The Dig (9 page)

“I understand. That makes perfect sense. When was the last time you got a shot?”

“Oh, just a couple months ago. It was no big—my doctor only uses disposables. My dentist still does it old school with everyone else, but he knows I only do disposables.”

Tuni looked at him with genuine empathy.
That is genuine bloody emotion, pure and raw.
He’s the real thing. It definitely hadn’t been all roses for him, growing up.
“Can I ask you a personal question? Or… well, it can wait…” she asked, caressing his shoulder from across the aisle.

“Pssh—fire away. Believe it or not, I’m actually pretty desensitized to things. It probably doesn’t seem like it right now, but it’s really just the emotions that are forced on me that I worry about.”

“Very well. Um, so were you born with your, um, talent? That is, did your parents see you spazzing as a baby when you were, say, wrapped in Grandmama’s blankie?”

“Actually, I would
spaz
out if I had to call someone ‘Grandmama.’” He chuckled. “Sorry, no. It didn’t actually start until I was about eight years old. At least, that’s the earliest I can recall. At the time it seemed more like I was blacking out, and when I woke up I’d remember these vivid dreams about being other people. I took quite a few spills growing up. ‘Write your name on the paper, Matt’—wait, that’s not my pencil,
thunk
. Hold the door open for your mom,
thunk
. I got pretty banged up.”

Tuni had taken off her heels. She turned toward him.

“How did your parents react to all of it? I presume they thought it was some sort of narcolepsy.”

“Exactly. Doctors tried out all sorts of pills on me. I was already a little hyper, and on the pills I was like an electron, shooting around the house—and, of course, touching everything.”

“So when did you put the pieces together and realize the physical contact thing?”

“Well, I had to stay at my cousin’s house for a week this one summer. And I slept in the top of his bunk bed. The weird thing about sleeping in a strange bed or with someone else’s blanket was that I’d be stuck, basically dreaming all this weird stuff that was always through the eyes of someone else, with all their thoughts and emotions, you know? Super surreal. Well, no one could wake me up. Eventually, my mom and dad were called and one of them pulled me out of the bed, breaking the contact, and I came out of it, groggy, looking like I woke up from a normal sleep. That happened more than a few times. My parents always said how I was the type that would fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow. As it turned out, it depended a lot on the pillow.”

Tuni nodded sympathetically but said nothing more than “Hmm…”

“So the day I sort of figured it out, I was in the garage with my dad, helping him mount this bike hanger thingy. I was holding his hammer and screwdriver for him, as I had a bunch of times before, and he would ask me for one or the other of them as needed. So he’s up on the ladder and asks me for the hammer and a nail. I give them to him, he smashes the hell out of his thumb trying to drive a nail in, drops the hammer, swears all up and down the garage for a minute, and then it’s back to work. A minute later, ‘Get me the hammer, Matty.’ I pick it up and, wham-o, there I am asking myself for the hammer, smash my thumb (pain and all), and storm up and down the garage cussing a blue streak. All along, I’m seeing myself looking up at myself, all concerned. I wake up, Dad is over me, checking my head for injuries—the usual drill with my ‘blackouts’—and I looked at the hammer and understood. He had left a piece of himself in it.”

Eyes wide, Tuni nodded. Matt was about to continue when the pilot cheerily declared they were starting their descent into Accra, Ghana.

“So did you tell him?” Tuni asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Matt answered gravely as he looked away and peered out the window.

“He didn’t believe you?”

“Oh, no, he believed me right away. It kind of made it all fall into place. But that’s when everything else started. ‘How about this, Matt? Does this one have any memories? What about this? Hey, I don’t want you in my room anymore.’ Then I became his new project.”

“Sort of like a new power tool, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“He was a homicide detective. Retired now.”

“No!” She replied with shock. “Would he… bring stuff… criminal evidence… home to you?”

“Yeah, but I’d just as soon not go into it. Let’s just say that for something that was wrong to begin with, he went
way
too far, especially toward the end.”

Matt looked out the window and saw the lights of a good-sized city, ending abruptly along one edge where it met the sea. They were nearing the ground. The landing was smooth, but as they taxied to the gate, Matt began to worry about the shots again. Tuni picked up on it at once.

“Don’t worry, Matthew. We’ll make sure they’re disposable.”

After a short walk from the tarmac, they entered the air-conditioned terminal through automatic sliding doors. Matt had expected a third world airport with chickens and goats and naked, screaming children running around, but now he felt a little guilty about his assumption. Everyone was dressed, no farm animals in sight, and from what he could hear on the way to customs, they all spoke English!

“Inoculations, please,” said a woman in uniform at the first counter they reached.

“Yes, I guess that’s what we’re here for,” Matt replied, checking with Tuni, who nodded.

“You have no doctor papers?” the woman asked.

“No, we thought we were coming here to get the shots—and, I guess, papers.”

“Very well, please step over there. Next time, you get your shots before you come to Ghana, okay?”

“Absolutely,” he replied, as if he planned to visit often. She had directed them to a door with an opaque white window centered with a red cross.

They waited in line for about twenty minutes before their turn.

Tuni whispered in his ear, “What about the chair, if they make you sit?”

“It’s fine, I’m covered. Thanks.”

Looking around the large room, Tuni wondered what else might be hiding these stories that only Matthew could see. “What about a metal table like that?”

“Doesn’t matter what it’s made out of. Just can’t be a living thing. I’ll give you all the ‘rules’, I guess, later. My father keeps this book about it. All sorts of weird details no one would ever think about.”

“You have a manual. That’s funny.”

