SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

“We believe that the land has a spirit. Every blade of grass and every leaf has a spirit within it. Wakan Tanka is our creator. He has no form like your white god. Instead he is in everything.” Burgess chuckled again. “It’s funny. I remember my grandfather, who was raised in the old way. He took us to a place where later on white men would come and dig up the bones of a great dinosaur. We could see the mark of its head and its eye in the surrounding rock. My grandfather said that this was the burial place of a great creature that had once walked the land. He said it had been made by Wakan Tanka to remove those creatures who would do the Lakota harm. And once it had destroyed all of these creatures, it had chosen this spot to die, so that every generation of Lakota could go to it, and remember what it had done for us.”

Gomer jogged out of the store with a map in his hand. “I think I got it figured out. We’re about five minutes away from the guy’s house.”

I nodded to Burgess, finished my bottle, then slid it into the wooden box beside the machine. We got in the car and headed west out of the gas station. Burgess drove with Gomer in the passenger seat. I sat behind Gomer.

Eventually, Burgess turned down a shaded two-lane residential street.

“What happened to the creature? You said white men came and dug it up?”

Gomer turned in his seat, his eyes full of questions.

“Yeah, scientists from the School of Mines came, dug it up, put it back together, and sold it to a museum for millions of dollars that they put back into your school.”

“None of the money came to the tribe?”

Burgess gave me an Are you kidding? look in the mirror.

“Looks as if the great beast hadn’t cleansed the land of everything.”

Burgess nodded. “We say that all the time. If it had only waited for the white man to come before dying we’d never have had this problem.”

“What kind of dinosaur was it?”

“Tyrannosaurus Rex,” he said, as he pulled into a space by the curb in front of a single-story California white and blue craftsman. A yellow and white ’57 Chevy was parked in the driveway.

I couldn’t help grin as I imagined settlers in their Conestoga wagons running for their lives while being chased by herds of white-man-eating dinosaurs on the American Great Plains.

When we got out of the car, Gomer asked, “What was that all about?”

“We were talking about belief and God and dinosaurs.”

“However did you get to that?” Then he snapped his fingers. “The gas station.”

I nodded. We headed up the walk. “Do you believe?” I asked.

“Dinosaurs?” he asked with a smile. “Most definitely.”

“And God?”

“I was raised in the South. What do you think?”

“Churches on every corner?”

“And then some.”

We took the three steps to the porch. Burgess stepped ahead and rang the buzzer.

“What about the Chinese as a race?”

Gomer sighed. “My people spent the last two thousand years worshipping an emperor, then we were told our religion was socialism. We’re still getting over that. Trying to figure out how killing all of our teachers and scientists fits into God’s plan.”

Burgess rang the doorbell again.

Still nothing.

Gomer put a hand on Burgess’s shoulder. “Go around the side and see if he’s in the back yard.”

Burgess took off round the corner at a fast walk.

I nodded toward the car. “It’s unlikely he’s gone, but he could have gotten a ride, be taking a walk, or any number of reasons.”

He frowned. “Could also be that he’s dead, being held hostage and not allowed to open the door, or crushed beneath a fallen book case.”

“So you’re a glass half-empty person.”

“Actually, sir, I’m more of a glass totally empty person. If there’s something that could happen, I want to have thought of it ahead of time.”

“Isn’t that a little paranoid?”

“Did you know that the Chinese character for paranoid and prepared are the same?”

“Is it really?”

He glanced at me and grinned.

“I guess you’ll never know unless you can read Chinese.”

I couldn’t help grin as well. Getting to know Gomer Pyle after the death of Chiba had been slow. Looks like getting away from the office was just the thing we needed to break the ice.

The front door opened, revealing a breathless Burgess, his eyes panicked. “Back door was open. You got to see this.”

I glanced at Gomer.

He said, “Looks like it’s half-empty after all.”

We entered the home.

MONTE RIO

July 8, 1970

Evening

Major Everett Duncan, formerly a Cerberus working for the National Security Agency, sat in the center of his sofa in the living room, staring blankly at the empty fireplace before him. His chest moved, which meant he breathed, but that’s all he seemed able to do. His soft gray eyes could have been staring at a spot a thousand miles distant for as focused as they were. He had close-cut blonde hair and wore a rumpled gray suit, white shirt, blue tie. His long face seemed longer because of the way his cheeks sagged.

“I came inside and found him like this. Weird isn’t it? Think he’s on something?”