Jessie

by JJ Aughe

  “Jessie!” that woman whispered, glancing over her shoulder at the circle of men on the beach. “You know you can ask anything of me. You saved my life for crying out loud! If it weren’t for your bravery Almed would have surely killed me!”

  Jessie waited until they were standing in the shade of the new pop-up cabana she had bought the day before, then pulled her friend to her, giving her an ‘I love you’ hug. Keeping her voice low, she finally replied. “And I would do the same thing again, Sis. But this is something I don’t want anyone to know about just yet. At least until I am certain.”

  Melissa’s face lit up. “I knew it! Jessie! You are pregnant! I suspected it as soon as I saw you standing on the beach! You were absolutely glowing!”

  “Well,” Jessie hedged. “I’m not one hundred percent sure yet. And I couldn’t get away from Bailey long enough yesterday when we were in Puyallup to get an EPT. That’s what I need, Sis. Carol was supposed to bring one back today, but she stayed behind for some reason. Do you happen to have one with you?”

  “Darn straights I do, Sister O’ mine.” As she spoke she bent down, unzipped a side pocket of the wheeled suitcase, producing not one, but three EPT’s. “Before we left on our honeymoon,” she explained, “I bought six of these. I wanted to be prepared so I wouldn’t have to sneak out to buy one while we were in the Caribbean.” Her grin disappeared in disappointment as she handed one to Jessie, stuffing the other two back into the pocket and zipping it shut. “None have been positive so far though.”

  “Thank you, Sis. I’m sorry you’ve been disappointed. But on the other hand, I owe you dearly now.”

  She gave Melissa another quick embrace then confessed, “I wish I had thought of buying a supply of these before we came out here to stay. Though I was able to keep Bailey from worrying about me or guessing the cause, I’ve been worried sick for the past two weeks, sick being the optimal word here. And until yesterday we’ve been so busy here that there was no chance to get anywhere for me to get an EPT. This morning I even called Carol to ask her to pick one up for me. Her phone went straight to voice mail though, so I left a message for her to call me as soon as possible. Cell reception here isn’t all that good so she may have tried to call and my phone didn’t receive it.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Sis,” she quickly continued. “I love what’s happening here. Archeologists from four different universities here in the States and another in British Columbia have teamed up with Professor Logan to excavate the site. In itself, what they have found so far is amazing. But what is to come I think will blow the minds of archeologists around the globe.”

  In her excitement, Jessie failed to notice Bailey and the guys start walking toward them. Melissa noticed though and placed her hands tenderly on Jessie’s cheeks. “I can tell you’re just elated with the work here, Sister O’ Mine.” Surreptitiously nodding in the men’s direction she added, “And I do want to be filled in. But if you don’t do something quick with that EPT, Bailey’s going to see it.”

  Jessie glanced towards the beach, blushed pink as she saw the men were too near for her to hurry into their tent to hide the box and hurriedly shoved it under her blouse and into her waistband to keep it out of sight.

  Bailey, always ready to tease Jessie when he saw her blushing, didn’t fail this time either. Stopping the other two men ten feet away, he leaned toward them. In an aside that everyone heard, whispered, “Uh-oh, guys. We better turn tail and run. Jess is blushing and giving us that so very innocent smile of hers.”

  “I just saw her stick something in her waistband. Now, if I were a betting man I would bet that means she has a secret. And her secrets always make me nervous. They usually mean she has thought of something else that needs to be done. Now, if Peter were around to volunteer his help as he always is, I wouldn’t worry. But he’s in Victoria on his honeymoon with Monica, his new bride. That means we will get put to work if we stick around.”

  Jessie gave him her most innocent smile and, using his initials, something she only used when they were in bed together, turned the tables on him. “Now BG, I do wish Peter were around. He is always so helpful. And I know you’re always so busy going over building plans for the Visitors Center and cabins with Sonya Montian, our very beautiful and so very single architect that you know I would never ask you to do anything.” Donning a very serious expression, she ended with, “But, now that you three are here? Hmm. Yeah. I think you guys could handle it.”

