Escaping Yellowstone Read online

  “Catherine mentioned you had a family emergency,” Elliott said. “I hope it’s nothing too serious.”

  “My cousin,” Cody said. “He was riding his bike and was hit by a car. He’s been stationed in some of the most dangerous spots in the world and he comes home to a tiny town in Oregon and gets hit by a car. I don’t know much more than that, but my uncle said it doesn’t look good.”

  “You two were close?”

  “We were like brothers until after high school, we went different directions.” Cody closed his eyes in reflection. “The trouble we got into as kids, neither one of us should have made it to twenty-one.”

  Elliott smiled. “Yeah, we’re all lucky to be alive. I used to play cards and I lost a bundle of money on a hand. The guy who beat me said, ‘fate is the hand that is dealt to you, your destiny is determined by how you play it’. He showed me his cards, which a true poker player never does. He had a pair of jacks and I had trip queens. He bluffed me. I thought about that a long time. The next week I won this airplane from the same guy.”

  “With a pair of Jacks?” Cody asked.

  “No, I was dealt four of a kind. I had a hard time keeping a straight face. It was the last hand of cards I ever played.”

  “Really? It had that much of an impact on you?”

  “I knew if I kept playing he’d win it back and then some. I decided I liked to fly more than I liked to play cards.” He laughed. “Winning that hand could have been the most dangerous thing I ever did in my life. He was so pissed; I thought he might gun me down in a back alley. It took a long time before I stopped looking over my shoulder.”

  “Remind me never to play cards with you,” Cody said.

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Elliott said. “We’ll be in Bozeman in an hour. Is that going to give you enough time to catch your flight?”

  “It’ll be close. I appreciate you waiting for me.”

  “No problem. I was returning to Bozeman anyway. Give me a call when you return and I’ll fly you back in. I enjoy the company.” After a few moments Elliott changed the subject. “Catherine says you monitor the systems at Yellowstone. Are you looking into that family that was killed last week?”

  “The Sheriff’s handling it. They were in a zone that has been known for carbon dioxide emissions in the past. By the time I got there to check out the air, there wasn’t anything unusual. The autopsy will tell if the initial assumptions are correct. We get freak eruptions from time to time. They just happened to be at the wrong place at the right time.”

  “But you think it was gas from a geyser?”

  “It’s happened before. Yellowstone is a dynamic place. We closed an area last year where the trail was so hot it was melting the soles on hiker’s shoes. This year the ground temperature is back to normal. Go figure.”

  “Someday I’m going to ask you for a tour.”

  “Anytime,” Cody said. “I’ll be glad to show you what makes this place tick.”

  While he waited for his flight to start boarding, Cody called and got an update on Ray. He thought about their early years when they had so much fun together. That ended abruptly one year. They had been spending the summer at Ray’s home at the beach in Newport, Oregon.

  Haystack Rock was a huge rock in the shape of its name standing like a small island a few hundred yards offshore. Between Haystack and the beach were dozens of smaller rocks from the size of cars to basketballs. You could easily walk to the shore-side of Haystack by jumping from rock to rock or even walking between the rocks at a minus tide. The ocean side of Haystack was always in the water though, so if you climbed on Haystack you could walk around it and bottom fish for sea bass. Sometimes you’d hook into a flounder or a kelp fish.

  That morning he and Ray had walked out to Haystack. He had pulled another sea bass from the churning water. He looked down at a breaking wave and dodged the spray as it crashed against the rocks. He and (his cousin) Ray had been fishing for several hours.

  They were the same age, born a month apart, and lived seventy miles apart. Like many summers before, Cody had come to visit for the summer. Both were proud to have finished the sixth grade and were excited about starting Junior High in the fall. Cody was taller than Ray, but what Ray didn’t have in height, he made up for in determination. The two had been called Mutt and Jeff by his grandfather, after some characters in an old comic strip his grandfather used to read, but at the time he didn’t know whether he was Mutt or Jeff.

