Claire returns to Bennington’s tent each night. Of all the many hidden things in Yellowstone, she understands this least of all. She will wonder if forgiveness and hopelessness are the same, but that reflection is for some future day when the pieces of her life have reshaped down to the size of artifacts. On this evening, they are too large and Claire is too close.
The Karelians are content. The purpose of the breed has sought expression and now that has been accomplished. They have been together since birth and now these grown up littermates lie together at the edge of the hilltop. Their noses point east to Chickadee Lake. One evening soon, they will sleep with their ears cupped toward the north, where the Firehole and Gibbon rivers join to make the Madison, fifteen miles west of the outlet of Yellowstone Lake and the beginnings of the north-flowing Yellowstone River.
This day had been hot. Grant Village has been shuttered since the third week in June. It’s water has been turned off. The showers that the Park Service have let them use are now locked up and dry.
In late afternoon, Claire and Bennington have gone swimming in the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. The road is still passable. The lake has been ice-free since the first of June. It has had six weeks to warm up. Even so, at best, it is bracing—even along the west shore of West Thumb where there are geysers and hot springs.
By this time, they had seen each other naked many times. There is no embarrassment. With their clothes off, it is actually easier. They are more amiable. There is less talking. Life seems stripped down and immediate. When the human mammal is at its worst, it is always fully dressed.
They almost have Yellowstone to themselves. Only PBS is poking around the closed park, but this beach of the West Thumb cannot be seen from the road. Cherry Brady’s helicopter occasionally overflies. The approaching sound gives plenty of warning.
Claire retreats deeply into the lake, where Bennington either cannot or will not follow. She swims with long, powerful strokes. Bennington watches her with admiration turning into desire. This becomes worry as she proceeds farther east across the water. West Thumb is over three miles across, although if you measure where it connects with the main lake, then it is fifteen miles wide altogether. Bennington sees the Absaroka Mountains behind her. They mark the eastern shoreline and make it seem impossibly far away. Still, Claire strokes steadily onward. She is getting hard for Bennington to see.
She is already out from shore so far that if she had a problem, Bennington could not help. Now he worries about hypothermia. She has been in the water for fifteen minutes. She must be a half-mile out. If she turns around now, she will have been in the water for half an hour.
He cannot lose a graduate student. His fieldwork would be over. What would he tell them if he came back alone, if they flew her body home, or put it on a train? It must be frigid out in the middle of the lake.
Why is she doing this? He wonders if she is driven to prove something. He grows angry, but he knows that is supremely foolish. There are dozens of perfectly good reasons for Claire doing this, and still he grows angry. Is she doing this to provoke him, to draw him out, to see the real Bennington, to see it happen twice? He has no more chances. He can say precisely nothing about this.
He will meet her at the water’s edge with a towel, with both their towels, and with plaudits, and with a laurel wreath if he had one. There is a blanket in the truck, but he cannot leave the shoreline.
Bennington would not let her help with dinner. He is attentive. He keeps her wrapped up in a sleeping bag. The fire is just now catching. The sun is just now sinking below the tree line. Twilight is very long in camp. The apron of valley floor retreats into deep shadows and darkens first, the hilltop last of all.
The coffee pot is sitting on a flat rock at the edge of the campfire. Bennington has opened three cans of beef stew and heats it in a kettle suspended above the flames from an iron hook. Bennington warms yesterday’s biscuits.
Claire has seen the side to Bennington that no one sees, a side he refuses to acknowledge. The volcano brought them together. It also tore them apart, and yet, this has quickly mended, but with clumsy stitches that now they must overlook.
Bennington knows that the colonel will make a place for her. She must stay behind. Somehow, Bennington knows that soon after arriving back on campus, Claire will say that they have to talk. She will say that this is not working and that she is sorry. Then he will see her with boys until, finally, with only one boy. Then the world will swallow her up and she will be gone.
The age difference was too great. This time he has overreached.
She and Digger will maintain Purdue’s presence here. They will bookmark Bennington’s place. How will he tell her, and when? She can always refuse. Will she? If she does, can he pull rank? What if she calls his bluff? She must see that the opportunity here for a geologist is obvious and immense.