  “Uh-oh. We’ve walked into it now, Guys. What is it you need, sweetness.”

  “Oh. It’s nothing, really. And I do hesitate to ask, Dear Heart. But the sun is really hot today. Would you and the guys mind putting up the new Cabana I bought yesterday?”

  Rolling his eyes, Bailey glanced at the guys then back at her. Knowing she was joshing him because she had insisted the pop-up Cabana be put up as soon as they returned last evening, he put a serious tone in his voice as he said, “But, Honey. Are you going daft? You are sitting under it right now!”

  “Oh?” she replied, looking up in mock confusion. “I hadn’t noticed. I’m sorry!” with which they both broke up laughing.

  “Okay, Sweets,” he said when he quit laughing. “Let’s get serious. I wanted to let you know I want to show the guys what Andrew Boyd thinks is a burial crypt he has partially uncovered at the end of that second passage. Would you ladies like to come along?”

  Jessie glanced at Melissa, who slightly shook her head, then declined, saying she and Melissa wanted take a short walk to catch up and she really wanted to start preparing the newlywed’s celebration dinner.

  The men disappeared around a bend in the trail leading to the cavern and Jessie rushed to the small RV trailer Bailey had hired flown in by heavy-duty construction helicopter so they would have private facilities, used the EPT and returned overjoyed with the positive results.

  Melissa congratulated her, then kidded her by saying she was jealous. Then she turned serious. “All kidding aside, Jessie,” she finished. “We’ve been trying to get pregnant for the whole month of our honeymoon. Sean keeps telling me not to worry, it will happen. But what if it’s too late and I’m too old to get pregnant now?”

  Hearing the sadness in her friend’s voice Jessie tried to cheer her. “You are wrong to even think you are too old, Sis. You are only four years older than I am and I just tested positive. It isn’t too late. Women still can have children when they are in their forties.”

  “Well, nevertheless, I’m not pregnant and I want desperately to have Sean’s baby. He told me he looks forward to us having children. If I can’t get pregnant I’m afraid it will ruin our marriage. And that would just kill me!”

  Jessie could read between the lines and knew there was something serious bothering her friend besides not being able to get pregnant. She thought about it for a space trying to decide whether to continue the subject or change it to something that would get her friend’s mind off it. The latter won as she stood and took Melissa by the hand.

  “Sis,” she started. “A lot of important things have happened around here since you got married. Some of them concern you, me, Carol and Monica. Would you care to hear about them?”

  Taking her cue from Jessie’s words Melissa stood too. “Okay. What’s been happening?”

  “Let’s walk down the beach, Sis. There’s a log there that seems to be just what the doctor ordered for catching up. And for baring of the soul.” So saying, Jessie smiled and started down the beach. “Come on, Sis. I promise. It’s actually a really nice, comfy log.”

  As they strolled down the beach Melissa suddenly stopped, turned toward the temporary camp. She cocked her head to one side, asking, “Did I just hear Kerry?”

  Jessie just smiled and pointed to the path leading to the cavern.

  Melissa focused her eyes on the path. Kerry, yipping excitedly, burst into sight, his feet tossing sand up in a rooster tail behind him as he raced down the beach toward Melissa. That woman yelled his name and knelt on both knees,
bracing herself in anticipation of his excited charging into her.

  He didn’t disappoint.

  Jessie noticed the muscles on Kerry’s haunches bunch just before he leaped into Melissa’s outstretched arms, hitting Melissa so hard she went over backwards laughing, her arms going around her cherished dog in a loving embrace. That animal, his front paws buried in the sand at each of her armpits, his body pinning his mistress on her back in the sand, was happily wagging his tail and licking Melissa’s face until she squealed his name in pleasure.

  Jessie laughed at the dog’s antics until she looked up and saw Professor Logan, who Melissa had entrusted a very sickly Kerry to before leaving on her honeymoon, appear at the trailhead, hurrying towards them. Oh boy! She thought. This could get sticky, now. Logan has become attached to Kerry and Kerry to him! I wonder how Melissa will handle this.

