No more empty spaces, p.5
No More Empty Spaces, page 5
“That’s a good thing.”
He made a snorting sound, then asked, “Do you like it here?”
“Anatolia’s an amazing place. The history’s so deep. Sometimes I think I can feel the ancients beside me when I walk down the road to the village . . . that must sound crazy.”
“No, it sounds neat.”
“Kevin, we should go. If we stay out here much longer, one of the others could find us. They’d wonder why we’re having a picnic instead of heading back. Your dad’s worried about you.”
He snorted again but didn’t say anything. Knowing Dad, he probably thought being out here all night was a good, manly exercise.
“Okay. I don’t want to get you in trouble too,” he said.
Buddy romped around while they collected their things.
“This way,” she said, leading them along the ridge.
Kevin followed, hoping the ancient people who walked with Paula would walk beside him too.
* * *
Paula stopped to let Kevin and Buddy catch up just past the gate back into the Kayakale Dam complex. The closer they’d gotten, the farther behind her the two of them had lagged. Buddy was plastered to Kevin’s left knee as if he’d been trained to do a proper heel, but she thought it more likely that the pup needed the comfort of his new master’s touch. The leash they’d fashioned from a strap off Kevin’s backpack hung loose between them.
When they reached her, Kevin shuffled to a halt. He pulled at the right sleeve of his shirt, yanked up on the belt loops of his dirty, sagging pants, fiddled with the leash. He glanced in the direction of the houses, then immediately looked away.
She wanted to hug him right then and there. Instead, she lightly rested her hand on his back. “It’ll be okay,” she said, hoping it would be. Then she propelled him forward, walking beside him and Buddy across the square.
“A doggie!” She heard Didi’s voice and turned to see her tugging on Will’s hand as they crossed the bridge toward the square.
“Lookee, Daddy, a dog!” Didi cried, jumping up and down, pulling on Will, trying to hurry him along. But Paula couldn’t see Will’s face with the sun in her eyes. Once they cleared the road, Will let go of Didi’s hand and she catapulted across the parched grass. Kevin and Didi and Buddy merged into a tangle of arms and legs and paws and one wildly wagging tail, accompanied by the happy yelping of both Didi and the dog.
The commotion brought the neighbors out. The Kayakale compound was like most small towns, complete with nosy neighbors. Young, beautiful, and very pregnant Kadriye peeked out from behind her screen door. She and her husband, like the Rosses, were new here. Figen and Zeynep, both residents before Paula arrived, descended the front steps of their respective houses and stood together, staring at them, whispering to each other. Figen, also pregnant, though not as far along as Kadriye, wore her usual slate-blue headscarf, and Zeynep, holding little Elif on her hip, looked elegant as always in a purple-and-silver silk scarf, long-sleeved silver top, and sleek black slacks. Paula thought they must be hot in those clothes. She kept her shoulders covered, even in summer, as the culture dictated, but outside of school she lived in T-shirts and jeans, which she sometimes cut off to a modest pedal pushers length.
Paula waved at them, and they dipped their chins in her direction, as much acknowledgment as she ever got. They didn’t like her. Or perhaps their husbands had directed them to steer clear of her. She never really knew.
The three American moms and their kids weren’t there. The construction shutdown had offered a rare opportunity to visit the States along with their husbands. A treat for them, Paula imagined, since they usually had to manage traveling with their kids alone.
Kris and Kerry, also Americans, both worked on-site—she was the nurse, and he managed the maintenance team. They were taking advantage of the work stoppage to take a trip, but Paula couldn’t remember where. They were adventurous, working here after a stint in the Peace Corps.
The residents of the last house on the square, a British couple, were both archaeologists. They’d be out at their dig in Kayakale Dam’s future reservoir, but even if they had been home, they pretty much kept to themselves. They weren’t lookie-loos.
The noise must have roused Rob’s curiosity. The screen door whacked shut behind him, and he jogged toward his brother and sister. Buddy, his tongue hanging out, was happily being petted by four eager hands. Will had arrived in the square shortly after Didi, but he hung back from the kids, watching. Paula still couldn’t see his face for the sun.
