Carbon Dating

by Jerusha Jones

  The cab of the tractor was empty, but one lone man was walking slowly in front of the yellow grille, carefully studying the clumpy, unmanicured dirt at his feet. He looked an awful lot like Nash, but I couldn’t be sure, given the distance. A smattering of curious crows circled lazily overhead. There was a small cluster of people at the near corner of the field, and among them I could just see Denby’s red bandanna, which she tied over her head in an effort to tame her flyaway honey-colored locks.

  “Over there.” Vaughn nodded toward a dust-coated ATV parked at the farmhouse’s back door.

  “Do you suppose the keys are inside?” I asked, eyeing the door that was half window, half peeling paint over weathered wood. It probably opened into a mudroom. What were the chances the Frasers left their house unlocked and kept the keys to all their vehicles on a nice pegboard just inside, over a row of rubber boots? I was thinking it was worth a look.

  “It’s a farm, darling,” Vaughn retorted. He was already astride the ATV, and with a flick of his wrist fired it up.

  I tried not to appear shocked at the endearment. He’d used the same term—darling—that his mother regularly applied to me. Another familial trait? But even better was the reality that the Frasers apparently left their keys in the ignitions of their vehicles. How handy.

  Vaughn was clearly much more in tune with farm habits than I was. He was also growing impatient. “Are you riding or not?” He revved the engine.

  “Right, right.” I clambered on behind him as quickly as I could. Which wasn’t that fast. Vaughn swung an arm around and gave me some assistance that wasn’t entirely necessary. I let out a little grunt and grabbed fistfuls of his shirt at his sides.

  “You’ll need a better grip than that, darling,” he tossed over his shoulder just before the ATV lurched forward with a roar.

  Was this some sort of challenge? If so, he won. I hung on for dear life, arms wrapped around his middle, as the ATV barreled down a dirt track toward the distant field. Several times, I came up off the seat, landing again hard on my fanny as we rumbled through potholes the size of—well, of bomb craters. Or so it seemed. The gorgeously crisp and invigorating afternoon around me was a little blurry, my eyes watering with the wind whipping my hair across them.

  I scrunched my eyes closed and mashed my face between Vaughn’s shoulder blades to preserve what little dignity I had left.

  But he got us there. As soon as Vaughn killed the engine, I slid off the seat and staggered a bit before regaining my land legs.

  Denby hurried over. “Eva, is everyone safe? Are you okay?” Her pert blue eyes were clouded with worry—for me—when she had a far bigger worry on her hands.

  Vaughn answered the more important question. “The fire department has everything in hand. Your employees are managing admirably. No one’s panicking.”

  It was just what she needed to hear. Her shoulders settled as she let out a silent exhale. “Good,” she murmured. “Good.” She shook her head and wiped a hand over her brow. “This is crazy.”

  “How crazy?” I asked.

  She winced. “Navy crazy.” My eyebrows climbed high enough that she kept answering, as though trying to make sense of the stray facts as they rolled off her tongue. “Parts of a plane, some stenciling of a serial number. Nash thinks—well, there’ve been WWII-era wrecks found in these hills before, usually by logging companies. What’s in the field is pretty small—pieces, chunks of metal—except for the bomb. Nash thinks it tumbled down the hill and embedded in the field as the plane disintegrated. Maybe. We cleared a lot of scrub off this field earlier this summer. That might’ve started the disturbance, but we didn’t know…”

  “Pilot?” Vaughn asked quietly.

  “There must’ve been one,” Denby said softly. “You know what the coastal range is like, with the fog rolling in from the Pacific and building up from the valley on this side. Pea soup sometimes.” She shook her head again and took a deep, shuddering breath. “So, Oregon State Police are sending their explosives unit. They’ll probably be able to confirm if the bomb is live or a training dummy. But we’ll have to wait until the Navy gets here to deal with it and the rest of the wreckage—and the body, or two, if they’re still up there.” She nodded toward the hills rising greenly beyond us.

