Bone Hunter

by Sarah Andrews

  “Oh. Well, that’s fine, Nina.” And, as if I were making conversation just to keep her company, I said, “Tell me more about George, then. What was he like when you met him?”

  “He had more hair on his head.” She giggled. “But still that lovely beard, so soft. He sat me on his knee and told me stories.”

  I knew I could not ask certain questions, like Where was that? “How nice,” I sighed. “What stories did he tell you?”

  Nina was warming to her narrative. “He told me about the different animals that lived on the earth before the Flood came. He told me about Allosaurus, and Camarasaurus, and Stegosaurus, and about how they lived by the rivers that flowed across the earth then, and about how they ate plants that were dif ferent from the ones that grow here now.”

  “How wonderful.”

  “Oh, yes … .”

  “And did he ever take you to see these animals?” I asked, letting my voice communicate the wonder all children feel around the marvelous, no matter how old those children may now be.

  Nina paused, and I knew she was considering what she could and could not say. Clearly, there were imponderably strong threads of secrecy stitched everywhere through her life. I imagined a polygamist subcult living far out from town, scratching out a living on its wits and slim resources, keeping itself hidden, keeping its secrets from the world. It would have to be a group that had something to hide, or at least felt an unusual need of privacy. Into this, George Dishey had stepped. Someone Brother Nephi knew. George had held Nephi’s trust; or, if my gut feelings about evangelists who swore their minions to secrecy were correct, the two found they had a lot in common and had simply struck an agreeable deal. Manna, indeed. What kind of business had George done with them, that he was willing to take a child in marriage to seal the deal? George, a master liar, a charmer who sat a little girl on his knee and told her stories of gigantic beasts that God had seen fit to punish by erasing them from the earth with a gigantic flood … . I had to fight not to shudder, for fear it would shake Nina from her reverie.

  In a little voice, Nina said, “I really shouldn’t tell you about the animals.”

  I tried another tack. “When did George marry you, Nina? Tell me about it, please. Was it wonderful? I’ve never been married.” We were back to girl talk, the evergreen stuff of bonding among females of all ages.

  “Four years ago today,” she said wistfully. “He told Brother Nephi that he must wait until I was of age.”

  Fourteen … “A real gentleman.” I winced over what the wise men of Utah considered the age of consent among females.

  “Yes. Brother Nephi said that was okay as long as he took me out to his camp with him right away.”

  My stomach lurched. George had waited until she was fourteen to marry her, following not the letter of the law but its spirit, but had taken her to his bed at ten? The image horrified me. This didn’t make sense. “I’m not sure I understand. You, uh …”

  Nina suddenly giggled. “Well, yes, he took me to his camp and gave me hot chocolate to drink and told me stories and taught me the names of the stars. I always liked those visits. It was like I was special.” Her voice fell into a whisper. “And he was so gentle. He said he wanted to wait until I was grown before he … you know …”

  I took a wild guess. “Consummated the marriage?”

  The bed jiggled up and down. Nina was nodding her head, tittering with excitement, and then suddenly she was crying again.

  I sat up and scooped her into my arms. “Oh my God, Nina, you don’t mean he had never made love to you, and you thought that now he was going to, and—and now he’s dead?”

  Nina’s head bobbed up and down underneath my chin. Her sobbing ripped into outright howls. I was now holding Nina the woman.

  “Oh no … Nina, is it your birthday?”

  “Y-y-yesterday!”

  “Holy shit!” I expostulated, then caught myself, apologized for my blasphemy, and said, “But wait, that’s why you showed up Sunday night? You were coming to be with George on your birthday?”

  In a tiny voice, she said, “Yes.”

  My mind started to implode. Struggling to fit the puzzle together, I said, “Did George know you were coming?”

  A pause. “No.”

  “No clue? Did he know it was your birthday?”

  “Well … well, he should have. I mean, I told him, last time I saw him, and …”

  “When was that, exactly?”

