Season of Death (24 page)

“She thought we were having an affair …”

“You don’t have to talk about this …” Ray tried.

” … As if I’m some slut who hops from bed to bed. Okay, so I’m no virgin, but …”

“Really, Cindy. We don’t need to know the gory details …”

“… With my own professor?” She made a gagging sound. “With the dig leader? Just how sleazy does Janice think I am?!” Cindy was building steam. “We didn’t do anything. Mark was just nice to me. Is that a crime?”

They reached a twist in the trail, and Ray meagerly attempted to shift the conversation. “Won’t be far to the river now. You doing okay, Billy Bob?”

The cowboy nodded. He was staring into space, riding a nonprescription high.

“One night last week, we sat and talked in the mess tent until 2
A.M
. Just talked,” Cindy continued in a whine. “That’s it. Nothing more. Next thing I know, Janice is on the rampage. She wants me on the first boat to China.” She sighed wearily.

After an appropriate lapse, Ray asked, “So is that why you’re leaving the site?”

Cindy nodded. “Janice banished me. She waited until Mark left on Friday. Then she told me to pack up and get out.” In a hoarse whisper, she muttered, “The witch.”

“Amen,” Chung and Chang chimed.

“Difficult to work for?” Ray submitted. He was looking at Stubby, the packhorse.

“Real pain in the backside.”

“Anyway,” Cindy continued, “the meltdown Thursday evening started with her shouting about how the two of us slept together. He came back with something about how she had bedded one of the undergrade in her lab group. Then it slowly settled down, focusing on the two subjects they’ve been bickering about all summer.”

Ray waited, actually leaning an ear in her direction. The parade stopped.

Cindy blinked at them innocently. “Hunan and Red Wolf.” She shrugged, implying that this was common knowledge. “The sexual stuff is ripping their personal relationship apart. The grant from Hunan and the opposition from the mine is tearing their academic relationship to shreds. The rumor going around camp is that after this dig they’ll part ways—get a divorce and disassociate themselves from one another back at the U-Dub.”

“Is it really that bad?” Ray asked.

“Oh, yeah. We’ve got a pool …
Had
a pool. The rest of the crew still does. It’s to predict when the big split will happen. You know, a date, who sues first, what the grounds will be. Some of the guesses were pretty funny. Some of them were pretty rude.” She shook her head in disgust. “I guessed mid-November.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’ll be about six weeks after the dig’s over. The Seattle winter will be settling in: drizzle, cold … Kind of like it is here today. Except it will stay that way until spring. And everybody knows it. So it affects your mood. No matter how long you’ve been there, it still gets to you. Anyway, add the weather, the end of the dig, the recovery time…

“They’ll be ready to call it quits. Either that, or ready to kill each other.”

TWENTY-FIVE

I
T TOOK OVER
an hour for the parade to reach the river. Cindy chattered continuously, telling them about the dig, recounting events of the summer, and periodically throwing her traveling companions juicy tidbits concerning the Drs. Farrell.

By the time the boats came into view, Lewis was visibly withering, his usually bright face was grim, the smart-aleck remarks and attitude absent. Billy Bob, on the other hand, was in good spirits. Almost giddy, he was having trouble putting one foot in front of the other. He had taken to calling his hulking attendant “partner,” and was chuckling as he peppered the man with questions about
Chiny.

After dragging a raft down to the water, one of the enforcers began loading the packs. The other loaded Billy Bob, as if he too were a piece of luggage. Lewis teetered dangerously as he climbed aboard. Cindy got in next, Ray last. Without so much as a word in parting, the security guards kicked the Zodiac away from the bank and turned their backs on it.

“Thanks for the help!” Ray called. He meant it too. Without them, the trek to the boats would have been an ordeal in itself.

“Ain’t this nice!” Billy Bob exclaimed. He was leaning back, elbows over the side of the raft, legs spread-eagled, face to the sky, like a sunbather on the promenade deck.

Nice
was not the term Ray would have chosen. Cold maybe. Gray. Dreary. A brisk wind was rising from the water, and the sun had deserted the region entirely.

“This here is the life,” the cowboy boasted. “Floatin’ down a lazy river with two of my best buddies. And a perty lady friend.”

Cindy smiled politely, then whispered to Ray, “Is he drunk?”

“No. Just high on meds.” Ray gave the starter on the outboard motor a pull. When the engine failed to catch he yanked it again. “Hope we’ve got fuel.”

Lewis roused himself and leaned over to check. “Eh … Lotsa gas.” With that, he returned to his place next to Cindy and withdrew into his parka like a turtle, hood coming up, hands disappearing. Balling up, he grunted, “Keep left, or we go boulda hopping.”

Two pulls later, the motor roared to life. Ray used the handle to steer the craft to the extreme left. He had no desire to “hop” any boulders today. A simple, uneventful float to the village and a plane ride back to Barrow. His attention was already focused on what waited for him there: a loving wife, a baby in progress.

“You married?” Cindy asked, as though she had read his mind.

Ray nodded happily.

“Kids?”

Another nod, this one noticeably proud. “Our first is on the way.”

“Congratulations. Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

Ray shrugged. He hadn’t really thought about it. Grandfather would say it was in violation of the old ways, against the wishes of the
tuungak.
Ray tended to agree, though for a different reason. Knowing the sex of a child before birth seemed unnatural, a rude intrusion into a mysterious biological process.

He directed his attention to the river. They were coming up on the section of rapids that Lewis had been so excited about a day earlier. Ray carefully hugged the bank.

“Are you an archaeology major?” he asked over the roar of the white water.

