Saving Cecil

by Lee Mims

  “Whatcha got there, girl,” I said, setting the papers aside to inspect her find. At first I thought it was the stick she’d pulled from under the tarp at the clay pit yesterday. It didn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a geologist, however, to see that it wasn’t. It was a fossilized bone. The significance of the find wasn’t lost on me either. This was huge!

  The object I now held in my hand was a bone from a long-extinct vertebrate. More than that, I couldn’t say. Lucky for me, however, I knew lots of paleontologists. Suddenly recalling that one of them, a close friend, might be in the area, I scooped my iPhone from my purse and pulled up the cell number for Dr. Jonathan Byron Watson.

  “Cleo!” he answered brightly. “What a nice surprise.”

  “Not nearly the surprise you’re going to get when I tell you what I’m holding in my hand,” I said, barely able to contain my excitement.

  “Do tell. What are you holding?”

  “Uh, only the fossilized bone of a large vertebrate!” Stunned silence floated between us. “Watson? Are you there?”

  “Yes. Yes, my dear, I’m here. But are you sure?”

  “Well, I’m sure it’s a fossilized bone,” I said, pacing back and forth across the trailer. “And, considering the environment in these parts back during the Triassic, I’d say it’s likely from one of the larger reptiles. Plus, it’s remarkable in its detail. I can even make out a trace of where a tendon was attached. The rest, well, that’s over my pay grade.”

  “I have to see it! Where did you find it? Does anyone else know?”

  “I would send you a phone photo, but … ”

  “No!” Watson interrupted. “It’s too risky!”

  “Exactly,” I said. “And to answer your other question, it’s hard to say but I believe the only other person who knew about it is dead now … ”

  “What?”

  “Long story, but for now let’s go with the premise that no one else knows about this and keep it that way.”

  “My sentiments exactly. Until we know what we’re dealing with, of course.”

  “When are you coming down here to your research site in the Durham sub-basin?” I asked.

  “I’d come tomorrow, but if I cancel a preplanned meeting, well, it might send up a red flag. You know how it is with us old bone hunters. We’re a suspicious bunch. It would be better to wait for my next scheduled trip in about a week.”

  “How is your Mayfly research going?”

  “Terrific. Even better than I expected. But I want to be in on this find, if there is one, of course. And don’t worry, you’ll get all the credit.”

  “That’s something we’ll have to talk about later.”

  “I can’t tell you how much this means to me, Cleo, to have something like this as a career topper. You know, old girl, if it does turn out that you’ve found a complete fossilized skeleton, it will take an entire team of paleontologists, geologists, and archeologists to bring it to light. Why, bringing such a project to fruition will take years!”

  “I’m happy and honored to include you,” I said as I sat at my desk, marveling at the wonderful bone before me. “Get back with me when you know your arrival time.”

  “Right-O!”

  I’d just tapped my phone off when I heard footsteps on the stairs outside the open door.

  “Hi!” chirped Sara Lauderbach. “I was hoping you’d be here. Is this a bad time?”

  “No. It’s not a bad time at all,” I said, sliding the bone under the log sheets on my desk. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “Really?”

  She and Clinton had been in the back of my mind ever since I’d found the clay pit. “Sure,” I said. “I wanted to ask how your paper is coming along.”

  “That’s why I’m here!” she said as if I’d be surprised. “Do you think I could bother that nice man who showed me around last time? I’d like to ask him some technical questions.”

  “Let me check and see what he’s got going on right now. As long as we aren’t having some type of problem with the well, he’d be glad to talk with you.”

  “That’d be super!”

  “No problem. I’ll step out and ask him right now.”

  “Want me to come with you?” she asked as I moved to the door.

  “If you’d like.” I looked out the open door to the drill pad. “Uh-oh,” I said. “I see they’re making a connection right now. Joining another three sections of pipe to the drill string. We should let them finish that first. While we wait, mind if I ask you a question about Clinton?”