  “Portland’s bomb unit isn’t coming out?” Vaughn asked. “They’re closer.”

  Denby shook her head with utter weariness. “They’re on another call. A suspicious package at Providence Park. The Timbers have a home game there today.”

  What was our world coming to? If I had to choose, I’d take a several-decades-old, rusted military bomb embedded in rural dirt over that kind of call for service—a threat at a professional sporting event attended by thousands of raucous fans—any day.

  “Your chief’s coming, though, Vaughn. He’ll be here shortly,” Denby added.

  Technically, the farm fell under the law enforcement purview of the Fidelity Police Department. But for a small department in a mostly rural area, cooperation with neighboring agencies was paramount. It also meant that, at the moment, Detective Vaughn Malloy was the officer in charge.

  Nash finally completed his long trek across the field and joined our party. His face was lined with dust embedded in the remnants of sweat rivulets. He nodded briefly to all of us without a word, slipped his arms around Denby, and rested his chin on top of her head. “Rough day, baby,” he murmured.

  Vaughn sent all the farmhands—many of whom were Denby’s cousins, along with a few interns from the agriculture programs at Oregon State University—back to the house so they could greet and guide the arriving teams and help wrap up the evacuation. At my request, he also gave them strict orders not to let any media onto the property. The television vans and reporters could wait out on the shoulder of the county road if they were so inclined.

  Unfortunately, the threat at the Timbers game would dominate the newsreels that night, but I wanted to make sure whatever sound bites popped up regarding the farm were controlled by yours truly.

  That left just the four of us stationed on the dirt track midway between the house and the corner of the field—what Vaughn judged to be a semi-safe distance from the metal bits and the tractor. The air was turning cold, the sun sinking lower and casting its rays closer and closer to horizontal as the coastal mountains’ shadows crept toward us. I shivered in spite of my warm jacket.

  So I used the flimsy respite to hash out a publicity strategy. The timing wasn’t fabulous, but at least the conversation served as a distraction for Nash and Denby, keeping them occupied while Vaughn paced with his cell phone glued to his ear.

  CHAPTER 3

  The bomb squad did finally arrive, with their heavy truck and robots and generator-powered floodlights. And confirmed that the suspicious hulk of rusted metal was, indeed, a bomb. But given that it’d been found on such a remote part of the farm and had been resting inert for seventy or so years already, they decided to wait both for morning light and the Navy before doing anything further with it.

  But that didn’t mean they didn’t keep vigil. Denby shuttled sandwiches and coffee and an entire pumpkin pie made from the farm’s own pumpkins out to them, then we retreated to the farmhouse to wait.

  The suspicious package at the Timbers game had turned out to be a diaper bag, of all things—one of those rugged, modern numbers that look more like a messenger bag with flaps and pockets and lots of buckles and which, presumably, a man would not be embarrassed to carry. It had been dumped on a bench by a young dad, and then forgotten in the heat of the moment when the spectator lines opened, so excited was he to get inside the stadium and cheer on his favorite team. Needless to say, both his wife and wailing child were as irritated with him as were the general public and the two soccer teams who’d all had to wait an extra couple hours before the event could commence while the bomb squad used their robots to X-ray the bag and find only the soft gray outlines of diapers and a Tupperware container full of Cheerios on the film.

  Once
the situation at Providence Park was resolved, all of Portland’s media were dispatched to Heritage Farms, it seemed. Chief Monk, Vaughn’s boss, reported that satellite trucks lined the county road for roughly a quarter-mile in each direction from the farm’s driveway and included crews from as far away as Eugene and Seattle. I wondered how the news team from Seattle could arrive before the contingent from Naval Base Kitsap, which was just across Puget Sound near Bremerton.

  “They’re going to be here all night, just like us, Eva. Might as well go out and talk to them. My department doesn’t have an official public information officer. Besides, you’ll handle them better than I would anyway,” Chief Monk rumbled. I happened to know the man considered a television interview on par with a colonoscopy.

