Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner

by Lisa Wingate

  Gertie had control issues. She liked to stay right on course, no side trips. Normally, we got along very well.

  She quieted as we pulled onto the two-lane. I pictured her inside the dashboard like I Dream of Jeannie in a prim gray business suit, hair in a tight French twist. Right now she was mopping her forehead, saying, Whew, that was a close one. For a minute there, I thought she was going to stop and pick flowers… .

  Gertie went into snooze mode as we wound along the old two-lane highway, slipping through the gnarled fingers of overhanging live oaks, past roadside pastures vibrant with wildflowers and crystal-clear streams still swollen from spring rains. The rhythm of the road and the melody of sunlight and shadow soothed my mind, and I found myself letting out a long breath, taking in another, breathing out again, feeling drowsy as the miles passed.

  Gertie must have sensed it, because she spoke up eventually, guiding me through a bypass of Killeen, near a few vague signs of civilization, a metal fabrications shop, a giant red barn with a cross on the top that said COWBOY CHURCH, a sports complex where golfers were whacking balls on the driving range and Little Leaguers were perfecting their swings in the batting cages. After that, civilization faded away again, and Gertie ran out of things to say.

  I fell into the rhythm of the road, not thinking for a change, just driving and breathing in air, scented with growing things and damp spring earth, as another fifty miles drifted by. It was good to be far from home, beyond the boundaries of the museum and our apartment in downtown Denver. Here, the countryside was foreign, empty, distinctly Southwestern. Lacy mesquite trees waved lazily as I drove by, and spiny yucca plants stood at attention, their white plumes thrust into the air like the banners of the Spanish explorers who once traveled these rambling hills.

  I passed a ranch where a herd of horses grazed peacefully, now and then raising their heads and flicking their ears, instinctively alert for danger. I slowed to look at them, black, blond, brunette, gray. Sydney would have known the technical terms for those colors. I would be sure to tell her about them tonight in my e-mail. She loved horses, even though I was terrified of them. If she could have found a way to smuggle one into our apartment, she would have.As it was, she had to settle for a guinea pig and a goldfish, which were staying over with one of her school friends for the summer, because she didn’t trust me to feed them. “I’m not trying to be mean, Mom,” she had said. “But you’re not an animal person. I think they can tell you put together bones and stuff for a living.”

  Slowing a little more, I studied the horse herd, memorizing the details so that I could impress my animal-crazy daughter. She would never believe—

  The horses raised their heads and started suddenly, and a blur of movement flashed past the corner of my eye. I turned back to the road just in time to see something large and white bolt into my path and stop directly in front of me. My heart rocketed into my throat, exploding like a bomb. Grabbing the steering wheel with both hands, I slammed on the brakes. The Jeep squealed and fishtailed as I spun the wheel left, then right, struggling to keep the car on the road, trying to make out the hairy white object ahead. Sheep? Pony?

  The car wasn’t going to stop in time. Closing my eyes, I braced for the impact as the SUV slid sideways, then started to spin. The steering wheel vibrated wildly in my hands, and I hung on as the force threw me against my seat belt, then back into the seat.

  Please don’t let it roll… .

  Thank God Sydney’s not in the car… .

  I imagined her being raised by her father and Whitney.

  No!

  It’s going to hit now… .

  The SUV came to a stop and everything was silent. The spin was over as quickly as it began. I opened my eyes, shaking, my pulse booming like a bass drum. The Jeep had done a complete three-sixty, so that it was facing forward again. In the correct lane. Idling just like nothing had happened. In the road, not more than two feet from my bumper, just now turning its head and noticing me, was a huge, hairy, white … dog?

  Parting his massive jaws, he hung his tongue out, wagging his tail casually, completely unaware of what had almost happened.

  “What in the … ?”

  In the dash, Gertie came to life. “Proceed seven miles on Highway 190,” she said, apparently neither confused nor affected by the wild spin, just frustrated with the unauthorized stop. “Proceed seven miles on Highway 190,” she said again. Ding, ding, ding. Apparently, she couldn’t see the enormous dog in the road, though, at his size, he should have been clearly visible from any orbiting satellite.

