Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner

by Lisa Wingate

  On the piano among other photos, there was one of Zach holding a little dark-haired girl, perhaps four or five years old. She was smiling softly at the camera with her head tucked under his chin. A tender moment between cowboy and child. I touched the photo, wondering who she was.

  “That’s Zach’s daughter, Macey,” Pop said as he returned to the room, carrying a wooden box with fading blue paint.

  Pulling my hand away, I felt the blood drain from my arms and legs, and my body went cold. Zach had a daughter? I read the date on the photo and guessed at the age of the little brown-eyed girl in ponytails that reminded me of Sydney’s. Four, maybe five years old then. She would be nine or ten now, just a year or two older than Sydney. That’s Zach’s daughter. The words repeated in my mind, repainting reality with broad, careless strokes. Zach wasn’t who I thought he was. He was someone’s father. How could he have kept such a secret, after I’d poured out the entire saga of Sydney, sniffling and sighing about how much I missed her and how worried I was about the custody issue? All he’d said was, That must be hard.

  We’d talked about everything from our childhoods to the difficulty of watching our childhood icons—my father and his grandfather—suffer the ravages of time. I’d told him about Sydney’s daily e-mails, how much she liked the picture of the horses, and how she wanted to keep the dog, and he never brought up the little girl in this picture. His daughter?

  How could that be?

  “This place sure was full of laughs when she was livin’ here.” Pop reached out affectionately, swiping dust off the picture frame. “Course, she’s probably growed quite a bit by now. We don’t see her anymore since the divorce.”

  “Oh,” I said, not trusting myself to respond further. Zach had a daughter he hadn’t seen in years? One who used to live here at the ranch with him? “I … I guess I’d better go,” I stammered. I wanted to turn and run, dash out the door of the big stone house and forget everything I’d learned here. Forget the image of a little dark-haired girl living … where now, exactly? Yearning for a father who never came to visit. Just like Sydney.

  “Well, I didn’t mean to go into all that. These days I get to rattlin’ on and sometimes I don’t even know why.” Handing me the box, Pop stepped back and eyed me quizzically. “You all right? You look white as a fresh-painted fence.”

  I nodded vaguely, gripping the box so tightly that the wood pinched my fingers. The weight seemed slight compared to the heaviness of Pop’s revelation. The idea of Zach as some kind of a deadbeat dad, a chip off the same block as Geoff, was more than I could bear. Could that be who he really was? I’d let myself fall for him without knowing even this most basic thing about him—he had a daughter. I didn’t know, because he kept it to himself, hid it behind easy smiles and innocuous talk about his childhood on the ranch, his college years in vet school, his job.

  What if he wasn’t the larger-than-life cowboy hero I’d painted in my mind? What if he was just one more father, like so many—like Geoff—more concerned about moving on with his own life than raising his child?

  “It’s just the heat,” I muttered, realizing that Pop was watching me with growing concern. “I’d better go.”

  We stumbled through a quick good-bye, and I rushed down the walkway, loaded the box in the back of my SUV, grabbed the dog, and sped off without thinking of where I was headed.

  I ended up at the riverbank. Parking above the track site, I let the dog out and started walking, trying to catch my breath as Mr. Grits trailed along beside me, looking worried. Air formed a knot in the top of my chest, and tears welled in my eyes. I wiped them away impatiently. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t. There wasn’t any reason to cry. What was I crying about? I’d known all along, in some practical, rational part of myself, that this grown-up fairy tale was all smoke and mirrors. Sooner or later the stroke of midnight would slash through the illusions, the coach would be a pumpkin, my glass slippers worn-out Birkenstocks, and I would be just another lonely single mother spending Friday nights with the prime-time lineup and a bucket of ice cream.

  But no matter how unrealistic it was, I didn’t want to give up the fantasy. I wanted to believe in magical trees, and love at first sight, and someone, somewhere out there, waiting just for me. My soul mate, brought into my life at exactly the right time. I wanted to have faith in divine providence. I’d floated so far off the ground the last few days that there was no way to land softly back on earth.

