“Whenever you’re ready, there’ll be food for you in the mess tent. If your friends can’t make it over, I’ll have Chung and Chang bring something.”
“Thanks.”
Ray watched her strut down the line and enter a blue dome tent near the water supply, her gait confident yet feminine. She was an interesting woman, he decided.
“Arigaa … Lookin’ good,” Lewis growled, savoring Farrell’s exit.
“Come on.” Ray aimed a thumb at the tent.
“And she like you. I saw da way she look at you, how she touch you.”
“Lewis …” he groaned. “I’m a married man.”
“Dat don’t matter to her. I know dat kind. White witch. Day mess with da mind,” he said, tapping his temple. “Turn da head backwards. Tease you. Then … dump.”
“Is that right?”
“Yah. We like … savage to them. Different from naluaqmiut. Mysteree-ous. Dey think it fun to play with us. Make us do things we don’t want to do. Hu-mil-er-ate us.”
“Humiliate,” Ray corrected.
“Dat too.”
“Get in the tent,” Ray ordered, assisting Lewis inside.
“I tellin’ you, Ray. She bad news.”
“Who’s that?” Billy Bob asked. He was stretched out on a cot, lying on his side like an Egyptian king, watching as the specialist staggered out with a stack of boxes.
When he was gone, Lewis grinned. “Dat doctor lady … Arrigaa!”
“She’s somethin’, ain’t she?” Billy Bob exclaimed. He shook his head. “Reminds me of the fine sweeties back home in Texas.” He said this with enthusiasm, as if he were discussing a sumptuous meal or a particularly wonderful pie.
“She like Ray,” Lewis said. “She play him … like drum.”
“Stuff it, Lewis. She doesn’t like me. She was just being friendly. Hospitable.”
“What hospital got to do with it? She give you da eye.”
“She did not.”
“I thank maybe she did,” Billy Bob agreed.
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I’m married.”
“Ayiii …” Lewis groaned, frowning. “Can’t forget da ball and chain.”
“Da ball and chain is about to have my baby,” Ray replied angrily.
“Okay …” Lewis tried out his cot, moving in slow motion to a prostrate position.
Chang and Chung reappeared bearing sleeping bags and a first-aid kit the size of a small suitcase. They set the gear down and left without comment or even eye contact.
“Who dem grunts?” Lewis’s eyes were closed, his breathing slow and regular.
“They’re security guards,” Ray said.
“What fer?” Billy Bob wondered.
Ray considered offering a detailed explanation, but decided against it. The effort was beyond him. “For security.”
“Oh,” the cowboy grunted, as if this answered everything.
Ray opened the kit. It was fully stocked with antidys-entery medicine, cold medicine, Band-Aids, bandages, iodine … He opened a bottle of pain relievers and doled them out, taking two himself. Billy Bob downed his without rising. Ray placed a trio of pills in Lewis’s open palm, but the defeated guide was sinking rapidly into a heavy sleep.
Billy Bob’s wounds looked good, all things considered. Very little bleeding. None of the ruptures appeared to be infected. After swabbing them liberally with antiseptic, a procedure which the cowboy protested vigorously, Ray dressed the wounds with gauze and tape.
“You’ll live,” Ray told him as he repacked the kit. He felt like a doctor making a house call. All he needed was a stethoscope and a white coat. “I’m going for something to eat. You guys want to come?”
Lewis’s reply took the form of a snore. He was out.
“Nah,” Billy Bob said. “I’m too whupped. Not sure I could sit up, much less make it out of this here tent. Maybe you could bring me back some vittles?”
“Vittles … I’ll see if they have any.” Ray peeled out of his soiled clothing and slid on a pair of Billy Bob’s jeans. “I called Barrow. Betty’s working on the missing-person business. I told her to have a plane meet us at the village tomorrow.” He fished a T-shirt out of Lewis’s pack and fought his way into it. The front shouted “Lewis Fletcher’s Authentic Native Alaska Bush Adventure and Hunting Service” in bold, red letters. The back was consumed by the company logo: the face of an emaciated bear. The shirt became a tank top on Ray, the sleeves barely covering his shoulders. “Dr. Farrell said we could borrow a raft. I figure if we get out of here early, we can make the village by ten.” He looked to Billy Bob for a reply, but the cowboy’s eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. Ray pulled the sleeping bags from their pouches and draped them like blankets over the two men before zipping his way through the insect door of the tent.
