Radon & The Navajo Eclogite

By Rand B. Schaal

In this third book of The Radon Trilogy, Radon Schneider, geologist, finds an exotic red and green rock in Monument Valley, a part of the Navajo Nation. Schneider unravels the mystery of its origin while he battles his mortal enemy, Spencer Barkdale, the murderous villain who attempts to poison him. Cunning moves and countermoves between scientist and outlaw end with a bang.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rand B. Schaal
• Release date: Aug 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310339714

Rand B. Schaal

Rand B. Schaal, PhD, taught geology at the University of California, Davis from 1986 to 1998. He was also employed at NASA Johnson Space Center, researching shock metamorphism in Moon rocks and in meteorites in the late 1970s.He assimilated science and math on three campuses of the University of California: Davis, Berkeley, and Los Angeles. Later in life he also took courses in fiction writing and in popular science writing at UC Santa Cruz. Many years later, he also audited classes for two years at the UC Davis School of Medicine.Dr. Schaal learned the most about the human frailty after suffering a major stroke on Memorial Day in 1998. Initially, while in the intensive care unit, he flatlined for thirty-six seconds and saw the proverbial white light. After his brush with death he was temporarily paralyzed on the right side. He recovered in the hospital for six weeks. Suffering from dain bramage and impeech spediments (spoonerisms were an amusing side effect), he was forced to give up lecturing at UC Davis and piloting regular airplanes. He became a hermit who typed with all five fingers on his left hand and pecked with only the index finger on his right hand. He wrote his first two novels that way.In the year 2000 he bought Elsa, the motorglider. Then, in his garage at Davis, California, he completed the four-hundred-day project of assembling Sheila, a light sport airplane, from a kit. He finished her in 2007 and flew her to Arizona. Since then Sheila has been based at Safford Municipal Airport, SAD, in Arizona.The unthinkable happened on 9 December 2013: another stroke. This time it affected the opposite hemisphere of his brain as the first. Afterward, his whole brain was damaged! No paralysis this time. He was in the hospital for only one week, but he was forced to take a seven-month hiatus from writing to renew his desire to write again and to regain sufficient motor skills to type words on a computer keyboard—two-fingered. As he took on the task of finishing The Radon Trilogy he could type only three-letter words without a typo—mots of teh tmie. A lot more time was required to write each new paragraph.Sense of place shines as a principal aspect of Dr. Schaal's writing. Detailed factual descriptions of disparate geographical locations bring these stories to life: the taste of the salty seawater off the coast of San Diego in California to the silent snowfall on Moses Rock Dike in Utah; the comforting dry desert air at the Algodones Dunes in southern California to the huge pink boulders at the Texas Canyon Rest Stop on Interstate-10 in Arizona; and the spectacular cliffs of the Mogollon Rim north of Payson in Arizona to the majestic snowcapped Inyo mountains visible in alpenglow from the hot springs at Saline Valley in California. He has invested a lot of intimate time at each of these places, if not doing actual geological fieldwork there. These places become their own sort of ancillary characters in the stories. Safford, Arizona, in particular, becomes a well fleshed-out character with references to its streets, motel, restaurant, hospital, cemetery, airport, Walmart, and Dodge dealership. Some of the other non-speaking characters are the Gila Valley, Monument Valley, Saline Valley, Chaco Canyon, Grand Canyon, Colorado River, and Superstition Mountains. Their descriptions fulfill in him the accomplishment of travel, to peer at any distant horizon and to know what lies beyond, with the certainty of having seen it with his own eyes. Being an airplane pilot for nearly forty years has allowed him to explore beyond many distant horizons and to bring a sense of place to all his stories.Dr. Schaal has begun outlining the next trilogy—a lunar geologist's adventures living on the Moon in a futuristic colony.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Radon is my name, collecting mantle xenoliths is my game. I'm a retired professor of geology looking for green and red xenoliths, Radon Schneider replied to the policeman of the Navajo Nation. Radon had presented his Arizona driver license on request to the Navajo cop.

Standing beside his white Chevy Tahoe with its light-bar flashing blue, Officer Notah Nezbah said, I don't know what that means—manto zeenolits.

The mantle of Earth is the layer beneath the crust, here on the surface, Radon said, spreading his arms widely with palms down. ... and above the iron core, deep in the center of Earth. And xenoliths are rocks that came from inside the Earth. They were accidentally plucked out by volcanic fluid that rose through the crust and eventually erupted up on the surface of the land. Right here. I'm collecting only ones that came from the mantle. They're red and green.

