The Lost Choice (14 page)

Dylan slid off the couch and, on his knees at the coffee table, looked through his magnifying glass at the food stone again.

“Well, the similarities for one thing,” he said,“but those are obvious. Abby, you're the expert—I'm out of my league here.”

The pony-tailed archaeologist crowded in closely. “Let me see.”

Dylan shifted to allow her room while Mark moved the tray with the sugar and cream to the dining room. He then transferred the lamp at the end of the couch directly to the coffee table. “That better?” he asked, and when they answered in the affirmative,Mark joined everyone else on the living room floor.

“I'm surprised the scripting is so clearly maintained,” Abby said.“There is wear, obviously, some fading, but these are beautiful pieces.”

Dorry, looking over Abby's shoulder, asked, “Why are you surprised about the scripting?”

Without taking her eyes from the two objects, Abby answered,“I am assuming these are the same relative age— if not exactly the same age—because of size, color, degree of declension, and certainly because of the similar translations. But . . . in a relic this old, one would expect much more wear around the edges of the script cuts.” She held the objects up into the light for everyone to see. “Notice how sharply defined the carving is? If one were to view each separate indentation as a tiny canyon, the rim of the cliff is a sudden drop. It is not a smoothed or rounded edge as one might expect after centuries of exposure to the elements.”

Abby used the magnifying glass again. “I want to look at these under a scope, if you don't mind my taking them to the museum's lab”—she paused—“but what I see here . . .” She looked up and thought for a moment. Placing the pieces carefully back onto the coffee table, Abby continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “Two specifics catch my attention. One is the condition of the items—which is what we've been talking about. I know this one was found in or around water, correct?”

“Yes, correct,” the Chandlers confirmed.

“Just a cursory examination will tell you that this thing has not spent much of its life
outdoors
, forget ‘in the water.' And both objects are the same in that regard. They are simply not eroded sufficiently to have been anything but . . .” Abby frowned.

“Anything but what?” Dorry asked.

“Personally protected.” Dylan finished the sentence for her. Turning to Abby, who still seemed deep in thought, he said, “That's what has you thrown, isn't it? You think they've both been personally protected—passed down like an heirloom—for two thousand or so years?”

Abby sighed. “But that's absurd . . . right?”

“Weeeell,” Dylan drew out the word. “I think it's stretching the realm a bit. I don't know, Ab . . . to think an object might be intentionally transferred from person to person for two millennia? As empires are rising and falling? I mean, that's longer than civilizations have lasted in that part of the world.”

“Logically, I agree,” Abby allowed. “And archaeologically, it doesn't make sense . . . but
look
at them.” She placed the objects in Dylan's hands somewhat defiantly.“You have to admit . . . you've seen Apache artifacts less than two hundred years old in worse shape than these. I don't think this piece”—she indicated the one Michael found—“has been exposed to the elements for even a hundred years, much less two thousand. And this one . . .” Abby picked up the food stone by its leather cord. “This one is in better shape than the other! The only possibility I can imagine is that they have been protected in some way since they were cast.” Dylan nodded. “It's strange, but I don't disagree with anything you've said.”

“And like
you
said, Dylan,” Mark interjected, “she's the expert.”

“Yeah, she is,” Dylan concurred.

“Abby,” Dorry broke in. “A minute ago, you said that there were two things—specifics, you called them—two specifics that caught your attention. One was the condition of these pieces. What was the other?”

“Location,” Abby said simply. “Both pieces were collected on the North American continent. Not unusual really, but telling, just the same.”

“How so?”

Abby shrugged. “Think of it this way. This continent is an archaeological net. The world's objects of scarcity and value have always gravitated to financially superior and culturally free societies . . . and that's what we have in North America. Mathematically, give Earth another twenty thousand years, and everything will end up here.”

“So this one,” Mark said, “the food stone, came from Africa in the mid-1800s. And this one, Michael's, was—”

“—was not in that creek for long,”Abby interrupted.“In an archaeological sense anyway.”