“Where’d you go?” Rob asked.
“Up that way,” Kevin said, pointing, then resumed stroking Buddy’s flank. “I found him out there.”
“Can I pet him?”
“Sure.”
Rob flopped to the ground with the others, reached out both hands, and scratched Buddy behind his ears. The puppy waggled every part of his body it was possible to wag.
After hanging back and observing them for several minutes, Will joined his children. He knelt down on one knee and extended a hand to pet Buddy.
“You mad?” Kevin asked.
Brave boy, Paula thought.
“No.”
“’Course not,” Rob said. “He never gets mad at you.”
“Did you find what you needed out there?” Will asked.
“I found him. His name’s Buddy.”
“Buddy,” Didi said, and pulled the wiggling puppy into a hug.
“Can we keep him?” Kevin asked.
“Have to make sure no one’s missing him,” Will said. “Since he’s so skinny, I’m guessing not. He’s a beauty, son.”
“No, Daddy, he’s our Buddy,” said Didi.
Paula noticed it was noon. The rest of the searchers would be meeting up at the dining hall, so with one last look over her shoulder at the Rosses, she left to tell the others that Kevin was home.
PART II
SEVEN
Will shrugged his faded green canvas field pack into a comfortable position on his shoulder as he stood near the base of the rock formation that gave the dam its name, Kayakale—kaya meaning “rock,” kale meaning “castle.” Today, his second day at the site, he was finally getting to the field, to the work he’d come to do. Yesterday had been spent first in search of Kevin, then negotiating with Erdem Borkan, the third person to proclaim himself Will’s boss at DECCO. The negotiation had been about Buddy. And Refik.
Will was determined that their family would keep the puppy. The kids loved him already, and Will was getting there too. But he’d been curtly informed that Turks don’t keep pets, at least not Anatolian shepherds who grow large and fiercely protective of their flocks, whether the flocks were sheep or children. It was true that if Buddy grew into his paws, he would be one big dog, but even as a half-starved puppy, he’d caused consternation among the Rosses’ Turkish neighbors.
The other matter was Borkan assigning a young geotechnical engineer, Refik Kaptanoğlu, as Will’s field assistant. Will had no need, and certainly no desire, for an assistant. Under normal circumstances he would have refused outright, but these were not normal circumstances. And so a compromise had been reached—the Rosses would keep Buddy, and Will would keep Refik. Both Buddy and Refik would be on short leashes until they proved themselves well trained.
When he heard someone approaching the trailhead, he checked his watch. Seven sharp, as he’d instructed. Good start. He smiled a greeting at the young man; might as well make the best of this. “Günaydın,” he said.
“Günaydın, Bay Ross.”
“You can call me Will.” Pointing to himself, he repeated, “Will.”
Refik dipped his chin. “Günaydın. . . .” He paused, looking down as if to study his shoes. “Will.”
He followed Refik’s gaze and saw that the boy was wearing loafers.
“Boots?” he asked, indicating his own well-worn hiking boots.
“Botları,” Refik said. “Hayır.” No. He didn’t have boots.
“Sneakers?”
Refik looked at him blankly. They were close to the same height and stood looking eye to eye. Close to the same build too—lean and long-limbed. There, the resemblance ended. Refik’s eyes were dark brown; his hair was thick, black, and curly. His skin, though dark in complexion, was not weathered by the sun, like Will’s.
Will typically didn’t notice what people wore—he didn’t care. But he cared about the work, and what he saw in his assistant was a man dressed for an office job, with pressed linen slacks, a neatly ironed button-down shirt, and those shiny loafers. He’d also arrived at the trailhead empty-handed.
Will pulled the dictionary, which had become standard equipment, from the pocket of his field vest and rifled through it, listing sneakers, backpack, canteen, and lunch as he found the words. The book didn’t list hike, so Will chose walk.
“Yürüyüş,” he said, sure he was mangling the pronunciation. He pointed down at the trail, then up to the gorge. “Yürüyüş. There.” He patted his field pack on one shoulder, his canteen on the other.