Officer Nezbah had seen Radon's silver pickup, visible from US Route 160 near the village of Dennehotso, Arizona. He came to investigate at midday. Radon was near his truck for lunch.

With fewer than eight hundred inhabitants, Dennehotso lies in one of the least populated and remotest areas of the lower forty-eight states. It sits on the high Colorado Plateau in the northeast corner of Arizona. No cell reception.

Officer Nezbah had recognized a vehicle out of place. Radon's silver pickup stood out like a miscreant dressed in red among white-clad monks in a monastery. Incongruous. Nezbah had patrolled Route 160 for five years.

Garnet Ridge is located here, a site known as a source of ruby red garnets from Earth's mantle. These tiny red jewels adorn anthills. Ants find them underground and roll these nearly spherical, dodecahedral crystals out of their subterranean homes. House cleaning. Radon was collecting anthill garnets as well. A baggie in his pants pocket held dozens of them.

This landscape is mostly barren tan-colored sandstone and supports only sparse vegetation—scattered sagebrush and a few squat juniper trees. Located near the geographical center of the Colorado Plateau, Garnet Ridge is a prominence that overlooks the iconic Monument Valley to the west. Famous John Wayne movies were filmed there, as well as more modern westerns, like Back to the Future III. Through the years, the exaggerated vertical buttes and hoodoos inspired many artists and photographers, including Ansel Adams.

Officer Nezbah said, Okay, I get it now. Let me see your permit to collect rocks.

Radon obediently retrieved an envelope from above the sun visor in his truck and handed to the uniformed Officer.

Your permit specifically prohibits you from collecting yellow rocks. And I see one in your truck—there on the passenger seat, he said pointing.

Radon said, That rock is orpiment, not yellowcake. I bought it at a rock shop in Holbrook. Orpiment is arsenic trisulfide. I bought it for my mineral collection. Whatever you do, DO NOT lick it. Arsenic is poison!

Officer Nezbah said nothing, as he clicked his pen nervously, obviously becoming more impatient.

Radon continued his explanation, The permit is referring to urania, also called yellowcake, a leached form of uraninite. Y'know, uranium dioxide. The source of uranium for atom bombs and nuclear power plants. It's found in the Chinle Formation in these parts. Radon pointed northeast along the long ridge toward Utah, only ten miles away.

No, I don't know all this chemistry and geology you're talking about, Officer Nezbah said. But I do know about the uranium mines around here. And that they are off limits! So, you're gunna hav'ta wait until I call this in. Stay right there.

Radon leaned against the front fender of his silver pickup. He had named it the silver bullet after the Coors Light can. It had a silver camper shell. The Navajo cop slid inside his four-by-four SUV with the emblem of the Navajo Nation Police on the door. The door slammed shut.

Notah Nezbah was a small young guy with a buzz haircut like Radon's. His black leather belt was heavy with the weight of his holstered Glock, spare ammo, and handcuffs. His weighty hardware compensated for his stature. His skin was the color of a cinnamon stick. His khaki uniform had a military press with vertical creases so sharp they could cut a finger. He grabbed the microphone and spoke on the radio.

Radon could not hear him talk. Nezbah returned shortly.

My lieutenant told me to verify that the yellow rock is orpiment. Let me see the receipt, Officer Nezbah said.

Yes Sir, gladly. Radon rummaged around the front passenger seat of the silver bullet and found the plastic bag from the Holbrook rock shop on the floor, passenger side. The short register tape was still inside.

Officer Nezbah examined the receipt. Satisfied, he handed the paper back.

Radon said, I guess that was the quicker way to verify orpiment—licking it and waiting to die would take too long. He grinned sheepishly.

Radon's lame attempt at humor resulted in the subtlest of responses: a sudden and almost imperceptible tightening of his lips. A fleeting smile.

Notah Nezbah examined Radon's driver license. You're from Safford, huh?

Yes. I drove up here yesterday after I got the permits in Window Rock to collect rocks and to camp out.

Your first name reminds me of a gas that we look out for in underground mines, Nezbah said.

Yes, I was a science geek at a young age—especially because of the Periodic Table. My given names are Raymond Donald. I shortened them to match the homophone of the eighty-sixth element, radon. And the gas, radon, is a daughter product of the radioactive decay of uranium.

