The Thing

“Dude, I’m not trippin’ bro there’s an owl right there,” Wesley said. He scratched at his curly hair and pointed out his front passenger seat window. 

“What kind of owl is it?” Manuel asked. His eyes were rimmed in red and he squinted and stared out the driver’s side from his seat in the back.

“What the fuck do you mean ‘what kind of owl is it,’ it’s a fucking owl, bro. It’s looking right at me.”

The two of them sat in the Corolla on the far side of the Wilcox gas station parking lot where the pavement turned to dirt while they waited for the other two members of the Dead Dads Club to return. The AC had stopped working 117 miles back in Silver City, and so the windows were down and they looked like they’d been dunked in petroleum jelly. They had another 83 miles to drive to the valley of Tucson, until the purple mountains would cradle them on all sides, and only then would they feel truly suffocated. Only then would they be home. 

Manuel swatted at a nonexistent fly, then ran his fingers through his hair.

“It’s right there dude,” Wesley said. He pointed at one of two palo verde trees in front of them. In the thick of the twiggy green branches sat a small owl, eyes wide and fixed on the two boys. 

“Oh shit it’s looking right at us,” Manuel said, instinctively covering himself with his arms.

“No shit, dude, that’s what I said,” Wesley lifted his phone to take a photo.

“What are you doing?” a voice outside asked, as if from heaven.

Wesley dropped his phone out the car window. “Dude I swear to God, did you just hear that owl speak?”

“It’s me you fucking idiot,” Collins opened the right passenger door and climbed in next to Manuel. 

Wesley pulled three quarters of his body out of the window and folded himself over the side of the car to retrieve his phone.

“Why didn’t you just—” Collins stopped and shook her head. “Where is Jake?”

“Buying cigs,” Manuel said. 

Jake’s lanky frame popped out of the gas station doors and marched toward the car, one cig in his mouth while he shook the rest of the pack. He opened the driver’s door and leaned to the right, Wesley lighting the cigarette before Jake had even planted himself inside the vehicle. 

“In this weather?” Collins asked. 

“We’re already on Hell’s front porch,” Jake said through gritted teeth. He started the car. 

“America’s asshole,” Wesley said.

“I don’t believe we’re in Reno,” Collins said. 

Jake spit-laughed as he passed the cigarette behind him to Manuel. “Touché.” 

The four of them sat in the car quietly for a moment, the boys passing the cigarette between the three of them until Collins finally relented and joined in. It had always been like that. 

*

Wesley’s dad died in Iraq when he was seven. A surprise soda can IED took out his leg and he died from the shock. They’d been rationing water before the IED exploded, so his official cause of death was dehydration. The Arizona desert wasn’t too different from Iraq’s, which made Wesley’s thirst for his father more palpable, like he could have died a half mile from their home. After his dad died, Wesley made a lot of inappropriate exploding Moses jokes before he was kicked out of the first grade and had to transfer schools. 

He met Manuel in third grade. Manuel had transferred from a school in the Nogales on the south side of the frontera, and when their teacher had asked Manuel to introduce himself to the class and say why he’d transferred here (according to Manuel, the teacher had asked it in a very condescending “state why you love America and renounce the chupacabra” type way), Manuel said his father. When the teacher asked if his father had gotten a new job, Manuel shrugged and said “creo que no, se mató.” 

The two of them were relegated to the “shame corner” often, and by eighth grade had carved a home out of every after school detention room. Together, they discovered Wesley’s exploding Moses jokes were even funnier in Spanish. 

High school was the determining factor for surviving (leaving) the valley: would you get pregnant or would you get out? Each high school was designed by the same architects that made prisons and hospitals, which made the threat of captivity much more real. There was a third worst option, which nobody dared say aloud until they’d graduated, and even that was cocky, because the desert could hear you the way dogs heard danger, and you’d better be on the I-10 with a full tank before you dared think: would you get stuck in the valley? The valley was quicksand, and if you thought quicksand was wet, you’re wrong. It was hot and dry and burned going down your throat. Getting stuck in Tucson was worse than getting pregnant, because if you had a child there was at least the hope of your child getting out. But Jake’s dad had done things backwards. He had Jake and then he got out, and left Jake to choke on the desert’s hot and thorned everything. “He’s not dead,” Jake had said to Wesley and Manuel when they found him smoking weed between periods sophomore year, “but he’s dead to me.”

Manuel had found Collins crying outside a frat. He asked her what was wrong, worried she’d been raped or something and that he’d have to take her to the police station or the hospital and say something empty like “it will get better” or pat her shoulder like she was a cat, but not actually go into the station or hospital with her, because they always suspected the mestizo guy. But instead she said “my dad is dead,” and before he could stop himself he said “welcome to the club.” She laughed a hard, guttural laugh and took the hand he offered and they walked the two blocks to the shithole where he and Jake and Wesley lived. They didn’t ask how her dad died and she didn’t offer an answer, but they believed her because even though she floated over the valley with a grace and sense of direction the others could hardly grasp at, she was stuck inside herself and her eyes showed it. 

