by Dana Cameron
“Lot of them, in our field,” Tony replied. “Occupational hazards.”
His words were detached, almost unaccented, but they contained a world of meaning for me. I stood leaning against the counter and said nothing. The moment hung heavy between us.
“Always some trouble to get into in the field, from what I’ve seen,” he finished. “Gotta watch out for yourself.” Tony picked up his package and was gone.
I unbent out of my rigidly cavalier posture and stretched painfully, feeling as though I had just gone too many rounds with the heavy bag, and it had started to hit back. Chuck had gone back to his fiddling, and had, for all intents and purposes, tuned out of the conversation. “Too many books, man, not enough life,” I could hear him mumble.
He never did say what the package was.
Either I had spoken aloud or was sharing his thoughts because Chuck replied, “It’s probably something to do with his trip last summer. The good doctor can be quite the cipher when he wants.”
“Tony was in Spain?” I turned to him, wariness temporarily forgotten. “I thought he was in the Yucatán the whole time.”
“Sure he was, but then he called up, all in a tizzy, and wanted me to send him a ticket the last week or so. Some library dude found an early church letter or something about his site, so he decided he needed to get there yesterday, if you know what I mean.”
“When was this?” I asked, trying to contain myself.
“Near the end of June, beginning of July, in there.”
My mind reeled, and I held on to the side of the counter to keep my balance.
Chuck flipped back through the calendar on the desk. “Bingo. Yep, here ’tis, Museo Arquéologico Nacional y Biblioteca, Madrid. Put a real boogie in his board, that did. He was there nearly three weeks, till the second week in July.”
At which time he suddenly wanted to visit the site, I calculated excitedly. So far I still didn’t know what it might mean, but it sure as hell felt like a solid clue. “Must have found something exciting.”
“I don’t know, I just pass the papers, make the magic happen,” Chuck waggled his fingers, as if casting a spell. He looked depressed, not magical though. “I’m the cosmic enabler. Anything I can do you for, now, Dr. Fielding?”
It actually took me a minute to remember why I had been there in the first place. “No, I just came to check the mail. I’m going to hit Joey’s. Can I bring you back anything?”
“Oooh, I could rilly go for a carrot bran muffin!” Chuck brightened considerably. “I’ve been feeling a little, y’know, tight around the middle. Too much cheese, not enough herbage.” He patted his midsection meaningfully. “My great-gran used to tell me, ‘Charlie,’—she called me Charlie, y’know—‘you’ve got to mind your innards; you can live without a brain, but no one ever made it through life without a clear set of tubes.’”
I wondered if she meant that remark specifically for her grandson, or just as general advice. As he pulled out a clasp purse that had probably belonged to that venerable relative, I shook my head and indicated that he should put his money away.
“This one is on me, Chuck. I owe you at least that much.”
I hurried across the campus, trying to sort things out for myself. Alan was clearly pressed to some sort of breaking point and it was going to be messy when he finally reached it. And I couldn’t believe how desperate I was, clutching at slim possibilities like the fact that someone, possibly Tony, had messed with the map drawer while the department was abandoned for the weekend. But this new information, that Tony had been to Spain and that he had a number for a dive shop that was close to the site…alone they seemed ridiculous, meaningless, but taken together, they seemed, well, at least circumstantial, at best damned suspicious. The map of the fort only seemed to underscore the tentative links between these facts.
But the incongruity of considering such things, on as fine a day as this one, struck me as I opened the door to the campus sandwich shop. As the smell of warm spices and hot coffee assailed my nose, I wondered about the other customers in the shop. None of them knew that I had mortal thoughts on my mind, and there was nothing about me to suggest that I was occupied with things more dire than lecture notes or article deadlines.
Thinking this, I looked around with a little more interest at the others in the shop, and not surprisingly, no one noticed my scrutiny. Who really knew what was going on behind those blank faces, absentmindedly staring out the window or flipping idly through the selections on the miniature jukeboxes that were on each table? Suddenly I made eye contact with Rick Crabtree, who had joined the line in back of me, and he bolted from the shop.
