could see a few stars through the open overhead vent and part of the Big Dipper through the side window.
He was here. On the inside of the fence. And he could stay ... for a while, anyway. The people seemed nice enough, so why wasn’t he feeling exultant, elated, thrilled? Was it because all his planning, hoping, and working toward the moment had been so intense that a letdown was inevitable? Was it because he was worried about his artwork measuring up, or doing or saying something stupid in his role as an “old friend” of Jamie’s? Was it because he didn’t know how to avoid being stodgy? How could he possibly hope to turn into Mr. Personality all of a sudden?
Things looked brighter in the light of early dawn.
“Digsville,” as Bonnie had called it, boasted tents, trailers, campers, a couple of trucks, a Jeep, an old Volkswagen Beetle, and several bicycles.
An Atco trailer served as a cookhouse/dining room, and that was where Adam was heading when he heard running footsteps behind him and felt a slap on the back.
“Hi, guy! Put her there, man! Mike’s the name, micropaleo’s the game.” An exuberant young man with longish dark hair tied back with an elastic band clasped Adam’s hand and shook it vigorously.
“Micropaleontology?” Adam said. “So you study the —”
“Yeah. The micro sites, the little guys — frogs, bugs.”
“Uh ... nice to meet you.”
“Ditto.” Mike scrutinized Adam with a puzzled frown. “So you’re the famous artist. I thought you’d be older. Anyway, catch you later.” He headed in the direction of the toilets on the run.
The activity in the cookhouse reminded Adam of a large family of kids getting ready for school. People were eating, slapping lunches together, grabbing fruit and juice boxes from the fridge, sorting through water canteens in the freezer, and looking for misplaced backpacks.
A young man who reminded Adam of Mike, except he was blond with short hair, paused with a cup of coffee in one hand and a slice of toast in the other. “Hi, I’m Hans. You must be ...?”
“Adam. Nice to meet you.”
Hans balanced the toast on his coffee cup and offered his left hand for a shake.
“You from around here?” Adam asked. He had decided to try to keep all conversation focused on other people.
“No. University of British Columbia. Excuse for a second. I better grab something for lunch.”
“Hans is a sedimentologist,” Jamie said. She was kneeling on the floor, fitting food and drink around various tools in her pack. “He’s working on a thesis with a long name — about rocks.”
Adam didn’t have much difficulty fitting lunch around his supplies — two sketchbooks, twelve pencils in a case, and a small pencil sharpener. He was just closing the door of the camper, ready to leave with the others, when Bonnie came running across the road with a camera.
“Hold it, sweetie. I need a picture for my album. Smile! Say ‘sex’! Gotcha!”
At 6:30 a.m. a party of ten set out for the dig. Cowboy Slim didn’t go. His role, as far as Adam could see, was to provide support for his wife, amuse and entertain with stories and song, and be the gofer — take the water barrels to Warner and fill them up every second day, run into Raymond for groceries, make an overnight trip into Calgary for glyptal, a preservative, and plaster of Paris.
In addition to the people Adam had already met — Mr. Jamieson, Jamie, Bonnie, Denise, Sy, Mike, and Hans — there were two new faces.
“You must be Adam. I’m Lois.” A short-haired, healthy-looking woman of about forty transferred a pencil from her right hand to her left, which held a notebook, and shook his hand. She and Denise walked together, and Adam overheard snatches of conversation about rose mallows, brown-eyed susans, and sunflowers. They seemed to be absorbed in identifying wildflowers and plants.
“Hi, there! Welcome aboard. I’m Herbie.” A small dark young man fell into step beside Adam.
“Thanks. I’m Adam. Are you from around here?”
“Yes, from the University of Alberta.”
“Paleontologist?” Adam asked.
“Uh-huh. I’m working on the digestive systems.” He had a slight lisp and pronounced the words digethtive thythtems. “I classify coprolites.”
Adam looked puzzled.
“Droppings,” Herbie said.
“Oh ...”
“I understand you’re going to be our resident artist for a few days.” Herbie bent down, picked up a stone, and turned it over. “Do you do book illustrations or gallery work or what?”
Adam tried to make his face appear normal, but his lips felt tight as he shook his head. “Not really. Mostly just private stuff.”
Jamie, the rescuer, had apparently overheard, because she immediately joined them. “Watch your step as we climb the hill,” she warned. “The caliche can be tricky if you step on it the wrong way.”
“Caliche?” Adam asked.
“Yeah,” Jamie said. “The little white stones. They can send you skidding along the sandstone on your butt quicker than you can say calcium carbonate.”
“Or into a cactus,” Herbie added. “And that’s not an adventure without peril.”
Adam grimaced. “I guess.”
The countryside was stark and inhospitable. Great expanses of prairie grasses — spear grass and wheat grass — were interrupted by eroded patches of rock and dirt. A few oil well pumps bobbed their grasshopper heads up and down, up and down. The morning sky was clear, and the wind hadn’t started to prowl yet. On the dry southern slope of Devil’s Coulee grew prickly pear, cushion cactus, sagebrush, yellow violets, and prairie onion.
“John Palliser sure got it right two hundred years ago when he said this country wasn’t fit for human habitation,” Adam said.
“Oh, like really? Did he say that?” Jamie gazed around. “I guess it does seem kind of barren, but I like it.” She put her hands behind her back and shoved her pack higher.
“Oh, yeah, it’s nice in a way,” Adam said quickly. Actually, the ambience was improving. There were surprises in the sear landscape — patches of bright yellow buffalo beans, golden asters, bluebells. Ground squirrels popped beady-eyed heads out of dens, peered around with quick movements, then crept cautiously out to sit up straight and swivel their necks to search for danger.
“Isn’t it just the most perfect thing?” Jamie shaded her eyes with a hand and gazed up at the coulee. “Only a tiny fraction of dinosaur remains are ever fossilized and here we have whole nests right in our own backyard.”
Adam tried to think of something un-stodgy to say. “Yeah, funny, isn’t it? All this time they’ve been finding fossils of adults but no kids. They just weren’t looking in the right place. I mean — right church, wrong pew.”
