The Desert Sky Before Us
Page 22
Billie nods to the fifth drawing: the only one without dinosaurs, nothing but a sea of illustrated blue water. Flood, I’m guessing?
Exactly right. Angela’s hand slides to the upper-right corner. This last theory suggests that a widespread flood drowned these dinosaurs and deposited them all here.
Does the geology support that? Billie asks. What kind of flood might have happened during the Jurassic period?
It’s hard to say, Angela says. But it’s a good question. I mean, look at all these different theories. We’re talking about a total flood or else a total drought. Opposites. But the Jurassic period was such a large span of time. Sixty-five million years. Angela glances up and nods out the small window of her trailer. Look outside, she says. Look how much our weather has changed in just the past few years.
Billie peeks at Rhiannon whose gaze has drifted beyond the trailer to the scorched span of desert all around them. Changing weather. Rhiannon surely thinking about the planes, the wildfire that kept them overnight in Cortez. Billie doesn’t know what to think, this landscape as fascinating as anything she’s read about in any library book, but she wants to know about their mother. Why she was here. Why she’s led her daughters here beyond the guise of a funeral.
What do you believe? Billie asks.
I don’t really know. The bones are so dispersed that none of them really indicate anything unifying. Vertical orientation indicates mud bog, that they were trapped upright. Some fossils have been found that way, while others have been found horizontal, which supports a theory of water flow. Still others are oriented completely randomly, which could indicate poisoning or drought. I work in paleontology for the University of Utah. Marcus is one of my research students right now. Neither of us knows what to believe. Have you girls been up to Salt Lake City yet?
Rhiannon shakes her head. We drove up from the south.
Part of my work at the university is contributing to the Cleveland-Lloyd exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Utah there. Kids and their parents can cast their vote on which theory they believe.
What’s the winning vote? Rhiannon asks.
Angela smiles. If you’d believe it, all five are split pretty much evenly.
Billie looks up. What did our mother believe?
We’re dealing with so much time here, Angela says. Sixty-five million years. Your mother never said it outright, but I think she entertained the possibility that multiple events might have happened across the entire era these dinosaurs would have been alive.
You mean she thought several disasters happened? At different times?
Angela sets down the posterboard. I don’t know. She never said definitively. I think she wanted to stick to her corner. Stegosaurs. She knew I was studying the mystery.
Then what was she studying, if not the mystery? Billie says. Why was she here?
Angela looks at her. I’m sure you know your mother studied vascularization. Blood vessels in the plates. What they were for.
Rhiannon nods. She said they were intended to attract mates.
Blushing for attraction, Angela says. That’s true. But here, she was also studying vascularization as temperature control, and as a potential detector of environmental changes. She thought the plates might have served all three functions. And here, beyond the thrill of finding an intact skeleton at the Small Quarry, she had the chance to study vascularization for attraction, temperature control, and climate detection, all in a place that might have contained so many different environmental possibilities.
Mass drought, Rhiannon says. The ranger at the Small Quarry told us it might be what caused the stegosaur’s extinction.
It’s a possibility here, too, Angela says. That’s what first led your mother here.
So she was studying Jurassic climate, too, Rhiannon says and Billie watches her connect a scattering of dots by the expression on her face.
Angela nods. Your mother thought there might be several environmental catastrophes across so much Jurassic time. So in a way, yes. She was studying Jurassic climate, too, through the plates themselves. She was looking into how stegosaur plates detected their environment over time, especially if there were multiple events.
Billie sits back, the mug of tea finally beginning to cool in her hands. A land of multiple catastrophes. Rhiannon sits in silence and the wind picks up and scatters dust against the trailer’s small window. The planet’s monsoons and tornadoes. So many planes. An earth the news speculates might be on the brink of another mass disaster. Billie tries to imagine her mother here reenvisioning what this land was even so many millions of years ago. A land of puzzles. A land she believed carried several disasters in the layers of its sediment. A land pocked by loss, what swirls in the atmosphere of every corner of the world around them, and what has drawn Billie and Rhiannon back here for a funeral.
WHEN THE SUN begins to set across the valley below the quarry, casting the surrounding mesas in layers of lavender, Billie pulls the tent from the Mustang’s trunk as Marcus emerges from the visitor center and locks the door behind him for the night.
What’s that you got there? Marcus calls. A two-person tent?
Billie smiles. It’s worked fine for us the past few nights.
Didn’t Dr. Wallace tell you we have a trailer for you?
Rhiannon emerges from the backseat with their two paper grocery bags in her arms. We don’t mind camping. We were expecting it.
Yeah, but we’ve been expecting you too.
Marcus tucks the visitor center’s keys in his pocket and takes the two bags from Rhiannon’s arms. In the fading light, Billie can see her sister’s face stiffen. How uncomfortable it makes her to take help from anyone. How impossible it was to even picture her letting their father organize her pit crew on the raceway. Marcus motions for Billie to put the tent back in the trunk and she grabs only their suitcases and follows him down the trail behind the visitor center.
Next to Dr. Wallace’s trailer sit four other small trailers, what Billie assumed this afternoon were the living quarters of other researchers. Marcus leads them to the front door of a trailer at the edge of all five. He pulls another set of keys from his pocket and hands them to Rhiannon.
