Earth Colors Page 16

  I smiled sweetly, but thought, What luck! A griper. She’ll tell me all sorts of things that are none of my business in the name of glorifying her martyrdom. “Is it her lungs?” I asked, giving my voice ever-so-slight a quaver. Martyrdom and drama, they go hand in hand.

  Deirdre bore down on her pet issues. “I get no help from my brothers,” she grouched. “One is a drunk who fancies himself an actor,” she emphasized this last, indicating her distaste for the profession. “And the other is off making his millions.”

  “Is that the ‘Precious William’ your mother mentioned?” I asked. “Your mother asked after him.”

  “William seldom comes to see her, which is just as well, because every time he comes, she gets sicker.”

  “Yes, you said.”

  Ignoring me, she went on with her diatribe. “But it’s fine with them that I give up my life to nurse her. I try to run the farm, but just watching her keeps me busy, let me tell you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. But you have the farm.”

  “Damn straight I do!”

  “You love this place,” I said, wondering if she in fact loved anything.

  “This farm has been in the family for generations! Nobody loves it as much as I do, and I will pass it on to my children!”

  “Farming is such an endless list of chores,” I clucked.

  “The roof’s all but gone on the barn, and the porch is falling off the house.”

  “It’s ever thus,” I said morosely, getting into the flavor of the gripe session.

  “But the old girl has to have her pretty things. I was just moving her pet objects downstairs when she said she wanted to take the air.”

  “Ah.” And what are these pet objects? I wanted to inquire. Perhaps a Remington bronze or two?

  “Well,” she said, glancing at her watch, “I have a lot to do.”

  “Would you like me to sit with her while you take care of a few things? I know how this goes. My mother was ill for years with cancer, and I about lost my mind. I’ll just sit by and drink my tea, and you can get about things.”

  She scowled at me. “I couldn’t impose,” she said, her brusque tone not matching the politeness of her words.

  “Really, it would be a pleasure to help, and it’s no trouble whatsoever.”

  Deirdre stared at me, taking my measure in detail, her mind turning as methodically as the escapement in an old watch. “Fine,” she said. “Then you can be on your way.” It was an order.

  She rose and bustled from the room.

  I instantly got down to the business of making observations, first making a visual inventory of the room. The refrigerator was avocado-colored and made a grinding sound, which indicated that it was quite old and as sick as Mrs. Krehbeil. The stove looked like it had been installed no later than the 1940s. There was no dishwasher. The walls once had been white, but had yellowed with the vaporized grease of five thousand dinners. Again, this did not fit with a place that might house original Russells.

  Deirdre rushed past the doorway carrying an elegant fluted vase and a silver-backed brush-and-comb set. She disappeared into the room where she had installed her mother and then reappeared, hurrying back toward the stairs for another load.

  While she was upstairs, I went to the door into the dining room and took a look. One small painting hung above the sideboard. It was another amateurish, inconsequential piece, and the subject was definitely an East Coast village. Hearing Deirdre returning, I hurriedly sat down again and lifted my cup as if I had not left the table. The toast was congealing on the plate in front of me. I took another bite and forced it down my throat. It stuck like the lack of welcome it was meant to represent.

  This time Deirdre was carrying a small set of leather-bound books. After she had deposited them and hurried off again, I got up and cast about for a paper napkin so I could wrap up the toast and hide it in my pocket rather than gag it down. Not a scrap of paper was visible in the room, not even a roll of paper toweling. I moved across the hall and started searching for a bathroom, thinking I would use toilet paper instead, but it seemed that the house predated indoor bathrooms, at least on the ground floor. I opened the only two closed doors, but found only a coat closet and a small storage room filled with the accumulation of a hundred years of indecision about which papers and books might be thrown out. There was a pantry, but it was filled with the usual sorts of things one might expect to find, mostly dishes, and mostly chipped or mismatched.

  Deirdre was fast returning with the next load, so I returned to the kitchen table but did not sit down. “May I use your bathroom?” I inquired, after palming the toast back onto the plate.

