New Indiana Jones story from the fanzine days
Patan
Marion Ravenwood finds herself stranded in Nepal after the death of her father and has to cope with the unthinkable. Who is there to blame? This story originally appeared in Field Studies 4, edited by Cheree Cargill. The art is by Danaline Bryant
"I learned to hate you in the past ten years."
NEPAL, SEPTEMBER 1934:
"Oh, Marion…"
Marion Ravenwood leaned her shovel against the side of the trench and straightened up. "Yes, dad?"
Watching her father fumblinge around absently in his pockets, she felt a sudden stab in the area of her solar plexus. God, he was looking so old! His hair, which had once reminded her of a bushy red gold lion's mane, had turned almost completely white now. Worse still was the lost look she had been seeing in his eyes lately and the hesitation in his voice when he spoke.
"I seem to have left my notebook back down at the inn. Would you be a darling and go get it for me?"
"Of course, Dad." She caught herself using the patient, humoring tone which had been creeping into her voice lately whenever she spoke to Abner. It was almost as if the normal parent child role was reversing itself and she had begun to see herself as her father's protector. "Now take it easy while I'm gone. I don't want you to strain yourself."
"Nonsense. I've been digging all my life. Now get along with you."
Marion hoisted herself up out of the pit and began zigzagging her way through the maze of exploration trenches that crisscrossed the dig site. The side of the mountain resembled a scene out of the Great War. She and her father had been digging all summer, and so far their efforts had not turned up a single thing. But Abner remained convinced that his beloved Ark of the Covenant was buried up there and any day now they would find some trace of it.
Even with her relatively minimal knowledge of archaeology, Marion knew that was impossible. It was, she hesitated to use the term, insane. But this obsession with the ark had been overtaking Abner increasingly during the past few years, and nothing could dissuade him. By now, Marion knew better than to even try.
Winter was coming. Already the Autumn snow storms were obscuring the higher peaks, and the white snow lines were creeping down the mountain sides. Soon the snow would cover the dig site, making it impossible to excavate any more. Then they could go home, Marion hoped, and forget about this lunacy.
In spite of winter's approach, the weather was warmish today, at least in the sun. Marion left the top half of her jacket open for ventilation as she picked her way carefully down the path to the village. Her foot slipped on a muddy patch, and she had to flail out her arms to regain her balance. For the past few weeks the ground had been freezing at night and thawing out during the day, turning the dirt to mud and making the footing treacherous. It also made digging a torture in the wet, heavy earth.
Marion had gone halfway down the path when she felt the first vibrations under her boot soles. Gradually, the rumbling increased until it resembled the roar of a freight train, and Marion grabbed onto a large boulder to steady herself on the shaking earth. When the noise died away, she turned and looked back. The whole side of the mountain was gone.
"Dad!" she screamed and ran back up the trail. The path ended abruptly in a confused mass of snow, mud and rocks. The dig site, the equipment, Abner-all had disappeared.
Still yelling frantically for her father, Marion began to tear at the slide with her bare hands. Her fingertips ripped and a nail bent backwards and pulled away on a sharp rock, but she barely felt the pain in her desperation. "Oh, Dad, please-no! " she sobbed as she dug.
After a while, she realized it was useless. Help-help was what she needed. She stood up and dashed down the path toward the village. A season of hard work at that high altitude had accustomed her to exertion in the thin atmosphere, but her heart was hammering and her lungs felt near to bursting by the time she reached the narrow streets of Patan. She felt lightheaded, and she could barely get the words out as she stumbled into the tiny tavern where she and her father had rented rooms.
Dimly, her eyes took in the sight of the stuffed raven, its wings outstretched over the doorway, which had captured her father's fancy when they had first arrived. Not that it would have made any difference as to where they stayed. Not only was the Raven Bar the best inn in Patan, it was the only one. She saw the tavern owner, a British expatriate by the name of Farrell, standing behind the bar, serving out drinks to the usual mixed crew of daytime customers.
"Please," she gasped. "I need help! My father… An avalanche!" She was totally oblivious to the sight she must present to them, half hysterical, with her hands torn and bleeding, her clothing covered with mud. They all stared at her indifferently.
