The Dinosaur Hunter(92)
The way Edith looked at me, so beseechingly, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. All right, I’m an old softy, especially when it comes to a woman who had clawed her way up from being the poor daughter of a detested chicken-and-pig farmer to mayor of the county seat. Inside, I sensed she was still that frightened little girl who’d run away from home. Also, of course, she had always been decent to me. “I guess that would be all right, Edith,” I allowed. “But it’s up to Jeanette, not me.”
“Please, Jeanette,” Edith implored. “Let me help you dig. I won’t be any trouble.”
Before Jeanette could answer, Pick said, “We can always use another hand. I think we may have more rock to move than I thought.”
Jeanette glared at Pick, then nodded down the hill, a gesture which meant she and Pick should meet and discuss the situation and then she would tell him what he was going to do. Pick gave up his catbird’s seat and joined her below. They disappeared inside the cook tent. To this day, I’m not certain what Pick told her but, to my surprise, when Jeanette came back, she said, “All right, Edith, but if you’re here, you’re here. You have to stay until we’re finished with our work. Did you bring what you need?”
“I have everything in Ted’s truck including a tent.”
Jeanette said, “OK.” And Edith responded with a grateful smile.
For the rest of the day, we dug. Edith pitched her tent, and then climbed up to us to join Amelia, Laura, Brian, and Philip on the sandstone cap. She worked so hard during the next hours, I heard Laura caution her to slow down or she would go into heat exhaustion. That was one of the things I really admired about Edith. It didn’t matter the job she took on, she worked diligently to see it through.
For all our work, nothing was found and Pick finally called it a day. We dragged ourselves down the hill and collapsed in various poses of exhaustion all over the camp. I stretched out beside my tent until the ants started to bite, then sprawled in one of the chairs around the fire pit. Gradually, everyone gathered there. Edith showed up, her face coated with dirt and dried sweat. “I brought beer in my cooler,” she said. “Enough for everyone.”
“Bless you,” I said to her since every drop of gin, vodka, tonic, and beer was by then drunk up. Edith went off with Brian and Philip to carry the cooler. After a while, she returned with a bottle of Rainier for me and told the others that cold ones were waiting for them in the cook tent. Off they went, leaving me and Edith alone. We clinked our bottles and I considered just going with the flow but what remained of the detective inside me made me ask, “What’s wrong with Ted?”
“Just a bug. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried. I think you know I don’t give one fig about your husband. It’s you I can’t figure out. Why are you really here?”
She didn’t reply to that and we silently drank our beers as the others filtered back to the fire pit. Tanya came over. “Mike, if we don’t cook the steaks tonight, I’m afraid they could spoil.”
“Steaks!” Ray cried. “I could sure use one of those!” Others around the fire pit also cheered the prospect of eating the juicy tenderloins Laura had stocked. My muscles ached and my bones creaked but, for the morale of the troops, I was willing to be the cook even though it meant I would be preparing something I couldn’t eat. Being a vegetarian was never so hard as that evening when I smelled those steaks cooking over the charcoal. Fortunately, while Tanya and I barbequed, Laura and Amelia made biscuits and some fantastic potato salad, and Jeanette tossed a green salad so I had great food to eat, too. Ray, Brian, and Philip set up the tables and chairs. Edith, of course, supplied the beer. We were a good team. Pick was somewhere wandering. I didn’t much care if he got lost. He apparently was learning his way around, however, as he showed up in time for dinner.
After the meal, everybody else went to bed but I sat with Tanya at the fire pit. I really enjoyed her company. We talked about this and that, but then I asked her, “After this dig is finished, where do you go from here?”
She looked me over. “Where do you want me to go, Mike?”
My heart fluttered, then demanded to speak. I let it. “Wherever I am.”
She leaned over and kissed me. “I love you, you know,” she said.
I checked with old brother heart and he gave me a thumb’s up. “I love you, too.”
Suddenly, everybody appeared out of the shadows and cheered. Someone had fireworks and they shot them into the sky, showering us with bazillions of brilliant and flaming colorful sparks. The moon popped out, milky and brilliant, and the sun posed on the horizon, turning the sky a bright pink and the clouds scarlet. A sky-writer appeared and traced out a heart in the sky and two rabbits and a prairie dog linked arms and did an impromptu cancan dance.