  “Not at all,” she said, taking a seat on the cot.

  “When you guys were little, did you ever play in the woods? You know, build forts, dam up creeks, go exploring, stuff like that?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “What about your brothers?”

  “The little ones were too small back when Clint and I were kids and my older brother, well, he thought of us as a bad rash. So it was mostly just the two of us. Our favorite game was Lewis and Clark. There’s not a part of this farm we don’t know.”

  “Did you ever find any of the red clay beds, the kind used by the brick makers around here?”

  “Yes,” she said. “There’s an old brick pit on the farm. Mom hated the day we found that! She’d get so angry at us when we’d come back to the house covered in that red sticky stuff. Even Clorox won’t totally wash it out.”

  My pulse rate ticked up. “Can you show me?” I asked, moving to a corkboard, which covered most of the wall above my desk. I’d tacked an enlarged copy of the aerial there.

  “Wow!” she said. “This is neat! I’ve never seen the whole farm at one time.” I pointed out a few orienting markers for her like barns, roads, and creeks. “Okay then, the old brick pit would be right about … here in this patch of woods, down in this shallow depression.” She’d pointed to the very spot where Tulip had found the fossilized bone. “I’m told,” she continued, “that my great grandparents used the clay to make the bricks that were used in the foundations of buildings right here on the farm. In fact … oh, wow, you’re going to love this … ”

  “What?” I prompted.

  “Well, there are layers of a red slate-type of rock in the clay. If you break a piece of this slate just right, sometimes you can find little impressions of leaves and bugs and stuff. I even have a few pieces in my room. I haven’t thought of doing that in years … ” She grew quiet.

  “Do you think Clint did? Remember that slate bed, I mean. Maybe go back and look for more fossils there?”

  Sara shrugged. “Honestly, I’ve been so wrapped up in helping take care of my parents since the accident, I haven’t had time to think of much else, but it wouldn’t surprise me. He’d become so fascinated by fossils, it seems logical anyway. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious,” I said, then looked back out the door. “Okay. I see the guys are finished with the connection now and I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll take you to Jackie and you can fire away at him with your questions. He loves the opportunity to educate civilians on what a clean source of energy natural gas really is. Then, when you’re ready to move on to the next stage of your paper, production and distribution, let me know.”

  I put the fossilized bone in the safe and locked it. Then I scurried around, logging in last night’s samples and taking care of reports, phone calls to the main office, and the usual morning duties. The timing worked out perfect. Just as I finished, Sara drove her little Nissan past my office window on her way off-site. I strapped on my Beretta, tossed my camera in my field bag, and Tulip and I headed to the clay pit.

  I had some documentation to do and I wanted to do it in private.

  Instead of going straight to the clay pit, it seemed prudent to first make sure no one was at the hog pens. Besides, I still wanted to know the identity of the man in the green T
oyota truck. Did he work for Arthur Lauderbach? Was he in charge of tending the hogs? He certainly didn’t look the part.

  It took a good half hour of fast walking to make it to the last section of woods, the one that contained the pit and the hog pens. Here I adopted a wary mode. I didn’t have to caution Tulip; she was just as anxious as last time we were here.

  The North Carolina Wildlife Commission considered feral hogs a serious problem that required drastic measures to correct. Hence the yearlong open hunting season. They carry diseases like hoof and mouth and pseudorabies virus. Some of these diseases can even be transferred to humans, plus they do hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to crops every year. So why would anyone want to increase their numbers by crossbreeding?

  I could only come up with one reason.

  To create a larger, more impressive hog to hunt, a trophy hog, if you will. I also had a theory.

  Say someone was crossing feral with domestic hogs, then taking the biggest, most fearsome boars and fattening them up, maybe even making them more aggressive with hormones and steroids, and using them as trophies in a secret hunting club. Since secrecy would be paramount, guns would not be allowed. Too noisy. Wouldn’t that leave only bow hunters as members? Made sense to me.

