Easter Island (39 page)

Burke-Jones blew his whistle three times, and everyone crouched and lifted their ropes, tentacles coming to life. Greer sunk her feet deep into the grass, bent her legs, and prepared herself. Vicente was in front of her, Sven in front of him. The whistle blew—two long, one short—and all the teams heaved. Greer’s face flooded with the heat of exertion. Her palms burned around the rough fibers of the rope. She shifted her weight from leg to leg, but no matter her position, every muscle rebelled. All sorts of sounds began springing up. Grunts, moans, a distinct
Mi madre
. Someone on the statue’s other side cursed Burke-Jones. Finally the whistle blew, and all of them, dizzied and hot, let the ropes drop and collapsed in the grass.

Several women from the audience waved canteens at the volunteers. Vicente and Greer sipped from their own.

“This will be a long day, I think.”

Disappointment had already set in among the volunteers. They drank their water, wiped their foreheads, leaned against the statue. Greer carefully stretched her neck, which was now bothering her for the first time in over a year.

Again came the whistle. They lifted their ropes. Burke-Jones blew again. Greer could feel the furnace of her muscles burning, the skin on her hands chafing against the coarse rope. Again the quit whistle. Nothing.

Burke-Jones had clearly anticipated this. Three of the team leaders were summoned, and a project of collecting stones began. Within an hour a pile of rocks had been wedged beneath the
moai
’s head—this might raise the statue enough to get some leverage on the ropes. While the rocks were set in place, the sun reached its full height. Volunteers tied scarves and bandanas over their heads, doused their necks with canteen water. Only a slight breeze rolled off the ocean. When Greer looked toward the coast, she saw Luka Tepano on his horse at the bottom of the hill. He was studying the motions of the volunteers, the ropes being tested, the stones being rolled. This was a good distance from the woman’s cave, and it seemed he’d come simply to watch. He appeared transfixed, but when Greer looked a few minutes later, he was gone.

A team of volunteers flanked the head, seated so their feet could further wedge the stones beneath the
moai
as it was pulled. Again, the whistle blew; this time Burke-Jones had ordered a rocking motion, in the hopes that the simultaneous force of all fifty people would help.
Uno. Dos. Tres. Hee-yaa! Etahi. Erua. Etoru. Hee-yaa!
Then on the opposite side shouts exploded, and the whistle spluttered, the sound of a referee madly calling a time-out. Everyone released their ropes. With Vicente and Sven in tow, Greer ran to the other side: Team number three, five panting men, were heaped on top of a very disgruntled team four. One of the ropes had snapped.

Burke-Jones called a lunch break while he examined the torn rope and made adjustments on his diorama. Mahina had come down the hill to sit with Greer and Vicente, and Isabel stretched out her legs in the grass. They all shielded their eyes from the sun.

“These ropes aren’t strong enough,” said Vicente. “Perhaps if they were thicker.”

“Let’s hope it’s the ropes,” said Sven, “because I don’t want to think we’re not strong enough.”

Vicente sighed. “Poor Burke-Jones. He has been planning this for months.”

“Well, Burke-Jones will get the job done,” said Sven. “I have faith in the man. He has plans A through Z filed away in his mind. We may be here all day, all week, but he’ll get it done.”

“Now we can appreciate how hard a task it was to move these things,” said Vicente.

Greer was thinking of the tree legend Mahina had told her. She’d been reading further and had found a similar myth from other Polynesian islands—the myth of the coconut palm. Of course, there hadn’t been a trace of coconut palm pollen in any of her cores. The unknown pollen was still unidentified—neither Kew nor the Swedish Museum of Natural History was able to name it. They both suggested she send a sample to Strasbourg, France, where a new International Laboratory of Pollen Sciences had just been established, staffed with the best pollen-typing experts from around the world. She’d done just that and crossed her fingers. Whatever it was, the species was endemic to the island, and so far removed from any parent plant, it had lost all traces of its inheritance. But what if it were some sort of palm? A large tree used for construction, strong enough to move the
moai
? Ropes and stones clearly weren’t sufficient, a thought that had apparently occurred to Burke-Jones as well, who was now distributing five-foot gnarled planks from specially flown-in Japanese pagoda trees—the closest match to the
toromiro
tree that had once covered the island.