  There has to be an explanation, I told myself. I was making assumptions about Zach, based on sketchy information from Pop and my own suppositions. Zach deserved more than that, didn’t he? The real Zach couldn’t possibly be so different from the man I saw looking at me on the windmill tower. The one I wrote giddy love notes about on my computer.

  But what if I was seeing only what I wanted to see? What if I was fooling myself? What if I was so desperate, so lonely and depressed with Sydney gone, that I was willing to jump at any remote possibility of love?

  Take a chance, a voice inside me whispered. Take a chance. Take a leap of faith.

  Don’t be a fool, another voice said. You’ve been fooled before. Pack up and go home.

  The two fought like angel and devil on my shoulders as I walked along the water’s edge with Mr. Grits. Finally I stopped, stood still, closed my eyes, and just listened to the water passing, the trees shifting in the breeze, the grass rustling as some tiny creature scurried about collecting seeds. I tried to think rationally. Stay or go? Go or stay? Take a chance, or play it safe?

  Mr. Grits splashed into the water, and I opened my eyes, watching him track the movement of a tiny perch. The fish darted toward shore, then back to the shallows, and I saw something that swept every other thought from my mind. Polished smooth by the kiss of the water, it lay only inches from my foot, rocking slightly in the tide. A partial caudal vertebra, sleek and unmistakable, cutting a swath of dark brown among the cream-colored fossils of snail shells and sea urchins. Squatting down, I plucked it from the water and turned it over in my hand. It was hollow, the fragmented fossilized bone of a meat-eating creature, large enough to be part of Melvin’s dinosaur. Laying it carefully on a rock, I checked the area, but there was nothing more. This one small piece had been carried from somewhere upstream, deposited among the rocks only inches from where I stood.

  It was a sign. I wasn’t meant to leave yet. Picking up the vertebra, I hurried back up the riverbed to my car, took out the wooden box of Pop’s ranch history mementos, sat down in the grass, and began to read.

  I lost myself in the life of Caroline Truitt. Even though the pages were copies, produced at some time in the past when Xerox machines used slick paper and left a haze of gray, I imagined that I was reading the original journal, the one that was now somewhere in the county museum. In my mind the paper was crackled and yellow, and the drawings of plants, animals, the cabin by the river were sketched in faded pen and ink. In fine loops of handwriting with the occasional inkblots of an old-fashioned pen, Caroline recounted her life, her love, and the founding of the Jubilee Ranch.

  She wrote on the first page:

  It began with an unlikely meeting on a street corner in New Orleans. He was lost, wandering around Esplanade, carrying directions to an office somewhere near the water. I lingered, I must admit, out of sympathy and some fascination for his dark skin and hair. He cut a fine figure, and when finally he became bold enough to ask my assistance, I could see that he was from some completely foreign place …

  The story went on from there. Eventually Caroline discovered that her foreigner was a Texan, the lowest form of white man, according to her father. And on top of that, Jeremiah Truitt was part Kiowa Indian, a hero of the battle of San Jacinto when he was only fourteen years old, now homesteading a land grant in what was still a wild, untamed region of Texas. He’d come east to buy a horse, a Thoroughbred stallion to lend some height and stride to his herd of sturdy mustang mares. He hadn’t intended to find a bride, but a week later, Caroline Portelieu
Truitt left with him on a ship, against the wishes of her parents, to the horror of friends, and to the complete dismay of professors at the women’s university, where she had been studying ornithology.

  She wrote next to a sketch of a seabird diving for a fish:

  To my mind, it is a far better thing to experience life than to read about it in a book. I am in love, blindly so. I would follow him to the end of the earth if he wanted it, though my father assures me that Texas is somewhere close. He says the Texans are fools and rabble-rousers who will soon be taken over again by the Mexicans, by which course we’ll all be put in chains. I am not worried in the least. In fact, it is another case that worries me more. What if this is my one chance in all the world to fall truly, deeply in love, and I fail to take it?

