Sweetness in the Dark

by W. B. Martin

  Just because he and Amanda were hitting things off intellectually didn’t mean that anything more might transpire. There is at least fifteen years difference between us, he thought. Certainly there was just a common interest in academics between them. Her offer to continue their discussion warranted an answer. But where? Do I dare offer? he thought.

  “If you don’t think me impertinent, I have an apartment upstairs where we could sit and talk,” Paul offered.

  Chapter 2

  Pine Mountain Observatory, near Bend, Oregon (July)

  Thunderstorms started building in the afternoon over Pine Mountain Observatory. Located at 6500’, the Observatory towered over the surrounding high desert country of Central Oregon. Twenty-six miles southeast of Bend, the Observatory was the research facility of the University of Oregon Physics Department.

  The largest operating telescope this day was pointed toward the sun as one of the professors and his students worked on their research. But their work would have to wait as the large doors began to shut to protect the delicate 32” telescope from possible hail damage.

  Thunderstorms were a frequent visitor to the Observatory during the summer months and this July was turning out to be one of the most active yet. Already the Observatory had been evacuated twice from wild fires started on the mountain by lightning strikes. Both had been suppressed by the U.S. Forest Service, but the dry undergrowth was still waiting for another storm to set things ablaze.

  “Dr. Ewing, we can finish up here,” one of the students offered. “Your wife called hours ago and I know you’ve been anxious to call her back.”

  “Thank you. I almost forgot,” Dr. John Ewing replied. Sometimes he needed a pad of paper hung around his neck to remind him of things. When he worked on the telescope, time just flew by. Just put me down as the ‘absent-minded professor’, he thought.

  He had enjoyed that old movie immensely when his kids were small. Fred McMurray played the part well, he thought. The new version with Robin Williams was definitely inferior. Modern Hollywood just didn’t do the job like they did in the old days.

  “I think we got some good pictures before the storm blew in,” the graduate intern added.

  John focused back on the telescope, with the young people standing and waiting for instructions.

  “Go ahead and work those pictures up for transmission to SOHO. They’ll want to see them right away. Just mind the lightning. Power down if it really lights up around us,” John said. SOHO stood for the Solar and Heliosphere Observatory. SOHO collected data from around the country for analysis.

  The Pine Mountain Observatory had numerous lightning rods on its buildings and the electrical system was fully protected from any strikes. But the equipment was sensitive and he didn’t want to risk a power surge taking out any of the expensive equipment. The University was frugal with its budget and if something went down, it might be a long time before a replacement could be purchased.

  “Are you expecting a repeat of last month, Dr. Ewing?” one student asked.

  “We are in a Solar Max period. Last month’s CME was in line with the size that had been predicted,” John answered. CME stood for Coronal Mass Ejections, the scientific term for a solar flare. John noticed a certain concern in her voice. For her benefit. he added, “We’ll have plenty of warning from the Space Weather Prediction Center on any X-class ejections.”

  A Solar Max was a period of maximum activity on the sun compared with a Solar Minimum. Each period lasted about eleven years and this Solar Max was in its tenth year. The sun went through phases of solar flares and last month’s flare had led to some electrical outages in Argentina.

  Things had definitely been heating up on the sun over the last month and he wanted to continue watching from the Observatory. The sun had recently thrown out two high X-class ejections but luckily they had been aimed out into space and not at Earth. We dodged it that time, John thought.

  John headed to his office to call his wife, Mary, back in Eugene. He hadn’t been home for almost three weeks now due to all the solar activity.

  “Mary, sorry to be so slow getting back to you. Things have been hectic here,” John said. He knew Mary had resigned herself long ago to having an absent husband.

  “John, Isaac has his final baseball game this weekend for the American Legion. He’s heading off to college soon, if you remember. You may not get another chance to see him play. Do you think you could make it over?” Mary asked.

