Those Crazy Katz' of Windsong Lane: Chapter 23

Chapter 23: Sarah’s Turn

The following week, Sarah went with her dad to do his fieldwork. It was a much tenser group at that point. The graduate students were getting pretty tired. They were healthy, young and strong, but four solid weeks of hot outdoor work, dusk to dawn, was getting to all of them. This would be the last week and they would be wrapping things up. Everyone was in a hurry to get the work done.

If the grant was extended, they might be able to come back the next year, but the Katz’s had planned for this one year of solid work in the area. It was important to complete the work, because the more data they gathered, the more solid the conclusions. There were limits, though they were working as hard as possible.

Sarah did her best to keep up with the constant stream of numbers and observations. She thought the things that they found in the buckets were pretty neat. However, sometimes they would hike to a bucket and there would be nothing in it. Also, at each bucket they would record what was in it and then remove it, stow everything, and fill in the hole. They were wrapping everything up and trying to put everything back to the way they had found it. They were nowhere near the gopher tortoise hole, so Sarah wasn’t able to see that, and she was thoroughly exhausted by the time it was all over.

Personally, she knew her dad thought it was good for her to come out and see how he worked, but this was not her thing. She didn’t like sweating and she didn’t like being dirty and dealing with bugs, and she hated, HATED, wearing boots. When they were finally done and heading home she was glad to have had met Anaan and Phoebe and seen what her dad’s days were like, but she also hoped he didn’t insist she come with him ever again. For her, it was a kind of torture. She hadn’t complained, but Johnathan could clearly see the lack of enthusiasm. Since he loved what he did so much, he felt disappointed that his oldest child didn’t share that love, but he supposed you couldn’t win them all.

As they were driving through town on the way home, Sarah looked out the “window” of the open Jeep and saw a group of teens on the corner. Her first instinct was to duck, but before she could do that, she saw Leo and he looked right at her. He waved and she turned bright red and looked away. She was mortified. She was sweaty and her hair was a mess from the hat she had been wearing. She was sure she had dirt on her face. She must look awful. Then she thought, why do I care? She had so many confusing emotions. Fortunately, her dad didn’t notice at all. Phoebe did though, and she leaned over and said very quietly, “I think that young man likes you. Good looking guy!” She smiled at Sarah and Sarah smiled back. She didn’t know what else to say.

At the end of the week Johnathan called the sampling season over for the time being and invited Phoebe and Anaan over for dinner. When they came over they were bemused that their professor had such a large family. Anaan said he came from a big family himself and fit right in. He sat down on the floor with Joe and asked him about the puzzle he was doing. Phoebe and Karen started a conversation, and Phoebe was telling Karen how she hoped to be a Herpetologist some day and contribute a significant piece of research. She was particularly interested in the tropics, and she hoped to move on soon to a project in the Amazon.

Jack listened from nearby. To him, this sounded like the coolest thing he had ever heard. You could tell he was fascinated and a little bit in worship of this young College student. He hung on her every word. What she was saying seemed like the kind of thing that he read about in National Geographic. He always read those articles about faraway places avidly. The new and unusual places that the people would visit were so interesting. He wanted to go places and see things all over the world some day. He knew that the Amazon was a place of amazing numbers and kinds of plants and animals. How he would love to go there! It seemed way more exciting than his own life thus far.

They all sat around the dining room table and had spaghetti and meatballs. There just wasn’t any more room at the kitchen table. Emma didn’t really sit with them, but Joe tried. He wanted to be like the big people, but he only managed to sit until his food was eaten and then he had to go run around. Dinner was all very informal, though, so kids coming and going wasn’t a bit deal. The two college students had a wonderful evening and felt pretty lucky to be working with such a nice Professor. They knew other professors that seemed to enjoy giving people a hard time and generally being stuffy sticks-in-the-mud.

Johnathan was happy. He felt it had been a successful year and he could go back to Raleigh and be busy for some time to come. He just needed to get all of that data into the computer and start crunching the numbers. That and writing were what these and his other students would be doing for him in the coming months. Hopefully, he could get several papers out of it. On Monday he would head back to Raleigh for a bit to settle things and then he’d be able to stay home for a couple of weeks before they would need to start making plans for either moving back to Raleigh or staying here.

Karen and he had told the kids that this would be a temporary thing, but they had also discussed the possibility of not wanting to leave after a year. It was part of the reason why they had sold their house. They could have kept it, but paying for two places would have drained their finances and they hadn’t really been attached to the last house anyway. This house was pretty neat, but they were just renting it. It would be easy to move out when the lease was up. It had turned out to be a nice arrangement, and being able to stretch out at least mentally had been really nice. On the other hand, the resources here for classes and other homeschool friends were almost nonexistent. He and Karen had decided to wait until he was done to decide for sure.