by Linda Jacobs
“We’re having a swarm of quakes.”
Her heartbeat accelerated. “That’s the last thing I need right now.”
“Me, too. If it weren’t going on, I’d drive down to see Stanton. Buy you a beer.”
“I could use one.” Her mind raced. “We need the GPS data.” Satellite receivers planted in over fifty park locations triangulated their position so that the smallest elevation change was detectable.
“I ran some numbers today,” Wyatt said. “The caldera is on the rise.”
Usually a spate of increased activity in the park piqued her interest. Tonight, it just seemed an additional, overwhelming burden.
“It’s always up and down,” she bargained.
“Six inches since last week?”
“Impossible.” Between 1923 and 1984, the caldera had risen a mere three feet. Then, accompanied by thousands of tremors, it dropped eight inches by 1995; it has since started again to rise. “We’ve never recorded movement this rapid.”
“Mount St. Helens rose a meter a day. Right before it erupted.”
Kyle folded down onto the floor next to the phone. The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, the worst in the human history of the United States, might have taken the country by surprise but not the men and women who studied volcanoes. They had known the deadly potential coiled beneath the smoking crater. Miles of forest turned to ash-deep wasteland, millions of trees mowed down like toothpicks, the Toutle River a rampaging flood that swept away bridges and everything else in its path … not to mention fifty-seven people dead or missing.
“Kyle?”
“I’m here.”
“I wonder if you might bring some portable seismographs up tomorrow.”
She couldn’t leave Stanton … but even as she formed the thought, she knew the danger from an awakening Yellowstone could spell disaster for so many that her problems didn’t amount to anything in the balance.
“I can be there by afternoon.”
“Good. Meet me at Earthquake Lake Visitor Center on the Madison slide.”
Kyle gasped and put a hand onto the cool floor tile. She had never been to the Earthquake Lake Visitor Center, a few miles from where Rock Creek Campground had been. The idea of people putting a scene of death and devastation on a vacation agenda turned her stomach, not to mention her personal reluctance to stir up ghosts.
“We ought to check for renewed activity west of the park,” Wyatt said.
After a second of silence, “You there, Kyle?”
He’d been a friend for years, but on policy, she never told anybody.
“Can I let you know in the morning? I’ve … got some things to work out.”
Climbing the stairs toward bed, her thoughts roiled. She had succumbed to her uncanny fascination with the Yellowstone region several times in her life. First, when she was an undergraduate and attended geology field camp south of the park; next when she came to Utah for her Ph.D.; lastly upon coming to work at the Institute. Yet, she tended to watch from arm’s length due to a lesson learned when she got too close.
During her first year at Utah, she had joined a student fieldtrip to Hebgen Lake. Twenty-three years old, with a B.S. and M.S. in geology from the University of Arizona, she figured it was a good time to put the past behind her.
All went well as the group loaded onto vans in Salt Lake and caravanned north. Pizza, beer and field stories carried her through to bed, but at 4 AM, she awakened in her sleeping bag on the floor of an overcrowded West Yellowstone motel room. Slick with nightmare sweat, she fought off her covers. The room’s black ceiling lowered like the sky when dust had blotted out moon and stars seventeen years ago.
Breathe, she ordered. Her tight chest barely responded. She should never have let herself be peer-pressured into sleeping in the dark. Reaching by her side, she switched on a flashlight beneath her covers.
It didn’t calm her racing heart.
Dragging the sleeping bag into the john, she closed the door and turned on the light. Stark green-blue eyes like her father’s stared back from the mirrored medicine cabinet, her dark brows startled wings. “Jesus,” she muttered, running a hand through her disheveled hair, while she tried to tell herself she was being ridiculous.
It didn’t work. With shaking hands, she spread the bedding in the tub and spent the rest of the night in the garish reflection off white tile.
In the morning, Stanton approached. “Kyle? One of the guys thought you might be sick.”
She kept her gaze on the wheel stops in the motel parking lot. “Maybe a stomach virus. Since we’re staying here again tonight, would it be okay if I crashed today?”
