No matter which way you cut it, Saturday is not a work day. I mean, you can make a good go of trying, but it never works out. Don’t tell Professor Rick, though – to all appearances, Saturday was a work-day, indeed.
We’d taken Friday for our own, and had been glad to do so, but the price had to be paid. I mean, in the end, we’re basically on vacation with one stipulation: give John a solid five-and-a-half days of work per week. And Festivál week, with its noteworthy (ha! a pun!) paintings, parties, and general antics, hadn’t been very kind to our work ethic. And so it came as little surprise when, after an early breakfast on Saturday morning, Dr. Rick broke the Sabbath for a day of work.

The cagey reader is probably thinking two things. Number one, “hasn’t all the working material been cleaned out of the lab?” and, perhaps, number two: “isn’t that excavation permission still held up in Lima? How could they possibly do any work?” Well, as for number two, reader, we were actually granted permission on Friday in a late-night call. I just didn’t tell you. That’s what you get for assuming; it makes an ASS out of U and ME.

And as for number one, that’s pretty much what we spent the day fixing.

*

“I would like to announce,” Dr. Rick said, almost too perkily for his own good, “that because of our excavation grant late last night, we can expect to be digging as early as Monday, but as late as Wednesday, at the outside. Another benefit,” he continued, “is that we can pull the lithic material back from the site, and get started again clearing those babies outta here.” The lithics crew rolled their eyes.

“Right,” John said, decisively, “we’re going to have several crews going about getting us ready today. Rocas,” and he looked at Cesar and the Rocas crew, “you guys can continue if you feel comfortable, now that we have our compass in for you from Lima. Y el equipo de conservación,” he added, addressing the conservation-happy Peruvians, “Alicho will be waiting for you guys up at the site, starting at eight-thirty. The rest of you guys,” and he cast about, looking for free faces, “we’ll be riding up to the site to get back our boxes of lithics.” He clapped his hands – our cue to disappear.

As per usual, Robert and I brushed our teeth and were loitering in the courtyard at eight – ready for the rough ride to the site’s dank storeroom. Rosa, who was patrolling the gate out of breakfast, noticed our toe-tapping, and told us she’d already told others to go back to their room. “I just told Megan,” she said, though the “t” and “d” went unpronounced, “that John is running a late, so to go back to her room and reading a book.” She blinked at us through her rose-colored glasses, and waited until we’d turned tail to slink back to our room to wait for the day to begin.

*

Eventually, close to nine, one of us put down our books and looked around. The courtyard was empty, except for the cat, which was alternating between sunning itself next to the cactus and watching the parrot with an unerring stare. The Señora tottered out of the kitchen, towards he favorite chair in the sun, and I asked, “¿ha ud. visto Senor John?” – “have you seen John?” She shook her head slowly, then sank into the wicker chair, her sigh nearly covered by its creak. I turned to shuffle towards the lab in my socks and sandals (standard gringo relaxation gear), and was mildly surprised to see John, in that one outfit he owns – khaki everything with a floppy Indiana Jones hat, striding toward me. “Ready?” he asked, almost bursting with verve. “Er, yeah, sure…!” I said, a bit taken aback at the enthusiasm. The man really wanted his stones back.

I fetched Robert, and by the time we’d gotten back to the courtyard, John and Megan we clambering into the Land Cruiser. With a coughing rumble and a sound like an anvil being dragged on stone, the engine turned over, turning the headlights a pale gold in the sun. Robert and I mounted our own seats, picking ourselves a good well between packs of the strangest supplies – typewriter erasers, watch batteries, and an emergency blanket. With his customary narration, Dr. Rick jawed the gearshift into place, swung his arm around the passenger seat, and muttered in my direction as he fixed on the gate behind him. The Señor rushed to open it, and we were soon chuttering out onto the street, gunning the gas furiously to keep from stalling.

John toned down his narration this time – perhaps because word has gotten around about his traffic play-by-play. In any case, there were a few choice mumbles, though nothing to prove to Robert that I hadn’t just made the entire stream-of-driving business up. We sat in attentive silence on the way to the site, but Megan fixed on a point outside the window, refusing to answer the rhetorical questions Dr. Rick would pose to her side of the car about parking possibilities.