  Sticking my head out the window, I looked up and down the road. No cars. No one. No ranch house visible anywhere. The dog had apparently escaped from somewhere, because he was dragging a length of chewed-off rope.

  “Shoo!” I hollered.

  He promptly sat down in the road and scrubbed his long, furry tail back and forth against the pavement.

  “Shoo!” I hollered again. “Shoo! Scat! Get off the road, you idiot.”

  Inching the car forward, I honked the horn, backed up, and pretended to make a run at him. No reaction. I pulled alongside, waving my hands madly out the window to chase him off the road before he got killed or caused another accident.

  He only lolled out his tongue, long and pink, dripping slobber between enormous canines perfect for making a quick snack of tourists foolish enough to exit their cars.

  “Get out of the road, you big, stupid dog!” I screamed, honking the horn.

  The mat of weeds and loose hair on his head shifted upward, then back down like a giant, overgrown eyebrow. There were probably eyes in there somewhere, and behind that a brain that was saying, Just a little longer … here she comes … she’ll get out of the car, and then … lunch.

  “I don’t believe this!” I muttered, clamping my hands over my eyes, then bolting them to the sides of my head, looking around the car for a weapon, something to scare him with, maybe one of those long poles they used to catch wild crocodiles on TV.

  I ended up with a fold-up umbrella and a stadium seat. Hitting the hazard lights, I opened the car door a crack.

  Gertie went crazy. Ding, ding, ding. “Door ajar. Proceed on highway… .” I left her there, talking to herself.

  Inching forward, one step, two, three, I moved around the side of the car, holding the stadium seat and the umbrella like a toreador advancing on a wild bull. The bull only cocked his woolly white head to one side and looked at me, unconcerned, yawning with a bite radius the size of my thigh.

  That was definitely the biggest dog I’d ever seen. He stared at me from almost chest level. Covered with pounds and pounds of thick, dirty white hair, he looked like something from Star Wars. The wookiee.

  “Shoo! Ha! Scat!” I screeched, sounding, I thought, fairly fierce.

  The dog stuck his head forward and let out a huge, baritone noise … something between a bark and a growl … a sound completely unlike anything I’d ever heard a dog make. It echoed against the rim of rocky hills that surrounded the highway.

  “Geez!” I jumped back, and the wookiee stood up, barking at me three more times.

  “Ooooh, gosh.” I started backing toward the car, muttering, “Good job, Lindsey. Really smart. You’re going to get eaten by a gigantic white dog in the middle of nowhere… .”

  In the car, Gertie piped up again, “Door ajar. Proceed …”

  The dog turned his attention to the car, bounding back and forth in front of the headlights, sending out a deafening series of raspy barks. When he finally stopped, I heard a sudden clatter on the road. I turned around just in time to see a cowboy on horseback come running through a break in the barbed-wire fence and gallop toward me.

  Thank God! The beast had an owner, and there he was.

  The cowboy skidded to a stop on the roadside, sending up a shower of flying gravel and waving his hand urgently with a lasso in it. “Lady, is that your dog?”

  “What … ? My …” I glanced toward the dog, which had left the road and
disappeared around the side of my car. The rope slid past the tire like a snake. “I was just trying to get him off the—”

  Jumping sideways, the horse spun around in the ditch, flinging specks of foamy white lather in all directions. “Whoa, idjut!” the cowboy hollered, bringing the nervous animal under control, so that it stood stomping and trembling. Ears flicking back and forth, it snorted at the rope slithering past my car. “Listen, if that’s your dog, you better git him outa here, because he’s fixin’ to git shot.”

  “He’s not my …” I felt a wet nose on the small of my back, hot breath seeping through my T-shirt. Oh, God …

  I stood very still, the umbrella and the stadium chair dangling at my sides, my arms like overcooked noodles. The dog rubbed his head against me, knocking me sideways into the open door of the Jeep. Bracing his feet on the door frame, the dog climbed halfway in and tried to kiss me. I smelled old sneakers and tuna fish.

  “Get down!” I pushed him away with more command than I thought I could muster. Rejected, he cowered in the doorway, pinning my leg against the seat as the cowboy forced his horse a few steps closer. “He isn’t mine,” I insisted, as the odor of swamp water crowded my nose, flipping the wad of half-digested grits in my stomach.

