“To look at an example of an oozing volcano, we only have to go as far as Hawaii, to the Kilauea Volcano. Low pressure, thin-skinned. It’s been oozing for a very long time, and will continue to ooze for a much longer time. There’s not enough pressure for it to explode violently, so it just oozes magma a little at a time. The magma turns to lava, which hardens and makes the island a little bit larger.
“As for Yellowstone, we think it’s like a pimple which popped, but not all the way. We think there’s plenty of magma still there and that it’ll start building pressure again. In fact, it’s almost certainly started already.
“Like the half-cleaned pimple with sebum and bacteria left behind, it’ll reconstitute and form another pimple. The Yellowstone Caldera, with magma and pressure left behind, will start to build toward a second eruption.”
“When?”
“We don’t know. And we won’t until we take measurements of the magma field and the strength of the layers of rock which prevented it from fully erupting the first time. We hope it won’t blow again for many thousands of years. Or… it could happen again in our lifetimes. Only by studying it closely will we know.”
Julie thanked the professor and hung up the phone.
Suddenly she understood why Wayne felt such a strong need to go back.
Chapter 25
That wasn’t to say, though, that she was going to make it easy on him.
Julie knew her husband very well.
Not only was he as stubborn as an old mule, but he was proud of his hard-headedness.
He was still, after being in the geology game for over twenty years, very much fascinated by rocks and tectonic plates and volcanoes. They were more than his profession. They were his life’s work and his passion.
Julie quite honestly wondered if he loved his rocks and volcanoes more than he loved her.
“I understand now why you feel such a strong need to go back,” she finally told him over dinner at their favorite gasthaus that night.
“But I need for you to understand that I won’t be going with you.”
“Honey,” he started to complain, “Whatever the situation, it’s relieved enough pressure to render it safe for at least a few months. There’s no danger. No reason why you can’t come with me. We’ll be back here long before she starts to rumble again.”
She looked him directly in the eyes, obviously peeved and making him go back and rethink his words.
“Wayne Hamlin! When on earth have I ever been afraid of anything you’re involved in? When have I ever turned down a chance to go with you on your little excursions to Africa, or southern Italy, or to the Mediterranean?”
“Well, you’re not going this time.”
“And you think it’s because I’m afraid?”
“Isn’t it?”
She paused and thought for just a moment.
“Well actually, yes. I am afraid. But not for the reason you think I am.”
“There’s never been a volcano that frightened me, Wayne. I’ve stood with you on the lip of volcano craters all over the world and looked into them to see the magma boiling below. I never even winced, even when the heat drove us away and blistered our skin.
“I ignored the warnings of tour guides who refused to take us all the way to the craters, turning back halfway there and saying it was ready to blow at any time.
“I always took you at your word that it was safe. That the volcano would blow on another day and kill somebody else. But that it wasn’t our day to die.
“I guess I am afraid.
“But not of the volcano.
“I’m afraid that if you do this… if you go back to Yellowstone… that you’ll get so involved in your work you’ll find it hard to pull yourself away again.
“I’m afraid you’ll go there and you’ll take your measurements, gather your data. And then instead of coming back you’ll help other scientists gather their own data and take their own measurements. You’ll want to compare your data to theirs to make sure everything agrees, that your calculations are correct.
“I’m afraid that one month will turn into two, then to six. Then to a year.
“And that when the National Geologic Survey decides to build a monitoring station adjacent to that still-smoking hole in the ground you’ll volunteer to help monitor it.
“And that you’ll call me to say, ‘I’m sorry, honey. I couldn’t help myself. But hey, I only committed to help man the station for two years. You can get by without me for that long, can’t you?’”
He looked at his bratwurst but didn’t say a word.
She had him pegged.
He could argue the point, and say he’d never do that to her; that he’d go for exactly as long as he said he’d go, and then beat feet back to Germany.
Truth was, though, he couldn’t even trust himself.
He’d always been faithful to Julie. He’d never even looked at another woman.
When it came to his work, though, he’d betrayed her several times. Put the needs of his work over her needs.
Broken her trust.
They both knew damned well there was a better than even chance he’d go for a short stay and stay longer. He’d delay his return over and over again until he’d turn a six-week stay into six months.
Maybe even longer.
She knew him better than he knew himself; he couldn’t deny it.
After a couple of minutes of silence, she finally said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Wayne.”
Chapter 26
“I’ll let you take your trip back to Yellowstone,” Julie continued. “You said you want to go for six weeks, and I’ll give them to you.
“But I won’t be going with you. I won’t be trapped at a place I don’t care to be just because you can’t pull yourself away from it. You’ve done that to me too many times in the past and I’ve had enough.
“I’ll be staying here.
“And for those six weeks I’ll stay here and wait for you.