Ah, that makes sense, he said without further comment on the subject. He examined the document from Window Rock. Your permit, here, says you can camp out five days near the Comb Ridge, Officer Nezbah said. Do you plan to stay here all that time?

No. Tomorrow I plan to explore Moses Rock Dike, just southeast of Mexican Hat, Utah, Radon said, pointing in the direction northward toward the floor of Monument Valley. He could actually identify his destination in the distance because the visibility was so good on this cool, clear winter day in January, 2017. From this lofty perch on the ridge he could see mountains on the horizon eighty miles away.

Well, in that case, I'll probably be seeing you and your truck again this week, Nezbah said. "My patrol extends southwest on Route 160 to Kayenta and then northeast to Mexican Hat on Route 163. The Navajo Nation covers twenty-seven thousand square miles in northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico, as well as southeast Utah. It's bigger than a lota states.

Wow. Big footprint. And Window Rock is the Capital, right?

Yes, Nezbah said. We call it 'Tségháhoodzání.'

I see. That's hard to pronounce. Where do you live?

Kayenta. That's 'Tó Dinéeshzheeʼ' in Navajo.

How you say 'thank you' in Navajo?

Ahéhee', Nezbah said.

And 'goodbye'?

Hágoónee'.

Ahéhee', Hágoónee', Radon said with a slight stammer. He parroted the phonetics as best he could.

Lá'aa, hágoónee', Notah Nezbah responded and handed the official Navajo document and Arizona driver license back to Radon.

Radon offered his hand. They shook hands and Radon said, It was a pleasure to meet you. I hope to see you again.

Notah Nezbah smiled briefly and gave Radon a reserved nod. Then he mounted his Chevy Tahoe and kicked up a cloud of dust as he resumed his patrol.

Radon considered the Navajo language as a new challenge. He relished the thought of learning a few phrases and understanding basic Navajo syntax. But he admitted to himself that the words were hard to pronounce. Radon wondered why the response to goodbye was two words.

Then he ruminated on the significance of the confrontation with a policeman of the Navajo Nation. At first Radon thought that the Navajo cop was set on rousting him off Navajo land and busting him for possessing a yellow rock. He was clearly prepared to arrest Radon. At first his attitude seemed pugnacious, almost belligerent. But after Radon's story was clarified and he vetted the official permit, Officer Nezbah softened a smidgen. Perhaps Radon's interest in learning Navajo words had helped soften his hostile demeanor. Maybe it took any Navajo time to gain the trust of an outsider. After all, Radon was a stranger in this strange nation, the size of a small state that would rank forty-first in the USA sizewise. The Nation spans portions of three bona fide states. And here inside the fourth largest country on the planet sprawls this Navajo Nation with its own capital, language, and police force—with policemen carrying handguns and enforcing laws of their own making.

But why on Earth is there so much conflict? Radon still harbored a naive notion that science should trump any petty regulation about paying for permission to collect rocks for research. But the USA prohibits taking rocks from National Parks. And the Navajo Nation is equally protective of their uranium ore, but allow anybody to collect mantle xenoliths for fifty bucks. Charging non-Native-American citizens for camping in the desert of the Colorado Plateau is like levying a tax on the outsiders—another fifty bucks. Was it reparation for bad deeds non-Native-Americans did to the Navajo in the past? To Radon it was a Whatever you say moment. Pay the dues and keep quiet about them. Radon did not abide politics.

‡

The reason for a retired geologist to resume fieldwork was motivated by a different kind of conflict: scientific challenge. In early December, 2016, Radon Schneider and Richard Dunbar were at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The AGU invited them there to present a series of lectures on the meteorite that they had discovered in the desert of eastern Arizona. The meteorite was from Mars, like so many others found of Earth, but what made it a milestone of scientific discovery was that it contained DNA evidence of life on Mars. Radon and Richard gave public lectures explaining the details of their discovery, both geological and biological.