This is ridiculous, I thought. He had been more than usually brusque with me since the news of the events at the site, but each time I had tried to draw him on it, I had been brushed off or ignored. He had tried to get me to take a leave of absence. And now that Alan had unexpectedly pulled out of my class, I knew that something was definitely up.
I didn’t stop to think; I left the line and followed him, even though it was nearly my turn to order. The little bell on the door jangled cheerily as I slammed out to confront my second colleague of the morning.
“Rick, this has got to stop!” I shouted. I believe he only stopped scurrying away because of the heads that were swiveling around to stare at us.
“I don’t have anythin’ to say to you, Professor Fielding,” Rick Crabtree squeezed out through clenched teeth. He still wouldn’t look at me, staring determinedly down at the pavement, giving me an unobstructed view of his sweaty, balding head.
“That’s pretty obvious, but I have a whole lot to say to you,” I said. “You’ve made it perfectly clear that you believe I had something to do with what happened—”
“Not believe, I know, Professor Fielding, and I think it is an abomination, an abomination, that you are still allowed to continue on here at Caldwell. I brought my knowledge—”
“What knowledge?” I scoffed.
“—my knowledge to the chairm’n, and then to the dean, and in both cases, I was dismissed without the slightes’ consideration.” Now he looked straight at me, venom tinged with something else I couldn’t read. “They may force me to work near you, but I won’t have any more to do with a murd’ress than I have to. So all I can do is warn others about you.”
“Warn others about what?”
“Mrs. Peirce called the department to ask what we were going to do about you—”
“Pauline’s sister called here?” I was amazed at the woman’s audacity.
“—and she told Dr. Kellerman about the undue influence that you exerted on her sister, based on the will she left. That’s when he started to listen to me. He and I discussed it and then brought what we knew to the dean. But he wouldn’t make you go on leave.”
I held up one hand. “Wait a minute. You think that I was manipulating”—the very word was comic—“Pauline?” I couldn’t help it, I shouldn’t have, but I hooted at the notion. “You can’t be serious—oh, never mind, it’s too stupid to say out loud!”
“I know what I know,” he said stubbornly.
“You know nothing.” The fact that he believed that drivel made me angry again. “Listen, you wretched little man, the only influence going on in that relationship was Pauline’s good one on me. It’s too bad you didn’t have someone to care about you as much, or you wouldn’t be so busy looking for evil where it doesn’t exist. And now you’re poisoning your own son against me, for no good reason. You’re pathetic.”
I turned and headed back into Joey’s, convinced that reason was lost on Rick, and saddened by the patent silliness of the man. He was a lost cause if ever there were such a thing.
Rick, however, wasn’t done. He was trembling with self-righteousness and…excitement. That’s what I couldn’t recognize before. I guess he was rattled enough to practically shout across the quad.
“You can laugh all you want, but I know the truth, and I can prove it too! I will prove it! You just watc
h yourself, Emma Fielding!”
Chapter 22
CONTINUING IN MY RECENT TRADITION OF BEING forced into too close contact with my colleagues’ personal lives, I found that Meg was in a deep blue funk Saturday morning. I sighed. Brian was back in California again and there was no point in my going home this weekend. We finally realized that we were going to have to live with the bicoastal commutes until the two companies were comfortably merged. It did nothing for my growing anxiety about what I thought I was uncovering, and it didn’t help Brian, who was increasingly worried that I was chasing fata morgana. He’d said so on the phone when I called him Friday evening and told him about my encounters with Tony and Rick Crabtree.
“Just go to the sheriff,” he begged, and I finally agreed. I was left with the feeling that he was more uneasy about me than he let on, because he didn’t even tease me as he always did about obsessing my way onto the funny farm. The problem was, I knew something was going on. I just needed some kind of solid proof.