  She stopped and stared at me for several moments. “Up the stairs and to your right,” she said with obvious annoyance. “Hold the handle down for at least ten seconds.”

  I mounted the stairs, past faded wallpaper and framed photographs in black and white. One was of Deirdre as a young girl, and others were children who had to be her siblings. Tert as a boy, the gray gaze already perfected. Another pale-eyed lad with a supercilious smile and wide-ranging ears, hugging a stuffed beagle. A fourth portrait showed a very blonde little blue-eyed girl who smiled so widely that her dimples hurt to look at. A sister? I wondered. No. If Deirdre had a sister, she would have made a special fetish out of griping about her, underlining her own worthiness at the expense of a female who does not assist.

  I found the bathroom and pretended to make use of it. Like the kitchen, it was greatly in need of an update. The toilet indeed needed coaxing, and the sink dripped mercilessly. The tub was a marvelous old claw-foot thing, but the enamel was far past its prime.

  I ran water in the sink as if I were washing, waiting until I heard Deirdre pass by to seize another few objects, and then pass again on her way downstairs. When she was well on her way down the staircase, I slipped out the door and moved as silently as I could up the hallway, glancing into each room as I went. I found the doors to several bedrooms ajar, and checked each one. The first was a monument to the slovenly habits of the young male I had seen coming out of the driveway as I arrived; unwashed clothing lay in drifts around the bed, and the air stank of armpits. I pulled my nose quickly from this room; there was nothing of interest on the walls anyway, just posters of fast cars and busty women. The second bedroom reeked of stale cigarettes, and the scattering of clothing on its floor suggested it belonged to the young female. Again, the walls were ornamented with cheap posters, not priceless Remingtons. I moved on down the hall to the last room. It stank of the ailing woman.

  This room was larger than the others, clearly the master bedroom. There, centered on the wall opposite the four-poster bed where it could be admired from the pillow, was a small watercolor that looked like it just might be a Russell.

  I heard Deirdre returning. I glanced back toward the bathroom. I had closed the door so she might assume I was still in there, which was good, because there was no way I could make it back in time. I hurried down the hall, ducked into a fourth bedroom, and plastered myself against a wall, out of sight of the doorway.

  This room smelled sourly of another sort of decay, something unused and fusty. The yellowed roller shades were drawn two-thirds of the way, making the room look like it was lost in sad amber. There were bookshelves all around the walls. The bed was neatly made, and some bookwork was open on a drop-leaf desk. A tattered nightdress lay across the chair. I glanced around the walls. Not a single picture graced the aging plaster.

  Deirdre was making another circuit now, so I slipped back out into the hall and grasped the doorknob of the final door and turned it. Or tried to. It was locked. “Shit,” I whispered under my breath. I gave it a shove, and the knob came off in my hand. I stuck it quickly back in place and, bending, took a peek in through the keyhole. I saw the shadows of some sort of small wooden structure and caught the scent of turpentine. A studio?

  It was time to skedaddle. I had introduced myself as a passing Samaritan, not a friend of the family who deserved a glimp
se of the paintings, and I could think of no artifice to throw out now to justify bringing up the subject. So, with regrets and frustration, I moved as silently as possible back down the hallway, flushed the toilet, and then made plenty of noise going down the stairs.

  Deirdre met me in the front hall, blocking my return to the kitchen. “Do you need any more help?” I asked.

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Well then, I’ll be off. It was nice meeting you and your mother.”

  She backed me toward the door by crowding me physically, and closed it behind me with a firm thump.

  I found my way down the lawn and down the road, and got into my car. As I went about the ritual of pulling the key out of my pocket and adjusting my seat belt, I surveyed the front of the house, counting windows until I found the locked room. Only one blind was up, but I saw what had cast the shadow: It was indeed an artist’s easel.

  I put the car in gear and drove away, trying to piece together the puzzle that was the family Krehbeil.