With an iron hand on the wheel, John cajoled the truck into the site, cutting the engine just as it took a fancy to the steep hill, and began drifting away. The Monster shuddered to a halt, chocked and braked for the moment. We hopped out, and John freed a small cloud of dust as he swung down the rusty tailgate. The site crew spared us from venturing into the moldy room by piling up our boxes near the site scale-model, and it was relatively easy work to transfer them back to the wildly creaking truck bed. With our five-minute task over, we sat on the path’s rocks, waiting for Dr. Rick to come back.

The word from Martín was that Dr. Rick had gone to look over the excavation site, and would be back in a moment. In the meantime, we gave our utmost attention to Shadow, Martín’s awesome dog. His squat, barrel-chested stance and tufted tail (not to mention honey-brown eyes) reminded me pressingly of my dog. We ruffled his stomach and talked about the possibility of going into Huaráz, which was looking dimmer and dimmer as talk of the national holiday – La Día de Patrias, on Monday – and its effect on lodging became more pessimistic. “Ready?” said John, suddenly leaning over us. “Yeah,” we said, and hopped in the Monster, leaving Shadow with two paws scratching absently at the air.

With the lithics back in the lab, sinister in their thousands, we were free to analyze again. Because so many people had escaped to Rocas or conservation, Robert and I drafted two new people to help out – Beth, the new arrival from Mexico (originally Seattle) and Bodie, the Goliath of fainting fame. Over tea and laughter, we gradually got them used to calling pebbles data, slowly stirring jargon into the conversation. Though Dr. Rick flew in and out, we were basically alone, so we conducted scathing reviews of whoever’s music was on – demanding justification of excessive Michael Jackson (14 songs, Beth?), Death Cab for Cutie (I will follow… them with a pickaxe), and Jimmy Buffett (because everyone knows there’s only one song he can sing).

The hurly-burly came to a head when Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” came on. If you don’t know, and there’s no reason you would, I ended up memorizing the entire song for the AP U.S. History test – it saved my bacon on the essays. It’s a chronological run-down of the last forty years; really just a trivia chant you can memorize if you have a spare month or two. Anyway, with calipers clipping away at bits of quartzite, I mumbled the opening words under my breath: “Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray…” and was shocked to hear an identical murmur bubbling up to my right.

Robert and I locked eyes. “South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe Di-mag-i-ooo.” His eyes narrowed, and I widened mine – no one knew this song like I did. Soon the calipers slid to a stop in both our grips – “Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television, North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.” Oh ho – a worthy adversary. We kept it up, mouths in perfect unison, never blinking, never flinching, breathing only during the chorus. Beth sighed in exasperation, and picked up the rock I’d long since dropped:

“Rosenbergs, H Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye. Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen, Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye [breath] Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc, Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dancron Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock, Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team, Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland, Bob Dole, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev, Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez [breath] Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge On The River Kwai Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball, Starkwether, Homicide, Children of Thalidomide, Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia, Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go, U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy, Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo [long, long breath] Hemingway, Eichman, Stranger in a Strange Land, Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion, Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatle mania, Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson, Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician sex, J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say [breath / desperate gasp] Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again, Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock, Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline, Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan, Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide, Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz, Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law, Rock and Roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore

We broke eye contact, satisfied that we were equally large nerds, and huffed quiety as we picked up our bags again. After they were done laughing, Bodie and Beth made us promise never to do that again. I couldn’t agree more.

*

Again, we gathered in Megan’s room for the next Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back. Robert and I made our now customary chocolate bombing run, and came back with enough for a couple cavities apiece. We winced through the painfully bad graphics and awkward storyline (when was this a blockbuster!?) jawing on decadent sweets. When the speakers started to go towards the end, frustrating Luke into a mute bombing run, we each took on a character, and used ridiculous voices to read their subtitled lines. By far the best, however, was Bodie, who’s bleep-bloop dubbing of R2-D2 was good enough to fool Lucas. I just gave Luke an effeminate British accent. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it made the Rebellion’s victory that much sweeter.