  Caroline told of a difficult journey by sea, then land, of founding a ranch in a dangerous country, of falling more deeply in love each day with a husband she adored, but barely knew. In her first four years at Jubilee Ranch, the time the initial journal spanned, they lost babies and crops, and from time to time each other, but they always found each other again. In her quiet time she contented herself with her writings, where she cataloged strange plants and animals, and the awesome relics of mysterious dragons that walked the river basin in ancient times, long before Caroline Truitt set foot on the untamed hills of Texas.

  NINETEEN

  WHEN I FINISHED READING CAROLINE’S JOURNALS, I SAT FOR A long time thinking—not only about the fossil sites she had sketched and identified, but about her life, and my life, and the similarities.

  Caroline was convinced that there was something big on Jubilee Ranch. A fossil of epic proportions, she called it. In her journals she wrote about a meeting with neighboring Comanche Indians, who spoke of the stonelike remains of a gigantic creature with long black teeth and sharp claws, which ancestral legend claimed had once lain exposed near a salt flat by the river. The bones were buried by a flood and a resulting landslide. Caroline had spent her life, in between ranching and raising children, trying to determine the exact location of the salt flat, but her attempts were unsuccessful.

  The recent appearance of Melvin’s dinosaur bone and now the fragmented vertebra made me suspect this spring’s rains or perhaps another landslide had reexposed the salt flat. Most probably it lay somewhere upstream, the fossils at least partially open to air and water, waiting to be found. As exciting as that possibility should have been, it was the private parts of Caroline’s journal that drew me back again and again.

  I thought about the courage it must have taken to leave behind everything—home, family, friends, security—and board a ship with a man she barely knew. To move to a far-off place, with wild animals and hostile native peoples. I tried to imagine birthing babies miles from the nearest doctor, and raising children when there were no guarantees of survival. Caroline had buried two children and raised four. She grieved the lost ones in long, painful passages, her writing trembling between inkblots as she paused to weep, or think, or gather strength. She taught local children to read, worked cattle alongside her husband, milked goats, involved herself in Texas politics, and struggled to raise crops in the pale, rocky soil of the hill country. She gave the town of Loveland its name, and selected its location, near the Lover’s Oak, which the Comanches had for years revered as a matrimonial site. She never questioned whether she should have boarded the boat with Jeremiah Truitt at just twenty-three years old. She never wondered if she should have stayed in the civilized world and lived an easier life.

  She died at thirty-eight, when she came in from the field, lay down to rest, and never woke up. Her final journal entry ended with a few lines written by a neighbor’s wife, who described Caroline’s passing as peaceful. The doctor in New Orleans wrote a letter to her husband, saying that Caroline had a weak heart, which she had known about since childhood. She never told anyone, not even her Jeremiah.

  As if somehow she knew she would be passing soon, she wrote in the final pages of her journal:

  My only fear has been failing to really live. And I have lived entirely, every moment in this wild and delicate place. What more would there be for me to do, if I lived to be one hundred? One bold year is worth a dozen timid ones.

  The last line of the journal, written by the neighbor, said:

  She lived on the Jubilee Ranch for fifteen years. She was buried beneath the Lover’s Oak, without a marker for mourners to gaze down upon, as was her request. The tree, she said, would mark her very well. It was ever reaching upward to God.

  Mr. Grits nuzzled my hand as I closed the journal. Stroking his fur, I lay back in the grass and stared into the sky as the clouds blazed red and then dimmed among the branches.

  My only fear has been failing to really live.

  I have lived entirely, every moment in this wild and delicate place… .

  These past few days, I felt as if I had lived entirely. I couldn’t remember when I’d ever been so alive. Perhaps when I was fresh out of college, traveling the world with Geoff, hunting for buried treasure in exotic locations. Sometimes the locations were dangerous, but I was never afraid. I was young, and in love, and doing what I wanted to do. I felt that, if something happened to me, I would die happy.

  And then I grew up. One simple line on a pregnancy test accomplished what childhood and college, endless lectures from my mother, and four years of marriage could not. I opened my eyes and saw that the world is filled with risks, and the risks weren’t just about me anymore. Geoff left, and I learned that life can change in an instant. It can flip over like a box of Styrofoam peanuts, and you’re left scrambling to gather enough insulation to survive, before it all blows away. After that, you sink down into what’s left, like a fragile glass vase with a crack in it, trying to avoid further damage.