  She need not have worried.

  Professor Logan, even though Jessie had succeeded in getting him re-instated in his position as head of archeology at the University of Washington, insisted everyone drop the professor and just call him Logan, was still twenty feet away when Kerry sensed his presence, quit laving Melissa’s face and turned his head so he could see Logan. He gave two happy yips then tilted his head skyward and howled like a wolf, as if saying, “I’m happy now! I have my favorite people back!”

  Logan helped Melissa untangle herself from Kerry, then to her feet. “That was quite a welcome home,” he laughed, giving Melissa a quick, but very warm welcoming embrace. “I hope he didn’t hurt you in his exuberance to get to you.”

  Her eyes glistening with tears of joy and pride, Melissa didn’t answer immediately. She knelt on one knee, slipped her arms lovingly around Kerry and spoke softly to him. “Kerry, I missed you so much and I can tell that you missed me too. I promise you right now, sweetie, I’ll never leave you for that long again.”

  Logan knelt beside Melissa and patted Kerry on the head and let his hand slide down the Irish Setter’s neck, then his back. “After he recovered from that last surgery and the vet released him to me Bailey had his pilot bring us out here. I tell you, he was one upset puppy when he discovered you weren’t here. You know how he acts up when you aren’t there and he thinks you should be. Well, when we arrived here he evidently caught your scent on the path where you had hiked up to the cavern and there was no holding him back. No sir! I was kneeling to unleash him, but he suddenly took off. He hit the end of the comeback leash before I could even get to my feet. That leash snapped like it was made of twine and he was gone!”

  Shaking his head and smiling, Logan put his right hand over his heart. “I’m telling you the absolute truth here, Melissa. We found him in the main chamber of the cavern and you will never guess where.”

  Melissa giggled and replied. “Oh, yes I can! He was lying on that big flat rock where I sat just before Sean and I left on our honeymoon wasn’t he?”

  Logan shook his head again. “You got it! And it took all three of us to coax him off that rock and back down to the campsite. After that though, every time I went to the cavern he was right beside me every step of the way. I think he knew you were going to return and figured that when you did you would immediately go up there.”

  “My poor baby,” Melissa sighed as she gathered Kerry to her bosom. “I bet you felt I had abandoned you. Didn’t you?”

  “Oh, I don’t think Kerry actually thought you had abandoned him, Melissa,” Logan assured her. “Like I said, I think he was sure you would return. He just didn’t know when. I say that because he’d be lying there on that rock and I’d notice him suddenly lift his head, intently listen for a bit, tilt his head sidewise, sigh morosely and plop his muzzle back onto his front paws. I’d go outside once in a while to check something and he’d be right at my heels. But while I was doing whatever took me outside, his tail wagging happily, he’d run over to that little promontory and look down at the lake. I checked a couple of times to see what he was looking at. Each time I checked Robert would be just taxiing in to drop off supplies or workers. Kerry would look up at me, give a huff as if to say, ‘It’s not her! Isn’t she ever coming home?’ Then he would saunter back to the cavern entrance and lay down to wait for me.”

  A serious expression came over Logan’s face then as he said, “Melissa, I know you know Kerry is real smart. So what I’m about to say probably won’t surprise you. On those excursions outside I noticed Kerry always stopped in the same area, sniffed around for a second or two then would trot on. He would do that on both our exit and when we returned. That went on for a few days until I finally decided I should check what he was so interested in. What I found would later turn out to be a very significant find.”

  Logan needlessly explained that the explosions had collapsed the crawl-through entrance Bailey had originally found forcing the dig crew to meticulously dig it out again. Professor Logan, being the lead archeologist, had logged every layer of detritus in his notes and every evening would go over those notes, comparing the different layers of detritus. A week and a half into the dig project he came to a conclusion he was certain would soon be proved out.