  “Well, then he’s fixin’ to git kilt.” Pushing his hat back, the cowboy wiped his forehead with his sleeve. I realized he was younger than I’d originally thought. Twenty-one, twenty-two, maybe, baby-faced despite a pathetic attempt at a mustache. He didn’t look like the type to do something so heinous as shoot a helpless animal.

  I felt the need to defend the dog. “Listen, you can’t—”

  Pointing a finger, the cowboy cut me off impatiently. “That dog just run two hundred head a’ cattle through the fence. He’s been causin’ trouble around here for a solid month. The boss is gonna shoot him this time and take care of it for good.”

  THREE

  IGAPED AT THE COWBOY. AGAINST MY KNEE, THE DOG WHIMPERED. The mother in me, the soft, tender part that yearned to protect little people and big stray dogs, rose up and leaned menacingly out the door. “You are not going to shoot this dog.”

  The cowboy glanced over his shoulder in a guilty way that told me he didn’t want to shoot the dog. “Lady, as soon as the boss lays eyes on that dog, it’s dead. We got tore-up cattle and a half mile of downed fence over there.” He winced, his eyes beseeching me. “You sure he ain’t yours?”

  “Well, he’s somebody’s.” I motioned to the animal, now pressed so tightly against my leg that my foot was going numb on the door frame. “You can’t shoot him. He’s obviously somebody’s pet. I’m sure they want him back.”

  “Doubt it.” Dismounting, he tied his horse to a fence post, then came back, gesturing with the lasso still coiled in his hand. “That thing’s part Great Pyrenees. Them kind ain’t supposed to be pets. They’re supposed to live out with the sheep to keep predators away. They’re raised with the herd and mostly they don’t like people, but every once in a while, you git a dud that won’t stay in the sheep pasture. This one’s a dud, I reckon. Either wandered off or somebody dumped him. He’s been hangin’ around the area awhile raidin’ trash cans and causing trouble. Then today he took up chasin’ cows.” Glancing over his shoulder at the ruined fence, he gave the dog a disgusted look. “If you don’t want him to git shot, you better load him up and git him outa here.”

  “I can’t …” I stammered. “I don’t … don’t live here. I don’t have anywhere to take a giant … dog.”

  “Listen.” He raised his hands, pleading, looking at the dog and then me. “You’re only a few miles from San Saline. My mama runs the Hawthorne House Bed-and-Breakfast there. If you don’t want him, drop him off there. Tell her Jimmy sent you. She’s always takin’ in stray animals and finding homes for ’em.”

  The dog laid his woolly head on my thigh, gazing hopefully upward. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. All right,” I heard myself say. What was I thinking? “Back up, OK. He’s afraid of you and he won’t get off my leg.”

  The cowboy, Jimmy, walked up the road a few steps, his spurs jingling against the asphalt. “You better hurry up and git him loaded. Boss is gonna be comin’ any second.”

  “Just give me a minute. You’re scaring him.” Pushing the button to open the back hatch, I grabbed a huge handful of matted neck hair, pushed the dog off my leg, and slid to my feet. This had to be one of the stupidest things I’d ever done. “Come on, boy,” I urged as the stadium seat toppled from the floorboard and clattered against the pavement. The dog responded by compacting me against the side of the Jeep, while eyeing the folding chair warily, so that all I could do was inch sideways along the car, my rear end wiping a clean streak in the dust of three states.

  When we got to the back, I patted the empty space next to my suitcase, saying, “Come on, boy. Come on.”

  Cocking his head to one side, the dog perked his ears and wagged his long tail at my singsong, friend-to-animals voice. “Get in the car. Come on.” Still no progress. “The mean cowboy men are going to shoot you. Get in the car.”

  Gertie started talking in the dash, and the dog let out a deafening series of barks. The cowboy hollered, “Lady! Here comes the boss!” His spurs jingled as he ran through the ditch to his horse. Peeking around the side of the Jeep, I saw three riders galloping up the fence line, coming straight toward us, no doubt following the barking.