  “Well … a month ago, maybe?” Her voice sounded tight with impending humiliation.

  “But he didn’t say, ‘Come on up to my house’ then, or anything like that.” In consideration for her feelings, I quickly added, “Not like that exactly.”

  “No—because, well, you’d have to understand that it was just after the Punishment, and—”

  “The what?”

  “Well, I had sinned again, and I had been given my beating, and—”

  “Someone was beating you?” My mind ran wild. I thought, We’ll just see what Brother Raymond and the police department have to say to someone who’s beating you; that is, if I don’t get to the son of a bitch first! “Who’s beating you? Was it George, Nina?”

  “Oh no!” she hastened to assure me. “George would never do that! George was gentle with me, just like I never made mistakes.”

  “What kind of mistakes?”

  “Well, this time it was because I put the wrong flavor of preserves in Brother Nephi’s sandwich.”

  “Someone beat you for—”

  “Well, yes, of course. Brother Nephi is a Living Prophet, and he had to cleanse me of my errors so I could be worthy. But George was astonished at the bruises, you see, and he gave me a key to his house, and drew me the map of how to find his house, and said if they did it again, I should go there, and he’s my husband and—”

  “You mean you’d never been to his house before?”

  “No. Never,” Nina said, as in Scout’s honor.

  “But you came across that yard as if—”

  “Oh, I know!” she said proudly. “And me never in a city before and everything! But that’s because George drew such a good map. And because he taught me so well. And oh, Em, finding the city was strange and marvelous, just like George said it would be. I always thought there’d be plagues and monsters past where the road gets hard, but no. I just stood by the road and prayed, and angels stopped their trucks and cars and brought me here. George always said, ‘Nina, you are a good map reader, the best. You can find anywhere just by reading a map. You’re my very best finder.’”

  “And what did he have you finding, Nina?”

  “Well … bones. You know, like Allosaurus, and Stegosaurus …”

  My jaw went slack. I almost flopped back against the pillows, but fought to keep my body and voice under control. “Did you dig for bones with him, too, Nina?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said proudly. “We all did. That’s what we traded for the manna! You know, like the dried fruit that will survive the millennium, and the canned meats. And the thing is, Brother Nephi said that picking up the bones rids our lands of all those creatures Heavenly Father wanted to punish, and the Gentiles paid George money for it! Can you imagine? But of course, I needed to be punished, too, so—”

  “But Nina,” I gasped, trying to grab a rein on this conversation, “who was beating you?”

  “Brother Nephi, but of course, I’m supposed to take my punishment and accept God’s revelations through them. You see, it was for my own good, but George said it was nearly time that he should be giving me my revelations, and, well …” Her voice trailed off, losing its way in a blur of soft syllables.

  “Is Brother Nephi your pastor?”

  “Oh, no. He’s my prophet. And my father.”

  As she said “father,” Nina went oddly limp, and as I felt her slackening posture, I thought dully that I had heard about this response, that a child accustomed to abuse would sometimes flop like a doll when it began to happen again, for the fifteenth o
r the hundredth time, and might do it even when only remembering the trauma. It was a protective thing, I had been told, as if the soul took flight from the body for just a little while, until the torture again ended. I was talking to a survivor of scenes I could not imagine, of people beating her tiny body without remorse, working out horrors of their own at her expense, telling her all the while that it was for her own good.

  I began to sway slightly in the bed, rocking Nina with me, holding her in my arms like the child she was. My heart grew outward to envelop her, wishing protection and love upon her. I wanted to say something comforting, like Oh, Nina, I’m so sorry, but feared that naming the abuse just then might be too shattering, feared she’d have to run from me to keep it locked up in the box it had come packaged in, a box labeled “Punishment,” a huge dark compartment of the weird, drama-spiced world in which she had somehow managed to grow up.