  Logan’s conclusions and his subsequent theory that when the terrorists tried to destroy the cavern they had actually done the archeologists a favor had proved to be correct. The many different levels in the layers of dirt, large boulders and other rubble to each side of the area where the crawl-through entrance was located had produced crude arrowheads and one broken quartz awl. Artifacts that, based on their positions in the rubble, indicated the entrance Bailey had found, as Logan had thought, had actually been a natural tunnel formed by landslides that had sent enormous boulders cascading down the mountain. The first landslide had evidently sent large boulders down the hillside ahead of other debris. Seven of the boulders ended up spanning the deep depression in the ground leading to the ledge in front of the original cavern opening and become a barrier that would hold the following debris above them producing a crawl-through entrance to the, eventually rubble sealed cavern entrance. Logan believed that over a long period of time, possibly hundreds maybe even thousands of years the debris from later landslides had finally sealed the remaining opening of the original walk through entrance leaving the crawl-through tunnel the only way in.

  What Professor Logan was leading up to was that, even as meticulous as they had been from the first day of the dig, they had missed something of great significance, an artifact they had crawled and eventually walked right past for over a month but one that Kerry had not. It was an artifact Logan was certain, once it was carbon dated, would help give an approximate date for the wall etchings and paintings in the cavern.

  “I know,” he admitted. “You are wondering what it was that Kerry found, and I’m sorry I have made you wait, but I had to try to put a mental image in your mind as to how and where the artifact was hidden from view.

  What I saw when I knelt beside Kerry appeared to be the very tip of a barely visible hollow bone fragment. I put a yellow marker there so I could easily find it again and brought two of the dig crew, for verification purposes in the event the fragment was a significant find, and my tools back to the area to unearth what I thought would probably be an animal bone. What we uncovered turned out to be a nine centimeter in length leg bone, possibly from an eagle. The significance of the find is that the bone had been fashioned into a flute, the very tip of which had been painstakingly carved with the head and neck of a snarling wildcat almost exactly matching the one depicted on the Talisman Pouch Jessie now wears around her neck!”

  Melissa glanced up at Jessie then back at Logan. She was so grateful for Logan. Kerry had been recovering from his second surgery when she and Sean had married. But the day before the wedding the veterinarian had informed her that, as he had warned early on, Kerry needed another surgery to repair damage to his right rear leg. For that reason, though the delay would sadden her, she told everyone that she was so worried about Kerry she was postponing the wedding.

  Logan knew how
much the woman he had come to think of as a daughter had been anxiously awaiting her wedding. All the necessary reservations, airfare and deposits had already been arranged. He wasn’t about to let her postpone the nuptials and immediately insisted she go ahead with the wedding and the honeymoon because he would look after Kerry that month she would be gone. He assured her that he would personally keep her informed on her pet’s progress. To that end, and so he wouldn’t be interrupting her honeymoon, he gave her his personal cell phone number and told her to call at least once a week for an update.

  Melissa had still been reluctant to leave Kerry and tried to convince Logan he would be too busy at the lake to take care of her pet. Bailey, also not wanting her to postpone her wedding, had stepped in. He told her that because there were pre-dig activities that needed to be accomplished at the lake and another permit to be issued before the actual dig could begin, Professor Logan wouldn’t really be needed on site for at least another week and a half. That would give Kerry time, he insisted, to heal a little from his surgery before Logan had to be actually on site.

  Bailey’s assurances giving her a sense of peace, Melissa gave the situation some thought, decided Logan and Bailey were right and relented. Never the less, instead of calling once a week, she called every day until the vet had released Kerry to Logan two weeks later.

  Now, as she stood gazing lovingly up into his face, she went up on tiptoe, threw her arms around his neck, kissing his cheek. Tears of love and joy filling her eyes, she choked out as she slowly shook her head, “Logan, you can’t possibly know how much what you have done for Kerry, Sean and I. I don’t know if there are enough words, or even the proper words, in any language that could express the fondness, no, the love we feel for you. The best I can do to convey what we feel is to say a fond Thank You for everything you have done. You have proven to be a friend and we want you to know that anytime you need us we will welcome the chance to be there for you.”