Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner

by Lisa Wingate

  The dog seemed happy with the plan. Sticking his big head out the window, he lapped up air, his jowls flapping like the wings of a stingray underwater as we drove to the Dairy Queen, pulled up to the sign to order, then proceeded to the pick-up window.

  “We’re in kind of a hurry,” I said as the waitress, a twenty-something blonde with a pert nose and too much makeup, slid open the window. Working the register, she held the tail of the receipt while the machine slowly punched out numbers, making an old-fashioned ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching rather than the sterile beep-beep of modern models. The sound was rhythmic and relaxing in a way that promised the food would be cooked by hand and the waitress would take time to chat about the weather.

  Tearing off the receipt, she turned slowly toward the window to hand it to me. “That’ll be seven ninety—” Her eyes as big as Dilly Bars, she jumped back. “Holy crap, what is that?” Motioning to the dog, she craned away from the window as if he might jump through and eat her right along with the burgers.

  I laughed. “I’m not sure. I found it on the road.” Pulling money out of my wallet, I held it out to her. “I think it’s a really big dog.”

  She made a quick grab for the money and handed the food out the window, followed by the drinks. “Your change is three cents.”

  “Keep it,” I said, busy finding a place to put the food, realizing that this might not have been such a good idea. The bag smelled like hamburgers, and the dog was getting excited. “Thanks,” I said, elbowing my copilot back into the passenger seat.

  He collided with the dash, awakening Gertie. “Destination error. Make a legal U-turn, proceed east six-tenths of a mile on Highway 190.”

  The dog barked, and the waitress cried, “Lord have mercy!” The hamburger sack fell onto the floor, and limeade spilled on my knee, dripping, cold and sticky, into my shoe. Scenting the aroma of fresh meat, the dog tried to scramble over me onto the floorboard.

  “Stop it!” I hollered in my mean-mommy voice, and the dog, surprisingly enough, froze. “Get back in your seat.”

  Ducking his head, he backed across the console, slunk into the passenger seat, and turned his face, pink hair band and all, away from me, sulking.

  “Geez,” I muttered, wiping my jeans with a napkin, then putting the limeade in the drink holder next to the dog’s water glass. The hamburgers, fortunately, were still wrapped in the white Dairy Queen papers with a toothpick stabbed through the middle. Rescuing them from the floor, I tucked the sack between me and the driver’s-side door. Everything under control, finally.

  Leaning out the window, the waitress flashed a customer-friendly smile, and said what was probably the most enthusiastic thing she could think of at the moment. “He sure minds good… .”

  FOUR

  FOLLOWING COLLIE’S MAP TURNED OUT TO BE MORE DIFFICULT than I had anticipated, not because the map was unclear—Collie had noted all of the landmarks—but because trying to drive while sharing lunch with a ravenous hundred-pound canine presented a challenge.

  We traveled east, back out of town the way we had come. By the time we passed Mill Creek Park, and then the river, the dog had finished his hamburger and wanted mine. Grabbing the leftover container of grits from the dash, I opened it and set it on the floorboard on his side, as we turned onto a smaller county road. “There you go. See how you feel about Lone Star grits.”

  He felt fine about them, of course. It was hard to dislike a dog who appreciated the value of a good grit.

  “Careful. They expand in your stomach,” I said, and he looked up, his snout covered with grits and a smear of mustard. He tried to sniff my hamburger. “Stop that,” I said, and he backed off, but sat watching me, his face soulful beneath the pink Barbie fliggie. I took a bite, and he licked his lips, sweeping a long slobber string and a few leftover grits into his mouth.

  “Mr. Grits—” I muttered, vaguely aware that I’d fed the dog, and now I’d named it, which was not a good thing.

  Mr. Grits continued watching the hamburger like a marksman homing in on a target. Up to the mouth, down to the lap, up to the mouth, down to the lap, salivate, lick lips …

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Here you go,” I said finally, surrendering the remaining burger bit as we came to an enormous live oak tree that Collie had listed on the map. Next to the tree was a historical marker. I coasted slowly past, reading a few lines of text before the sign drifted out of sight.