Radon and Richard, geological colleagues and close friends, also listened to lectures in other fields of study, including the section of the program on the topics of geochemistry (Earth chemistry), petrology (study of rocks) and volcanology (study of volcanoes). One talk in particular piqued Radon's interest. The speaker was Doctor Jerry MacPherson, a professor from the University of Southern California. He presented his study of the mineralogy and geochemistry of garnet-bearing ultramafic (ultra-rich in magnesium and iron) xenoliths from the mantle. He collected those xenoliths from volcanoes in the San Francisco Volcanic Field near Flagstaff, Arizona. He concluded that a hot spot in the mantle, a mushroom-shaped plume of exceptionally hot magma, created the grouping of volcanoes beginning six million years ago. Furthermore, the USC prof proposed that it was this expanding dome of hot mantle that gently uplifted the Colorado Plateau to its present elevation of approximately six thousand feet above sea level. That uplift resulted in the Colorado River carving the Grand Canyon.

Radon had been so unsettled that he bolted up to his feet to ask a question during the customary post-talk questions and answers session: Didn't the subduction of the Farallon Plate have something to do with the uplift of the Colorado Plateau?

Doctor MacPherson spoke sonorously and condescendingly, I believe that the Farallon Plate plunged deeply beneath the North American continent. Then it was assimilated into the mantle not far east of the roots of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Radon spoke again, Did you find any eclogite xenoliths?

No. The host magma in the volcanoes was far too hot. In fact, the mantle hot spot that I'm proposing would have melted the oceanic crust before it had gone underneath the whole of Nevada. After all, it's nearly one thousand miles from the subduction zone west of California to the eastern limit of the Plateau, he said slowly.

Radon had sat down with a disgusted Humph. He turned to Richard and said, "His entire premise is based on high-temperature ultramafic xenoliths derived from primitive mantle. He should have been looking for mafic (rich, but not ultrarich, in magnesium and iron) xenoliths instead. Mafic basalt from the oceanic crust transforms into mafic eclogite under the pressures and temperatures found in the mantle. He would change his theory if only he had found eclogite xenoliths."

Where could you find some? Richard had asked.

In diatremes in the middle of the Colorado Plateau. And I'm gunna find eclogite xenoliths to prove this USC theory wrong.

Richard had smiled and said enthusiastically, Go get 'em, Tiger! Do ya know what I think USC stands for?

No. Tell me.

University of Second Choice!

Chapter 2

Confrontations, awkward situations, crises, and conflicts. Life is full of them. One after the other. Radon was on a quest to disprove another geologist—that was a type of academic conflict. At the same time he had to explain his way out of a regulatory conflict with Officer Notah Nezbah. Shit happens. Always!

Sometimes Radon pictured the human condition as a series of challenges. He imagined life figuratively as a fastidious clean freak would or an obsessive-compulsive germophobe would. Someone who always kept his skin clean. He would use antibacterial soap and would scrub his skin from head to toe every day. Every square inch.

Like Howard Hughes did. Scrub those hands with plenty of soap. Squirt on the hand sanitizer. Decline to shake hands. Use a handkerchief to turn a doorknob.

But still a person would usually eat three meals a day, for fuel and nourishment. Food stoked the fire that keeps the body working. Food helped to repair injuries and to rebuild lost cells. Eventually his gut would get full. All the energy and restorative nutrients had been absorbed from the food in the intestines. What remained in his colon was just solid waste. Then he would eat another meal, and the inevitable happened. Evacuation: defecation. Bowel movement. Bacteria-laden waste would contact his skin. His skin was contaminated. Conflict!

He would wipe himself clean as possible, but he would repeat his antibacterial scrubbing once again, knowing full well that it would just happen again tomorrow and the next day. No matter how anal he was, the inevitable would happen.

That was the human condition: Shit Happens. Just get used to it. Wipe. Pull your jeans up, zip your fly, and buckle your belt. And bathe every day.

Such a vulgar expression that was: Shit Happens. A more euphemistic wording of the idiom could be the unforeseen awfulness occurs, or defecation is inevitable, feces befalls all, or excrement extrudes, dung passes, poopoo persists, or caca comes.

No matter how humiliating, awkward, or painful, or expensive, people just got through the conflicts and tribulations of life. Every day. Caca comes! In one form or another, it always happened, and it's unpredictable. Shit Happens was a Forrest Gumpism, like Life is like a box of chocolates ...

Nothing remained the same for long. Despite planning for a blissful future when all is good, the monkey wrench got thrown in, Murphy's Law prevailed, and Pandora's Box was opened.

Things usually got worse. Cars needed repairs. Houses needed painting. Tortilla chips got stale. Wine turned to vinegar. People made mistakes. After all they were only human. Accidents happened. Relationships ran their courses and eventually went sour. And then you died.

