by Anne Valente
Look, it was so lonely there, Billie says. It was so fucking lonely in Jacksonville. She sets her beer in the grass and keeps her eyes on the mountains’ silhouettes. I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. I just sat with it. Until he did what he did and I decided that I’d kill myself first before I let him do it for me.
She expects Rhiannon to speak, to scream something back, to tell her what she should have done with her loneliness. But her sister says nothing, sets down her beer and holds Billie’s hand in hers.
I’m so sorry, Billie.
Billie watches the dark of the mountains until they blur.
I wanted to die, Rhee. What he did made me want to die.
Maybe not. Maybe you knew burning down the library wouldn’t kill you.
What, you think it was a cry for help?
I didn’t say that. But maybe you knew you’d live. Maybe you knew someone would see you and drag you from the building. Maybe you knew it was a way out. That either way, what you did would put an end to your relationship.
Billie can’t speak. Can’t believe that what she’s held on to for over six years has fled her mouth. What she dreamed from a prison cell, how her tongue would ever form the words to say it.
I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Rhiannon says. I’m sorry you went to the library instead.
The library. Billie closes her eyes and sees nothing but a trail of flames ziplining across the carpet. Scattered books.
I wanted better, she says. I wanted so much better than that for myself.
It wasn’t your fault. Tell yourself that. Tell yourself again and again. None of what he did was your fault.
The barn owl has gone silent, the city lights below them a patchwork of grounded stars.
Tim’s brother, Rhiannon says. God, Billie. I shouldn’t have made you call him.
You didn’t. I offered.
If he calls back, I can handle it. It’s my phone. You don’t have to pick it up.
I’m fine, Rhee. It’s been six years.
We can figure out another way to find out what Mom left us in St. Louis.
I said it’s fine. Oscar was always nice. He probably never even knew his brother was such a piece of shit.
I know someone else who can help us if Tim’s brother can’t. I talked to Dad. Tonight. He said he’d drive through St. Louis for us.
You called him?
He called while you were at the bar.
I bet he was proud that his felon of a daughter was on the loose in Colorado.
I didn’t tell him. He only asked how you were doing.
I bet he did. What else did he say?
That he didn’t know anything about the journal. That he proposed to Mom near that lake by the Science Center when she was in grad school.
How did we never know that? Is that why she led us there?
Maybe.
Then what about the T. rex?
A coincidence. That’s what he said. I don’t know if I believe that. Anyway, he said he’d be on the road this coming week. Maybe through St. Louis. If so, he can find what we missed instead of Tim’s brother finding it.
I said it’s fine.
Rhiannon picks up her beer. I called Aunt Sue, too.
Jesus, Rhee. You made the fucking rounds.
She wanted to talk to you. I said you were sleeping.
Billie pulls out the locket, still wedged in the front pocket of her jeans. Did she say anything about this? Did she tell you why it was along a riverbed in Kansas?
Actually, she did. She says Mom was studying marine fossils her first year of grad school. Aunt Sue sent her the locket on her first travel dig.
Despite everything, her arm still aching, Billie feels her body lighten.
So there’s a reason the locket was there, she says. A reason that makes sense.
I don’t really know what it means. I don’t know why Mom wanted us to have the locket. But yeah, I guess it means there’s some reasoning to these coordinates.
And it means there’s something in St. Louis, too, that we didn’t find.
Maybe. Like I said, I can have Dad take a look.
I said I can handle it. I’m sure Oscar will call me back.
Rhiannon pours the remains of her beer in the grass. It’s getting late. We should get some sleep. Do you know how far the next coordinates are from here?
Not far. I’ll map the exact route in the morning.
Billie stands and Rhiannon stays seated, her gaze on Cañon City’s valley.
I’m glad you told me, Billie. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you sooner.
Billie nods. The sound of crickets filters through the darkness of the woods. She doesn’t know what to say so she reaches down and Rhiannon takes her hand and Billie pulls her up.