The bouncer, a big fellow named Mohan, stepped outside briefly and came back in, shaking his head.
"No-please! You have to help!" Marion screamed. She stood alone in the dark circle of eyes. Like some small panicked animal, her consciousness scurried around and beat against the walls of the cruel truth. There was no escape. The room began to waver and tilt, and the rough plank floor rushed up to meet her as, for the first and only time in her life, Marion fainted.
She wasn't sure how much later it was when she finally awoke, recalled to consciousness by the pale gray light flowing in through the tiny dormer window in the eaves. She lay in her room above the tavern, lying fully clothed on her narrow bed, with her only her shoes removed. At first she felt disoriented. Her muscles ached, and there was a dull pain in her scabbed over fingertips. And then the memory came flooding back with a vengeance. Abner.
She let out a moan and curled up on her side, hugging her knees to her chest. He was dead. Gone. Her father. Her last mainstay in the world. For all the times she had chafed under his restrictions, for all the times she had felt he stood in the way of her happiness, for all her resentment of his obsession with his work, which had forced her own life and needs to take a back seat, she wanted him back ten times over. That damned Ark, she thought, it killed him! But perhaps it was better that way. Abner had died doing what he loved best, never knowing that he had failed. Tears came and she lay convulsed by huge wracking sobs, as she poured out her grief for her father.
Finally, she reached a point where there were no tears left. Her earlier wild anguish had been replaced by a dull, aching apathy. She felt empty and as brittle as glass, as if all it would take was the least little jolt and she would shatter. She lay back on the narrow bed and stared up at the bare wood rafters.
It was an odd fact in her life, now that she reflected on it, that the people she loved best seemed to leave her suddenly and without warning.
Her mother for example.
Marion had been only twelve years old on that spring afternoon when she had come home from school to find their next door neighbor waiting for her. The neighbor lady was a large, motherly sort who liked to hum the popular tunes of the day to herself as she hung out her wash in the backyard next to the Ravenwoods' large Victorian house near the University of Chicago campus. Marion had always liked her for her cheerful greetings called out over the back fence and her ever-present smile, but today a look of anxiety had banished that smile.
"Marion, dear, your father asked me to come over here and wait with you. He had to take your mother to the hospital earlier this afternoon. Something gone wrong with the baby, they're afraid…"
Baby…? It was the first Marion had heard of it, but it made sense. It accounted for the secret smile her mother had been wearing for the past few weeks and the extra tender way her father had been treating his wife lately, although her parents had always seemed to behave more like lovers than man and wife anyway. Their relationship had always been a special one, ever since the day in the early weeks of September 1908 that Abner, already entering middle age, had spied her mother sitting in the first row of his archeology 101 class.
Marion tuned the neighbor woman out, letting well-meaning phrases like 'tubal pregnancy ' and 'doing everything they can' flow right past her. She shook her head mutely when asked if she wanted anything to eat or drink and went on up the wide staircase. On the first stair landing was a large leaded glass window with an upholstered bench beneath it, set off into a private alcove by velvet draperies. This window seat had been Marion's own special place of refuge ever since she was a small child, and it was here that she went now to mull over this new and troubling piece of information.
Marion was by no means a sheltered child, having seen much of the frank side of human life in the primitive areas of the world she had visited on digs with her parents. She knew where babies came from and why, and she also knew that it was sometimes a perilous business. From the worried look on the neighbor's face, it seemed that was the case with her mother now. Marion drew her knees up to her chin and waited for news.
She sat alone with her thoughts as the light failed and the afternoon darkened into evening. The grandfather's clock in the hall had just chimed seven when she heard the front door latch turn. Abner. All throughout the long afternoon, Marion had felt like a little girl, alone and afraid, but now her father was here to make things right.
She sprang up from the window seat and ran down the stairs. "Daddy…?" One look at him standing in the hallway and she had not needed to hear any more. A light seemed to have gone out of Abner, and he appeared to have aged ten years in the space of an afternoon. "Marion, your mother…"
Something inside of Marion seemed to die, too. "Oh, dad…"
She walked down the last three steps and took her father gently by the hand. "It's okay, Dad. Come on into the study and rest for a while. I'll make you a cup of tea. Everything is going to be all right."
