Bones

by John Wilson

  “From what you say,” I point out, “it’s a lot of work to get a dinosaur out of the rock. No one could do that without being noticed.”

  “That’s right,” Dr. Bob agrees. “But there’s nothing to stop a major dig being undertaken as long as the landowner agrees. Your mom and the others on the farm gave us permission to dig in the coulee.”

  “Someone like Battleford wouldn’t be interested in the skeleton on Mom’s farm, would he?” I ask.

  “I hope not,” Dr. Bob says. “People like Battleford seem to have networks of spies in areas where valuable fossils are found. If word got out that we have something unusual, who knows? But don’t worry. If he’s looking for dinosaur specimens, he’s probably in China. That’s where the most exciting finds are being made—and also, unfortunately, where it’s easiest to steal fossils.”

  Annabel jumps back and crashes into me as a man pushing a low trolley suddenly appears around a shelf of boxes. “Watch where you’re going,” he says.

  “Careful,” Dr. Bob says. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

  The man is short and dressed in dark blue overalls. He has a square face and black eyebrows that meet in the middle above his nose. His head is shaved, but he has a goatee and moustache that match his eyebrows. Above the pocket of his overalls are the words Paterson Scientific Courier Service—Nothing Too Big or Too Small.

  “Sorry,” the man says sullenly. “Got to take these out to the truck. Shipping them down to the Museum of the Rockies in Montana. All the paperwork’s done.” He waves at a clipboard of forms on top of the specimens.

  “Okay,” Dr. Bob says. “But be more careful. Those trolleys are heavy.”

  The man grunts and moves away.

  “The best beetle eyebrows I’ve seen in a long time,” Annabel comments. “He even has the sullen look to go with them.”

  Dr. Bob chuckles. “Beetlebrow—good name for him. He may not be the happiest courier in town, but he’s the cheapest.”

  “Why do you send fossils to a museum in Montana?” I ask.

  “We’re short of space and staff, so sometimes we send specimens out to private companies for preparation and to other museums for research. Now let’s go and look at the preparation labs.”

  As Dr. Bob shows us the rest of the museum’s back rooms, I think of Battleford and his dog, Percy, and hope that they are as far away as China.

  Chapter Three

  “I feel like a chicken on a barbecue,” Annabel says, wiping the sweat off her brow with her sleeve. It’s incredibly hot. We are in the dry creekbed of the coulee that cuts across the end of Mom’s farm. Below us, where the dirt road ends, there are two Tyrrell Museum trucks, the one the field crew came in and, behind it, the one Dr. Bob brought us in. Above us, on the side of the coulee, a large square tarp shades a flat area where three grubby students in shorts, T-shirts and bandannas or wide-brimmed hats are huddled on hands and knees.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “Badlands trap the heat. I wouldn’t want to come here without water.” I haul my bottle out of my daypack, take a swig and pass it to Annabel.

  “This is nothing,” Dr. Bob adds cheerfully. “You can’t get lost in a narrow coulee like this. In the big areas of badlands—over at Dinosaur Provincial Park or down in Montana, for instance—you can get turned around and spend a long time stumbling around. Then if it rains, you can’t get out. The popcorn is like ice.”

  “Popcorn?” I ask.

  “That’s what we call the clay-rich rock here.” Dr. Bob steps over to the steep valley side and scoops up a handful of irregular pieces of gray rock. They do look like popcorn. “When it dries out, it shrinks and forms this.” He tosses the handful up in the air. “Popcorn. Of course, the opposite happens when it rains. The clay expands and becomes so slippery, you need climbing gear for a simple slope.”

  Dr. Bob points to the tarp. “Shall we go up and take a look?”

  We scramble up the slope, and the students move back. The flat area is partly a natural change in slope and partly the result of some serious digging around three bumps. Two of the bumps are basketball-sized and are completely covered in white plaster. The third is about the length of a longboard and is half covered in plaster.

  “Things are going well,” Dr. Bob comments.