SUNLIGHT BILLOWS DOWN and warms the tent’s mesh and Billie awakens with the thick taste of cotton in her mouth. Too many drinks. On her left arm, a swath of blue green that looks like a small lake spilled across her tricep. Jesse’s fingers. A bruise that will surely stay for days. Rhiannon is nowhere in the tent, her sleeping bag already gone. Billie unzips the tent’s nylon flap and Rhiannon is sitting in the grass overlooking the ridge with her hands curled around a thermos.
Coffee? They had it for free at the check-in station.
How long have you been up?
Long enough to take a shower and get packed. Are you hungry?
Not really. We could just eat protein bars this morning.
Rhiannon fills the thermos cap with coffee and passes it back and Billie sits beside her sister, the grass dewed and wet against her bare feet. The mountains are clear in the distance behind a thin wall of summer haze, the valley below already crammed with cars circuiting the streets. A Tuesday morning. A workday filling the road with traffic. Billie has long forgotten the schedule of nine-to-fives.
I’m ready when you are. Rhiannon glances over at her. You okay?
Billie rubs her face. Just let me hop in the shower too.
By the time they pack the Mustang, the sun is already high in the western sky. Billie takes out the GPS and plugs in the set of coordinates from their mother’s journal.
The coordinates are just past town, she says. Sort of back the way we came.
And the drawing is a stegosaurus?
Yep. Hopefully this one will be more self-explanatory.
The GPS takes them north of Cañon City along a road dotted with signs for the Gold Belt National Scenic Byway, a paved throughway that turns to dirt-covered switchbacks the Mustang steadily climbs. The Rockies on all sides. Billie navigates while Rhiannon steers around the road’s turns, the car jumping on divots and rocks. Not once out on these roads has she revealed any slippage in her skill. Billie grips the door’s handle, the valley teetering beyond the edge of the guardrails, and navigates them six miles outside of Cañon City until they reach the coordinates’ destination: a single sign. The Garden Park Fossil Area.
Have you ever heard of this place? Rhiannon asks. She pulls the car into a sparse parking lot populated only by wooden signs pointing to different fossil sites.
Never, Billie says. Maybe Mom mentioned it, but I wouldn’t remember.
Looks like there are several quarries here. Any sense of the one we need to find?
The one with the stegosaurus, Billie says blankly. How many can there be?
Rhiannon parks the car in the shade of a juniper tree and squints across the parking lot. Visitor center over there, she says. We can ask inside.
Billie follows her toward the building, larger than the visitor center at Smoky Hill River but still unimpressive, a site clearly passed over by Colorado tourists. A woman in a brown uniform and ranger hat sits behind a lone desk inside the center.
You ladies need help?
I think we’re looking for a quarry, Rhiannon says as they approach the desk.
Well, this is the place. You know which one?
How many are there?
Six. Each one’s got a different story. Do you know which
story you’re looking for?
The one with the stegosaurus, Billie says. Unless that’s all of them.
Just one. The Small Quarry is the one you want.
Which way is that? Rhiannon asks. And is there anything we need to know about the Small Quarry before we go?
You’ll need sunscreen, the woman says. Not a lot of shade out there.
I mean history, Rhiannon says. I’m assuming we’ll find stegosaurus bones. But is there anything special about this particular quarry?
The woman pulls a pamphlet from a drawer and slides it across the desk.
Most of the information is back in town at the Dinosaur Depot, she says. Not the most official name, I know. But it’s the museum where tourists go.
Then who comes out here? Billie asks as she takes the pamphlet.
People who want to see the original sites. The actual quarries. Also hikers. Lots of good trails out here. Anyway, the Small Quarry is where one of only two complete stegosaurus skeletons has been found. The skull intact. Plates all in a line.
Plates? Billie asks.
Their mother’s specific area of study: surely what they’ve been brought here to find.
One of the only places in the world where the plates have been found in a full row, the woman says. Other quarries, they’ve been found scattered around the skeleton. If you want to see the site, take the first trail out the door to the right.
