Dawn of Revelation

by A N Sandra

  There had been a cave in the rock, once, but volcanic upheaval had collapsed over what had either been a burial cave, or a home, and the trapped inhabitants, whether living or dead at the time. Suddenly Bud’s eye was drawn to the base of the rock wall, where debris had gathered since he had begun working in the morning.

  Although most of the debris was cinder rocks, there were also other things. Things that should be noticed. Fossilized pieces of clothing, and a large chunk of what must have been a sandal, for instance, were lying among the rocks. Clearly the area would be an archeological site if the right person came to inspect it. Based on previous events, Bud had no confidence in anything happening other than losing income his family desperately needed, for no reason at all.

  With patience, Bud gathered everything that might be an artifact into a box and decided to work farther into the wall with heavy equipment. He would discard evidence of everything incriminating at his own home. Spending the next two hours working methodically, Bud managed to gather even more genuinely ancient things to dispose of at home, and when he didn’t see any more protruding from the rock face, he decided not to push his luck. He would not work there anymore, he would not let anyone else work there, and the situation would lose steam, especially if no one mentioned it. For all his smack talk about Bud having too many children, Donovan never said no to the three he had, and his wife had a QVC habit. He wouldn’t want to be out of work again, no matter how much he liked to run his mouth.

  “One more look,” Bud told himself.

  He felt there was more to find. He kicked his worn work boots systematically in the dust, turning up several more things that should be buried in the old outhouse behind Twilight’s chicken coop/t-shirt factory. The last thing Bud picked up had been hard to notice since it was only slightly bigger than a golf ball, light colored, and covered in dust. He turned it over in the late afternoon light and froze with amazement when he wiped it off.

  The ivory box was intricately carved. Bud had been to many Native American art shows (his mother-in-law was a collector) and he’d never seen anything like it. Even pieces of art detailed with modern lasers were not as elaborate. The box was carved in such a way that it appeared to glow from the inside. The fact that there might be something that actually glowed within it was not something Bud could mentally process.

  All Bud knew was that everything in the back of his truck needed to disappear if Jael and Rachel were going to have their tuition to Chico State paid next year. Never mind any kind of contribution to his retirement account other than the very small amount MacDonald Road Materials put in every December thirty-first. Somehow the box would not allow itself to be thrown in the back of Bud’s Silverado. Bud opened the passenger door of his truck, slightly surprised with himself, and opened his glove compartment to put the ivory box on top of the yellow Les Schwab tire warranty and the vehicle registration for the current year that were already there.

  The drive to town to meet Randy had a calming effect on Bud. His blood pressure seemed to go down right away, and he knew what he needed to suggest that they do to keep the quarry open. As he drove it seemed there was only one solution, and he knew what it was. By the time Bud parked his truck next to Randy’s truck he was calm and ready with a plan.

  The bar of the Rim Rock Dinner House was packed, just the way Bud had expected it to be when he texted Randy. It wasn’t actually packed with people from Blythe, their own home town, it was packed with tourists who had come to visit the state and national parks within easy driving distance. In early summer international tourists crowded into the town. That was another thing Bud had counted on when choosing the location. Eavesdroppers who did not count English as their native language didn’t bother him much.

  “The boys and I found some things today,” Bud started. As he had suspected, Randy’s ruddy face looked as though it had just pulled a swallow of turpentine from his schooner glass instead of an award winning local microbrew. “But I wrapped them up. They’re long gone. We could just move onto Area C sooner than we had planned.”

  Randy took another drink of his beer, looking disgusted at the information he had been presented with. Bud felt for him. Nothing was worse than unexpected bad news. When his oldest son had dropped out of college to marry a demanding diva no one in the family could stand, Bud had looked worse than Randy did at this moment. Several moments passed and Randy continued to look as if he might choke.

  “Do you need some help?” Bud wanted to know. Bud was perfectly willing to thump Randy on the back vigorously. He’d been waiting for a chance for years.