Planks in hand, their numbered placards flipping in the wind, the volunteers looked like a group of marathoners preparing to riot. They dragged their wedges up the grassy hill and reassembled around the statue. Greer doubted this would work—pagoda wood wasn’t very sturdy, and the planks were too short to be of much use. What were needed were planks as long as the statue, fifteen to twenty feet, that could slide the statue on its back.

The whistle blew. Half the volunteers were still pulling ropes, team three was still wedging stones, but now two teams were shoving planks beneath the
moai
’s head, trying to use the wood as levers. Then came a crackling as one by one the planks snapped, and then another rope was torn in half. Burke-Jones sounded the whistle, defeated.

Greer sat to catch her breath. Some of the spectators had already left, like fans heading home when their team’s score is too low for hope. Mahina, though, remained, taking pictures of volunteers collapsed in the grass. Greer looked at her watch—almost four—and knew that soon Burke-Jones would have to call it a day.

Greer, weary, glanced toward the coastal path where the Jeeps were parked and the horses tethered, and there was Luka Tepano again. This time the woman from the cave was seated behind him on his horse, holding one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. They slowly approached the site, but stopped at a distance of about forty yards, staring at the scaffolding. Sven, deep in conversation with Isabel, who was dabbing his forehead with a lace handkerchief, didn’t notice them. Only Greer seemed aware of their presence, and lifted her hand to wave.

“How many strikes until you’re out?” Sven was asking.

“The last time is the luckiest, no?” asked Vicente.

“Forty-eight men, two women, a hell of a lot of rocks, and trees. How many trees did he get, Greer?”

“Ten pagoda,” she said, pulled back to the group. “And fifteen
semitriloba
for the rope.”

“Twenty-five trees,” said Sven. “You can’t accuse the man of not trying.”

“Poor Burke-Jones,” sighed Greer, watching him rearrange his diorama, “soon we’re actually going to have to try moving this thing with toothpicks and dental floss. We’ve nothing else left.”

“We have our effort,” said Vicente. “And our spirit.”

They took their positions once again, now on the
moai
’s other side—Burke-Jones had shuffled everyone around, as though simple rearrangement might offset the ineptitude of their tools. Greer noticed Luka and the old woman were still watching. The whistle blew, the last fragments of pagoda wood were jabbed into the ground, the ropes were held like lifelines, the rocks rolled. Curses flew through the air as the volunteers, on this last attempt, gave their all. But when the quit whistle finally sounded, Greer dropped the rope and stepped back from the
moai
with enormous relief. A silence descended on the scene; the crowd looked to Burke-Jones, whose face, fixed on the statue, was expressionless.

“I think he’s going to want the whole bucket of pisco tonight,” said Sven.

“He looks ill,” said Vicente. They all three wiped the sweat from their faces, and stumbled toward the Jeep.

“Let’s call it a day,” said Sven, patting Burke-Jones’s back.

“Randolph,” said Vicente, “you’ve done a great thing here. We must always test our hypotheses, and follow the answers wherever they lead us.”

“I see an ice-cold pisco sour in your hand, my friend.”

Burke-Jones’s mouth hung open for a moment, then closed. It was as though after six hours of unprecedented activity, he had spent himself. He had, it seemed, nothing left to say.

“Randolph,” began Greer, “I think what we saw here today might be related to something else I’m seeing in my cores—”

Burke-Jones nodded slowly, then climbed into the Jeep, started the engine, and drove off. The diorama, which had been resting on the hood, flew into the air and fell to the grass, the matchbox Jeep landing exactly where the actual Jeep had sat, the small toothpick figures scattering in the wind.

When Greer returned to the
residencial
that night, there was a letter from the International Laboratory of Pollen Sciences in Strasbourg waiting beneath her door. She tore open the small envelope. The letter was handwritten:

Jesus! I don’t have a thing here that resembles that little critter you sent me, but I would bet my ass it’s a palm species. Call it an informed hunch. You’ll need some proof though, verification (all good scientists do, don’t they?). Maybe look for macrofossils. Fossilized leaves, bark, nuts.

