Digging up Bones

Professional Reviews

Excerpt

"Oh, hell."

The exclamation fell out of her and landed with a sizzle on the hot highway shoulder. Kasia Payne stood over it, staring with dismay down the steep incline created by the overpass at the pleasant little truck stop that wasn't there.

There was a general assortment of buildings, just like her last ride had said, huddled around a worn parking lot like pioneer wagons protecting themselves from Indians, and yes, there was the post office and the gas station and the mercantile, and there was even a building with a sign that said 'Drive-In Eats,' but the building was a burned out shell with no roof and the sign was sitting off to one side with the individual letters picked off, perhaps by vultures, leaving only the paler impressions to mark the places they'd stood throughout the years. The bustling wheel of commerce that had been Drive-In Eats was no more, and all its faithful clientele had clearly abandoned the rest of its orbiting pioneers to fate and the elements. That left exactly two pickup trucks in the parking lot below and one of them was up on cinder blocks.

"Hell," Kasia said again, with even less spirit than she had the first time. She unshouldered her pack and let it drop with a thump to the pavement, pulled out her canteen and sat down on the cushion of her meager belongings to take the last two swallows and try to think.

No truck stop. After a two mile hike up the road from Tribulations, and the right turn that had taken her here instead of the left turn onto Highway 191 and over to Provo, no truck stop. No truck stop meant no ride, and no ride meant a whole lot of walking. A lot of walking meant ... well now, just what did that mean? Kasia risked an upwards peek.

The skies burning over Utah in the middle of September this fine morning were stab-you-in-the-eye-blue and cloudless. It was just after ten and already hotter than hell and so dry it felt as though her eyeballs were slowly turning into granite. Her feet were burning, even through the soles of her sneakers--not sore, but actually burning, as in 'flame'--and there was a hot, yellow taste to the air that just kind of crawled into your lungs and lay there.

A lot of walking was going to be a bad thing.

Kasia heaved herself up, pocketed her canteen and dragged her pack back up onto her shoulder. She had about fifteen bucks and some change left. She'd go down to the parking lot, see what building looked the most open, and see what there was to see. Sometimes folks off the beaten path like this didn't mind so much if a girl took a bath in the sink and then slept out the day in a store room. At the very least, she'd be able to fill her canteen.

She trudged down off the overpass shoulder and headed on over, feeling sunlight like molten lead on her head and shoulders. Her sneakers scuffed across the cracked, chapped asphalt, and then the cracked, chapped desert ground, and finally the cracked, chapped parking lot.

The lights in the gas station were on, but it looked empty. The doors to the post office were open, but it was dark and somehow not very official-looking. There was a small cabin-y looking brown shack off to one side of the lot, next to an enormous tin water tank, but although it looked like it saw a fair amount of use, there were no signs or hints of any kind to indicate what the heck it was. That left the store, through whose windows Kasia could see an old man in overalls moving around, and so she went toward it, although she was not encouraged.

There were a number of signs hung up around the windows, but they all seemed kind of abstract and faintly ominous to her. Hand-Dipped Cold Drinks, one said. This Is The Place, said another, with little quotes around it, and a couple of weathered bumblebees painted at the edges. Opposite that, on a diamond-shaped piece of pressed aluminum, green letters advised her to 'Choose the Right.' On the door itself, beneath the hand-written slate of store hours, was a small sign with a stark message saying, 'Life was Not Intended to be Easy.' There was a string of others, carefully etched on metal plates and mounted along the doorjamb: "Never let a day pass that you will have cause to say, I will do better tomorrow," "He Who Calmed the Seas Will Not Forsake Us," and "There is no cure for the ills of this world except the gospel of Jesus Christ." Over the door, on a plank of wood that looked almost old enough to be petrified, was one word in whitewash: STARVATION.

Kasia stood in front of that door for a long, long time.

At last, however, she opened it.

The first thing that struck her was a cool breeze--not a cold one, as it would take an air conditioner roughly the size of a Studebaker to get an edge up on a Utah heat, but cool was good enough and very welcome--and the second was the smell of something sizzling on a nice, greasy griddle. She leaned into the aroma and the breeze, pushing on the door hard to shut it, and became aware of an old man's gravelly voice having one side of a heated debate on oranges.

