Here was something Harry was pretty sure no one else had discovered: a road. The map he’d gotten from the field office showed an abandoned copper mine very near where Harry knew there was a road. Wasn’t listed on the map but Harry had driven on it. It took him four hours from the Stagecoach Oasis to get to the spot where an access should branch off, and he had to backtrack and hunt on foot for it, hiking up and down the main road (main road! ha!) opening his mind to new interpretations of thoroughfare, meaning, drive up this massive boulder because the flat part of it could be the access way.
And he was right. The boulder was part of the road. Three burro miles later (thinking ahead), he parked, checked his map again, and scrambled up an outcropping. Before setting off with a compass he wanted to scope the area with binoculars. Didn’t actually think he could find it that way, things didn’t come tied with ribbons out here, but there it sat, a little gift for Harry Lindstrom: an old mine stuck low in a sunbaked, spalling brownness. It looked to be a mountain cave for a troll— a troll fallen on hard times. The small squat entrance was shored with tortured lumber. The weight of the top beam had pushed the entrance base wider and wider. A wheelbarrow was tossed out in front. It was obviously a small-time, mealworm operation—abandoned, Harry guessed, after the copper ore proved too low grade to turn a profit.
Harry returned to the truck and opened up the back. He groaned at the boxes of liquor he had forgotten to give Miss Dazzle. He pushed them aside and pulled out his best detection instruments and considered which ones he should use. He’d been wanting to try out the Halross model so he could provide testament to his customers that this was indeed the finest among portable scintillators.
One thing was certain, he was going to try out black light inside the cave. That was the newest thing on the market, supposedly all the rage, and yet the Mineralight wasn’t selling well. Perhaps because not all the uranium-bearing ores fluoresced under black light. Carnotite, for example, didn’t fluoresce, and that fact alone was enough to keep most people away. Everyone was chasing carnotite these days—Jimmy was mining a carnotite vein in his operation—but carnotite wasn’t what Harry was after. With copper ore involved, especially low grade, he was betting on some pitchblende lurking within. Problem was that only impure pitchblende fluoresced. Pitchblende in its primary state wouldn’t. People heard that news and they ran from black light. Did it worry Harry? Let him put it this way: the AEC was offering a $10,000 discovery bonus for primary pitchblende, and so far not a single bonus had been given. So what did that tell you? That told you to go to the Belgian Congo to find your primary pitchblende and not trouble yourself about finding it in Utah because you weren’t going to.
Harry carefully packed the Mineralight in his rucksack and started out. He hadn’t gone twenty steps when he returned to the truck and exchanged the scintillator for a Geiger counter—think, Harry, think. You’re going to be inside a dark cave where flashing lights and ticking sounds might be useful. He picked up the Babbel instead.
Outside the cave he took some background counts. The meter averaged between 3 and 4. The weathered lumber shoring the entrance left him uneasy. But if it had stood this long, it could remain standing another hour or two. He stooped and went inside the mine. The passage didn’t go in very far. They must not have made it past their first or second assay. He imagined someone just like Leonard Dawson as the man behind this. A shoddy operation that showed Dawson’s same telltale lack of will. But it predated Leonard Dawson. It had been abandoned years earlier, before the uranium rush. You could see history here, and it told you there would always be generations of gritless men ready to shortchange the world.
At the back wall he set down his pack and brought out the black light. The cave turned into one of those special museum rooms when he turned on the Mineralight. The walls shone with fluorescence. He looked for yellow-green, judged the color as best he could, then chipped out some samples with his pick. He found a thick overburden of rock on the floor and set the Babbel on it. The counter didn’t give up anything. He hammered and picked through the rock. His long limbs were cramping from having to squat. When he broke through the overburden he took another reading and the crackling and the lights were steady and stronger, with the meter jumping to 6. He took it down two ranges to the lowest level of sensitivity and still got a reading. He put some samples in his bag, then found another spot and gouged it out, but it offered up nothing. But this had been good. This had been very good. He cased the Mineralight, returned it to the rucksack, and crawled out of the cave.