  “Yeah, man,” says one of the students, a tall skinny guy wearing a black bandanna with a skull and crossbones on it. “We’ll finish plastering the top this afternoon. We’ve almost dug out underneath. We should be able to turn them tomorrow, and then they’ll be ready to truck to the museum on Sunday.”

  “We dig to find the extent of the fossil,” Dr. Bob explains. “Then we plaster the top for protection, dig underneath, flip it over and plaster the bottom. Then we can transport it back to the museum and put it on the shelves you saw earlier.”

  The pirate guy takes a phone from his back pocket, steps away and takes a photo of the site. He catches me looking at him. “It’s for the blog,” he says. “I post a photo every day. This is important work, and people need to know about it.”

  “He’s right,” Dr. Bob agrees. “These days, we have to keep up with the technology, and the more young people who know what we do, the better. It’s not all Jurassic Park, but if we give these bones a story, it helps people relate to what we’re doing.”

  “What’s the story here?” I ask, waving at the hillside.

  “Seventy million years ago this was a coastal, swampy place, cut by rivers running into the sea over there.” Dr. Bob points east. “Our friend here”—he kneels down beside the largest lump—“was washed down one of those rivers. His or her body got stuck on a sandbank and provided a meal for some small animals. That scattered the bones around a bit, which is why we have him in three lumps. I reckon we have about fifty percent of the skeleton. We’re missing the hips, back legs and tail, but we have the backbone, ribs, front legs and, most important, some of the skull.”

  “What was it like?” Annabel asks.

  “Hard to say. Probably something like a small ostrich, except with a long tail. This is one of the hands.” Dr. Bob leans over the partly plastered lump and points at three long bones radiating out from a jumbled collection of smaller ones. “Very delicate. Probably good for picking fruit.”

  “But it’s the skull that’s really cool,” says the pirate guy.

  “Ah, yes,” Dr. Bob says with a smile. “Captain Jack Sparrow here thinks we have a smart dinosaur.”

  “The skull,” the student says, pointing at one of the basketball-sized lumps, “has eyes on the front, like we have, and a high forehead, which suggests a large brain.”

  “Apparently,” Dr. Bob agrees, “but we can only see a part of it. We won’t know what we’re dealing with until we remove the skull from the rock. But you’re right, this was a smart dinosaur.”

  “What!” I exclaim, thinking of a book I read about intelligent dinosaurs that talked to each other, built towns and tamed other animals.

  “Smart for a dinosaur,” Dr. Bob adds quickly. “Lots of them had eyes like ours on the front of their heads. It’s a useful adaptation if you want to catch fast-moving prey or pick fruit off a bush. But a high forehead doesn’t always mean intelligence.”

  “Pachycephalosaurus,” Annabel says. “It has a domed head and looks smart, but the dome is just a bony lump. People used to think they head-butted, but the neck’s not right. They probably used their heads to butt the flanks of their opponents, like giraffes do.”

  I stare at Annabel. How is there room inside her head for all that information? And what normal person knows that stuff about giraffes and that weird-named dinosaur? Of course, Annabel’s not normal, which is one of the things I like about her—normal is boring.

  “Your girlfriend is smart,” Dr. Bob says with a smile. I blush violently, but I’m happy. Annabel is my girlfriend, and that makes me very lucky.

  “I just remember stuff,” Annabel says.

  “Like Pi to some ridiculous number of decimal places,” I sa
y.

  “Over four thousand now,” Annabel says proudly.

  “Now I fall, a tired suburbian in liquid under the trees, drifting alongside forests simmering red in the twilight over Europe.”

  We all turn to stare at the pirate who has said this gibberish. He looks at Annabel.

  “Pilish,” she says.

  “No need to be rude,” Dr. Bob says.

  “No,” Annabel says, her excitement rising. “He’s speaking Pilish.”

  The pirate nods, a self-satisfied grin on his face.

  “What’s Pilish?” I ask, feeling left out.

  “It’s the language of Pi,” Annabel explains. “Count the number of letters in each word—Now I fall, a tired suburbian in liquid under the trees.”

  I concentrate. “Three, one, four, one, five…it’s Pi!” I exclaim.