  She knew how to make her point. The college remark hurt, but she was right. He’d been away too much and had missed his three children growing up. Every summer he headed to Pine Mountain and every school year he was busy with classes.

  “I’ll get away. Tell Isaac I’ll be over Friday evening. Maybe we can go out for breakfast Saturday morning before his game,” John said.

  “They have a team breakfast before every tournament. You’d know that if you’d been around here more often,” Mary said. Her exasperation was evident.

  “Sorry. I’ll be home for the whole weekend. See you soon,” John said. There wasn’t much else to say and he hung up quickly as a large clap of thunder rocked the Observatory. No need getting electrocuted holding on to a phone, he thought. And it offered an opportunity to avoid any more stings from his wife.

  He loved his wife, but he loved his work, too. He knew that his children had suffered because of his work, but at least their mother had been able to stay home and be there for them.

  John suddenly realized he was famished. The Observatory had living quarters for those who studied and worked there. The kitchen was well stocked and once a week someone would drive into Bend with the shopping list. John grabbed some yogurt and noticed some new nectarines on the counter. My favorite: yogurt, nectarine and some granola, he thought.

  John ate while he read his professional journal. The kitchen grew quiet as the thunderstorm moved off to the east. That one hadn’t been bad, John thought. The building had shook a couple times from lightning strikes close by. We’ll have to wait to see if the Weather Service calls about nearby strikes and any fires, he thought.

  As the senior staff member, he was responsible for everyone’s safety at Pine Mountain. When he headed to Eugene in a couple of days, he’d make sure the graduate intern was ready to take over.

  “Dr. Ewing, there’s a phone call from Boulder.” John looked up as the student broke the stillness.

  “Thank you,” John said. Now, what did Boulder want? he thought. The Space Weather Prediction Center was located in Boulder and it was almost certainly them calling. John hurried to his office and punched the extension on his phone. “John Ewing here.”

  “Doc, Max here.” John envisioned Max when he heard his voice. Max had been one of John’s doctoral students a couple of years back and they had stayed in touch. Max had landed a job at SWPC and had been excited about moving to Colorado.

  “Max, good to hear from you. How’s the mountain biking?” John asked. Max had always been an ardent biker and always mentioned how he liked the sunny weather of Boulder. “You miss the rain of Eugene yet?”

  “Doc, our satellites just reported Sunspot AR1654 flared again. NOAA is acknowledging it as ‘BGD’. It looks seriously big,” Max said. John could tell Max tried to keep his emotions in check as he talked. He wasn’t succeeding very well.

  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, ran the Space Weather Prediction Center. If they were labeling the latest sun activity as a BGD, that wasn’t good. A Beta-Gamma-Delta, or BGD, was the most complex solar magnetic configuration that existed. It meant that the positive and negative polarity fields were in a strong gradient.

  “How large is it?” John asked.

  “1100 SM and growing. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory picked up the re-flare and measured it at M2.6,” Max answered.

  M2.6 was high for a re-flare, John thought. The Solar Dynamics Observatory, SDO, was a satellite positioned between the earth and the sun which provided a limited warning s
ystem. “So we can expect further activity from this spot soon?”

  “I’ll call if we get any further reports,” Max said.

  “Thanks, Max. I appreciate the heads up.” He knew Max must be busy and had taken valuable time to call with the information. It would soon be on the SWPC’s website, but John had learned long ago that NOAA was slow on evaluating SDO reports. Better to have an inside source, he thought.

  John didn’t have long to wait for his inside source to call again. He answered Max’s call with trepidation. He wouldn’t have called back so soon if it wasn’t important, John thought.

  “Max, it must be something big to call back so soon,” John said.

  “Doc, I wouldn’t have called so soon, but this is big.” John definitely heard the panic in Max’s voice.

  “How big?” John carefully asked.

  “The Mother of All Solar Flares big. Remember how we used to discuss the possibility of a Z-class flare. This one may be it. And it’s aimed right at us.”