  One bold year is worth a dozen timid ones… .

  I’d lived more in the last few days than in months of my normal life. I didn’t want that feeling to stop. I wanted to stay here, in this wild and delicate place. But part of me knew I couldn’t. I had a daughter and job and a home to return to, a thousand miles away. With Sydney’s life a chaotic jumble of custody arrangements, new parents, part-time houses, she didn’t need the added confusion of my dating—long-distance or otherwise. I couldn’t have her building her hopes on some unpredictable, improbable situation with a man who kept the most important parts of himself a mystery, who had a daughter he apparently never saw and didn’t acknowledge.

  But Sydney isn’t here, a voice whispered in my head. Sydney was thousands of miles away, for weeks yet. What if I was jumping to all the wrong conclusions about Zach, based on sketchy information from Pop? What if I was using that as an excuse to run away from another potential relationship?

  But if I stayed, if I let myself become more deeply involved, was I setting myself up for another painful fall?

  It is another case that worries me more. What if this is my one chance in all the world to fall truly, deeply in love, and I fail to take it? Caroline was in my head now, too. Another voice, one that was willing to risk it all.

  What if this is my one chance?

  Overhead, the sky turned dark and the branches became shifting shadows against dusky blue velvet. Somewhere along the river a coyote yipped, and Mr. Grits lifted his head, growling. Sitting up, I grabbed his fur to keep him from taking off after the sound.

  “Ssshhh. We’d better go,” I whispered.

  Grateful for the reprieve from my own questions, I took Mr. Grits to the car, then went back to gather the journals. I stood for a moment, gazing toward the riverbank with the box in my arms. Even though I’d spent the afternoon analyzing all the reasons for leaving, I couldn’t imagine never coming back here again. If I left now, I’d always wonder what was hidden along the river. I’d always wonder what might have happened between Zach and me.

  I’d always know that once again, I’d chosen fear over faith.

  The two were at war inside me as I drove back to the cabin. On the hillside, the coy
otes had started into a full-scale chorus by the time I’d brought in Mr. Grits and Pop’s box. Shivering at the sound, I locked the door, feeling lonely and vulnerable. I hoped the mystery truck didn’t come back tonight.

  My nerves were on edge as I fixed a supper of ham sandwiches and instant grits. I ate on the table, and the dog ate on the chair. I didn’t put his food in the bowl by the door because I didn’t want to be alone.

  The cacophony of the coyotes and my own whirling thoughts kept me up late, even though my eyes were burning, and I was physically exhausted and emotionally drained. The dog, either sensing my disquiet or sharing it, moved restlessly between sitting by the window and leaning against my chair with his head on my arm.

  I stroked his fur absently, sailing on a sea of conflicting desires, until finally I pulled out Caroline’s field journals, old pictures of the trackway, and a topographic map of the ranch. Spreading them on the table, I spent an hour comparing Caroline’s notes and drawings to the modern map. Sometime between listening to the sounds of the night and trying to plot the locations of Caroline’s fossil sites, I fell asleep with my head on the table.

  I awoke hours later with a sinus headache and my spine feeling like it had been put in a vise. Groaning, I stood up and wandered off to the bedroom, slipped into my pajamas, and burrowed beneath the old quilt, not wanting to think, or wonder, or worry anymore.

  Hush up now. Sleep. I felt my mother in the room, her presence so real that I sensed her fingers smoothing tangled strands of hair away from my face. Things will look clearer in the morning.

  I hoped that was true. I hoped I’d awaken and know what I was supposed to do. I hoped there would be a sign.

  Deep in the night, I once again fell into bizarre cowboy dreams. I was in an old movie theater, the fancy kind built in the thirties and forties. On the screen, John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn were traveling down the river in Rooster Cogburn. They were arguing, but someone had turned down the sound so that I couldn’t hear the words. Then I was on the screen, standing on a butte high above the riverbank. I could see that the river was rough and angry around the bend, littered with rocks. Cupping my hands, I screamed at the raft, but the passengers couldn’t hear me.