“Tamam,” Refik said, swiveled on the slick soles of those ridiculous shoes, and hurried away.
“A ’benture,” Will reminded himself. He glanced over his shoulder toward the compound. Then he studied the notes he’d made in the Ankara office and squinted up the valley to where he wanted to be.
Will was tired of waiting—the minutes since Refik left, the days since they’d arrived in Turkey, the weeks since he’d accepted the job, and the years since he’d done his last real fieldwork in graduate school. The move to management at the Philadelphia Port had fed his ego and his bank account but not his intellect. Will was hungry.
As soon as he spied Refik in the distance, he started up the trail. The gravel gave a satisfying crunch underfoot.
The trail headed upstream and gained elevation, the dry channel of the Euphrates below. The river was diverted through tunnels so the dam could be constructed. From the research Will had done to land this job, then the maps he’d studied and reports he’d read from DECCO, he knew most of the rock here was marble, metamorphosed limestone and dolomite—carbonate deposits, marine in origin, that were recrystallized by intense heat and pressure.
Carbonates dissolve in the groundwater that flows through them more readily than rocks with silicate chemistry, rocks with more quartz. The reports noted some evidence of dissolution in the Kayakale marble, but only minor karstic features, small caves and sinks, reported to be limited to fractures and faults where groundwater percolated into and through the formation.
But what they’d found during construction proved those conclusions wrong. There were huge, unmapped voids beneath the dam’s foundation. Learning their extent was imperative. So was finding their cause. Without understanding the geologic process that caused the cavities, he had no idea if it was ongoing, or if it had ceased long ago in geologic time. When they managed to fill the empty spaces, would they stay filled?
His lungs burned. Out of shape from five years behind a desk, the ascent left him winded. He neared the pillar of rock, Kayakale. Seen from a distance the day before, when he and Didi were searching for Kevin, he thought it looked like travertine. The closer he got, the more it looked that way. Travertine wasn’t shown on any of the maps of the dam site.
Will squatted to inspect a boulder on the trail. Gray and rough and not distinctive to the untrained eye, the thin convoluted layers of the rock spoke of the heated waters that had dropped their calcareous mineral loads. The only hydrothermal deposits noted in the literature on the region were associated with the mines several kilometers downstream, near Kayakale village. None had been noted near the dam site, but there was no doubt—this was travertine.
Refik huffed up the trail just as Will reached for the Estwing rock pick that hung on his belt. Its handle was smooth and contoured to his hand, shaped over years of study and work. He swung the hammer. Metal rang on stone. Rock dust drifted up, and the smell of gunpowder stung Will’s nostrils, as a thin film of grit settled on his lips. He blew the dust off the specimen in his hand.
“Travertine,” Will said, holding the rock out to Refik. “Each of these layers”—he pointed to them—“was precipitated when hot, mineralized water surfaced and cooled. Cooler water can’t hold the mineral load in solution that hot water can, so when the water daylights, minerals get deposited layer by layer by layer.” He traced them with his finger. “Like this,” he said. “Do you understand?”
“Little,” Refik said. “Daha yavaş, lütfen. Hmmm. More slowly, please.”
“Okay. I mean, tamam.”
Refik smiled. “Çok iyi. Very good.”
Will opened the leather pouch on the other side of his belt from the pick and pulled out the brown glass vial with dilute hydrochloric acid. He squeezed a few drops onto the rock and watched it fizz. The acid bubbled as it ran into the nooks and crannies.
“See? Definitely carbonate. Not that we didn’t know that. But travertine, so close to the dam site, that wasn’t reported. And it’s a big deal. Hot water can dissolve a lot more carbonaceous rock than water at ambient temps. The implications of travertine so near the dam site are immense with respect to the foundation and abutments. More dissolution means more and bigger cavities. Exactly what shut construction down.”
“Yavaş, yavaş,” Refik said, signaling with his hand to slow down, like you might to a driver who’s coming toward you too fast.
