No more empty spaces, p.12
No More Empty Spaces, page 12
They would always be quiet lovers, as if there were always children just down the hall, even long after the kids were grown and out on their own.
They held each other’s gaze. Then he blinked and smiled at her. He leaned down, kissed her neck, and murmured, “Thank you.”
Paula untangled her fingers from his, reached her arms around his back, and drew him down, onto her chest. She wanted to feel his whole body against hers. She unwrapped her legs from his hips and slid them beneath him, holding his body inside hers. They lay like that for a long time, his lips moving on her neck. Their breathing slowed and fell into the same rhythm.
His lips stilled, and just when she began to wonder if he’d fallen asleep, he rolled to the side and propped himself up on his arm. With his other hand, he ran his finger along her jawline.
“Günaydin, güzelim,” he said. Good morning, beautiful.
And she felt beautiful. She craned her neck and kissed him.
“Kahve?” he asked. Coffee?
“Evet, lütfen,” she said. Yes, please.
He swept his hand down her body, then climbed out of bed. Her eyes wandered over his body while he stretched. He turned to sort through his bag.
“Should I be worried?” he asked.
“Worried?”
“I’ve already got three kids,” he said, taking a pair of sweatpants out of his duffel.
“Oh. No. I only plan to have kids if I plan to have kids. I’m on the pill.”
He stood, regarding her. “I’ve never been with a gal who took care of things herself.”
“Woman,” she said. “Really? Did you miss the sixties? Civil rights! Free love! Women’s liberation!”
“Sort of,” he said. “We were in Pakistan, in a big house with a cook, a housekeeper, and an ayah. I worked, and Kat was a lady of leisure. She was liberated from housework, if that counts. Never forgave me for taking her away from all that to go to grad school. So I guess I did miss the sixties. But hey, I’ll show you what a liberated guy I am. I’ll go make your coffee, baby.”
He pulled his sweatshirt over his head while he crossed the room back to the bed. He bent down to kiss her and lingered when she put her hand on his cheek. Again, he held her gaze. Paula loved that about him, even if he did have quite a way to go in the liberation department. Always looking her in the eye counted for a lot in her book.
Paula would savor that time, because that night, that morning, that week, was the most she’d get of him for quite a while. After that trip, for Will, it was work, work, and more work.
PART III
SEVENTEEN
Will stood at the back of the room, his hands jammed into the pockets of the dove gray suit Paula had given him the week before for this all-important meeting. His right foot tapped, and he fingered the knot of his new tie, also a gift from Paula. For the third time in as many minutes, he paced over to the slide projector to check that the carousel was seated properly. The evidence that he and Erdem Borkan were about to present for sweeping changes to Kayakale Dam filled the slides in the carefully loaded, checked, and rechecked carousel.
Will made another trip to the lectern, assured himself the clicker was secured there with its cord run along the far wall so as not to be tripped over and pulled out. A pointer was propped behind the podium, and an extra, the extendable metal kind about the size of pen, was in his suit jacket pocket, just in case.
Reaching inside the lapel of his jacket, his finger probed his shirt pocket, that old nervous habit of searching for a smoke. No pack of cigarettes was tucked there; instead, he felt the index cards outlining his part of the presentation. That was a comfort, though the likelihood Will would need those cues was slim. He knew the material inside and out, forward and back.
But where was everyone? Everyone important, that is—the young men milling around, talking in small groups, were not project managers from either Ankara or New York, and they certainly weren’t the money guys. Will glanced at his watch.
Moments later, right on time at nine o’clock, the door swung open and Borkan entered. Formal as always, he swept his hand, ushering those behind him in. “Gentlemen,” he said.
Gus Browning stepped in, followed by Mehmet Alkumru from DSI, then three others who Will assumed were DSI engineers and managers. Next came John Heatley and Joe Gallimore from DECCO New York. The collective of financiers, as far as Will could tell from their slick suits and slicker hair, followed.
Will was the first technical speaker. He would lay the groundwork for the rest of the presentation since he was addressing the dam’s foundation. He strode to the podium after the welcoming statements and intros from DSI and DECCO.
“Lights,” he said and cleared his throat. “First slide, please.”
Will’s edginess eased as soon as the image flashed onto the screen. The waiting was over. Each photo and figure were cue cards for what needed to be said. He’d taken every shot and drawn every map, cross section, and schematic.
The picture of the foundation that Will drew was truer than they’d ever seen, and it wasn’t pretty—riddled with voids, two of them massive (nicknamed Moby and Babe for the legendary behemoths and their respective shapes, though Will didn’t mention that in the presentation, as befitted its formality), and crisscrossed by faults and fractures (named for the women in the lives of the site team, also not mentioned specifically). Some scored the near subsurface, and others plunged deep into the foundation. Many of them intersected the mapped voids, providing conduits for the groundwater that had dissolved the marble, creating the cavities.
