Chapter Five #2
“Now I just need to make sure I have enough coffee supplies. Oh, and lemonade.”
“Lemonade?”
“It’s my favorite.”
“You have breakfast in there?”
“Oh, I brought my own.”
“Well, do you want something fresh?”
“I eat a cranberry-white-chocolate-chip cookie for breakfast every day. A specific brand. I always bring enough with me when I travel.”
“You bring your own food?”
“Oh yes. I get really thrown off if I can’t have my same food when I need it.”
She had actually only started doing that recently. And she was relatively proud of herself for managing her own comfort in that way. Because it was the kind of thing that people looked at her weirdly about, but she found it more important to be comfortable than to have people think she was normal.
He accepted her answer, and she watched as he finished his shopping, then collected her bag of coffee beans, and a jug of lemonade. Then a second, for good measure.
“Your grocery store on the ranch isn’t going to open up until you have guests?”
He nodded. “No point doing it any sooner. They wouldn’t sell enough just providing supplies to us.”
“That’s so convenient, though. That you’ll have one there. You can have them stock your favorite things.”
“It’ll be more valuable to have them stock the guests’ favorite things.”
“Sure. But some of those things might be your favorite things. And that will save you a lot of trips.”
“True.”
When they went up to the register, she felt questions bubbling up inside of her, and she couldn’t hold them back when the woman—middle-aged with very bright blue eyeliner—began to scan their items. “How busy would you say this store gets?”
The woman looked at her like she was a total curiosity. “Well, sometimes when the after-work crowd comes by it gets pretty busy.”
“But the locals are enough for you to stay in business?”
“We’re the only store for miles.”
“Still, I would think that it’s very difficult to run a business in a place this size.”
“There are some seasonal fluctuations,” she said. “During elk season—rifle and bow—and then again in the summer when people are camping, white water rafting. Sometimes we attract rock climbers.”
“Oh. That’s probably all helpful. And you’re opening a store at Three Brothers Ranch.”
She looked up at Jax. “Yes.”
“Are you excited about that?”
“Well, I don’t know if excited is the right word. But it is a good opportunity, and we’re definitely grateful that they chose to use us as a location rather than just doing it themselves.”
“Seems like a better idea to bring business to the town, rather than take any away.”
She smiled at Jax. “A lot of people don’t think that way.”
“They don’t,” Ernestine agreed. She and Jax paid for their transactions separately, and then he pushed the cart out to the truck.
“Is there anything else you want to see?”
She looked down the street. “Is the pizza place good?”
“I think so.”
“Should we pick up pizza and take it back to the ranch?”
“We could.”
Which is how they found themselves strolling into a quintessentially old-fashioned-looking pizzeria with bench seats and arcade games from the ’80s.
She was charmed by all of it. Jax ordered pizzas, and then wouldn’t let her pay, and then they started on the drive back to the ranch. “I realize it’s presumptuous of me,” she said. “I can take my pizza and go back to the cabin.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “You’re welcome to eat with us. I mean, we’re opening up the place to guests. Plus, you realize the three of us lived in a group home for a long time. Rotated families around forever. Another seat at the table is pretty much second nature to us.”
“Well. That’s nice.”
“I forgot to ask you if you made any big discoveries today.”
“Oh, not big ones. I think there’s a layer with footprints. Preserved. At least that’s what I picked up but I have to approach it really carefully, because if I do it wrong, I’m going to disturb the layer with the footprints. There is one place where I might need to bring in dynamite.”
“Dynamite?”
“It’s very effective. But you do have to make sure that you’re not actually compromising specimens. But if I can actually get down to this layer, I’ll have an idea of where I need to be.”
“How long do you think that will take?”
“Probably by tomorrow I’ll have some definitive answers. At least I hope so.”
“And you think these are mammals?”
“I do. Though I have a suspicion that there will be some smaller dinosaur footprints in there as well. Oregon was a late addition to the North American landmass. It was built up by volcanoes toward the end of the Cenozoic Era. And that means that it wasn’t the home of Tyrannosaurus rex or of the other thunder lizards, so to speak. ”
“Well. That’s kind of disappointing.”
“It’s not really. It’s what makes this such a dynamic ecosystem. This place is volcanic. Which I’ve always felt changes the whole makeup of the place.”