*

“Have you guys ever seen The Thing?” Collins asked, inhaling deep. She stared past Manuel at the billboard on the side of the interstate. He followed her gaze. 

Before you entered the valley, regardless of which direction you came from, you saw faded billboards all along I-10, and if you made the trek from north to south often enough—or even if you traveled east to west, or if you took Route 66 to and from New Mexico, or even as far as Texas—you wouldn’t even notice them anymore, but they were there. Ads for automotive accident lawyers whose phone numbers always had a lot of sevens. Evangelical signs that said crap like “In despair? Jesus is your hope! Find the truth!” and then some website that supposedly gave you “the truth.” McDonald’s ads with happy meals on them, complete with a toy that was no longer available. Political ads telling you how to vote “no” on an already passed proposition that would allow open pit uranium mining to suck up the water supply and infect the indigenous, causing Navajo mothers to give birth to babies with radioactive uranium inside them. Dozens of ads for casinos, usually with culturally appropriated names like “Apache Sky” or “Spirit Mountain” or “Twin Arrows” that had Subway restaurants connecting them, and a wall would be partially blocked off because some drunk trucker rammed into the side of the building, cracking the wall and breaking half the slot machines. 

But most importantly there were the billboards for THE THING. Every mile you saw a faded yellow billboard with huge, blue lettering in an expired font that said THE THING? with a question mark on the end that somehow made it more menacing. And off to the side of the billboard there was an exit number and a quote that read “the mystery of the desert!” And nobody in the state ever knew what it was, nor did they ever go.They just drove past THE THING?’s billboards and commented on them, like every other weird and mildly disappointing thing in Arizona. 

“Ah, yes, Kurt Russell, great movie,” Wesley said.

“No, John Carpenter,” Jake said.

“John Carpenter directed it. Kurt Russell was The Thing,” Manuel said.

“No, Kurt Russell killed The Thing,” Wesley said. “Childs—”

“Oh my god, shut up, I’m talking about the billboard,” Collins said. 

“Oh the billboard,” Manuel said, nodding and raising the cigarette to his lips and inhaling, “yeah I’ve seen that.”

“But have you actually seen The Thing?” Collins pressed. She rarely raised her voice or repeated what she said, preferring to be silent rather than ignored.

“Nah, man, it’s like a lizard or something,” Manuel said quickly. He raised his thick eyebrows and held in a cough.

“I thought it was like a wooly mammoth,” Wesley said.

“I thought it was like a really, really, really small guy,” Jake said. “Like a hobbit.”

Collins looked around at the boys. “We should go see it.”

“Aw man, we’ve already been driving for hours,” Jake said, tapping his pack of cigarettes. Because his dad was still technically earth-side, Jake possessed an impatience that tethered him to reality in a way the others were freed from.  

“Riddle me this you dumb fuck, what the fuck else do we have going on?” Welsey asked. “And when has there ever been a reason to get to Tucson quickly?”

“I have an exam tomorrow,” Manuel offered.

They all turned to stare at him.

“My dad will kick my ass if I fail,” Manuel said.

They all burst out laughing until they coughed and choked. Then they passed the cigarette around again as if to quell it. For a brief moment a heaviness settled over the car. Apart from Collins, they were all flunking out of college, and only Manuel and Wesley had jobs. They’d paid for gas and cigarettes with a combination of nickels and spite. 

“Dude, I’m not tripping bro there’s an owl right there,” Jake said.

“What kind of owl?” Collins said.

“Bro anything but this again,” Manuel said. 

“It’s hobbit time, baby!” Wesley yelled. 

*

They drove northwest on I-10 and the distance between the billboards shrank until they were nearly on top of each other. THE THING? THE THING? THE THING? The yellow on each billboard a sickly mucus color and the blue lettering nearly dripped off each sign. The brush around each billboard was tan and dry, and half dead yucca reached toward the cloudless sky.

Jake sighed as he took the exit and slowed the car as they pulled into THE THING’s parking lot. 

It was an ugly building. All yellow, just like the billboards, with giant blue and red lettering all along the sides,reading: THE THING? GIFTS MUSEUM SOUVENIRS JEWELRY. On the side of the building there was a graphic of a t-rex fighting an alien spaceship. A Dairy Queen was attached to the building, and seemed to be trying aggressively to detach itself. Adjacent to the THE THING? building was a Shell gas station in the same ugly yellow. Several cars were parked in a cluster, and a few tourists meandered about taking photos, even though there was nothing to take photos of except the building itself.

The four got out of the car and stared silently at the building. Wesley chucked his cigarette and walked forward and the rest followed in a single file line. 

They paid ten dollars each to see it. But they didn’t get to see it right away. They started in a museum gallery plastered with posters stating things like “What if human history as we know it is a lie?” And then the room opened and there were giant murals and dioramas of dinosaurs and aliens fighting each other. An alien rode a triceratops, an alien overlord shot lasers at a prehistoric earth, dinosaurs and aliens battled against one another for the fate of the planet. 