“If you come back after six weeks like you’re promising, things will be as they were the day you left.
“If you’re so much as one day late, though, I’ll not wait for you.
“I’m getting too old to put my own life and dreams on hold.”
“But honey… I thought your life and dreams were the same as mine. I thought we had the same goals and bucket list.”
She laughed. But it wasn’t a laugh borne of humor, for there was nothing humorous about this situation.
It was an ironic laugh.
“You should know better than that, Wayne Hamlin.
“I’ve been telling you for years about things I wanted to do before I died.
“You always said there would be plenty of time for that after we retired. But that date… that retirement… became a big pie in the sky event that we kept pushing forward in front of us.
“I’m tired of waiting, honey.
“I’ll give you your six weeks.
“But if you’re a day late you’re going to have to catch up with me.”
“Catch up with you? But where will you be?”
“I don’t know, honey. I might be skiing in the Alps. I might be backpacking across Europe with a bunch of college kids, living in hostels or sleeping on park benches.
“Hell, I might not even be in Europe anymore. I might be in Asia or on a safari in Africa. You’ll have to hunt me down. Are you willing to do that?”
Julie thought she knew everything there was to know about her husband.
Granted, she had a right to. And really, almost an obligation to. Since his parents died several years before, she knew him longer than anyone else on earth.
She knew his habits, his attributes, his flaws.
She knew his tendencies, his idiosyncrasies, his beliefs and his fears.
In ninety nine times out of a hundred she knew what he was going to say before he said it; what he was going to do before he did it.
She knew him that well.
One of the
most wonderful things about being human, though, is that we have the freedom and ability to change ourselves on a whim.
A lion can’t change himself just because he has a change of heart.
He can’t say to himself one day, “I don’t think I’m gonna chase down that gazelle and eat him after all. I think this is the day I give up meat and become a vegetarian. I’ll start eating in fine restaurants and order up green salads and veggie smoothies.
“Eating the salads won’t be easy for me, because I don’t have opposing thumbs. But if humans can hold a fork, then by God I will too. Because I’m a lion. And if I can be king of the jungle, I can sit in a fancy restaurant and eat a damned salad.
“And hey, while I’m at it, I can wear a suit and shoes and… well, maybe not shoes, because that would be stupid. But I can certainly wear a shirt and tie. I’ll just tell somebody to button and tie them for me and let out my mighty roar.
“Because after all, what good is being the king of the jungle if I can’t strike fear into someone’s heart and make them tie a damn tie for me?”
No, a lion can’t just decide one day to make dramatic life changes.
But a man can.
Wayne let Julie ramble on because although he was a slightly eccentric scientist and quirky college professor he was also the consummate gentleman.
Raised in the south he was taught to respect women, for women were not only inherently tougher, smarter and more talented than men as a whole, it was their job to bear children and therefore further the species.
It was his grandfather, an old Alabama minister, who taught Wayne early on that women are not only to be respected, but honored and revered as well.
So Wayne didn’t interrupt her. He knew it was important to Julie to get her feelings out. To let him know how she felt; the internal strife she was dealing with.
But now it was his turn.
And by taking his turn he could relieve her of much of that turmoil and strife.
“Julie, honey, I am indeed one of the world’s premier volcanologists. I could be modest and deny that’s so, but we both know it would be a foolish gesture on my part.
“And volcanology and geology have been a very big part of my life’s work. That’s obvious to anyone who knows me. You know that more than anyone else.
“But you should also know, after all this time, that you are the most important part of my life. Always have been, always will be.
“I’m getting old, Jules. In twenty years I’ll be gone. And it won’t matter at all whether I was the one who went to Yellowstone and made the prediction whether she’s going to blow again, or some other scientist did.
“There are plenty of other capable volcanologists who can take those readings and interpret that data. It doesn’t have to be me.
“It won’t be me. I’m going to be here, in Germany, with my wife.
Chapter 27
Vince was rather nervous.
He was a nice guy. A computer programmer and a gamer who spent hours a day playing Castle Warrior with people he’d never laid eyes upon all over the world.
That in alone cast him as something of a geek to most people.
He was an only child of parents who died in a boating accident on his nineteenth birthday. The only relatives he had were aunts and uncles and cousins, and he wasn’t close to any of them.
In fact, he didn’t live within a thousand miles of any of them, hadn’t seen them since he was a kid, and couldn’t pick them out in a lineup if his life depended on it.
Due to circumstance and his own personal preferences Vince was not a man with a large circle of friends.
Unless you count the gamers all over the world, of course.
Most people wouldn’t.
Yet he was a nice guy. All his co-workers, and everybody who knew him said so.
His parents raised him right.
Now thirty and having fallen in love with an older woman, a woman with three children, he was way out of his element.