  That day Cody stuffed the 16-inch fish in the gunnysack with a bunch of other fish he had caught. Ray had been right, the fishing was good. In the bag were three other sea bass, several kelp fish, and a flounder. Altogether he had a good fifteen pounds of fish. Uncle Buck will be so proud of me, he had thought. For the past hour, Ray had been out of sight on another part of the rock.

  “Hey, Cody, look what I got,” Ray said, coming around the back of the rock. He was holding up his bag of fish. “I see you caught another one. I think we have enough for today. You want to head in?”

  “Looks like it’s going to rain,” Cody said. “I’m ready if you are.”

  “Yeah, no sense staying out here and getting soaked. Grab your gear and let’s go back to shore.”

  Cody grabbed his rod, dumped his tackle box in the bait pail, clutched them in one hand, and dragged the sack with other. It would be difficult to juggle the items and climb back on the rocks to the beach with both hands full, but he would manage somehow.

  Ray went around the rock, grabbed his things, and joined Cody and they both walked around the perimeter of Haystack, watching their footing so they didn’t take a plunge into the cold water. Cody was the first to gain sight of the beach and he stopped. “Shit, where did the rocks go?” he said, looking at several hundred yards of water between the rock he was standing on and the shore. Only rocks the size of cars poked above the water. It was several yards between them. There was no hope of making it to shore by hopping from rock to rock. In the distance waves were breaking and sending long tentacles of foam onto the beach.

  Ray looked up when Cody stopped. “Holy crap! Dad’s going to kill me.”

  “How are we going to get back?” Cody asked.

  “Wait.” Ray said.

  “Wait for what?” Cody asked.

  “Until the tide goes back out,” Ray said.

  “How long will that be?” Cody asked, apprehensively.

  Ray hesitated a long time. Fear showed on his face. “I forgot to check the tide tables. The tide is coming in and it won’t change until tonight. Dad’s going to kill me,” he said again.

  “What’s a tide table?” Cody asked. “You’re telling me we can’t get back to shore until tonight. What are we going to eat? We didn’t even have breakfast.”

  They each had a piece of toast with peanut butter before they left the house that morning, but Cody figured that didn’t count as a meal. Ray’s parents had still been asleep.

  A clap of thunder and a flash of lightning told them the day was only going to turn from bad to worse. Cody hoped his aunt and uncle wouldn’t call his parents. He had only been at his cousin’s house three days. It was still early summer. If Ray was worried about a beating from his father, Cody would probably get it just as bad from his mother. Corporal punishment wasn’t used often, but Cody figured this was a situation that might merit a switching.

  As the rain started to fall in a cloudburst, Cody looked around to find shelter. He saw a huge opening in the rock about thirty feet overhead. He started to climb, eyeing the overhang in the opening hoping it might provide some shelter from the rain.

  “Where are you going?” Ray asked.

  Cody was already a good ten feet up. “There’s a crack in the rock and it looks like there’s an overhang that will give us some protection.”

  “Don’t do it,” Ray said. “That crack goes all the way down to the ocean. It’s too dangerous when it’s wet.” Roy had been on the rock before with his father. This was the first time he had ev
er been out on the rocks without his dad. He had left a note in his room for his parents, but had hoped they would be back before breakfast. He looked up at Cody who hadn’t stopped climbing. The thunderstorm gave no sign of letting up and he was beginning to shiver. School had only been out a week and he had lots of plans for him and Cody; pneumonia wasn’t one of them. He started to climb the slippery rocks. As he ascended he looked down and watched the waves crashing with more power than he had ever seen before. Between him and the beach he could see a line of breakers rolling in toward shore. Slowly the tops of the rocks disappeared and all he could see was water. From this elevation he could see a rock he had named Pirate’s Butte from a story his father had told about a pirate ship that had crashed on it hundreds of years ago. His foot slipped and he grabbed hold with both hands. He had left his bag of fish and gear at the bottom. He regained his footing and yelled to Cody. He looked up, Cody was not there. Panic set in and he started to whimper as he continued to climb. He reached the opening and looked inside. The crack opened into a cave. Cody was standing against the wall, sheltered from the rain, but he was perched on a narrow ledge, the cave had no bottom and dropped all the way to the sea just like his father had said. As he made his way inside he kept one hand on the cold rock wall for balance. He looked down. A hundred feet below a wave crashed and sent a shower of spray upwards. “This is stupid, Cody,” Ray said. “We’re already soaked to the skin.”

