justin herrmann

Extinction of Dinosaurs

The three of us are in our underwear, bathing in the fluorescent blue river that snakes through Dino Canyon Mini-Golf. Except for the darkened parking lot, it’s lit up just like when open, neon lights beaming, fountains geysering, pterodactyl calls screeching from ancient speakers throughout all dirty thirty-six holes.

Bill Ed, my oldest friend, pulls a rusted putter from the chilly autumn water, peels away a rope of algae from the shaft. His wife Casey’s slick toes slide past mine while she hands me the fiberglass triceratops horn we’d sawn off earlier, now filled with local apple wine this region is gaining a reputation for.

Bill Ed called the school I work at in the arctic weeks back to tell me his parents sold the fun park. In its place, soon, a Comfort Inn. Tractor trailers roar by on I-57. Diesel fumes marry the scent from the popcorn machine Bill Ed fired up. Throughout high school and college I’d pulled weeds here, escorted vandals off property, manned the registers. One thing I know from a youth spent at a fun park: people behave the worst when they expect things to be the best.

I feel around the river’s gritty cement bottom for lost golf balls. The village I teach in is dry, and I already feel lightheaded, drinking for the first time in over a year. 

 “A raccoon family moved into the belly of the triceratops,” Casey says. “You see anything like that at the North Pole?”

Hours ago we were playing the park’s last round of 18, fully clothed. Now, under the cover of heavily tinted water she firmly grips me by the ankle, guides my foot up her thigh’s slick skin, digs my toes underneath the tight elastic of her panties. Judging by our proximity there’s no mistaking whose foot she’s holding. “At night the raccoons would steal bags of popcorn from the snack shack,” she says, her face telling a different story than what she’s doing with my toes. 

Bill Ed laughs and laughs in his signature bray. Soggy popcorn floats around us.

In the glow of the course lights, I see vulgar golf-penciled sketches on the remaining two horns of that docile-looking triceratops. Weeds push through guardrails onto the green. My best friend since second grade, Bill Ed’s as good-natured, oblivious, and lazy as they come, every reason this park deteriorated. I’m not judging him. No student in my class is fortunate to have me as their teacher. Each birthday or minor holiday we attempt to sink a golf ball in the largest divot of the exposed subfloor in my classroom. Most days my students educate me on video game strategies or offer tips on butchering local wildlife. I teach middle and high school English.

Bill Ed pulls his thick body from the river in the ungraceful motion of prey being dragged into a cave. He drops a wet ball onto the green at the incline facing the interstate on hole 12. We lost hundreds of balls one summer trying to drive them across the highway into a McDonald’s parking lot with a putter. Most balls were harmlessly engulfed by wet weeds, though a few clean shots clinked off the highway’s asphalt. Another summer, we found, curled against the fence nearest the interstate, an androgynous naked bum we mistakenly thought was dead. Summer of my senior year, my frail, bald mother read me passages from Dana Stabenow novels over the phone from a hospital room in St. Louis while I lived with Bill Ed’s family, and last summer my hands explored Casey’s skin inside the fiberglass body of the tyrannosaurus where balls collected on hole 18 as whining voices of children resonated alongside mechanical roars, the taut skin on her chin sticky and fragrant with coconut jungle-snow syrup. That same morning Bill Ed’s dad asked me to reconsider the arctic, to manage the park instead, a job Bill Ed always believed was his.

While Bill Ed smacks balls into the ditch along I-57, I retrieve my foot from his wife. Part of the reason I went to the arctic was to avoid what’s now happening. On each of the four flights it took me to get back here, starting with an eight-passenger Cessna from the village, I’d told myself I’d look for the chance to have the right kind of closure with Casey, a talk to set things straight. But now, I scoot close, place my hand where my foot had been.  

“What’ll you do now?” I say, meaning work, though I know they’ll be set up for a good while with money gifted from Bill Ed’s folks from the sale of the park. Surely a blessing, and given time, Bill Ed might discover work he’s capable of.

“Soon, where hole 18 sits, diabetics will peel long socks from swollen legs in generic hotel rooms,” she says and leans into me, straddles a leg over mine. Cold water drips from her hair onto my chest. Her warm breath cloying from the wine. “You and I should give hole 18 a proper goodbye while Bill’s distracted.” 

A metallic clank and screech of tires on the interstate causes her body to jolt. Her fingernails dig into my ribs, break the skin.

I adjust my erection underneath the elastic waistband of my boxers and stand up.  

A candy-red Peterbilt eighteen wheeler flashes its emergencies and pulls hard to the shoulder. The trucker slides out of the cab, stands in the highway, looks toward McDonald’s, then Extended Stay America, then at the bright lights of Dino Canyon. Bill Ed dumbly peers out over the fence. The trucker shouts accusations up to him. 

Bill Ed lumbers over the fence, walks toward the highway with his putter in his grip. A car coming off the exit ramp crawls by. The trucker, short, pot-bellied, chin engulfed by neck fat and neck beard threateningly points a wrench.

I’m out of the river, over the green, up the fence, and then my wet toes slip on the chain-link. I fall forward, my hands and face crash into the tall weeds, my boxers catch on a sharp link, hang me up. 

Bill Ed holds both arms skyward, passive, shakes his head as the man continues to approach. “I’m awfully sorry,” Bill Ed says. “I didn’t see you coming. Honest.”

The trucker steps closer, draws back the wrench. Bill Ed drops his club, covers his head, falls to the ground before the trucker takes a swing.

I struggle to break free from the fence, eventually slide completely out of my boxer shorts that have gotten tangled and torn. I run towards the action. Somehow I’m still erect.  

The trucker steps back, squares up in my direction, looks to load up for a big swing, but I see doubt in his face as I barrel toward him. He tosses the wrench in the ditch and scrambles to open the truck’s passenger side door. 

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To rectify the significant dent in the Peterbilt’s hood, the trucker backs his trailer to the front entrance of Dino Canyon where we load up the jungle snow machine along with the fiberglass pterodactyl for his troubles. He leaves, confused I reckon, but satisfied with the trade. 

Inside the clubhouse, Casey pours apple wine into paper cups, her and Bill Ed still in underwear, though I’m once again in jeans.

Bill Ed hoists down the employee of the month plaque from the wall behind the cash register. He extends it toward me. “Thought you might want this,” he says.

I trace my fingers over the thin metallic plates. My name appears eight times. No other appears more than once. 

I have no desire to keep it, but as I read, I notice two of the months my name appears were when my mother was ill. I’d get up early that summer, walk miles to the park from Bill Ed’s house. I’d straddle those fucking dinosaurs, scrub soil, pollen, and bird droppings with a handbrush, then detail between claws and ferocious teeth with a toothbrush. I cleaned one dinosaur each morning before the park opened. No one asked this of me. I don’t imagine I mentioned any of this to my mother during our calls, but one night she’d told me, “You’re such a good boy. You’ll have so much to offer.”

Bill Ed sniffles, tears form. He brushes popcorn crumbs from the counter to the floor. He lays an arm over my shoulders and says, “We were lucky to have you all those years.”

After a while, I hang the sign back in its place. I open the door to the control panel. The pterodactyl is miles up I-57, headed toward Chicago. I flip a switch and the park is finally silent of its screeching calls. I flip another switch and the course goes dark.