Radon was not surprised at his recent conflicts.

Caca comes. Always.

Chapter 3

Back in November 2016, Melissa Hollister was driving her old white, had four-wheel drive Jeep Grand Cherokee. Her father, Jimbo, had bought it for her used, ten years old at the time. An auto mechanic by trade in Payson, Jimbo made sure the Jeep was well maintained.

Their home was amateur-built, not up to code, and utilized many unorthodox building materials. The south-facing wall of the living room was constructed of green and clear wine bottles oriented horizontally in a matrix of many batches of quick-dry cement. In the midday sunlight it looked like a stained glass window. Green and white dots lit the room. Jimbo was proud of his creation.

Melissa and Jimbo lived alone, off the grid, just beneath the Mogollon Rim in central Arizona, ten miles north of Payson. Melissa's mother had died of cirrhosis of the liver when Melissa, an only child, was twelve. That's when Jimbo left Payson, moved north ten miles and took Melissa out of the public school system. Since then Melissa was home-schooled. Jimbo, Oklahoma born and raised, was not a well-educated man himself, but he took on the task of teaching his daughter. His strengths were in how things worked, especially cars, in physical education and in working hard. His weaknesses were in American history, world history, civics, geography, mathematics, science, typing, expository writing, spelling, English, literature, music, computers, and foreign languages. And first aid. All are parts of a standard curriculum in high school.

At age eighteen Melissa Hollister was a striking: pert, short. She was no more than five feet four inches with shoes on. Her brown hair was squared off below the ears. Without bangs she frequently and subconsciously swept both hands across the sides of her head and behind her ears to keep the hair out of her eyes. She cut her hair by herself. It showed. Ends were uneven and split.

She had a slender athletic build with a narrow waist, petite breasts, and flared hips. Her thighs were substantial from running and hiking. In the cool months she mostly liked wearing tight, black, stretchy tops with black, baggy, knee-length shorts. She always remained sans makeup.

Sitting beside Melissa in her Jeep that November morning was Spencer Barkdale, a fugitive wanted by the FBI for multiple crimes, the worst of which was the killing of eleven people in the bombings of the three bridges over the Colorado River along the interstate freeways between Arizona and California—I-8 in Yuma, I-10 near Blythe, and I-40 near Needles. It was an act of domestic terrorism. That had happened just two months before, in September.

‡

But earlier in November, at a hidden encampment in the Rim Country just ten miles north of Payson, Arizona, a civilian consultant to the FBI had opened fire with a sniper rifle on the three Barkdale brothers and their three accomplices. This occurred at night as the six domestic terrorists were preparing to leave, intending to bomb another bridge across the Colorado River near the Hoover Dam. After the shots from the sniper rifle all six vehicles belonging to the six men were immobilized with flat tires. A seventh vehicle, a big old Winnebago camper, was undamaged. The lone sniper also set propane tanks ablaze. One of the Barkdale bothers, Wesley, the leader of the pack, shot the civilian consultant in the left shoulder with his hunting rifle. The consultant returned fire with the sniper rifle and shot Wesley Barkdale in the left foot. After a flurry of pistol fire from the encampment the consultant wounded another Barkdale bother, Marty, in the left foot with his Glock pistol. The consultant exchanged handgun fire with Spencer Barkdale in the dark, managing to wound Spencer in the face and before making a speedy escape.

Spencer made his escape by helping an accomplice change tires of his vehicle and getting dropped off near Hollister's house. Spencer had been dating Melissa since the spring when they happened to meet on the slopes of the Mogollon Rim, both searching for fossils of trilobites.

The accomplice, Spencer's partner and college buddy, was pulled over and arrested within a mile after dropping off Spencer. A Gila County Deputy Sheriff took him to the slammer in Payson. He didn't squeal on Spencer.

Of the remaining two accomplices the FBI team shot and killed one and arrested the last one who stayed behind with the two wounded Barkdales. The FBI team transported the wounded Barkdale brothers to the hospital with GSWs to their left feet. Only Spencer Barkdale escaped.

‡

Jimbo Hollister and his daughter, Melissa, were horrified when they saw Spencer's wounded face and bloody shirt. He still wore his familiar Houston Astros cap. The facial wound was a bloody furrow that extended from the left corner of his mouth to the jaw-line just below the left ear. He had been such a handsome and clean-shaven