  With that encouragement—or sense of desperation—I borrowed a pad of paper and pencil from Denby and wrote down the presentation points that had been swirling in my head from our earlier discussion. I nearly had them memorized, and once I stepped in front of a camera, I was always fine, but it still made me feel better to get them in tangible form. Then I went into the bathroom and had a good look at myself in the mirror.

  Nighttime television appearances are the worst. Those bright, flat lights they shine directly into your eyes in order to give the cameras enough illumination to film by make everyone look as though they’ve just awakened from the dead; are bloated with about forty pounds of water weight, all in the face; and result in the mile-long, glassed over gaze otherwise known as the “zombie stare.” No matter how alert and perky you are in real life, you never look attractive, or knowledgeable, or expert in anything during a roadside nighttime interview with a crew that’s usually as exhausted as you are. Joy, joy, joy.

  So I guessed it didn’t matter that I already looked like a zombie with dark circles under my eyes and hair that stood out from my head in a tangled mess. I was tempted to ask to borrow one of Denby’s bandannas too, but one cute female farmer was enough. Nope, I had to pull it together, and pronto.

  Vaughn walked with me out to the road. But he stayed back in the shadows when I stepped forward and collected reporters the way a piece of rotting meat collects blowflies. I expounded, at length, on the long family history of Heritage Farms and the Frasers’ commitment to sustainable, organic practices. I was also able to reassure everyone that all of the visitors had been safely evacuated with no injuries.

  I had to defer on the technical questions about the bomb itself, and was happy to learn that none of the news crews had yet realized that the bomb had been attached to an airplane when it crash landed on the edge of the farm’s property so many years ago. Apparently, they’d heard the early dispatch reports only on the emergency police and fire channels. All the other urgent communication conducted in the meantime must have occurred via personal cell phones, which had been prudent, to say the least.

  I could’ve hugged the scrawny little blonde chick from KOIN6 who asked when the farm would reopen for business. While I didn’t have a firm answer for her, the response did allow me to segue nicely into plugging CSA memberships which were easy to sign up for on the farm’s website. In another stroke of good luck, the reporters in the back had trouble either hearing or spelling, so I was asked to articulate the website’s URL several times. Nothing beats free publicity.

  We all had a few laughs—and it was an excellent wrap—when a young male reporter asked, quite eagerly, if the farm would be adding a pumpkin chucking contest to their entertainment lineup, as a way to keep the theme going. I just grinned mischievously and gave him a shrug. It was actually a good idea. I’d bring it up with Nash when he was in a less worried frame of mind.

  “Who was that?” Vaughn murmured as we trudged back to the farmhouse.

  I stopped and looked over my shoulder. “Did you see someone you need to talk to?” Because now was the time, if he wanted to make a statement of some kind. I wished he’d let me know sooner. We could’ve held a joint conference. Except the one time I’d seen Vaughn in the back row on the dais during a police press conference, even though he’d had a nonspeaking role, he’d looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  “No, I meant you. The suave, sparkly woman who turns on for the camera and flirts with reporters.” Did he sound a smidge annoyed?

  “Oh.” I waved my hand dismissively in the dark. “Part of the job.”

  “Not a side of you I’ve seen before.” He slid an arm around my waist and drew me closer. Have I mentioned he smells good? Even after a long day of crisis management he still had that spicy clove-slash-eucalyptus scent going for him.

  What he’d said was true. I’m ungainly and awkward most of the time, which is the side of me he’d seen plenty of. More than enough so that he should’ve known what he was getting into when he asked me out. Caveat emptor.

  oOo

  “You were plowing the field anyway, right?” The sailor with the shaved head and can-do attitude also sported a broad grin beneath his freckles. Apparently, depending upon what line of work you’re in, blowing up a bomb can be great fun. “We’ll just be plowing it a little bit more for ya today,” he added. “Crater-style.”

  I was absolutely lost in the world of naval ranks. All I knew is that the Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit’s commanding officer’s sleeve-patch insignia had a pair of crossed lightning bolts on it, which seemed entirely appropriate. Also, his name patch read Hollis.