Thanks, Billie says and opens the pamphlet to the map of a trail that will take them a mile into the quarry’s hills. She heads toward the door and readies to fold the pamphlet into her pocket when Rhiannon takes it from her hands and runs her finger down its text, halting on the paragraph explaining the trail’s history.
June of 1992, Rhiannon says.
And? Billie says. Does that mean something to you?
No, but it’s recent. I thought these sites were all dug before Mom’s time. Nineteen ninety-two was well into her career. Do you think she was here?
I don’t know. We were around then. Don’t you think we’d remember?
We were kids. We didn’t know where the hell she went.
Excuse me, the woman calls behind them. Did you say your mother? What career?
Rhiannon turns around. Our mother studied stegosaurus bones.
What was her name?
Margaret Hurst. She worked for the University of Illinois geology department.
The woman’s face changes. Are you ladies her daughters?
Rhiannon says nothing and Billie steps in. We are.
Welcome to Colorado. And I’m so sorry for your loss.
Billie feels herself motionless. Did you know her?
Your mother’s a household name around here.
Billie watches the woman. Rhiannon has gone silent beside her.
The woman smiles. The Small Quarry is where the first stegosaur skeleton was found fully intact, she says. And your mother’s the one who discovered it.
GORDON, RICHARD. “URBANA HIGH SCHOOL GRAD TAKES SECOND PLACE IN NASCAR NATIONWIDE SERIES.” THE CHAMPAIGN-URBANA NEWS-GAZETTE. 21 AUGUST 2007: G1. PRINT.
Urbana High School Grad Takes Second Place in NASCAR Nationwide Series
In a close finish at the Talladega Superspeedway, local driver Rhiannon Hurst took second place in the NASCAR Nationwide Series’ championship race after racer Chase Derrington pulled ahead by a .01 margin. Derrington took the first-place trophy, while Hurst took home a second-place win.
“I was close,” Hurst said in a postrace interview. “But not quite close enough.”
Hurst, a graduate of Urbana High School, has made a name for herself in NASCAR as she ascends the ranks of the Nationwide Series. Having once driven in local and regional races, she has had a breakout year on the Nationwide circuit by placing tenth, fifth, fourth, and now second in the series’ races.
Hurst is the only currently active female driver in NASCAR.
Her father, Jim Hurst, a retired NASCAR driver and former resident of Champaign-Urbana, now serves as his daughter’s pit crew manager. “It’s an extremely respectable finish,” he said. “Rhiannon’s primed for debuting in the Sprint Cup Series. Just wait until next year.”
38.4419° N, 105.2209° W:
Cañon City, CO
Rhiannon wants to feel relief that this woman knew their mother, that she and Billie have an answer before they hike a trail to find the meaning of a scrawled coordinate. Their mother one of the first to find a full stegosaurus skeleton, a star in the field of paleontology. She wants to feel relief but there is nothing, the woman’s words bouncing hollow through her brain.
Household name.
A term her father once used for her on the racing circuit.
Climbing the ranks of every NASCAR race from tenth place to fourth to grandstand finishes. Standing on the platform in third place and then second, pushing her way toward her inaugural first-place win that became wins that became sweeps. So much easier than what Wendell Scott endured, his photo still taped to her childhood bedroom wall. Easier than what Billie has revealed, what Tim did to her, what she silently withstood in Jacksonville. Still, how many times interviewers asked who she was dating, whether she wanted kids, if a stock car was harder to control for a woman’s small hands. Shirtless fans yelling cunt from the stands during pit stops. All of it unwanted fuel to prove she could do it. You’re gonna be a household name, Rhee, her father said as they drove across Indiana and Oklahoma and Texas, a term her mother echoed in anticipation of everything their daughter would become.