  *

  THE LOVER’S OAK

  Mentioned in the diaries of the earliest settlers, The Lover’s Oak is said to have been considered a sacred matrimonial site by Native Americans. According to legend, young couples passing beneath these branches would be destined for true love and …

  *

  Giving a rueful snort, I turned back to the road. Considering that my date today was a smelly stray dog, this was not good news, but it was par for my luck lately.

  Just past the Lover’s Oak, a small settlement crouched nearly forgotten in a riverside thicket of lacy mesquite. A faded sign marked the entrance to town with the proud proclamation: WELCOME TO LOVELAND, TEXAS. HOME OF THE LOVER’S OAK. POPULATION 77.

  I checked my map. Collie had, indeed, noted the location of the town with a quickly scrawled abbreviation, LL, Tex. Somewhere near here, I was to turn onto a dirt road, then drive six more miles to my destination.

  Slowing the car, I watched for the turn, absently surveying the decaying town. “Population 77” was hard to believe. Unpainted and overgrown with mustang grapes and wild mustard weed, the buildings on the left were abandoned except for a tiny one-room post office and a hardware store that might or might not have been operational.

  On the left side of the road was the Lover’s Oak Chapel, where you could get married or book a float trip down the river, or both. Across the street stood an old clapboard-sided building, aptly named Over the Moon General Store, which advertised everything from bait and souvenirs to decorative river rocks and plumbing supplies. Next to the store, separated by a grass-and-gravel parking lot, was the Big Lizard Diner—an odd conglomeration of two antique railroad cars set parallel to the road, with an ancient silver Airstream trailer crammed sideways in between. Collie had abbreviated it on my map, BL Diner. Cross bridge, turn right. She’d drawn the river and three odd-shaped boxes that hardly did justice to the café. Permanently marooned in a sea of white gravel, it looked like something that might have floated down the river during a flood and landed there by accident, a cross between a giant catamaran and Noah’s Ark.

  “Now that’s something you don’t see every day,” I commented, craning to look out the window as I passed. There were vehicles in the parking lot—four pickup trucks, two cars, and a propane tanker of some kind. People sat in the railroad cars, happily settled in for a train trip to nowhere. Down the hill on the riverbank, a crowd was throwing what looked like flower petals into the water, while on the river, a canoe drifted toward the bend. In the boat a woman pulled something from her long blond hair and tossed it into the air, where it floated, light and diaphanous, seemingly weightless in the breeze. A wedding veil.

  “That’s something you don’t see every day, either,” I muttered, feeling like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. This adventure was getting stranger by the minute, and I hadn’t even made it to the ranch with the missing dinosaur tracks yet. I couldn’t wait to see what surprises were awaiting me there.

  In the seat beside me, the white rabbit blinked his long lashes and yawned like he’d seen it all before. Reaching over, I stroked his fur absently, speeding toward our destination, the last landmark on the map, an arched rock gateway that marked the entrance to the Jubilee Ranch, at least on Collie’s map.

  The ranch melted out of the heat waves in the distance ten minutes and six miles of gravel road later—a lone sign of civilization. Past the Jubilee Ranch, the road faded through an open gate into a pasture, where it wound across the flatlands and disappeared into a canyon. I wondered where it went… .

  The brakes gav
e an impatient squeal, and a cloud of white dust enveloped the car as I turned into the driveway. From where I was, I couldn’t see a house, barns, or any other signs of civilization. A hawk sat perched atop a gnarled wooden fence post perhaps ten feet away, so close that I could see sunlight glinting on golden eyes as it clicked its head sideways with robotic precision, and regarded me.

  In the passenger seat, Mr. Grits barked, and the hawk took wing.

  “Good boy,” I said, touching the dog’s fur like a toddler grabbing a security blanket. This place felt more like the end of the world than some guest ranch where beleaguered urbanites came to have a rugged vacation.