Miss Dazzle stood alone at the edge of the parking lot. Hands shoved against hips, chin craning down the street. Her wagging finger flew up, and she trotted forward. Harry wondered how long she’d been standing there waiting for him. “Sorry, sorry,” he yelled. “I forgot all about them last night.” Not bothering to park, he cut the engine, rushed out, and opened up the back of the truck. He started unloading the boxes of liquor.
“Where’s the fire, Harry?”
“Thought you were waiting for me.”
“Of course I’m waiting for you, Harry. I’m always waiting for you. But I wasn’t waiting for you.”
“What were you waiting for?”
“You were waiting for something.”
“Oh, Harry, we’re all waiting for something.”
“That sounds mysterious,” Harry said. He was in a good mood and he could feel this new ability to joke bubbling up. “Let me get that, now. You just stand here and wait.” His shoulder blocked her when she tried to grab a box. “No, really,” he said. “Let me carry them in.”
“You’re such a gentleman.”
He turned when he got to the office door. “And you’re a lady in waiting.” The riposte came too late and by now she was past getting it but that was okay, that was a pretty good joke any way you looked at it.
He brought in the second box and set it on the desk. The screen door slammed behind Miss Dazzle. “I’m sorry I forgot your order,” he said. “Had a few errands to do this morning. Left before anyone was up.” Harry tried not to sound breathless and proud of himself, but the way Miss Dazzle was glinting at him told him he probably hadn’t succeeded. He poked around the liquor boxes; he was smelling fumes. He picked up a few Jim Beams from the box but couldn’t find the one with the broken seal. “Saw Jimmy Splendid last night and he helped himself.
Miss Dazzle came over and took a bottle from Harry’s hand and gazed at it.
“Jimmy said he was here,” Harry told her.
Miss Dazzle nodded. “Was Jimmy here? Oh yes, he was here. What’s a month without a little visit from Jimmy? Where did he end up staying last night?”
“I saw him at Dr. Randolph’s.”
“Hmm. I know Jimmy. He doesn’t just show up to make sure everyone other than himself is doing fine. A good enough man, but he comes first. So what’s he up to?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said.
“What’s he got you doing for him now, Harry?”
“What do you mean?”
“What little errand did he send you out on?”
“I’m just an errand boy, is that what you’re saying?”
“I didn’t say that, Harry.”
“This was an errand,” Harry said, plucking another bottle of Jim Beam from the box. Miss Dazzle came close and squeezed his biceps with both hands. “I think he’s sweet on the mother,” Harry said. “He kept asking about her.”
“Jean?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“You didn’t pick up on it?”
Miss Dazzle shrugged. “And you did?”
“Right away.”
“Oh, I forget, Harry, you’re versed in the ways of love.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Harry said. “You’re in a mood today.”
“Jimmy’s not going to make a special trip for a woman, believe me.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because men don’t do that.”
“Sure they do,” Harry said.
“I’m a woman and you’re a man and yet I know more about men than you do.”
“Well, I’m a man and my brother’s a man and making a special trip doesn’t seem like it would take a miracle.”
“My husband walking across the room with a box of chocolates for me? That’s a miracle.”
“That’s not a trip.”
“It’s a trip across a room. My husband—listen, Harry—would drive all the way to Grand Junction to go find some special fishing hook or a piece of beef jerky for one of his buddies, but it would never cross his mind to walk across the living room, not from here to there, for me.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Harry said. “You’re not really describing a trip.”
“Oh, Harry! If I was sitting there on that sofa bawling out my eyes, which I can tell you happened more than once because of him and his behavior, the guilty party wouldn’t even hand me the handkerchief in his hand. What!”
“You’re describing a bad marriage, not a special trip.”
“Oh, Harry, you’re something.”
“You should be glad you’re rid of him.”
“I am, honey, believe me.” She unscrewed the Jim Beam and got two glasses. “Come on and have a drink with me. Let’s celebrate being rid of him.”
“I’ve had a long day. Out in the field,” Harry added with another failed squelch of pride. “One drink and you’ll have to wipe me off the floor.”
Miss Dazzle eyed him skeptically before bursting into laughter. “Oh, I needed that laugh. Thank you.” She poured two glasses and handed one to Harry. “I don’t know what my boys see in him. Both of them. Think the sun rises and sets on him. He’s got a girlfriend out there, Harry. Ma Bell finally got my boys on the line and they told me.”