And now this park ranger’s voice makes it clear: their mother’s reputation. What Rhiannon could’ve guessed but her mother never directly said. That she’d been famous in her field. That she surely wanted this for her daughters. Billie’s visit to the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry some hope that the desert would infuse one daughter with some sense of drive, the other already making a name for herself before spiraling out across the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and leaving behind her helmet and her racing career before it truly started.
The heavy weight of expectation, of being a girl who does.
It blankets Rhiannon as the ranger stares at her and Billie.
Why is it called the Small Quarry? Billy is saying.
Bryan Small, the woman says. One of your mother’s assistants. He’s the one who stumbled on the stegosaurus skeleton first. Being who she is, your mother let him take the name recognition for the discovery.
Being who she is, Rhiannon thinks, not knowing at all what this woman means. If her mother was someone different out here than who she was in Illinois.
Were you here when she was here? Billie asks.
The woman laughs. I guess my face shows my age. I was here. Just starting out then, in conservation and forestry. I’ve met a lot of scientists out here. Your mother was always one of the nicest.
Rhiannon tries to smile. Any information should be welcome, any story to celebrate the memory of her mother, but this woman’s words are a swift needle. Was.
I was sorry to hear about her passing, the woman says. You ladies out here retracing her steps?
Rhiannon wishes the ranger would stop calling them ladies. A household name, she wants to say. I could’ve been a household name. We’re making our way out to Utah, she says instead and pulls Billie toward the visitor center’s door. This is on the way.
Definitely stop in on your way back, the woman calls after them. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about the quarry or your mother’s work.
Rhiannon smiles thinly and Billie follows her out the door toward the trail and Rhiannon paces ahead and Billie walks quickly to keep up, the sun beating down across the treeless hills.
What was that all about? Billie says, catching her breath at an overlook along the trail. And Jesus Christ. Slow the fuck down.
Rhiannon stops and looks across the valley. Nothing tall on the horizon, only sagebrush that reaches her waist. The Rockies a jagged line in the distance, a paleness matched by the growing smog of the sky.
Hey, Billie says. Answer me. What the fuck was that all about?
It was about nothing, Billie. Nothing at all.
Oh, come on. That woman just wanted to help us.
Did she? By telling us how well she knew Mom?
It’s not a competition of who knew her best. It’s okay if that woman knows things we don’t know.
Did you know?
Know what?
About this skeleton she found, Rhiannon says. That Mom was so famous.
Billie pulls a water bottle from her daypack. No, I didn’t know.
You think that’s why she sent us here? So we would know she was a household name?
That phrase. Rhiannon can’t help the mocking tone that fills her voice and Billie stares at her, a realization sliding across her face.
So that’s it, Billie says.
Rhiannon watches the valley, its small cars and sunlit metal.
It pisses you off. That Mom was so well known and you’re not anymore.
Rhiannon wants to feel angry that Billie’s said it out loud, that she was never famous like their mother. The desert’s dust fills her lungs, so much grime and silt. She closes her eyes and a mass of black dots clusters at the edge of her vision and she is at once on her knees trying to swallow so much thin air. A twilight of fainting. A precursor she’s experienced only one other time in her life, out on the track after spinning out.
Jesus, Rhee. What?
Rhiannon wants to speak but can’t. She sets her hands on her thighs and keeps her eyes on the ground. Why this. Right now. Why not standing at the edge of her mother’s casket. Why only upon hearing something that elated her when her father said it and now only scalpels her chest, the words blading the breath from her lungs.
Drink this, Billie says, shoving her water bottle in Rhiannon’s face. It’s probably altitude. We’ve only been in Colorado a day. You haven’t had time to acclimate.
Rhiannon takes the bottle and the huddle of dots remains.
Put your head between your legs, she hears Billie say.
Rhiannon sits back in the dirt and lowers her head to her knees. She can’t remember the last time she was at this high an altitude, every business trip from Champaign heading east by plane. Where there were no mountains. No raceways. Only the smooth gleam of a textbook’s hardcover, only the glad-handing of shook deals and the listless transfer of business cards between palms.