by Anne Valente
Did the library fire ever make the news? Billie asks.
Rhiannon glances at her from the driver’s seat. What?
The fire at Illinois College. My fire. Did it make the local news?
Maybe in Jacksonville. Not in Champaign. We were two hours away.
Nothing happens in Jacksonville. I’m sure it was all over the local news for one day and that’s it.
Rhiannon lowers the radio’s volume. Does that matter to you?
I guess not.
Would you have wanted it to be on the news?
No. Billie hears the frustration in her voice. I’m just surprised by all this news coverage of weather and air disasters. The news only cares if something huge happens. If people lose their homes. If people die. I’m not saying that any suffering is worth more or less attention. But isn’t it strange that domestic violence never makes the news? Or nature? Nobody cares about a woman with a broken face. Or about a wildfire that’s killed millions of trees.
Rhiannon looks at her. The news doesn’t cover everything that’s important.
I don’t need you to say that. This is important. Billie gestures toward the radio. So many planes. The weather of a whole planet. I’d say that’s important.
So is never knowing that someone’s sister lived in an abusive situation for years.
How could I have told you?
Maybe you couldn’t have. But I wish you would have.
Billie watches another mile marker pass by.
Are you feeling better? Rhiannon asks.
I’m fine. My arm is fine.
That’s not what I mean. The hawk feather Mom left you. You were so upset.
Billie watches out the window. I can’t believe we’re almost there. I thought I was ready for this, but I don’t know if I am.
Rhiannon nods. I know.
You went to her funeral, Rhee. This isn’t even a real one. What could you possibly not be ready for?
This is different. You and I are together this time. And Billie, you’ve been here before. I’ve never seen this place. I’ve never seen this quarry that meant so much to her.
It’s not like I remember it that well.
But you’ve been here. The Small Quarry was hard enough. To see how much she was revered. I don’t know what it will be like to see the place where she actually spent most of her career.
Billie watches a line of mountains in the distance and says nothing and Rhiannon turns on a new playlist. Soul and blues. Sam Cooke and Etta James. Billie remembers flying into Salt Lake City and driving south through Provo and Spanish Fork along the length of a range she later learned was the Wasatch Mountains, the same mountains that approach out the window. She wonders if their father ever made the trip here. If she’s the only person in their family who’s seen the quarry. She watches the desert sweep past the passenger window and wonders if her mother felt more free out here, a landscape that let a woman roam beyond the closed-in tree lines of Illinois.
RHIANNON SUGGESTS STOPPING in Price, the last outpost with food and gas, before they make the final push to Cleveland-Lloyd. Two new grocery bags of precooked hot dogs and canned baked beans and apples and coffee sit in the backseat as Rhiannon steers the car up the gravel road leading to the quarry’s entrance, everything meant for making meals on the intermittent fire pits dotting the Bureau of Land Management.
Do we even have outdoor cookware? Billie asks.
Rhiannon nods, the car bouncing over the rocked road. I packed a small set. I hope camping is okay for one more night. There’s nothing else out here.
Is there a specified campground?
Not like in Moab. Out here, it’s just BLM land. More rustic, no showers. They’ll surely have a place where we can camp for the night.
Rhiannon winds the Mustang up the unpaved road until she reaches the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry’s visitor center, a small building Billie remembers from her trip in high school. How it surprised her that there was any building at all out here, the middle of nowhere. A wide vista of Utah’s central valley visible from this elevated height. The GPS beeps, their destination reached. Billie doesn’t know who’s expecting them and what she and Rhiannon should anticipate in return. Who from the Bureau of Land Management has organized this second funeral. Who knew their mother well enough to extend this favor to her two daughters.
Did Mom tell you anything about how this funeral would go? Billie asks.
Not really. She just said that when we arrived, they’d tell us what to do. Did she tell you anything?
No. She just gave me the journal.
That’s more than she gave me.
What about ashes? Mom was buried. What ashes are there to scatter way the fuck out here?
Goddammit, Billie. Rhiannon’s voice is sharp. I don’t know.
Billie feels all at once stupid that she asked. Rhiannon parks the car beside the visitor center and Billie follows her through the front doors. Inside, a mounted allosaurus stands directly in front of them: what their mother drew on the journal’s page. Panels line the walls explaining bone excavation and the makeup of the quarry’s terrain. In display cases around the center’s perimeter sit the enormous skulls of dinosaurs. Camarasaurus. Diplodocus. All herbivores orbiting the allosaurus, the quarry’s primary carnivore. Rhiannon drifts off to find a bathroom and Billie meanders around the railing that guards the allosaurus skeleton and makes her way to a display case that holds a single, large skull.
The stegosaurus. Billie wonders if her mother’s hands touched the smooth fossil behind the glass. Twenty-three feet long, Billie silently reads. One of only four stegosaur remnants found in the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry compared to forty-six allosaurs, the predator trap she remembers her mother explaining. She leans closer to the placard on the wall behind the stegosaurus’s display case: a paleontological puzzle, the sign says, no intact skeletons found anywhere on the grounds of the quarry. The mounted allosaurus a reconstructed anatomy, a sham of display that was never found this way. Billie wonders why their mother spent more time here instead of the Small Quarry where she found an entire stegosaurus skeleton, and here, only a scattered four. Billie knows there’s a plastic box somewhere and that if it were anywhere, it would be here by the stegosaurus skull. She looks to the ground. So much easier than Carlsbad. Just behind the display case lies a small gray box.
