“Well, the back of the map has a few sentences about it, and that’s all I know, really. It began as a Minoan town, around 2500 B.C. Then it was occupied by the Greeks, the Romans, and the Byzantines. Under the Greeks it was an independent city-state and coined its own money. It was abandoned around either 900 A.D. or 1500 A.D., because of earthquakes.”

“Only six hundred years’ difference,” Sandy says. “My Lord, the time scales!”

“Immense,” Jim says. “We can’t imagine them. Especially not Californians.”

Sandy takes this as a challenge. “Can too!”

“Cannot!”

“Can too!”

About five reps of that, and Sandy says, “Okay, try this. We’ll go backwards from now, generation by generation. Thirty-three years per generation. You tell us what they were doing, I’ll keep count.”

“Okay, let’s try it.”

“Last generation?”

“Part of Greece.”

Sandy makes a mark in the dirt between flagstones. “Before that?”

“Same.”

Five generations go by like that. Jim has his eyes squeezed shut, he’s concentrating, trying to recall Cretan history from the guidebooks, his history texts back home. “Okay, this guy saw Crete deeded over from Turkey to Greece. Before him, under the Turks.”

“And his parents?”

“Under the Turks.” They repeat these two sentences over and over, slowly, as if completing some ritual, so that Jim can keep track of the years. Sixteen times! “That’s one big Thanksgiving,” Humphrey mutters.

“What’s that?”

“Lot of Turkey.”

Then Jim says, “Okay. Now the Venetians.”

So the response changes. “And their parents?” “Venetian.” Ten times. At which point Jim adds, “We’ve just now reached the end of Itanos, by the way. The end of this city.”

They laugh at that. And move to the Byzantines. Seven times Jim answers with that. Then: “The Arabs. Saracen Arabs, from Spain. Bloody times.” Four generations under the Arabs. Then it’s back to the Byzantines, to the times when the church before them was functioning, holding services, having its doorsill scraped by the door’s locking post, again and again. Fifteen times Jim answers “Byzantine,” eyes screwed shut.

“And their parents?”

“In Itanos. Independent city-state, Greek in nature.”

“Call it Itanos. And their parents?”

“Itanos.”

Twenty-six times they repeat the litany, Sandy keeping the pace slow and measured. At this point none of them can really believe it.

“Dorian Greeks.” After a few more: “Mycenaean Greeks. Time of the Trojan War.”

“So this generation could have gone to Troy?”

“Yes.” And on it goes, for eight generations. Sandy’s shifting to get fresh dirt to scratch. Then: “Earthquakes brought down the Minoan palaces for the last time. This generation felt them.”

“Minoan! And their parents?”

“Minoan.” And here they fall into a slow singsong, they know they’ve caught the rhythm of something deep, something fundamental. Forty times Sandy asks “And their parents?”, and Jim answers “Minoan,” until their voices creak with the repetition.