He let her stay behind, but something in her quavering voice or averted eyes must have tipped him. The day they got back to school, Stanton asked Kyle into his office and closed the door. Wordlessly, he passed across a newspaper account of the Hebgen Lake catastrophe. The list of victims included Rachel and Daniel Stone.
It hurt somehow that there was no mention of Max.
“Are you sure you want to study earthquakes?” Stanton asked.
“There’s no better place for me,” Kyle’s younger self had told him. As much as she loathed her memories, it was in and near Yellowstone that she might find the key to warn others.
Seeming to understand her inability to discuss the past, Stanton had set the matter aside.
Still going to bed with her light on after so many years, Kyle thought how Franny had accepted her grandchild’s fears, making sure her room had an extra lamp and a backup nightlight. Moreover, as there were things in Franny’s life that she had refused to discuss with Kyle, she had never pressed for details about that awful night. Perhaps Franny had not wanted to know too much about how her only daughter died.
Celebrities might go to shrinks; might even think it fashionable, but Kyle had never gone for counseling. Her reading told her psychologists forced you to relive bad experiences, to go through them relentlessly until you were too worn down to get excited.
Kyle preferred her method, erecting a wall and putting disaster behind it.
Yet, she felt sure that if Stanton knew what Wyatt had told her, he’d want everything checked out, including the area near the defunct Rock Creek Campground. And there was no gracious way of refusing without attracting attention. Wyatt might start probing for answers she wasn’t prepared to give.
No, it was clear that with Stanton out of commission and Hollis gunning for her funding, Kyle had no choice. She must face the danger gathering beneath Yellowstone.
CHAPTER FOUR
SEPTEMBER 13
The next afternoon, Kyle drove the Institute van along the Hebgen Lake shore. The fifteen-mile length of dammed reservoir ran east-west, a few miles outside Yellowstone’s western boundary. Looking out over the gray expanse, she questioned the shreds of what she regarded as her sanity.
With a jerk of the wheel, she pulled into an overlook.
This was ridiculous. A single peek behind her wall and the bogeyman was still there.
Deep breaths of the crisp fall air, in and out until she calmed.
There was some time before she was supposed to meet Wyatt, so she opened the door and stepped out with a crunch of gravel beneath her boots. A sign indicated a walk down to the lake would take her to the site of summer homes flooded during the 1959 earthquake. Determined to treat this like any other fieldtrip, she reached behind the seat for her Canon and brought along a field notebook and pen.
As she looked around, she realized Dad had stopped the Rambler here on the drive west to Madison Canyon. That August day had been a bright gem, the lake shimmering beneath a faultless sky. Today was cold and cloudy bright with a sprinkling of snow capping the trees on Coffin Mountain to the southwest.
Kyle set out on a narrow footpath through waist-high brush. Evidently, based on the poorly marked trail, not many people cared about the ancient ruins anymore.
After a few hundred feet of steep incline, she came to a weathered log cabin without windo
ws or doors. Going down to the shore, she photographed a house that had sunk to its roofline when the bank collapsed and dropped twenty feet. Waves lapped at fragments of green tarpaper where the shingles had weathered away. Had the place been empty that August night, its owners blessedly away? Not likely during the high season for vacation and fishing.
Kyle imagined being shaken awake and kicking open the jammed door, leaping a crevice that had opened in the earth, while her house fell away behind her into turbulent waters.
Taking no pictures or notes, she stared at the wreck before retreating on foot back to the road.
A few miles farther, the lake narrowed into a neck, where a seven-hundred-foot-long, ninety-foot-high wall of earth held back the reservoir. In the twelve hours after the initial shock, the lake had sloshed back and forth like water in a bathtub, sending three-foot surges over the dam’s crest at least four times. Kyle photographed the sign that proclaimed: THE DAM THAT HELD, an impressive feat since the construction dated back to 1915.
The highway began to wind downhill beside the un-impounded river. At her next stop, a twenty-foot scarp followed the trace of the Hebgen Fault. Although softened by years, the earthen wall was still an impressive monument to the upheaval. A vision of her father on the high side of a similar scarp sent a shaft of pain through her.