Rhiannon approaches from the bathroom. Is this the stegosaurus?
One of four. Billie crouches and picks up the box.
You found it already?
This is the only stegosaurus display in the entire visitor center. She hands the box to Rhiannon. You want to open it?
Rhiannon takes the box and pops open the plastic latch. Inside: a slip of paper, the same as every other box. A hand-drawn coordinate and the allosaurus drawing. Rhiannon pushes the paper aside and pulls out a single jigsaw puzzle piece. She holds it up to the light of the visitor center’s windows and Billie sees the vague outline of an illustrated dinosaur on the piece.
What the hell is this?
I bet I can guess, Billie says.
She takes the jigsaw piece from Rhiannon’s hands and holds it to the informational sign behind the stegosaurus’s display case. Paleontological puzzle. A literal match in their hands for the figurative mystery of how the bones were found.
Rhiannon looks at Billie. Is this a joke?
No. I think she means this place is literally a puzzle. Probably one she spent her entire career trying to solve.
What’s so puzzling about this place?
Billie points to the sign. This says seventy-five percent of the dinosaurs found here were carnivores. And that none of them were found intact.
You mean complete?
Not like the full skeleton Mom found at the Small Quarry.
Then why did she spend so much time here? If there aren’t even that many stegosauruses here? And if she found a full skeleton in Colorado?
Why would I know?
She gave the journal to you.
And th
at means I know something?
You’ve been here before. Do you remember Mom saying anything about what was so mysterious about this place?
It was so long ago, Rhee. I told you, I don’t remember much.
Rhiannon sighs. Come on. Let’s just ask someone where we need to go.
Billie slides the puzzle piece into her daypack and follows Rhiannon to the front desk where a park ranger sits behind the counter, a young man in a beige sunhat who looks like he’s still in high school.
Excuse me. Rhiannon approaches the desk. We were hoping you could help us.
The young man looks up, the brim of his hat low above his eyes.
This will sound weird, Rhiannon says, but we’re here as the daughters of Margaret Hurst. She was a researcher here. We’re here for her funeral.
Billie expects the young man to look confused, to pick up his desk phone and seek the advice of a supervisor, but his face changes.
You’re Dr. Hurst’s daughters? I’m very sorry for your loss. It was truly an honor to work with her.
Billie looks at him and feels a quick sting in her rib cage, what Rhiannon must have felt talking to the woman at the Small Quarry: that everyone in every park across America knew their mother, and that they all know more about her work and what these coordinates are telling them than either she or Rhiannon do.
Did you work with her? Rhiannon asks.
Just for the past few years. I’m still relatively new to the field.
Billie can’t stop herself from thinking it: relatively new. Embryonic. This boy seemingly at least fifteen years younger than her, surely still in college on some kind of prolonged summer internship. But he tells Rhiannon he’s a doctoral candidate in paleontology at the University of Utah and Billie’s stomach plunges as he stands and extends his hand to Rhiannon. A PhD student, the same as Tim was. And so fucking young. Billie lets him shake her hand and feels ancient standing at the desk.
My name’s Marcus, he says. Yours?
Rhiannon says her name and Billie mumbles hers.
Follow me, Marcus says and motions for them to follow him away from the counter. Billie wonders if it’s okay for him to leave the front desk even though there’s no one here, thirty miles from the nearest two-lane highway.
Marcus leads them through a door behind the desk and into a small back office with two computer-laden cubicles. One is empty, Marcus’s workstation. Only two employees. At the other desk sits an African American woman holding a turkey sandwich in her hands, the first woman of color they’ve met on their trip, Billie realizes. So few groups of women at each campsite, especially women of color. The American myth of the West a whitewashed landscape. Marcus coughs and the woman sets down the sandwich, a private moment Billie knows she and Rhiannon have disturbed.
Dr. Wallace, Marcus says. There are two people here excited to meet you.
Billie wonders if she’s ever heard this name before, if there’s any way she met her while visiting in high school. Billie’s brain draws nothing as the woman turns and instead of extending a handshake she drops her sandwich and envelops her and Rhiannon in the soft blanket of a hug.
INSIDE A TRAILER down a dirt path behind the visitor center, where Dr. Wallace tells Billie and Rhiannon she lives during summers of research, she makes them tea on a red-coiled hot plate despite the temperature outside nearing ninety degrees. The trailer is tiny, large enough for single living and nothing more. A one-person kitchenette, an airplane-size bathroom. A fold-down table where Billie and Rhiannon sit, a low door in the back that Billie assumes leads to a twin bed. The scent of cinnamon and cardamom drifts up from the mug in Billie’s hands. Dr. Wallace sits on a bench across from them, no tea, her elbows resting on her knees.
How much did your mother tell you about our work out here?