"It doesn't matter who squeezes the orange," the old man was saying earnestly. "Juice comes out. You could squeeze it, I could squeeze it. Usama Bin Laden could squeeze it! Juice comes out!"

"Oh boy,' thought Kasia, and despite the allure of the little store's climate controls, she found herself looking back through the window at the highway and thinking that it hadn't been all that hot...

"S'cuse me for a second, son. Little miss? Welcome to Starvation, honey--Oh, gracious, you look like you're going to fall down dead in the doorway." The old man was coming toward her, wiping his hands on his short-order apron and pruning up with concern so spontaneous and genuine that Kasia felt a little ashamed of herself for her awkwardness of a moment before. "Come on in here and sit down. Got road trouble?"

"You could say that," she said, allowing the old man to lead her down a narrow aisle full of dog food, saddles, and cleaning supplies. "There's a road, anyway, and I don't have a real easy way down it."

"Oh, uh-huh?" The old man sat her down before the high malt-shoppe-pink counter at the back of the store and bustled around to get behind it again. "Car broke down, did it? Let me give my son Mike a call and he'll go fetch it here for you--"

"No, thanks, I didn't come in a car," Kasia said, eyeing the little hand-chalked menu on the back wall with naked yearning. "Um, could I have a water, please?"

A tall glass, wet and brittle-ly cold, was set before her on a napkin. The old man's face had pruned up again. "No car? Honey, you ain't walkin' out there!" A quaver at the end of his words put it halfway between a question and an exclamation, but in either case, the answer was the same.

"Yes, sir," she said, and drank.

"Well, where are you headed? I'll get Mike out here and give you a lift, it ain't no trouble at--"

"Georgia coastline," she answered, setting the empty glass down. "Thanks anyway, though."

"Oh." He continued to stand there, nonplussed, for a beat or two before comprehension flooded his face and lent it profound gravity. "Oh, little miss, you ain't hitchin', are you?"

He said hitchin' as if it meant whorin'. Kasia fished an ice cube out of her glass, wrapped it in a napkin, and rubbed at her eyes with it. She nodded, forcing a smile and feeling tired. "And before you ask, no, I'm not a runaway; no, I'm not in trouble with the law; yes, I know what I'm doing; and yes, my parents know where I am." That last one wasn't strictly true, but she doubted it would come as a shock to either of them, assuming they could be found and prompted to remember who she was. "I've been living in Seattle for a while, and now I just need to get somewhere warm and easy for the winter."

The old man looked at her, his eyes now almost buried by furrowed, frowning wrinkles. "Do you have a home, honey?" he asked quietly.

She smiled at him, a little more easily this time. "No, sir. But I'm okay, I swear."

"You shouldn't ought to be hitching," the old man said stubbornly, sorrowfully. "Bring you to a bad end."

"You allergic to work?" someone asked suddenly, and Kasia just about fell off the stool trying to jump and look around at the same time.

There was a man sitting on her right, a man who had gone completely unnoticed all this time, between the whole ice-water and interrogation thing. He had his elbow on the table and his chin in one hand, sitting easy just two stools down with his foot up on the kick bar. There was a plate with half a bacon sandwich on it in front of him and the dregs of an orange soda; he was chewing idly on the straw. He looked about mid-thirties, but he wore it young. He had a thick head of hair that looked like it was trying very hard to jump off his head, strong bones and a clear complexion, and a sporty little black Van Dyke to put a point on an otherwise square jaw. Add to that a pair of intense Gypsy eyes and it was kind of hard to see beyond to the rest of him.

Her first thought was, Damn, that's a good-looking guy, and it took her a little time to regroup from that. Her second was, What did he--gosh, really good looking!--just say?, and her third was, And just what the hell gives him the right to say it to me!

"No, I'm not allergic to work!" she sputtered, the fires of her initial attraction freezing immediately over. "And I pay taxes and I never took a dime off the government after I turned sixteen! I work everywhere I go and I bet I work harder than any six people you know!"

The stranger showed his teeth (and his straw) in a quick grin. "That a fact?"