Especially since two of those children were on the cusp of womanhood, and he had absolutely no experience at all in dealing with teenagers of the female persuasion.
“I’m scared,” he confessed to Jenn early in their relationship. “I’ve never been around kids in a family setting. I mean, never as in not a single time. I had no siblings. My cousins never came to visit. It was just me and my parents and my dog until my folks died.”
Jenn wasn’t worried.
“Did your dog love you?”
“Yes.”
“Then they’ll love you. Kids are just like dogs. Especially when they’re teenagers. They’re nothing but dogs with shoes. Kids and dogs are great judges of character. If your dog loved you he knew you’re a good guy. The kids will see it too.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
It was just shy of four p.m. Once upon a time, in a world before Yellowstone erupted, school kids would be getting off their buses and walking into their homes.
The more studious among them would get settled in and start their homework.
The vast majority, though, would have a snack and either turn on their televisions or play their video games. They’d do that while using their phones to send selfies to their friends until mom or dad yelled at them to crack open a book or come to dinner.
Jenn’s kids had been home schooled for a couple of years.
Once the country suffered its third school shooting in a month she said enough was enough.
Jenn wasn’t a political person.
She didn’t necessarily believe there were too many guns on the streets and that legal gun owners were to blame. In fact, Jenn was a registered gun owner who owned a 9 mm handgun for personal protection.
At the same time she didn’t buy into the whole “arm the teachers and the preachers” argument either. Anyone with a working brain cell, she believed, knew that some people couldn’t handle a gun in an active shooter situation. They’d panic and fire into a crowd and get themselves or other innocents killed.
As long as the whole country was so busy fighting among themselves to agree to a solution she knew nothing would change.
Strike that: one thing would change.
Jenn’s kids would no longer be sitting ducks because a toothless and impotent government was incapable of protecting them.
She began home-schooling all three of them.
And she started sleeping much better at night.
So while four p.m. marked the time most kids came home from school and got settled, four p.m. in Jenn’s house meant something completely different.
Four p.m. at Jenn’s house meant the kids had just finished their hour of mandatory study time and were released from schoolwork until after dinner, when they were to finish any homework they hadn’t finished during study hour.
The chitlins occasionally complained their mom was a slave driver when it came to their schooling.
Jenn was always quick to point out that since she started home schooling her kids they were at least a year ahead of their old classmates. They’d finish the state-mandated course requirements earlier than their friends, start college sooner and graduate sooner.
“I may be a slave driver, but you’ll thank me someday when you finish college two years before your friends. By the time they graduate and start working you’ll have two years’ work experience. You may even be their supervisor.”
Autumn got a wicked smile on her face.
“Does that mean I can torture Becky Johnson for bullying me all the way through middle school? That I can make her do all the crummy parts of the job that I don’t want to do myself? And that I can make her come in for me on the weekends?”
“How did one of my children get to be so hateful? Where did I go wrong, child?”
“Hey, we’re talking Becky Johnson, Mom. Remember how embarrassed I was when she put anonymous notes in all the cute boys’ lockers telling them I had crushes on all of them?”
Meadow jumped in. “As
I recall, you did have crushes on all of them. She didn’t lie.”
“That didn’t mean I wanted them to know it. And she was the one who super-glued my gym shoes to the locker room floor.”
“I thought that was pretty funny myself,” Samson observed.
In the end, though, all three liked being home schooled. Especially on Fridays, when they could wear pajamas all day.
On this particular day, they walked out of the back of the house to find Jenn and Vince waiting for them.
Chapter 28
“Uh, oh…” Samson said.
“What did we do?” Meadow asked with a bit of apprehension.
“Nothing at all,” Autumn said. “Whatever it was, we didn’t do it. I swear.”
The rather stern look on Jenn’s face had been Vince’s idea.
As the clock was striking four, and knowing three smiling faces would soon come around the corner, he suggested, “Hey, let’s look angry and freak them out.”
Just because Vince had no experience in dealing with children didn’t mean he had no sense of humor.
Jenn went along with the gag, and as it turned out it worked perfectly.
The chitlins thought they were in trouble for something.
Jenn countered their denials by saying, “You must be guilty of something to profess your innocence so quickly.”
“I’m guilty only of being a beautiful girl, worthy of being a princess,” Autumn said without missing a beat.
Samson said, “Oh, brother…”
Meadow had no time for trifle bickering.
She got right to the point.
“What’s this all about, Mom?”
“Does it have to be about something?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, it is.”
“Ha!”
“Don’t you ‘ha’ me, young lady!”
“Sorry. Can I say I told you so?”
“No, you may not.”
Now Meadow was crestfallen. She felt her hands were tied if she couldn’t express her feelings at what was obviously an unscheduled family meeting.
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