Dad used to spend springs in the California desert leading groups of college students on their first archeological digs. He didn’t like the jobs any – he didn’t look forward to them as breaks in the grind of police work, and he always complained that Mom didn’t come with him. But she didn’t like the desert. When I was sixteen, I overheard him saying that since she didn’t go, I should. He wanted me doing more masculine things anyway. He’d formed the idea that I was a coward ever since I’d come home with a bloody and bruised face, and he’d been trying to toughen me up ever since. It was at that moment that I realized he was impotent.
It occurred to me at first because I was angry for being called weak. Being called weak by my own father was awful because I was embarrassed of the defeats I’d had in my fistfights. So me thinking he was impotent was a childishly angry reaction. But then I realized that he actually was frustrated and angry all the time, and I hadn’t seen my parents’ bedroom door closed, not for a couple of years anyway. It had to be true. Dad had to be lacking and walking around with an almost constant sixteen-year-old’s erection made me feel powerful. I confirmed it later that night when I got up to go to the bathroom and I heard no moans nor squeaking springs that I imagined would be the music of sex.
Mom ended up volunteering me to go on that year’s trip with Dad. It was to be two weeks long and we’d be camping in pup tents near a place called Darwin Springs, which was within ten miles of Death Valley. Dad liked that spot because arrowheads and bones were fairly easy to find and water was nearby.
Twenty students, mostly eighteen year-olds from the University of Arizona in Phoenix, came with us. This was seen as a sort of fun trip to them. In their freshman year they looked for bones and things, but not seriously. Dad was not leading the real trip. The real trip came in their sophomore and junior years when they went to the site of an old Indian city in Colorado. Freshmen weren’t allowed to go because there simply wasn’t enough room, so they were sent out with Dad to get their feet wet and learn how to not destroy a site through clumsiness. Occasionally they would find the bones of some long dead person, and they would dig them out carefully, marking the site scientifically, as though it were as precious a find as ancient Troy. If they couldn’t find a human skeleton by the fifth day, Dad would have them carefully remove a cow skeleton from the ground. He knew he’d find the cow skeleton because every year he buried it. Most years, they unearthed the cow skeleton.
* * *
But that year Danielle Johnston and I found a human skull. This made her a celebrity in camp. She wasn’t a very good student. None of them were. She’d found it quite by accident, and I’d been with her when she’d done it. Dad had sent the two of us down the ravine to get water and bring it back for the entire camp. This was a twice-daily event for Danielle and me. We’d walk downhill to the spring and then climb back up resting twice in shady spots. We also liked to rest next to the springs because an old oak tree had been planted there years ago, and it was the only spot of life in the deserty mountains. We’d sit in the shade of the oak tree, and she’d tell me what college life was like and then complain about how demanding my father was and I’d say, “Tell me about it. I have to live with the guy.”
She was telling me what a slave driver Dad was and that she didn’t like to have to be the one who had to go down to get the water. She said, “Why is it me who has to do this? I’m as good a student as any of them, aren’t I?”
I said, “Tell me about it. I have to live with the guy.” I didn’t want to tell her that Dad had sent her down with me because she was the most beautiful girl in camp, and he wanted to see how masculine I was. If I weren’t a good fighter, he wanted to prove that at least I was a good lover. Or this was my theory. As I was saying she should tell me about it and that I had to live with my father, I leaned back and put my hand on what I thought was a stone. It felt strange to my hand, smooth and almost glossy, so I looked at it and could see a face emerging from the Earth. I pointed it out to Danielle and she began to brush away the dirt from its face with her thumbs.
She was excited and kissed me on the cheek and said, “My God, what have you found?”
“What should we do?” I asked. I wanted to defer to her since she was the archeologist. Also it was one of the first times I’d been kissed by a girl and absolutely the first time I’d been kissed by an eighteen-year-old college woman.
She stood up and said, “I’ll go tell your dad what you found. Stay here and guard it.”
“No,” I said. “You’re the archeologist. You stay here and I’ll get Dad.” I sprang up and ran as fast as I could back to camp. Even though we usually stopped twice I didn’t break my stride. Twenty minutes later I got to camp winded and sweating. Dad saw me and rushed out of the main tent.
“What is it?” he said.
“Danielle’s found a skull.” The alarm went up, there was shouting and yelling, and pretty soon everyone in camp was following me down the ravine to the oak tree and the spring. On the way down, I made a story up about Danielle finding the thing by herself. I said we were walking to the water, and she’d noticed the eyebrow ridge sticking up from out of the Earth. From that she’d known it was a human skull and when she’d brushed away the dirt, I could see it too. I don’t know why I made up that story, except that even after running up the canyon for twenty minutes, I could still feel the kiss on my cheek.
