Kronosaur

By Tom Stockwell

Published @ Twenty Thousand Feet

© Copyright 2010 by Tom Stockwell

Kronosaur

In the spring, after the snow and ice had finally melted, Peter Milque quit his old job and drove up the highway through the sun light to take a new one. His job was to program the mainframe computer of his new employer. Since one computer was – from Milque's perspective – much the same as any other, his new job fit him to a tee. For long periods of time he would sit in his windowless cubicle pouring over the numbers and the code that had been printed onto green-bar paper in the smaller adjoining windowless cubicle. Meanwhile, outside, the spring sunlight deepened into the heat of summer.

Sometime in July, during his lunch hour, Milque looked up from his reports and his cup of yogurt and realized that, indeed, the spring had passed and it was now sometime in July. This didn't upset him, of course, time being somewhat ethereal during the heated spells, but it did occur to him that he' d yet to go outside to explore his new surroundings. He made a note to do so the following day and returned to his work.

True to form, the next day did find Milque outside, enjoying his lunch hour in the sun, and as he accounted a good forty five minutes that could not be accounted otherwise, he chose to follow the utility service path that meandered unaccountably away from his office building. So it was that he arrived at the edge of a deep widening channel crossed by a railroad trestle where an old sea gull hesitated on the brink of a granite block.

The sea gull was extremely old; ancient in fact. It was possibly the oldest sea gull Milque had ever encountered. Its plumage was dun-gray, and speckled with white, and the bird looked in need of a good meal. For some time Milque did not move, fearing to frighten it unnecessarily, but after eying Milque for several minutes, the bird thought better of its place and attempted to fly. It couldn't. It gracelessly floundered into channel. After several more attempts to fly it eventually floated and bobbed and drifted out into the inlet. Overhead younger birds circled and called in uncanny unison.

The following lunch hour Milque brought his lunch with him to the edge of the water. For some reason and by some manner the old crippled gull had also returned to the granite block. Milque sat down. The bird, this time, chose not to move. Together, after a few tense moments, they shared his sandwich. It was really a delight.

After many such lunch hours, with time playing its summer games of speeding and slowing, slowing and creeping, Milque began to talk to the bird. He did not expect answers from the old bird and he did not receive any. But again, after some time, he imagined that it was communicating with him, in a slant-eyed look or the shake of its head or the impotent flutter of its wings. Exactly what the bird was communicating was extraneous to the shared lunch, which now included bread crusts and sardines. Together their lunch hours now spread into hours and the sunlight of summer began to lighten into fall.

One afternoon the bird was missing. Although Milque was upset, he did not become excessively distraught. Such is the way with wild things, he reasoned. They get old and they die. They didn't seem to show any particular courtesy about such things. But something that did bother him was the pile of dun-gray feathers with the white speckles that was left on the granite block. He would have thought the bird would have taken them with it somehow. Feathers should not be left behind like that. Something, he thought, must have eaten the bird. And then he regretted having given the bird so many things to eat, when after all, it would probably have still been alive had he not fattened it on flounder bits and haddock heads. Still, he began to seriously imagine what might have eaten his friend.

The next lunch hour he baited a small, improvised trap with the remains of some turbot and set it in the spot where the old gull had stood. As a piece of improvisation the trap was quite ingenious: it was composed of a lasso stretched from a bent sapling and connected in some manner to the fish. After carefully inspecting to be sure that all was in order, Milque left fifteen minutes early from lunch and returned to his office. He felt the tiniest twinge of regret that he' d not had the wit nor the courage to spring the trap himself. But then there was no way of telling what kind of creature he would capture or how long it would take. And there were just so many minutes to each lunch hour.

He was, of course, greatly disappointed the next day to discover his turbot gone and his trap still un-sprung and he sat for several minutes musing over his naivete, staring out over the channel when he saw something moving along the shallows on the other side of the water.

At first he thought it was a stick lodged underwater in some way as to make it bob up and down. But then after some minutes of watching it he began to believe it must be alive. Perhaps, he thought, it's the creature that ate the gull. He studied it from afar for as long as he could, then carefully spread out his uneaten lunch upon the granite block and left. Across the water the bobbing continued, and from the top of the hill – looking back down to the channel – Milque realized that there was not a single sea gull anywhere to be seen. Perhaps, he thought, it has eaten them all.

That night in his small apartment Milque studied the pictures of dinosaurs he found in a book that belonged to one of his grown children. The book was extremely battered and misused as his children had misused it well and then had grown up to forget it. Still there were some pictures of several sea creatures that had lived millions of years ago that were partially preserved. Of course the colors were all wrong, but after carefully examining each painting Milque finally found the image of the animal that had eaten his seagull. It was a kronosaurus.

Milque 's wife questioned him very thoroughly. “Why are you reading childrens' books?” she asked.

“Because,” he replied. “Some animals never grow older.”

“Nor wiser,” she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

The next day, when Milque discovered that the granite block was once again barren of food, he decided it was time to confront the creature that had been raiding his trap. By now he was convinced that the bobbing he'd seen was an animal that had been extinct for sixty million years. And so, gazing across the channel with his hand shielding the glare, he came to a decision that he must risk his own life to see this animal at close quarters.