In the months that followed, Marion had missed her mother dreadfully, but she did her best to overcome her own feelings of loss by making life easy for her grief-stricken father. She cooked the meals, did what little housekeeping had to be done, saw to it that clean and matching clothing was laid out for Abner each morning, and listened to the details of his day when he came home at night. Marion took over the task of keeping her father's books and papers in order, and she became privy to the details of his latest research. And, in time, as she blossomed from a spindly girl child into a slender, self-possessed adolescent, she entered into that quasi-official realm of University social life that her mother had irreverently referred to as "tea and cookie duty", passing out refreshments at receptions and serving tea at the Ladies Auxiliary along with the other faculty wives.
In fact, she came to take her mother's place everywhere but in her father's bedroom. One day she had jokingly said as much to Indy, who narrowed his eyes at the remark, and said it wasn't a good idea for kids to grow up too fast-he ought to know.
And then, ironically, he had proceeded to make her grow up even faster.
Indiana Jones. He was another person who would come into her life and into her heart only to leave her with no warning.
She had met him for the first time at a faculty tea held in honor of the incoming graduate students. She had spied him hovering on the edges of the crowd, a tall, bespectacled young man, looking distinctly uncomfortable while the party went on around him. He clutched a half empty cup of punch as if it were a life preserver and doing a tolerably good impression of a potted plant.
A shy one, she told herself. Striking up a conversation with him would be an act of mercy, not to mention her duty as a hostess.
"Watch out, it's spiked," she said, coming up behind him.
"What?" He turned toward her with a look of confusion in his hazel eyes that she found oddly appealing.
"The punch-it's spiked. I saw one of the boys from the Chemistry department pouring in a fifth of vodka while he thought nobody was looking. You wouldn't be able to taste it unless you know it's in there."
"Thanks for the warning. I have a class to teach at three o'clock. It wouldn't look good for me to show up plastered-even innocently." He smiled down at her. "Doesn't it make you wonder about human nature sometimes? Now that we have Prohibition, people seem to be drinking more than ever. You can't get away from it, even at an afternoon tea."
"Maybe that's because forbidden fruit always tastes the sweetest," Marion ventured.
"You sound like you're from the Psychology department."
She suppressed a giggle. "Well, no… Archaeology is closer to my field, actually."
"Oh, yeah? Me too," he said, brightening. "My name is Jones. Indiana Jones."
"Oh, the star pupil from the east. Dad's told me about you."
"Dad?"
"My father, Abner Ravenwood."
"Oh, right… He mentioned a daughter in one of his letters. Let me see, Maryanne, wasn't it?"
"Marion, with an 'O'," she corrected.
His voice took on a teasing quality. "What kind of a name is Marion for you? That's a man's name."
"And Indiana's a whole state. So, what of it?"
"Touché" he said with a laugh. "Pleased to meet you, Marion."
"Likewise, Indiana. So, what brings you all the way back here from Cornell University?" she asked him.
"You know I attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate," he said.
She nodded. That had been four years ago. Back in the days when her mother was alive. With a rich family life to occupy his time, Abner had rarely socialized with students. She had heard the names of promising students mentioned from time to time, but had never met any face to face.
"Well, after I got my bachelor's degree here, I went back east to Cornell for graduate school. Looks better on the Curriculum Vitae and all that. I got my Masters there and started on my Doctorate. Abner and I had been corresponding for the past few years, ever since I sent him a letter telling him how sorry I was to hear about Mrs. Ravenwood. He was kind enough to write back, and before I knew it, we had a friendship going. A short time ago, I mentioned I'd gotten bogged down in writing my dissertation, and he persuaded me to come back here to finish out my Doctorate so that I could make use of his private research materials."
"Dad must think highly of you if he's giving you free run of his personal library."
Jones nodded. "I appreciate the offer. My thesis is on the subject of 18th Dynasty Egypt and the roots of Hebrew monotheism. Your father has quite an extensive collection in that area."
"I know," Marion said. "I'm in charge of dusting it every two weeks. I must warn you, Dad has narrowed his field of interest in the past few years. His new ruling passion is the Ark of the Covenant. Don't get him started on it or he'll talk your ears off. He's a little nutty on the subject, to be honest."