"That's a fact!" Kasia dropped her pack in a dusty heap on the floor and held out her upturned palms defiantly, displaying the scars and yellowed calluses that ridged and pocked and whorled across her hands. "That's four months on a landscaping crew in Seattle, buster, and three weeks picking oranges in California!"

The stranger leaned in to have a closer look, prodding at one of her fingers like he was kicking a tire on a car he meant to buy.

Kasia snatched her hand back, locked both of them around her empty water glass, and glared at him. "So there!"

"Ha." The stranger rolled back to face the old man, pointing at Kasia with his chewed-on straw. "Let's get a plate of something and some more water for this one," he said, making it sound like a completely original idea, something that ought to be patented, perhaps. "I've got a business proposition for you," he added, before Kasia could even begin to hotly refuse his hospitality. "But I'm going to need to butter you up first, because it's clear you don't harbor a lot of trust for strange men in small towns."

"You know me so well, then you know what you can do with your 'business' proposition," she countered, but her eye kept getting distracted by the eggs and bacon that the old man was heating up on the griddle. "I'm going to eat that food," she announced, "But don't think for one second that entitles you to a damn thing!"

"Check that gutter talk, honey," the old man remarked.

"Sorry," she grumbled. "But the sentiment stands."

"Fair enough." Unruffled, the stranger stuck out his hand. "I'm Esben. Professor Emory Esben, a pleasure and a privilege to meet you. Call me Ez."

Kasia ignored the hand and turned her head to run a huffy eye over the merchandise crowding the diner's corner. Undaunted, the straw-chewing Ez took a handful of her hair, gave it two quick pumps in a gentleman's shake, and let go before she could react.

"What would you say to six weeks alone with me in the desert under the hot sun digging up fifty-pound blocks of fossils with a garden trowel?" he said cheerfully, and immediately held up both hands like a man at a mugging. "Oh, but wait, there's more! You get your own tent, air mattress, sleeping bag and not one but two pillows! There's a chair and a deck of cards, flashlights in every color of God's rainbow, and all the comforts of home, provided you live in Outer Dustbonia, not to mention companionship in the form of me, Professor Ez. Once or twice a day, I do stop talking."

A breakfast was set before her, and Kasia's objections were neatly derailed by saliva.

Ez continued, "On top of the rewarding glow of honest labor, you will receive fifty dollars a day for six days each week, provided you stay the course and finish out the field trip. At the end of six weeks, or until the weather turns, whichever comes first, you will accompany me back to BYU where I will draft you a check for eighteen hundred dollars and put you on a Greyhound bus to the city of your choice. I'll need a W-2 and all that, of course. Everything fair and above board." Solicitation spent, Ez dropped both hands to the countertop and folded them neatly, watching her eat and awaiting her reply.

"I don't wander off into the desert with people I don't know," she said, eyeing him suspiciously over a biscuit.

"What do you want to know? My middle name's Tyler, if that's a help to you. Let's see ... I'm a Virgo, which means I'm restrained, shy, and very serious, but I try to come out of my shell when there's company around." Ez pushed out his jaw and nibbled so that the tip of his straw bobbed up and down as he contemplated himself. "I was an eggplant in my third-grade class play on the subject of nutrition and I blew my only line in front of at least fifty people when I announced to an audience of innocent and unsuspecting parents that, through the aid of modern science, many vegetables have adapted themselves to a carnivorous diet."

"All right, all right, enough!" Kasia fought her way through the mental image of a snarling eggplant and got back to the salient issue. "You can say anything you want, but what it all boils down to is that you're still a total stranger!"

"Yeah, well, there's not a whole lot I can do about that, but Pops here has seen you talking to me, so if you're really afraid I'm going to drag you off and murder you, at least you'd have the satisfaction of knowing I'd be caught right away." He rolled his eyes at her expression and threw out his arms as though to display his inherent ineffableness. "I'm not going to drag you off and murder you, for Pete's sake! I'm a paleontologist!"

"You're a what?"

"Dinosaur bones," Ez said, picking up the other half of his sandwich and setting to with a vigor. "I dig up dinosaur bones for Brigham Young University, and as it happens, the season is over, my students went home, my assistant had to bail on me, and I'm in a real bind. Now what do you say? Six weeks, hard work, decent pay, no funny stuff."