  Randy shook his head, “No”. Bud was skeptical, watching carefully because he was still hoping for a chance to thrash Randy someday. Donovan wore on Bud, but Randy was a hard assed jerk most of the time and Bud was tired of trying to pretend to respect him.

  “Area C wasn’t supposed to be tapped until—” Randy couldn’t even finish his thought.

  “We can keep going with what we’re doing,” Bud said grimly. He pulled a long swallow of beer from his draft while he tried to formulate his thoughts. “But it might reveal more things we don’t want anyone to know about. The more we hide, the more trouble we could be in later.”

  “This is my worst nightmare,” Randy said bitterly.

  “We have a permit for Area C,” Bud pointed out. With six kids, Bud could always think of a bigger nightmare than Randy’s business problems, if he got crazy enough to allow his mind to go there. Bud believed in keeping his imagination firmly in check when dealing with his personal life, however. “If you start now you can get another permit for the east area by the time we’re done with Area C.”

  “What did you really find?” Randy was much more flushed than anyone could get from one beer, no matter what the alcohol content. It was obvious Randy wanted to think Bud was overreacting. The opposite was usually true though. Hump had made Bud the quarry supervisor because he kept a cool head in all circumstances, or could pretend to, which was mostly just as good.

  “Petrified clothes and leather stuff, pieces of platinum jewelry-”

  “Platinum jewelry?” Randy interrupted, his voice going up a full octave. “That’s not even—”

  “God, I know!” Bud interrupted back. “None of it should be there at all. It was clearly a cave that collapsed in an earthquake.”

  “After that streambed…” Randy looked off into the distance. “Do you know we lost the biggest potential contract ever because of that?”

  “I’ve heard,” Bud said shortly. One or two thousand times.

  “Did you really get rid of the evidence?” Randy wanted to know.

  “As good as I could in a couple of hours. I didn’t want to make a bigger deal—”

  “We’ll shut Area B down today,” Randy looked resigned. “Tomorrow we start on Area C and we don’t look back.”

  “That’s right,” Bud answered, pulling a deep swig from the rest of his beer. No looking back.

  “Do you have gluten-free vegan French fries here?” the man next to Bud asked the bartender.

  Bud took that as his cue to leave. As he stood up, Randy did too. Neither man wanted to be next to a vegan, alone. Who knew what frightening tendencies a vegan would have that might be contagious. Both men ate meat at every single meal in some form. Bud and Randy might not be the same in many ways, but they were both devoted carnivores.

  “Make sure we have a full crew to get started on Area C tomorrow,” Randy delegated. “I’ll try like hell to buy us some time on the orders we need to get out.”

  Bud nodded once and left the comfort of air conditioning for the hot parking lot and the heat of his truck cab that had been sitting in the late afternoon sun. Blythe had three stoplights and Bud managed to catch every one of them red on his way out of town to go home. It was just as well; he needed the time to decompress.

  At each stop light Bud looked around him, focusing on the newly cleaned-up town. Like other rural communities across America it had taken a beating from drug u
se and mental health issues until the Hollister Foundation had removed the blights on the town. There were no more meth “tweakers,” heroin users, schizophrenics, or animal hoarders in Blythe, and life was easier, even if it was not as interesting. It was also more pleasant to look at because the Hollister Youth Corps had cleaned up all the homeless camp messes by the river and torn down the dilapidated shacks that other undesirables had been living in. They’d planted native plants in natural landscape settings in the empty spaces that were left. Most of MacDonald Road Constructions products these days were not actually used to build roads. They were used in the massive landscape projects Hollister Youth Corps did to restore rural habitat for wildlife.