This one is yours, he says. For as many nights as you want to stay. We have another paleontologist from the University of Utah, Dr. Torres, who usually stays here. He’s back in Salt Lake City this summer with his family. The trailers are pretty sparse, but better than camping. The desert can get cold at night, especially at elevation.
Thanks, Rhiannon says. Which trailer is yours?
I’m right next door. Dr. Wallace, right next door to that, which you already know.
And the other two trailers?
Usually BLM workers, though neither of them are occupied right now.
Billie glances at Marcus. Do you know much about why we’re here?
Dr. Wallace told me. I haven’t seen your mother since last summer, but I know why she planned for you to be here.
Do you know when the funeral will be? Rhiannon says. We forgot to ask Dr. Wallace this afternoon.
I really don’t know. Marcus sets the grocery bags on the metal steps leading up to the trailer’s door. All I know is that she’s planning to grill for all of us tonight.
Is she in her trailer right now? Billie asks.
I’m guessing so. There aren’t a lot of hiding places out here. Anyway, I’ll let you unpack and get situated. I’ll be next door if you need anything. Just come out whenever you’re ready and we can make dinner.
Inside, the trailer looks near exact to Dr. Wallace’s living quarters. Small makeshift kitchen. Fold-down table. A narrow bathroom with a spray-handle shower. A tiny bedroom in back with a double bed shoved in, both edges lining the walls.
Looks like we’re sleeping together tonight, Billie says from the bedroom as Rhiannon unloads the groceries into the overhead cabinets and dorm-size refrigerator.
I don’t think we’ve slept in the same bed since I was in junior high. That time
you watched Carrie at Nicole Sizemore’s house and you were too scared to sleep alone. I think you were only in fifth grade.
Billie emerges from the bedroom. How do you even remember that?
Rhiannon looks at her. I remember everything.
Billie sits on a fold-down bench beside the kitchen cabinets and doesn’t want to ask but asks anyway. Rhee, are you doing all right?
Rhiannon sets a can of baked beans down on the counter. It’s just a lot, she says. All of these people who knew Mom.
I know.
First the woman at the Small Quarry. And now Dr. Wallace. And even Marcus—they all knew her. They all knew her in a way it seems we never did.
I never even knew about all those theories. Mom never said a word.
Rhiannon sits down on the bench beside Billie. I keep trying to remember that she was our mother. Not a colleague. That maybe she wanted to be a parent first. That she never wanted to bore us with her work.
Billie motions out the trailer window across from them, the sun’s last light thinning across the mesa line. How is this boring? How the fuck is any of this boring?
We were kids. We were kids who became adults. It probably never even occurred to her to tell us about any of this.
But she brought me here. She brought me here once.
Rhiannon sighs. To make you want something. Not to let you know anything at all about her work. Did she tell you anything? About predators or bone plates or five different theories of why so many fucking dinosaurs disappeared in the same place?
We knew she studied plates. I feel like that’s all we ever knew.
Now we know she studied climate, too. Climate sixty-five million years ago. And she was clearly aware of how the weather is changing now.
You think there’s a connection.
I don’t know. I’m tired, Billie. Not just from driving. I’m so fucking tired.
Billie leans against the wall and feels a weight descend on her shoulders. She tries to imagine how Rhiannon feels driving both of them across so many states in so many days only to experience another funeral, all over again.
How many days are we here? Billie asks.
We have to be back a week from now. It’ll take three days to drive back. If we go nowhere else, we can stay here until Wednesday. If we even want to.
We made good time.
We made good time, assuming we’re not headed anywhere else but here. Did you look? The journal. Did you look ahead at the coordinates?
I told you I wouldn’t do that. I promised.
I mean the next page. Did you check to see if we’re going anywhere else?
I don’t want to know right now. But doesn’t this seem like everything? Where the hell else could we go?
I don’t know. But five days here is a long fucking time. We could go back early. Though we don’t even know when this supposed funeral will be.
Billie stands. I can go ask Dr. Wallace. I may as well right now, so we don’t have to talk about it at dinner. Would you let me do that? You look like hell, Rhee.
Thanks. Rhiannon grins. That’s nice of you to say.
Billie opens the trailer door and lets herself out before Rhiannon can say no.
WHEN BILLIE REACHES Dr. Wallace’s trailer, the front door is already open. Angela sits inside at the fold-down kitchen table beneath a weak lamp, notes scattered before her, the table’s surface a converted desk. The sunset’s ghost lingers in the sky through the window behind her and Billie feels a faint catch in the cage of her chest. How wide open the desert is. How easy it is to forget that a week ago she was still locked inside a barbed-wire prison yard in the flatlands of the Midwest. She knocks softly on the open door and Angela looks up and motions her in.
I didn’t mean to disturb you, Billie says.
Not at all. Just finishing up some field notes before we start dinner. You hungry? And did Marcus show you your trailer?
Billie nods. Thanks so much for hosting us.
It’s no trouble at all. We have room, and you both are special guests.
Billie climbs the steps. That’s what I came to talk to you about.