Harry set the drink on the counter. “You didn’t really think he was coming back, did you?”
Miss Dazzle hung her head. She began to sniffle, and Harry hugged her and let her sniffle against his chest. He was dirty and worried about that. He could smell himself, but now he could smell Miss Dazzle. The fumes came to him from their real source, in pulses, with each shuddering exhale.
She pulled back and hunted for her glass. “This one’s yours.” She handed the glass to him. “He’s got a girlfriend; I might as well get a boyfriend. Isn’t that how it works, Harry?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have had a drink before, haven’t you, Harry?”
“Sure,” Harry said.
“You’ve had drinks and all that other stuff before, right? I know because of your religion . . .”
“Come on. Everyone’s out having some special barbecue. I loaned them the car. Wasn’t that nice of me and don’t tell my sons. Have one drink with me, Harry, just one.”
“I think you’ve already had one. Maybe even two.”
Miss Dazzle laughed loud and long. She clinked Harry’s glass, returned to the counter. “You’ve never had a drink, have you?”
“I have,” Harry said.
Miss Dazzle lifted her glass and swallowed. She pushed the other glass at Harry again.
“I’m sorry about your bad news,” Harry said. “I thought you didn’t want him back.” He didn’t take the glass.
“I don’t want him back. What makes you say that?” She took his hand and like a schoolteacher wrapping a chubby fist around a pencil, she fitted the glass into his palm. She clamped both her hands around his so that there could be no escape. “He’s no husband of mine. Harry, I’m free, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Her hands pushed the glass to his mouth. Harry took a nonchalant swallow and leaned away, but the glass continued to follow him upward for more swallows, and it didn’t lower until he had swallowed it all. Miss Dazzle was tall but Harry was very tall, and when she moved in to kiss him she couldn’t reach his lips and she was too unsteady to remain on tiptoes. But she was almost there and almost there she stayed. She kissed his throat instead. Her hands went to the sides of his waist. Harry was raised to be polite and friendly and now he saw what kind of trouble a polite and friendly girl could get herself into. He froze. It was different with a polite and friendly man of course. Nothing could happen unless a man made it happen, but then Miss Dazzle’s hands started to move and he realized that wasn’t necessarily so. He caught her hands, but not quite in time to hide his body’s betrayal. He took Miss Dazzle’s wrists and handcuffed them to his chest.
“Harry,” she said.
“We’ve always been good friends,” he said.
“I’ve always thought you were special.”
“We’re friends,” Harry said. “We’ve always been good friends.”
“You’re different. You’re the kind who’d make a special trip.” Harry began to ease himself away. She pressed closer, against him.
“All your talk about making special trips,” she laughed. “What special trips have you made?”
Both turned their heads at the sound of the DeSoto pulling into the lot.
“Jiggers, the cops,” Miss Dazzle said. She breathed out a warm vapory chuckle against his throat. As soon as Harry moved to the door Miss Dazzle’s freed hands slipped around him from behind. “This is what you’re missing, Harry. If you think maybe . . .” Her fingers were quickly inside his belt. “. . . because we don’t match . . . our experiences. No, Harry. I would never make fun of you.” Her hands moved down farther and, with gasps escaping them both, held him.
“What’s got into you!” Harry finally cried out and instantly regretted it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it that way. You’re a wonderful person. I value our friendship.”
“It’s all right,” Miss Dazzle said, weeping silently against his back, her wrists once more handcuffed to his chest, the best he could manage without doing further damage to her emotional state. Her mouth bored a hot circle into his back. He heard them calling outside.
“Your truck’s open, Harry.”
“Harry, your truck’s open!”
“Hel-lo!”
He cracked the door wide enough for his head. Miss Dazzle was still stuck behind him. “I know. Thank you. I’m unloading some boxes. How was the barbecue?”
That wasn’t going to stop them. Already he saw Jo and Jean angling their heads to see through the door gap. “Okay, I’ll be there in a minute,” he called, a futile attempt to forestall them. They had already said something to Beth, who was bounding over.
“She’s coming,” Harry pleaded. Even now he couldn’t find the nerve to shove her away.