Cindy scowled at this and was about to say something when the raft began to bounce. Lewis moaned and hunkered down into the bottom of the boat.

Grinning, Billy Bob exclaimed, “Ride ‘em cowboy!”

“Hang on!” Ray warned.

For the next five minutes the raft pitched, bucking like a bronco, much to Billy Bob’s delight. He was oblivious to the danger, unaware that the Zodiac could overturn and they could all drown if Ray failed to keep the boat away from the rocks.

Beyond the boulder field, the Kanayut widened, becoming a smooth, suspiciously tranquil liquid highway that curved north into the swirling bank of hovering cotton.

“There’s Red Wolf,” Cindy said, pointing.

“Where?” Ray squinted into the curtain of fog.

“The camp is a hundred yards or so off the river, just up from those rocks. If it was clear, you could see it. The operation is right on the side of the mountain, a _ig strip of barren ground where they’ve torn it up.”

Ray stared at the mist. “I understand they’ve been giving you a hard time.”

Cindy’s face scrunched as if she had just swallowed a lemon. “Who?”

“The folks from Red Wolf,” Ray said. “Dr. Farrell said they were pestering the dig team.”

“She did?”

“Threatening you guys when you went to and from the village. Violating the site. Trying to sabotage the dig …” He waited for recognition. “Were you there all summer?”

A nod.

“And you never witnessed any conflicts with the Red Wolf people?”

Cindy pursed her lips, then slowly shook her head. “No.”

“Dr. Farrell painted a pretty grim picture ….”

“Shore is a perty picture,” Billy Bob mumbled. His eyes were closed now, the smile reduced to a faint grin. He was draped across the raft like a wet noodle.

“… Of the relationship between the two groups. Something of a feud.”

Cindy considered this. Shrugging, she told him, “I doubt the Red Wolf people were overjoyed to hear that parts of the valley might be declared historical areas. But as far as I know, they’ve never made any threats. To tell you the truth, we haven’t had much contact with them. You see a few miners in Kanayut once in a while. Or maybe pass them on the river. That’s it. They’re always nice enough.”

Odd, Ray thought. Farrell had made it sound like a small war was being waged between the two factions and that her husband’s trip to Juneau might well be the decisive blow. “I thought Chung and Chang were enlisted to keep the miners at bay.”

Cindy seemed surprised by this. “We were told that they were sent in by Hunan, to prevent looting.”

“Looting?”

“At the site. After we realized the significance of the find and the number of artifacts, Hunan wanted the site kept under strict security, to deter time thieves.”

Time thieves. Ray had heard of those: criminals who went around robbing archaeological digs and selling the relics to museums. But out here in the Bush? To battle the miners, he might buy. Even to stave off Headcase. But to deter time thieves?

“Has this dig been publicized?” he asked.

“Not yet. Mark was hoping to publish this year, but … I don’t know. He changed his mind for some reason. Said he wanted to get a better feel for the scope of it and nail down the dating. But he’ll be lucky if he can stall them until next season.”

“Stall who? The university?”

“No. The U-Dub is big on the ‘publish or perish’ ethic, but even they’re willing to hold off until all the facts are in. It’s Hunan that’s applying the pressure. They’ve been on Mark to write up the site and get it into the archaeological journals.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“Who knows? Maybe they think science works just like the marketplace: make an investment, get a quick return.” She smirked. “As if archaeology was a business. The whole thing disgusted Mark. He’s a purist. You know, obsessed with discovery, but unwilling to accept help if it could risk compromising the scientific process.”

“Then why …?”

“Janice,” Cindy answered, anticipating the question. “Mark’s the field arch. Janice is the bookkeeper. I mean, she knows her stuff in the dirt. But without him, there would be no site. Without her, there would be no funds to excavate it. She’s a deal maker. I don’t know how she snared Hunan, just that she put the thing together against Mark’s will. He kept saying that letting Hunan into the loop would destroy the integrity of the dig.”

“Did it?”

Wiping raindrops from her face, Cindy replied, “Depends on who you talk to. According to Janice, no. According to Mark, by all means. Me? All I know is that I needed this field trip as a prereq to get into the anthro program. And now …” Her face sunk, and she looked like she was about to cry.

Unsure what to say, Ray looked to the river. Hand on the throttle, he absentmindedly angled the motor left, right, left … “You okay?” he finally asked. “Need another coat or something?”

She sniffed at this, on the verge of crying. “It’s not so much getting booted from the dig. It’s …” A single tear welled in her right eye. “But Mark … he …” She sucked in a long, halting breath. “He and … I … we …” She began to sob, her entire body quaking.

Ray patted her shoulder tentatively. Comforting jilted coeds wasn’t exactly his forte. Feeling that he had to do or say something, he released his grip on the motor and began rummaging through one of the packs. Withdrawing a sweatshirt, this one displaying Michael Jordan sky walking toward a monster dunk, he draped it over her.

After a cursory glance at the river, to ensure that they were not about to be pounded by a rock or go over a falls, he fished through the pack for something with a waterproof texture. Half a minute later, his fingers came onto what felt like gortex. He yanked on it, doing his best not to dislodge the entire contents of the main storage compartment.

Still fighting with what he suspected was a windbreaker, Ray felt the raft lean. Before he could react, he was falling sideways into Cindy, the raft performing a 180. He looked up just in time to see the Y. Having spun around a bend, they were facing a split in the river. The left fork appeared to be rather shallow, a maze of eddies and sandbars. In the middle, a single lane of scraggly alders sprang up from an oval island. The right side of the fork was an obstacle course from a whitewater rafter’s nightmare.