No more empty spaces, p.17
No More Empty Spaces, page 17
Money. Money earmarked for studies, like drilling the foundation or mapping the reservoir area, could have been diverted. To send twin boys to a name university, with a big sister already at a fancy college, on a mid-level engineer’s salary? Seemed more like a movie than real life. Even though he disliked Browning, Will didn’t want to believe it. They found no evidence, but that kind of paperwork would be in Ankara, or New York, or destroyed. In any case, Browning wouldn’t have left it at the site.
Will and Borkan strategized about what to do next and when to do it. That Browning would be defensive seemed a given. It would have been on his watch that the oversights, or worse, occurred. Borkan had good rapport with Browning; Will did not. They both had solid reputations with Heatley and his superiors in DECCO’s New York office, but they understood the likelihood of repercussions if they chose to go over Browning’s head.
“We have to do something,” Will said, sitting on the front steps of the house with Paula, watching a luminous gibbous moon rise over the gorge.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“We have a better shot of being heard by Heatley, but. . . .”
“There could be ramifications to going around Mr. Browning,” she said.
“Right. Could be consequences to going through him too.”
They sat in silence as the early summer evening cooled. One of the many things he appreciated about her was her comfort with quiet. He turned to look at her. Moon shadows played on the contours of her face. He reached for her hand, wrapped his around its warmth.
Without shifting her gaze, she said, “Will, what if you and Mr. Borkan went to the Ankara office and told Mr. Browning you think you’ve found features that could be a problem when the valley’s inundated? Say you need to find the reservoir reconnaissance report, which must be there, since you can’t find it here. Ask him for his help in defining the problem, and fixing it. Try to make him part of the process, instead of assuming he’s going to be an obstacle to it? If you get him invested in it, he could go up the chain of command to New York. Then he could be the hero. Of course, you and Mr. Borkan would have to be willing for him to be the hero. Remember, his wife said he’s ambitious. He wants to look good. Do you think he’d go for that?”
Will thought about it. “He might, if it really was just an oversight. . . .” He left the statement hanging.
“What? Are you saying Mr. Browning. . .?”
“I’m not saying anything. Not anything we can prove, anyway.”
“Wow,” Paula said.
“Yeah, wow.”
“Do you really think. . .?”
“I don’t know, Paula. I can’t imagine it, but you know it happens.”
TWENTY-SIX
“I’m going to fire you!” Browning roared across his desk at Will and Borkan. “Or you can drop this nonsense and keep your jobs. How dare you come here—not doing your jobs, I might add—and pull this shit?”
“We have a legitimate need to see the work that’s been done on the reservoir area,” Borkan said. “It is all of our jobs to make sure this project is completed safely.”
“I say what your jobs are, Borkan. I knew he was a pain in the ass. . . .” Browning flicked his chin in Will’s direction. “He was from day one. Now you too?”
“He made it possible to get construction going again.”
“And you both should be at the site working on that construction right now.”
“Mr. Browning, as professional engineers, you and I have a responsibility to protect life and property. Those letters behind our names, PE, they’re like an oath. We must do that now. We must see the data we already have. There is ample time to do any additional work that’s needed before we start filling the reservoir. May I ask why you are opposed to studying the slopes? To making sure this project is safe?”
“No. You may not ask.”
Will and Borkan had agreed that Borkan would do the talking, but it was all Will could do to sit silently through this. He might not have those precious PE letters behind his name, but he knew a lot more about Kayakale Dam than Browning did, and he sure as hell cared a lot more about its safety.
Borkan pressed on. “These slopes can be mitigated. This does not have to be a fatal flaw. But if we don’t fully understand them, they could be. We cannot take that gamble.”
He was covering all the points they’d gone over.
“There’s no gamble,” Browning said.
“You cannot guarantee that.”
“And you can? What are the odds?” Browning asked. “About the same as little green men swooping down in their Martian spaceship and blowing the dam up. My bookie back home would love that bet.”
“Did we not learn anything from the Vajont failure? DECCO and DSI must deal with this. It could cause Kayakale Dam to fail.”
“This is nothing like Vajont. Besides, the dam didn’t fail.”
“Vajont is still standing. True. No reservoir, no power, but the dam is standing—a tragic monument,” Borkan said. “Come to the field to look. Let us show you why this needs investigation.”
“I spent years in that fucking backwater. I know it better than you ever will,” Browning said.
“Do you?” Borkan snapped. “Then why have I been cleaning up the messes you left the whole time I’ve been there?”
Borkan’s face was red; his fists were clenched on the arms of the office chair. He looked like he might launch himself across the desk at Browning, who had clearly gotten to him. Will had never seen his colleague and friend more agitated.
“I could fire you right now. For insubordination.”
“Mr. Browning,” Borkan said; then he paused to take a breath. “Perhaps you think this will threaten your excellent reputation? Admitting that you missed yet another problem at Kayakale Dam. I assure you that failure of the dam, or any part of the project—like for instance, a hillslope plunging into the reservoir—will destroy that reputation entirely.”