Miss Dazzle broke off and turned to her desk.
“Hello, Beth,” Harry said.
Beth pushed through him and entered the office. “Why is Miss Dazzle crying?” she asked.
“She’s not crying. She’s going through her papers on the desk. Did you have a good barbecue?”
“Yes thank you. Why is she crying?”
“She has a lot of paperwork.”
“Because Harry’s such a gentleman,” Miss Dazzle said and sniffled.
You can go now, Harry wanted to say but he couldn’t say that either. “I’ll be over to the room in a few minutes,” he told her.
“Okay,” Beth said and stood there.
“Could you tell your mom I’ll be over there in a few minutes?” He waved good-bye.
“Okay,” Beth said.
Harry waved good-bye again and reluctantly she departed.
“I wish you hadn’t said that,” Harry told Miss Dazzle.
“Why? Do you think she understands?”
“Do you think she might repeat it?”
Harry figured he’d get it over with, so after changing shirt and pants he headed to the motel room and knocked on their door. The mother answered, squinted as if to place him, and said, “I thought I heard a gentleman knocking.”
“Does Charlie want to help me with an experiment?” Harry asked.
“Where have you been?”
“I had something I had to look into,” he said. To contain the smile he felt creeping proudly across his mouth he added, “Do you want to help me, too, Beth? You can.”
“No thank you,” Beth said and left.
The smile Harry couldn’t hold back found a proper excuse in the form of this cute little girl high-tailing it to Miss Dazzle’s office (hadn’t that been his niece just months earlier?—when had she become a beauty contestant?). “You don’t even know what it is he’s got,” Jo called after Beth. “At least ask.”
He said, “I think I can honestly say that I have the most exciting thing Charlie has ever seen.”
“He went on a helicopter ride yesterday,” Jean said.
“Oh,” Harry said.
“Mr. Flaherty took us,” Jo said. “Do you know him?”
“Sure.”
“He was a gentleman, too. Though he didn’t make us cry.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“It’s nice being surrounded by gentlemen,” Jean said.
“Really nice,” Jo said.
“Okay,” Harry said. “I get it.”
“What was going on in there between you and Miss Dazzle?”
“Nothing,” Harry said.
“Harry knows nothing, sees nothing,” Jo said.
“What’s between Mr. Flaherty and Jimmy?” Jean asked. “Can you answer that?”
“It’s the usual stuff that goes on around here. Everybody knows about it.”
“We don’t.”
“Jimmy’s still burned up over some withdrawn land the government changed its mind about and released. He thinks Flaherty claim-jumped him and he makes sure to let everyone know.”
“Did he?”
“It was legal, if that’s what you mean. But Jimmy’s still burning over it.”
“So were you claim-jumping Miss Dazzle in there?” “No, but it was legal.” The two women were doubled over as Harry turned his back on them.
Charlie caught up to Harry at the truck. The evening had brought with it a dry breeze. The sleeves of Charlie’s T-shirt flapped like flags. “What country’s this and what country’s that?” he joked to Charlie, lifting each sleeve.
Charlie shrugged.
“Did you enjoy that helicopter ride?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said.
“I bet that was something, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Harry pulled out his mineral bag from the truck. He took one of the samples that had fluoresced in the cave and chipped off a candy-sized piece with his pick, then pounded it into powder with the hammer side. Charlie watched. He always watched before he asked questions.
“You want to see a piece of equipment that’ll run you about a thousand dollars?” Harry brought out the Mineralight. He would rather stay outside and do the test on his tailgate but the breeze would make it difficult. Plus it wasn’t dark yet, and it had to be dark.
Charlie was a good kid. He regarded the Mineralight with a twelve-year-old’s lust but kept a proper distance. Harry knew how bad Charlie wanted to get his hands all over it. Even after Harry had it set up on the writing table in the motel room, Charlie didn’t dare touch it. He did help Harry set up the Bunsen burner on the toilet seat since it was just a Bunsen burner. Harry directed him to set the ground-up mineral sample next to it. Then Charlie heated up a loop of wire dipped in some sodium fluoride they had found in the chemistry set Miss Dazzle had lent him. Charlie kept dipping and heating until a molten bead formed. Then he touched the bead to the ground-up sample and picked up a speck, brought that back over the flame and melted the speck into the bead.