Claire lets the sleeping bag slip from one shoulder. She moves a little farther from the fire as it builds. She pulls the towel off her head. Bennington has a few minutes while the food warms. He sits next to her. He smiles at the pleasure of it.
Their swim is still on his mind. “That really was a phenomenally athletic performance in the lake today.”
Claire seems unimpressed by it. “Have you ever heard of a vertical thermocline?”
“I thought temperature sorted itself out in horizontal layers.”
“Unless it spreads from some central point. Perhaps there is a density difference. Minerals perhaps, in greater concentration.”
Bennington’s smile flattens. “What are we talking about?”
“After I got fifty feet from shore, the water warmed dramatically. It should have cooled.” Claire had said nothing until now. She considered keeping this to herself. She has learned from Bennington. A scientist is wary about sharing, but, suddenly, she is in a conversation.
“The farther I swam out into the lake, the warmer it got, maybe twenty-five degrees warmer. I could never have stayed in sixty-degree water more than five minutes without a wet suit. I think a massive new vent has opened. Yellowstone Lake is turning into a hot spring.”
So that was it, he thinks. She was collecting data. She was never in any danger. She was not trying to make a point, not trying to show him.
She turns to him, excitedly. “Tomorrow, can we go north to the outlet at the Yellowstone River? Can we stand on the bridge and see if there is a fish migration under way? They should be seeking the cooler water of the river. ”
“Then you were exploring?”
“What?”
“Swimming out into the lake, you were gathering data.”
“Yeah, I guess I was. It felt so good I didn’t want to stop. I felt so warm, and buoyant. And, I wanted to see how hot it would get. We could record some water temperatures. We should examine the shoreline. I wonder if we will see new beaches, or flooded forest. I wonder if the lake is tilting. Can we go, please?”
Of course they can.
The bridge at the outlet of Yellowstone Lake spans the mouth of Yellowstone River. The road is bordered with heavy timber. Bennington has parked the truck on the bridge. He and Claire hang over the railing facing north. This railing is an entire Lodgepole Pine. The bridge is a forest glade of them hammered together. It may have been the stoutest structure in Wyoming.
They watch the bigger fish struggle across the rocky bottom that is now almost perceptibly rising toward the surface. The old lakeshore is newly marked with a dark ribbon several feet above the waterline showing the extent of newly revealed lake bottom. Soon the bridge will cross a dry wash and the lake will search for a new outlet through the trees, miles to the south.
Bennington is proud of Claire. “You were right.”
“There must be a new swamp in the woods at the south end.”
“Yes. The water has to go someplace.”
“We should document all of this. Let’s measure the depth of the mouth of the river and the height of the newly exposed shoreline.”
“Yes, we should investigate the two south arms of the lake, but that will be a long hike through the woods. I don’t know if we can get the truck in there.”
“We could rent a boat.”
He laughs. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you’re not me.” Claire beams. “Wait. The park is closed. Silly me. They’re not renting boats.”
“We’ll call the Colonel. He’ll shoot the lock off the boat house.”
It is a jolly moment. They hug each other and walk off the bridge. They have worked well together this summer, every day but once.
Claire straddles him. She lifts herself up on her arms as she rocks her pelvis into his. She arches her back. She lifts her chin, tautly stretching the skin of her neck, which now seems impossibly long, surcharging her sensuality. Absently, she searches for patterns in the night sky. Who can blame her for staring at the clear western sky at 8,300 feet of altitude? Absent the pollution of city light, the black is blacker. It is a bloom of stars. Still, she alertly attends to her rhythm. Climaxes large and small wash across her nervous system like waves coming ashore.
What kind of sex is this, she wonders? It seems distant and remote. Looking up at the sky, this could almost be masturbation.
Claire’s retreat into self makes Bennington a prop. He has the truck keys. He bestows the PhD. He cooks. It is his signature on the permit. When he gets hard, she fucks him. He has become like his dogs, or like the tent.
The science at this place has become her lover. Curiosity arouses. It is the desire to know that warms each moment. Everything that the Earth does, or has ever done, it does here, and for her and it will have no lover more ardent than she.