"I'm used to it," Jones said, rolling his eyes. "My own father has spent his entire life studying the Holy Grail, of all things!" The two of them proceeded to share a knowing laugh at the eccentricities of parents.
They fell into an easy discussion of archaeology: Abner's work, Indiana's dissertation, the field in general. In her role as unofficial assistant to her father, Marion had always found the subject of archaeology to be rather mundane, if not boring. But, somehow, talking with Indiana put the topic in a new and much more interesting light. Perhaps it was the fact that Jones seemed to treat her as an equal. To Marion's annoyance, most of Abner's colleagues and his other students tended to talk down to her. Or maybe she found Indy's enthusiasm for the past to be catching.
Their conversation came to an end when another of Abner's graduate students, a young man by the name of Daniel Peterson, came strolling across the room.
"Hey, Indy, you're going to have a room full of angry freshman over in West Hall if you don't get a move on."
Jones took a quick look at his watch. "Oh, Jeez, look at the time! I've gotta run." He gave Marion a regretful smile. "I guess I'll be seeing you around. Maybe we could go out for a bite to eat sometime? Or take in a movie?"
It took Marion a moment to understand that she was cautiously being asked for a date. It surprised her, until she realized that there was nothing about the way she dressed or wore her hair that day to give a clue to her actual age. Indy must simply have assumed that she was a few years older. She was also more than a little flattered, and she couldn't stifle a giggle when she answered him. "We'll have to see what my father has to say about that."
As Indy and young Peterson walked off together, Marion could hear Daniel saying, "Indy, are you crazy? That's old Professor Ravenwood's daughter!"
"Yeah, I know. Nice girl… Pretty, too."
"Indy…!" Peterson bent his head confidentially and began saying something too softly for Marion to hear.
Darn him anyway, she thought. She had just met someone who didn't treat her like a kid and Peterson was about to spoil it. As Daniel continued his earnest communication, Indy did an abrupt double take. The look of disbelief on his face as he turned back to look back at her was almost comical. Marion sighed. It had been fun while it lasted.
Marion Ravenwood finds herself stranded in Nepal after the death of her father and has to cope with the unthinkable. Who is there to blame? This story originally appeared in Field Studies 4, edited by Cheree Cargill. The art is by Danaline Bryant
"I learned to hate you in the past ten years."
NEPAL, SEPTEMBER 1934:
"Oh, Marion…"
Marion Ravenwood leaned her shovel against the side of the trench and straightened up. "Yes, dad?"
Watching her father fumblinge around absently in his pockets, she felt a sudden stab in the area of her solar plexus. God, he was looking so old! His hair, which had once reminded her of a bushy red gold lion's mane, had turned almost completely white now. Worse still was the lost look she had been seeing in his eyes lately and the hesitation in his voice when he spoke.
"I seem to have left my notebook back down at the inn. Would you be a darling and go get it for me?"
"Of course, Dad." She caught herself using the patient, humoring tone which had been creeping into her voice lately whenever she spoke to Abner. It was almost as if the normal parent child role was reversing itself and she had begun to see herself as her father's protector. "Now take it easy while I'm gone. I don't want you to strain yourself."
"Nonsense. I've been digging all my life. Now get along with you."
Marion hoisted herself up out of the pit and began zigzagging her way through the maze of exploration trenches that crisscrossed the dig site. The side of the mountain resembled a scene out of the Great War. She and her father had been digging all summer, and so far their efforts had not turned up a single thing. But Abner remained convinced that his beloved Ark of the Covenant was buried up there and any day now they would find some trace of it.
Even with her relatively minimal knowledge of archaeology, Marion knew that was impossible. It was, she hesitated to use the term, insane. But this obsession with the ark had been overtaking Abner increasingly during the past few years, and nothing could dissuade him. By now, Marion knew better than to even try.
Winter was coming. Already the Autumn snow storms were obscuring the higher peaks, and the white snow lines were creeping down the mountain sides. Soon the snow would cover the dig site, making it impossible to excavate any more. Then they could go home, Marion hoped, and forget about this lunacy.