  Nash, frowning, asked if the bomb could be moved to a safer location before detonation. I was thinking he was probably proud of those straight furrows he’d been making. No farmer loves having to redo hard work.

  “Hell, no. Moving it would be the most dangerous thing we could do. Already had that argument with the JPAC people. I get that they want to preserve the site of the plane crash until they’ve investigated it thoroughly, but we can’t risk people’s lives for history’s sake. Also, we confirmed there’s only the one bomb. Usually those old Curtiss SB2C Helldivers carried them in pairs, so we don’t know what the pilot was up to when he went down, but you’ve got only the one problem out there. Farmland is the safest place there is for a detonation—just a bunch of dirt and some trees. Trust me, nothing will go wrong. Be about an hour, then you folks can go about your business.” And with that, he’d slapped his cap back on his head and barreled out of the kitchen to his waiting Jeep.

  I breathed a gusty sigh of relief. The Navy crew had thought of everything, for which I was very glad. We were in capable hands, even if the process was tedious.

  A technician had already driven the John Deere tractor back to the machine shed to keep it out of the line of fire. Hollis’ first executive decision when he’d arrived on scene and relieved the Oregon State Police squad had been to continue the directive that all of us concerned onlookers had to stay safely ensconced inside the farmhouse during the festivities. After a long night and an even longer morning, we were going a little stir crazy, but the hearty breakfast that Denby and I had whipped up seemed to help return some measure of good cheer to the group.

  I scooted back from the table and began collecting dirty plates.

  The explosion occurred thirty-five minutes later, while I was scrubbing the last of the bacon grease from a skillet, my hands immersed in rapidly cooling sudsy water. It was spectacular. I saw the massive eruption of dirt and debris through the window above the sink a nanosecond before I felt the resonant whump in my chest cavity, and that percussive pulse arrived a few moments before the muffled but audible thud flew by on the air waves. A sort of staggered triple play. A huge smog-like cloud of dust and dirt particles hovered over the east side of the farm and turned the pale sunlight grimy.

  “Wow,” Denby muttered. Then she turned and squeezed the breath out of Nash, who’d been pressed up against the window glass next to her. “That could’ve happened to you,” she whimpered into his chest, “yesterday.”

  He looked at me mutely over the top of her head, all color drained from his face, his arms finally catching up with his brain and reflexively wrapping
around Denby’s shoulders. It was, indeed, a terrifying thought.

  The phone on the wall rang. It was an old, push-button phone with a stretched-out, twisted cord that dangled nearly to the floor—a relic from the days of telephone poles and operator assistance. Vaughn, who was closest, was also the first to break out of our collective frozen spell and figure out how to react to such a summons. He snagged the receiver and held it to his ear.

  “Yep?” he answered. Then his chin dropped and his brows slid into a scowl. He angled his long body for a better view out the kitchen windows toward the blast site.

  The person on the other end of the line was talking fast and urgently—tinny squeaks were coming from the receiver.

  “Okay,” Vaughn finally replied. “I’ll be right there.”

  Then he gently replaced the receiver and turned to Nash and Denby. “Do you guys know if there was a family cemetery out there in the field?”

  Denby was shaking her head before the words came. “No. The family graves are all under that copse of oak in the southeast corner of the property past the greenhouses, near the county road. Where the wagon train used to come through,” she added, reminding me, once again, how deep her family roots ran on this land.

  But Nash was the one who asked the much more pertinent question, to my way of thinking. “Why?” He still hadn’t released Denby, and her red bandanna was bright against his denim-clad shoulder.

  “The Navy crew says there are a bunch of bones—human bones—in the crater, and that there’s no way that many people were aboard a Curtiss SB2C Helldiver.” Vaughn was facing Nash and Denby, but the next bit of information was directed toward Chief Monk, who was still seated at the kitchen table, nursing the last dregs of coffee in his mug. “Hollis wants law enforcement out there immediately. He said it looks like a mass grave.”