Farther on, the Madison began to widen into Earthquake Lake, the remnants of the flood. Kyle closed her eyes and rode another wave of anguish as she imagined a black wall of water rushing toward Rock Creek Campground.
For several weeks after the quake, the Madison had been dammed completely. Although the Army Corps of Engineers cut a channel that permitted the river to renew its flow, the slide had flattened the configuration of the valley floor. Even now, drowned trees stood with their tops sticking out of the water.
Along the shore, the original highway remained as violently tilted pavement blocks. The rebuilt route lay higher on the hillside, the new construction smoother and straighter than the road Kyle had watched from the Rambler’s rear window.
Seven miles downriver, she came to the edge of the massive slide. The shock wave ahead of eighty million tons of falling mountain had created the hurricane force wind that swept into Rock Creek Campground.
Her mouth went dry and she gripped the wheel. Thankfully, what remained of the campsite was on the opposite side of Earthquake Lake. She drove past and began the winding climb up and over the massive treeless mound. In a few minutes, she caught sight of the round building of the visitor center perched like a flying saucer on the north rim of the valley.
Kyle parked and got out. From this high vantage point, the impact of what had happened took shape.
On the afternoon when she and her father had fished for trout, Sheep Mountain had formed the south wall of Madison Canyon, a pristine north-facing slope covered in dense forest.
Until the magnitude 7.5 quake tore it in half.
At over one hundred miles per hour, trees, earth, and solid rock had shot over a thousand feet down the canyon and up more than four hundred on the opposite side of a river thrown from its bed by the shock. The great scoop-shaped scar loomed above the visitor center.
Faced with the awesome sight, Kyle’s nerves frayed like a worn rope. She tried more deep breaths of the crisp fall air and saw the emotion on her face reflected when an approaching father drew a child closer and gave her a wide berth on the sidewalk.
In Rock Creek Campground, she had seen terror in her father’s gaze across the widening crevasse. Only now did she understand what he must have seen behind her.
When the landslide had crashed into the Madison River, it sent a thirty-foot wall of water racing upstream, breaking and toppling trees in its path. Before Kyle could turn away from her father’s stricken gaze toward the sound, a colossal force caught the Rambler. Shoved sideways across the clearing with her inside, the car broadsided against a pine. A great thud on the roof was another tree falling.
An ominous rush surrounded the station wagon and she leaped onto the open tailgate. Bark scraped her palms as she found a foothold on a branch and blindly dragged herself up. Below, the black tide rose almost as swiftly as she scrambled ahead of it. Higher in the tree, the limbs grew smaller and the trunk whipped back and forth.
A terrible roaring increased, as though mountains ground together.
If Dad would come, he’d swim her to safety, like when she jumped off the diving board. Mom would be waiting, ready to dry her with a thick towel and ruffle her hair.
Kyle strained to make out the Rambler in the gray shadows. The picnic table and her parents’ tent were gone … beneath this rising flood.
“Daddy!” she shrieked. “Mommy!”
Darkness and the shuddering earth mocked her.
Wyatt pulled his Park Service Bronco in at the Earthquake Lake Visitor Center. As always, the wound that had not yet begun to heal struck him. On both sides of the channel dug through the slide by the Corps, bare rock and earth lay dissected by great ravines. Only at the edges had reforestation begun, revealing small patches of what looked like Christmas trees.
Kyle sat on a bench with her back to him wearing well-fitting jeans and a red down vest over a plaid flannel shirt. Her hair was braided at the back of her head; turquoise and silver dangled from her earlobes. As he approached, she did not turn but seemed absorbed in looking toward the ruined site of Rock Creek Campground.
Wyatt came up behind her. “What hell it must have been for those poor bastards caught down there.”
Kyle started.
She turned on him, red-eyed, and he realized with a small shock that she was crying.