“I don’t know whose side I’m supposed to be on,” Jake said, pressing his nose against an alien’s cardboard face. 

“Dinosaurs, I think,” said Manuel. 

“Is this a creationist thing or was I really not paying attention in class?” Wesley asked. 

“Two things can be true,” Collins said. 

They walked into another gallery room that was, at first glance, suspiciously normal. There were life size replicas of offices, notably Winston Churchill’s, complete with mannequins. But upon closer inspection, half of the mannequins were aliens, and when they moved into the third room, they saw Churchill and an alien shaking hands. There were more posters in this gallery, explaining that the aliens had beaten the dinosaurs in a “turf war,” and this museum depicted what the government didn’t want you to know, that every major historical event in human history was caused by extraterrestrials. 

“So the creationists were rooting for the natives,” Manuel said. 

“That can’t possibly be true,” Jake said. 

“First and last time for everything,” Collins said. 

Wesley shoved an unlit cigarette into an alien’s open mouth. “Do you think these people are on the same side as the ‘Jesus Is The Truth’ billboard people? Or do they have their own turf war?” 

“If they are in competition, they’re both winning in the ‘worst billboard’ category,” Collins said. 

They stopped at the final room. This doorway was smaller and more rundown, like everything else in the museum had been slowly tacked on, and this was its center. Butchered drawings of kokopelli were painted all over the doorway. When they walked through the door, there was an overwhelming melange of wood carvings, painted driftwood, and engraved saddles and guns from the cowboys and pioneers and colonizers that had come before the Dead Dads Club. There were old photographs and lithographs and arrowheads and trinkets cobbled together from the past century and a half of Southwestern American history. And their compilation created a feeling of deep unbelonging, like each piece had been placed there against its will, waiting to be returned to a rightful owner who would never show up.  

And then they finally got to see it. The room funneled into a small hallway, where there were footprints all over the walls, like THE THING? had crawled into this hideous tourist facade, and made its home at the building’s dark beginning.  

It was in a small box that looked like a coffin, but with a glass top, and when they got close, they huddled over it and looked down. 

It was a small mummified body, covered in dirt and cloth, cradling an even smaller mummified body against its side. A worn yucca hat rested on top of it, as if it were saying the pledge of allegiance, as if it were saying a prayer. 

“Parent and child,” said Collins.

“Probably native,” said Jake.

“Probably murdered,” said Manuel. 

“We live in a black hole,” said Wesley.

“He held me like that while he died. I watched it happen,” Collins said. 

The other three reached out their hands as if to place them on her shoulder, as if to stand behind her like their fathers might have stood behind them, but their hands only hovered in the air for a moment before falling back to their sides.

They stared at the mummified family. Manuel kicked the coffin, as if to curse the people who put them there, as if to free the family trapped inside, to shake his father awake and alive again. Wesley took his face in his hands and turned away when Jake looked at him. Then the four of them walked single file out of the hole, out of the room of stolen artifacts, out of the creationist turf war, and back into the parking lot. 

They sat smoking on the curb outside and watched the sun fade and the sky turn pink and gold. And then it became its nightly dull, dark blue, and the only light left came from the buzzing Dairy Queen sign and the gas station fluorescents. The last few tourists loaded up  their minivans with Wisconsin and New Jersey license plates and drove off into the desert night. Collins turned and stared at the giant blue letters on the hideous yellow building. The air was thin and dry and the dirt around the building was too hard to kick, too hard for palo verdes and owls. 

“Should we go home?” Wesley asked, and then shook his head. “What a sorry sack of shit this all is.” 

They inched closer and closer toward the valley and they could feel it reeling them in slowly on fishing line made of spider silk. They passed Benson, with its roadside stands with red painted letters where you could buy pecans and oranges in dollar bushels. Then came Colossal Cave, which was deemed a Mountain Park, except the mountains were underground and hollowed out.  It was worth the hype on TripAdvisor for the stalactites and stalagmites and the ghosts that tripped you as you descended. Every valley child went into the upside down mountains on school field trips and emerged with stories of licking the forbidden salt and shaking the hand of a deceased child slave laborer. And finally they passed the giant federal prison complex that housed the molesters and killers wild enough to make national headlines for more than a single week. People the country wanted to forget and so they shoved them into the valley’s armpit, so only the people of the valley could not forget. The four of them stared at the prison as they drove past it and watched it morph into each school and restaurant and home they’d ever set foot in. 

The road curved and they saw the valley, the billboards, but there was no neon sign to guide them and there was no Thing to lead them. Behind them there was the prison and the cave and Saguaro National Park where the Wisconsin and New Jersey tourists took pictures with the desert’s ribbed and regal fathers, but for the Corolla there was just the mile marker, the fishing line that reeled them into the valley, the sand.