  John closed his eyes. On the scientific scale for solar activity, X size storms had been the highest that had ever been detected. To move up into the Z category would mean disaster. “How much time?”

  “Two hours, three tops. It’s coming fast and furious,” Max said.

  Chapter 3

  Middle Fork of the Salmon River, Idaho (the same day)

  “Paul, we need to pull in and let the kids catch up,” Amanda said.

  Paul Kendall turned on the cooler he sat on and noticed that his two children had drifted too far upstream for safety. He pulled on his oars and the cataraft responded quickly. Heading toward a nice eddy in the river, he slid into a quiet spot behind a rock. The raft would sit with little attention until Matt and Meredith caught up.

  “We need to group up,” Paul yelled at the other two rafts in his party. This was their second day on the Middle Fork and at this rate they would be two weeks getting to the take-out. The other two rafts pulled into an eddy downstream and turned to see how much time they’d be waiting.

  The day wound down and they had a few more miles to go before reaching their campground by Indian Creek. The Forest Service that managed this stretch of the Salmon River assigned camp spots and raft parties were responsible to be at their assigned place each evening.

  Paul waited patiently. He didn’t mind the time sitting in the sun watching Amanda sunbathe. Amanda was the breath of fresh air that had swept into his life over the last seven months. Since his inviting her up to his apartment to discuss historical disease outbreaks, things had happened fast.

  When he realized the first night that their talk had carried them into the early morning, Paul insisted that Amanda not drive home. He had fixed up his daughter’s bed for her and retired to his own room.

  Paul had attended Amanda’s graduation party the next weekend after she received good news from her Master’s Thesis committee. That had solidified a lot of what both of them had been feeling. Their relationship took off from there.

  A physical relationship followed whenever Paul’s children visited their mother. Strong feelings for each other soon followed, at least in Paul’s estimation.

  But his ex-wife was a constant reminder of the ugliness of their divorce. The continued battles between them seemed to affect the children and he hoped this float trip would clear his soul of the wrath he often felt towards his ex.

  Looking at Amanda helped clear out something. His feelings for her continued to grow and Amanda seemed excited about the float trip as her first chance to meet the family.

  Paul had kept the two separate until he had a better feeling where things might lead. Amanda had made the right moves and things seemed serious. He knew he was taking a chance on having her meet his children, but Paul knew it had to happen sometime.

  “Do you do this often?” Amanda asked.

  “Do what often?” Paul asked.

  “You know, float the river?”

  “Oh yeah. We get up here to the Middle Fork every year. We make it onto the Snake River through Hell’s Canyon once in a while and we’ve been lucky to float the Selway almost every year. I’ve been floating Idaho rivers each summer for the last twenty-five years,” Paul said. And then he regretted it. He had paddles older than Amanda. Don’t say stuff about your age, you idiot, Paul thought.

  At forty-two, the fifteen year age difference between him and Amanda bothered Paul. He knew younger women often went for older men because of the money, but he certainly didn’t have that kind of wealth. So he dwelled on why a younger woman would be interested in him. He was distracted from that thought when Amanda stood up and took off her life jacket.

  “If we’re going to be sitting here for a while, I want to get sun all over.” Amanda said. She proceeded to get down to her very small bikini. Paul stared as she laid down on the aluminum storage box strapped to the raft frame that acted as her seat. “Could you put some sunscreen on my back?”

  Paul reached for the mesh bag beside him that carried their sunscreen. Like everything else, it was lashed to the raft in case they overturned. He untied the bag, took out the bottle and squirted the contents onto Amanda’s back.

  “Oh, it’s cold.”

  Paul placed his hand on her warm back and started spreading the lotion around. She relaxed from the initial shock, although at ninety degrees outside, how the sunscreen could feel cool was beyond him.

  “Could you get the back of my legs, too?” Amanda asked.