Meg acted as though she was about to speak on several occasions and then just sighed and continued to stare dismally out the window. So much for my attempts to overcaffeinate myself into semihuman behavior. That was okay; I had lots to think about myself.
But just as I had resigned myself to a silent trip, Meg suddenly asked “How did the two of you meet? I mean, you and your husband?”
I was taken aback: I usually make a point of not discussing my personal life with my students or anyone else outside of my little circle, for that matter. Her interest didn’t seem idle, however; she seemed genuinely curious, even troubled about something. I decided that I wouldn’t be in violation of any state secrets if I told her. And maybe it might get her to chill out too.
“Ages ago, we met. In graduate school at Coolidge, in Michigan.” I sighed, staring straight ahead as I drove and remembered. “It was spring, right before exams. I was bringing a bunch of books to the library, you know the deal, bring back thirty, check out another forty for my next paper, right? Back then I had this bad habit of biting off more than I could chew, and I was a little overloaded. Backpack and two tripled grocery bags full of books. I think I had a couple under one arm as well. Anyway, I had way too many, but I was managing; I always do.
“Got from the dorm, across the quad, no problem. My shoulders were killing me and I could feel the handles starting to cut through my hands but that didn’t matter as long as those plastic bags held together just long enough for me to get rid of those books. I was taking those quick little steps you have to take when you can’t swing your arms, but I thought that I was going to make it before the bags broke. Just in sight of the library, I could feel the plastic starting to tear, and once that starts, you’re pretty much doomed, so I kept scuttling along like a little crab down the path. I was just congratulating myself on making it up the stairs to the landing in front of the library’s main doors when the bag ripped.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that the bag emptied out all over the staircase, and all the books went tumbling and skidding down in a little waterfall. The stairs are pretty marble, but they were badly designed, short and narrow. In the wintertime, it’s like trying to climb up an iced-over slide. So there I was, standing at the top of the steps, feeling like an idiot in plain view of the entire university, when two of the library guards started nudging each other, laughing at me.
“I couldn’t believe it, I mean, why laugh at someone who’s having trouble, right? I’m sure I looked pretty funny, but I sure as hell didn’t feel the humor of it—my back was killing me and I wasn’t certain how I could manage to carry everything now. I started to say something pretty caustic to them, when three of the books were suddenly stacked up on the landing in front of me. Someone was helping me.
“I looked and there was this incredibly sweet-looking guy smiling at me, like he had just heard the best joke in the world and couldn’t wait to share it with everyone he saw. He winked at me, then ran down the steps to get the rest of them. That took about fifteen seconds, but I was absolutely blown away. I was mesmerized watching his back, the top of his head, the way his hair brushed his neck as he bent over, picking books up. I remember thinking that he seemed to be wearing a lot of layers, even for April in Michigan, but that only made me want to get to the bottom of them. Don’t ask me why I was so blown away; the best answer I can still come up with is that it was fate.
“I couldn’t wait for him to come back up the stairs and say something. I just sat at the top of the steps trying to keep everything else together, but I remember that it felt like about a year before he climbed back up to me. What would he say? I only knew that if it was the right thing, I was his forever.
“‘How about a hand with these?’ he asked.
“I nodded, so tongue-tied that as he held the door open for me, I forgot to give the guards a really withering look. I knew that I only had about thirty seconds before we got to the circulation desk, and so if I was ever going to see him again, I had to say something quickly.
“‘Thanks. How about a cup of coffee?’ I blurted out. Deathless, huh?
“He thought it over and then shook his head.
“I was absolutely crushed, and I had only ever laid eyes on him three minutes before. Then his next words changed my life.
“‘No, I don’t think we could balance anything else on top of all the books. But we could get some after we drop these off.’
“I was totally smitten.