“Sorry I scared you.” Shoving his hands into his pockets, he turned away. But though he studied the vista, he saw her face superimposed on the pale sky. Usually strikingly attractive, with prominent cheekbones, a high-bridged nose and clean line of jaw, today her features had twisted into a mask of tragedy. Awkward moments passed, while he wondered whether to say something or just give her time. The decision made through default, he leaned against a nearby rail and waited.
Finally, she said in an almost normal voice, “Let’s put out some equipment.”
With the sense he’d somehow failed her, Wyatt led the way back to their parked vehicles.
Together, they drove in caravan down over the huge landslide and turned south on Highway 287. The Old Madison Valley Fault parallel to the road was not believed to be as active as the Hebgen Lake and Red Canyon Faults farther east, but they wanted to check that theory.
Coming to a dirt road, Wyatt signaled a turn. In the Bronco’s rearview mirror, he saw Kyle follow him. Forest punctuated by patches of golden meadow unfolded on either side as they drove deeper into the wilderness. It was difficult to believe desolation lay just on the north side of the ridge.
When Kyle signaled him with a tap of her horn, he pulled up beside a thick pine.
Getting out, he agreed, “This looks like a good spot.” The scarp of another small fault ran along the right side of the track.
He got out one of the portable seismographs. In contrast to the older models that had weighed an unwieldy amount, the newer technology had created lightweight sensors of only a few pounds. Inside the metal casing was a pendulum that would remain steady while the rest of the instrument moved with the earth.
Kyle pointed out a relatively flat area a little distance from the road. Wyatt lifted the seismograph and carried it to the chosen spot. After digging a hole to ground the instrument and insulate it from wind or vehicle noise, they opened the solar panels that would power the battery for the detached drive.
“We’re going to need extra help to gather all this data,” Wyatt said.
“After I chair the Monday Consortium meeting, I’ll get Xi Hong to take my seminar so I can come back.”
“I can count on Helen Chou.”
Kyle plugged in her laptop and ran through some tests to be sure the seismograph functioned. As they prepared to leave, Wyatt patted the unit. “
I hope we don’t need you, little fella.”
“I’ll have a stout,” Wyatt told the waitress, anticipating the rich, molasses-tasting brew. He and Kyle shared a booth in the Red Wolf Saloon in West Yellowstone, Montana. The small town located ten miles south of Hebgen Lake served as the western gateway community on the park boundary.
“Light beer,” Kyle added. Beneath the glow of a brass mine lamp, she traced the scars of myriad initials carved into the wooden table.
Wyatt watched the movement of her long, expressive fingers. Since leaving Utah, he’d missed their working late and adjourning for a brew … although they’d never been in quite this situation before, alone in the field and sitting in an intimate booth that would have been perfect had they been lovers. Tonight, she’d let her hair free from her habitual braid and let it flow in shining waves over her shoulders. It made her look younger and in his mind erased that she was somewhat older than he.
When the waitress brought their drinks, he raised a toast. “To Stanton.”
Kyle clanked her mug against his and took a long swallow.
“And to you getting the bucks for Yellowstone,” he finished.
They each drank again.
“I’d rather be lucky than smart at this Consortium.” Kyle drummed the tabletop. “I found out that even before Stanton collapsed, Hollis Delbert has been circling like a vulture.”
Wyatt raised an inquiring brow.
“Asked Stanton to put him in charge”—she mimed quotation marks in the air—”when he retired.”
“Like Stanton was ever going to quit.” Wyatt grimaced. “I’ve never liked that SOB Delbert.”
Kyle flashed a grin. “You’re just hacked off because he gave you a B in Tectonophysics.”
Wyatt laughed.
She pushed back a stray lock of hair and her oval face settled into serious lines. “What worries me is that Hollis is planning a frontal attack at the Consortium.”
“You mean his Salt Lake project deserves all the money because nobody lives in Yellowstone?”
She nodded. “You know, if Rockefeller hadn’t gotten the Grand Teton National Park started, there’d be a city like Denver or Salt Lake in Jackson Hole … folks driving to office buildings, trying to see the mountains through a smog inversion. Yellowstone would probably have ended up in Disney’s hands.”