“Look at that, perfect timing. It’s getting dark out. By the time the bead cools, it’ll be just right. We need it nice and dark for the ultraviolet to work. Right, Charlie?” Harry made an announcement that he thought would please the boy: “Charlie can explain to any of you others what we’re doing in case you’re interested and don’t understand.” But Charlie looked increasingly, terribly unhappy. “And guess what? I just had an idea. I’m going to get the Geiger counter. We’ll test it with that, too.” A bonus, the idea had occurred to Harry in the middle of the bead test, but Charlie didn’t manage even the barest of smiles at what Harry thought was an inspired suggestion. “I thought you’d go for that,” Harry said. The smothering in his chest must be his heart breaking. He thought he’d had something for Charlie. Plus he was going to tell him all about the troll’s cave, the fairy-tale adventure that sprang out of a copper mine of old. Instead he had made Charlie miserable. “Sorry,” Harry said. “Thought it was something you’d find interesting.”
Jean steered him out the door. “Go get your Geiger counter,” she said with a push.
Harry walked ahead so Jean couldn’t see his face. He thought he might start to cry.
“That’s Charlie. He looks that way when he’s happy.” Harry turned toward the voice. Jo was following him.
“He doesn’t look happy to me,” Harry said.
“He is happy. That’s how he looks when he’s happy.’
“But he doesn’t look happy.”
“Harry, are you listening to me?”
He felt a scolding tug on his elbow when he didn’t respond.
“Charlie, he’s just so happy he can’t contain himself right now. I know it’s hard to understand.”
“I understand,” Harry rushed in to say. “I’m not an ogre. Do you think I’m an ogre who can’t understand?”
“Harry, what an awful thing to say. Harry . . .”
“Thank you for explaining it to me.”
In this bare rush of seconds, darkness had arrived. Harry hoped the dark would shield them. If only he had parked his truck the other way, the back end would be situated so that neither the office window nor the windows of the motel room could look upon him. He felt desperate enough that he almost didn’t care.
He pulled out the Prospectometer, the Detectron DG-7, the Uranium Scout de luxe (the pre–”de luxe” Scout was junk), the Lucky Strike (junk), and the Model DG-2 (also junk) and lined them up, even though he knew he wanted to use the Babbel-400. His mind gave them their full official names. Even in his thoughts he felt the urge to show off when Jo was around. How do you know which one to use? How do I know? Well, I’m an expert for starters.
“In fact, I was using this one today,” Harry told her, picking up the Babbel.
“That’s where you were,” Jo said.
“Where?” Harry said.
“I don’t know. Where were you?”
“I thought you knew. You said that’s where you were. I thought you knew.”
Jo didn’t say anything.
Harry held out the Babbel’s earphones for Jo and she fitted them on her head. He liked how she didn’t care what small disarray it might bring to her hair. Her hair that she’d tied back with a snapped shoelace. He turned on the Babbel.
“My goodness!” she said. Her eyes lit up with victory.
“No, no, calm down,” Harry told her. He reached out with his hand and touched her forearm. “It always crackles. You have to learn to tell the crackles apart. Of course when you really get something hot, there’s no guessing. Like today,” he said. “That happened to me today.”
Jo smiled reassuringly at him but didn’t ask him to go on. His hand was still on her forearm, it was still okay for it to be there, but in a few more seconds they would both be obliged to notice it. All Jo had to say now was, What happened today? and he would have his opening. Given such an opportunity, he could explain it to her; the words he always botched would be corrected by his fingertips dictating the real message on her arm, the old copper mine he was betting would yield uranium— this mine he was going to work for her. But she didn’t ask, and in two ticks the time was past when he could keep hold of her forearm. He’d have to force it upon her now, but that was a disastrous option. Even in the very best red-carpeted situation he’d still have trouble getting it out right. You could give him an opportunity that was like a stunningly adorned romantically set table (with wine glasses!) and his personality was the thing that pulled out the linen tablecloth and toppled it all.
He swiveled with the microphone probe to buy himself time. “Anything different happening?” He touched the probe here and there. She nodded yes, yes, listened, squinted, shrugged, she was getting something but it remained a foreign language. “How about here?” He touched the probe to her forehead.