  I’m happy that I worked it out, but Annabel is talking to the pirate. “That’s from Not A Wake.”

  “Yeah,” the pirate agrees. “The first book ever written in Pilish. The number of letters in each word in the book corresponds with the digits in Pi. It goes up to ten thousand decimal places.”

  “That’s so cool,” Annabel says. “I’ve always meant to read it but never got around to it. Have you read it?”

  “Every word,” the pirate says. “It’s awesome.”

  Dr. Bob looks at me and shrugs. He feels as left out as I do. I am developing a dislike of the pirate who knows as much about Annabel’s favorite topic as she does. How can I compete with that?

  “But Dr. Bob, why couldn’t this dinosaur be really smart?” pirate guy asks. “I mean, they evolved for over a hundred and fifty million years. And they would have kept changing if they hadn’t all been killed sixty-five million years ago. Someone suggested that they might have evolved into something like us, walking upright, using tools—perhaps they even spoke to each other. Some animals today—chimpanzees, whales—have complex language. Maybe dinosaurs developed that before they died out, and we haven’t found the right bones. Until now.”

  “That’s stupid,” I blurt out.

  “Not necessarily,” Dr. Bob says. “It’s extremely unlikely that’s what we have here, but in science we must keep an open mind. If we dismiss an idea as stupid, then we won’t recognize evidence if we see it.”

  Now I feel stupid, and everyone is looking at me. “Let’s go back to the farm,” I say to Annabel, keen to get out of here and take her away from pirate guy.

  Annabel looks surprised. “I thought we were going to hang out here longer. Maybe even help out. I’d like to stay.”

  “You can if you want,” I say, more harshly than I intend. “I’m going back to the farm.”

  I climb out of the coulee onto the flat prairie and stop to catch my breath, hoping Annabel is following. She’s not. I glance down, and my heart sinks as I see her crouched beside the pirate, looking at the fossil. Dr. Bob looks up at me and waves. I wave back half-heartedly and trudge across the fields toward the distant farmhouse. I feel horribly lonely, the only person in this vast flat land. Why did we have to come here?

  Chapter Four

  My trouble is that I can’t let things go. If something bothers me, I worry at it like a dog with a bone. I convince myself that the worst possible outcome will happen. I’ll sleep in and miss the exam, or say the most embarrassing thing possible in front of the whole class. Right now, I’m seeing Annabel and the pirate guy strolling along the street, holding hands and laughing at an obscure Pi joke that I can’t understand. They look perfect together. They are even the same height.

  I kick a clod of dry earth in frustration. It was probably dumb to leave them together back at the dig, but if I’d stayed, I would have said something else stupid. I wish we were back in the diner in Australia, eating fries and talking about shipwrecks. That would be simple—and no pirate guy.

  The rough sound of an engine makes me look up. A beat-up red pickup truck bounces toward me along the edge of the field. I watch as it slides to a halt in a cloud of dust. A guy in a plaid shirt and oil-stained baseball cap leans out the open window. “Howdy,” he says. “Can I help you?”

  “No, thanks,” I say. “I’m just heading home.” I nod toward the farmhouse.

  “You one of them Australian kids staying with the hippies?” The hand-rolled cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth bobbles as he talks.

  “I’m Canadian,” I say, “but yes, I do live in Australia.”

  “You been down at the bone place in the coulee?” he asks.

  I nod and begin to walk away. I don’t want to get into a conversation with this guy. Not only am I too miserable for small talk, but there’s something about him I don’t like. I think it’s his eyes—they’re small, set close together and shifty.

  The dog that leaps up from the bed of the truck, barking, almost gives me a heart attack—for two reasons. One, I wasn’t expecting it, and two, it looks like Humphrey Battleford’s dog, Percy, from Australia.

  “Careful. Ajax ain’t fond of strangers.” The guy in the truck smiles at my discomfort.

  Once my heart slows down, I see that Ajax is actually not like Percy. He’s the same breed, a black Lab, but he’s older, with a touch of gray around his muzzle. And his temperament is nothing like the friendly Percy’s.

  “Must be pretty near ready to lift that fella out,” the guy says.

