I was leafing through deep-core glaciology results from Greenland’s mid-rift when the telephone rang. It droned on forever before it finally quit and I could concentrate again. The Greenland data confirmed all the other studies: the earth suffered ninety thousand years ice-age weather, then ten thousand years of warm, in a loop that repeated over and over, as far back as there was ice to record it. The Clovis appeared at the end of the last Ice Age, inaugurating an era of warmth that ushered in agriculture, the birth of civilization, and the ascendancy of Homo sapiens. But the Clovis simply plundered the first sunny days of humanity, just as we, a thousand years overdue for the next Ice Age, were plundering the last.
Oh, the caprice of history was limitless, and it was my job to tame this bitch.
The phone went off again — where was that blasted thing?
When I answered, it was Trudy, breathless, on the other end.
“What are you doing calling me here?” I asked.
“We tried you ten times at home,” she said. “We need you out here, Dr. Hannah. We’ve found something.” Gaming machines trilled in the background.
“What do you mean you’ve found something?”
“Eggers is the one who actually came across it,” she said. “We don’t know what to make of it — it’s like nothing we’ve seen in any of the journals or textbooks.”
I sat down at my desk, scratched the back of my neck. Certainly I was interested, but look at the towering stacks of Junior. I’d just recommitted myself, and you don’t go running off every time something sparks your fancy. You don’t just up and quit when someone new comes along; you don’t pack your bags when some distant mud city appears golden under scientific light.
“Dr. Hannah?” Trudy asked. “Are you still there?”
“Trudy,” I said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass.”
“Pass?” Trudy asked. “What do you mean, pass? You don’t even know what we’re talking about. We were out in the field, Eggers was digging away, and then — there it was, right there before our eyes. You’ve never seen anything like it.”
I paused a moment, then said, “I have my own work, too, you know.”
Now she paused a moment.
“You are some kind of teacher,” she said. “You’re one piece of work. Do you know what I’m putting up with out here? It’s cold as hell, and all day I get to listen to Eggers’ theme-park ideas. You know he wants to start a Clovis Channel on cable TV? Twenty-four hours. I thank God every time he goes to the latrine, but then I have to race around sneaking off Polaroids for my professor, who, after a year of secretly lusting for me, takes my fellowship away and then won’t even help me. Do you hear me?” she asked. “You aren’t even listening,” she said, and hung up.
I leaned back in the chair and exhaled deep. I’d momentarily lost my thirst for science, but that was to be expected. It was simply the ups and downs of the investigative process — the same force that drove a man into the library basement would, eventually, scare him right out again. I replaced my Greenland-glaciology surveys on the tallest stack and, stepping out, closed my office door for the first time in memory. But the key to lock it, I discovered when I thumbed through my key purse, was long since gone.
* * *
I sat in my car, engine idling. The thought of my own dark house gave me the willies — the leather of my father’s chair grown cold under drapes of blind, creeping plants — and I just couldn’t go there. When the motor warmed, and the defroster had cleared the windows, I saw that someone had spat all over the windshield. As the mucus thawed, it began to run. Some clown was obviously jealous that I’d snatched the prime handicapped-parking spot on campus.
I dropped the Corvette into gear, the trademark headlights popping up. The power steering whined in the cold as I rolled toward the end of the lot. The plow had been through earlier, pushing up hard, crusted mounds of snow. In my headlights, the heaps glowed like glazed crap. When I got to the exit, for some strange reason I circled back for another loop, parking again in the same handicapped spot, one hand on the shifter, a thumb tapping the wheel.
Of course, I could go hang out with Farley — I was always welcome there — but when I thought of his house, bright and warm on top of the bluffs, I wasn’t so sure. I pictured the steam of his laundry machines venting into the night, smelled the jerky he was always making in his basement dehydrator, saw his nieces’ drawings taped to the fridge — stiff construction paper, watercolors. Farley was on the couch, I was sure, talking long-distance to his grandmother in Mobridge, eating cookies in the blue of the TV. No, he probably had some lady over, was cooking up that soufflé of his, the one with the mushrooms that never failed to impress the babes. Santana was playing on the turntable.
How could I barge in and interrupt him like that? Stars, if you’ll notice, burn dimly and alone. Once in a while, two ignite together. Never three.
I couldn’t think of a place in the world I belonged that night. Then, prickly and chilling as a whiff of gin, my father came to mind, and it seemed the evening I deserved included him. I slipped out of the lot and cruised a couple of blocks, rolling past a bank marquee that still read “Glacier Days Awaits,” though the sign had lost a lot of bulbs.
Past the victory grove of oak trees that lined Parkton Square, Glacier Days was simply gone, leaving precious little evidence it had ever been — a few latrine-blue puddles of ice where the Porta Pottis had stood, the flapping of junk-food wrappers exposed by melting snow, and the petroleumlike smell of butter where they’d dumped the nightly popcorn tubs. Glacier Days had only rained stuffed animals on the city of Parkton, given its citizens a safe taste of death, and fed the crows.
I suspected my van might be sitting in the red zone outside the Odd Fellows, as it was some nights, but when I cruised up, it wasn’t to be seen. It was probably still parked in front of that cheap motel. In the lobby of the former lodge, I could see a gauntlet of old men, sitting on sad red couches, watching televisions suspended by chains from the ceiling. These gray-haired men were the Odd Fellows themselves, guys who’d lost their place of congregation, yet still gathered here in the after-supper hours to reminisce, smoke, and watch TV in a marble lobby whose symbols used to be theirs. Through the dirty windows, their faces were hazy enough that I could picture them all as my father, five years down the road.
I couldn’t sit there a minute longer without getting all soupy. There was nothing to do but cinch my parka, crank the heat, and power down the windows as I drove out of town, heading for Keno through fields whose low spots were puddled with indigo. Above were clouds more meant for a summer afternoon. Big and singular, they sailed against a clear night sky. Backlit by a hefty moon, they glowed at the edges like chips of obsidian. If there were other cars on the road, as there must have been, I did not see them.
I craned my neck to look into the howling wind. Pinpoint stars, fixed in a galactic vise, stood fast in a sky as slick and intense as midnight vinca, the flower whose small hemlock-blue petals Janis wanted spread with her ashes in the Missouri, a wish Farley and I honored one evening last summer. From the back of the boat, I broadcast bone dust that chalked the surface of the water before heavier chips — femur, pelvis, teeth — sank like tiny comets. Farley spread the midnight vinca, beyond blue as it landed and turned in the gas slick behind his outboard.