When we got down to the oak tree, Dad patted her on the back and looked at the skull. He said, “Yeah. It’s human all right. It looks old too. You can tell by the color.” I was able to tell Danielle about the lie I’d made up and she wanted me to come clean and tell Dad I’d found it so I’d get the credit. I explained to her that I never wanted to be an archeologist and so didn’t care about any sort of credit. She kissed my cheek again and thanked me. I kissed her on the cheek and said, “You’re welcome.”
The next couple of days were spent unearthing the skeleton slowly. Dad let Danielle be the lead archeologist, and he told me that I was to be her assistant, carrying her things and fetching whatever she asked for. This didn’t bother me even a little. They mapped out the area with strings and stakes and dug around the skeleton not with shovels but with brushes. Next to the skull they found some ribs and next to that the top of another skull. Dad said, “My God, Danielle what have you found here.” He said that since there were two there may have been more and so they should really start moving. And since they only had two weeks, Danielle suggested that they bring in lights and work around the clock. Dad said that was a good idea, and she even volunteered to be the one who worked nights since she’d made the suggestion. Dad smiled proudly at her. He said, “You’re really doing a first rate job here. You’re going to be a hell of an archeologist.” She beamed at him and then at me. Then Dad told her that I’d stay up with her and help her to dig. He didn’t think that any woman should be out in the desert night alone. She beamed at me again, and I blushed.
By the time night came around, I had mounted some high-powered lights around the bones. I’d brought down a gas powered generator too and some extra food. The night didn’t faze the students at all and most of them stayed until about twelve when Dad said they should go back to camp to get some sleep so they didn’t botch the job the next day. But Dad gave strict orders that Danielle and I should stay and that I should not dig, but only make sure Danielle had everything she needed.
Danielle didn’t ask me for anything but kept digging with her brushes. As she dug, I watched her. I sat so I could see her face and when she bent over, I could see down her tee shirt to her breasts, which swung freely without a bra. She’d look up at me every once in a while and smile. I could barely force a smile and even though it was about sixty degrees, I sweated.
About an hour before dawn she stood and stretched and walked and smiled at me again. She went to the spring and cleaned the dirt off of her face and arms. Then she took off her shoes and socks, then her tee shirt, jeans, and panties. She was standing twenty feet in front of me, naked. I couldn’t say anything but just watched her. She walked over to me and kissed me on the cheek once again. She said, “Thank you” and began to undress me. She followed the same order with me as she had with her own clothes: shoes, socks, tee shirt, jeans, underwear. After I was naked, she pushed me onto my back and climbed on top of me. She took my penis into her hand and put me inside of her. She must have known I was a virgin, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that myself. But I’d seen enough movies to know that I should start thrusting then. As soon as I did, she began to moan sweetly and sitting on top of me, she arched her back and closed her eyes. When we were done, she lay down next to me and kissed me on the cheek again. She said, “Thank you.”
I said, “Are you kidding? Thank you.”
She kissed me on the cheek and I turned over and kissed her long on the mouth. It was the first kiss that I’d used my tongue. She got up, walked over to the spring, and climbed into the water. As she bathed, I suddenly became worried that someone might wake up early and want to come down to help her dig, and that person might catch us and tell my dad. Then I thought I heard the noise of a foot on the gravel and I looked in the direction of the sound. At first I didn’t see anything distinctly because the glare from the high powered lights had ruined my night vision. But I shaded my eyes and looked into the dark and I thought I could see something move behind a rock. Slowly my eyes began to adjust to the light and I thought I could make out part of a face. I stared at it long, wondering if it actually were a face and telling myself not to be paranoid. Finally I decided that it couldn’t be. I stood up facing it. It spun quickly toward me, and I could see it was Dad. He’d been watching Danielle but when he turned to me, I was able to see him more clearly. He looked hungry. Then he was gone and I could hear his foot as he turned around in the dirt even though I wasn’t able to hear his footsteps as he walked or ran away.
Danielle heard him too and jumped out of the spring, still naked looking in the direction of the noise. She said, “Did you hear something?”
“No,” I said. I grabbed at her ankle and missed, and she looked down at me and laughed. She came over and kissed me long on the mouth, and we made love again. This time, I was on top of her. Later, she dressed and went back to digging at the dead person with her brush.
* * *
An hour after daybreak, Dad came down to the dig. He didn’t look into Danielle’s eyes directly but kept focused on the bones. She had revealed parts of both the skeletons, and he told her she’d done a good job. He looked at me though, and he kept smirking and slapping me on the shoulder the way my high school friends had when I’d lied to them and said I’d slept with one girl or another. After that, for the rest of the trip, he’d send Danielle and I off on small jobs where we’d be alone and he’d always leave us alone at the dig at night. They didn’t find anything else in the area but those two bodies, but Dad said it was the best find he’d seen in any of the field trips.
* * *
For months after we came home, I listened at Mom and Dad’s door in the dead of night for moans and spring squeaks, but I didn’t hear any. When summer came around, Dad enrolled me in a karate class even though I didn’t want to go. He said I’d be all right. He told me that I’d need it if I got into any more fights and anyway he knew I was man enough to take it.