"But..."

"I don't think Pops has any tasers or pepper spray on the shelves," Ez added, giving the store's goods a dubious eyeing-over. "But I suppose I could pick you up a can of lemon Endust. That wouldn't do me any good if I caught a dose between the eyes."

"Well..." She was weakening and her plate was almost empty.

"We'll have to take turns cooking, but apart from that and the backbreaking labor in a dark pit, the work-load's light. I make a mean pot of chili mac and I'm no good at any of the board games I brought." Ez peered a little closer at her, drumming his nails on the counter, and then snapped his fingers and said, "Pops here has a washer-dryer and a set of showers in the shack out back for paleontologists to use, but I don't believe they're available to hitch-hikers, are they, Pops?"

The old man wiped his hands on his apron, looking from one to the other of them. "Guess not," he said at last.

"So what do you say?" Ez leaned back and watched her mop up the last of her yolk with the last of her biscuit. "Got a name?"

Kasia chewed her final bit of breakfast and looked out the window at the overpass. It sounded like a pretty good deal, actually. On the surface, anyway. Fifty bucks a day...

She wouldn't swear to the fact that this guy Ez was exactly harmless, but ostentatiousness was a good start. When you were on the road a lot, you learned to distrust anyone who acted really normal. She thought this guy was okay. Really good-looking though, and that could be a problem. But fifty bucks a day...

"Payne," she said slowly. "Kasia Payne."

"Welcome aboard, Kasia Payne!" Ez's hand swooped around and caught hers up in an exuberant clasp. "Oh, it's going to be a great time! Go get yourself a shower! It'll be a week before you get another one! What fun!"

Gosh, it was nice to have someone to talk to again.

The girl had cleaned up pretty good after she'd taken about ten pounds of red Utah dust off of her, and she'd evidently had a spare set of clothes in that beat-up pack she was guarding, and now, fresh-faced and riding shotgun in a climate-controlled pickup truck, she even looked a little cheerful. At least, she'd lost that edgy, suspicious squint and that had to count for something.

Ez left the skeletal remains of Starvation in the rearview mirror and aimed his fuzzy dice at the mountains, chattering comfortably about anything that popped into his mind and making occasional efforts to include his new assistant in the conversation. So far, she hadn't said much, but he didn't let that bother him. He was well-accustomed to having to do all the talking.

"--We've got a big can of funny spray that we use around the perimeter to kind of keep the snakes out," he was saying now. "It's non-toxic, but they don't like crawling through it. Or slithering, I should say. I guess you need knees to crawl, but snakes seem to have a pretty good outlook on life without knees. Never heard one complain, anyway. Scorpions, though, they can be a problem if they move in, so don't let them move in. Keep your shoes and your pack and pretty much all your stuff inside your tent with the zipper sealed at all times. Make sure everything that can be moved is inside the trailer at night with the door closed and check out the dig thoroughly with your flashlight before you go inside. They're not poisonous, not the ones I've seen out there anyway, but they still hurt and you'll swell up some if you're allergic."

"How do you know if you're allergic or not?" she asked, looking distracted and only peripherally interested.

"Well, first you get stung, I guess, and then you see whether or not you swell up. I've got a first aid kit with some stuff that'll help if you are allergic, incidentally, but it shouldn't be a problem either way. Just keep the site clean, tent closed, everything inside."

She nodded and turned back to the window.

"Seriously, say it back to me like you were paying attention."

"Tent closed, stuff inside, site clean, check the dig with a flashlight," she echoed obediently.

Funny. Out here in the field, Ez was used to dealing with only two kinds of people: the ones who knew exactly what they were doing and did it efficiently and well, and the ones who eagerly and apprehensively looked forward to learning. Kasia Payne and her weathered mode of surface acceptance was a whole new bird for Ez.

"Good." He stole a glance at her from the corner of his eyes and put on his Professor-face. "There aren't many rules out here, but the ones I have are hard and fast ones. I need you to listen up and say you understand them before we go any further."

"What happens if I break a few?" she asked, indicating she was teasing with a wan little smile.

"You get a spanking," he replied, grinning back at her.

She laughed. Cute kid, she probably thought he was joking.