by Homer Hickam
“I like you, too,” I said which, of course, was true.
“You should see me when I am not so stinky as now. Maybe someday you and I will talk after I’ve taken a bath.”
I provided her with what I thought was as insightful a thing I’d said all day if not all year. “Tanya, there are many rules for this land. Leave the gates the way you found them and so forth. Another one is there is nothing sexier than an intelligent, dirty girl. I like you just the way you are.”
Tanya laughed and squeezed my hand before letting it go. “I think we will dance when we are in town,” she said and I felt, well, thrilled.
I might have stayed thrilled a little longer, had Amelia not showed up at that moment. She climbed up beside us, squatted down, and started back to work without saying a word. When Tanya and I just sat there, kind of enjoying the glow of our flirting, Amelia finally stopped picking and brushing and looked up at us. “What?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” Tanya said.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Did I interrupt something?” she asked.
“No,” we both said in unison.
She frowned at us, then smiled. “I think I did.” Then she gave me a compliment that I could have done without. “Mike, I think it’s really nice how you can still act young sometimes.”
“Thanks,” I said while Tanya laughed. When she winked at me, I winked back.
“Ray acts so old all the time,” Amelia went on, oblivious to our flirting.
“He is a very nice boy,” Tanya said.
“Yes, but that’s all he is. A boy,” Amelia said, not noticing or caring that she had just contradicted herself.
We dug on in silence until we’d dug ourselves out and headed back to camp. That evening, after dinner, I found myself sitting alone before the fire pit. I was feeling a bit blue, don’t ask me why, but then Tanya appeared with two highball glasses, which clinked with ice and held a clear liquid. My spirits immediately rose. She handed me one of the glasses and sat in the chair beside me. She raised her glass and said, “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I replied and we drank. It was, unless I missed my guess, a vodka tonic. “Tanya, I think I’m in love.”
“With me or my vodka?” she asked, winking to show she knew I wasn’t serious.
“Where did this come from?” I asked.
“What Russian girl does not keep a stock of vodka on hand?” she asked. “The tonic is Pick’s. He likes to keep a store of it around because he says it keeps away the malaria he caught over in Africa. He hides it but, of course, I know where it is.”
“Well, God bless Russian girls and stealing from Pick, too.” I took a deep breath, and caught a whiff of Tanya. She smelled good. “What’s that perfume?” I asked. “It’s delightful.”
She preened. “Ivory soap, my dear.”
“You’ve bathed!”
“Well, I did my best from a bucket of dishwater.”
I took another deep inhalation. “Surely, there must be more. I detect the hint of an intoxicating fragrance that is familiar, yet I can’t quite identify.”
“Ah, you have a discriminating nose, Mike. Yes, the scent you detect is one hundred percent pure Diethyl-meta-toluamide.”
I took a wild guess. “You sprayed yourself with DEET.
“Yes, my dear. I am not only clean, I have my mosquito armor on like a good little dinosaur girl. Another vodka tonic?”
I gulped mine down and held out my glass like a cowboy Oliver. “Please, ma’am, can I have some more?”
Oh, we had a fine time that evening, drinking up her vodka and Pick’s tonic, and solving the world’s problems if not our own. The others joined us briefly, even the two Marsh brothers, but everybody seemed tired and slipped away to bed early, our guests given lodging in the cook tent.
After a while, a dreamy mood overcame Tanya and me, and we just sat there and watched the moon rise and the Milky Way blink on and the satellites crossing over. When, toward the end of the evening, she assured me that she had a “very great deal” of vodka tucked away, I began to understand how really special this woman was. Of course, Tanya and I went to our respective tents alone. We were playing the flirty game and, so far, that’s all it was.
That night, I again heard the strange engine noises. I stayed in my tent and listened. There was no way I was going to climb that hill again to see what I could see. I went to sleep, waking to what sounded like a small avalanche. I got up. Everything was quiet except for the brotherly snores coming from the cook tent. I started to climb back into my tent when I heard the sound of a rock rolling down the hill. It smacked the sand at the base with a solid thump. Or someone? I got out my heavy duty flashlight from my tent and shined it up the hill. All I saw were rocks, dirt, and the layers of deep time.
