by Anne Valente
I talked to Dad this morning, she finally says.
Billie looks up. And what did he have to say?
He’ll be out racing this way next week. Outside of Denver. He offered to stop through St. Louis to pick up Mom’s ring.
You told him it’s there?
I also told him Tim’s brother would take care of it.
Billie takes another drink of coffee and stares out the window.
You’re going to have to talk to him at some point, Rhiannon says. She expects Billie to say something smart, but Billie just looks at her.
I know, she says.
Look at you. Have sex once and you’re cool as a cucumber.
Billie smiles. Fuck you.
Dad asked about you, Rhiannon says and stops short of telling Billie what else their father said. Love you girls.
Billie slices the waffle, her plastic knife carving a line into the Styrofoam plate. Sorry I slept so late. We can get on the road as soon as I finish this heaping plate of sugar.
You’ll hike it off, Rhiannon says and looks at the mountains beyond the window. Fly fishing blares on the television above them. No more news. No more wildfires, no more planes, what Rhiannon hopes stays at bay but knows won’t hold. What the newscasters said: an unfortunate fluke, nothing more than a series of terrible coincidences. All of it bullshit. Rhiannon drops the last of her tea in the breakfast room’s trash.
THE TWO-LANE HIGHWAY winds from Cortez toward Utah with far less fanfare than the major interstates Rhiannon and her father crossed between racing competitions. She remembers state signs stretched like rainbows across six lanes. Welcome centers. Rest stops and bathrooms and free maps. But here on Highway 491 is a beacon no bigger than a speed-limit sign: WELCOME TO UTAH, LIFE ELEVATED. The panoramic wall of the Rockies receding in the rearview mirror. Billie’s chosen the soundtrack, a loop of the Grateful Dead’s greatest hits, what Rhiannon knows is one of their father’s favorite bands though she says nothing as they drive into southern Utah’s crimson lunarscape. Red-rocked mesas, layers of age Rhiannon can see from the car. The planet’s history marked in the gradations of sediment, strata their mother could read in the scalloped sweep of desert land. Rhiannon glances up at the bright blue, no more smoke and no spitting gray rain, this sky unblocked by trees and the small-town steeples of Illinois churches. More cars clog the road as they turn north toward Moab on Highway 191, packed full of families traveling to Arches and Canyonlands. No matter the wildfires and the drought.
We may need to camp tonight, Rhiannon says. I’ve heard Moab is small. If there are only a few motels, they may all be booked.
That’s fine. I got my hotel fix last night.
Rhiannon nods. I bet you did.
Billie smacks her arm as they pass signs for Hole in the Rock, what Rhiannon can see beyond the passenger-side window is a tourist trap. An old house built into the base of a plateau littered with cars and outdoor tables full of cheap souvenirs. Dinosaur bones. Ants trapped in amber. Broken-open geodes. Similar to the roadside attractions Billie sought on their trip to the Ozarks when they were kids. The world’s largest nylon ball of twine near Branson. The world’s largest fork in Springfield. The two-lane highway’s traffic backs up as they roll into Moab, three blocks of storefronts and old bars and a line of campgrounds and cheap motels. A Rodeway Inn boasts a chain-linked outdoor pool painted blue and ringed in plastic palm trees. Signs announce Jeep tours and canyoneering and ziplines. Rhiannon sees the kaleidoscopes of blinking neon as they travel down the main strip: NO VACANCY. Every single motel room booked. She pulls into the dirt lot of a campground just past the northern edge of town.
Moab Valley Campground, Billie says. Our home for the next twenty-four hours.
Assuming they have space.
Looks like they have cabins.
Look at the traffic, Billie. This is high season. Camping will be cheaper.
I told you I was fine with camping.
Rhiannon leaves Billie in the car and enters the campground’s front office, nightly rates posted on the wall behind check-in. Tent, no hookups: thirty dollars. Deluxe cabins, the only availability beyond pitching their tent: one hundred and thirty. Rhiannon sets a twenty and a ten on the counter and pulls the Mustang through the circuit of mud-caked roads until they find their campsite, an unassuming patch of dirt.
We should set up the tent now, Rhiannon says. Who knows how long this hike will take, and it’ll be even busier here later on when we get back.
