Awash in Talent Read Free

of college. I didn’t go home at all, citing excessive airplane time to my parents, but stayed with a new friend on the Cape before leaving the States. With Carlos, Professor Marsden, and three other undergrads from Archaeology and Anthropology, I brushed the brown landscape with wide brooms to separate silt from fossil. The dust rose out of the earth in great foggy banks and clung to our hats, sunglasses, and loose cotton clothes. It was almost better not to shower, to stay dry and not create mud.
    When we worked on the shaker boxes, Carlos usually chose me as his partner because we had the same rhythm. Back and forth, side to side, a mating dance to discover fossils. He was the only one who ever used the global phone, always at odd hours to call the States and check on his wife and their new baby. So imagine my surprise when he came running from the truck to where I was kneeling on the earth, sorting pebbles that might be fossils onto a crusty blanket, to tell me I had a phone call.
    “It’s your mom,” he said breathlessly as we walked back together. His eyes shone.
    I spat out some dirt and spoke into the receiver. “What is it?”
    Tinny, tiny, the voice came back to me. “Emily, we’re coming to see you.”
    “Who’s doing what?”
    “Your sister wouldn’t let it go. Beth got a medical clearance and we’re all coming to see you.”
    It had to be the connection. “Mom, it sounds like you’re saying you’re coming to see me.”
    “We are. We have tickets for next week.”
    None of this was possible or likely or desirable, but I played along. “Okay. But I can’t meet you at the airport.”
    “Oh, we know you can’t leave the site.” The call suddenly cut off, apparently sympathizing with my discomfort.
    I worked the next few days hunched over, looking but not seeing. One morning, Carlos noisily laid claim to what looked to be an intact hominid femur, so everyone moved to that site. The truck trundled up behind me as I used a soft toothbrush on the surface of the femur. Thoughts of Carlos still had a way of filling my ears and my heart. I was thinking about the raspy tiredness in his voice when he’d told me, “Emily, you’re the only one I can trust with this level of detail. Make sure none of the other students interfere.” My name in his mouth was like a melody, so I barely heard the commotion.
    Finally, Carlos’s real voice startled me from my reverie.
    “What are you doing? Are you crazy? We have an intact hominid femur in this area and you’re driving a truck through it!”
    I looked up in time to see my father hopping out of the offending vehicle. “You have a what, now?”
    My muscles protested, but I stood up and shaded my eyes in his direction. “An intact hominid femur. Femurs can tell us so much about where any hominid is in the evolution of upright walking.”
    “You mean we didn’t just stand up one day, and that was it? I guess I never thought about it before,” said the man who had somehow engendered me.
    “Oh my God, Dad,” I said, absently returning the hug and kiss my mother, so much shorter in Africa, was earnestly delivering to me. A shapeless blob was making its way out the door of the truck in clearly defined stages—clinging to the door, gingerly stepping onto the lip under the door, and putting one cotton-clad foot at a time on the sediment-laden soil, all while clutching a surgical mask ever closer to her mouth and nostrils.
    It was Beth. She was in some kind of hazmat suit made of puffy, crinkly, white material, probably the cost of her unprecedented desire to travel. My mother went to help her and she tried to wave at me and say, “Hi!”
    Carlos was at my side, wringing his hands. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to get that truck out of here. This is a very delicate work site.”
    “This is Carlos, Dad,” I said. “You really have to do what he says.”
    “Of course, I wouldn’t want to ruin any scientific discoveries,” he said, then went to