Given the realities, finally clearly defined, building this dam would cost more than twice what had been estimated when the project was proposed. The foundation preparation would be deeper and more extensive, including excavation and over-excavation in brecciated zones, rock cleaning, emplacement of “dental” concrete, cutting and backfilling of now deeper cut-off trenches, and, of course, grouting. The dam’s alignment would shift upstream to skirt the biggest part (the “body”) of the Moby void that in the current alignment was directly under the dam’s centerline where it keyed into the left abutment. In addition, the entire design would change from a rock-fill dam to a concrete gravity dam, making the structure’s footprint smaller, limiting, to the extent possible, the huge problem the foundation treatment had become and the massive undertaking it remained. The boots on the ground—Will, Borkan, and their team of engineers at the site—agreed that these changes had to be instituted for Kayakale Dam to be safe and viable.
Returning to his seat after handing the presentation over to Borkan, Will saw that Heatley and Gallimore looked stoic, while Browning scowled. They’d been briefed beforehand, but this was new information for the others. They all wore expressions of concern, their brows furrowed, mouths tight-lipped or frowning. But how could it be a surprise to them that the dam was in trouble? Construction had been shut down for months. Pretty big clue.
At the end of Borkan’s talk, the room fell silent. The only sound was the quiet crackling of the fluorescent lights flickering on. The interval seemed interminable, but it was probably on the order of a minute at most.
“Mr. Ross, please join me at the podium to take questions from our esteemed company,” Borkan said.
Will advanced to the front of the room and took his place beside Borkan. He rested his left hand on the lectern and slid his right into his pants pocket, trying to appear more casual than he felt.
Questions were asked, but not many, and not the one that seemed most obvious to Will—why hadn’t the foundation conditions been properly studied and understood before the start of construction? Perhaps the men in the room already knew the answer—they were the ones who hadn’t allocated adequate funds to investigate the site thoroughly in the first place. The cliché that there was never enough money to do things right the first time, but always enough to do them over, rang true. Or was it never enough time? Both, maybe. Time was money. Yet another cliché.
He was relieved that no one pointed out the glaring inconsistencies between what was just presented and the previous site investigation reports. Perhaps Gus Browning was the only one in the room, besides Borkan and Will, who was well versed enough in those reports to know. And Browning certainly wouldn’t be inclined to draw attention to his own incompetence. Will didn’t believe it made a difference, not now, given the additional work they’d done, the questions they’d answered.
Over the months of Will’s tenure at Kayakale, he and Borkan spent hours in intense discussion, starting just days after Will’s arrival and up to the week before this presentation. During those exchanges, they had come to know and respect each other professionally and to like each other personally. Why else would Erdem have opened up about his deep roots in Kayakale? Upon meeting him, Will had assumed the dapper engineer was a city boy, based on how he dressed and spoke. So much for judging a book by its cover. Erdem and his wife, Lale, had grown up in the nearby village. Their mothers, both widows, still lived there. So did almost all their siblings and their many cousins.
He and Lale had missed Kayakale during their years away, and they’d jumped at the chance to come back. They were happy to be raising Timur in the valley, surrounded by loving family. In response to Erdem’s confidences, Will had divulged some of his own background—why he’d longed to get away as a teen, sought adventures around the world as he grew up, and why he thought giving the same to his children was beneficial. The key difference in their stories lay in an adjective. Erdem could speak of his loving family. But their respective journeys had landed them in the same place, with the same mission—to build a monumental dam, well and safely, in the shadow of the beautiful rock tower, Kayakale.
After all their talks, both Will and Erdem stipulated that, although the mistakes made had hindered understanding of the dam site conditions, the level of exploration previously completed, correctly or not, simply wasn’t sufficient. That was the real problem. Together, they decided not to blow the whistle about the errors, in order to get the project moving again and to keep DECCO, and admittedly themselves, on the job.
Will worried that he was complicit in the deception, if not the incompetence. But he and Borkan were in agreement that keeping silent was in the best interest of the dam and of the progress it would bring to Kayakale, and to Turkey in general. The necessary data had now been collected, the errors corrected. And no one said a word about it—not in the Q&A, not at the lunch that followed, and not as they were all taking their leave, back to New York, to Istanbul, some staying in Ankara, and Will and Borkan back to Kayakale.
Weeks passed. Will finished the final field investigation report and started drafting specs for continuing the geological study of the foundation and monitoring conditions during construction in anticipation of its resumption, though they hadn’t gotten word when that would happen.
“What’s taking so long?” Will asked. “Don’t they want to get the construction going again? Why haven’t they come back with questions if they aren’t sure of things?”
“The report is with the panel of reviewers; that is all they tell me,” Borkan said.
“Panel of reviewers,” Will mumbled. He walked slowly back to his desk, as there was no rush, but Will hated the waiting.
EIGHTEEN
Kevin and Buddy were out on walkabout one Saturday morning in late February; between school and the short winter days, their wanderings were restricted to weekends. The family had come to expect that Kevin would finish breakfast, make sandwiches for himself and Buddy, and head out the door in anything short of a blinding blizzard. It all worked since his father was in the office most days, Rob and Timur did whatever it was Rob and Timur do, and Didi seemed happy tagging along with Paula, who seemed happy to have her tagging along. Kevin wasn’t missed.
