23

Tuesday, 7 July

Day Sixteen

No flowers awaited Kate outside her tent in the morning, causing an odd mix of both disappointment and relief.

A light rainfall had carried over from the night. Maybe the flower-giver hadn’t wanted to get wet, or eyes had been trained their way. Maybe the wind had blown away any floral gifts. Maybe the flower-giver stopped giving.

At breakfast, to which she was late again, Ben had saved her a blueberry muffin. She didn’t ask him about the flowers. It would’ve been terribly awkward in front of others, especially if he denied it. In any case, Erik had been right there. If he was the flower-giver, she didn’t want to know.

Sam joined Kate in cleaning what was looking to be a complete burial after unearthing additional fetal bones surrounded by a dark, organics-rich soil, clearly a grave cut with original backfill.

The light rain became a rainstorm, pecking at the shelter above the cemetery. Those digging at the mead hall came to the cemetery or went to the field lab.

Kate swooshed her brush across what was thus far a vacant expanse of brown to the left of the platformed fetal bones. But after several more swooshes, she spotted the unmistakable arch of an adult iliac crest. She paused, then moved to the right of the fetal bones. If this burial was undisturbed and bones had not shifted horizontally over the centuries, and if this was an in situ mother–fetus burial, then on the other side of the fetal bones should be the opposing half of an adult pelvis.

Sam pulled their dust mask down to their neck. “I should have known it was a baby human femur.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kate murmured absentmindedly as she picked up her trowel.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

“But it’s so obviously not a chicken bone,” Sam said.

“Hindsight.”

Brush, brush, brush.

“Yeah, but what else have I misidentified? Did I throw out bones thinking they’re rocks?”

“You know the difference between stone and bone. I taught you the difference.”

Brush, brush.

Kate stared at the unit. “Sam, go get Erik, please.”

“Why? What is it?” Sam hovered over her.

“You tell me. What do you see?”

They scrunched their face and examined the unit. “Bigger bones,” was their answer.

Yes. Bigger bones. Flanking the pedestaled fetal bones. Symmetrical in their placement, two pelves curved skyward.

Kate carefully cleaned the adult’s iliac crests, their epiphyses partially fused—an age marker. She then exposed a hint of the sacrum to the side of where the fetal bones had come to rest. The distal segments of the adult sacrum were partially fused—another age marker. The proximal adult femur had broken from the rest of the femoral shaft and was displaced from anatomical position; the femoral head was fused—a third age marker.

Kate set down the brush, placed a 10 cm black and white scale bar next to the fetal bones, then took a photo.

Roth Field Journal ~ Day 16

Yesterday’s discovery of fetal bones piqued the students’ collective interest. The new burial is now being excavated with extra care, no longer assigned to undergraduates without supervision. The fetal bones found thus far appear to be aged six months in utero. The mother was likely in her younger twenties.

Students may need extra instruction on identifying subadult human skeletal remains. It’s a shame the plastic subadult skeleton went missing.

Kate didn’t write about how she was gutted by the discovery of the mother–fetus burial, the first she’d ever encountered, nor did she write that the sight of human baby bones made her insides twist in a confusing mix of regret and warmth, emotions she buried deep, just as she had for the last fifteen years.

Lunch was difficult. The last thing she wanted to eat today was pulled pork. The barbecue aroma was tantalizing, but the look of it nauseating.

As she pushed around the uneaten bits of salad on her plate, Alex sat across the table from her.

“No pork for you?” he asked. “You should have said if you didn’t eat pork.”

“Hm? I eat pork. Haven’t you seen how much bacon I eat?”

He laughed. “Something else has you down, then? I expected you would be ecstatic after today’s discovery. A mother–fetus burial! Our first at the site, first I’ve seen in person.”

“I’m just tired,” she lied.

The crunching of croutons drowned out the mess hall’s conversations, and when Kate finished her lunch, she promptly left the house for her tent. She’d use the next forty minutes to decompress. To wish she could call Clara. To cry.

The rain had stopped after lunch, and the sun had dried the grass outside Kate’s tent.

Pre-dinner yoga had become a routine for her and Ben. Usually they chatted during. He’d do his prescribed stretches while she stretched whatever body part ached most.

Today, she didn’t particularly feel like chatting. Neither did Ben, it seemed. Aside from turning pink from exertion—some of his exercises were more physical than others—he maintained a flat expression.

Kate had a stubborn streak. If something pissed her off, she could remain pissed for hours, days, years. It was the same when something made her sad. Trazodone did wonders for dulling rage, devastation, panic. The last three days had been trazodone days.

She twisted in a seated stretch toward Ben. Seeing his moodless face made her want to talk.

“My joints are annoyed with me after yesterday and this morning,” she said, to fill the silence, to get Ben talking.

He grunted lightly and said, “Me too.”

