Wise words indeed. They made me inspect the boy closer. To be Vadim’s age, I knew, was to be plagued by unknowns.
Yulia patted Vadim’s shoulder and squeezed once, to let him know she was there.
“Well,” she said, looking into my eyes, “shall we see this corn, perhaps?”
Eggers cleared his throat. “We have some preliminary business,” he said.
I’d forgotten Eggers was even in the room! How to speak of this night with anything approaching method, let alone objectivity? Dear guardians of tomorrow, I know not what future you inhabit when you read these words, what centuries or millennia have transpired. All I know for sure is that you all hold doctorates in anthropology, so you understand the principles of uncertainty at work in any version of the truth, let alone a saga soon to be stained by love and lust, as this one is. So I apologize in advance if I forget some particulars or lose track of any participants. As dedicated anthropologists, you will, I know, be especially offended at the destruction of an ancient artifact that I will shortly relate. I say only this: every thought and every action that shapes the rest of this wily and temperamental sojourn must be understood in terms of Dr. Yulia Terrasova Nivitski.
Everyone gathered around the kitchen island. The setting sun had purpled the room, and folks nibbled on orange potato chips from a festive bowl.
Trudy spoke up. “First things first, Dr. Hannah. We’ve been working on a project.”
I looked to my father and Lorraine. I looked to Farley. If they knew what Trudy was speaking of, they gave nothing away.
“What is this project?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
Eggers stepped from behind the counter. Dorito in hand, he gestured solemnly. “Dr. Hannah,” he said, “I told you yesterday that everything in my lodge had been confiscated by the sheriff, but that wasn’t exactly true.”
Farley took a keen interest in this. He slid his casserole dish into the oven without taking his eyes off the boy. Trudy came forward to join Eggers. They looked at each other a moment, as if deciding how to proceed.
“One article of clothing was spared,” Trudy said. “It was at the dry cleaners.”
Farley just shook his head — he checked his watch to time the dish, but it looked as if he was taking note of the exact moment and place this statement was made. “Does anyone hear this?” Farley asked. “A Clovis using the dry cleaners? Is no one bothered by this?”
Eggers ignored him, strolled into the hall, and returned with a garment bag from the cleaners. “Here you go,” he said, handing me a hanger that must have weighed thirty pounds.
I looked around the room, my eyes finally meeting Trudy’s. “What is this?” I asked.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Open it.”
I slipped off the bag to reveal a grand coat, cut from the softest, richest pelt I’d ever seen. The pile of the fur must’ve been four inches thick. The coat closed with a set of toggles carved from antler that buttonholed into a rather smart-looking set of sinew loops. And the crowning glory was a large hood ringed with fleece cut from fur whose color and fluff I’d seen only in Pomeranians.
To Eggers I said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I did the outside of the parka,” Eggers said. He eyed Farley. “Using strict Paleolithic technology. I brain-tanned the hide, then soaked it in brine for three days. I smoked it, waterproofed it, then worked it soft with a hand loop. The panels were cut with obsidian flakes, and I did the seams with a needle shaped from a heron’s beak. Trudy did the inside.”
I laid the coat on the countertop so everyone could see, then folded it open to reveal an interior that was completely quilted and embroidered. The lining of the coat was a patchwork of fabrics, sewn into a large map of North America that depicted the Corderillan and Laurentide glaciers, which once extended from Siberia to South Dakota. All was glacial ice, except for a narrow gap that cut across Alaska and Canada: the route the Clovis followed to South Dakota.
Trudy joined me to explicate her work:
“American pilots in World War II used to sew maps of Europe in their coats,” she said. “That way, if they crashed or bailed out, they could always find their way. Since this is a Clovis coat, I sewed in a map of America from twelve thousand years ago.” She began explaining the different fabrics she’d incorporated. “The aqua satin is from a kimono my grandma sent me that was too short,” she said. “The white canvas was cut from a cooking apron that Farley donated.”
“It was my lucky apron, eh?” Farley corrected.
Her finger pointed to a patch of pink fabric and then a swatch of creamy velvet. “The pink came from one of Eggers’ old polo shirts, which I found in the grad lounge, and of course you recognize the baby-blue of the old curtains that once hung in the Hall of Man. This velvet came from that big chair Peabody used to sit in.”
I remembered that chair, all right. How many times had I sat in that old white chair in Peabody’s office, listening to him speak of the grand excavations he’d been a part of? There was Folsom Creek and the Iowa Mounds. Peabody had worked the Manitoba Washouts and had personally met Ishi, a Native American whose California tribe existed completely on Stone Age technology until they were discovered and eradicated by land-grabbers in the year 1910. Ishi, the sole survivor, then walked to San Francisco, where he spent the remainder of his life trying to tell the story of his people to passers by who didn’t know his language.
Trudy’s words brought me back. “Only five arts are truly North American,” she concluded. “Clovis points, Anasazi ceramics, quilting, jazz, and the blues. So this jacket is truly American.”
I looked at Trudy. She’d somehow just synthesized nearly every important thing in my life into something beautiful and functional. I realized, right there, that her dissertation thesis would work, that she had the instinct and intellect to show the world how an ancient people’s religion, art, philosophy, and physical needs were all met by a single object: a Clovis spear point.
Vadim inspected the coat. “What’s this?” he asked.
He ran his hand over a pocket that had been sewn inside the breast. It was embroidered in cursive with the words “Open in Case of Emergency.” When I tried to open it, I found it was sewn shut. I looked to Trudy.
She smiled. “Open only in case of emergency” she said.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“Essentials,” Eggers said.
I ran my hand over the pocket. There was something in there for sure, some sort of object, but I couldn’t tell what. Was it hard or soft? Did I hear the crinkle of paper in there? I didn’t try to guess — my brain was simply consumed with the beauty of the coat, the grandness of the gesture that brought it to me.
“Eggers,” I said. “Trudy. I don’t know what to say.”
“We wanted to say thanks,” Trudy added. “You know, for all you’ve taught us.”
“It’s just an arigato, that’s all,” Eggers said. “We’d been wanting to do something for you for a while. And when I heard a brown bear got hit by a train up in Glanton, I just had to get that skin.”
“Glanton?” Farley asked. “That’s thirty miles away.”
Eggers shrugged. “It was no big deal. When you have the right fur parka on, you can walk forever. Besides, who would pass up a free bear pelt?”
Trudy said, “You should have seen the thing before I drycleaned it. The fur was all matted with blood. Don’t forget it had been tanned with brains. And then Eggers used rancid grease to waterproof the backing.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I said.
Eggers said, “You don’t have to say anything. It’s a gift.”
Yulia ran her hand across the pile, the fur shining dark brown one way, almost silver the other. “Put it on,” she commanded.