Going Home

© 1995 by Clayton Emery

Art by
Rick McCollum
& Bill Anderson

Click for a larger version.

Who's King Dinosaur?  A time-tripping hippie I dreamed up - Oh, who knows how?  I ran with his ball for a while, started a novel.  Then JURASSIC PARK came along and ate up the dinosaur genre, and I moved on to other projects.  Still, King is no quitter and deserves a second look - some time.

Gotta get back to the land, gotta set my soul free...

"Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell

My dinosaur hit a tripwire and a shotgun blew its leg off. The poor bastard cartwheeled and dumped me, crashed onto me, then rolled clear, blood spraying everywhere. My head slammed pine needles.

I'd come riding up here to see my old buddy Draco. I'd found him. He shoved the barrel of an AR-15 into my face. Above the black hole of the muzzle his eyes swam in his head.

"Shit, Draco, don't shoot! It's me!"

The eyes rolled like marbles. They were red all around and solid across. A flicker of focus. "Kite Man?"

Draco staggered back and let me up. My friend looked as if he hadn't eaten in twenty-two years. His arms were like tree roots, his hair like prarie grass. He wore a Captain America T-shirt and neon bike shorts, no shoes. Behind him was a shaggy pig of a man. Pig-Guy wore overalls and food stains and a long-barreled shotgun with a banana magazine.

"Kite Man. It really is you." Draco stumbled over and peered at my camptosaur. "And that's a for-real dinosaur. I thought it was all bullshit." Pig-Guy shuffled up and scratched his face.

With my hands out and my back to the woods, I knelt at the dinosaur's head. It gasped, dying. The one leg twitched. Most of its blood was on the trail and bushes. It was long as a horse, dappled brown, its head like a tiger shark, but I'd managed to tame it.

"Sorry, old buddy. My fault." I chopped its throat with my parong. I cut off the crude saddle and made the carcass vanish.

Draco and the pig peered at the trampled spot where it had lain. "How'd you do that?"

"Magic. What's this all about, Draco? Tripwires and shotguns? This is some kind of good neighbor policy."

"People are always ripping you off, man." Draco waved his free hand, pointed uphill. "Come on. We'll go up to the house. That's Sundance. He's a brother."

Pig-Guy scratched his chest and tugged at his shotgun strap.

I followed Draco up a deer trail through red pines and mountain laurel. The trail broke into a meadow. A sky stacked with clouds. Trees to the east. A dropoff into a valley along the west. Dark green mountains in the distance. At the back of a meadow, Ma and Pa Kettle's place.

"Hey, check it out!" Draco weaved off the path and perched on the edge of the bluff. The valley was half a mile long and even wider. A stream ran through the bottom. The valley was carpeted with fuzzy Dr Seuss plants.

I hung next to Draco, ready to grab his belt as he waved his hands. He ranted, "Primo stuff by the acre! Right here in Mister Bush's backyard! We got the seeds from that Dutch guy. Five bucks a seed, believe it?" He hopped along the brow then started down a trail.

Through a tunnel of plants somethings silvery hung in the air like mayflies. I reached out to finger one, but Sundance growled. I watched my back. "Fishhooks?"

Draco pointed at the sky as if I were up there. "Lighten up, man. It's just to keep the tourists out. People'd be through here all the time."

"It's federal land, isn't it?"

"Right! It belongs to the people!"

"I don't get it, Draco. All this to protect some dope? You never used to care about property. What happened to the spirit of the revolution?"

Draco spread his hands. The rifle shook. "Hey, the revolution is all around us!" He bounced up the slope. "Come on! You can see everyone!" He turned with a crooked leer. "Country Girl will be glad to see you."

"Country?" I didn't see the rest of the trek, only yellow hair and a garland of flowers. A smile like the spring sunshine. I felt her breast on the inside of my arm, her bony back, her soft bottom. I smelt baby powder and jasmine like the wildflowers in the meadow.

The houses were shacks and mobile homes and some kind of hanger, a geodesic dome that needed stain and a cement dome that had collapsed, tattered poly, junk vans. A road dropped between trees into the next wave of woods.

