“That is a good summary,” Sophia said, realizing too late that she’d allowed the lid on Pandora’s box to be lifted. Her presentation had just become a Q&A. “The national parks have dual responsibilities. They are supposed to protect the resources for right now and make sure what’s available right now will be also available to people in the future. Some people call them the dueling mandates.”
“Like dueling banjos,” somebody called out. In the murmur that followed his joke, Sophia tried to gather the group’s attention back.
“Does that make sense?” she said to the NPR man, who nodded, sort of. She went on. “For many years these sites were plundered by the people who settled here, and ‘settled’ isn’t really the right word. They took what they wanted, destroyed much of it outright, saved a little, sold the rest. They erased the people who were here. Now it’s impossible to know what really happened, what it was really like. Because it is not our history, what we are able to show you is inaccurate.”
Another hand went up. He looked European, with a sweatshirt tied around his shoulders. He didn’t wait to be called on. Instead, he stood and spoke. “Who owns history, then?” he asked in a German accent. “Is it the people of the present day or the people of the past? This is a question I often ask myself, and the more I think about it, the more I am unsure. German people are enchanted with the American Indian, and these western lands, but perhaps we love something that no longer exists. I’m sorry if this is an unhelpful question. Perhaps it is not even a question at all.”
Sophia felt the room narrow. This was what she secretly hoped her digression might open up. His question was the key to her work, and she loved how he put it so simply.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Reinhardt,” he said.
“Reinhardt, I don’t know if I have an answer, but a good archeologist is always asking herself that question. The answer depends on so many things.”
“I am a physician, so I lack the necessary training to ask myself this as a professional. But I pursue these things as a hobby. I study the American Indian only as an amateur, as a lover of such things. I will take my answer from this chair. I did not mean to create a distraction.” He sat down and tilted his head slightly to one side.
As Sophia began to formulate her answer, another hand shot up. It was a man with a giant red maple leaf on his shirt. He didn’t wait to be called on either. “A guy at work says Indians came from spaceships that crashed, like, ten thousand years ago. They just got stuck here. He says when they all disappeared it’s because that’s when the rescue ships came.”
“Oh, don’t. Please don’t say things like that. First off, they didn’t just disappear. Second, it’s already hard enough—”
“You don’t really think we’re the only intelligent life forms in the universe,” the man replied. There was some laughter, and Sophia was furious that he had stolen the room. Her jaw clenched, and everything seemed to get louder.
Just as Sophia was about to launch her counterattack, the German spoke again without rising. “Perhaps there are no intelligent life forms anywhere.” The audience laughed, and the man waited for it to grow quiet again. “But in reality, given the immensity of space, the chances of us existing in the same small window of time as other intelligent life is immeasurably small. That doesn’t even factor in the time delay of such cosmic distances.”
“Look,” the maple leaf guy said, “the U.S. Navy has seen UFOs. They’ve got pictures.”
Reinhardt smiled and shrugged.
From another corner of the room a man’s voice called out. She couldn’t see his face. “They came across the land bridge from Russia.”
“Okay,” Sophia said, “that may not be true either. It’s just one story and it’s not set in stone. Genetic data is showing us other possibilities—”
Another hand went up. It was a woman, finally. Her jacket matched the one her husband next to her was wearing. “Do you know anything about the man from Kanab who killed himself? They say his house was a kind of museum. How does he fit into all of this? Nobody gets to see his stuff.”
Sophia was advancing through her slides to get to the one that outlined the main points of the Antiquities Act of 1906. People in the audience began talking back and forth. Soon there was a rising, confounding cacophony of languages. When she came to the slide she was looking for, she had clicked too many times, overshot it, and had to back up. As she did, a Korean man, who had been sitting quietly through the presentation next to his wife, sat up straight in his chair on the aisle. His eyes went wide with alarm as he gasped, tipped forward, and fell. The people around him moved away as he hit the floor. His wife knelt immediately at his side and looked around pleading for help in her language. Sophia couldn’t see what was going on, but she began to run for the door to get help.
“Let me through. Let me through,” said Reinhardt. “Clear the way.” He knelt and checked the man’s breathing and pulse, then looked at Sophia, held up two fingers, and pointed to his eyes. “You. I believe he is in cardiac arrest. Call for help, then come back here. If there is a defibrillator in this lodge, please bring it back.”
Sophia rushed from the room and wove through the crowded corridor. She cut the line at the front desk, which triggered a series of disgruntled complaints. “We’ve got a heart attack in the auditorium. He looks older. I didn’t get a good look, so I don’t have a description.”
The desk clerk was young. Her name tag said SILVIA, HOMETOWN TRNAVA, SLOVAKIA. Sophia could see that the girl couldn’t process what she was saying. She reached over the desk and grabbed the phone, dialed the number, and called it in. When she was done, she handed the phone back to Silvia, who held it without hanging it up.
“Do you know where a defibrillator is?” She pantomimed placing the paddles on a chest and the jolt that followed. Silvia’s face fell, and she started to panic. “Never mind,” Sophia said.
She ran back to the auditorium and found the crowd gathered in a circle around the fallen man. The German doctor was on his knees performing CPR, singing softly to himself as he leaned into the compressions. It was the Bee Gees. “Stayin’ Alive.” After many strokes, he leaned down and gave two deep rescue breaths.
Someone from the crowd called out: “They’re saying don’t do mouth-to-mouth anymore.”
The doctor returned to his compressions. “Danke,” he said to his critic. “Physicians receive different training.” Then he returned to his song.
A woman in a rhinestone shirt turned to her husband and asked, “Is he singing Saturday Night Fever?”
Her husband shrugged. “Maybe. I haven’t seen it in a long time.”
“Do you think he should? I mean a man is dying right there. Maybe it’s tacky,” the woman replied.
Someone standing next to Sophia said, “Lady, I think whoever does the CPR gets to pick the music.”
The doctor continued to give compressions and rescue breaths. He checked the man’s pulse at regular intervals. Sophia heard the sirens and started pulling chairs aside to make a path. In a few minutes, the park EMTs burst into the room with a rolling stretcher. When the doctor saw them, he stood immediately and let them do their work.