  The town of Blythe faded away quickly, being so small it was easy to lose in a rear-view mirror. The countryside, lush pastureland and rugged volcanic landscapes, filled Bud’s windshield as he drove. The Hollister Youth Corps had cleaned up old houses along the highway over the last couple of years, removing rusty trailers and junker cars before planting native trees and grasses in those spots. It was impossible to see, for instance, where Old Man Ray had kept fighting cocks in the middle of his personal junkyard. Bud had grown up terrified of him, but he was long gone. That whole area was now a beautiful habitat and the stream winding through it was pristine. Finally, he came to his driveway, a quarter mile long. It was nice that his house wasn’t too close to the highway. If Bud had had close neighbors his six kids would have driven them away anyhow. Not that many neighbors were left with Urban Relocation in full swing.

  Even though Bud made very good money as quarry supervisor he probably could not have raised six children on his sole income without living in his grandparent’s house. His grandfather had left it to him when Bud’s oldest child, Caleb, was three. Bud and Danica had moved in right away. It was a three-bedroom, two-bathroom ranch, but Bud had converted the garage into two more bedrooms with another bath between them and built a carport for the ever-expanding fleet of vehicles that it took to move the Henderson family through life. Bud parked behind his youngest son Joshua’s Firebird, blocking him in, but he was too distracted to notice.

  The house sat on twenty acres with a beautiful creek passing through. It was all that was left of the original family homestead. His grandparents had sold off several parcels to fund their retirement in times of economic instability. Danica kept a large garden in the backyard to do her part to feed six kids. Several small outbuildings were sprinkled around the house and it was hemmed in by a lush lawn that Bud made war on every weekend he didn’t get overtime. Whiskey barrel planters surrounded the house and bright petunias and geraniums waved from them in a very gentle breeze.

  Joshua was sitting on a bar stool on the back porch, strumming his guitar as Bud tripped up the steps. With huge blue eyes, well cut facial features, a mop of black hair that was somehow never combed or too messy, and tanned biceps bulging out from under a t-shirt that announced: MY GUITAR IS DRUNK, Joshua was the heartbreaker of the family.

  “Sounds good!” Bud said, lying cheerfully. The truth was Bud couldn’t understand why Joshua played the same things over and over again. He could grasp the theory of practice, but Joshua’s constant repetition of the same songs wasn’t Bud’s idea of entertainment. At least Joshua’s band wasn’t all there practicing and that was an improvement over the day he’d had already.

  Joshua’s band, Back Pasture, played “progressive country” according to Joshua himself. They practiced a great deal because Joshua believed that once they had ten thousand hours of practice they would be as big as the Beatles. Bud himself believed that to be as big as the Beatles they would need a lead singer with sex appeal. Bud was as straight as a person could be, but he could see that Rod Bingham, the lead singer for Back Pasture, was too effeminate to be a country star even if his voice was a heart stopping tenor. Nevertheless, Back Pasture made a decent living playing at VFW and American Legion halls all over the North State, and Joshua put in at least twenty hours a week at the quarry all summer long to supplement his income enough to make payments and insurance on his Firebird and keep on top of the few expenses he had.

  “We need you at the quarry tomorrow,” Bud told Joshua casually. “Six sharp. You can ride with me if you want. You won’t leave before me anyhow, it’s going to be a long day for everyone.”

  Joshua shrugged. Work was a fact of rural life. He didn’t seek it out or avoid it. Bud sometimes thought Joshua would have made a wonderful Buddhist monk. Except for the celibacy part. Joshua’s good looks and cool attitude drove girls crazy. He’d been a player since junior high. In fact, Bud suspected Joshua really lived at home to keep girls from trying to move into any apartment he might have, rather than simply saving rent money. Danica and Twilight were intimidating enough to keep girls from following Joshua home from gigs.

  “Good!” Danica was in the kitchen mixing a huge bowl of Caesar salad. A Costco lasagna was on the table cooling and Bud could smell garlic bread in the oven. “I hoped you were almost here.”

  With no words Bud kissed Danica on the cheek and went to wash up. Her cheek was more wrinkled than the day he married her twenty-eight years ago but kissing her still grounded him. That alone was worth the pressure six children brought to his life. She was plumper than she had been when they married; her three svelte daughters were not smaller than she had been at their ages. But Bud was always aware that he needed her more than she needed him.