“I began unloading my poor backpack, and I noticed that he was looking at the titles of my books. I don’t know why it made me so nervous, but I felt like I was being sized up. I was being sized up. I looked at them quickly to remember what I had been working on last night: This guy, whoever he was, had driven every other thought out of my mind. But they were pretty safe, pretty straightforward, mostly faunal analysis and books on sixteenth-and seventeenth-century social life.
“Only he didn’t think so. He looked all confused and said, ‘Okay, I give up? Historian? Biologist? What?’
“It was an easy question, but I could barely think straight. ‘Uh, archaeologist. Paper on Elizabethan foodways.’
“Again he seemed to stop and think about it. ‘Are you good at it?’
“No one had ever asked me that before. Mostly they tell me all the stories about dinosaurs they read in the paper. I nodded.
“‘Okay, let’s get that coffee. I’m Brian Chang.’
“‘Emma Fielding. Thanks for your help back there.’
“I bought the coffee. Brian ate three biscotti. I found out that he was in the chemistry department and that he’d just finished his exams. I’d never met anyone so…happy. It’s the only word. I don’t mean in the ignorance-is-bliss way. Brian doesn’t waste time worrying about things. It was a relief just to be with him—it made me feel as though life made some sense, even though I hadn’t ever thought it didn’t. I guess he was intrigued by the fact that I was curious about lots of things, not just my work. But at the same time, I liked that he reminded me that there were things going on outside of academia…”
“It worked from the very beginning. The thing that scares me is that if it weren’t for a stupid, ripped grocery bag, I might never have met Brian. There are accidents in life that send you down paths you’ve never imagined.” Like a stupid photocopied map.
I shook myself a little as I finished, startled to find how vividly the details came back to me. I looked at Meg. She wasn’t smirking or anything, she just nodded.
“Guys are funny,” she blurted. “One minute you think you are right there with them, the next…” She shook her head in frustration. “The next, you realize you’re a million miles off the mark. I gotta tell you something,” she said abruptly.
“Okay,” I said warily. Everyone had to tell me something lately.
“Alan’s been saying some pretty horrible things about you to people. Did you know?”
My hands tightened on the steering wheel. “No, I didn’t. Are you su
re you should tell me?”
Meg nodded. “Pretty sure.”
A long silence followed, and then she began in a rush. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ve been kind of seeing Neal for a while now. A couple of dates so far. Things were going good. At least, I thought they were.”
Meg looked out the passenger side window as the scenery gradually shifted from college town to more rural landscapes. She began talking again, quickly, as if to get it out before she thought better of the idea. I just kept quiet.
“He cooked dinner for me last night, chili, real hot, you know, but that’s okay. I like spicy food. We were talking and talking, and he was telling me about his huge family and I was telling him all about being an army brat, all the weird things you grow up with, like a change of scenery every six months, learning how to shoot—”
“You shoot guns?” I asked incredulously.
“Firearms, yeah,” she said, surprised at my surprise. “That’s what he, Neal, said too. It’s fine as long as you treat them with respect.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Man, cross the Mississippi and people get silly on you. Anyway, we were getting along, having a great time. And this is good, okay, because I’m used to guys who are a little more gung ho or have something to prove because their parents are in the army or whatever, so this is just fine with me and I’m deciding that I’m going to give the kid a chance. And we eventually got around to, you know, kissing. Whatever. But that’s when the trouble started.
“I guess Alan walked in on us, I don’t know, neither of us heard right away. And when we did look up, he had this look on his face like someone kicked him.”
I nodded, remembering what I’d seen on the site. Alan had a crush on Meg the size of all outdoors.
“It wasn’t like we were doing it or anything, not even close,” she said hurriedly. “I just didn’t realize that Alan, well, that he kinda was getting ready to ask me out or something, and there I was, trading spit with his roommate. But I figured, cool, now he knows, no harm done, asked him how dinner was—you know he goes home to dinner with his folks every Friday?—and he said dinner was god-awful, but that he quit your class and if I knew what was good for me, I’d stay away from you too.”