Lydia Blankenship: So you two went in this cave and came out with a sample of the mold?
Delaney Doyle: Bunch of different samples, yeah. To test. See which worked.
Lydia Blankenship: Talk about that.
Delaney Doyle: I’m, um, sorry. So I used to hang around in the science lab at my school, and my science teacher, Mr. Hotchkiss, would let me come in and use the lab. Our school doesn’t have much money, so he used his own money to buy a good microscope.
Lydia Blankenship: I went to public school in a town of five thousand in Tennessee, and that sounds familiar.
Delaney Doyle: Yeah. It sucks. So Mr. Hotchkiss got me some petri dishes and helped me get some bacteria samples. I started testing the mold on bacteria, and I saw that the mold was killing every bacterium it came into contact with. I even tested it on some MRSA, and it worked.
Lydia Blankenship: For our listeners who may not know, MRSA is a dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. How did you get a sample of MRSA?
Delaney Doyle: I probably shouldn’t tell. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble.
Lydia Blankenship: We’ll move on. Now, how did Dr. Srinavasan enter the picture?
Delaney Doyle: I googled scientists who study antibiotic-resistant bacteria and emailed them. Dr. Srinavasan was the only one who responded. She’s at Vanderbilt, which is only a few hours away. Good luck, I guess. So Cash drove me and my samples and the records I made to meet with her. A few days later, she sent a couple of grad students to Sawyer to collect more samples and bring them back…Sorry, hang on a sec…Okay, thanks. Sorry, I’m at work.
Lydia Blankenship: Where is work?
Delaney Doyle: Dairy Queen.
Lydia Blankenship: Does Dairy Queen have any idea that one of their employees made one of the major scientific finds of the decade?
Delaney Doyle: I think so, because when I clock in, I’m the only one they make wash my hands twice.
Lydia Blankenship: [Laughter] We’ll let you get back to work, but one more question: Dr. Srinavasan told us the name she gave this miraculous new mold, but we’d like to hear it from you too.
Delaney Doyle: Penicillium delanum.
Lydia Blankenship: I can hear you smiling even over the phone.
Delaney Doyle: [Laughter] I am.
Lydia Blankenship: Delaney, on behalf of young women everywhere, and especially young women from small towns in Tennessee, thank you and keep up the great work.
Delaney Doyle: Thanks, I will.
It’s a lie that water is odorless. Water smells like water. The way wind smells like wind and dirt smells like dirt.
The mossy, metallic fragrance of the river wafts around us in the syrupy humidity, mixing with the flinty scent of wet stone and the yeasty tang of mud. The sun bakes the river water into our clothes, making them stiff, and onto our skin, leaving a taut film that feels like dried tears.
Delaney reclines gingerly on the fallen log where we sit. She shields her eyes against the late afternoon brightness. “I don’t think a dog qualifies as a critter.”
“Course it does,” I say. “When’d you put on sunscreen last?”
“Doesn’t. And I forget.”
I toss her the bottle. “You’ll burn. Why doesn’t it?”
“Because a domesticated animal can’t be a critter.” She shakes the bottle of Dollar General brand sunscreen and blats out the last few dregs into her palm, then slops it on her face, neck, and arms.
“Says who? Any animal can be a critter. Come here,” I say. She scoots closer and I rub the sunscreen in where she missed.
“Would you call a cow a critter?” she asks.
“Maybe.”
“Bullshit. Is a whale a critter? Say the sentence ‘A whale is a critter’ out loud. See how dumb you sound.”
I smile, knowing I’ve walked right into Delaney’s trap. She always wins our debates.
She props herself up on her elbows and pushes at my thigh with a muddy toe. “Huh? I see your guilty little grin.” Few people see this teasing, playful side of Delaney.
I grab for her toe but she jerks it away. “Whales aren’t domesticated,” I say.
“Still not critters.”
“Let’s look up the definition in the dictionary.”
“Waste of time, because either it’ll agree with me or it’ll be wrong.”
“Then you define critter.”
She lies back down, resting her forearm over her eyes, dangling one foot off the edge of the log. “A critter is a nondomesticated animal that weighs under twenty-five pounds.” She says it with finality and certainty. Another piece of the natural world understood and catalogued—her never-ending quest.
I pull one knee up to my chest and hug it. “So that’s it, then.”
“That’s it. Possums and raccoons are critters. House cats aren’t.”
She’s right. It makes perfect sense. And I would definitely rather be wrestling over this than the topic we could be debating but haven’t broached yet today.
Delaney pulls out her phone, kept securely in a sandwich bag, and starts typing as if texting. I know it’s more likely she’s recording some observation or writing down a question to research later. We let minutes drip past and listen to the burble of the river. Insects dance just above the surface of the water, catching the sunlight like tiny flecks of gold. We’re on a small island in the river, where it flows through Sawyer. Not far from us is a bridge to downtown. Cars hum by occasionally.
I lie back on the sun-warm log. There are days when your heart is so filled with this world’s beauty, it feels like holding too much of something in your hand. Days that taste like wild honey. This is one of them.
When you grow up with ugliness and corruption, you surrender to beauty whenever and wherever you find it. You let it save you, if only for the time it takes for a snowflake to melt on your tongue or for the sun to sink below the horizon in a wildfire of clouds. No matter what else might be troubling your mind. You recognize it for something that can’t be taken from you. Something that can’t die with its back against a door, shutting you out in its final act.
This is all I ever need. Nothing more.
But in this reverie, there’s space for the Unwanted Conversation to slip in. I fill the silence with a diversion, taking a page from Papaw’s book. “Tell me something I don’t know.”