Thunderhead

cathedral silence closed around them. Now they were alone on the green expanse of lake, walled in by thousand- foot bluffs and slickrock desert. The sun hung low over the Grand Bench, with Neanderthal Cove appearing on the right, and the distant opening of Last Chance Bay to the left.

Thirty minutes before, Luigi Bonarotti had served a meal of cognac-braised, applewood-smoked quail with grapefruit and wilted arugula leaves. This remarkable accomplishment, achieved somehow on the shabby gas grill, had silenced even Black’s undertone of complaints. They had dined around the aluminum table, toasting the meal with a crisp Orvieto. Now the group was arranged around the barge in lethargic contemplation of the meal, awaiting landfall at the trailhead.

Smithback, who had dined very well and consumed an alarming quantity of wine, was sitting with Black. Before dinner, the writer had made some cracks about camp cooking and varmint stew, but the arrival of the meal changed his tone to one approaching veneration.

“Didn’t you also write that book on the museum murders in New York City?” Black was asking. Smithback’s face broke into an immensely gratified smile.

“And that subway massacre a few years back?”

Smithback reached for an imaginary hat and doffed it with a grandiose flourish.

Black scratched his chin. “Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great,” he said. “It’s just that . . . well, I’ve always understood that the Institute was a low-profile entity.”

“Well, the fact is I’m no longer Bill Smithback, terror of the tabloids,” Smithback replied. “I work for the buttoned-down, respectable New York Times now, occupying the position formerly held by a certain Bryce Harriman. Poor Bryce. He covered the subway massacre, too. Such a pity that my masterpiece of investigative reportage was his lost opportunity.” He turned and grinned at Nora. “You see, I’m a paragon of journalistic respectability that even a place as stuffy as your Institute can’t object to.”

Nora caught herself as she was about to smile. There was nothing amusing in the journalist’s braggadocio, even if it was tempered with a touch of self-deprecation. She looked away with a stab of irritation, wondering again at Goddard’s idea of bringing a journalist along. She looked toward Holroyd, who was sitting on the metal floor of the barge, elbows on his knees, reading what to Nora’s mind was a real book: a battered paperback copy of Coronado and the City of Gold. As she watched him, Holroyd looked up and smiled.

Aragon was standing at the bowrail, and Roscoe Swire was again by the horses, wad of tobacco fingered into his cheek, jotting in a battered journal and occasionally murmuring to the animals. Bonarotti was quietly smoking a postprandial cigarette, one leg thrown over the other, head tilted back, enjoying the air. Nora was surprised and grateful for the cook’s efforts on this first day of the journey. Nothing like a good meal to bring people together, she thought, replaying in her mind the lively meal, the friendly arguments about the origins of the Clovis hunters, and the proper way to excavate a cave sequence. Even Black had relaxed and told an exceedingly foul joke involving a proctologist, a giant sequoia, and tree-ring dating. Only Aragon had remained silent—not aloof, exactly; just remote.

She glanced over at him, standing motionless at the rail, gazing out into the fading light, his eyes hard. Three months on the Gallegos Divide, excavating the burned jacal site, had taught her that the human dynamic in an expedition of this sort was of crucial importance, and she didn’t like his resolute silence. Something was not right with him. Casually, she strolled forward until she was standing at the rail beside him. He looked over, then nodded politely.

“Quite a dinner,” she said.

“Astonishing,” said Aragon, folding his brown hands over the railing. “Signore Bonarotti is to be complimented. What do you suppose is in that curio box of his?”

He was referring to an antique wooden chuckbox with innumerable tiny compartments the cook kept locked and under jealous guard.

“No idea,” Nora said.

“I can’t imagine how he managed it.”

“You watch. It’ll be salt pork and hardtack tomorrow.”

They laughed together, an easy laugh, and once again Aragon gazed forward, toward the lake and its vast ramparts of stone.

“You’ve been here before?” Nora asked.

Something flitted across the hollow eyes: the shadow of a strong emotion, quickly concealed. “In a way.”

“It’s a beautiful lake,” Nora went on, uncertain how to engage the man in conversation.

There was a silence. At last, Aragon turned toward her again. “Forgive me if I don’t agree.”

Nora looked at him more closely.

“Back in the early sixties I was an assistant on an expedition that tried to document sites here in Glen Canyon, before it was drowned by Lake Powell.”

Suddenly, Nora understood. “Were there many?”

“We were able to document perhaps thirty-five, and partially excavate twelve, before the water engulfed them. But the estimate of total sites ran to about six thousand. I think my interest in ZST dates from that event. I remember shoveling out—shoveling out— a kiva, water lapping just three feet below. That was no way to treat a sacred site, but we had no choice. The water was about to destroy it.”

“What’s a kiva?” Smithback asked as he strolled over, his new cowboy boots creaking on the rubber deck. “And who were the Anasazi, anyway?”

“A kiva is the circular, sunken structure that was the center of Anasazi religious activity and secret ceremonies,” Nora said. “It was usually entered through a hole in the roof. And the Anasazi were the Native Americans who peopled this region a thousand years ago. They built cities, shrines, irrigation systems, signaling stations. And then, around 1150 A.D. their civilization suddenly collapsed.”

There was a silence. Black joined the group. “Were these sites you worked on important?” he asked, working a toothpick between two molars.

Aragon looked up. “Are there any unimportant sites?”

“Of course,” Black sniffed. “Some sites have more to say than others. A few poor outcast Anasazi, scrabbling out a living in a cave for ten years, don’t leave us as much information as, say, a thousand people living in a cliff dwelling for two centuries.”

Aragon looked coolly at Black. “There’s enough information in a single Anasazi pot to occupy a researcher for his entire career. Perhaps it’s not a matter of unimportant sites, but unimportant archaeologists.”

Black’s face darkened.

“What sites did you work on?” Nora asked quickly.

Aragon nodded toward an open reach of water to starboard. “About a mile over there, maybe four hundred feet down, is the Music Temple.”

“The Music Temple?” Smithback echoed.

“A great hollow in the canyon wall, where the winds and the waters of the Colorado River combined to make haunting, unearthly sounds. John Wesley Powell discovered and named it. We excavated the floor and found a rare Archaic site, along with many others in the vicinity.” He pointed in another direction. “And over there was a site called the Wishing Well, a Pueblo III cliff dwelling of eight rooms, built around an unusually deep kiva. A small site, trivial, of no importance.” He glanced pointedly at Black. “In that site, the Anasazi had buried with loving care two small girls, wrapped in woven textiles, with necklaces of flowers and seashells. But by then there was no time left. We couldn’t save the burials; the water was already rising. Now the water has dissolved the burials, the adobe masonry that held the stones of the city in place, destroyed all the delicate artifacts.”

Black snorted and shook his head. “Hand me a tissue, somebody.”

The boat moved past the Grand Bench. Nora could see the dark prow of the Kaiparowits Plateau rising far behind it, wild, inaccessible, tinged dusky rose by the setting sun. As if in response, the boat began to turn, heading for a narrow opening in the sandstone walls: the foot of Serpentine Canyon.

Once the boat was inside the narrow confines of the canyon, the water turned a deeper green. The sheer walls plunged straight down, so perfectly reflected it was hard to tell where stone stopped and water began. The captain had told Nora that almost nobody came up into that canyon: there were no camping sites or beaches, and the walls were so high and sheer that hiking was impossible.