Fine with me. Just so long as we eat something soon. I’m starving.
Late night of activity? Extra exercise?
Billie rolls her eyes. Give it a fucking rest.
She helps Rhiannon pitch the tent, the stakes sliding easily into the desert’s silt, a consistency that to Rhiannon feels almost like the sand of a beach. Utah once an inland sea: Rhiannon knows this not from her mother’s research but from racing. The Salt Flats to the north. An evaporated sea west of Salt Lake City, almost to the border of Nevada. A swath of public land Rhiannon has only seen in pictures, gleaming-white fields of salt. One of the country’s premier land-speed record sites where racers have gone to set down history, the landscape’s utter flatness a track for breaking records. Rhiannon knows the highest land-speed record for a woman: 512 miles per hour. For a woman. Words Rhiannon heard far more than she ever wanted. She imagines her hands guiding a stock car across the rough grain of the Salt Flats as she drives the tent’s metal stake into the dust-strewn ground.
What do you want for lunch? she shouts to Billie, obscured by the tent’s domed nylon, staking the other side.
Whatever, Billie shouts back, her voice muffled. Something quick on the way out to the coordinates.
Do you know where the site is? I just mapped us to Moab, nothing else.
Do you have service here? If not, we’ll need to find a lunch place with internet.
Rhiannon pulls her phone from her back pocket, two cell bars poking up in the screen’s left corner. I have service, she says. Want to map us to the coordinate? I can finish staking the tent.
Billie emerges from the other side and Rhiannon hands her the cell phone and Billie pulls the journal from her bag.
North, she says. Just ten miles up.
The signs back there said Arches and Canyonlands are up that way too. You think the site is in one of the parks? I can bring cash for the entrance fee.
Billie shakes her head. This coordinate is mapping somewhere right between the two parks.
Rhiannon stands and rubs the dirt from her jeans and feels the sun baking the back of her neck. Let’s get going. Whatever you want to eat on the way is fine with me.
Billie smiles. Fast food?
Fine. There probably isn’t much else. Let’s go before it gets too hot to hike.
AFTER A BRIEF stop at Taco Bell, Rhiannon motors the Mustang north up Highway 191 where they pass the Colorado River and the Arches entrance, a line of cars jammed behind the entry booth and snaking up a plateau of switchbacks into the park.
Jesus Christ, Billie says. High season is right.
I’m glad this coordinate isn’t in either of the parks. If it was, we might’ve needed to go early tomorrow morning instead to beat the crowds.
The highway flattens out beyond the Arches entrance into sweeping desert plains on the right of the car, tall buttes on the left that block the sun. The map on Rhiannon’s cell phone leads them straight up the highway toward the coordinate, a location she isn’t sure they’ll be able to clearly spot from the road. The Mustang passes a dinosaur museum on the left, a T. rex standing in the building’s yard. So similar to the same statue in Forest Park, holding the secret of their mother’s wedding ring. Rhiannon steadies the Mustang along Highway 191 until Billie tells her to slow down, their turn approaching. A near-invisible turnoff if not for a small sign: MILL CANYON DINOSAUR TRAIL.
I fucking knew it was a hike, Billie says.
Like that was hard to guess. We’re in the nation’s capital of hikin
g.
I’m not complaining. But you’d think Mom would surprise us.
Surprise? God, Billie. We’ve been to Carlsbad, to Cañon City. She planned a whole fucking scavenger hunt. This trip has been nothing but a surprise. You want to know what surprises me? Someone who just got out of prison being so unimpressed.
The Mustang approaches a gravel parking lot, no other vehicles anywhere, every other tourist exploring the national parks. The sun high in the sky, midafternoon. Beyond the windshield, two staked signs. MILL CANYON. DINO TRAIL. Both with arrows pointing right.
Is this the coordinate? Rhiannon asks.
Billie nods to where the signs point. A little farther up that way. Between the two, I’m guessing the Dino Trail is what we want.
Billie grabs her daypack and a water bottle refilled at the campground to fend off the sky’s hanging heat. Rhiannon sees no visitor center, the trail far smaller than the neighboring national parks. Utah more desolate, the land cracked open. Rhiannon approaches the trailhead and pulls a pamphlet from a single staked box.