Outside, the stars were gone, obscured by a featureless blanket that made the night seem unnaturally dark. The air was cool and moist, the temperature dropping.
The stadium lights were still on, but the excavation area was deserted. The neat line of tents glowed like giant luminaries: two shades of blue, two shades of green, yellow, red … The mess tent was the brightest. Shadows danced against the fiery nylon walls. Ray found it mildly amusing that the meals were served in an orange tent. He had always been told that bears liked orange. Keeping scavenging blacks out of the camp’s food supply would be difficult enough without the added element of attractive packaging.
Two coeds were at the barrels using towels to give the skin of their exposed arms, legs, and faces a cursory wipe. When they were finished and had retreated to the mess tent, Ray found a towel of his own and mimicked their motions.
Satisfied that he was presentable in a camp of unbathed dirt hounds, he made his way to the makeshift cafeteria. Despite the crude surroundings, the interior of the mess tent managed to recreate the party atmosphere of a college tavern: rock music blaring from a boom box, crew members milling about, sipping from amber bottles, throwing darts, playing poker, laughing boisterously, as if they were gathering a few blocks off campus to celebrate the passing of an especially tough final. Six card tables had been set up near the center of the room. They were cluttered with books, boxes, notepads, video monitors, and several brightly labeled cases of Red Hook Ale. A dozen folding chairs were sitting at odd angles around the tables and along the right-hand wall of the tent. A few people were seated, eating some sort of casserole from paper plates. A long table on the left held the food platters. A Hispanic man was scooping baked beans from an enormous tin can into a chrome tray. Behind him a ten-foot purple-and-gold banner read: “The Dawg House.”
“Care for a brew?”
A Red Hook hurtled toward him. Ray caught it, examined it, noted that it wasn’t cold, and tossed it back to Farrell. “No, thanks.”
She raised her eyebrows at this. “You sure?”
Ray nodded. “You carted booze all the way into the Range from Seattle?”
Farrell shrugged as if beer was an essential part of any and every field trip. “Got to bolster morale somehow. We brought just enough to use as a carrot: one ale per person per day. Nobody gets blasted, everyone’s happy. Gives them something to look forward to. At the end of the day, we hang out in here, toss one back, eat dinner, then get down to the business of recording our finds, writing up artifact reports, reviewing site videos …”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” Ray observed. It also sounded exceedingly dull.
“It is. But it’s worth it.” She twisted the cap on the bottle, flung her head back, and chugged a full third of the contents. Ray watched, noting that even when Farrell drank beer like a frat rat, she was dangerously attractive. The fact that she had cleaned up and changed into another form-fitting T-shirt was not lost on him.
“Last chance …” she taunted, pointing the neck of the bottle in Ray’s direction.
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” She finished off another third, head tilted back, chest forwar
d, before submitting, “Let’s get some dinner.”
Ray followed her to the serving table, accepted a plate and a set of plastic utensils, and scooped out a serving of casserole.
“Chicken surprise,” Farrell told him as she reached for the beans.
When they had taken seats near one of the card tables, Ray sampled the chicken. It wasn’t a taste sensation, but neither was it inedible.
“Tell me about Margaret,” Farrell insisted between bites. “What she like?”
“She’s … wonderful.” He meant it, but his tone lacked conviction.
“How long have you been married?”
“Year and a half,” he answered from rote.
After a brief pause she asked, “Are you happy?”
“Yes. Very.”
“Satisfied?”
Ray nearly choked on his chicken. He glanced at the card table, desperate for a change of subject. There was an open box just a foot away from him. It was filled with bones. “Tell me about the dig. You said it might be Thule.”
She seemed disappointed by the shift, but accepted it in stride. “Possibly.”
“And if it is …?”
“It might be the first opportunity to perform an in-depth study of proto-Eskimo civilization.” Farrell picked at her casserole without eating any of it. “It could also turn out to be one of the oldest settlements in North America.”