“That’s it!” Browning yelled, standing up and slamming his hands down on his desk. “We’re done. You’re both suspended for a week without pay.” Browning looked down at his watch. “Starting now. If you haven’t dropped this by the time the suspension’s up, you’re fired. Period. End of story. Now get out.”
They stood, and as if they’d rehearsed it, they buttoned their suit jackets, still facing Browning, staring him down. Then they left his office and continued out of the reception area, the secretary calling, “Güle, güle,” after them.
On the sidewalk, in the summer sun, they turned to each other. Will held out his hand. Borkan shook it.
“You were great,” Will said.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Can he do that? Suspend us without pay?”
Borkan shrugged.
“Well, I guess I’m going to take the time to think about what to do,” Will said. “Maybe take my family someplace we haven’t been before while I do. What are you going to do?”
“I must think as well. If we push this further, I suppose he could fire us. But if we don’t and something happened . . . I would never forgive myself. I will need to speak with Lale, of course. This could mean another move. She would not be happy about that. We love Kayakale. It is our home. I had hoped to stay on as site engineer when the dam was operating.”
“But she wouldn’t want your village and your families en- dangered.”
“No,” Borkan said, his voice flat. “No.”
* * *
A few days past the longest day of the year, it was late by the time Paula noticed the shadows lengthening. She considered the time, wondering where Will might be and how his day had gone. He and Mr. Borkan had left early that morning, just before dawn, for the airfield in Elazığ. She’d stood on the porch to wave them off and stayed to watch the sunrise. Pensive. The feeling had lingered all day.
When she realized how late it was, she sent Kevin and Buddy to fetch Rob from the Borkans’ or the ball field, wherever he and Timur were, and helped get Didi ready for bed. She heard the boys come in while she and Didi were reading. The door to the boys’ room was closed by the time Dee was tucked in. Paula made her way to the porch steps and waited.
Will’s face was grim as he crossed the patchy, dry grass between the Land Cruiser and the house.
“Browning didn’t want to be the hero,” he said. “But the good news is we’re going on vacation.”
“What? Vacation? I don’t get it.”
“Where’re the kids?”
“Didi’s asleep. The boys are in their room. Tell me?”
“Some . . . but I’m tired,” he said, sinking down onto the step beside her. “I’ll fill you in on the rest tomorrow, but the short version is that Browning suspended both Erdem and me for a week without pay. He said if we don’t drop this after the week, we’re fired.”
“Can he even do that?”
“We don’t know. But I’m going to take the time. Think about what to do next,” he paused. “We might as well have some fun while I’m thinking it all over. Where should we go?”
“I have no idea. I can’t even think. Someplace we haven’t been before?”
“That’s what I thought. Someplace new. Since it might be our last chance.”
“This isn’t what I expected. . . .”
“I don’t know what I expected,” Will said. “But we had to try.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Buddy nudged Kevin awake, like he did every morning. Letting the dog out, he found Dad and Paula packing the car.
“What’s up?” he asked, standing on the porch in his pajamas.
“Good. You are,” his father said. “It’s a long story . . . I’ll tell you on the way. We’re going on a vacation to the coast, the Mediterranean, for the rest of the week. Run over and tell Dr. Young that you’ll be away from the dig again. Back Monday, I think. We’ll see.”
That’s weird, Kevin thought. He knew that his father and Mr. Borkan had gone to Ankara to talk to the DECCO boss about that slope.
But going down to the coast—to the Mediterranean Sea—now that sounded pretty great. Playing at the ocean versus sieving dirt at Bağvadi in Kayakale’s summer heat was a good trade-off, even though Kevin wouldn’t admit it to anyone, having campaigned to stay on at the dig after school was over.
When he and Buddy got back, Dad looked up from a cooler he was filling from the fridge. “Pack for five days,” he said. “We can do laundry if we’re gone longer. Get Buddy’s stuff ready too. Paula’s helping Didi, and Rob’s gone to see if Timur can come.”
“Buddy and I call the wayback,” Kevin said when the crew gathered around the Land Cruiser to load up. He knew shotgun wasn’t an option. That was Paula’s now. And Buddy was too big to fit anywhere else anymore. He was happy to let Didi, Rob, and Timur duke it out in the back seat.
Before they finished lashing everything down on the roof rack, Kevin grabbed one of the sleeping bags and tossed it inside. He climbed in, settled back against the bedroll, and patted his leg. Buddy jumped in, and as Dad swung the tailgate closed, the dog spun three tight circles, lay down, and rested his head on Kevin’s thigh. His warm brown eyes looked up at Kevin, and one eyebrow went up, then the other. Kevin rubbed Buddy’s silky ears, looking out the back window as they headed out of the compound.
Kevin remembered the first time they’d driven in on this road. It was eleven months ago yesterday, now that he thought about it. He couldn’t even say Kayakale correctly then. He remembered how Dad made them all practice saying teşekkür ederim over and over in the car that day, minding their manners in Turkish. And now they all spoke the language.