He carefully removed his shoes and stuffed his socks and his watch and his wedding ring into them. Then – carefully stepping out onto the granite block within the circle of his trap with his white feet flapping against the cold wet stone – he crouched at the edge of the water to wait. He realized that it made no difference how long this was going to take. The autumn wind pushed cold against his face, dried leaves rustled in the treetops, and the slight waves of the channel splashed over his toes. “It doesn't matter if I stoop here all winter,” he thought. “There are some answers that require all the time in the world. ”

About four thirty the office building's groundskeeper discovered Milque still crouching on the granite block beside the channel. By now he was surrounded by a circle of his clothes, still stooping within the loop of the rope that stretched back to the bent sapling. He was shivering uncontrollably and his white feet had turned blue. The groundskeeper immediately reported the situation to Milque ' s supervisor, who in turn came down with a group of co-workers to investigate. But Milque wouldn't be moved from his trap.

“What exactly are you doing?” his supervisor asked.

“I'm waiting for a kronosaur,” Milque replied. “What did you think!”

The group of men mumbled to themselves for several minutes and then the youngest of the them, a clerk on the receiving dock name Madsen, ventured to ask Milque why.

“It ate an old sea gull,” he replied. “I've been stalking it for several days now, but I don' t think it will come with all of you standing about. ”

“Will you be coming back to the office?” his supervisor asked.

“No,” said Milque And he turned his back on the group and said softly, “Now please go away. ”

The men left, save Madsen who promised to the others to stay until the paramedics arrived. Madsen also promised Milque that he would remain perfectly silent, just in case the kronosaur appeared.

After several minutes passed Milque rose up from the granite block, once again shielding his eyes from the glare of the setting sun, and turned to the younger man to say “It' s no use, you realize. It will never come now. You all made too much noise, and now I have to go to the john. ”

“But you can' t leave now,” said the clerk. “I mean, it might still come. And besides, it' s still early. ”

After several moments of negotiation the two of them decided they would change places, just in case, while Milque went off to relieve himself. Milque gave Madsen explicit directions on where to stand within the trap, and how to crouch to look like the old gray seagull. Then, quickly dressing, Milque walked back to the parking lot, got into his car, and drove silently home. His wife was in the kitchen making Mulligan stew. Milque kissed her gently on the cheek and went into the study to read.

During dinner there was a knock on the door. It was a policeman with a radio pinned to his left shoulder and a wire extending into his left ear. “Are you Peter Milque ?” he asked. “We' re looking for a young man whom you may know. His name is Madsen. Do you know him?”

“Indeed I do,” Milque answered.

“And where did you last see him,” asked the policeman.

“At work,” Milque replied.

“We've received an odd report,” the policeman continued. “Something about a dinosaur. ”

“Ah yes,” said Milque. “Actually a kind of plesiosaur I believe. But no matter. ”

“Whatever,” said the officer. “In any case, it seems you are the last person to have seen Mr. Madsen. I must ask you to come down to the station with me. ”

“Whatever for?” asked Mrs. Milque.

“Mr. Madsen was left alone with your husband,” the officer said. “He did not return to his post on the receiving dock and when an ambulance arrived for your husband all that the paramedics found was a shoe – which has been identified as belonging to Mr. Madsen – caught in a rope strung from a small tree. Consequently, Mr. Milque, I' m afraid I must take you down to the station to answer some questions. ”

“It' s alright Edna,” Milque said to his wife. “Just a problem of mistaken identity.”

It was by this set of rather odd circumstances that Milque was thrown in jail.

The case of Milque proved to be more than the local newspapers and television stations could resist. They were attracted to the case by Detective Norris who was in charge of the investigation. Norris believed that the body of Madsen must be drowned and hidden beneath the granite blocks that extended into the channel, and he asked local skin divers to search along the quay. This attracted the attention of the editor of the local paper, who assigned a young intern reporter by the name of Elizabeth Hoye to the story. It was Hoye's byline that was picked up by the press syndicate when the following was printed:

Extinct Dinosaur Spotted – Foul Play Suspected in Death of Local Man

A local man is being held without bond in connection with the disappearance of a 24 year old receiving clerk by the name of Corky Madsen. Madsen' s tennis shoe was found dangling from a rope in a small tree beside the Clogsworth Industrial Quay. Madsen was last seen in the company of Peter Milque, a programmer analyst, also of Clogsworth Industrial. According to witnesses, Milque was seen talking to Madsen while standing in a homemade rope spring-trap beside the water. Milque was reportedly standing naked in the unsprung trap, awaiting the appearance of a dinosaur believed to be extinct for more than sixty million years. Police believe foul play was at work.

UPI picked up the story, and it in turn was aired on public radio.

Within hours the defense fund for Phillip Milque had grown to more that sixty thousand dollars by the “Save Our Endangered Species” foundation while television crews set up their satellite antennae along the streets and bright young female reporters talked into cameras on the sidewalks across from the police station. Protesters were marching in front of the courthouse wearing Tee shirts that read “Free the Kronosaur”.

Milque, who could see the commotion from his cell window, thought to himself “I wonder if this will scare it away for good.” His cell mate, Bob Flax, who was in jail for unpaid parking tickets, told him it was the American way of jurist prudence. “I'd be honored to act as your agent,” he offered. Milque turned him down on the spot. He'd already decided to be his own legal defense.