I waited in the car while Trudy grabbed her gear and changed. Then we hit the road, heading out of town on the same road Eggers and I had walked. In the dark, we passed empty fields where the ridges of buried corn rows were echoed in the snow, making the pastures seem raked with black and indigo. Near the casino, we scanned the fields for Eggers. One fire burned out there, small as a tiger moth against the night. It had to be Eggers. I shuddered to think of him alone and angry as he took counsel with a litter of poached animal skins and an open grave.
Trudy parked the GTO on the side of the road, under the “Phase II” casino sign. We could make out a figure by the feeble fire, stirring it with a twig.
“That must be him,” I said to Trudy.
“Let’s do it,” she responded.
We got out and walked a few steps down the embankment. But I stopped. I’d almost convinced myself that I wanted to come out here, but Eggers’ sullen silhouette reminded me this was just a ruse to thwart my father.
“Why don’t we get a drink up at the casino first?” I offered.
“Didn’t you say this was a Clovis site, in situ?”
I nodded.
“What’s wrong with you, Dr. Hannah?” Trudy asked. “This is the Holy Grail. This is what anthropologists dream about. If I wanted a drink, I’d be at the Red Dakotan right now, being leered at.”
I looked at Eggers out there, feeling abandoned and needy. I’d dealt with one father tonight. I thought, Let Eggers deal with his.
“I’m going to take a rain check, too,” I said. With that I showed her my back, then crunched off into the snow, walking through slush and grit toward the neon glow of the casino.
The Thunderbird parking lot, when I entered it, was beyond fulclass="underline" vehicles stretched horizonward in orderly rows, industrial lights muting their paint jobs to variations on blue, the frost making windshields appear yellowy and sandblasted.
Inside, the bartender was a lean young man from the Tribe. He wore heavy glasses that were partly obscured by bangs, and as if in acknowledgment of the poison he was handling, he poured my drink carefully, holding it directly in front of his face.
He set my bourbon on the bar, gave change in gaming chips. “Party on, Dr. Hannah,” he said and returned to folding some napkins. The kid’s name tag said “Tommy.” I figured he must be a former student. In khakis and a polo shirt, with that haircut all the boys wear, he could have drifted through any of my classes.
“Party on, Tommy,” I said.
I set off across the casino floor, where scores of people, transfixed as if by fire, crowded around gaming tables, three and four deep. Green and illustrated, the tables resembled small sports fields, above which hung round lights that illuminated glowing cones of cigarette smoke. I moved like a ghost — all eyes were focused on the turning cards — while smoky clouds rose toward the lights as if being sucked.
Here were all the missing people from Parents Weekend — students and out-of-towners, teachers and administrators, as well as local folk, from farmers and aldermen to barbers and prison guards. They sat with their backs to me, yet I was greeted by colognes and perfumes, by a matrix of smells who’d left their original owners: the creamy stink of hog tallow, the tanky musk of a grain silo, and the pink ammonia of aircraft de-icing fluid.
I came upon a table at which only one man sat. He wore a warm-up suit cut from fabric so fleecy and sheened it obviously cost hundreds of dollars, while his wife stood behind in a T-shirt spangled with gold. His jowls were ruddy, his manner was expansive and chatty, and on his finger was a grand square-cut diamond. A passionless dealer attended him, and their parlay was conducted in black chips — a huge denomination, I assumed.
Immediately, I imagined them as Eggers’ parents, people who swooped into town to yuck it up with billionaire friends in prison, but couldn’t resist kissing off a couple pillowcases of cash at the casino before choppering on to paint the next town red. All while ignoring their son.
Childs and Lizzie Eggers, I named them, though they could easily have been Reece and Sabrina or Lattie and Pearl. I looked at their bloated excess, and the irony struck me that these were the real Clovis: people who used for themselves the resources of many, who exploited their environment to depletion, and, once everything they wanted was gone, would skip town. I felt sorry for Eggers at this moment. The boy was a romantic, his dissertation an exercise in nostalgia. Eggers was no Clovis. The Clovis took and took and took, leaving six hundred generations of descendants to fend for themselves in an impoverished world, a place without horses to ride, elephants to tame, or camels to burden.
“Childs” laughed deep at the turn of a card, and “Lizzie” raked the chips for him. I wanted to throw my drink on these fat cats, but there wasn’t much left, and they surely weren’t Eggers’ parents. Like I had the guts anyway.
I examined my glass of icy bourbon. I hadn’t drunk this much in years, yet I didn’t feel a thing. Why didn’t the damn stuff work?
Then something on the other side of the casino caught my eye. Through an acre of lights, I noticed a flicker, beckoning me. I cruised through rows of slot machines, squatting like silver monkeys before the old people who tormented them, and I followed runners of red carpet until I reached another bar, a horseshoe of padded booths below a cul-de-sac of windows. Through them, I could see a ring of fire in a distant, frozen field. I neared until my face entered that layer of biting air that always hugs glass in winter.
Eggers had five fires gong out there, the flames making the snow incandesce a sooty orange that penetrated the powder, traveling under the surface till it dulled pale yellow. Or were there six fires? The flames seemed to sway, separate themselves, rejoin as one. Could be a trick of the wind, I thought. Or maybe the bourbon had kicked in.
I held up my glass, ice winking. “I’m sorry I doubted you,” I said.
I became aware of someone staring at me; in the window, I could make out the reflection of a woman at the bar. When I turned, she turned, but not before I recognized her — it was Julie, from the art show. She feigned interest in her drink, a fuzzy colada or something.
She sat, hip ajut, on a red bar stool, looking very available in a foofy blouse, black leather skirt, and dark hose. Peeping from her handbag was an issue of Horticulture Today.
Hers was the sole face I recognized in the entire casino, and despite her flinty knees and frizzed-out hair, I needed to be near someone, so I went to her.
“Julie,” I said, taking the next stool.
“Get lost,” she told me.
Her eyes narrowed to dismiss me. Her accent was strong—“Gyet loss.”
“Julie, please,” I said. “We’re academics here. Let’s be civil. Let’s talk.”
“It is Dr. Nivitski to you,” she said. “You have been drinking much.”
She leaned away and waved her hand—what, from my breath?
“Perhaps I looked like a bit of a cad earlier,” I said. “But I can explain.”
She slurped the bottom of her drink. “When I saw you in the art gallery, I am thinking, He is sort of cute, he is my type. But I am wrong. You are like the rest.”
She set aside her glass as if to leave, and I felt a pang run through me.
“Please,” I said. “Stay. Let me get you another drink.”
It was maybe not the best thing to say.
Julie’s eyes widened in outrage — she had fire in her.
“So pathetic, your tricks,” she said. “I am not the rube. You are the rube.”
She scooted over to the next stool, showing some serious thigh as she did. I was left with her empty glass.