THE THING
Frank Criscenti
Summer, 1958.
The new, Chevrolet Corvette convertible, top down, pulled out to pass on the two-lane Mojave blacktop.
The boy counted the cars as they fell behind. One-two-three-four...
From the other direction, a car raced toward them, collision course.
Five-six-seven. Seven. Same as his age.
His mother steered the sportscar into its own lane. The other car blew by them, its horn blaring. Zoom—gone, the noise with it. The boy looked behind and watched as the car disappeared in flashes of chrome and window glass.
The ends of his mother's blue scarf, tied over her platinum-blonde hair, flapped in the wind. Clear road ahead. He checked the speedometer. Ninety. He liked a hundred better. A boy could brag about a hundred to his friends, if he had any.
He watched the silvery-blue water mirages boil up on the desert flat.
“Lousy two-timing son-of-a-bitch,” his mother said.
“Who?” the boy asked.
“Why would he treat me that way?”
“Joe? You talkin' about Joe?”
“Never mind.”
They raced toward a roadsign. He read it. He could read most anything now. The sign showed a cartoon prospector with a cartoon mule looking blown by the wind of a passing car: WHOA PARDNER! TURN AROUND AND HEAD BACK TO THE NUGGET. THE NUGGET HOTEL AND CASINO LAS VEGAS, NEVADA.
“You be good for your grandma and grandpa,” she said.
“Okay.” It was not okay.
“It won't be long. Just till I get things straight. A month or two, six at the most. Then you can come back to Vegas and live with me.”
“Okay.”
More signs. NEXT TIME IN VEGAS VISIT FOXY'S.
Cartoon fox. He liked cartoon signs.
His mother glanced over at him. He looked back, trying to meet her gaze through her sunglasses. He smiled and wondered why she didn't like him anymore.
He stared down at the white buttons of his white shirt. He straightened his plaid, clip-on bowtie, ran his fingers over the fuzz of his crew-cut. He lifted his butt off the seat and looked into the rear-view mirror at his face. He hated his round, tortoise-shell glasses.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a small sign. He'd almost missed it. THE THING IS COMING.
“What's The Thing?” he asked.
“I wouldn't know.”
“What's it mean?”
“It's just a sign.”
More road signs. Some large then small again. Small white signs with red letters: ICE COLD POP! SOUVENIRS! THE THING!
“Can we see The Thing?”
“We're in a hurry. I got to get back. I've got to work tomorrow night.”
She owed him a look at The Thing. He looked inside for the anger he had felt when she first told him he was going away. He had screamed at her. “It's best,” she had said.
They passed a line of cars. Five cars this time. Speedometer up to ninety-nine.
IT'S COMING!
“I don't know why these these keep happening to me,” she said.
“What things?” Another small white sign with red letters.
“First your father, then Joe. I can't understand why it's happening. I don't want to be alone.”
He'd already decided the reason for his mother's problem. “You know how there's more women than men in the world?”
“Yeah,” she said, glancing at him before pulling out to pass two more cars.
“Well, maybe when all the men and women pair off, you're one of the ones who gets left out.”
She looked down at him. “Maybe that's right.”
“You always got me,” he said, grinning.
“Thanks,” she said looking back at the road.
He watched the roadsigns. THE THING TEN MILES/
“Can we see The Thing? Please?”
ICE COLD POP!
“No.”
“We could get something to drink,” he said.
She passed another line of cars. A hundred. Finally. A hundred-and-one-and-two.
THE THING! 7 MILES.
“Please, I'm real thirsty,” he said, trying to make good sense. “You could get an ice cold pop.”
Six miles. Five miles. One car. Two cars. Four miles. Three.
“Please. Pretty please with sugar—and strawberries—and an ice cold pop. Please.” He wanted to see The Thing more than anything in the world.
The white signs with red letters lined the road now. He could see a low, beige, ramshackle building with a tin roof. There were big signs now.
THE THING IS HERE! DESERT MYSTERY, MOHAVE MONSTER.
“Please, please, please?”
The gravel pelted the underside of the car as she swerved into the parking lot.
They got out. He could see no Thing through the dusty windows. They went inside. The shelves on the walls were lined with souvenir, ceramic coiled rattlesnake ashtrays. He's seen those before. He'd seen the fake Indian papoose dolls, seen the fake Indian spears with the feathers and the rubber points. He'd never seen a Thing.
A skinny man stood near the cash register, sweating.
“He wants to see The Thing.”
“Fifty-cents,” the man said.
“I don't want to see it alone,” the boy said.
“I thought you wanted to see it.”
“Not alone. You come too.”
“Damn.” She dug into her purse as she walked over to the man. She handed him a dollar.
The man limped. He led the boy and his mother to a doorway near the counter. The doorway had a chain across it. The man unhooked the chain and let them into a cool hallway. They walked doiwn the hallway and stopped at a space cut in the wall. In a space, encased in glass, a gila monster sat on some sand and gravel.
“Is that The Thing?” the boy asked, unsure if the lizard was even alive.
“It sure-as-hell better not be,” she said.
They moved down the hall. They saw some Indian artifacts in the next case. An arrowhead. Some broken pottery. In the next case they found a rattlesnake. The snake flicked its tongue out and uncoiled. There were no cases then, but there was a doorway with a plywood partition built a few feet in front of it.
THE THING, it said on the partition in blood-red, drippy-looking letters.
The boy and his mother went around the partition into a ten-by-ten room. Plywood had been nailed over the windows. In the center of the room, in a cage covered by chicken wire lay a small mummy.
The boy eased toward the mummy and stopped. The mummy was tattered and brown, covered with caked, cracked leather with a few faded beads sewn loosely on the chest. The boy could not make out any sort of face to The Thing. Just the outline of legs and body and arms plastered to the side and a thick round bump where the head should have been. It smelled old.
He heard his mother's footsteps tap out of the room. He crept up to the cage and looked through the chicken wire. The Thing lay so still. It was no larger than a small child. Smaller than he was.
He stretched his finger through the chicken wire on the side of the cage. He stretched and pushed until the wire gave and he could touch the mummy. He pushed at the stiff leather. It felt hard. He kept pushing, shoving the chicken wire back, stretching until whatever made uo the mummy gave and crunched.
He ran out of the room, his heart pounding. He ran through the souvenir shop. He ran outside where his mother stood, leaning her head back and drinking a bottle of Coke.
His mother looked white and trembly. She wiped the sweat of her face with her hand.
“What's wrong? Why did you leave me alone?”
“I don't like dead things. I don't like them and I don't like being in the same room with them. They scare me. Scare me to death.”
She reached down and picked up a bottle of Coke sitting on the dirt and handed it to him.
“Here, I got this for you.”
He took the bottle, the feel of the mummy still on his finger.
She walked back to the car. The boy followed. They got into the car. His mother retied her scarf. They tore out of the lot and drove.
“How long does a fly live?” he asked. He put the finger outside the car and let the hot wind blow against it.
“I don't know. Three days. A week.”
“How come things have to die?”
“I guess God makes it that way,” she said.
He stared out the window at the blur of the desert.
“Everyone's going to die someday,” he said. “Everyone is going to get old and die. Grandma and Grandpa. Me. Even you.”
He looked at his mother as she stared straight at the highway. He thought how she was the prettiest mother anyone could ever have. He looked at her and wondered why he had to go to his grandparents. He wondered why she didn't just turn the car around and take him back home. Why was she afraid to be left alone when she had him? He'd never understand that. Not ever.
She ground her foot onto the accelerator and passed a line of cars. One-two-three...
Published in Rag Mag 1992. Vol. 10, number 2.
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