Linnie Greene
Diplodocus
Damon and I climb through the womb of the dinosaur and up to its teeth, where we can see the tawny mountains and a Valero selling gas for $3.60. We’re between gigs, driving from Oregon down to Fresno, and the adventure has gone sour. I choose Ojai because it has a whiff of the spiritual, and because this tourist trap is just off the highway outside town. You can climb into the plexiglass beast with the purchase of a soda from the minimart next door. Kids under 6 go free.
He passes me a vape pen full of mids and we smoke, staring wistfully. The desert air is pleasant until it’s choked off by the funnel of the creature’s neck. Perched in the head, we have to aim our exhalations out each giant nostril. This is as close as we get to the $300-a-night hotels and meals we can’t afford, realizing we have strayed into a place that would not have us. If Damon had chosen, we’d be somewhere else—the sure thing of a Walmart parking lot, the anonymity of some gravel road. The sky is extra lavender, forest-fire particles refracting the light. He has a diamond tattooed at the outer corner of his eye. It doesn’t glint in the fading sunlight. I know his face no way but embellished.
“Used to could name every single one of these,” he says through a clot of vapor. “Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Diplodocus, all them fuckers.”
“You were that kind of kid?” It’s almost impossible to think of him as small, but I try: needful, hands covered in jam. Does his mother think of him as an earlier self, scarless and pale, strawberry blonde, milk-fed? Afraid of a cartoon bat, averse to tuna salad, excited by the junkyard dogs lunging at the fence? Does she have time to remember these things? Does she permit herself? In absence, his father does not exist, and has no load to carry, just like mine.
Last month I got pregnant and we stopped at two places on the way through Colorado. Before I figured out the ruse, all my extra pregnancy blood rushing to my cheeks, I sat down with a lady in a leaf-print dress while he played Pokémon Go in the strip mall parking lot. As she closed the blinds, I saw him move from the Dollar Tree to a parked minivan in pursuit of monsters.
“We’re glad you’re here,” she said, speaking for herself and the Lord. Presumptuous to assume His will. God is mercurial, a tricky bitch. My religion is superstition, flat tires and road closures as omens, but I sampled Vacation Bible Schools countywide when mom couldn’t find a sitter. At the clinic, I listened dutifully to the choices ahead, laid out for me as a map any idiot could follow. God made dinosaurs on day six, according to a picture book on the counter.
The woman said we could sell the van, put down a deposit on a rental somewhere in Colorado Springs. She made life sound abundant. I might have believed her on a better night’s sleep, with more money in the glove compartment; I used to tell myself a story that this was pure adventure, the prelude to something better and not the end itself.
“Still here,” I said when I came out. He’s a sure thing, certain to wear us both down to our tread. A spendthrift and a cheapskate, poor in everything but schemes. I was drawn to his big ideas because mine were small, daydreams that began and ended in a picture frame, beach sunsets and namebrand appliances. Now I haven’t got any. He looked surprised that I was power-walking toward the Sprinter. We drove a ways and then I got right back on Google to search again.
It got sorted. There were mammoth churches dotting the highway from Boulder to Las Vegas, but even here you could find real doctors.
“What kind of kid were you?” he asks, and I can tell it’s to be nice. It’s to keep the journey smooth, eight months and hundreds of miles from the time he slept on someone’s couch and we stayed up the night of the party in the backyard, away from everyone, just the two of us smoking until sunrise. He offered me a ride that afternoon, then when the van broke down in Kansas City I spent the rest of my Shoney’s money to bring it back to life. I only have scraps of his past, and I’ve been just as stingy with mine. It’s a Tuesday evening and the valley is quiet, turning purple. I could stay here, I think. I could be part of this dirt.
“I don’t know.” An old wood-paneled station wagon; food coupons at the Pic-N-Pay like green raffle tickets; mom and her friends crowded around the TV, ice clinking in their tumblers; bleach fumes; the burgundy walls of a bedroom brother painted. Sighs, everyone sighing and tired.
“Horses,” I say. “Horses and cowboys.” No matter that I never sat astride one, only briefly imagined that I might ride off into some valley after a spate of grainy movies watched on a rainy Saturday in a house crowded with other children. The closest I’ve come is riding this dinosaur in the sky.
We hear footsteps coming up the metal staircase. He pockets the cartridge and fans the air feebly with one hand.
“We’re closing up,” a man in a uniform says. He looks at us like everyone does, and I know why. We never smile with our poor, crooked teeth.
We follow him down into the twilight, out of the tail, and there is the van, parked and covered in the funk of the road. He turns the key in the engine and I smell the fuel, the liquefied past.