The Old Priest

The Burnie-Can

155 T h e Un e x a m i n e d L i f e The Burnie-Can I N THE EARLY SUMMER OF 1966 MY GRANDmother captured a baby dinosaur, or maybe it was a fully grown dinosaur, just a small one. She trapped it under a clothes basket. It was early in the afternoon, just after lunch, and she and my mother were the only two people at home. It was a hot July day. My sister Ailie and I were off swimming at a nearby lake. My father and grandfather were both at their jobs, down at the Owens-Corning plant, working on their asbestosis . When the dinosaur arrived my grandmother was out in the backyard, taking laundry down off the line and folding it into a red plastic clothes basket. My mother was in the house, chainsmoking cigarettes and watching Days of Our Lives. We all heard about it over dinner, and even though it was my grandmother who’d caught the dinosaur, it was my mother whobegantotellthestory,andIthinkthefourofuswhohadn’t been there probably chalked the whole thing up to my mother ’s fondness for diet pills. In fact, there was a copy of Reader’s Digest out in the living room with an article that my sister had urged my mother to read. The title of the article was “The Diet Pill Menace.” “I was in the house,” my mother explained. “Nan was outside , folding the sheets. Then she came into the living room and said, ‘I trapped a dinosaur under the clothes basket. Hurry up! I trapped a dinosaur under the clothes basket!’” 155 A n t h o n y Wa l l a c e 156 But when they lifted the clothes basket up the dinosaur ran away. Up to this point my mother told the story, and then they both began speaking at the same time, breaking in on each other’s account of what the creature looked like and what had happened next. “He was like a lizard but stood up on his hind legs,” my grandmother told us, bending her hands at the wrist to illustrate a dinosaur standing up on its hind legs. “He looked over his shoulder at us and made this strange sound, like a roaring sound but small, then took off for the burnie-can.” The burniecan , I should explain, was a rusted oil drum that my grandfatherusedtoburnthingsin ,backinatimewhenburningthings was an acceptable way of getting rid of them. There were holes and tears in the side of this can and toward the bottom, from repeated exposure to fire and the elements, and apparently the dinosaur ran in through one of those openings. “We didn’t know what to do,” my mother cut in. “The dinosaur was in the burnie-can!” Little by little we got the story of how, with great caution, my mother and grandmother decided to overturn the burniecan , clothes basket once more at the ready. But when they followed through with their plan, the dinosaur was gone. No one that evening quite knew what to make of my mother and grandmother’s story, and even my father, who had a mean streak and loved any opportunity to ridicule, was unusually reserved . Nobody, it was clear by the time the blueberry cobbler was on the table, knew what to say. As kids we were used to telling stories that had a heightened sense of what was possible. (One time, sitting alone in the basement, my sister Ailie swore 157 T h e B u r n i e - C a n she’dseenasmallparadeofghosts,andghostsofrabbitsatthat, spirits of dead animals that my grandfather had hunted and then skinned at a long low porcelain sink.) That the grownups were telling a story this strange and improbable was exhilarating and frightening at the same time. Several times more the ladies alternated with their descriptions of the prehistoric creature. It stood on two feet, but it had anothersetoflittlefeetthatitkepttuckedclosetoitspuffed-up chest. It was as green, my grandmother added, as the ginger ale bottle that was sitting on the table in front of us. It had a long toothy snout and a tiny red tongue that lashed out in quick, furtive movements, and a long slender tail that it seemed to use not only for balance but for propulsion. Finally my sister went into the living room and returned with the volume of an encyclopedia that identified...