Who Would Draw the Water?

Soon I spot a few tents and a ger set up beside a series of hills. There’s no water out here, says Billy. That’s why base camp is so far away. Each night we leave the place looking pretty bare-bones, he says, adding that in the past the expedition loses equipment to scavengers and profiteers, so they learn the hard way that it’s better to take everything with them at day’s end.

We spend the first hour unpacking what each team needs. Already the teams are at work for more than a month, racing against time to get whatever specimens they discover free of the rock. Stevie and Jess move between teams offering advice and encouragement as well as scouting future digs. Tömör trails along. The two scientists often stop to shoot infrared images of the bare ground. If things look promising, they perform a preliminary dig to hit whatever might be there. Then they try to identify what the stone might hold to see if it is worth the hundreds of hours it can take to bring it up into the light.

When I think of western scientists, I picture men in spotless white lab coats the color of snow. Stevie and Jess look nothing like what I imagine. Earlier Billy explains to me that they’re a married couple. So when I see two women cresting a hill where Billy is pointing, I keep scanning the landscape. No, them, says Billy. Right there. I look again. How can they be the world-renowned dinosaur hunters?

Mun senses my confusion. They’re lesbians, dummy, he thinks. In Mongolia, the idea of two women or two men making a life together is a concept I cannot imagine. In such a household, who would draw the water? Who would slaughter the animals? I am surprised my brother seems so comfortable with it, but then again, he has many more interactions with westerners than I have. Get with the times, Mun thinks.

The women are deeply tanned, wrinkles like rays shooting from the corners of their eyes, noses slathered with zinc. Both wear their hair in long braids. In some ways, they look more like mother and daughter. Stevie’s hair is blond where Jess’s is a pale silvery color. Billy whispers that Stevie is Jess’s former student, but that’s more than twenty years ago. This early in the morning, the women roll the sleeves and legs of their khaki shirts and pants all the way up, but later when the sun is broiling the earth, they unroll them for protection. There is something of the intrepid adventurer about each of them. I can easily imagine these women rolling across the landscape a hundred years ago as part of Roy Chapman Andrews’s expedition.

Tömör seems nonplussed by two married women who Billy says spoil him rotten. I watch as the little boy swaddled in clothes takes Uncle’s hand and begins to scramble up an embankment. I cannot help but think they look like playmates.

Billy asks why we’re here. I give a nebulous answer. There’s much to see in our country, I say.

I get it, Billy says. You’re here for the kid.

Why do you say that, I ask.

He’s something else, Billy says. An old soul. Nothing can stop him. He shakes his head. I mean, the way he finds dinosaurs out here—it’s totally crazy. Billy gestures at the landscape. You dig what I’m saying, he says. It’s like he’s one of them. Like he’s been here before.