13
The next day, we had more visitors show up. I was beginning to think we were at the crossroads of the world. This time, it was Mayor Brescoe accompanied by her husband, nasty Ted of the BLM. They arrived on foot, without water or anything else, having left their truck somewhere nearby, a suspicion soon confirmed when Edith crawled up beside us and said, “I’m bushed. Ted made us walk from the gate. Hello, Mike, Amelia, Ray. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”
The name she’d forgotten was Tanya’s. I reintroduced them and they both smiled at one another, though not particularly warmly.
Ted climbed up beside us. He was in jeans, a white T-shirt that said BLM in black letters on the back and a blue hat with yellow letters that also spelled out BLM. If I hadn’t known it already, I would have guessed he worked for the BLM. He looked over our dig, then said, “This site will be returned to a natural state after you’re through here.”
“Of course, sir,” Tanya replied in a most sincere manner. I took her response as more or less genetic. If you were Russian, when one of the Czar’s or Stalin’s minions showed up on the farm, you did as you were told and tried to appear grateful while doing it.
Having grown up in the U.S.A. where we don’t much care for government stooges, I came forth with a challenge. “Are you kidding?” I demanded. “This hill is just a pile of mud and rocks. Maybe we’ll throw a few shovelfuls of dirt in our hole.”
Ted ignored me and spoke to Tanya. “I will be inspecting this site after you’re finished. When do you expect that will be?”
“That is difficult to say,” Tanya answered. “Much will depend on how much of the animal we find. You should speak to Dr. Pickford.”
“Where is he?” Edith asked.
“On a walkabout,” I answered before Tanya could. We exchanged meaningful glances, which, upon reflection, was probably not lost on anybody. To change the subject, I told them about our two sickly environmental wackos wallowing back at camp in the cook tent.
“They have a permit to be out here,” Ted said, “but not to collect fossils. I should inspect their packs.”
“I’ve already done it. They had two completely empty plastic bottles of water and that’s about it.”
This made Ted angry. “Out here in this heat with only that small amount of water? What idiots! If they died, it would be my ass.”
For Edith’s sake, I didn’t start an argument with her husband although I could have observed how shitty it was that Ted only seemed concerned about himself, or that he must be a bigger idiot than the Green Planet brothers because he was out here with no water. I offered Edith my canteen. She took it, drank, and, without my leave, handed it over to Ted. Now I would need to boil that canteen. He handed it back to Edith who handed it back to me whereupon I discovered Ted had guzzled every drop. I should have kicked his butt right then. I still regret that I didn’t.
About then, Pick and Laura showed up. Ted yelled, “Hey, you, I want to talk to you!” and scrambled down the hill and took Pick aside. Laura listened in for a moment, then rolled her eyes, and headed in the direction of camp. I didn’t know what Ted and Pick were talking about but Ted seemed to be doing most of the talking. I supposed it might be
about Pick taking good care of the BLM, which had been eroded, beaten down, crushed, and flooded by Mom Nature for over 65 million years. We humans can be such idiots about this planet. We think it’s fragile. In fact, we’re the ones who are fragile. We screw up our world, it’ll kill us, and go on as if we never existed.
Edith interrupted my thoughts, “Can I help you dig, Mike?”
“Sure,” I said and gave her the standard introductory course on the proper etiquette of fossil excavation. She took up an ice pick and said, “OK, I’ll dig. You brush.” And that’s what we did for the next hour. When I raised my head, I noticed that Pick and Ted were gone off somewhere. I hoped Ted wasn’t expecting Pick to lead him back to camp. On second thought, I hoped he was.
Edith uncovered some big vertebra and Tanya said we were getting close to the sacrum. “That will be a huge, complex bone,” she said.