The day was cold and crisp, the first time the sun shone after several gray, gloomy days. Kevin smiled as he strode along, and Buddy pranced.
They took a break at Kevin’s rock, the one where he’d spent his first night in Kayakale, where he’d found Buddy. Kevin couldn’t count the number of pictures he’d taken of Buddy at that spot—sitting alert, curled up and snoozing, or even perched on the rock posed like Rin Tin Tin. Kevin was also dabbling in sketching portraits of his pup. He liked the fine pencil work, the sharp detail and contrasting softness.
But today was for stretching their legs and breathing in the clear, fresh air. As they trotted up hills and down valleys one after another, Kevin had a feeling wash over him that he had not felt in a long time, and it stopped him in his tracks. Buddy ran back to him, wagging his whole body.
“Are you happy, Bud?” he asked. “I am.”
Kevin lifted his face and let himself soak in the sun and the feeling of contentment. Life didn’t have to be exciting to be good. He wondered if his parents would ever get that. They both chased thrills, each in their own ways, but they never seemed satisfied.
He squatted and looked deep into Buddy’s brown eyes. He stroked his beautiful dog’s head. “You get it, don’t you?”
A sloppy, wet kiss was the answer, and Kevin laughed out loud.
They went on.
At the top of a steep rise, Kevin stopped to catch his breath, scanning the valley below. Downslope, there was a flat spot with four tents arranged in a perfect square. He squinted to see it better. “I wonder what that is?” he said and started toward it.
On each side of the valley, there were two big steps in the slope, and he remembered that Paula called them terraces. People took what the natural landscape gave them, stream terraces in this case, and enhanced them. They built their villages on them and farmed them. Located above the streams, they were safe from flooding, but still close to the water they needed. Pretty smart.
“C’mon, Buddy,” Kevin said. “Let’s go check it out.”
They weren’t tents after all; they were four big canvas tarps. Pulled low and tight, stout ropes secured the tarps to stakes hammered into the ground. Kevin slid his camera strap across his shoulder and around his back, got down on his hands and knees, and peeked under the edge of a tarp.
“Neat,” he said. “Ruins!”
He crawled around trying to get a better look. He could just see the outside of a wall, but it was out of reach when he extended his arm as far as he could. It looked like the remains of a wall, now two to three stone blocks high. The blocks themselves were roughly a foot square and nestled neatly into each other. Kevin wondered if they had taken natural rocks and fit them together like a puzzle or if they’d cut them that way and placed them artfully, like an oversized vertical mosaic. He scooched lower to see better.
What would it feel like to find an archaeological site? How cool would it be if he and Buddy crested a ridge and looked down at an undiscovered ruin? Or even to unearth a new treasure at a dig that was already in progress, like this one.
And then, without another thought, Kevin untied the knot in the rope and lifted the tarp.
* * *
February 24, 1974
Dear Mom,
Buddy and I found a ruin when we were out hiking yesterday. It’s partly excavated, so I guess some archaeologists started working on it already. There are a bunch of teams that come and go, but they’re all away for their winter break now. They call this salvage archaeology, because after the dam’s done, these sites will be flooded, which makes me kind of sad. But Dad says you can’t stand in the way of progress. He says they wouldn’t even be studying them if they weren’t going to be inundated by the reservoir. That’s what they call it. Inundation, not flooding. They make a big deal of it like there’s a difference, but it seems like the same thing to me.
I think this ruin was a whole village, even if it is just four houses. It’s a lot smaller than the dig we saw on a school field trip last fall. That was called Aşvan and it was a city in Altınvadi, which means “golden valley” in Turkish. The archaeologists think a lot of people lived in the valley from about 3000 to 2000 BC.
They figure out those dates two ways. One is doing something called quantitative age dating that uses radioactive elements to calculate how old something is. The second way is by analyzing the pottery they find. From one age to another, there are different pot shapes and colors, and they’re decorated differently. Archaeologists can tell the age of a layer in a dig from the pots, or even really small shards.
I guess this is a longer letter than I usually write. I got kind of excited about finding that ruin. I think it’s pretty neat. That’s what’s going on here. Hope everything is good there. We’re all fine. Miss you.
Love, Kevin
NINETEEN
Will arrived at the office on a morning in early March to find the whole place buzzing with the news that the panel of reviewers had rendered their verdict, and DSI and the investors had adopted the panel’s recommendations verbatim. Two of the three proposed design changes were accepted as presented by Will and Borkan—the expanded foundation treatment and the dam realignment. But the third, the change in the dam’s overall design, was only partially approved. The change to a concrete gravity dam structure over the area of the Moby void was approved, but the remainder of the dam would be completed as the initially proposed rock-fill dam.
Erdem Borkan finished reading the letter to the site team, who had assembled in the main room of the engineering office. Uneasiness rippled like a wave over the men sitting at their desks, standing at their drafting tables, and leaning against the walls. Will could see it in the way they moved, or didn’t, but only he spoke up. “Wait a minute. Am I understanding this correctly? It’s going to be a rock-fill dam and a concrete gravity dam?”