“Sounds like quite a find.” Ray tried the beans. They were cold, too sweet.
She adopted a thoughtful expression. “It’s significant because of its completeness.” Stabbing beans, she said, “The cataclysmic nature of the sites in this valley makes them unique. This hunting camp, the inukhuit corral, the village we hope to dig next summer … they were all buried whole. That gives us a real advantage.”
“Something along the lines of the frozen family of Utqi-agvik?” The family Ray was referring to had lived some five hundred years earlier in a sod house near present day Barrow. One winter morning, a huge block of shore-fast ice crashed the home, killing all five of the sleeping occupants and preserving them in remarkable fashion.
“There are parallels.” Farrell pursed her lips. “The Birnirk site where the family was unearthed was a terrifically rich find. It told us quite a bit about life in the high Arctic in past centuries. We’re hoping this site will prove similarly productive on a larger scale. If it’s half as rich as we think, it will open a new door on the mysterious Thule culture.”
Ray nodded at this, pleased that his distraction had worked. He was finished with his dinner, ready to go to bed, ready to make his escape from the sexually assertive doctor. Crew members were tossing plates and bottles into garbage sacks, drifting toward the tables in response to some silent cue. A woman fed a tape into one of the VCRs and chairs were pulled into a semicircle around the monitor.
“I’ll let you get to work.” Ray stood and discarded his plate. “Thanks for dinner.”
Farrell winked at him. “Maybe we can do it again sometime, in a real restaurant.”
“Uh … yeah … maybe.” As Ray hurried toward the exit, he couldn’t help but wonder if Farrell was serious. She was either an unabashed flirt, or she had a truly wicked sense of humor and was trying to embarrass him. If it was the latter, she had succeeded.
TWENTY-ONE
RAY DRANK IN the brisk night air, glad to be out of the noisy tent, away from the aroma of steamed chicken, away from the stale artificial warmth created by the convergence of two dozen sweaty bodies in a confined space, most of all, relieved to be away from Dr. Flirtatious. The site lights had been extinguished and the darkness was somehow comforting. A half-moon had just risen and was feinting in and out of a swirling mist, highlighting the tree line and bathing the craggy peaks that ran along the horizon in a ghostly gray cast.
Pressing the Indiglo button on his Timex, Ray noted that salvation was less than seventeen hours away. In approximately sixteen and a half hours, they would be climbing aboard a floatplane in Kanayut. A relatively short time later, they would be disembarking in Barrow. Ray could hardly wait. He was ready to leave the Range, to get back home, to see Margaret, to put this remarkably ill-fated misadventure behind him. Next time, if there was a next time, Mr. Expert Guide would have to find some other sucker to accompany him on his “dry rehearsal.”
Stumbling along the row of tents, he located his own by following what sounded like a pair of dueling hand saws: two lumberjacks slicing through a mighty redwood. After zipping the door open, he got tangled in the insect netting, tripped on the elevated nylon stoop, and literally fell inside. Neither Billy Bob nor Lewis missed a beat.
Ray slipped off his boots and climbed into the down bag without disrobing. His muscles ached, his joints were throbbing, and his stomach seemed to be objecting to the casserole. But fatigue overruled all of this. The canvas cot felt heavenly, as soft and soothing as a Sealy Posturepedic. He decided that he could have been exposed to the elements, with mosquitoes draining his lifeblood, and still manage to sleep for ten hours.
A half hour later, he changed his mind. The cot was not quite as comfortable as it had initially seemed. And inexplicably, he was awake. Alertly awake. Unable to relax, much less doze off. His body was painfully tired, yet his mind was in overdrive. The day had been stressful. And his subconscious seemed unwilling to release its grip on the events: news that the stork was inbound, nearly drowning, being forced to smoke a joint, getting shot at by a hophead lunatic, being propositioned by an archaeologist who looked like a model … Oh, and finding a head in a glacial stream. That was the pièce de résistance.
Turning over, he buried his face in the mummy bag and tried to sort through the overwhelming montage. The baby … That was something to be happy about. He managed to distract himself for another quarter hour contemplating possible names.
Repositioning himself on the sagging cot, he wondered about the effect a baby would have on his relationship with Margaret. Not just how they would weather the late-night crying or the endless stream of dirty diapers, but how they would keep the flame of love alive in the company of a little one.