  Made sense, too, that an arrow could have accidentally hit young Clinton on his way to the red beds to look for fossils—wounding but not killing him. It even made some sense that the guilty bow hunter panicked—knowing his missed shot could rain down all manner of crap on everyone involved—and ran away without calling for medical help. That the bow hunter, finding Clinton wasn’t dead, finished him off with a knife … now that didn’t make sense. Not to me anyway. Unless Clinton recognized him …

  With that happy thought in my head and holding Tulip’s collar with one hand, I parted thick undergrowth to reveal the hog pens. Damn! The green truck wasn’t there. I was hoping to get its tag numbers. Just then, the hogs began to oink and squeal. Crap! I’d forgotten to check wind direction, and they’d picked up my scent. Well, I never claimed to be a hunter. Time to head back the way I’d come.

  When I reached the fork in the trail, I ducked under overhanging limbs and trotted down the path to the pit. The faded camouflage tarp was still where I remembered it, covering an area of the pit near the edge beside a tall stand of mare’s tail weeds. My breath caught in my throat at the thought of what the next few minutes might mean to me and to Watson, but most of all, to Clinton.

  Fortunately dry weather, normal for autumn in North Carolina, had been the case lately and the clay wasn’t extremely sticky. I moved to each corner of the tarp to see what was securing it to the ground. Twine tied to wooden stakes held it down at three ends, but on the bottom left corner—the one Tulip had rooted under—it was broken. With trembling fingers, I lifted it …

  “Well, hello there, Cecil,” I said quietly.

  The skull of Cecil, the cartoon dragon that had delighted me as a child in reruns of the old Bennie and Cecil Show, stared back at me. At least that was my immediate impression. A shaky breath of disbelief escaped me as I knelt for a closer look. My next thought: this find was even bigger than I’d first realized. I was staring at the intact skull of a rauisuchian, a meat-eating reptile from the Triassic age.

  How did I, an economic geologist, have enough knowledge of large vertebrate fossils—a subject covered many years ago during my undergraduate days—to identify this one? Because a skeleton of this particular type of reptile had been big news back in 1999. A student from UNC had found it while on a paleontological field trip to a brick pit owned by the Triangle Brick Company right here in the Sanford sub-basin. The story had fascinated me then and I’d followed it ever since.

  As it turned out, the lizard was one of the most significant fossil finds in the history of the state. Interestingly, by the time the team of experts who took over the recovery and restoration of the fossil had finished their work six years later, they had even learned how the giant lizard met its fate.

  The skeletons of several crocodile-like creatures who attacked it lay underneath. Not only that, but the undigested contents of the rauisuchian’s belly contained four other specimens. Unfortunately, most of the lizard’s skull was missing, accidentally torn away by a dozer. This made Cecil, with his perfectly intact skull, truly unique.

  Wanting to take in the entire creature, I untied the bottom right corner of the tarp and folded it above the skeleton. As I did, I wondered if it had been young Clinton who’d placed the tarp here. I really wanted to believe it was.

  After all, he knew of the existence of the pit. He was a paleontology major. And, he was in the woods wearing camo. Then I had a thought. Since the tarp was also camo, if I could prove it came from the same place as his clothes, it would go a long ways toward proving that he was the one who’d discovered Cecil. I scanned the tarp and found stenciled on its underside: GI Joes’s Army Surplus, Durham, NC. Its faded condition suggested it was at least a couple of years old.

  Stepping carefully alongside the skeleton, I positioned myself between his massive legs and gazed at the miracle before me. It was as though the giant beast had just stretched out on the bank of a swamp 250 million years ago, died, and was quickly covered by a mudflow. Or, maybe the mudflow killed him. Whatever. The fact he was still here, perfectly preserved, as though waiting for someone to discover him eons later, was truly … well, I could think of no better word to describe it, miraculous.

