On the road to Terlingua, Joel slowed the pickup and looked for his old rock-collecting site. When he saw a wide arroyo he pulled off. Jouncing through dry grass woke Danny, his teen-aged son, who blinked and squinted at distant desert mountains.
“Said I would take you fossil hunting a long time ago. This is it. Where I always went, anyway.”
Joel led his son to the arroyo, its bed strewn with pebbles. The boy seemed dazed by the long drive. Usually, when it was his week to have the boy, they seldom left the house.
They walked down from the road and under strands of barbed wire so high above the washed-out sand that stooping to pass was not necessary. A few yards in, Joel pulled a half pint of bourbon from his back pocket and took a seat against a sand wall.
Danny gazed at the land for a while, then looked down and saw the fossils.
“Wow. Look at this,” he said. “Ammonites, crinoids, shark teeth, trilobites....” He picked up a few specimens, but then dropped them. “This is all wrong,” he said.
“Your mother thought so.”
“No, not the trip—these fossils. All these kinds can’t come from the same place.”
Joel took a sip. “I collected fossils for years. Went everywhere after them. When I got tired of it all I brought my whole collection out here and dumped it.” He wiped his face with his shirttail. “Kind of a joke, really. When I was thinking of bringing you out here, I wondered how long it would take you to see that everything you want never shows up in one place.”
The boy stood silent, watching cloud shadows cross hills.
“Take any of those you want,” Joel said.
Danny looked over his shoulder. “I never like for other people to do my finding for me,” he said. Then he turned, clambered up the sand bank, and strode into the desert.
“Well hell,” Joel said. “Boy? Watch for rattlers.” He pocketed his bottle and followed his son’s trail.
:::
Joel stopped and canted his head, listening. He moved in the direction of a scuff mark in the sand, weaving through the green-gold foliage of creosote brush until mesquite limbs appeared and thickened. He hoped the boy knew that mesquites have thorns. Near the base of a massive outcrop of rock, he heard the sound of water dripping into water. He stepped through branches into green shadows. Danny stood peering down at a bathtub-sized spring. A fringe of tiny water plants floated there, and diving beetles twirled across the clear surface.
“I never knew this was here,” the man said.
“I looked for thicker green. It usually means a way to a better life is near.” Danny turned a steady gaze on his father.
“Good point,” Joel said.
“It helps to know other people understand some things too,” Danny said. And he strode away again, headed for the road.
—From the author’s collection of flash literature, The Light I Want to Keep, forthcoming from MacQ
Bio: Daryl Scroggins