  Neither of them had thought about the climb down.

  The incident made the headline in Newport News Times on the next day and Cody would never forget it. They had been rescued by the Coast Guard in a helicopter after spending seven hours on the rock. They had lost all their fishing gear and their catch. He had been sent back home to spend the rest of the summer mowing lawns to pay back his uncle for losing his favorite fishing rod and his parents for the airline ticket they had cancelled at the last minute. They had also cancelled their vacation so they could watch Cody.

  It was the first time he had ever been curious about what made the tides rise and fall and how the earth worked. He would look back on those few days that summer as one of the most pivotal moments in his life. It was the end of summer vacations at the beach with Ray, but at age eleven the moment proved to be pivotal moment in his young life.

  An announcement came over the loud speakers shaking Cody out of his muse. He boarded the Alaska Airlines twin engine Boeing 737 and took his seat in the cabin. The flight was nonstop to Portland and was only about half booked, allowing him to pick an aisle seat near an exit. He stowed his carryon overhead and sat down. A few minutes later he noticed a tall man dressed in a tailored business suit coming down the aisle.

  “I think that’s my seat,” the man said, pointing to the window seat.

  He had a slight accent that Cody couldn’t place. Possibly German or Scandinavian, he thought. Cody stood and made room for the man to pass in front.

  The man set his briefcase under the seat in front of him and turned to Cody. “Clear weather all the way. Should be an uneventful flight.”

  “My favorite kind,” Cody said.

  The man leaned across the empty seat between them and introduced himself. “Nathan Wilson, real estate developer.” He offered his hand.

  “Cody Street. I work for USGS. Business in Bozeman?” Cody asked, shaking the man’s hand.

  “Just checking out some land for a client. USGS, what’s your business in Portland, may I ask?”

  Cody told him about his cousin in the hospital.

  “I’m sorry,” Nathan said. “It sounds like you two are close.”

  “Like brothers,” Cody said. He wanted to change the subject. An announcement came that the flight would be delayed for a few minutes while a faulty instrument panel light was being checked. “Looks like we’re in for a delay.”

  “Happens all the time,” Nathan said. “Do you fly much?”

  “Sometimes; around the park.”

  Nathan gave him a curious look.

  “I work in Yellowstone National Park. I’ve flown small planes for years, but the last few years I’ve spent more time in a helicopter than in a plane.”

  “You are a geologist?”

  “Technically a volcanologist: A fancy word for a geologist who specializes in the study of volcanoes.”

  “My daughter is also a scientist, but she studies the sky.”

  “An astronomer?”

  Nathan nodded. “She works for NASA.”

  “You must be proud.”

  Nathan nodded again. He furrowed his brow. “Yellowstone: Wasn’t there a family killed in the park last week?”

  “Freak accident. My guess is it was a carbon dioxide emission. It could have been hydrogen sulfide, but that’s less likely. The smell of that stuff usually drives people away before it can do much harm. The autopsy wasn’t complete when I left.”

  “You sound more like a chemist.”

  “It’s a wide range of study. Chemistry is a part of it. That area of the park has been a problem before, but only to animals. We try to educate the public on the risks and have warning signs posted. It was a tragedy, no doubt about it. We’ve closed the area so we can check it out more thoroughly.”

  “Park volcanologist, you must have your hands full, keeping up with that system. It’s been a number of years since I’ve been there, but as I recall, it’s a large place: A lot going on.”