The main room was like a Viking hall with a long table. An elk's head, the Zig Zag Man, and Give Peace a Chance all had bullet holes. A parachute on the ceiling was stained yellow. Mismatched chairs and tables were littered with burn marks, ashes, bongs, and beer cans. On one table stood a computer, plastic bags, and scales. Seeds and crumbs crunched underfoot. A rotten gingerbread stink of garbage came from the kitchen. In a dark room three kids watched a Japanese cartoon on a giant television. A dog snarled at me until Sundance kicked at it.

Draco walked straight to the table and propped his rifle. He rolled a trio of joints. He sprinkled white powder into two. Sundance handed us two beers apiece, then flopped into a broken recliner, the shotgun still on his back.

"Everybody else is at work. They'll be back later. Shit, it's good to see you again, man!"

One of the kids paused the cartoon and the others squawked. It came into the light. It had on a Metallica T-shirt and camo pants, no shoes. With long hair and a dirty face, I couldn't tell if it was a boy or girl. The kid took a joint and a light, then wobbled back into the TV room.

I brushed off the bench at the table and sat down, my pack under my elbow. Draco sat on the table. He fished two yellow caps from a plastic bag and chased them with beer. He flicked a lighter and sucked deep. He offered the joint to me. "Try some home brew."

"No, thanks, man. I don't do that any more. Are those kids always stoned?"

Draco frowned, but concentrated on holding in the smoke. "Fuck you, okay? You and Nancy Reagan both. They're mellow. You used to suck the stuff down all the time. That's why we called you Kite Man."

A dumpy woman in a wrinkled sundress came out of a bedroom and peered in at the kids. She scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

"I used to fly kites, too." I looked around the ruin of the room. "Where's Country Girl working?"

The dumpy woman said, "Kite..."

I stared.

"... You're so - young!"

Then she cried.

We walked to the garden to get out of the noise and smoke. I'd met the family: April and Tony and Honey and Chocolate Charlie and Jud and Mustang Sally and others. They didn't know whether to believe in me or not. It was if Michael Jackson had dropped by. They called me King Dinosaur, my stage name. "King" for short. Like Elvis. I look like an Indian to people who don't know Indians. The only thing left of my famous "dinosaur leathers" is a hadrosaur vest that looks more like alligator and a carnosaur tooth around my neck. The rest is Levis and Nikes. I don't even wear a peace sign anymore.

Country carried her hands in the pockets of her dress. Her hair was more gray than blonde. Her upper arms were lumpy with cellulite. One shoulder had a tattoo of a rose. She pointed with her pocketed hands. "I started a garden, but it didn't work out..." There were only weeds, bushy herbs, tiny pumpkins, broken tomato plants.

She squinted at the slot of sky between mountain and clouds where the sun set. "Is it true what they say about you? In People magazine?"

"Country... I don't know what's true any more."

"You can travel in time?"

I stubbed my toe on something buried in the weeds. A hoe. "I can travel to something that looks like the Mesozoic, but I don't really think it is. It's like... over the rainbow."

Country nodded. "We saw you make dinosaurs appear and disappear on MTV."

"Yeah, well... I tried lecturing, but people want entertainment, not enlightenment. I don't perform any more."

"What else can you do?"

I snapped the head off a tall white flower. "I can play `Blowing in the Wind' on the guitar if someone tunes it for me. I can still get a kite in the air. Remember the time we climbed on the roof of the police station and sent up that big hex kite? The peace sign? We thought the cops would cut it loose, but they left it there all day. They were cool."

For the first time, she smiled. "I remember. Draco helped. And Space Man. Do you ever see Space Man?"

I kicked at a rotten pumpkin. "He looked me up. He tried to steal my bird. To sell it."

"Bird?"

"An archaeopterix." I snapped my fingers. On my hand was a scrawny white roadrunner with orange trim. Scales ran back from his toothed beak. At the crook of his wings he had claws which he snagged on my jacket sleeve. He ducked his head for a neck scratch and crackled.

Country Girl's eyes grew wide. Pure terror. "How - How do you do that?"

I scritched my bird. "I don't know. I snap my fingers and pull something out of wherever, or I step sideways and I'm there. Everybody's got a theory. A mathematician thinks I'm crossing the threshhold of another dimension, like stepping through a door, a neutral equilibrium. I warp space, maybe. A function of my mind, maybe. Mentally wiggling my ears."