“Ooh, now it’s going wild!” she laughed.
“Did you know that Joseph Smith’s phrenology chart indicated acquisitiveness, alimentiveness, marvelousness, and amativeness?”
“And I thought you claimed to be such a gentleman.”
Harry withdrew the probe. “So you think Charlie’s liking it?”
“He’s loving it. It’s wonderful of you to do it. He loves that kind of stuff, you know that.”
“He’s a good kid. Charlie proves there’s nothing to make fun of about being a gentleman.”
“Of course not.”
“So you know what amativeness is?”
“Yes, Harry, I do,” Jo said softly.
Harry was now left with his next move staring him in the face. He could reach out and gently remove the earphones from her head, which would leave his hands cupping her neck. That was romantic. He could grab both her hands as she removed the earphones herself, and if she were anything like Miss Dazzle that would be enough to encourage her and she would do the rest for him. That was romantic, too.
He disguised a glance at her. If Leonard Dawson could see her now, he’d say that she had let herself go. He’d spew out some word meant to illustrate how she had disgraced herself. She was wearing a tattered men’s dress shirt she’d taken from Jean. The dresses she always wore were replaced by those short pants ladies like Jane Russell were wearing. Her ankles and calves were banged up; the darkness couldn’t block the landscape of scrapes and dirt that lured him to her skin like glittering jewelry.
“Your husband’s going to be pretty mad when he finds out what you’ve been doing.”
Miss Dazzle had said, I’m not married, not really, you don’t need to worry about that, and he waited for Jo to say it, too.
She didn’t remove the earphones. He didn’t remove them for her. Instead he tapped his forehead against the truck, coming close, very close, to simply giving up. His shoulders were drooping. He could feel himself losing strength. Jo’s hand came into his sideview as she set the earphones beside the Babbel. He gauged the angle of kissing her and saw there could be nothing romantic about it: he was too tall.
Give it up.
He suddenly straightened and blurted: “I don’t think your husband is good enough for you.”
“I know that, Harry.”
“But I don’t think a traveling salesman is good enough for you either.”
Jo didn’t answer.
“But I’ve got a mine I’m looking into and if it pays out . . .” He turned to tap his forehead again, took a deep breath, tap, deep breath, tap—he turned again. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”
He relived stooping into the troll’s squat little cave. He got himself down low—quickly! It was an act of faith and discomfort. He bent over and blindly pulled out the tablecloth and waited for everything to topple. When it didn’t, when she didn’t slap him, he bent low and kissed her again. He stood up. He was out of breath.
Harry didn’t know if Beth had seen them, but when he looked over she was standing in front of the office.
“Beth,” Jo called.
“Hi.”
“Come here. Come here.”
“Where’s Miss Dazzle?”
“She fell asleep on the sofa.”
“Well, come on inside. Harry’s got something exciting to show us.”
Beth was wearing Jo’s pink sweater with the pulled-out knobs. Harry couldn’t stop a hot rush of embarrassment. He picked up the Geiger counter and shuffled back to the motel room. Charlie hadn’t moved. He was staring at the tiny bead. Harry kept a flashlight on while they turned off the other lights and pulled the curtains. When he clicked off the flashlight, they were thrown into a strangely dense inkiness, the other bodies lost to them except by some traveling force of gravity. They were there but only blindly, apparently, there.
“Anytime now, Harry,” a voice in the darkness said.
When the black light came on, their bodies stayed hidden among the luminescence of white shoes, white shirt, white socks—a contagious white emitting whiteness. Harry was lost in it. A dancing luna moth became the white bandage on the mother’s head.
Charlie pointed out a tingling prick of light, different in color and tonality, that began to glow upon the writing table. “It’s got uranium,” Charlie announced.
“It does.”
“Look at that.”
Harry switched on the room lights and blinked away his disorientation. He picked up the Babbel and let Charlie hold it. “Now we’ll check it out on a Geiger counter but it’s not going to give you much.” He fitted the earphones on Charlie. “We have to get what we call a background count, Charlie, so you have something to compare it with. Stand over here.”
“I took one,” Jo told everyone. “I was outside taking a background count.”