  I glanced at my map again. I was definitely where Collie’s directions had specified. The stone nameplate on the gateway read JUBILEE RANCH, EST. 1855 BY JEREMIAH MICHAEL TRUITT AND CAROLINE ANNE TRUITT. I recognized the names from somewhere—probably the newspaper article, which I had only glanced over. The article was now somewhere under the dog. Slipping my hand beneath the mass of dog and hair, I found the paper wadded against the seat back and stuffed partway down the crack. It tore as I pulled it out, the bottom half remaining wedged. Fortunately, the article about the dinosaur tracks was on the top section … mostly. I had the horse psychologist’s hat, but the rest of him was still somewhere under the dog.

  “I hope this isn’t Collie’s only copy,” I muttered, turning it right side up, so that I could look at the pictures of the dinosaur tracks and read the commentary from the local sheriff. Mr. Grits leaned closer, tipping his head to see what had emerged from his seat, probably thinking, Is it edible?

  “Not for dogs,” I said, guiding the car across the bumpy metal gateway. A tingle of excitement ran through me, an electric sensation I couldn’t quite explain, a sense that something was about to happen. Beside me, the dog tried to catch a noon nap as the Jeep bounced over potholes and loose gravel, traveling an expanse of flatland, then winding uphill.

  When we crested the rise, I could see that the road split ahead, one branch descending toward the west, disappearing into a thick stand of trees, where I could barely make out buildings, and the other path heading south and east into the valley. According to the newspaper article, the east branch was the one that led to the dinosaur tracks in the riverbed.

  I sat at the fork in the road, trying to decide which way to go. Collie’s map directed me to the house, but by now she might be down at the track site. The old me, Archaeologist Lindsey, tingled at the idea of driving down the rough, washed-out road to the riverbed, observing the site, cataloging the strata and composition of the rock layers, estimating age, looking for more possible track locations, other fossils that might help index and date the missing tracks—a treasure hunt, of sorts, with a long-hidden treasure. I hadn’t been to a field site in years. The only digging I did these days was through prepackaged display materials in the basement of the museum, things other people discovered, which I only measured, cleaned, molded, and mounted for display.

  Now, looking out over miles of country, I remembered when the idea of finding undiscovered treasures was a passion that took precedence over anything else. A first love. A quest that had once prompted me to write stacks of applications for fellowships and grants so that Geoff and I could travel all over the world trying to make that one big discovery that would put our names in all the magazines. All of that stopped after I had Sydney. Geoff knew it would. When I told him about the pregnancy, he’d wanted to terminate it, terminate her.

  “Think about it, Lindsey,” he’d said, standing in the doorway of a hotel in Cairo. “It’ll be the end of everything. What are you going to do, drag a baby all over the world? Put it in a little backpack and haul it around the dig? Let it play in the dirt with the sand fleas, and the scorpions, and the snakes? What?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I guess we are.” I should have known that there was no we at that point. The look in his eyes, two dark, cool mirrors, should have told me. But I still didn’t think he’d leave. Two days before that, we’d been blissfully happy. A team, a partnership, desperately in love, living a dream life. Still wild for each other after four years of marriage.

  Then he looked at me with a gaze as cool as brown glass and said in that slight California accent, “Well, you know what, Lindsey? You can have it your way—you always do. But I won’t have any part of it. I’ll do the decent thing, but I won’t have any part of it.”

  He walked out the door and never came back, even when Sydney was born, all tiny and pink, with his eyes, his straight dark brows, his sandy-brown hair. His idea of the decent thing was to give her his name, to remain separated but married until she was two years old and I was able to get a job with health insurance. To sign joint custody papers, never arrange visits, send off-and-on child support, then take Sydney off to Mexico at age eight because his new wife wanted children and couldn’t get pregnant.

  A fork in the road. Then, now, over and over, it seemed. Six years ago I’d taken the museum job in Denver, relegated myself to cleaning samples in the basement lab, setting up displays, and talking about paleontology to schoolkids on field trips, so that Sydney could have a normal life. Now here she was traveling without me, and I was in Texas at the mercy of Laura and Collie’s plan to break me out of my funk, watching the road divide again.

  Once again, I took the safe fork, the one that wound through the trees toward the ranch headquarters. The play-it-safe-mommy me was saying, Better not take any chances. What if somebody thinks you’re trespassing down there and you get shot? What if there’s a gang of dangerous fossil thieves lurking and you run into them out here, alone? Something could happen, and who would take care of Sydney?