“In a scientific sense?”
“No. In a vibe sense.”
“Do scientists acknowledge vibes?”
“I do. I’m not one for… There is definitely a kind of scientist that lacks whimsy.”
He looked over at her, and yet again, he had that mystified expression on his face that made her wonder if she was going too far for him.
“Please, expand on that,” he said.
She felt warmed, right at the center of her chest, and she couldn’t explain why. Maybe because he’d asked her to expand, rather than looking at her like he wished she’d contract.
“That just isn’t me. I find that science is full of whimsy.
And we can use it to explain a lot of things.
But science is the building block of a story.
And oftentimes in storytelling, you find the miraculous in the absurd.
Science is no different. Some people want science to explain everything.
I want science to explain everything it can.
And then I find even more wonder in the things that it can’t explain. ”
“I will admit, when I said I thought of prison as a prelude to hell, I sort of thought you would tell me hell doesn’t exist.”
“We don’t know what dimensions exist. The reality is, time is something of a mystery. Once you start pulling at that thread, you realize how little we know about anything. Which again, I don’t find confronting or contradictory.”
“Except Jurassic Park. You don’t seem to like Jurassic Park.”
“I just don’t think it’s realistic.”
“Do you want realism from all your stories?”
“No, but I think it pushes where I’m willing to suspend belief.”
“How? It’s a bunch of people doing the thing they were warned not to do, all because they think it would make them money, and it would be cool. That sounds like human nature to me.”
She didn’t really know what to say to that, because in many ways, he wasn’t wrong. There was definitely an element of human nature in that facet of the Jurassic Park story.
“Maybe I just don’t like it because I’ve had to listen to countless people—mainly men—ask me if I’m going to clone something with a mosquito.”
“Sorry to perpetuate that harm.”
“Well, it’s just not as original as you maybe think it is.”
“I have a feeling that I’m not as original as I think I am a lot.”
“That’s okay. I don’t think very many people are truly original. And most people think that they are deeply unique. It’s a mark of good insight that you realize you’re not as original as all that.”
He looked at her. “I think you might be an original person.”
She frowned, trying to sit with that information, to figure out what it meant. “I think maybe that’s true. Though I don’t want to sound egotistical. I also think it probably causes more problems than it solves.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well, people don’t tend to want truly original.
They want things to be new, but the same.
It’s why genre exists in storytelling. And it’s why we have so many sequels and reboots, honestly.
Even I like familiarity. I like to watch the same shows over and over again because I feel like I know the characters.
Particularly when life feels unpredictable, something like that feels comforting. ”
“There’s nothing wrong with being original,” he said. “Because you’re not a sitcom. And believe me, I’ve never met anybody quite like you.”
“To be fair,” she said. “Relentless Jurassic Park references aside, I’ve never really met anyone quite like you either.”
“I feel honored by that.”
“It’s probably a testament to the fact that I’ve spent most of my life in deeply academic science spaces.”
He laughed. “Are you telling me that I’m not smart?”
“No. I would never say that. I’m not telling you that you’re not smart.
All I’m doing is telling you that you’re different than the usual person I’m around.
Academics are not necessarily smarter. They just have an incredibly narrow focus of study and they spend all their time thinking about it.
They’re also not any nicer than other people. Trust me.”
“I do,” he said.
She thought about her parents. Who were not academics, but were quite boring. Jax wasn’t boring. Not remotely.
“I think what you do is very interesting. Because you’re quite physical.”
“Am I now?”
“Well, that’s my take. You do physical labor. And I think that’s very interesting.”
“What is digging in the hot sun if not physical labor?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I never really thought of it that way before. I suppose the physical aspect of it is a necessary evil.”
“Same goes for me. I want this place, and I want all the freedom that it is going to give me. The connection that it’s going to give me.
To the land, to my own life, my own hopes and dreams. And it’s a lot of work to get there.
Doesn’t mean that it’s fun or easy. Doesn’t mean the work always feels like something I want to do.
But in order to have the fruits of your labor you have to… labor.”
“I don’t know that hunkering down and chiseling away at rocks is physical labor on that level. And anyway, usually I’m thinking. About what I’m going to find. About what it’s going to look like. The digging is only part of the work.”