  Paul finished her back and started on her legs. Long and athletic, they were already well tanned. She spread her legs as Paul worked the sunscreen up her thighs.

  “Hi, Dad, keeping busy I see,” Matt said as he pulled his kayak into the eddy. He slid into a spot beside the raft and grabbed the side of the tube.

  “Matt,” Paul stammered. Amanda stayed motionless as she relaxed in the sun. “We need to pick up the pace. We’re running out of sunlight in the canyon. The temperature will drop a bit when the sun goes behind the hill.”

  “OK. Meredith and I have been surfing some great waves. We’ll pick it up.” Matt pushed off the raft, dug his paddle into the water and accelerated upstream to hit the eddy line. He leaned on his paddle and swung out into the current just in time to pick up his sister coming downstream. “Come on Meredith, that eddy is kind of busy.” Paul noticed Matt’s smile as he led Meredith down the river.

  Paul hated this whole dating routine around his kids. He had avoided putting the two together until now. He started to regret his decision inviting Amanda along. But then Amanda picked herself up off her perch, stood up on the floor between the two cataract tubes and faced Paul. She slowly bent over and kissed him on the mouth. Paul forgot all about the kids as he returned the kiss.

  “Almost got caught there, didn’t you? We could hang back and let everyone else get ahead, you never know what might happen out here in the wilderness,” Amanda said. The invitation was very explicit in her voice. Her eyes radiated softness and desire at Paul.

  “I understand the offer, but can you save that thought? We are running behind. Maybe tomorrow we can be the laggards,” he said, ruining the mood.

  Amanda smiled as she put on her life jacket. She made a deliberate move to struggle with the zipper as she reached her out thrusted breasts. Slowly, she pulled the zipper up and over them, hiding them from Paul’s view.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” Amanda said.

  “Hey, I know what I’m missing. We’ll have private time tonight.” He pulled on the oars and got the raft out into the current. They quickly caught up with the others.

  * * *

  Around the campfire that night, Paul tried to focus on the entire party and not just Amanda. She was nestled beside him with her North Face polar fleece on to shield her from the cool up canyon breeze. Paul was still in his river shorts but had thrown on an ISE sweatshirt for warmth.

  As the night went on, the others drifted off to their tents to sleep. Soon it was only Paul and his son Matt stoking th
e dying campfire. Amanda had announced she was cold and had headed to the tent an hour ago.

  “Dad, you don’t need to hang here with me. I think someone’s waiting for you,” Matt said.

  Paul was taken aback by the bluntness of his sixteen-year old son. “It’s OK. I’ve missed you while your mother and I were divorcing. That took a lot of time and energy away from you and your sister.”

  “Look, Dad. You put up with Mom for too long on account of us. I know what she put you through. You deserve some quality time with someone special. Amanda seems to really like you. Go for it,” Matt said.

  As he said it, a coyote howled somewhere on the ridge above their camp. Then a second and a third answered the call. Paul and Matt both looked up at the sound. As they were listening to the nightly chorus, a bright light streaked across the sky.

  “What was that?” Matt asked.

  Before Paul could even answer, another bigger and bolder green light splashed into view. The coyotes went crazy. The howling increased as the light grew brighter. Soon the whole heavens were alive with dancing green and yellow light.

  Paul called everyone to come out and witness the spectacle. Slowly, the rest of the raft party crawled out of their tents to see the light show.

  Amanda rubbed her eyes as she sat down on the sand next to Paul. “What’s going on?” She asked

  “Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, like you’ve never seen them,” he answered.

  “I thought they were up in Alaska. What are they doing down here in Idaho?”

  “I don’t know, but they sure are spectacular. Too bad we’re in this canyon and can only see about a third of the sky. I’m sure if we were up on top of the ridge, they would be stunning.”

  They sat transfixed by the light show. Finally, as the night became late, they all began to drag themselves back to their tents. There was another 20 miles of river to run tomorrow, and everyone needed to be rested.