  17

  MORNING CAME SOFT AND WARM TO SALT LAKE CITY. AVA knocked on my door at 5:30, but I was already up, still awake from my conversation with Nina, although she now snored softly in her own bed. Having already more or less bathed during the night, I had only to dress and find my way downstairs. I pulled on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and my beat-up running shoes, drew a rather disreputable old jacket with polar fleece lining out of one of my bags, and checked its pocket for the little equipment kit I always keep there. Today was a field day. Geologists like to be comfortable when they are outdoors, and prepared. The kit held several things I’d found useful over the years: a tiny first-aid kit containing iodine, Band-Aids, a pair of fingernail clippers, a sheet of moleskin to treat blisters, and a bulb to suck out snake venom; a Mylar space blanket in case I ever had to bivouac in the cold or rain; a waterproof vial full of strike-anywhere matches; and a small metal signal mirror.

  Ray appeared in the kitchen when I was about halfway through munching down a bowl of cereal. For the past few hours, he had been asleep in one of the vacant bedrooms upstairs, having apparently decided, after being called out for the swimming pool fracas, that he would get more sleep there than by going home again. He was barefoot, and I marked down one more check on the positive side of his list: His feet were beautiful. Some folks may find it strange that I should even notice a man’s feet, but I do. Most people’s feet are utilitarian sorts of things, rather homely in their proportions, often flat or somehow awkward-looking. Ray’s were like something out of Greek sculpture. He was blessed with perfectly formed feet, his arches high, his toes graded from large to small along a graceful curve. I could imagine them flexing as he ran and jumped and caught balls in all the sports he must have played, a symphony of motion. Above these marvels of human engineering, he wore another pair of his pristine blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt that read simply BYU. The curve of its collar exposed perhaps a millimeter more of his neck than I’d seen before. I sighed.

  “Sleep okay?” he asked, striding soundlessly across the kitchen to the refrigerator.

  “Sure. You?”

  “Fine.” He poured himself a glass of orange juice and drank it, standing there with the refrigerator door still open, the glass in one hand and the carton in the other, one long draft. He refilled the glass, stowed the carton, and closed the door, then came to the kitchen table and sat across from me, his eyes on the glass. “I don’t suppose you’d not go today if I asked you?” It was a question, a plea.

  “No. I see no reason not to go.” I shrugged. “With luck, Nina will be asleep all day. What else is there for me to do around here?”

  Ray took in a breath and let it out. “Stay safe.”

  “I’ll be with fifty or more paleontologists on a big lazy bus. How much trouble can I get into there?”

  Ray rubbed his face with his hands. “One of them might have killed George.”

  “Maybe. Let’s say that’s one hypothesis. I’ve been collecting data that says Dan Sherbrooke had it in for him, or perhaps Vance the grad student. But at the same time, their worst provocation was professional jealousy, which is seldom enough to move one man to kill another. Scientists aren’t as passionless as they look in the movies, but then again, we pride ourselves on being logical, and murder is not that.”

  Ray shook his head in agreement.

  “So who else do we have?” I said. “Who’s on the list of suspects?”

  Ray turned his face away.

  “You can’t tell me,” I-said. “Fine. So I’m still on the list. But let’s also say this about scientists: We are trained observers, and we are intelligent. Putting those two things together, and also considering the obvious fact that no witnesses observed the murder of George Dishey—”

  Ray looked at me sharply.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “That’s simple deduction. If you had a witness, you’d be looking for whomever that person saw, instead of harassing me and Nina. So we can say that whoever killed George had the intelligence and good sense to kill him without being observed. Correct so far?”

  Ray stretched and sighed.

  “Fine. So far, so good. Next, if you were willing or able to talk to me about these things, you would point out to me that whoever made those wounds across George’s chest was not feeling calm or rational when he did so. But we’ll set that aside for a moment. Now, also setting aside the fact that George was a very provocative man who was generally disliked and distrusted among his paleontological colleagues, do you have evidence that leads you to suspect anyone else in particular? I mean anyone who might be on this well-populated bus full of highly trained observers, none of whom would be so stupid as to kill anyone in front of any of the others?”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s your problem?”

