and breathing, three hundred million years before she found its petrified skeleton exposed by bulldozers clearing a patch of land north of Birmingham to make room for a new Wal-Mart.
The university had managed to persuade the construction company to halt work at the site for three days, just long enough for her to oversee the specimen’s recovery, and then Chance spent four long months preparing it. Slowly, painstakingly removing the hard siltstone matrix with an Air Scribe until the entire left side of the skeleton was exposed in bas-relief, jet-black bones set in stone the color of ash. The bulldozer’s blade had destroyed the very tip end of the tail, but the rest was there, all twelve feet, eight inches of the creature’s spectacular frame. In a paper published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, she described the fossil and named it Megalopseudosuchus alabamaensis.
The week the paper was released, the geology department had thrown a surprise party for Chance, including a huge layer cake baked into something vaguely approximating the shape of her monstrous amphibian and covered with dark green, lime-flavored icing. Deacon came, though he spent most of the party sitting alone in a corner nursing a Coke and pretending to read an old issue of Scientific American . Pretending all of it didn’t make him uncomfortable, the noise and nerdy academic jokes, Chance’s success. But she knew better. Knew that some part of him resented her, and sooner or later that was something they would have to face, one way or another.
Driving home afterwards, a cold rain and the sky like folds of purple-gray velvet. “I’m really proud of you, you know,” Deacon said. “Maybe I never say it like I should, but I am. I’m very proud of you. Your goddamn brain, it amazes me…” and he trailed off, then, turned onto Morris Avenue, the tires bump-bump-bump ing over the wet cobblestones.
“Thank you,” she said softly and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.
“No, I mean it. You really do amaze me.”
“I know,” she said and smiled, and for the smallest part of a second Deacon smiled, too. The rain drummed softly on the roof of the old Impala, and in a couple minutes more they were home.
Alice drives slowly past the main entrance to the museum, squat and sensible building of brick and glass, past the visitor parking lot to a loading platform located in the rear. There are two young men waiting there to unload the heavy crates from the back of the Toyota, and the collection’s manager, a middle-aged woman named Irene Mesmer, is waiting with them. Alice talks to her, and Chance watches nervously and chews at a thumbnail while the men transfer her fossils from the truck to the concrete platform, a job she’d be handling herself if she were able. When one of them sets a crate down too roughly for her liking, she scowls and asks him to be more careful, please, and he apologizes and goes back to work.
“Have you ever visited Fernbank before, Dr. Silvey?” Irene Mesmer asks in a heavy Charlotte accent, and Chance nods, not taking her eyes off the workmen and the crates.
“Yeah. But I was just a little kid.”
“So you haven’t seen the new dinosaurs?”
“No,” Chance says.
“Well, then, why don’t I give you both a quick tour?”
“I think that would be great,” Alice says enthusiastically, glancing at Chance, who sighs and shrugs her wide shoulders.
“I don’t know. Maybe I should wait here. I could catch up with you guys later on.”
“You’ll have to excuse her,” Alice says, speaking to the collections manager. “She had to pee back at the state line, and I’m afraid I might not have stopped soon enough. There may have been irreversible brain damage.”
“I just want to watch, ” Chance says, annoyed now, wishing Alice and the other woman would leave her alone, wishing she were in any shape to lift the crates herself. The last hour spent trying to forget whatever she did or didn’t see
The university had managed to persuade the construction company to halt work at the site for three days, just long enough for her to oversee the specimen’s recovery, and then Chance spent four long months preparing it. Slowly, painstakingly removing the hard siltstone matrix with an Air Scribe until the entire left side of the skeleton was exposed in bas-relief, jet-black bones set in stone the color of ash. The bulldozer’s blade had destroyed the very tip end of the tail, but the rest was there, all twelve feet, eight inches of the creature’s spectacular frame. In a paper published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, she described the fossil and named it Megalopseudosuchus alabamaensis.
The week the paper was released, the geology department had thrown a surprise party for Chance, including a huge layer cake baked into something vaguely approximating the shape of her monstrous amphibian and covered with dark green, lime-flavored icing. Deacon came, though he spent most of the party sitting alone in a corner nursing a Coke and pretending to read an old issue of Scientific American . Pretending all of it didn’t make him uncomfortable, the noise and nerdy academic jokes, Chance’s success. But she knew better. Knew that some part of him resented her, and sooner or later that was something they would have to face, one way or another.
Driving home afterwards, a cold rain and the sky like folds of purple-gray velvet. “I’m really proud of you, you know,” Deacon said. “Maybe I never say it like I should, but I am. I’m very proud of you. Your goddamn brain, it amazes me…” and he trailed off, then, turned onto Morris Avenue, the tires bump-bump-bump ing over the wet cobblestones.
“Thank you,” she said softly and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.
“No, I mean it. You really do amaze me.”
“I know,” she said and smiled, and for the smallest part of a second Deacon smiled, too. The rain drummed softly on the roof of the old Impala, and in a couple minutes more they were home.
Alice drives slowly past the main entrance to the museum, squat and sensible building of brick and glass, past the visitor parking lot to a loading platform located in the rear. There are two young men waiting there to unload the heavy crates from the back of the Toyota, and the collection’s manager, a middle-aged woman named Irene Mesmer, is waiting with them. Alice talks to her, and Chance watches nervously and chews at a thumbnail while the men transfer her fossils from the truck to the concrete platform, a job she’d be handling herself if she were able. When one of them sets a crate down too roughly for her liking, she scowls and asks him to be more careful, please, and he apologizes and goes back to work.
“Have you ever visited Fernbank before, Dr. Silvey?” Irene Mesmer asks in a heavy Charlotte accent, and Chance nods, not taking her eyes off the workmen and the crates.
“Yeah. But I was just a little kid.”
“So you haven’t seen the new dinosaurs?”
“No,” Chance says.
“Well, then, why don’t I give you both a quick tour?”
“I think that would be great,” Alice says enthusiastically, glancing at Chance, who sighs and shrugs her wide shoulders.
“I don’t know. Maybe I should wait here. I could catch up with you guys later on.”
“You’ll have to excuse her,” Alice says, speaking to the collections manager. “She had to pee back at the state line, and I’m afraid I might not have stopped soon enough. There may have been irreversible brain damage.”
“I just want to watch, ” Chance says, annoyed now, wishing Alice and the other woman would leave her alone, wishing she were in any shape to lift the crates herself. The last hour spent trying to forget whatever she did or didn’t see
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