“Is the yoga—the stretches helping your back at all?”

“I believe so.” He lifted one and then both knees toward his chest as far as they’d go against his belly, and his face flooded with color as he repeated the stretch.

She shifted to her back, a forearm’s length from Ben, and mimicked his movements.

“I am so not used to kneeling all day,” she said. “I love excavating, don’t get me wrong, but…” A muscle at the back of her hip protested, probably the piriformis.

Ben turned onto his hands and knees, then grunted lightly with each slight rocking motion. Back, forth. Back, forth.

“There is a reason I do not dig much,” he said. “Not these last few years.”

“So, what is it that you do at work?”

“Instruct. Assign. Manage. I write and edit most of our reports.”

“I guess as a supervisor, you don’t have to do the heavy lifting anymore.”

“Precisely.”

A round of cat-cows. Downward dogs and three-legged dogs. Lunges into plank into cobra into upward dog. More cat-cows. Warrior II (her favorite) into triangle.

Ben was varyingly doing his stretches and watching her. She didn’t mind.

“Ever think about getting back into academia?” she asked as she stretched to her toes.

“Never.”

“Really? Never?”

He smiled as he rolled to his knees. They groaned as they stood, taking their mats with them.

“Oh, Ben. We’re too young to be so broken.”

—

In the house, Esben and Kate grabbed drinks and sat by themselves, facing one another, the first to arrive for dinner. Jorunn and Jake were busy in the kitchen. Pasta night.

“The mother–fetus burial is deep,” Kate said. “Could she be indigenous? We haven’t revealed her skull yet. Just the pelvic cavity. Though, to be certain, it’d have to be a DNA test.”

“It is possible, yes, though the depth of the burial is in line with when the settlers arrived. DNA testing may not be in the budget, but we will send organics for radiocarbon dating. Erik is our liaison with heritage management. Let him know immediately if you suspect she is not European.”

Kate examined her Cola before sipping.

“You looked sullen earlier,” he said.

“Did I?”

“While you were revealing the burial. And at lunch.” He didn’t want to pry, but at the same time, he very much wanted to pry.

“It’s just sad,” she said. “The mother dying pregnant.”

Esben’s thoughts went to Lina.

When Kate said, “I was pregnant, once,” he thought he had misheard her, but she added, “Long time ago. Bad timing.”

“What do you mean?”

She tapped her fingertips against her can. “I’d just moved to Boulder after splitting with my partner at the time. Did I ever tell you about Steve?”

Steve, with his shaved head, full beard, big nose, blue jeans, and black leather jacket. He was Scottish, slightly older than Kate, and a smoker. Esben had been jealous of that man for several years.

“I remember some things from Facebook,” he said, “but no, you have not mentioned him.”

Kate nodded. “We were together for several years while I was in London. I got the job in Boulder, left England, then found out I was pregnant. But I didn’t want to quit my new job or be a single mother or be tied to a man in another country. So I decided to not be pregnant.”

Esben’s gut clenched.

“I guess having kids was never on my life’s agenda,” she continued. “I would’ve welcomed them had I been in a relationship with someone long enough at the right time. But that didn’t happen, and here I am middle-aged and”—she huffed a laugh—“I don’t even have a uterus anymore, so… Whatever.” She swigged her Cola.

“No?”

“Fibroids are a bitch. Had it taken out years ago. Kept my ovaries, though.”

He was taken aback by Kate’s candor and stared at his iced tea, the kind made from a powder.

“One of my sisters has mentioned this,” he said. “She was in pain often. Is that how it was with you?”

Weakly, Kate answered, “Yeah.”

He ached to hold her hand. Instead, he said, “I’m sorry you had to go through these things.”

“I don’t regret it—the abortion or the hysterectomy. I’m grateful I had access to abortion care—I wouldn’t have made a good single mom. My dissertation was my baby, and I’m apparently”—she said this with a roll of her eyes—“married to my job. Though I do wonder what life would’ve been like had things turned out different. Had I chosen differently.”

Esben stared at his hands.

Outside the house, the dinner triangle rang.

Kate desperately needed to wash the day off of her.

The camp’s outdoor shower stall was somewhat secluded from camp. Not far, but half-hidden by two small pines. A slab of concrete as its base, three wooden walls and a door to match, a tall steel hook for hanging solar showers. The water in her five-gallon shower bag was pleasantly warm from the sun.

So much better than using baby wipes to stay fresh. Today, she even took the time to wash her hair and shave.

As she exited the shower stall wrapped in her big purple towel, her wet feet squeaked against her flip-flops when she nearly bumped into Erik. His grin was unnerving, and before the man could say anything, she sidestepped him and continued toward her tent.

When she arrived there, she found those same tiny white flowers she’d previously been gifted, only this time no longer clustered but scattered before the entrance.

“Fuck off, Erik,” she muttered.