  Ray stared a long while into his juice. At last, he said, “I’ve had a … what you’d probably call a premonition.”

  “Oh. You mean, like a message from God that says I should stay home.”

  For the first time that morning, Ray made eye contact. He smiled, one of those lopsided deals that bespeaks an irony. “Precisely.”

  I rocked my head back and stared at the ceiling. “Hoo boy. Here we go.” I wanted to say something insulting, like Did you get the winning lottery numbers while you were at it? but stopped myself in time. My church, I was quickly coming to see, was the faith I had in the physical world, the world of rational events that could be analyzed and comprehended. Because I did not believe in metaphysics, purported messages from God—a phenomenon I sure as hell had never experienced and could not observe in others—therefore had to come under an area I defensively labeled “irrational.” But getting angry about the irrational is more irrational yet, and I found myself once again counting to ten.

  Ray said, “Mother told me about you waking up just when Nina went into the pool. Think about it, Em: You didn’t wake up all the time she was moving about the room getting dressed and making the bed, but you must have come awake the instant she fell in, or she’d be dead now.”

  “Oh, so now you think I’m psychic. I woke up then because I’d had a nightmare; that was all—just dumb luck.” And then? Well, then I’d made a series of analyses, the kind geologists make, quick leaps of intuition. And intuition, I had come to know, was a talent for matching observation with previously observed circumstances. I had seen that a distraught girl had tidied her few effects and left the room, and had thought of suicide. That meant the pool. No, I had felt cold and thought pool, but the result was the same. So what if I had been right for the wrong reason.

  Ray’s eyes flashed. “Not psychic—connected.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He set down his glass and reached his hands across the table, palms up, a beckoning, an invitation. “You read The Refiner’s Fire. This is the alchemy he writes about. This is the magic!”

  Something in his look set off a nervous tension, a sort of vibration, just below my navel. I leaned back and put my spoon into my now-empty cereal bowl. For half a minute or so as my stomach danced its nervous jig, I indulged myself in loo
king into this man’s eyes, mapping them. I was transfixed by the light that seemed to shine from their bright mosaics of indigo blue specks. It was a frightening moment but also deeply gratifying, just the two of us meeting with our minds over the breakfast table, exchanging something of our hearts and souls. I wanted the moment to last, but knew it couldn’t. At any moment, Ava might find her way back into the room and come to hover, enforcing her marvelous son’s chastity. But for this moment, he was mine. My friend, however odd the circumstances of our meeting. My companion. What could I say to him that was not already communicated through our eyes? I knew that the moment I spoke, we would return to rational space, that place where my unbelieving mind must assert itself and burst this bubble of rapport, of understanding, of hope that he was right, that he spoke with God, and that God had known of my existence and taken time to pass along a warning of what was to come. I did not want to speak. I wanted life to exist continuously within a moment shared with this perfect man in this quiet kitchen.

  Ava bustled in, all practicality and perfunctory early-morning smiles, dressed in light teal green workout suit and white athletic shoes and socks. With the efficiency and high energy of a person who does not consider options, she had taken exercise while the morning was still fresh, keeping her splendid body functioning at maximum output for her age, gender, and genetic makeup for yet one more day. “Ah, Em,” she said brightly, “I see you’ve found the breakfast makings. Good. Did you get some juice? You’ll need it today, wherever you’re going. The air is very dry here in Utah.”

  “I’ll be sure to get some.”

  “I have a water bottle for you if you want it.”

  “Thanks, that would be great.”

  “When do you need to leave for the bus?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  “Ah. It’s time for our prayer, then.”

  Ray said, “Wait until we’re leaving, please, Mother. Em and I were just discussing if, in fact, she’s even going.”

  Our fleeting chunk of infinity completed, I said, “I am.”