Country shivered. "They said you were a superhero. Like Batman."

"More like Mary Poppins. The only crime I ever stopped - that wasn't being laid on me - was to keep an Indian from getting stomped by some cowboys. I dropped an ankylosaurus on their truck. The Indian was drunk and didn't even see what happened.

"I've tried a hundred ways to help people, Country, to accomplish something positive. Something zen. All I get are dead ends. And dead dinosaurs. And dead people."

Country stared at my bird, hypnotized. Her throat trembled. I snapped my fingers and made it disappear.

Country walked away and I caught up. She asked, "You're still only twenty-three?"

I sighed. "`Hip Van Winkle,' that's me. I don't understand that, either. After Hippie died - 1970, Jesus - I took off for the hills to hunt fossils and get my head together. I fell into this Mesozoic-like place and couldn't get out. So I worked, doing a Robinson Crusoe, totting up a natural history of dinosaurs. Three years by my lonesome. Then I woke up and it was 1993. Same space, but time runs slower there, which is why they're only up to dinosaurs. Strange karma. And all mine."

"I'll be forty-four this year."

"That's not old." I hated myself just then.

"If you took me to your - world - do you think I'd be twenty-three again?"

"It doesn't work that way."

She walked towards the bluff. "You've changed, Kite."

"Yeah? You haven't changed at all, Country. You're still as beautiful as ever."

She rubbed her upper arms. The tattoo jiggled. "No I'm not. I'm not anything any more. I don't know what any of us are."

She skirted the bluff's edge, too close. "Are you really rich?"

I didn't answer.

"Are you?"

"Everything I own is hanging off my shoulders or in my pack back there."

"They said you're a multimillionaire."

I sighed again. "A lot of it's tied up in lawsuits. Lawyers are a part of my life. The one guaranteed way I can use my `dinosaur-conjuring' power would be to sell them to people as pets. For two cents I'd give all the money away."

For the first time she touched me, held my elbow. Her hand was stronger than I'd have guessed. "Could you give me some money? Loan it to me?"

I looked at the valley below, where the shadows swallowed the plants. "Sure."

She rubbed her arms again. Darkness settled fast under the clouds. I could smell rain far off. Country said, "I'd like to travel. Get away for a while. I always wanted to see Greece, like Joni Mitchell and her goatherd."

"I can give you some money, Country."

A voice barked behind us. "Me too!" Draco, loud now, talking fast, his chest puffed out. He carried the army rifle and wore a bandolier of ammunition. He grinned like a wolf. "Long as you're handing it out, I'll take some. For the kids' college education."

He grabbed Country Girl's arm and towed her away from me, then let her go. "Stay out of trouble, you two." He marched into the dark. Sundance shambled after him like a nightmare.

"Where's he going?"

"Patrol. He's paranoid about people in the fields."

I took off my headband and scrubbed my hair. "Down in the village they wouldn't tell me how to get up here. Finally the police chief did. I wonder if he wanted me to walk into a tripwire."

"We don't go down that way. We go into Ellensburg."

A stuttering ripped the night down on the trail. A boom like thunder.

"What's that?" Though I knew. Guns are a part of my life, too.

Country shivered. "Nothing. Let's go back to the house."

I ran down the slope.

The forest was black. I couldn't see the trees as much as sense them. I went as fast as I could down the lighter path. I hoped no one had restrung the tripwire. The air was thick with pine pitch. Another stutter, close. Yellow flickered. I left the path and groped from scaly trunk to trunk. A campfire.

Shouting. "- sick a' you motherfuckers ripping me off! You hear? Sick a' you!"

I broke into a clearing. The smell of woodsmoke hit me with a wave of nostalgia. A skinny guy without a shirt lay face down, his legs half in a yellow sleeping bag, one arm in the campfire, red holes through his back. Two more sleeping bags were empty. A guy with a sharp haircut sat up in his bag like a caterpillar. He held both hands in front of him. "Okay, okay! Whatever you want! We'll get out right now! Just let us get up! Jesus shit! We'll go, okay?"

Draco hunched beside the fire. His rifle pointed down. Sundance watched him, sweat running down his fat face. He pointed his rapid-fire shotgun towards the woods.