“How long will it take to dig out?” Edith asked.
“Two days,” Tanya answered, “maybe three.”
“What part of Russia are you from?” Edith asked.
“Saint Petersburg, actually,” Tanya replied.
Edith nodded. “I went there one summer while I was in college. I was on a tour of Europe and Saint Petersburg was on the schedule. It is a beautiful city.”
“Da,” Tanya answered, “for all but those who must live there.”
“I’m sorry,” Edith said. “I suppose after the Soviet Union fell, it was a difficult time.”
“I was but a child then,” Tanya explained with a shrug. “But being an orphan is difficult at any time.”
“I imagine it is,” Edith replied. Then she asked the question every American wonders about when we meet someone born elsewhere who has come to our shores, apparently to stay. “How was it that you came here?”
“I was sent here to work,” Tanya answered.
“Work on what?” Edith asked.
“Just work,” Tanya said.
Without skipping a beat, Edith asked, “Were you a prostitute?” and the entire world, or so it seemed to me, went silent except for the wind through the grass.
Ray and Amelia were looking shocked at Edith’s blunt question but Tanya remained perfectly composed. “Yes,” she said. “That was what they wanted me to do. But I had other plans.” She narrowed her eyes. “What gave me away?”
“Well, you’re lovely, for one thing. But, as Mayor of Jericho, I receive FBI bulletins about how criminals over here promise Russian women that if they come, they will work as nannies or maids but are instead forced into the life. We’re supposed to report any suspicious activity. I’m glad you were able to escape.”
“I escaped because I had a dream and that was to be a paleontologist. Someday, that is what I will be.”
“Yes, well, good for you.”
Edith went back to digging and then, one by one, the rest of us did, too. Afterward, after Ted returned without Pick but with the two Green Planet brothers, Edith stood up, brushed herself off, and said, “I guess it’s time to go. Good luck. I hope you find all of it.”
“Oh, we will,” Tanya said. “If all of it is here.”
“Bye-bye, Mike,” Edith said.
“I’ll walk you down the hill,” I told her and I did. Halfway down, I stopped her and asked, “Why did you say what you did to Tanya?”
“Mike, I knew what she was and she knew I knew.”
“But she isn’t anything. She might have been brought over here for that purpose…”
“Please, Mike,” Edith interrupted, “I thought you used to be a cop. Where’s your antenna for this kind of thing? Of course she worked as a prostitute. Probably for a few years. They hook these girls on drugs. You know that.”
In fact, I did. I had been called to take home more than one strung-out Russian girl procured by a studio boss who was having second thoughts. The girls were hooked by their pimps, then had to keep working to pay for their addiction, a vicious cycle. Tanya had broken free, somehow, which made me respect her all the more.
“Don’t be cross with me, please, Mike,” Edith said. “I am in no way condemning this girl. She is obviously very smart and very brave. She did what she had to do, then got away. I hope you two enjoy each other. I just wanted you to know what she was before you got too far.”
I wasn’t cross before but I was now. “I don’t think I need you to protect me from women, Edith.”
“A couple of marriages would say otherwise,” Edith replied.
“Yeah, well, how about Cade Morgan?”
This surprised her. “What about Cade Morgan?”
“You two, you’re…”
She darted her eyes toward Ted who was looking at his watch. “Just shut up, Mike. Just shut up.”
“Listen…”
“We have nothing more to say.”
Edith climbed down the hill where she had to catch up with Ted who was already walking back toward wherever they had left their truck. The Green Planet brothers were trailing behind him. I guessed they were going to catch a ride into town. Edith had to run to catch up with Ted but he never looked back. A great guy, that Ted.
That night around the fire pit, Pick made an announcement. “I want to wrap up the Trike tomorrow. I know we have a lot of work to do on it and we’ll get to it, eventually, but for now I want to move to the Blackie Butte site.”
This upset Amelia. “But I hate to leave Big Ben!” she cried.
“Do you think he’ll be lonely without us?” Ray sniped.
