing another one in the sink.This one took a bullet to the head. History, then, was silence.