"You'll call the pigs!" Draco shrieked. He fired over the camper's head at the woods. Bullets chipped yellow splinters. He aimed at the guy's forehead. The barrel spun a crooked circle.

"Jesus no, we won't! I promise!"

I called, "Draco!"

He staggered around. "Kite Man!" He studied me for a long time. "Kite Man... You brought these guys here!"

I was far from any tree. "Draco..."

He snapped up the rifle.

I snapped my fingers.

Draco faced an allosaur tall as a billboard and half as wide. Scaly gray skin like tree bark. Claws like pickaxe blades. A head like a Volkswagen with teeth like icicles. The firelight shone white on its face as if it were already fossilized. It coughed.

I was too close. The monster flicked his tail and almost broke my leg. Draco screamed and fired the rest of his magazine at the saur. Sundance just gaped popeyed. The camper tore free of his sleeping bag and streaked into the woods.

The dinosaur ripped the ground as it advanced. The mouth opened like a cave. Draco screamed again. I snapped my fingers.

His scream echoed in the empty clearing and died. A pine knot popped in the campfire.

Draco shook from head to foot, shook so hard sweat flew off him like water off a retriever. He threw down his rifle. "You -"

He ran to Sundance, ripped the shotgun out of his hands. When he turned to blast me, I was gone.

I popped up behind him and snagged the gun's sling, jerked it hard and got it away. I limped from a banged knee. "Gimme that!"

Draco spun again, probably dizzy now, and lunged for the gun. I snapped my fingers. It disappeared. Draco lunged at me, hands like claws. I disappeared.

It was daylight on the other side, near dusk. Behind me were pitch pines, the edge of endless miles of forest. Cycads like giant pineapples were topped by insects circling after sap. Red clay dropped to a swamp that reached to the horizon. Gray-green brontosaurs hooted and honked, the evening call to enter the water and circle the herd. A clutch of pacyrhinos munched catttails and sawgrass. Sweat broke out all over me. It had to be close to a hundred degrees with matching humidity.

I picked up the shotgun, a black fluted artifact weirder than any caveman's club. I put it to my shoulder, aimed for the sky, and fired off every shell, a series of obscene explosions that almost knocked me down. I slammed the gun into the dirt and screamed.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

The echoes faded and the brontosaurs went back to feeding. Their necks rose and fell like construction cranes. I mopped my face and flopped down on the clay. "Just fuck everything."

At dawn I came back.

I couldn't see the house from the bottom of the valley, only pot higher than my head: a stranger sight than anything I'd seen in the Mesozoic. I hunted for traps or hooks or whatever. Nothing but weed here in the center.

I snapped my fingers. Again. Again. Again.

The hoots and honks and groans brought them to the rim of the valley. They pointed and yelled and pushed at one another. Draco jumped up and down like some tiny windup toy and aimed his rifle into the valley.

I popped up behind him. Chocolate Charlie and Honey and Jud still watched the herd of brontosaurs stripping their crop. I caught Draco by the hair and yanked him onto his back, kicked at his hands until he let go the rifle. I kicked it over the edge.

I dragged him by the scalp until we were free of the crowd, rolled him over and planted a foot in his back. "Enough is enough, Drac. I'm taking you down to the police."

"Police?" said one of the women. Most of them trotted off towards the houses.

I tangled Draco's hands with the rawhide thong from around my neck, knotted it somehow. He spat out a mouthful of grass. "Fuck you, man! You sold out! What happened to the spirit of the revolution, hunh?" Up by the house cars revved.

I looked at him writhing on the ground like a crippled bug. "Hippie is dead as the dinosaurs. It said so in People magazine." Far below a brontosaur hooted. I snapped my fingers and cut him off in mid-honk.

Country Girl had her hands in the pockets of the same dress. Her child stood behind her skirts. I noticed now it looked like Draco. She asked, "Kite?"

My throat was sore from screaming at the sky. "I'm sorry, Country, this was a mistake. I shouldn't have come."

"Will you still send me that money?"

"Sure. I'll send it to - a bank or something."

I pulled Draco to his feet. He weighed no more than a child. I pushed him towards the deer path.