“Shut up, Ray. I’m going to miss that old thing.”
Laura was sympathetic. “It is not unusual to begin loving the animal we dig up. They become very real to us. That’s why almost always we give them names. It hurts when we find a broken bone or some other evidence of a violent end.”
“It’s just an old pile of bones,” Ray groused.
“That’s because you don’t have any feelings or imagination,” Amelia accused.
“I do, too. I feel that my mother needs me to stay here and help her run the ranch. I also imagine you’re a nut case.”
Well, if we wondered how our two teenaged love bugs were doing, that answered that. Ray and Amelia started sulking and Pick said, “Laura will be in charge of wrapping up the Trike site. Mike, would you help her? Ray and Amelia, you’ll go with Tanya and me to Blackie Butte and help carry our tools and equipment over there. We’ll also be moving our camp site.”
“If you’re going to move off the BLM onto the Square C, I think you’d better have a talk with Jeanette,” I said.
“I’ll go over there tomorrow,” Pick promised.
And that was that. The Trike dig was over and we were on our way to Blackie Butte for whatever was there. I couldn’t wait to find out what it was.
14
Laura and I closed down the Trike site and spent the day plastering the bones already pedestaled and wrapping paper towels and aluminum foil around a variety of exposed vertebrae, horn chunks, toes, and other bones too fragmented to immediately identify. Then, we picked and shoveled until everything that remained was covered with at least six inches of dirt. Laura said she hoped Ted Brescoe was going to be satisfied with our clean-up of the site. I told her to not worry about it. In fact, I was thinking maybe I might yet go and kick his butt for no other reason than it would make my day. Then I thought of Edith and let it go.
The base of the hill was littered with plaster casts filled with Trike bones. “What’ll we do with them?” I asked.
Laura shook her head. “I’d like to move them to our old camp site. That way a truck could get to them when we’re ready to take them out. Any ideas on how to do that?”
“Well, we could leave them here and I could use the tractor to make us a road but I don’t think Ted Brescoe would like that very much. Maybe we can use the four-wheelers.”
Laura thought about that and said, “I’m a pretty fair field engineer. Let’s go see what we can figure out.”
We filled our packs with some of the smaller foil-covered b
ones and hiked back to camp, where, after giving it some thought, Laura came up with the idea of using a wheelbarrow attached to a four-wheeler. For that, I said we’d need to do some welding and Laura said, “We don’t have time for that. We need to move those Trike casts today. I think Blackie Butte’s going to eat up all the time we have left this summer.”
I scratched my head after taking my cowboy hat off, then said, “OK, let’s do this.”
My suggestion was crude but, oddly enough, it worked. We called Pick on the radio, asked for Ray and Amelia, and met them at the Trike site. We grunted each big bone onto the back of a four-wheeler (thank God for young backs), strapped it on with ropes and bungee cords, then, with Amelia or Laura at the wheel and me and Ray walking on each side to keep the four-wheeler balanced, trundled them all, one by one, slowly and carefully back to camp. It required a lot of sweat but we got her done. We had to take a day doing it and Pick managed to wander back to camp that night, frustrated that nothing much had been done on the move to Blackie Butte. “Did you go see Jeanette?” I asked.
He confessed he hadn’t so I climbed a hill and used the handheld radio in an attempt to contact her. Happily, she answered. It was good to hear her voice. I told her what was up, and she said, “I’ll be out there first thing in the morning.”
“Meet us at Blackie,” I said, and resisted telling her I’d missed her. “How’s the ranch?” I asked, instead.
“Your work’s building up but I guess it’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”
“You sent me out here,” I said, defensively.
“And you were more than willing to go!” she shot back.
“Listen…”
I heard a double-click of the transmitter, meaning she had nothing more to say. Frustrated, I stared at the radio. Couldn’t she at least have said something like, “The ranch just isn’t the same without you, Mike,” or something other than my work was waiting for me in a tone that sounded like I was just out here having a good time? Well, that was Jeanette.