This initial evidence of daily life in the 312-million-year-old Alabama rock came in the form of invertebrate tracks. Within minutes of his first find, Allen discovered another invertebrate trackway. Moments later, a long, flat, layered rock caught his eye. He placed his chisel between the layers and with a simple pop of his hammer the rock opened up. Drawing back his tools, Ashley Allen knew beyond all doubt he was someplace special. There, revealed before him, were three distinct tracks of footprints made by ancient amphibians, and a world once lost was newly found.
The pilot announced that we were beginning our descent into Birmingham, and we should put our seat backs and trays in the upright position. The fall through the clouds was bumpy, and when we dropped out beneath them it looked like we were right on top of the airport. I could see the terminal. Leah would be in there somewhere. I wondered if she was watching the plane fall from the sky and bounce twice across the runway.
7
As soon as the flight attendant said we could, I turned on my cell phone.
A text popped right up.
U landed?
Yes. At back of plane. Make take awhile.
Make?
Might take awhile
Come straight down concourse
You there?
At top of stares
Stares?
Stairs
Because I was at the back of the plane, I had plenty of time to text my mom and dad and let them know I was on the ground. Mom texted me to call her when we got to our host’s house. After about ten minutes I was able to sling my backpack over my right shoulder and leave the airplane.
Our gate was at the furthermost point down Concourse B at the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. It was, I’m guessing, at least two hundred yards from the gate to the terminal. About halfway down, you could see people waiting beyond the security checkpoints. When I was about seventy-five yards away, I thought I spotted her. When I was about fifty yards away, I was sure of it.
She was looking right at me.
I stopped and shifted my backpack from my right shoulder to the left.
She was looking right at me.
Even from fifty yards, I could tell her hair was a little longer. She was wearing blue jeans. Not the cut-off jeans she wore in the longleaf forest—these were long pants. She wore a short-sleeved black blouse, and her dark hair seemed to blend into the shirt from my distance.
She was looking right at me.
I shifted my backpack back to my right shoulder and continued down the concourse.
A voice over the intercom said something about not leaving bags unattended. It sounded muffled, like it was off in a soon-to-be-forgotten dream. I paused and closed my eyes for a second. The one clear sound I could hear was that of my own pulse pounding in my ears. I opened my eyes and at that instant felt a little queasy.
She raised her left hand just above her head. I nodded toward her. She lowered her hands and head, and a second later my phone buzzed.
U ok?
I did not text her back. I nodded in her direction.
Another buzz.
Y U just standing there?
This time I did text back.
Hungry. Just airplane peanuts for three hours.
I cinched my backpack up on my shoulder and continued on down the concourse.
She was, like she said she would be, at the top of the stairs—sort of. The stairs, it turns out, were escalators separated from the concourse by a rail and by the TSA. When I got to the point that I would have to go down to the baggage claim area, she called out to me.
“Meet you at the baggage claim,” she said.
She swirled around and her hair did that thing where it seems to drift up in slow motion. Never seen anything like it.
I took the escalator down, and there she was at the bottom waiting for me. We stood there looking at each other for either two or three seconds or two or three hours.
“Glad you could make it,” she said.
And then she stepped toward me. I was afraid she was going to hug me. Instead she smacked me in the shoulder with a sideways fist. My stomach did a somersault.
8
It’s easy to remember a man named Shirley who’s built like a linebacker and carries a gun. It’s another thing to be standing next to him. Deputy Shirley Pickens was waiting near the baggage carrousel. He made everyone around him look small. I’m sure I got shorter as I approached him.
“Jason, good to see you,” he said as he extended his hand.
“Good to see you, too,” I said.
“You’ve grown, what—maybe an inch since we saw you in April?” he said.
“Almost,” I agreed.
Deputy Pickens turned to Leah and said, “He’s gaining on you, Leah.”
Leah replied, “He may be taller than me someday, but he’ll never catch me.”
It was true. I was almost as tall as Leah, even though she’s a year older than I am. It was also true that I would never catch her.
The drive from the airport to Dr. Carroll’s house, according to the GPS on Deputy Pickens’s dash, would take about ninety minutes. We were planning to stop and get something to eat along the way. I wanted to ask about Carl Morris and how he escaped. I just didn’t know how to bring it up.
“You’re probably wondering about Carl Morris and how he escaped,” said Leah.
At that instant I became less interested in Carl Morris than I was in how she managed to know what I was thinking.
Leah was sitting in the front seat next to her dad. I was sitting right behind her. She turned around to face me and said, “That is what you were thinking, isn’t it?”
Before I could answer, Deputy Pickens said, “In addition to all the state and local charges he was facing, there were federal charges because his crimes were committed in a national forest. He had to be transferred to Montgomery for an arraignment in federal court, and he convinced the marshals who were driving him to take the back roads around Gantt Lake. Just wanted to get one last look at the countryside before they locked him away for good, he said. Well, it’s about the same distance from Andalusia to Montgomery whether you take the Interstate or not, so they thought, why not? Somewhere up above the lake, Morris talked them into letting him get out and take a leak. That’s the last anyone saw of him.”
Leah had been watching me as Deputy Pickens told the story. She turned around and pulled down the sun visor, then she opened the mirror on the visor and tilted her head to one side so that she could see me as she said, “Nothin’ but swamp up there above Gantt Lake. I think the gators got ’im.”
“It’s possible,” her father replied, “but not likely. Gators avoid people whenever they can.”
“Well, he just disappeared somehow,” said Leah. “State troopers couldn’t even find him with their FLIR.”
“Fleer?” I said.
“FLIR,