A Grave Denied

“Mosses,” Vanessa said thickly, wrestling the peanut butter into submission.

“Very good. Yes, mosses and lichens, which begin the process of breaking down the rocks to form soil. Not much, at first, but some, enough for-what, to take root?”

“Flowers!” cried Andrea Kvasnikof.

“And grasses,” Joh

“Like lupine,” said Andrea, who had her eye on Joh

“Yes, like lupine,” Ms. Doogan said. “Talk to me about lupine. Anybody.”

“They’re purple,” Andrea said after a brief pause.

“They’re members of the legume family,” Vanessa said.

“Which means?”

“Legumes fix nitrogen in the soil.”

“And?”

“Nitrogen makes the soil more habitable for more complex plants,” Betty said.

“Like?”

“Like shrubs.”

“Give me an example of shrubs.”

“Willows.”

“Alders.”

“Cottonwoods!”

“Cottonwoods are trees, doofus.”

“And after the shrubs, what?”

“Trees!”

“Spruce trees!”

“Hemlocks!”

“Birches!”

“Christmas trees!”

Ms. Doogan waited for the laughter to die down. “Think about this, boys and girls,” she said, waving a hand at the glacier.

“Seventy-five years ago? This little strip of beach we’re picnicking on was under the glacier. That’s right, under a big slab of ice just like that one. Your grandmas and grandpas couldn’t have had a school picnic here.” Eyes widened, measured the distance between the face of the glacier, a wall of ice a hundred feet high, and their beachfront picnic site. “Mother Nature doesn’t waste time in the Kanuyaq River basin. How many of you remember last summer, when Grant Glacier thrust forward right over the lake?”

Blank looks all around. Ms. Doogan tried not to let her exasperation show. These kids were living in the middle of a geological experiment in progress. If only she could get some of them to notice, they could go on to make a living from it one day.

They finished lunch and set out to explore. Ms. Doogan insisted that they go in groups of two or larger and stay in sight of her at all times, but beyond that they were free to wander as they chose, which added to the sense of it being more like a day off. Eric Kizzia ripped pages from his notebook and made paper sailboats to float in the lake, gathering other students to make a regatta out of it. Mary Lindbeck sat with her hands clasped around her knees and her face turned up to the sun. Others stretched out, some making notes, some napping.

“Hey, look, here’s a trail,” Joh

“Sure,” Vanessa said.

“I’ll go, too,” Andrea said.

“And me,” Betty said.

Andrea scowled.

Betty blinked.

Joh

“Sorry to be so clumsy.” She turned the smile on Vanessa, who looked more than usually wooden of face.

The next time Andrea tripped, Joh

“Sorry about that,” Joh

Betty shoved past both of them and peered at the slender green shoots, comparing them to the copy of Pratt’s Field Guide to Alaskan Wildflowers she held open before her on the palms of both hands, like a priest consulting a sacred scroll. “Lupinus arcticus, she a

They gazed at her, stu

“Tup, that’s lupine,” Joh

Once more Andrea brushed ineffectually at the knees of her khakis and muttered dire imprecations to the fashion gods. Joh

“Sure,” Vanessa said, measuring the distance. “Can we?”

“Sure, the trail looks like it goes right up to it.”

“It could fall on us,” Andrea said.

“We won’t get that close,” Joh

Vanessa and Betty swung out onto the path behind him. Andrea bit her lip, and followed.

It was rough and rocky going, with treacherous bits of ice cleverly hidden by glacial silt only revealing themselves when trodden upon. A faint, translucent fog seemed to be rising up out of the face of the glacier, looming large and blue in front of them.

They heard a faint cry, and looked around to see Ms. Doogan waving at them from the beach. “Did you hear her?” Joh

“Hear who?” Vanessa said.

“We’d better go back, we could get in trouble,” Andrea said.

Betty, caught between a natural inclination to succumb to authority and a congenital compulsion to amass scientific data, wavered.

“Come on,” Joh

In the end the four of them approached the foot of the glacier together. Where the moraine ended, the leading edge of ice had eroded into a yawning black cave, shallow, dark from the silt and dirt embedded in it, an enormous, engulfing shadow in ominous contrast to the bright, su

“It’s like standing in front of an open refrigerator,” Andrea said.

Joh

Joh

“Darn right we don’t,” Andrea said tartly. “Okay, we’ve been here, done that, let’s go back.”

“There’s someone in there,” Joh

“Oh, come on,” Andrea said with a playful slap at his shoulder. “Stop kidding around.”

“I’m not kidding,” Joh

“What?” Betty and Vanessa crowded next to him, peering into the gloom. “Where?”

“Right there.”

They followed the direction indicated by his pointing finger, and out of the dim a figure coalesced, a dark outline, vaguely human, sitting bolt upright with its back to the ice where the ice curved in to meet the gravel. The figure appeared to be clothed. At least no flesh was gleaming whitely at them.

It also wasn’t moving. “Um, hello?” Joh

It didn’t move. “Hello, you there inside the glacier,” Betty said in an unconscious imitation of Ms. Doogan’s authoritarian accents. “You need to come out from under the glacier. It could fall on you.”