Are there tracks in that brochure that we’re supposed to find? Billie shouts, already ahead of her on the trail. That’s what the drawing was. Little dinosaur feet.
Rhiannon glances at the pamphlet. Mill Canyon a former floodplain of silt and sandstone. Jurassic fossils embedded in every rock, a riverbed burying the bones of drowned animals. Allosaurus. Camptosaurus, a sketch on the leaflet that to Rhiannon looks like a brontosaurus. And right beside it: a stegosaurus. Telltale spiked plates.
Stegosaurus tracks, Rhiannon shouts back. That has to be it.
She follows Billie along the trail and regrets forgetting to pack a hat. A lone St. Louis Cardinals cap buried somewhere in her childhood bedroom, central Illinois loyalties on the dividing line between Chicago and St. Louis. Billie trudges ahead of her, sweat Rhiannon can see beading at the base of her shaved hairline. The sun sinks west toward the adjacent plateau and Rhiannon wishes they’d set out just an hour or two later, late enough for the rock to cast a shadow across the trail. Billie is silent, the only sound the scuff of their hiking shoes against dirt. Rhiannon wonders how much more silent it was when their mother was here: if she came in high season or if she came in the desolation of January, the only sound high winds sweeping west and her work boots crunching against snow and ice.
Billie stops short ahead of her. Well, that wasn’t long.
What?
I thought we’d be out here for hours. Billie points to a small sign. DINOSAUR BONES TRAIL. The trail’s length indicated in small lettering: only one hundred fifty feet long.
I thought we’d be hiking more, Billie says. But the coordinate points just ahead.
It’s hot as fuck. I’m fine with a quick hike.
This isn’t a hike. This is shorter than a walk to the mailbox.
Rhiannon follows Billie along the short trail, the creek bed nothing but silt beneath her feet. Grains of sand bounce into her hiking shoes, small pebbles she can feel beneath her socks. Billie crosses the creek bed and Rhiannon trails behind her until Billie stops at a short wall of bulbous sandstone marked by another sign.
What does it say?
That this is an outdoor museum of paleontology, Billie says. That there are no guardrails or fences. That it’s up to us to keep the fossils intact.
Where are they?
Billie plants her hands on her hips and scans the panorama of rock.
There, she says. Clear as fucking day.
Billie points at a trail of small tracks indented in the sediment that at first glance look nothing like footprints. Thin grooves carved out by water. Recesses in the rock. When Rhiannon moves closer she sees the shape of digits and talons.
Which ones belong to the stegosaurus?
Billie points to a set of prints high on the rock. Those.
How do you know?
I’ve spent enough time looking at them in books.
Billie leans closer to the rock, her hand nearly touching the trail of tracks. This is the coordinate, she says. Do you see anything? Do you see a box?
Rhiannon scans the ground surrounding the short plateau of sandstone, the afternoon’s sharp light crowding her vision. She kicks her hiking shoes through the silt and wisped prairie grass. She hears the tin-pulse of liquid and metal, Billie pulling her water bottle from the daypack to drink. Billie hands Rhiannon the aluminum canister and she takes a sip, her head tilted back. When her eyes realign on the landscape she spots a small gray plastic box bedded down against the wall of sandstone in the shade.
There, she says. She points and Billie crouches down and grabs it.
That wasn’t hard to find, Billie says. It’s the only thing out here that isn’t the color of sand.
Rhiannon finds a short ledge and pulls the sweat-damp pamphlet from her back pocket. These tracks the result of so many dinosaurs drowned at once in a former riverbed, similar to what she knows of the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry: a predator trap of bones fossilized in sandstone, a floodplain that became mud that caught so many dinosaurs at once. And here, according to the pamphlet, the exact same kind of rock. Billie fiddles with the box’s plastic latch and Rhiannon wonders if their mother began studying Jurassic traps here, if this was the first of what became her career’s focus at Cleveland-Lloyd. If she took trips downstate across the course of her career to compare bones, to see what differed between northern stegosaurus bones and southern digs or if this was simply a stopover at some point in her life. Billie opens the small box and drags out a card-size drawing of the dinosaur tracks, the same as the sketch in the journal. She hands it to Rhiannon and keeps searching and Rhiannon wants to know what’s inside as much as she doesn’t. The feather in Carlsbad. A blade that pierced Billie, this box containing the possibility of another knife. But when Billie pulls out what’s hidden in the box and holds it out in her hand, Rhiannon sees nothing in the object. No meaning at all.