Easter Island!—I feared you’d dropped off the face of the earth (forwarding address with the p.o. next time? or a phone number? Do they even have phones there?). When I heard about Thomas I tried to get hold of you. Looks like somebody didn’t want to be gotten hold of. They should let you run the Witness Protection program! Anyway, I ought to offer my condolences.

If you’re ever passing through Strasbourg you must come say hi. The pâté is divine, the wine, primo. No scuba diving here, but I gave that up anyway ’cause I slipped a disc. I smoke, I don’t know, about five packs a day. I’m happy.

I’ve thought of you often, you know. Please visit.

   
All good wishes,

   
Josephine (French pals insist—I kind of like it now) Banks

P.S. You should think of going by Dr. Sandor. When I saw Dr. Farraday on the analysis request form, I nearly had a heart attack. Also, have you heard about the National Geo expedition to Surtsey in February? Right up your alley. They’re looking for palynologists.

Greer sat on the bed and set the letter beside her. She tugged off her boots, peeled off her damp shirt, and looked again at the piece of paper. Jo. Greer thought she’d never hear from her again, that Jo had given up on her. Greer had never blamed her for this, knowing how hard it must have been for Jo to see her accused of plagiarism, humiliated in front of the whole department. Jo, who without a moment’s doubt knew what Thomas had done and then had to watch Greer’s stubborn denial. Jo must have known her accusation of Thomas would be suspect, that the simple act of defending a friend might seem the jealousy of a spurned lover. In the end, Jo had no choice but to let Greer figure it out on her own. She probably hadn’t thought it would take Greer five years.

Greer looked at Jo’s signature, the familiar handwriting. This unexpected hello should have made Greer happy, but sitting in the small room where she’d spent the past few months, she felt suddenly edgy. The note brought back too much, too suddenly. Jo, Thomas, the dissertation. Things she’d come here to get away from. That whole part of her life in Madison now seemed incomprehensible. Ever since Thomas’s death, the question plagued her: How hadn’t she seen it? Why hadn’t she realized his betrayal? She was an intelligent woman; she’d graduated summa cum laude from college, had a Ph.D. in botany and palynology. Yet when the evidence was presented, she simply turned away.

Greer looked at the letter once more, folded it, and slid it back in its envelope. She could feel the ache in her limbs, but wouldn’t be able to sleep now. She didn’t want to lie in the bed whispering taxonomy to herself.

Instead, she changed clothes and went to find Burke-Jones.

The laboratory was dark. Vicente and Sven, worn out, had gone back to their hotels to sleep, and perhaps Burke-Jones, too, was back at the Espíritu. But his silence at the moment she’d last seen him made Greer think otherwise. She turned on the lights and peeked into his room. Everything was in order, but no sign of him. As she now stepped across the threshold, she saw, for the first time, the full scope of his constructed world. The long table against the far wall was just the beginning. Perpendicular to either side of the room, six small tables each displayed their own green papier-mâché islands, small
moai
enmeshed with dental floss and toothpicks. In some places the statues were propped up with piles of jellybeans. She ran her fingertips along one’s head, the same grainy texture as the real statues—volcanic tuff. Had Burke-Jones paid a carver to make hundreds of
moai
the size of soda cans? Or had he carved them himself, as he’d so meticulously built everything else?

She walked through the labyrinth of alternate universes—the differences between each were subtle. In some the
moai
were only slightly more upright than in others, and then she realized: chronology. Here was the history of the island laid out on all the tables in the room. On the final table he had included the toppled
moai,
a barren landscape of fallen statues.

Greer flicked off the lights and went back outside. The air was cool now, the sky dark, and she made her way toward the village with her flashlight. She stopped into the Hotel Espíritu, and was told by a groggy Elian, the night watch, that Burke-Jones hadn’t yet returned. Elian lifted an invisible glass to his mouth and swigged. “Señor Burke-Jones drink, I believe.”

Greer left the hotel and cut toward the main street—no sign of him. Heading out of town she spotted his Jeep beside the road to the old leper colony. She followed the path to where the moon lit the semicircle of abandoned huts. She saw a figure seated beside one of them.

“Randolph?”

There was no response, but as she moved closer she saw that it wasn’t Burke-Jones at all, but Luka Tepano.