  I developed sudden superhuman strength. Wrapping my arms around the massive animal, I lifted. “You’re”—front end in, stiff-legged, claws digging furrows in the carpet—“going”—arms around the back end, and lift—“in”—ooof!—“here”—brace shoulder, shove—“darn it!” Grab hatch, shut quick.

  “There,” I breathed, wiping my forehead, then striding forward to meet the boss before he could see inside my vehicle.

  “… took off,” Jimmy Hawthorne was doing a very poor job of lying to his employer, while waving vaguely toward the hills. “Over there someplace, I think. This lady durned near run him over. Scared him away. Don’t think he’ll stop runnin’ for a while.”

  The boss swiveled slowly in his saddle, so that instead of looking at the hills, he was looking at Jimmy, then at me, our bodies reflecting off his sunglasses like figures in a funhouse mirror. His lips, made stern by the glasses and the square line of his chin, straightened into a thoughtful frown beneath the shadow of his cowboy hat. There was something familiar about the expression, but I couldn’t decide what.

  “He’s probably all the way to Lampasas County by now,” Jimmy added, his voice a little too quick, too high-pitched. He sounded like a teenager who’d just been caught ditching class.

  “That so,” the boss replied. It was neither a statement nor a question.

  I nodded, motioning vaguely over my shoulder. “I was looking at the horses, and the next thing I knew there was this huge dog in the road. I hit the brakes, and somehow I missed him.” All true. Just not all of the truth.

  The boss scratched beside his ear, then pulled off his sunglasses. His eyes were surprisingly bright against his dark skin. Surveying the round-robin skid marks on the road, he rested an elbow on his saddle and leaned closer to me. “You’re lucky that Jeep didn’t roll.”

  “Boy, is that the truth. I thought it was going to for a minute. It all happened so fast,” I babbled, suddenly nervous. The intensity of his regard was unsettling. If he hadn’t been a dog hater, he would have been … well … good-looking, in a rugged sort of way.

  “Bet that shook you up a little bit,” he commented with apparent concern. His gaze shifted past me to something else.

  “You have no idea.”

  Lips parting slightly, he clicked his tongue against even white teeth. “Guess that’s how you left your door open, and the dog got in your car.”

  Jerking back, I glanced over my shoulder. The dog was … climbing into the passenger seat, a huge mass of white hair squeezing past the console, filling the front of the Jeep, turning around and around in the cramped spa
ce before finally stopping. He was looking at us, I thought, but at this distance, it was hard to tell one end from the other.

  The boss gave his cowpoke a scathing glance, as did the two men behind him. “Jimmy, you want to tell me what the heck’s going on?”

  Jimmy’s gaze darted back and forth, like those of a rat in a trap. “I didn’t … It was … She …” He raised a hand, lowered it, then raised it again and pointed at me. “It’s her dog.”

  “It’s not my dog.” I had a fleeting vision of having to pay for two hundred cows and miles of fencing. Bracing my hands on my hips, I straightened my shoulders, suddenly feeling like my old self. The self who could handle pushy museum patrons, dishonest customs officials, and smart-mouthed high school kids on field trips. The self who wouldn’t let anything happen to a helpless dog, even if he was chewing on my dashboard. “Listen, mister, you are not going to do anything to that poor dog.”

  The boss drew back, craning his neck. “That poor dog just chased two hundred cows through a half mile of barbed wire fence.”

  “I don’t care.” I was suddenly on fire with the righteous indignation that had been simmering inside me ever since the family court judge chose to sympathize with Geoff’s sudden desire to be a father. This cowboy man would be taking that stupid, smelly dog out of my Jeep over my dead body. “That doesn’t justify what you were going to do.”

  “Really?” The hard line of his jaw jutted from beneath the shadow of his hat, catching the sunlight. He needed a shave.

  “Yes, really.” Riding his horse forward, he dismounted, and my heart started thudding against my chest. He was tall and intimidating, and he obviously knew it. In one swift move, I grabbed the discarded stadium seat, brandishing it without even thinking about what it was. In my mind, I saw Geoff standing there, smirking at me in the airport, letting me know he’d won.

  Stopping midstride, the boss pushed his hat brim back so that I could see his eyes again. He squinted at the stadium seat, then me. “Lady, are you all right?”