  I hated that voice—the careful, paranoid one that prattled on in my head, warning me of all the things that could go wrong, inventing scenarios that hadn’t happened and might never happen. Sighing, I thought of the bride on the river. Oh, to be young and carefree, just starting out in life again. As loose and light as the wedding veil floating on air.

  Who are you kidding, Lindsey? the mommy voice said .You’re a grown woman with a child to raise and a deadbeat ex-husband.

  The only similarity between me and the wedding veil was that, after years of working in the basement of the museum, I was about as pale and filmy as it was.

  In the passenger seat, Mr. Grits started snoring. As we bumped down the hill, he slid forward, fell onto the floorboard, and never woke up.

  “Now that is serenity,” I said, smiling at the shapeless mound of hair. Mr. Grits looked completely content. There was a lesson in that. Settle down, stop worrying so much, appreciate the little things—like a full stomach and a warm place to curl up. It was a beautiful day. Around me the watercolor landscape stretched to the horizon in tranquil shades of sage and gold. I was on an adventure rather than sitting in the basement of the museum fretting about Sydney. My sister and my best girlfriend loved me enough to drag me out of my pity party, bring me all the way to Texas, and come up with something interesting for me to do. My boss at the museum cared enough to let me take off at a moment’s notice on a sabbatical of unspecified length.

  All things to appreciate. My situation could have been much, much worse.

  Ahead, I could see the ranch headquarters. I was on the right road, and I’d almost reached my destination.

  Drifting slowly through the grove of trees and into the headquarters area, I studied the buildings—a huge hip-roofed stone barn, a long stable with horses hanging heads over stall doors, dozing in the sun, a small cottage house near the barn, a couple of outbuildings, a well house next to a tall windmill, an empty kennel, a chicken house with chickens pecking in the sand, a long stone building with a sign that said BUNKHOUSE, and at the end of the lane where the gravel drive circled around, a tall white limestone home with an old picket fence around it. An enormous pair of pecan trees stood like sentries in the front yard. Their lofty shade and downward-fanning leaves gave the place a slightly Southern feel, though the house itself, with its wraparound por
ch and steep dormers on the third story, could have been plucked from a valley in Norway. Over each window on the lower story, the rockwork formed an arch, which was inset with plaster. Small colored stones pressed into the plaster created a mosaic of sunflowers, crafted piece by piece in an age when people took the time to do things by hand.

  I watched the reflection of my SUV in the wavy plate glass as I drove up to the front gate, stopping in the shade next to a red pickup truck, which I could tell was Collie’s. On the door it said, SAN SALINE RECORD AND SAN SABA COUNTY REVIEW. I tried to picture my formerly glamorous Washington, D.C., reporter friend, Collie, cruising the backroads of Texas in a pickup truck. She’d left D.C. and opted for the slow life, and from the looks of things around here, it couldn’t get much slower than this. No sign of anyone, no movement, no human sounds. The place looked deserted.

  I waited in the car a few minutes, watching lace curtains sway inside the open windows, hoping someone would see me and come out of the house. When no one did, I finally rolled down the car windows and stepped out, leaving Mr. Grits sleeping on the floor. “Stay right there,” I whispered. The place seemed too quiet for anything more than a whisper.

  Tiptoeing around the Jeep and through the yard gate, I curled my toes to stop the slap-slap of my Birkenstocks against my feet. Even that seemed like too much noise. An eerie quiet stilled the pecan trees and let the curtains close against the screens, as if the place were holding its breath, waiting to see what I wanted. Gooseflesh rose on my arms as I walked closer. The house seemed to grow in stature, stretching toward the sky and blocking out the sun. Tilting my head back, I surveyed the second-story windows, the old glass reflecting sky and trees in misshapen rainbows of color and form. It felt like someone was up there, watching.

  I shuddered, climbing the steps. There was a piece of paper taped to the front door with something written on it. My name? I couldn’t quite tell.

  A horse whinnied in the stable, and I jumped. Tripping on the last step, I sprawled forward, landing with one shoe on, spraddle-kneed on the porch, like a baseball catcher trying to block a dirt ball.