Not much, Rhiannon says. Only that she spent most of her career here.
I came here when I was in high school, Billie says. Were you here? I’m sorry, I was so young that I don’t remember.
I was here. Though honestly, I was probably out in the field so much that it’s no wonder you don’t recall.
Dr. Wallace, did our mother call you? Rhiannon asks. In the last few months? Did she set up this entire second funeral through you?
Call me Angela.
Angela, Rhiannon says. It seems like you knew our mother well.
Angela nods. Your mother called me three months before she died. I’m still sorry I couldn’t make it to Illinois for the funeral. She mentioned her plan for you girls. She set up this entire thing through me and the BLM.
You girls. Billie wants to be irritated but there is nothing. This woman’s voice a balm where the Small Quarry’s ranger wasn’t. Nothing like being called a lady.
Did you hide all the boxes, too? Billie asks.
Angela looks at her. Boxes?
The geocache boxes, Rhiannon says. Our mom created a kind of scavenger hunt for us, plot points of coordinates all across the West. We’ve been everywhere this week. She hid boxes for us at each location. Are you the one who helped her drop them off?
Angela sits back. I don’t know anything about that. I only helped her with coordinating this funeral here for you two. What kind of plot points are we talking about?
Places that meant something to her throughout her career, Rhiannon says. And throughout her life in general, I guess.
Angela smiles. So you went to Cañon City?
Rhiannon nods. The Small Quarry.
That place made her famous before she began focusing her studies here.
Billie wants to ask Angela about the jigsaw piece. The quarry’s paleontological puzzle. Why her mother spent so much time here when there were no intact skeletons anywhere in these excavations. But Rhiannon steps in before she can speak.
Do you study stegosauruses too?
Angela shakes her head. Your mother was my very best colleague in the field. But we didn’t study the same thing. I don’t study any particular dinosaur or bone at all. I’m out here piecing together the strangeness of this place.
Billie watches her. What do you mean?
Your mother never told you about it? The predator trap?
She told us, Rhiannon says. But not that there was any mystery to it.
Angela stands and disappears through the small doorframe to the bedroom at the back of the trailer and Billie wonders if Rhiannon has offended her. Billie sips from her mug, the tea still far too hot. Rhiannon stays silent. Angela returns with a posterboard split into a pentagon of five equal drawings, what looks like educational material for patrons to the quarry’s visitor center. She sits back down across from Billie and Rhiannon and holds the posterboard upright on her knee.
This place is the largest concentration of Jurassic bones in the entire world, Angela says. And even still, no one knows why so many are here in the same place.
Why are there no fully intact skeletons here? Billie says. We didn’t even know until this week that our mother discovered one in Cañon City. She never told us. We only knew that she came to this quarry. Why did she come here if there were no intact skeletons, and only a few stegosauruses?
Angela grins. So you’ve done your research on this place.
What’s the mystery? Billie pulls the jigsaw piece from her daypack. Our mother left this for us here. This was hidden inside the visitor center for us. What’s so mysterious about this place that she spent so much of her career here?
Angela doesn’t answer but points to the upper-left corner of the posterboard where, above a paragraph in print too fine for Billie to read, a cluster of sauropods stands in a pool of sinking mud.
There are five main theories for why so many Jurassic bones are here, she says, and why nearly all of them are predator bones. This first theory is the muddy bog. This one. The floodplain turned to mud, where herbivores like your mother’s stegosauruses got trapped in a mud field that became a feeding frenzy for allosaurs.
Is that what you believe? Rhiannon asks.
Let me go
through all these first, Angela says. She trails her finger down to the lower-left corner where a group of dinosaurs, both predators and herbivores, lie dead along the shore of a cartoon-blue river. Theory two, she says. A former riverbed. The possibility that these animals died elsewhere and washed up over time on the same sand bar and fossilized. That they were all eventually pushed downstream from other habitats.
Wouldn’t that make sense? Billie says. Wasn’t all of Utah once an inland sea? I thought the Great Salt Lake was a remnant of an ancient ocean.
Hold on, Angela says. She slides her finger to the central drawing in the pentagon of boxes: scattered dinosaurs lying lifeless on a sunbaked stretch of desert. The third theory is poisoning, she says. That all the dinosaurs here died together from a single contaminated waterhole, and not from any kind of predation.
She moves her hand to the lower-right drawing, a similar sketch but with living dinosaurs roaming the desert’s sand and dust, no carcasses in sight. A very similar theory, she says. Theory four speculates that the animals died not from poisoning but from drought. If the land was mostly desert, they’d have all been here seeking the same water source. It might account for why the bones have been found in so many different orientations and states. Instead of contamination, some might have died of thirst, others by attack from competition.
That sounds plausible, Rhiannon says.
But why no intact skeletons? Billie asks. Wouldn’t poisoning or drought still leave full skeletons for paleontologists to find?
Not necessarily, Angela says. Like I said, predation due to competition would have scattered the bones, especially if carcasses were discarded left and right. This wasn’t a mass extinction, like an asteroid or meteor. It was isolated to this area. Scavengers from other habitats could have come in and decimated the bones.