“What’d you find?”
“My brain is worth a fortune.” When the mother started laughing, Jo laughed harder and harder at her own joke, delighted to be appreciated. She wasn’t used to an approving audience, Harry could see. Well, that would change with him around.
“Charlie,” Harry said, thinking of something that might be fun, “pull the light switch. Let’s do this in the dark.”
When they were thrown into blackness again, Harry turned on the Babbel. He had ranged it at its highest sensitivity since the sample was so small, but the lights flashed like an ambulance. “Wow!” Charlie cried out, his hand to the earphone.
Harry promptly lowered the dial. The lights, however, grew more urgent. Harry tried to back Charlie away from the sample, but everyone had stumbled together and Harry had to fight though a heap of bodies. The scrunch of bodies was disorienting him and he couldn’t find the light switch.
Charlie, dowsing-style, led the Geiger counter around the room, his heap of followers holding on. From the bathroom to the bed to the window to the nightstand. To the other bed to the pillow to the other pillow to the floor on the other side. The small radioactive bead causing all this trouble was by now in an opposite corner, yet the lights flashed ever faster.
When Harry found the light switch, Charlie was standing over Beth’s rucksack. Beth opened the rucksack and pulled out the piece of petrified wood and touched it to the Geiger counter’s probe.
“Good lord, this thing’s hot as a firecracker!” Harry said. “Turn it off, Charlie, we might blow the tube.”
“That piece of wood is doing that?” Jean said.
“Here I thought it was your brain,” Jo laughed.
“This is no joking matter,” Harry said.
“I really thought it was her brain,” Jo said. “Or mine.”
“Stop,” Harry said. “Pay attention. This is serious. Where’d you find this?” Harry asked Beth. “Stop,” he said to the two doubled-over giggling women.
“Beth found it,” Charlie said.
“You found it?”
Beth nodded.
“There’s more like it?”
“I didn’t have a Geiger counter with me.”
“No, I mean there’s more petrified wood?”
“I don’t know.”
Harry looked at her. “Think,” he said.
“I was in a hurry a little bit.”
“Where was it?”
“In this, it’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“I went through a crack and into a cave except it wasn’t a cave because it went all the way up after I got inside.”
“What do you mean?”
“I could see the sky. And then I found a pool and some plants.”
“Okay,” Harry said.
“I mean I had to squeeze to get in.”
“That’s all right,” Harry said. “So inside something like a mountain?”
“It was like a pyramid.”
“Okay.”
“I went swimming in the pool.”
“You’re probably radioactive now,” Charlie said. “You’ve been dipped.”
“Is that good what I did, Harry?”
“Really good.”
“I was exploring,” Beth said. “I like to explore.”
“Could you take me there?”
“Could you find it again?”
“No, she can’t.”
Beth said, “Charlie used his compass and drew it on his map.”
“Is that so, Charlie?”
“Yeah.”
“You used your compass?”
Charlie glared at him.
“Of course I know you used your compass, it didn’t come out right what I said. You always use your compass, I know that. What I meant was, did you mark it on your map, too?”
Charlie nodded.
“I told you that, Harry,” Beth said. “I saw him do it. And I know it’s right because Navajo Joe checked it out.”
“Navajo Joe? You mean Joe Istaqa?”
“No. Navajo Joe.”
“All right, Navajo Joe. Navajo Joe was there with you?”
“No. Earlier.”
“Earlier at this cave?” Harry asked.
“Earlier at the campsite. He was bringing us water.”
“Let’s back up,” Harry said.
“Okay,” Jean said. “This interesting conversation is now coming to an end.”
“Charlie, you are an amazing kid,” Harry said.
“Stop right there,” Jean said.
“Mom. You stop.”
“Do you have the map here, Charlie?” Harry asked.
“No, Harry,” Jean said. “And no we’re not getting it, Harry.”
Beth said, “That was pretty good of me, wasn’t it? I like to explore.”
“You’re a fantastic explorer, Beth.”
“No, Harry.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Yes, Mom. Mom. Yes. We’ll take you there, Harry,” Charlie said. “We’ll use my map.”
“All right. Stop right there.”
“You stop.”
“We’re all stopping.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
“No.”