“This deposit wasn’t mapped. Did the geologist who signed the initial report only look at the footprint the dam would literally be built on? Didn’t he hike up here? Didn’t he even look up?”
“Bilmiyorum, Bay Ross. I do not know,” Refik said.
“I know you don’t. I’m just thinking out loud. You know, it seems like management is always willing to overrun construction costs, but never willing to spend a fraction of that on good geologic studies beforehand. I just don’t get it. And call me Will, please. Lütfen.”
“Okay, Will.”
“Let’s go,” Will said. “There’s a lot more to do today.”
He marched up the trail, shortening his steps to accommodate the steepening slope. It was rough going, more like a game trail than the well-worn track it should’ve been, had it been established for a proper dam-site investigation.
Jeez, I can’t believe what they missed, he thought.
From the reconnaissance mapping where they hadn’t noticed that Kayakale was travertine to the drilling program where they’d missed gaping voids, so much had been overlooked. Will was determined to find the missing puzzle pieces and put it all together.
He stopped and turned to Refik. “I want you to learn this now. There’s no substitute for good, solid fieldwork, and lots of it.”
Refik stared back at him. “Okay, Will,” he said, as if he understood.
* * *
Will crossed the square as the pinks and purples of sunset deepened to the blue-gray of dusk. A light shone from the front window of his family’s little cinder block box. It silhouetted a figure on the stairs leading up to the stoop.
As he got closer, Will distinguished two figures on the front steps: Didi sat sideways on the teacher’s lap, the gal who taught the American kids at the site, who had greeted them when they arrived Tuesday and escorted them to dinner that night. She hadn’t hesitated to help in the search for Kevin, and she was, in fact, the one who’d found him, bringing him and Buddy home. But what was she doing at their house now? Surely Kevin hadn’t run off again. Will trotted the rest of the way, his fatigue from the long day forgotten.
The teacher looked up when Will approached. “İyi akşamlar, Bay Ross,” she whispered.
He stepped closer. “What?” Will bent down until his face was less than a foot from hers.
“I said, good evening, Mr. Ross.”
“Will. Call me Will,” he said. “The boys?”
“Inside.”
“They’re okay?”
“I think so, but they’re teenagers, so. . . .”
Will nodded. “Don’t I know it.”
“I came over to see if y’all wanted to join me for supper at the dining hall. I took them since you weren’t here. You’re pretty late.”
He was too weary to bristle. Besides, she was right—he was late.
“Dinner’s inside. Didi wanted to bring some home for you. Go ahead and eat. Then you can put her to bed.”
“You don’t mind waiting?”
“No,” she said, laying her cheek on the crown of Didi’s head.
He made his way down the hall to the kitchen.
“Boof.” Buddy scrambled to his feet, his nails clicking on the concrete. “Boof, boof.”
“It’s okay.” Kevin leaned over to pet him. “Sit, Buddy.”
The puppy sat. Will was impressed. “Good dog,” he said, bending to fondle Buddy’s silky ears. “Nice start on the training.”
Kevin sat at the table with his camera kit laid out like a nurse might arrange a surgeon’s instruments. He didn’t look up when Will spoke.
“Cleaning her up?”
“Yup.” Kevin picked up a brush and carefully stroked the lens.
“Where’s Rob?”
Kevin inclined his head toward the boys’ bedroom, not meeting his father’s eyes. Will observed his son at his task for a full minute. If Kevin felt Will’s gaze, he didn’t show it.
Will took the few steps over to the open bedroom door. Rob was sprawled on his bed, lying on his stomach, face toward the far wall, feet toward the door, a book propped open on his pillow. Again, Will stood silent, watching. Rob flipped a page and kept reading, either so engrossed he didn’t sense Will’s presence or pointedly ignoring it.
When Will returned to the kitchen, Kevin was packing up his equipment. The boy glanced at him, then turned his eyes away. He stood, scraping the chair across the floor, and left the room. Buddy followed, wide puppy grin on his face, tail wagging. Will heard the bedroom door latch and his sons’ low voices, though he couldn’t distinguish their words.