Conscious of the need to take a break, Dorry said,“Mark, you three go into the kitchen and make some fresh coffee. Tell Abby and Dylan the whole story about Mae Mae and George Washington Carver. I'm gonna check on Michael and do a couple of quick searches on the Internet. There's pie in the fridge.”

Twenty minutes later,Dorry eased back into the kitchen and joined the others who were seated around the breakfast table. Mark was almost through with the story—telling Dylan and Abby about George Washington Carver's funeral and how Mae Mae had gotten the food stone. As he talked, Abby held the food stone in her hand.

“I don't want to sound weird or anything,” Mark said as he finished,“but I swear, something happened to me when she put that thing around my neck and I promised to do something with my life.”

“Something
special
with your life,” Dorry corrected.

“Right. Something special.”

“Something happened to you . . . in what way?” Abby asked.

“Honestly, I'm not even sure how to explain what I felt,” Mark said. He lifted his hands, then let them fall in a futile gesture. “In a way, I suppose I have always intended to do something special with my life, but when I said it—or as Mae Mae said, when I ‘made it a choice'—I felt a sense of power, or purpose . . . or certainty . . . assurance . . . something.” “I'm not even getting this,” Dylan said. He held out his hand to Abby, silently requesting the food stone. As he took it, he shook his head as if to clear it, then spoke slowly. “Okay. This thing translates out to . . .” He looked expectantly at Abby.

She said,“By your hand, the people shall be fed.”

Dylan looked at the other three and repeated Abby's words. “By your hand, the people shall be fed.” He paused dramatically.“Fed . . . fed? And George Washington Carver was wearing this? George Washington Carver? I mean, guys, the odds against any human being achieving what he did . . . and then you tell me he was wearing this? I barely believe it.”

“Excuse me,” Dorry said as she raised her hand.“Let me rattle our collective cage a bit more.” She fanned out a stack of paper. “Fresh from my printer . . . plumbed from the depths of cyberspace.”Turning to her husband, she asked, “Mark, did you tell Abby and Dylan about Patterson?”

“Patterson?” Mark appeared lost.“I'm not sure
I
remember. Tell me who he was again.”

Dorry shuffled the pages she'd brought to the table. “Lucky for us . . . I take notes,” she said to Abby as she waggled her eyebrows up and down.“Dr. Frederick Patterson was the president of Tuskegee Institute when Carver died. Mae Mae met him at the funeral in 1943.”

“Yeah, I remember now.”

“Do you remember that Mae Mae said Dr. Patterson wrote a letter to her? In it, he told her that Carver put the food stone around his neck several times and asked him to pledge to do something special with his life. You remember this, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” Mark replied.“He told her that he tried to live up to that choice he made every day.”

“Well . . . he made good on his promise,” Dorry said. “You wouldn't believe the Internet search hits when I typed in his name. Listen to this.” She read a sentence she had highlighted on one of the pages from the printer.“As founder of the United Negro College Fund, Dr. Frederick Patterson richly deserved the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed upon him personally by President Reagan. Dr. Patterson, the first African-American member of the American Red Cross Central Committee, created research institutes, schools, public grants . . .” Dorry looked up. “It would take a week to read everything this guy did. It's incredible.”

Dylan was leaning over the table with his mouth open while Dorry read. When she finished, he held up the food stone and asked,“And that guy . . . Patterson? That guy had this around his neck?”

“Several times, evidently,” Dorry replied as the others gawked at her.“Hang on. Wait till you hear this!”Then, to Mark she said,“Did you tell them about Henry Wallace?” Mark nodded.

“The vice president?”Abby asked.

“Um-hmm,” Dorry confirmed. “There are about ten times the number of Internet hits on him. Now, you know that he wandered the woods with Carver when he was a child in Iowa.”

“Wait a minute,” Dylan said incredulously.“I wasn't connecting these dots before. Carver put the food stone on this kid in Iowa?”

