Digging In

Chapter 1: Bones and Barriers

The Union Pacific rail car smelled of coal smoke and summer sweat. Lela Penelope pressed her forehead against the window glass. She savored its coolness even though the vibration rattled her molars. Outside, the landscape flattened into prehistoric prairie. An endless grassland the color of old parchment. Occasionally interrupted by weathered rocks that rose from the earth like the vertebrae of buried dinos.

“You're going to crack a tooth.”

Lela didn't move. “Then I'll have Dr. Patterson extract it with the same care he extracts fossils.”

Beside her, Hera Lu laughed. “That's uncharitable. He's been kind to us.”

“He called me 'Miss Penelope' four times in one conversation last week. Each time with increasing emphasis on the 'Miss,' as if reminding me I had no business holding a Doctorate.” Lela pulled back from the window and left a small circle of condensation from her breath. “Though I suppose 'kind' and 'condescending' aren't mutually exclusive.”

The train lurched. Hera's hand shot out to steady the leather satchel between them. Inside, wrapped in cotton and newsprint, were their tools. Trowels, brushes with boar bristles, a hand lens that once belonged to Hera's father Dr. Lu, and geological hammers with hickory handles.

Hera's fingers lingered on the satchel's buckle. A brass latch that warmed in the afternoon light slanting through the window. Her hands were artistic. Long fingers, with the faint stain of rock dust that never quite washed away. Lela watched those hands piece together a Triassic fish skeleton from fragments no larger than her thumbnail. Pure magic.

“We should prepare ourselves,” Hera said. Her accent curled around the edges of her words. Beijing meets Boston. An inflection of someone who'd learned English from books first and then people. “This camp won't be like Cornell.”

“Cornell wasn't like Cornell.” Lela reached up to adjust the pins holding her hair. It was dark and heavy as wet wool. “Remember Professor Whitmore's reaction when you corrected his identification of that Devonian sample?”

“I was respectful.”

“You were correct. In his mind, those are opposite things.”

The train's whistle sang out and the brakes shrieked in complaint. Through the window, Lela could see the depot emerge from the heat shimmer. A raw wood platform. A water tower. Beyond it, a collection of tents and temporary structures that looked like they'd been scattered by wind and then took root.

The end of the line. Their independent paleontology beginning. Wyoming Territory.

The platform was chaos. Men shouting and cursing. Cargo thrown haphazardly. The aroma of sweaty livestock and unwashed humanity baked together beneath a merciless sun.

Lela stepped down from the train car as sweat prickled along her spine beneath the layers of her traveling dress. Wool, whalebone and propriety. Designed for drawing rooms in Ithaca. Not so much for standing on sun-bleached wood in the high desert heat.

Hera descended behind her. Her eyes drank in all the details. She was cataloging everything. Exits, threats, and allies. Armor disguised as observation.

“Dr. Penelope! Dr. Lu!”

The voice belonged to a young man fighting his way through the crowd. His blotchy red face beneath a flimsy hat. Timothy Something. Thompson? He'd been part of the advance team. Sent two weeks prior to establish the dig site.

“Mr. Thompson.” Lela extended her hand. He hesitated before shaking it. His palm damp and his grip uncertain. “I trust the site is prepared?”

“Well, yes, ma'am—I mean, Doctor—there's been some—” He glanced past them, as if hoping someone else might materialize to handle the conversation. “Perhaps we should discuss it with Professor Marsh's team? They're just…”

“We're not here with Professor Marsh,” Hera said. Her voice carried the weight of granite. “We have our own grant. Our own expedition.”

“Yes, of course, I only meant…they've been discussing you. When you'd arrive.” Thompson shifted his weight. Lela noticed the way his eyes skittered away from meeting her eyes directly. “There's some question about the permits. And the, ummm, accommodations.”

“What question could there possibly be about permits. We were approved three months ago, before Marsh?”

“I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding.” Thompson's tone implied... you're women, and therefore this is your fault.

“Where,” Hera said with the infinite patience of someone who'd had this exact conversation in a dozen different forms, “is our camp?”

Their camp, was an afterthought.