  17

  I HEADED SOUTH INTO THE CITY OF LANCASTER AND FOUND A bookstore near the center of town and purchased an atlas of Lancaster County and a map of Washington D.C. In the atlas, I plotted my trajectory to the Pennsylvania Geologic Survey, which was just over the county line on the far side of Mount Joy. I thumped my finger on the map, wondering where exactly in that town Hector might be found; half an hour later, as I drove past that part of the county, I tried to figure an approach to visiting him. It wouldn’t be good to look him up immediately after “dropping in” on his mother and sister, I decided. If they talk at all, my visit would be the first thing on Deirdre’s lips. Or the second thing, if she happens to mention that Ma fell out of her wheelchair.

  The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Topographic and Geologic Survey headquarters occupied a modern, one-story brick building at the top of a rise just off the highway. I parked the rental car and headed up past a hunk of limestone and a big slab of sandstone, resplendent in fossilized critter burrows, to the entrance of the building, where I found a glassed-in foyer presided over by more geologic specimens and a receptionist. “Can I help you?” the receptionist inquired. She was a perfectly reasonable specimen of humanity, but the rocks held about ninety percent of my attention. “That’s our state fossil,” she intoned, as I bent close to a trilobite.

  “I’m here to see Fred Petridge,” I said, now admiring a chunk of coal half the size of a Volkswagen. “I’m Em Hansen. I’m a geologist from Utah.”

  The receptionist dialed a number and had me sign a registry. Then I made myself to home with the rack of free booklets that stood by the door. Geological surveys are a veritable gold mine for such treasures. I selected booklets entitled, The Geological Story of Pennsylvania, The Nonfuel Resources of Pennsylvania, Oil and Gas in Pennsylvania, and Sinkholes in Pennsylvania. I was just absorbing the fact that some of the rocks that outcropped in Pennsylvania were 2.5-billion-year-old schists, slates, and marbles populated by fossilized blue-green algae, jellyfish, and worms, when Dr. Petridge joined me.

  “Em Hansen, is it?” He held out a hand for me to shake. He was a medium-looking sort who wore steel-rimmed glasses and spoke with a slight Southern accent. “Did you have any trouble finding us?” he inquired.

  “No, I am a geologist. I bought a map.”

  Petridge grinned at this inside joke, led me down a maze of hallways to his office, and offered me a seat.

  I sat down and took in the ambience of the room. It was, by my standards, quite homey, being stacked to the gills with reference texts and plastered floor-to-ceiling with maps. The desk was awash with a paper he appeared to be reviewing for a colleague. The edges of the pages bristled with colored sticky notes.

  Petridge settled into his swivel chair. “So. How can I help you with your project? For that matter, precisely what is your project?”

  That I wanted to know myself. “Well, as I think I mentioned in my e-mail, I’m searching for a possible thesis project in forensic geology. Generally, that’s trace evidence, the art of finding tiny mineral clues.”

  He nodded. “I understand all that, but what brings you clear from Utah to Pennsylvania? Don’t you have tiny mineral clues there?”

  I grinned. It was fun talking with such a smart man. “Well, to be honest, I was coming this way anyway, but I’ve also become interested in mineral pigments, some of which are mined materials. I understand you’re an expert on the mines of Pennsylvania. I’ve worked in petroleum, so I’m approaching this as a cross between a resource issue and a matter of trace evidence. I’d like to know how certain resources might be fingerprinted. I imagine that some ore bodies are quite distinct.”

  Petridge nodded. “Yes, they are. Others are not, and some pigment mines are so variable that the producers routinely mix the production from various places around the pit so that it remains more consistent. Is this a doctoral dissertation you’re talking about?”

  “No, a master’s thesis.”

  Petridge smiled indulgently. “Then what you’re talking about sounds pretty broad and overly ambitious. You know the distinction between a doctoral dissertation and a master’s thesis, don’t you?”

  I smiled uncertainly.

  “A doctoral dissertation is intended to be groundbreaking work, as highly detailed and exhaustive as suits the subject. A master’s is just supposed to show that you can do the work with the judges watching. My advice is simple: Be selfish. Trim it down as far as possible. Get it done. Get on about your life.”