They reached the front of the line and Tuni held him back, clearly meaning to go first. He didn’t protest. She sat down in the chair and laid her arm on the cold stainless steel table. A large woman in the standard starched white button-down shirt sat on a rolling stool beside the chair.

Tuni tried to see the area through Matthew’s eyes. One good thing: the woman wore latex gloves, though some of the fingertips bore yellow stains—they had probably seen a few patients. Another white-shirted woman slid a terry cloth towel to the nurse; on it laid five identical plastic syringes. Tuni looked around the nurse’s bulk to see the other woman tearing open more of the same syringes from protective packages and laying them on another white towel.

“Are these syringes reused?” she asked as the woman cleaned her arm with an iodine pad.

“No, missy,” she replied with a bit of attitude and little accent. “That is not sanitary. There is an HIV epidemic in Africa, don’t you know?”

“Of course. I don’t mean to be a bother, but would you mind changing your gloves?”

The nurse lowered her chin and looked at Tuni through her eyebrows. “Gloves are changed every tenth patient—sooner if contaminated. Good enough for you?”

Tuni peered over her shoulder at Matt, who was watching intently from behind the privacy barrier.

“And what number am I?”

“Okay, fussy one. I will change gloves for your pretty arm.” She snapped the old gloves off, dropped them in the trash, and slid on a new pair from a package on the table. As the shots proceeded, Tuni looked back at Matt and pointed at the table. He nodded in reply, pulling a pile of napkins out of his pocket to show her. They were the drink coasters from the plane. Tuni suddenly realized that he was probably accustomed to preparing for the unexpected. When she was done, she stood and waited a few feet away as Matt took the seat.

“Do you mind if I put these napkins under my elbow?” He asked the nurse. “I have severe skin allergies.”

The nurse looked at him sweetly. “No problem, love. Are you allergic to iodine or alcohol?”

“Nope.”

“Any other medications?” She began to clean the injection areas.

“Just penicillin.”

“Then we are all good, dear.”

The shots had no “complications,” and after paperwork and payment, Tuni and Matt were on their way back to the Gulfstream. As they stepped back onto the tarmac, Matt stopped Tuni and turned her to look at her face.

“Thank you. Seriously.”

“It is no problem, Matthew,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I will take care of you.”

She resumed walking to the plane as Matt took a deep breath. He liked this one.

He reboarded the jet, and they were off to Nairobi.

Matt watched a movie on his iPad to kill time. Tuni watched with little interest for the first half hour but had trouble staying with it—she kept mulling over how Matt’s father had exploited his son’s ability. She couldn’t ask, of course, but hoped Matt would volunteer it when he felt comfortable. Her eyes closed, and she listened to Matt softly laughing.

D
R.
R
HEESE HAD REQUESTED ONLY A
quarter of the crew for the site cleanup. Enzi had driven ten men back from the base camp, including Kanu, who would likely need to be interviewed by the arriving expert. Rheese wanted the entire southern half of the pit refilled and the jagged walls smoothed on all sides. Enzi hadn’t asked about it—he understood the motivation. It was also why the jackhammers were to be returned to the base camp, and the precision tools—trowels, brushes, screens, and dental picks—brought to the site. Rheese wanted to legitimize the dig.

Enzi was operating one of the backhoes, pushing dirt from the dump pile back into the hole with the front bucket. He had a few men disassembling the lift and winch by the equipment trailer while the rest worked in the pit, dressing the walls with mud and chipping away at jagged ends. Enzi could see that no one wanted to work near the elephant carcass, still present three days after the visit from the officials. He had phoned the office several times and always received the same reply: “Your incident is next in line behind a cleanup near Narok.” To which Enzi replied each time: “We
are
the cleanup near Narok!” The call would end after the dissatisfying assertion: “Then the crew should be there shortly.”

It seemed that insects and birds from miles around had hit the motherlode, and the stench had reached an unbearable point. The only relief came when it rained, though, of course, this wreaked havoc on the elephant’s remains.

As Enzi reversed the backhoe up the new mud slope he had created in the pit, Rheese stuck his bald head out of the motor home and waved him inside. Enzi whistled for another man to take his place on the backhoe and walked up to the RV.

“Our visitor is arriving in forty-five minutes,” said Rheese. He apparently just boarded a chopper in Nairobi. I haven’t the foggiest where they plan to land. Are there any clearings between here and base camp?”

Enzi frowned and sucked his lower lip. An idea struck him, and he looked around the site.

“We move your motor home to the road there and they have space to land. We done with the backhoe here and park back by the equipment trailer.”

“Good idea,” Rheese acknowledged. “I’ll need to clean up a bit more inside so nothing comes crashing down when we move. How much longer over there?”

“We pretty much done, Professor.”

“What about the rotting animal?”

“I call again, but they say same bull to me. They on the way, of course.”

Rheese swore softly and shook his head. “I’d just as soon bury the thing if they aren’t going to show. Hell, fifteen meters under? I challenge any gravedigger to make a more appropriate resting place for such a behemoth.”

Enzi nodded. “Perhaps in a thousand years, people come dig here, find bones and think it millions of years old.”

Rheese chuckled. Enzi hadn’t been known for his sense of humor thus far. Rheese leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked up into Enzi’s eyes. Enzi’s smile disappeared as he realized at that moment just how rarely the professor made eye contact with him.

“Enzi,” Rheese said softly.

“Yes, Professor?”

“What are we looking for in this site?”

Enzi’s brow crinkled in bewilderment. “We look for dinosaur bones and other fossils.”

“Yes, yes, but what are we
really
looking for?”

Was this a trap, a test?

“That is all we look for, Professor. What else to find out in jungle?”