The main fossil expedition established itself in a natural amphitheater of stone. The rock layers were exposed in bands of rust and cream. A readable history, if you knew the language. Dozens of tents clustered near the water source, organized with military precision. Cook fires sent smoke into the still air. Men moved between the tents performing the theater of serious scientific work.

Lela and Hera's allotted space was a quarter mile away. Near a red rock formation picked over and dismissed. Two stakes in the ground marked where their tent could go. No tent. No supplies beyond what they'd carried in themselves.

“This is unacceptable.” Lela said through restrained frustration. Hera's hand on her elbow.

Thompson, at least had the grace to look ashamed. “There was some confusion about the supply order. I'm sure it'll be sorted. There's a boarding house in town.”

“We're not going to town.” Hera's voice flat and definitive. “We're staying here. We'll erect our own tent. We'll need canvas, rope, and access to the water supply.”

“I don't know if Professor Marsh's team will…”

“Professor Marsh's team,” Lela said, biting each word off clean, “does not own the Wyoming Territory. The water supply is natural. We have as much right to it as anyone here.”

Thompson opened his mouth then closed it. “I'll see what I can do.”

He fled. Fast.

Lela waited until he was out of earshot before she spoke. “They're trying to freeze us out before we even begin.”

“Perhaps.” Hera moved to the stakes, and paced off the perimeter. Her eyes on the rock formation beyond. “Or they simply don't believe we'll last. Either way, we prove them wrong.”

Hera turned back to her, and in the harsh afternoon light, Lela could see the determination carved into the fine bones of her face. “We dig. We find something they cannot dismiss. We are, talented scientists. We have triple their talent.”

“And in the meantime, we sleep on the ground?”

“If necessary.” Hera smiled. “Though I suspect Mr. Thompson's conscience will provide canvas before nightfall. He's uncomfortable with cruelty. Even if he's complicit.”

She was right, of course. Hera was always right about people in the way Lela was right about rocks.

Before sunset, they had a tent.

It was patched canvas. It smelled of mildew and tobacco. Poles that didn't match and spliced ropes. It was shelter. Lela knelt inside it, arranging their bedrolls. Hera built a fire.

Through the tent's open flap, Lela could see the main camp in the distance. Lamplight beginning to glow. The sound of men's voices carrying across the cooling air, punctuated by occasional laughter. The easy camaraderie of people who belonged.

She and Hera had shared a laboratory at Cornell for three years. Working side by side in the basement where women were permitted so long as they were quiet. And never, ever took any credit. They cataloged thousands of specimens together. Published two papers under the name of their advisor who had contributed absolutely nothing but his gender.

They learned to make themselves small to receive their degrees.

Here, in the vastness of the Wyoming Territory, smallness was NOT an option.

“Lela.” Hera appeared in the tent opening, silhouetted against the deepening blue of the sky. “Come eat.”

They sat by the fire, eating hardtack and tinned beef. Hera had somehow transformed it into something palatable with dried herbs she'd brought from New York. The stars emerged overhead. It appeared as a shattered diamond across black velvet.

“Tomorrow,” Hera said, “we start digging. We find something that makes them remember our names.”

In the night, Lela awoke to the sound of someone moving outside their tent. She lay perfectly still and listened. Footsteps. Slow and deliberate, circling their camp.

Her hand found the geological hammer beside her bedroll. She gripped it so hard her knuckles ached.

Beside her, Hera's breathing changed. Awake, but silent.

The footsteps stopped.

Then, after a moment that stretched like taffy, back toward the main camp.

“Someone checking on us,” Hera whispered.

“Or trying to frighten us. Instead,” she said. “It made me angry.”

“Good. Anger is useful. It keeps you digging.”

They lay awake together, listening to the Wyoming night. The wind moved through rock formations like a breath through ancient lungs. The sound of their own hearts beating a rhythm that said ~ We belong here. We belong here. We belong.

Lela turned that rock formation beside their tent over in her mind. The sediment was soft. Red shale. While the men took the old canyon and the creekbed as their site in the morning, the red shale on the bluff called to her.

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My Creativity is fueled by tea. Lots of tea.