In spite of winter's approach, the weather was warmish today, at least in the sun. Marion left the top half of her jacket open for ventilation as she picked her way carefully down the path to the village. Her foot slipped on a muddy patch, and she had to flail out her arms to regain her balance. For the past few weeks the ground had been freezing at night and thawing out during the day, turning the dirt to mud and making the footing treacherous. It also made digging a torture in the wet, heavy earth.
Marion had gone halfway down the path when she felt the first vibrations under her boot soles. Gradually, the rumbling increased until it resembled the roar of a freight train, and Marion grabbed onto a large boulder to steady herself on the shaking earth. When the noise died away, she turned and looked back. The whole side of the mountain was gone.
"Dad!" she screamed and ran back up the trail. The path ended abruptly in a confused mass of snow, mud and rocks. The dig site, the equipment, Abner-all had disappeared.
Still yelling frantically for her father, Marion began to tear at the slide with her bare hands. Her fingertips ripped and a nail bent backwards and pulled away on a sharp rock, but she barely felt the pain in her desperation. "Oh, Dad, please-no! " she sobbed as she dug.
After a while, she realized it was useless. Help-help was what she needed. She stood up and dashed down the path toward the village. A season of hard work at that high altitude had accustomed her to exertion in the thin atmosphere, but her heart was hammering and her lungs felt near to bursting by the time she reached the narrow streets of Patan. She felt lightheaded, and she could barely get the words out as she stumbled into the tiny tavern where she and her father had rented rooms.
Dimly, her eyes took in the sight of the stuffed raven, its wings outstretched over the doorway, which had captured her father's fancy when they had first arrived. Not that it would have made any difference as to where they stayed. Not only was the Raven Bar the best inn in Patan, it was the only one. She saw the tavern owner, a British expatriate by the name of Farrell, standing behind the bar, serving out drinks to the usual mixed crew of daytime customers.
"Please," she gasped. "I need help! My father… An avalanche!" She was totally oblivious to the sight she must present to them, half hysterical, with her hands torn and bleeding, her clothing covered with mud. They all stared at her indifferently.
The bouncer, a big fellow named Mohan, stepped outside briefly and came back in, shaking his head.
"No-please! You have to help!" Marion screamed. She stood alone in the dark circle of eyes. Like some small panicked animal, her consciousness scurried around and beat against the walls of the cruel truth. There was no escape. The room began to waver and tilt, and the rough plank floor rushed up to meet her as, for the first and only time in her life, Marion fainted.
She wasn't sure how much later it was when she finally awoke, recalled to consciousness by the pale gray light flowing in through the tiny dormer window in the eaves. She lay in her room above the tavern, lying fully clothed on her narrow bed, with her only her shoes removed. At first she felt disoriented. Her muscles ached, and there was a dull pain in her scabbed over fingertips. And then the memory came flooding back with a vengeance. Abner.
She let out a moan and curled up on her side, hugging her knees to her chest. He was dead. Gone. Her father. Her last mainstay in the world. For all the times she had chafed under his restrictions, for all the times she had felt he stood in the way of her happiness, for all her resentment of his obsession with his work, which had forced her own life and needs to take a back seat, she wanted him back ten times over. That damned Ark, she thought, it killed him! But perhaps it was better that way. Abner had died doing what he loved best, never knowing that he had failed. Tears came and she lay convulsed by huge wracking sobs, as she poured out her grief for her father.
Finally, she reached a point where there were no tears left. Her earlier wild anguish had been replaced by a dull, aching apathy. She felt empty and as brittle as glass, as if all it would take was the least little jolt and she would shatter. She lay back on the narrow bed and stared up at the bare wood rafters.
It was an odd fact in her life, now that she reflected on it, that the people she loved best seemed to leave her suddenly and without warning.
Her mother for example.
Marion had been only twelve years old on that spring afternoon when she had come home from school to find their next door neighbor waiting for her. The neighbor lady was a large, motherly sort who liked to hum the popular tunes of the day to herself as she hung out her wash in the backyard next to the Ravenwoods' large Victorian house near the University of Chicago campus. Marion had always liked her for her cheerful greetings called out over the back fence and her ever-present smile, but today a look of anxiety had banished that smile.