  Cody smiled; if he only knew the half of it. “You took the words right out of my mouth, but it’s the job I’ve wanted most of my life.”

  “You need to meet my daughter,” Nathan said. “She also flies her own plane.”

  Now he’s trying to set me up with his daughter. I could be an ax murder. What kind of father is he? She must be a dream if he has to solicit dates for her from random men he meets on airplanes. Cody tried to dismiss the sarcastic thought, but couldn’t imagine his father setting up his sister with a stranger on an airplane.

  Nathan continued, “She’s pretty famous. You may have heard of her, Dr. Lisa Wilson. She just discovered an asteroid that is approaching earth.”

  “Should we be worried?” Cody asked, joking.

  Nathan laughed. “She says we’re safe. You probably heard about that asteroid that passed close to earth a few years ago, this one is nearly ten times the distance away, but it’s very large. She thinks it will pass on the far side of the moon.”

  “Thank God for that,” Cody said, still joking.

  “You shouldn’t take an asteroid impact so lightly,” Nathan said. “Surely you know it was an asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.”

  “I understand,” Cody said, “but if an asteroid is headed for earth, there’s not a lot we can do about it.”

  “But that’s what my daughter’s work is all about. If an asteroid is detected in time, maybe NASA can figure out how to change its orbit. I hope you are not implying my daughter’s profession is not important. I assure you, she would disagree.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cody said, “but the news blows these things all out of proportion. Asteroid impacts fall into the same category as a super eruption at Yellowstone and I know something about that. The threat gets exaggerated every time we make the news. These guys probably buy Power Ball tickets every week thinking they are going to win.”

  “But you have to admit it’s possible,” Nathan said. “She says it’s just a matter of time.”

  “See, you’re proving my point. A super eruption at Yellowstone is just as unlikely as a large asteroid hitting the earth. Sure it’s happened in the past, but the chance of it happening in our lifetime is infinitesimal. Neither will happen, yet the news and Hollywood make it seem like it can happen at any moment.”

  “So I should tell my daughter the odds against it are astronomical, pun intended,” Nathan said smiling. “You really do need to meet her. You two are a lot alike.” He handed Cody a business card. “She’s flying in for Independence Day family reunion. Her mother and I haven’t seen her since her recent discov
ery.”

  “She’s made more than one asteroid sighting?” Cody asked.

  “Last year she found one, but it passed by over a million miles out. When one of them is passing as close as our satellites in orbit, that’s what gets everyone excited. You know that happened recently, too.”

  “They knew that one was coming for over three years,” Cody said. “Still there was nothing anyone could do. It seems to me it would be better not to know. Can you imagine the anxiety all those newscasters caused by making it seem like it could be an annihilation event. People were holding ‘End of the World’ parties, for God’s sake.”

  “There you go again,” Nathan said, this time a bit agitated. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think you and my daughter would get along.”

  “If her job is to find asteroids that will wipe out civilization, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t see eye to eye,” Cody said, handing the business card back to Nathan.

  “Keep it,” Nathan said, “You may be in the market for property some day and I’m the man to see.”

  The pilot announced the plane would be taking off shortly. Cody pulled a magazine out of the seat pocket in front of him and opened it. He stared at it blankly. Ray was dying and he was sitting on an airplane discussing an asteroid impact. To his cousin Ray, a man so full of life and adventure, the whole subject of earth-changing events would have seemed as senseless as it did to him. Ray had spent his life making sure real threats to our way of way of life were eliminated. He remembered the smile on his cousin’s face when he would speak of a drone dropping a missile on a terrorist site. Ray believed in saving the world one person at a time. He hoped they were wrong about his cousin’s prognosis. Ray was a fighter. He had to hang on. The world would be a less safe if Ray wasn’t there to protect it.

  Chapter 4

  Portland, Oregon

  The plane touched down at Portland International a little past seven in the evening. Cody walked down the long corridor and into the main part of the terminal. Wendy was going to meet him outside baggage claim. He walked downstairs and looked around for his sister.