Dinosaur
short story #49
When I was in second grade, it occurred to our teacher how clever it would be to organize, in our classroom, an exhibit of dinosaurs made out of recycled materials. It would be very educational. It would remind the school body of the doomed fate of our own species if we did not recycle.
“Each of you make any dinosaur you want,” he said. “Out of the junk you find lying around your house.”
“What kind of materials, sir? Coke cans?” asked one classmate.
“Milk cartons?” asked another.
“How about yoghurt cups, sir?”
“Styrofoam?”
“Old wine bottles?”
“Alright, alright!” said the teacher. “Any of those, as long as you don’t use anything new. The point is we must save our planet!”
I went home dismayed. I’d never seen any of those materials mentioned in my own home. Save on special occasions, we always just prepared our own food and anything deemed superfluous and therefore a waste of precious space was right away thrown or sold to the scrap collector. Mine was a simple, humble household.
I couldn’t think of anything to do, and after much nervous idleness and nail-biting I’d given up racking my brain that afternoon and I waited for my father to arrive home at night. He arrived late. At that time he was still working in the Philippine Navy, and he worked on a tight schedule. I can still picture clearly how at 4:30 AM, sky still dark, he would wake up before the rest of us in that one common bedroom we all shared, without so much as a groan or delay, and how he would noiselessly bathe then comb his hair spic and span and tuck his light brown seaman’s uniform in that military-fold: meticulous, crisp, practiced. He was a true military man.
When I approached him, he was eating the cold dinner plate set out for him and he looked tired. I imagine it’s no joke standing stiff and poised in the heat all day and commanding a battalion of men to do likewise.
He smiled when he saw me. “Still up?” he said. “What’s the problem?”
I told him. He frowned, chewing the remains of his dinner slowly, deep in thought. “Due tomorrow, huh?” he said.
“Yes, Tatay,” I said.
He was silent for a while then he wiped his mouth and got up from the dining table and he opened one of the cupboards in our kitchen. That was where we kept the candles. During those years power blackouts were frequent in our neighborhood. Some families had the good fortune of owning power generators. For the rest, we used candles, lots of them. How I remember those countless black evening hours of heat and boredom passed in the confines of the gleaming radius cast by a candle flame.
My father took down some used candles and he set them on the counter. He had chosen all the white ones and they came in different diameters, from finger-thin to bottle-stout. He turned on the stove and he set a frying pan on it.
“What are you going to do, Tatay?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
While he waited for the pan to heat up he took out a kitchen knife and ran it down the sides of the candles, cutting away the dried wax drips so the sides would turn smooth. He took a long thin candle and cut it into four equal parts. He hovered his hand near the pan to test the temperature then he took the fattest candle and with the heat began to melt the four cut limbs into the candle. He took out this mass of wax and began to carve it, pushing at the knife carefully with his thumb to round the edges, the wax shavings falling on the counter.
He clicked his tongue. “Tsk,” he said.
“What’s wrong, Tatay?”
“Go fetch me a rag, will you.”
I brought him a white towel and he wrapped it tight around his thumb. I watched a dark red blot rapidly bloom on the cloth. I swallowed. I said, “Are you okay?”
“Don’t worry, it’s a scratch,” he said. He had already resumed chipping at the wax figure, once in a while approaching the heated pan and adding a new piece of melted candle to the white waxy mass slowly taking shape.
I was getting uneasy. It was getting quite late. But my father worked on. I pulled a dining chair to the counter to watch, kneeling on the seat, my chest against the backrest and my head resting on my hands. The household was filled with the silence of sleep, while my father sculpted the wax figure with a solemn, austere concentration, his strong, trim back bent to the counter, the sinews of his arms taut and tireless, eyes squinted with the tedious and minute gaze of a jeweler. To contemplate my father so absorbed in such trifles in no way diminished the soldierly composure for which I looked up to him, only strengthened it, made it more human.
I don’t know how long I’d fallen into a nap when my father woke me up. “What do you think?” he said, beaming at the creation in his hands.
I was stunned. My father had carved out a wax figure of a triceratops. An intricate crown spread around its neck, and on its forehead and nose stood the horns, masterful, domineering. The large body stood on carved, clawed legs and a smooth curled tail with a delicate and brute beauty. It looked like something you would find in a glass display in some store of collectible figurines.
“It could use a little more polishing,” my father said, studying it closer, smoothing out a part with his thumb.
“It’s beautiful, Tatay,” I said.
He yawned. “I think we should get some sleep,” he said. It was almost 2 o’clock.
We went up to the room, not making any noise, treading carefully in the gray dark so as not to step on any of my sleeping brothers. My father kissed me goodnight and he told me not to forget to say my prayers.
Before I went to bed I wrapped the triceratops in a small towel and laid it carefully into my school trolley. I fell asleep smiling — the placid, smug smile as of the well-to-do schoolboy who had just bought the latest action figure and could not wait to flaunt it under the envious eyes of his classmates the next day.
I woke up briefly to the buzzing sound of my father’s alarm at 4:30 AM and before falling back to sleep I heard the soft rustling sound of my father getting up for work, without so much as a groan or delay.