  Gathered around the table the four remaining Hendersons were a less impressive force than the whole family had been in earlier years. Caleb and Michael had lived independently from their parents since high school graduation. Jael and Rachel were in college, although Rachel was almost done with nursing school. Two more semesters, Bud told himself. He could handle that much tuition, surely. After Rachel, Jael had one more year, but somehow only one tuition bill didn’t seem as burdensome as the two coming together in the mail. Jael would be finished long before Twilight started college, although it was likely that Twilight would manage to pay for most of her own college with her own creativity and independent streak, the way she did everything else.

  The Hendersons could put away a Costco sized lasagna with remarkable speed. In spite of a stomach that was twisted from stress, Bud found he was able to eat with gusto. There was only enough left for Bud and Joshua to take to work the next day for lunch. Danica tucked some garlic bread in with it, and salad that Bud would throw away when no one was looking. Eating leftover salad seemed disgusting to Bud, but Danica didn’t like waste. She never ate leftover salad herself, only packing it in Bud’s lunch for Bud to throw away.

  “Want to talk?” Danica asked Bud as he wandered toward the living room to watch TV. He’d wait until it was so dark he could count on the entire house to not notice when he went out to bury the artifacts.

  “No,” Bud said, honestly.

  “Me either,” Danica told him, just as honestly. “But you look like you need to be straightened out.”

  “Twenty-eight years,” Bud sighed. She just knew him too well. It was a blessing and a curse. As far as he knew, he had done nothing out of the ordinary, but she intuited that he was bothered by something. They no longer argued over miscommunications, only when they understood things too well.

  “Yep,” Danica laughed a little and her eyes sparked. So much time had gone so quickly. Her face was older, but her eyes were the same. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

  “Or having kids.”

  “For you,” Danica snorted. “I gave birth to the buggers. Time stood still on those days.”

  “Can we talk right before bed?” Bud asked hopefully. In his experience that was when Danica was the most easy going. Plus, that gave him time to dispose of the trash in the back of his truck.

  “I don’t think so,” Danica said, with a very appraising glance. Damn, she was onto him. “How about we talk right now?”

  “The less people who know what’s wrong, the better,” Bud cautioned. It’s a minefield.

&nbs
p; “Do you think I’m Donovan?” Danica tipped her head just like Twilight did when she wanted Bud to realize she was right on score.

  “I think I can’t handle the fallout if people know what happened at the quarry today,” Bud said. He thought he sounded cryptic. His teens would call his tone of voice “throwing shade.” He didn’t know how to sound any other way about it, though. He also didn’t want to try to articulate a lot of thoughts that were barely formed about the matter. Danica would think she was helping by drawing it out, but he was tired and stubborn and not sure he wanted to be helped. “It would be better if no one else knew.”

  “So, you’ve taken all the responsibility to save everything onto yourself,” Danica observed. “You could let Randy save himself once in a while. It’s his business.”

  “I’m the quarry manager,” Bud protested.

  “You know how your mom is always trying to save everyone’s soul?” Danica asked. “You go around saving everyone’s butt.”

  “I wish I could save everyone’s butt,” Bud thought of his oldest son Caleb. Feeling slightly philosophical he added, “I prefer butts to souls any day.”

  “Well, you can have your privacy. It’s not like the Girl Scouts came to the quarry to sell cookies and you all got frisky with them and now you’re afraid of the law.”

  Bud couldn’t fathom the depths of Danica’s imagination sometimes. The idea of Girl Scouts foolish enough to come to the quarry was ridiculous. They could sell a lot of cookies there, true enough, but Girl Scouts in the quarry were not something Bud would ever allow.

  “I need to go outside,” Bud said. He might as well take advantage of Danica’s unexpected compliance to just bury the things in the back of his truck with no further delay.