What Lies Beneath

What Lies Beneath

Summer 1972.

“Road trip!” Pam screamed over the sound of the juke box. She had shoved her chair aside, since there was no dancefloor in this hole-in-wall bar, her arms in the air, hips bumping and grinding to the beat. Feet barely moving. After half a pitcher, she could sway her hips or move her feet. She opted for swaying to Otis Redding.

“Wastin’ time!” Barb was still capable of doing a fair lip-sync of Sitting on the dock of the bay. Pam a tad too wasted to remember all the words.

Fancying themselves the last hippies, the two girls planning to leave their homes in Georgia and head for the Frisco Bay. A few weeks earlier, Barb had bought a ’58 VW van, orange, of course. Whoever had owned Old Orange before had taken out the rear benches and built a sleeping platform, leaving plenty of storage underneath.

About ten days into the trip, by the time they came to Houston, they realized that the air hose, a vital necessity to cool the engine, would not stay where it was supposed to be. So, taking the southern route through the desert was out of the question. So, they turned right toward Dallas.

Old Orange had a few other minor quirks. For instance, the radio only worked in third and fourth gear. The windshield wipers only went one way. After each swipe, whoever was in the passenger seat needed to pound on the windshield to dislodge the wiper. Orange’s top speed was 50 mph, if the wind was at their back, a little faster if going downhill. The starter had left them in New Orleans. Which showed remarkable good taste for a starter and made Pam the designated pusher. In Dallas, they learned the expensive lesson that transmissions require fluids.

They spent a week in a tiny village at Lake Superior shore, where the main entertainment was going to the dump and watching the bears feed. Pointing west again, the plan was to bypass Denver and go to Aspen. Orange was willing but unable to keep the minimum speed of 40 mph while climbing up I-70. Once again, a detour was needed. They headed north into Wyoming before turning west again.

Two days later, they left Jackson Hole after breakfast and entered the Grand Tetons with its raw, relatively young peaks. Mid-morning, they pulled in at a rest stop next to a small lake. It was mid-June; the north slope had been warmed by the sun for several weeks and was carpeted with wildflowers. Every color in the rainbow, and all the ones in between. The south side was still holding on to patches of snow. This contrast, on either side of the still water, reflecting the blue sky, was breathtaking.

While Barb was coaxing enough life from the Coleman stove to heat water, Pam stretched her legs. Avoiding the clumps of snow and sludge, she made her way up the south hill. Feeling a rumble in the ground, she was stunned at the sight when she looked over the top of the hill.

Animals! Moose, elk, deer, rabbits, skunks, buffalo, the odd wolf all running eastward. Pam was a city girl but even she thought this was strange. None of the animals paid any attention to her or each other. They ran, stampeded across the meadow, as fast as their legs would move.

Worried, she returned to the van. Barb listened and shrugged. “It’s nothing,” she said. “If there was a fire, they would have closed the park. Let’s have our coffee and go on.”

Pam wasn’t so sure but took her word for it.

Soon they drove on, admiring the breathtaking majesty that are the Tetons. By early afternoon they entered the visitor’s center of Yellowstone Park. Right on time, which meant too late to get front row seats, or rather front row standing spots to watch the show.

While the summer intern was giving a play-by-play, Old Faithful did its thing.

“Well, folks, thank you for coming, if you want to see it again, please come back in… “ Old Faithful spewed again.

“Wow!” The kid gushed. “That’s a first.”

And again, another plume of sulfuric steam erupted. The intern stood staring; mouth open. Everybody felt the rumble. Some may have been more alarmed than others, but they all felt it.

Old Faithfull was quiet for a few minutes. People dared to exhale in relief. Pam just wanted to grab Barb and run, but she didn’t. She stayed with the other tourists and stared.

And then another spurt. No, that’s not the right word, a geyser, a flume... Oh, hell! Let’s just call it what it was. An eruption! The hot, sulfuric steam bubbled up and erupted, overstepping its recognized boundaries and sprayed over the poor hapless tourists who were standing on the eastern boardwalk.

This time, Pam dragged her friend away. Barb jumped in the driver’s seat while Pam, since that was her job, pushed the old relic off. As soon as Barb was able to turn the engine over, Pam ran and jumped in the passenger seat. People were screaming, running, elbowing, pushing and stumbling over each other. Some looked like extras in a horror movie, faces burned, clothing melting to their skin.

Only this was real.

She didn’t want to watch, didn’t want to see. But it’s like a massive pile up, you just have to. Pam gasped when she saw the head.

Just think of the slobbering, angry head, the poster child of the Jurassic Park movies, the face only a mother could love. That’s what reared up out of the boiling water. It had had eons to incubate and mature. And that day it was ready to claim its heritage.

If they’d taken the time, they might have wondered how many of those creatures had laid their eggs in the warm springs of Yellow Stone. How many eggs had survived the long winter that followed the meteor impact? The one that extinguished this one’s mommy and daddy.

They didn’t have to ask or wonder because just as Barb was able to back up without running over anyone, another one crawled out. This one had wings and within minutes took flight. Fully grown. Or at least hopefully it was full-grown. If this was just a baby, it could gown up to be much bigger than a jumbo jet. Much, much bigger.

The lake, that famous tourist attraction, that placid aqua blue, edged in yellow circle, was now a churning cauldron with prehistoric critters peeking out before clambering ashore. Screeching, howling and knocking over, crushing anything in their paths.

“Go, please go!” Pam begged.

“I can’t!” Barb cried. “I want to, but I can’t make myself drive over anyone.”

“If you don’t they will.” Pam pointed to the creatures that were crawling out of the water.

“Oh, shit! Oh shit, oh, shit.” Barb summed up the situation.

Though they knew it was time to haul ass, and even then, it might be too late, they sat there in the deceptive safety of Old Orange and stared as one grotesque beast after another crawled out of the boiling water.

“Go,” Pam whimpered. “Go, please. Go, Barb!” She nudged, shook, punched. Did what she could to make Barb wake up. “Go!” she screamed.

With a curse and a shudder, Barb put her foot on the gas and jumped forward. Don’t stall, don’t stall, don’t stall. Pam prayed as she turned backward in her seat and watched the first tree burst spontaneously into flames. “Faster, Barb, faster.”

Barb was a good driver. That day, she turned into an excellent demolition derby driver. Aggressively, she drove around everybody, forced people into ditches and off the side of the mountain. She prayed, the act of contrition, “Oh, my Lord God. I am heartily sorry for offending Thee….” all the way into Idaho.

They had grumbled the day before, when the gas station in Jackon Hole had gouged them. When the pump claimed to have put twelve gallons into a half-full ten-gallon tank, then charged them the usury price of forty-two cents per gallon for the privilege. But at least they had a full tank, and they were going downhill, which in the little old van, was a plus, a great plus.

Maybe those flying creatures were colorblind and couldn’t see orange, because cars left and right, front and back of them were picked up and dribbled like basketballs, rolled like marbles, stepped on like empty beer cans. But Barb weaved and bobbed and evaded their games.

It didn’t take long, just a few millennia to make it to Shoshone Ice Caves where they huddled with hundreds of other refugees till the National Guard came to tell them that it was safe to leave the cave.

Pam and Barb never made it to San Francisco, Old Orange threw a rod the next day.