“I think so.”
We walked on, and, thankfully, she didn’t prompt me. Finally, as the street came in sight I paused and said, “This is the best I can do. It doesn’t seem very elegant to me.”
“It won’t cause the ground to tremble.”
“No. Nor will the stones weep or the heavens open up.”
“I know what you mean, Jared, I really do.”
“The world is a sacred place and a sacred process,” I told her, “and we’re part of it.”
“That’s excellent, Jared, simple and to the point. This is what was understood—and is still understood among Leaver peoples. Wherever you went in the world, you found people who took it for granted that the world is a sacred place, and that we belong in that sacred place as much as any other creature in the world.” Smiling, she looked around the park, as if giving it a silent farewell. Then she included me in the smile as she said, “Maybe someday someone will find a way to say it that makes the ground tremble.”
The fossil
About halfway back to the hotel, I said, “You were going to tell me what Charles had in mind with the ammonite fossil he gave me.”
“Oh yes.” She drove on for a couple of blocks, then pulled over and parked. “Charles was much better than I am with this aspect of things. He would have sat you down and made you see how past, present, and future were woven together at that little patch of ground. He would have shown you that you really could read the future from the signs you saw there. Nothing magical. As I said myself, we’re all involved in reading the future all the time. He was fond of pointing out that our fascination with the hunt hasn’t disappeared in modern times, it’s just found a new object—the mystery story, where all the classic talents come into play: observation, deduction, forecasting, cunning, stealth, and alertness.”
“What does this have to do with the fossil?”
“Where is it?”
I dug it out and handed it to her.
“I suspect he planned to ask you the future of this fossil, which is at least sixty million years older than the human race. That’s an awful lot of its past that you know. What do you know of its future?”
“Nothing at all.”
She laughed and shook her head. “I’m sure he could have predicted that answer without any difficulty.”
“I’m sure he could,” I said, a bit miffed.
“Come on,” she said, getting out and going round to the trunk, where she took out a tire iron and handed it to me.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
She walked over to the curb, sat down, and, when I joined her, she set the fossil between us and told me to smash it to bits.
“I won’t,” I told her.
“No, go ahead.”
“I won’t,” I told her again. “Why do you want me to do that?”
“I want to show you how to read the future,” she said—half laughing, it seemed to me.
I picked up the fossil, returned the tire iron to the trunk, and got back in the car.
“Charles would have done it better,” she said as we drove off. “The point of the exercise needs to be more fully developed.”
I snorted contemptuously.
“Charles would have got you to smash it.”
“Bah,” I said, unable to think of anything better.
B laughed—to me, in my besotted state, a sweeter sound than birdsong.