Dorry nodded, and Dylan looked at Mark.“This is who you were telling us a few minutes ago who . . .
this
kid grew up to be the secretary of agriculture and vice president of the United States?!!” Dylan was about to come across the table.

“Well, here,” Dorry said. “Let me just send everybody over the edge.” She flipped some papers.“Okay . . . secretary of agriculture in '33 . . . vice president in 1940. That was under Roosevelt, by the way . . . hang on . . . here we go. Henry Wallace developed some of the first hybrid corn varieties, and by planting his hybrid seed, U.S. farmers doubled and tripled their per-acre yield.”

Dorry glanced up. Mark's eyes were wide as he slowly shook his head. “Oh, just wait,” she said turning pages as she searched for a specific, highlighted piece. “This next bit is . . .well, here it is. Okay,” she said to the others,“this is from just
one
of the Web sites with this info . . . you ready?”

“Go. Shoot,” they said.

Dorry read, “‘In 1940, shortly after being elected vice president,Wallace traveled to Mexico and was appalled at the corn production in a country where corn was the most important part of a Mexican family's diet. Their per-acre yield was drastically lower than that of American farmers who planted hybrid varieties. The vice president soon created an agricultural station in Mexico to develop corn varieties adapted for the climate and soil of that region.'”

Dorry looked up and said, “Still reading—follow me here.” She continued. “‘One of the first scientists to join the station started by Wallace was a man named Norman Borlaug. Twenty years after the station was built, corn production in Mexico had doubled and wheat production had increased fivefold. Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 because of the work he did at the station.'” Dorry lifted her head.

No one spoke. They simply stared at her as she held the papers printed from the Internet out in front of her. “So why did Borlaug get the Nobel Prize? It says here—get this—that the work at that station in Mexico in expanding yields of corn, wheat, and rice prevented worldwide famine . . . and over the years, the lives of a billion people were saved.”

“A billion?”Abby whispered.

“Yeah, billion,” Dorry answered.“With a
b.
”

“Uh-huh,” Dylan restated, “with a
b. B
for billion and
b
for butterfly. This, my friends, is a textbook illustration of the butterfly effect.”

“The what?” Mark asked.

“The butterfly effect—sensitive dependence upon initial conditions.”

“In English, please,”Abby prodded.

Ignoring her, Dylan continued.“In 1963,Edward Lorenz presented a paper to the New York Academy of Sciences that created an uproar because of its straightforward and unembellished accuracy. He called it the butterfly effect. Simply stated, the butterfly effect says that a butterfly can flap its wings on one side of the world and set molecules of air in motion . . . that in turn set other molecules of air in motion . . . which set
other
molecules of air in motion— that can eventually create a hurricane on the other side of the world.” Dylan spread his hands apart like an entertainer receiving applause and repeated,“The butterfly effect.”

As they digested this new thought, the four friends each quietly reacted in a different way. Dylan, the last to speak, remained perfectly still, simply staring at the others. Abby slowly twirled the end of her ponytail around the forefinger of her right hand. Mark ran his thumbnail back and forth in the groove of the table's edge while Dorry absentmindedly sipped her coffee, which was cold.

Mark broke the silence first.“So in human terms, you're saying that Carver is an example of the butterfly effect.”

“Without a doubt,” Dylan said. “Look at it this way: Carver influenced Wallace, who set up the station in Mexico. The station in Mexico produced Borlaug . . . who directed its efforts. And the final result was that worldwide famine was averted and a billion lives saved.”

“Actually,”Abby interjected,“that wasn't the final result. That
particular
storm put in motion by the butterfly will never die. It's still gathering strength. Think of the things yet to be accomplished—the lives that are sure to be touched— by those billion people who wouldn't even be alive if . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she raised her eyebrows in wonder.

Mark finished the sentence. “Who wouldn't even be alive if Carver hadn't taken time with that little boy . . .”

“Who grew up to be vice president . . . ,” Dylan said.

“And started the station in Mexico . . . ,”Abby added as they watched each other wide-eyed.