"Marion, dear, your father asked me to come over here and wait with you. He had to take your mother to the hospital earlier this afternoon. Something gone wrong with the baby, they're afraid…"
Baby…? It was the first Marion had heard of it, but it made sense. It accounted for the secret smile her mother had been wearing for the past few weeks and the extra tender way her father had been treating his wife lately, although her parents had always seemed to behave more like lovers than man and wife anyway. Their relationship had always been a special one, ever since the day in the early weeks of September 1908 that Abner, already entering middle age, had spied her mother sitting in the first row of his archeology 101 class.
Marion tuned the neighbor woman out, letting well-meaning phrases like 'tubal pregnancy ' and 'doing everything they can' flow right past her. She shook her head mutely when asked if she wanted anything to eat or drink and went on up the wide staircase. On the first stair landing was a large leaded glass window with an upholstered bench beneath it, set off into a private alcove by velvet draperies. This window seat had been Marion's own special place of refuge ever since she was a small child, and it was here that she went now to mull over this new and troubling piece of information.
Marion was by no means a sheltered child, having seen much of the frank side of human life in the primitive areas of the world she had visited on digs with her parents. She knew where babies came from and why, and she also knew that it was sometimes a perilous business. From the worried look on the neighbor's face, it seemed that was the case with her mother now. Marion drew her knees up to her chin and waited for news.
She sat alone with her thoughts as the light failed and the afternoon darkened into evening. The grandfather's clock in the hall had just chimed seven when she heard the front door latch turn. Abner. All throughout the long afternoon, Marion had felt like a little girl, alone and afraid, but now her father was here to make things right.
She sprang up from the window seat and ran down the stairs. "Daddy…?" One look at him standing in the hallway and she had not needed to hear any more. A light seemed to have gone out of Abner, and he appeared to have aged ten years in the space of an afternoon. "Marion, your mother…"
Something inside of Marion seemed to die, too. "Oh, dad…"
She walked down the last three steps and took her father gently by the hand. "It's okay, Dad. Come on into the study and rest for a while. I'll make you a cup of tea. Everything is going to be all right."
In the months that followed, Marion had missed her mother dreadfully, but she did her best to overcome her own feelings of loss by making life easy for her grief-stricken father. She cooked the meals, did what little housekeeping had to be done, saw to it that clean and matching clothing was laid out for Abner each morning, and listened to the details of his day when he came home at night. Marion took over the task of keeping her father's books and papers in order, and she became privy to the details of his latest research. And, in time, as she blossomed from a spindly girl child into a slender, self-possessed adolescent, she entered into that quasi-official realm of University social life that her mother had irreverently referred to as "tea and cookie duty", passing out refreshments at receptions and serving tea at the Ladies Auxiliary along with the other faculty wives.
In fact, she came to take her mother's place everywhere but in her father's bedroom. One day she had jokingly said as much to Indy, who narrowed his eyes at the remark, and said it wasn't a good idea for kids to grow up too fast-he ought to know.
And then, ironically, he had proceeded to make her grow up even faster.
Indiana Jones. He was another person who would come into her life and into her heart only to leave her with no warning.
She had met him for the first time at a faculty tea held in honor of the incoming graduate students. She had spied him hovering on the edges of the crowd, a tall, bespectacled young man, looking distinctly uncomfortable while the party went on around him. He clutched a half empty cup of punch as if it were a life preserver and doing a tolerably good impression of a potted plant.
A shy one, she told herself. Striking up a conversation with him would be an act of mercy, not to mention her duty as a hostess.
"Watch out, it's spiked," she said, coming up behind him.
"What?" He turned toward her with a look of confusion in his hazel eyes that she found oddly appealing.
"The punch-it's spiked. I saw one of the boys from the Chemistry department pouring in a fifth of vodka while he thought nobody was looking. You wouldn't be able to taste it unless you know it's in there."
"Thanks for the warning. I have a class to teach at three o'clock. It wouldn't look good for me to show up plastered-even innocently." He smiled down at her. "Doesn't it make you wonder about human nature sometimes? Now that we have Prohibition, people seem to be drinking more than ever. You can't get away from it, even at an afternoon tea."