Angela stacks the papers before her and waves Billie toward the fold-down chair on the other side of the table.
Billie sits. The funeral. We forgot to ask you about it this afternoon.
What do you want to know?
When will it be? And what can you tell me about it? We don’t know anything other than that this is a second funeral. So I could attend.
Angela smiles. That’s the story, right?
You mean there’s another one?
I don’t really know. All I mean is that your mother was full of surprises, always. That seems evident by this trip she planned, and this journal she gave to both of you.
Did you really not know about any of that?
No idea. She didn’t mention any of it to me. All she told me was that she needed help setting up a funeral out here. Only logistics. She knew I’d take care of it.
Any idea who left these boxes for us everywhere else, including here?
Not a clue. But I can tell you, your mother had friends and colleagues everywhere. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to find someone at each site to hide something for you.
Billie hesitates. What do you mean, my mother was full of surprises?
I mean she was full of life. Maybe that’s a better word. She had a joy about her. To seek and explore. That’s what I mean. This is a funeral, but it’s also a road trip, right? This seems an extension of that. She wanted you to have some fun.
Despite a funeral being the end result, Billie says.
Angela reaches her hand across the table. A woman Billie barely knows. A welcome unfamiliarity. So few people have touched her in the past six years.
The funeral will be tomorrow, Angela says. Nothing extravagant. A simple ceremony. Small. It’s not like there are many people out here. We’ll close the visitor center for the day. We’ll scatter ashes across the valley like your mother wanted.
Whose ashes?
It’s just silt. Sedimentary rock from the dig site where your mother spent most of her life. Maybe remnants of a fossil or two. Nothing special, but special enough that it might hold some meaning for you and your family.
But why? Why spread anything at all if it isn’t real?
Angela’s grip tightens. So you can say goodbye.
Billie avoids Angela’s eyes. Says nothing of watching her mother walk away from Decatur’s visiting room for the last time.
Do you have a family? Billie asks. I’m sorry. I hope that’s not too personal.
Angela laughs. I do have a family. My two kids are grown. My husband is back in Salt Lake and comes down on weekends when I’m here in the summer. He’s a lawyer. Practices environmental law. Utah is the place to do it.
Billie nods. Wants to ask more. Wants to shift the conversation away from herself.
Your mother told me about you, Angela says. I’m not trying to impose. But I think it matters to say goodbye in the right way. It sounds like your sister got to say goodbye. Your father. This is just another way of doing that. In a place that meant something to your mother.
We didn’t think to bring anything fancy. No dresses. I’m sorry we’re not prepared.
You won’t need anything but what you have.
Billie pulls back from the table. I should see if Rhiannon needs help unpacking before dinner.
Come out whenever you’re ready. We’ll have hot dogs and brats. And beer.
Billie turns and heads toward the door and when she’s almost on the front steps, the desert breeze picks up and blows through the frame and Angela calls behind her.
You were the falconer, weren’t you?
Billie stops in the doorway and turns around.
Angela smiles. It’s an interesting choice.
Billie looks at her. Are you a birder too?
I’m not. I wish I was. But you and your mother share that.
She studied dinosaurs.<
br />
She studied stegosaurs, right. But they’re ornithischians.
Billie knows the root word. Ornithology.
Bird-hipped joints, Angela says. Stegosaurs also had beaks. So much like birds, even though birds descended from lizard-hipped dinosaurs. A perfect inversion, you and your mother. Studying two sides of the same coin.
Billie nods. I’ll see you at dinner.
As she walks back toward the trailer where Rhiannon will be waiting, Billie looks up at a wide moon rising over the desert and her legs feel like they might collapse beneath her. This landscape her mother’s epicenter. Where she studied the age of giants that could never last. The age of Pangaea splitting off into separate continents, Billie remembers from elementary-school books, how something that large could break apart. An age of devastation and mass burial. And Angela’s words: birds a tie that bound Billie to her mother, even if the era when she practiced falconry was marked by a similar devastation. Shoves. Broken bones. Billie listens through the dusk for any kind of call at all. But there is nothing, no sound she recognizes, every hawk bedded down until dawn.
BALDWIN, CHARLES. PHD. JURASSIC ECOLOGY. CAMBRIDGE: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1992. XVII-XX. PRINT.
CALL NUMBER: QE320 .G9 1992
JURASSIC ENVIRONMENTS
The Jurassic period, spanning from the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous, was marked at its start by the supercontinent Pangaea splitting into two separate landmasses, Laurasia and Gondwana. This resulted in more coastlines and shores, and more lush greenery by trading aridity for humidity.
Dinosaurs dominated the land of the Jurassic period, and it was during this time that birds were introduced. Conifers, ferns, ginkgoes and cycads filled the junglelike landscape. Oceans were inhabited by fish and marine reptiles, and streams and rivers by turtles and crocodiles. Algae first appeared in the seas.
Because the climate was warm during the Jurassic period, no ice caps existed on either pole of the earth. Additionally, there is no evidence of glaciers. Volcanic activity was common along tectonic plates given the shifting movement of Pangaea, and warming temperatures created rising sea levels.