He glanced at his watch again and sighed. How was it possible to be totally exhausted and yet not fall asleep? This was getting irritating.
Sitting up, he tried to remember where he had put the Tony Hillerman novel. Had it been in his pack, which was now resting on the bottom of Shainin Lake? Or had he given it to Billy Bob? He rose and rummaged through the side pockets of the cowboy’s pack, feeling for a book in the darkness. Giving up, he was retrieving a penlight from his parka with the idea of rifling Lewis’s pack for reading material, when he found a small rectangle: the Bible. It wasn’t Hillerman, but at this point, entertainment wasn’t the goal. Sleep was. And from what little he knew of the “good book,” it was just the thing. Extremely boring.
Returning to his cot, he opened it randomly and began reading. Minutes later, hardly able to keep his eyes open, he snapped the book shut and flipped off the penlight. Lying on his back, he relaxed his limbs and breathed deeply: in, out, in … Whew! Something in the tent was rank. It smelled. No, it stank to high heaven. Maybe it was Lewis.
Ray tried to ignore it. He closed his eyes again and … No. Whatever it was needed to be tossed out. Either that or the tent vacated. He sat up and sniffed. Standing, he stepped over to Lewis. Nope. He turned and sniffed at Billy Bob. Nothing. He sampled the air around the backpacks. Bingo! Lewis’s was fine. It smelled of mildewing cotton, but nothing else. Billy Bob’s … Ray inhaled, then coughed.
He was bending to open the pack and determine the source of the stench when he remembered: Fred! The head was still in there, wrapped in nothing more than a sweatshirt. Unzipping the main pocket, he covered his mouth with a hand. The odor was extreme. Fred was obviously going bad: what little flesh the skull retained was beginning to rot. Ray gagged at the image this brought to mind and zipped the pocket shut.
He hurried through the tent door in search of a container and fresh, unpolluted ai
r. It was sprinkling outside and though the droplets were icy cold, they felt refreshing.
Half of the tents were dark, the occupants either asleep or still over in the cafeteria finishing up their notes and research. Ray guessed that the former was more probable. Though it was early, these folks seemed to put in a tough day’s work: stooping, kneeling and otherwise hunching down to pluck history from the dirt. It had to be punishing on their bodies. And he assumed that they rose quite early, to make use of all available light. Especially since this was the twilight of their digging season. The peaks bordering the canyon were already getting termination dust. Another couple of weeks and the lowlands would see their first snowfall. A week or two later, winter would move in abruptly.
The wind whipped rain at Ray’s bare arms eliciting a wave of goose bumps and he decided that the night was no longer refreshing. Neither was it boreal, brumal, or any number of other romantic adjectives. It was merely cold. Penetratingly cold.
He started for the mess tent, hugging himself to keep from shivering. The cook probably had a Tupperware bowl big enough for Fred. Either that or a roll of cellophane. Better yet baggies. Zip-loc bags! Ray remembered seeing several boxes of them in the crate next to the water barrels. He changed direction and headed for where he thought the fifty-five-gallon drums were. Looking away from the tents, toward the darkened site, he was able to make them out at the edge of his vision.
It was at that moment, as he performed this corner-of-the-eye trick, that he tripped on one of the grid markers, caught his other foot on the line strung along the boundary of the excavation area, and executed a picture-perfect faceplant into a pit. Thankfully, the pit was merely a broad step a few inches deep. Still, he managed to scuff his palms and scrape a knee. Though he couldn’t tell, he thought the knee was bleeding. Great.
When he finally reached the barrels, he blindly felt around in the crate. There were several long, thin boxes, probably various sizes of baggies. He wished that he had brought along his penlight. Extracting a Zip-loc from each box, he examined them with his fingers, guessing at the sizes. Fred would require something big: an industrial two-gallon freezer bag. He continued fumbling through the supply, strewing extra Zip-Iocs about the crate. Several slipped to the ground, where they were snatched up by the swirling breeze. Ray swore softly. Two minutes later, he found what he assumed was the largest available bag. After removing a pair, he carefully retraced his steps back across the site.
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