  I had a feeling this Fred Petridge guy and I were going to get along. “Then what would you suggest?”

  He tipped his head to one side. “How should I know? I’ve never worked in forensics. But let me call in someone who has. Nigel Iago. He’s our GIS specialist.” He picked up his phone and dialed, and told the person who answered it, “Hey, come on down here a mo,’ will you? Got a woman who’s into forensic geology here. Yeah.”

  When he had put down the phone, I asked hopefully, “Does your colleague have a specialty in forensics? We’re rare beasts, so it would be great luck to meet another.”

  Petridge shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “Oh, here he is now. I’ll let him explain.”

  The man who appeared through the doorway was tall and angular, and had mustaches that were brushed wildly to either side of his long, narrow nose. As he shook my hand he grinned brightly, an action that induced his mustaches to rise and spread like two wings taking flight. “Fred,” he said, “who is this vision?”

  “Don’t mind Nigel,” said Fred. “He hits on all the girls.”

  “Nice to meet you, Nigel,” I said noncommittally.

  He said, “You’re interested in forensic work, are you? How marvelous. I have an inverse specialty in forensic geology.”

  “Oh?” I said. “Inverse?”

  “Yes, it’s what brought me to the Survey, in fact. When I taught at Bowling Green State, a fellow faculty member taught forensic geology there, and each term he’d declare me dead and make his students figure out who killed me and how and where it was done. Dirt in the shoes, forged securities in overrated gold stocks, that sort of thing. I got very good at lying about looking extinct.”

  Petridge said, “When the forensic man left Bowling Green, he came here to head the Survey. He took pity on Nigel’s corpse and brought it along. We try to ignore the odor.”

  Nigel made a gesture that was inclusive of the whole building. “This is my new coffin. Quite nice, really, though I’d rather fancy a bit of tucked sateen.”

  “Nigel works the graveyard shift, usually,” said Petridge. “You’re lucky to catch him in by daylight. The garlic we were wearing around our necks generally keeps him at bay.”

  Nigel said, “I do have to stay out of direct sunlight.” He threw back his head and bayed with laughter at his own joke.

  “How nice for you both,” I said carefully. I could see that these two guys got on like gunpowder and lightning.

  Fred
Petridge nodded. “Yes it is, in fact,” he said, “Nigel’s building up the GIS force at the Survey here and is also working with the U.S. Geological Survey to create a detailed electronic map of the state that is ten times better than the old topo sheets, a project called ‘PA Map.’”

  “That’s a palindrome,” Nigel informed me.

  “The thing is,” said Fred, “Pennsylvania is in fact a commonwealth. The counties have much more power than the state. They already have tremendous amounts of data on the county Web sites. Their combined budgets dwarf ours, and if the federal government were to try to replicate what the counties have done, it would cost untold millions. So, Nigel is working with me as I try to make a mine layer for the state, county by county.”

  “Wait, back up. What exactly is GIS?” I said.

  “Geographic Information Systems,” said Nigel, his eyes flashing.

  “Computer magic. Each ‘layer’ is one slice of information: land ownership, utilities, geology, mines. We have forty-four layers going for Lancaster County alone.”

  “You see his prejudices already,” Fred commented. “Geology is just a slice. Mines are another slice, which means that he doesn’t really consider mines to be geology, or geology to include mines.”

  Nigel’s mustaches flew out wildly with a new level of joviality. “Fred, dear man, I see that you are finally beginning to understand.” To me, he said, “GIS is marvelous. You can select the layers you want and cross-compare graphical information in a blink.”

  “So the point is, Em, that you can ask to see your mines relative to any other layer, such as roads. But keep in mind that it’s actually a dark art,” said Fred. “You know what they always say about computers: garbage in, garbage out.”

  Nigel sat down in a second side chair and put his feet up on this desk. “Fred is such a naysayer, but GIS is the new buzz. There are whole university departments that do nothing but. Big bucks. Very powerful tool. Thing of the future. Fred, old bean, you are a dinosaur, has anyone told you?”