Jeff Rovin: Fatalis

Grand turned on the lamp. He wasn't hungry and he didn't feel like going into the workshop or drawing a bath and reading. That left the desk, so he walked over and sat down. But he also didn't feel like editing his paper on the Ice Age caves he'd explored three months before in Greenland or logging on and debating human origins with some armchair academic. So he just stared at his dour reflection in the dark computer screen.

Grand's deepset blue eyes were dark and his wavy black hair could use a trim. He also hadn't shaved in two days. He used to shave every day. The chin was still strong but the long jawline had no meat on it. His face looked thin. Or maybe it only seemed thin because the rest of him was so healthy-looking from all the hiking, climbing, and spelunking he did. It was strange. Hammer the body and it became stronger. Hammer the soul and it grew numb.

Grand shook his head as his eyes drifted from the monitor to the small framed photo on the left, beside the phone.

The picture was of Grand and Rebecca on her sailboat Kipper Skipper . He smiled broadly. That had been a perfect day. Great wind but smooth seas, a lot of laughs, and a total surprise when he went into the cooler and came back with tuna sandwiches, iced tea, and a diamond engagement ring. It was one of two occasions he'd seen his stoic little New England Yankee cry with happiness. The second time was when he got a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to explore and map the more remote Chumash caves in the high Santa Ynez Mountains. Even though Rebecca's own funding at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had been gutted and her own job was in jeopardy, she couldn't stop hugging him when he got the news. She knew how desperately he wanted to get out of the classroom more and into the field.

Grand felt tears behind his eyes and looked away from the photograph. It was strange. Part of him didn't want to lose the pain, as though by losing it he would also lose the love he still felt for Rebecca. It was a passion he continued to feel, the only one he could express. But he also knew that he needed to let it go. Tears were draining enough during the day. At night they kept him awake, filled his dreams, and left him unrested in the morning.

Grand slid the computer keyboard to the right, then folded his arms on the desk beside the photograph. He lay his head down, shut his eyes, and listened to the rain.

"I'm sorry that you have to see me like this," he said softly, thinking of the photograph. If Rebecca were spirit, he wondered what she thought about his suffering. Probably sadness. And what about the little things she'd never have seen when she was alive? Everything from buying products from companies she was boycotting to letting fingernail clippings fly across the room and stay there.

That last, at least, brought him a little smile. If spirits could go ecch , she did that for certain.

The downpour caused him to think about the cave and the conditions he'd find in the morning. The mossy rocks on the cliff would be slippery, there might be flash floods from captured rainwater, and rock slides both inside and out were a real possibility. But Grand wasn't worried about that. The danger had always been part of the appeal.

Besides, what was the worst that could happen? He'd be trapped down there and preserved and discovered by some other anthropologist in a few thousand years.

Big deal , he thought. He'd end his own suffering and he'd make headlines as the Brooding Mountain Man. They'd try to figure out his life and habits from the clothes he wore and the tools he carried. They'd open his stomach and pick between his teeth and try to learn something about his diet. They'd study the fillings in those teeth and the scars on his arms and legs and marvel on how primitive medicine was. But when they found the faded photo slipped into his shirt pocket they'd feel a kinship that spanned every age of human endeavor. They'd know that his ancient man had the capacity to love, and that he'd loved a woman named Rebecca Schuman-Grand.

Grand's tired mind was cycling again but he kept his eyes shut. And as he returned to Rebecca and thought of the picture standing beside him, he no longer felt so terribly alone. The rain turned to sea spray, the desk became a deck, and in a few minutes he was finally able to sleep…

On most days. Senior Structural Engineer Stan Greene and his junior partner William Roche of the California Department of Transportation, Office of Structure Maintenance and Investigations, District 7, would have enjoyed this morning's TroDA-Tertiary Road Degradation Assessment duty. Though the partners had only a rudimentary knowledge of geology, they were already on the payroll. Sending them up for preliminary analysis was less expensive than bringing in a three-hundred-dollar-an-hour UCSB geologist for an opinion. Ordinarily, walking around with a hand in his pocket, sipping coffee and poking dirt roads with toe, heel, or pick, was more fun than being suspended from a windy bridge and taking vertical angle measurements with a Laser Theodolite.

Ordinarily.

Mucking around in thirty-degree temperature at five in the morning on the top of a mountain with a cool drizzle still falling-that wasn't the forty-two-year-old Greene's idea of a fun start to the day. But hundreds of people lived high in the Santa Ynez Mountains. One of them had called the sheriff about a prowling bobcat. After investigating, the deputy had spotted a sinkhole. Greene and Roche were on call; if the only road in and out of the mountains was collapsing, they had to find out where and why and figure out how to fix it.

After getting the call from the assistant deputy district chief, Greene hurriedly dressed and went to pick up the thirty-four-year-old Roche at his foothills condominium. Greene had forgotten to bring his doxepin, the antidepressant he'd been taking since hitting forty, but he'd been feeling better the last few weeks and hoped he'd be okay. The men had driven along rain-slippery roads from Santa Barbara. They beaded up Camino Cielo, the eastern approach to Painted Cave Road, following the snaking dirt road into the mountains. Painted Cave Road itself was little more than a one-vehicle path and Greene took it slowly. During storms, in the dark, branches fell from the overhanging trees and rocks dropped from the ledges, making it especially treacherous.

The men parked their Caltrans van beside the tree-lined ravine. Below them, to the north, the Ygnacio Creek went underground. Up ahead was where the sheriff's deputy had spotted the small sinkhole. They pulled on their orange ponchos, took flashlights from holders on the door, and got out Then they went to the side of the van and retrieved their-large field backpacks. The packs weighed twenty pounds each and contained a small collapsible pick/shovel combination, a digital camera, a hammer, various size pitons, flares, waterproof portable radios, a ten-foot rope ladder, and a first-aid kit.

The men turned on their flashlights and started up the steep, dark hill. To their- right was the tree-lined ravine, which disappeared into the darkness. To their left was a narrow ditch at the foot of sandstone bedrock that rose almost vertically. Greene walked a few steps in front of Roche. The only sounds were the rippling creek below, the rain tapping on leaves, and their boots crunching on the wet dirt The only living things they saw were three-to-five-inch lemony-gray banana slugs inching along the rocks and mulchy sides of the roadway.

"I was just telling the kids that when I was their age I used to play soldier up here," Roche said. "Y'know, we took away a lot of the enchantment up here with all the paving we've been doing. When we were kids it was all mainly dirt. You felt like a pioneer or a soldier behind enemy lines."