  I dug around in my tote for my measuring tape, then looked for a rock to anchor one end so I could take accurate measurements. That was when I made another find, a heart wrenching one. Under the dry leaves skirting the edge of the pit lay an Estwing rock pick. The initials C-A-B were burned into its simulated wooden handle. Clinton A. Baker?

  Exhilaration with the enormous scientific find, and sadness, fought to control my thoughts, but there was no time for that now. I pushed on, dropping a rock on one end of the tape. The reptile measured thirteen feet, six and one half inches. Since it was larger by two feet than the 1500-pounder found at the brick company, I imagined this big boy would have weighed closer to 1800 pounds, maybe a ton. I placed the pick, initials up, at varying spots on the skeleton and took a slew of photos. Before stowing it in my tote, I ran my fingers over the initials again.

  I knew others might need more proof as to who actually discovered the fossil. For me, the pick was all the evidence I needed that it was Clinton. Sometimes you just have to let your heart be your guide. Vowing then and there to make saving Cecil for posterity the crowning achievement of Clinton’s young life, thus insuring his place in North Carolina history as one of its greatest fossil hunters, I gave the reptile one last admiring look and covered him back up.

  When I came to the corner with the broken twine, I added a note beside my measurements to bring more twine when I returned. Then, just to be on the safe side, I pulled some Carolina creeper vines from a nearby pine tree and laid them over the tarp. Us Indiana Jones types have to take every precaution.

  On my way out, I was careful not to ruffle a leaf on the branches that hid the fork in the trail. Then I headed back to work. At least I was going to, but stopped after only a few feet. The proximity of the hog operation and the clay pit was really bugging me. Maybe if I went back, I might find some convincing evidence that there was a connection between the two.

  You know how it is when you don’t know what you’re looking for, you just know you’ll recognize it when you see it? Well, that’s why I went back. One more sneak peek and I might just get lucky and see that truck again, get some tag numbers. Maybe see someone feeding the hogs, do some real detective work. Chris wasn’t the only one with savvy in that area.

  This time, before advancing on the pens, I checked the wind, noting I’d need to make a correction in my approach. The north side of the clearing would be downwind. This worked out well because, according to the aerial; it offered better cover than the
south side. Then I pulled some masking tape from my tote—I kept everything in there—and taped Tulip’s tags to her collar. No sense taking chances with unnecessary noise. Then, quietly, stealthily even, we made our way to the opposite side of the pens to see what we could see.

  I found a good vantage point, unfortunately there was still no sign of anyone, so I sat down to wait. Tulip fidgeted behind me. “What are you doing?” I whispered and looked over my shoulder to see for myself. She was plundering around in the underbrush, but she seemed content, so I turned back to my stakeout. I was just wishing I’d brought a snack when I heard the sound of a truck engine.

  The dark green Toyota truck pulled up. Just as I opened my field notebook to scribble the tag numbers, I heard Tulip thrashing about behind me again. “Quiet!” I whispered, craning my neck to see the truck, which was now blocked by a small limb. Frustrated, I rose to a find a better line of sight.

  That’s when I lost all sight and everything went black.

  TWELVE

  Caw! Caw! Caw! A couple of noisy blue jays fussed somewhere nearby. Try as I might, however, I couldn’t seem to perform the simple task of opening my eyes to see them. And my head felt like it was about to explode. What was up with that? I knew I was still outside since I felt dry leaves at my fingertips. I was also leaning against something. Tulip stirred beside me.

  Summoning all my strength, I lifted my arm—though it felt made of lead—and reached out. Tulip’s bony head slipped lovingly under my palm. One thing, at least, was right with the world.

  From close beside me came a deep, familiar voice. “Dere she is, girl! She coming around, now!” This was followed by a whimper and a tail thumping. Damn! I just had to get my eyes open! Then the chill of a cold, wet cloth on my forehead—apparently the stimulus my brain cells were waiting on—startled my eyelids into opening.

  The smiling face of Luther Green floated before me.

  “What happened?” I croaked, trying to push myself to my feet.