A lot of other things had changed too. The most recent one was how Kevin viewed the landscape. Since the morning when he stood beside his father looking at that failed Ottoman dam, he’d been seeing the geomorphology, as Dad called it, differently. Seeing it more literally—geo meaning “the earth” and morphology meaning its “shape.” His father had lectured to them about rocks and stuff for years—as long as Kevin could remember. As a kid, he’d hung on Dad’s words, but the last few years he’d pretty much lost interest, until that day.
Seeing the mudflow, he could imagine it liquefying like his father had described. He could picture the mass of mud and rock surging down the slope and destroying that dam. It made sense how his father said he read landscapes and told their stories. Standing there, Kevin saw the story in that slope, and it was interesting. And important.
Now he watched the passing landscape, trying to see things he hadn’t before. But he didn’t. Then again, Dad had gone to school a long time to be able to do that. Kevin understood that now. It had taken him years to grasp the process of taking and developing pictures. He was just beginning to get an inkling of that about drawing. And archaeology too—what to do and what it meant.
Seeing Dad, how he was always looking at the geology, whether he was at work or not, you could tell how much he loved it. What could be better than loving what you do most of the time? Kevin knew so many kids back in Moorestown whose fathers hated their jobs, and his hadn’t been happy working at the port in Philadelphia either. He was way different here—totally into it. Paula was like that about teaching, for sure. And the professors and grad students he worked with at the dig were like that about archaeology. Kevin hoped he’d be able to spend his life doing something he loved.
“Hey, y’all,” Paula said, rustling a map and rousing Kevin from his reverie. “If we take a little detour up here, we can go through Kahraman Maraş. They make the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted. What do you think?”
“To resist the siren call of the sea, it better be some really special ice cream,” Dad said.
“Turn north at Narlı . . . I’ll tell you when,” Paula said. “It has a secret ingredient, but I’m not going to spoil the surprise. Don’t you either, Timur.”
“Another interesting fact is that the Turkish Parliament changed the city’s name from Maraş to Kahraman Maraş just last year. In February,” Paula continued. “Kahraman means ‘hero or heroic,’ and they added that in honor of the brave people there. After World War I, the French army occupied the city, but the residents put up fierce resistance to the occupation, so they became heroes in Turkey’s War of Independence. And now their city’s name proclaims it.”
“How do you say it?” Didi asked.
“Kahraman Maraş?” Paula sounded it out: “Kar-a-mon mar-osh.”
Can’t help being the teacher, Kevin thought. There’s the thing about loving what you do. And he felt kind of bad about all the times he’d complained to Dad for doing it, in his case, talking about geology. He wondered if he’d do the same thing to his kids. Yikes, he thought, kids?
Didi sang it over and over. “Kar-a-mon mar-osh . . . kar-a-mon mar-osh.”
Over the back seat, he saw Rob and Timur elbow each other, whispering and snickering.
“Jeez,” Kevin said under his breath, and thought that maybe you don’t have to have kids.
“You’re so lucky, being an only child, Tim,” Rob said.
“I don’t know. . . .” Timur answered.
“Kar-a-mon mar-osh!” Didi chimed in.
“Maybe,” Timur said.
His father navigated the Land Cruiser through the narrow streets of the city center. When he parked on a side street, they all piled out and trooped toward the square. Kevin and Buddy brought up the rear. As the crew turned the corner, Dad hung back.
“I didn’t want to talk about what happened in front of Timur,” he said. “I don’t know what his father’s told him or wants him to know. And I don’t really want to let Rob and Dee know yet, because I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Gus Browning suspended Mr. Borkan and me for a week.”
“What? Why?” Kevin asked.
“Because he’s mad that we found another problem at Kayakale. Another one that he missed. He doesn’t think it has merit, from what we told him, and he refused to come to the field to see it. He said if we don’t drop it, he’s going to fire us.”
Kevin stopped and turned to face his father. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But if it’ll make the dam unsafe, don’t you have to tell someone? Someone else? Someone who’ll listen?”
“I’m considering that. I’m also considering whether I can do the project more good by staying on, somehow.”
“Shit,” Kevin said.
“Yes,” his father agreed.
Kevin noticed that Dad didn’t say anything about him swearing for once.
“I’m going to think about it these few days away. I have to decide by Monday.”
“Paula knows?” Kevin asked.
“Yes.”
“What does she think?”
“You can ask her yourself. I wanted to tell you. To make up for last year. You’re growing up, and I need to trust you.”
Kevin was speechless. Wow, he thought, looking at his father, who was gazing intently at him. Did Dad really say that?
“Come on. They’re going to wonder where we are. Keep this to yourself for now?”
“Okay,” Kevin said. “Hey, Dad. Sorry . . . that this is happening.”
“Me too, son.”
Though distracted by his father’s news, licking his cone, Kevin had to admit the Kahraman Maraş dondurma was delicious. It was vanilla, but not just vanilla. He tried to analyze it while working on his double scoop. It had a hint of something—honey, maybe. And a gooey, kind of chewy, texture that slid across your tongue and down your throat and coated them with sweetness. It was different from any ice cream he’d ever had before.
“That’s worth the trip,” Dad said, as if he hadn’t just told Kevin what he had. But his father was good at hiding things. Like moving here last year.