A laser pointer, Billie says. A fucking laser pointer?
Rhiannon takes the black wand from Billie’s palm. How do you even know what this is? she says. It looks like a pen to me.
Don’t you remember these from college? Professors used these all the time to highlight information on PowerPoint slides.
I wasn’t in as many college classes as you were.
Well, I remember these from biology lectures. But I have no clue why she’d leave one of these out here for us.
Rhiannon holds the pointer up to the late-afternoon sunlight. Maybe something about the University of Illinois? Maybe something about her teaching?
What about her teaching? Did you ever sit in on one of her classes?
Just one. Sometime in high school, though I don’t remember what it was about.
I sat in on one during college. Billie wipes away a line of sweat gathering on her forehead. It was an introductory paleontology class. She had a slideshow showing the students what tools to use for digs. I don’t remember a laser pointer at all.
Rhiannon bounces the pointer in her palms, testing its mass. Lightweight. She has no idea what this object is supposed to mean.
Well, we have a short walk back and all afternoon to figure this out, she says.
What, you don’t want to sit here and enjoy this heat wave?
Not a chance. Come on.
Rhiannon moves away from the wall of sandstone, the tracks and layers of rock receding behind her. Her mouth dry. Her skin flushed with the heat of the high desert. Her impatience beginning to flare, with their mother and with this newest detour and with the inscrutability of these hidden items. She starts to walk back to the car, Billie still behind her with the plastic box in her hands.
WHEN THE SUN begins to set after they’ve returned to the campground and taken quick showers, Rhiannon drives them down the main strip into the heart of Moab’s three-block downtown.
Hungry yet? Rhiannon asks.
Billie sits in the passenger seat with a knee pulled to her chest. Still burning off two Taco Bell burritos, she says. Ho
w about a drink first?
The few drinks Rhiannon’s had with Billie since they left Illinois have already surpassed anything she and Beth ever drank across the last months of their relationship. Beth’s kitchen: no liquor cabinet. No rack of wine bottles. No six-packs stored in the fridge. Beth drank only bourbon on the rocks, and even then, only intermittently at best. Rhiannon realizes across four years of living together and across so many years on the road with her father and their team that sometimes resulted in nights out after races but more often in only early nights at cheap motels to get back on the highway before sunrise, she hasn’t been to many bars at all as an adult, a woman nearing the age of thirty-six.
She parallel-parks along the sidewalk in front of a pizzeria and a closed bookshop. The sun sets directly down the street, sharding light against the row of storefront windows. Billie walks beside her along the sidewalk above a narrow creek, a shock of water that surprises Rhiannon in the middle of the desert. The creek winds past Woody’s Tavern, a stand-alone bar with darkened windows, a neon sign blinking OPEN above the entrance. Rhiannon glances at Billie. Her sister nods and pulls the door open.
Four pool tables line the floor just past the entrance door. An empty stage, unlit. A single couple sits in the back near the restrooms. Billie takes a seat at the bar beside two plastic baskets of popcorn, what Rhiannon assumes are free to all paying customers. She sits beside Billie, thick stools sidled up to a wooden bar scratched heavily with names. The graffiti of past patrons. Initials knifed inside hearts. Billie checks the taps behind the bar and orders a Uinta, what the bartender says is local out of Salt Lake City. Rhiannon asks for the same, the bartender a middle-aged man with dark hair and a goatee. He walks away and fills two mugs and Rhiannon glances at the two televisions behind the bar. No news. Only an NBA playoff game, the orange beacon of a basketball shuttling across a court. The bartender returns with their beers and Billie slides hers against Rhiannon’s in cheers.
This tastes weird, Billie says.
Three-two beer. Lower alcohol content.
Billie grabs a handful of popcorn. Three-two? What the fuck does that mean?