  I turn back. “What do you mean?”

  “The fossil fella down in the coulee.” The truck driver removes the cigarette from his mouth and spits in the dust. “They been working on it long enough. I been following the blog that kid keeps. They ready to move it soon?”

  “I guess so,” I say. For some reason, I am reluctant to give him details.

  “What d’you reckon it is?”

  “A dinosaur,” I say.

  “Maybe so,” the guy says. “Word in town is that them bone guys have found a smart dinosaur, maybe even an alien or some such. They’re keeping quiet about it, but when word gets out, it’s gonna change everything. Something like that’d be worth a buck or two.” He rubs his thumb and fingers together in the sign for money.

  I stare at the man. “It’s an alien,” I say. “His spaceship’s parked down by the mall in town.”

  For a moment, the guy stares at me, his jaw hanging open. Then he laughs. “That’s funny.” He lets the clutch out and the truck jumps forward. I close my eyes and wrap my arm over my nose and mouth as the dust swirls around me. When it clears, I continue my miserable walk. That’s two people now who have told me that Dr. Bob’s dinosaur is special—smart or an alien or both.

  “Where’s Annabel?” Of course that has to be the first thing my Mom asks when I walk through the kitchen door.

  “She stayed down at the dig,” I say as casually as I can.

  Mom looks up from the counter where she’s rolling out dough. “Everything okay between you two?” She’s always had this incredible radar about relationships. The only couple it didn’t work with was her and Dad.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Everything’s fine,” I say, reaching for a warm scone on the tray on the table.

  “Just one,” Mom says. “They’re a new recipe. Whole wheat, blackberry and ricotta. I don’t want you spoiling your appetite for supper.”

  “What’s for supper?” I mumble through a mouthful of scone.

  “Mac and cheese.”

  “Mac and cheese?” This doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that’s cooked at the commune.

  “Yeah,” Mom says, “with basil, broccoli and Gruyère cheese.”

  “Oh,” I say. That sounds more like it. In the days with Mom, I’ve learned more about weird food than I ever thought possible. I’ve also promised myself not to ask what something is, because it always leads to a long explanation of why it’s healthy. Not that I’m against food that’s good for you, but I am going to be craving a burger by the time I go home.

  “The scones will go well with it, and there’s nettle salad.”

  “Nettle salad?”
I ask, forgetting my promise.

  “Don’t worry—they don’t sting once they’re cooked. They taste like spinach. Very rich in vitamins A and C and in iron, potassium and manganese.”

  “I can’t wait,” I say to interrupt the flow of information. “Who’s the creepy guy in the red pickup? He was driving around the field as I was coming up from the dig.”

  Mom grimaces. “That’s Darren. He leases the field from us.”

  “But there’s nothing growing there,” I say.

  “Last spring, Darren was full of all these ideas for growing genetically modified crops and getting rich. We pointed out the clause in the lease that said he could only use organic farming methods on our land and GMOs didn’t fit the bill. He complained, but there was nothing he could do. He never got around to doing anything with the land—spends too much time with his no-good friends in the hotel bar. Still, it won’t do the soil any harm to sit fallow for a season.”

  “He seemed interested in the dinosaur bones,” I say. “Thought they belonged to an alien.”

  “Darren’s a couple of nickels short of a dollar, if you ask me.” Mom brushes the flour off her hands, comes around the counter and envelopes me in a hug. “I’m so glad you came to visit,” she says when she lets me go. “I’ve missed you. I thought it would be years before I saw you again. Are you settling in okay?”

  “I am. School’s weird. They’re strict, and we have to wear uniforms and stuff, but everybody is nice.”

  “Keeping your grades up?”

  “I am,” I say with a smile. “You know me—solid B student.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Mom says. “As soon as you find something that interests you.” She walks back to the sink and begins washing the baking tools. “I’m so glad you brought Annabel with you. She’s a lovely girl, and that makes you a lucky boy.”

  “I have to go,” I say, standing up. The last thing I want is for Mom to ask too many questions. “I promised I’d email a couple of friends about the dig.”