"Maybe that's because forbidden fruit always tastes the sweetest," Marion ventured.
"You sound like you're from the Psychology department."
She suppressed a giggle. "Well, no… Archaeology is closer to my field, actually."
"Oh, yeah? Me too," he said, brightening. "My name is Jones. Indiana Jones."
"Oh, the star pupil from the east. Dad's told me about you."
"Dad?"
"My father, Abner Ravenwood."
"Oh, right… He mentioned a daughter in one of his letters. Let me see, Maryanne, wasn't it?"
"Marion, with an 'O'," she corrected.
His voice took on a teasing quality. "What kind of a name is Marion for you? That's a man's name."
"And Indiana's a whole state. So, what of it?"
"Touché" he said with a laugh. "Pleased to meet you, Marion."
"Likewise, Indiana. So, what brings you all the way back here from Cornell University?" she asked him.
"You know I attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate," he said.
She nodded. That had been four years ago. Back in the days when her mother was alive. With a rich family life to occupy his time, Abner had rarely socialized with students. She had heard the names of promising students mentioned from time to time, but had never met any face to face.
"Well, after I got my bachelor's degree here, I went back east to Cornell for graduate school. Looks better on the Curriculum Vitae and all that. I got my Masters there and started on my Doctorate. Abner and I had been corresponding for the past few years, ever since I sent him a letter telling him how sorry I was to hear about Mrs. Ravenwood. He was kind enough to write back, and before I knew it, we had a friendship going. A short time ago, I mentioned I'd gotten bogged down in writing my dissertation, and he persuaded me to come back here to finish out my Doctorate so that I could make use of his private research materials."
"Dad must think highly of you if he's giving you free run of his personal library."
Jones nodded. "I appreciate the offer. My thesis is on the subject of 18th Dynasty Egypt and the roots of Hebrew monotheism. Your father has quite an extensive collection in that area."
"I know," Marion said. "I'm in charge of dusting it every two weeks. I must warn you, Dad has narrowed his field of interest in the past few years. His new ruling passion is the Ark of the Covenant. Don't get him started on it or he'll talk your ears off. He's a little nutty on the subject, to be honest."
"I'm used to it," Jones said, rolling his eyes. "My own father has spent his entire life studying the Holy Grail, of all things!" The two of them proceeded to share a knowing laugh at the eccentricities of parents.
They fell into an easy discussion of archaeology: Abner's work, Indiana's dissertation, the field in general. In her role as unofficial assistant to her father, Marion had always found the subject of archaeology to be rather mundane, if not boring. But, somehow, talking with Indiana put the topic in a new and much more interesting light. Perhaps it was the fact that Jones seemed to treat her as an equal. To Marion's annoyance, most of Abner's colleagues and his other students tended to talk down to her. Or maybe she found Indy's enthusiasm for the past to be catching.
Their conversation came to an end when another of Abner's graduate students, a young man by the name of Daniel Peterson, came strolling across the room.
"Hey, Indy, you're going to have a room full of angry freshman over in West Hall if you don't get a move on."
Jones took a quick look at his watch. "Oh, Jeez, look at the time! I've gotta run." He gave Marion a regretful smile. "I guess I'll be seeing you around. Maybe we could go out for a bite to eat sometime? Or take in a movie?"
It took Marion a moment to understand that she was cautiously being asked for a date. It surprised her, until she realized that there was nothing about the way she dressed or wore her hair that day to give a clue to her actual age. Indy must simply have assumed that she was a few years older. She was also more than a little flattered, and she couldn't stifle a giggle when she answered him. "We'll have to see what my father has to say about that."
As Indy and young Peterson walked off together, Marion could hear Daniel saying, "Indy, are you crazy? That's old Professor Ravenwood's daughter!"
"Yeah, I know. Nice girl… Pretty, too."
"Indy…!" Peterson bent his head confidentially and began saying something too softly for Marion to hear.
Darn him anyway, she thought. She had just met someone who didn't treat her like a kid and Peterson was about to spoil it. As Daniel continued his earnest communication, Indy did an abrupt double take. The look of disbelief on his face as he turned back to look back at her was almost comical. Marion sighed. It had been fun while it lasted.