In fact, just a few miles north of where we are right now.” I take my right hand off the steering wheel and point north. “You mean nuclear bombs?” he wants to know, and I say, yeah, I mean nuclear bombs. “But the site was deactivated in 1991, after Bush and Gorbachev signed the START treaty. So, there aren’t any bombs there anymore.” The kid, he just sorta gazes off into the distance, off the way I’ve pointed, out across the prairie. “Jesus,” he says, and then he laughs a nervous, hard laugh, a brittle laugh that would seem more natural coming from someone much older than however old he is, and the kid runs his fingers through his dirty blond hair. “I wasn’t even born yet. There could’a been a war, and those missiles could’a been fired, and I never would have been born. Jesus.” And then, to take his mind off an apocalypse that never happened, I say, “There’s also a dinosaur in Wall.” He stops staring at the prairie and stares at me, instead. “What do you mean? Like a dinosaur skeleton?” he asks, and I say no, not a skeleton. “You’ll see,” I tell him and I manage a smile, just to spite that sky. There’s only an hour left until noon and the day’s getting hot, so I tell him to roll up the window and I’ll turn on the air conditioning. He does, and I do. We pass a billboard that proclaims in crimson letters ten feet tall that abortion is murder. We pass another broken down truck, this one missing all four of its tires. We pass the turnoff for Philip. A few hundred yards to the north, there’s a deeply gullied ridge now, running parallel with the interstate, weathered beds claystone and silt-stone and mudstone laid down thirty million years ago, beds of volcanic ash and layers of sandstone from ancient Oligocene streambeds, a preview of the vast badlands farther south. I recall my dream from the night before, of titanotheres and lumbering tortoises. In the bright sunlight, the rocks are a dazzling shade of gray that’s very nearly white. The kid says he needs to piss. I point at the windshield, and I say, “There it is.” He asks, ‘What? There’s what?’ But then he sees it, the queerly majestic silhouette of the Wall Drug Dinosaur stark against the sky. The kid says, “Wow,” like he really means it, like he’s someone who can still be amazed by an eighty-foot-long concrete dinosaur, even after all he’s been through. That catches me off my guard almost as much as the sight of the Smith & Wesson did. The sun glistens wetly off the brontosaur’s painted Kelly green hide, off its sinuous neck and tiny head. I tell the kid how at night the eyes light up, how at night the eyes glow red, and he says he wishes he could see that. I take Exit 110 off the interstate, rushing past the dinosaur, turning right onto Glenn Street. “Last time I was here,” I say, “I was still in college. That was back in 1985, when there were still missiles in those silos, aimed at China and the Soviet Union.” The kid doesn’t take his eyes off the dinosaur, but he asks me what’s the Soviet Union. “Russia,” I say. “It’s what we used to call Russia.” The kid frowns and says, “I swear to fuck, dude, sometimes I think people change the names of shit just to make the next generation feel stupid.” And I tell him, yeah, that’s exactly why we do it. “I’ll tell you something else that’s changed,” I say. “Last time I was here, all this crap hadn’t been built yet.” And I mean the Day’s Inn and the Exxon station, the Conoco and all the convenience stores and a Motel 6, a Subway and a Dairy Queen, something called the Cactus Cafe and Lounge that promises home cooking and “western hospitality.” I’d meant to head straight for the venerable Wall Drug Store, the time-honored crown jewel of this exit, a gaudy oasis to mark the dead center of nowhere, but suddenly I’m no longer in the mood for tourist traps. Suddenly, I feel ill and lightheaded, and I pull into the Conoco’s parking lot, instead. The kid says, “Hey, ain’t we going to see the dinosaur?” I wipe perspiration off my forehead, because now I’m sweating despite the AC vents blowing in my face, and I reply, “I thought you had to piss.” And he says, “I can piss after,” and I tell him, “You can piss first. That dinosaur’s been there since 1967. It weighs eighty tons, and it isn’t going to run off anytime soon.” There’s an enormous convenience store attached to the Conoco station, the Wall Auto Livery, and isn’t that smart, isn’t that clever. I pull into an empty space between two other cars, one with Oregon plates, the other from Kansas, and I shift into park and cut the engine. I know now that I’m going to be sick, and I know that I’m going to be sick very soon. I taste hot bile in the back of my throat “You get whatever you want,” I say to the kid. “Go on and get whatever you need.” Then I’m out of the car, and Jesus it’s hot beneath that heavy, heavy sky, and for just a second or two I think maybe I’m gonna wind up on my knees, mired in the soft asphalt like a La Brea mastodon, praying for the mercy of vultures and slow suffocation. But then the door jingles and I’m swallowed by a blast of icy, impossibly cold air, and I realize that I’m inside the store. There are people moving and talking all around me, but I don’t make the mistake of looking anyone in the eye. I don’t care if maybe they’re staring. I just keep walking, past long aisles of snack food and coolers filled with row after row of soft drinks and energy drinks, bottled water and fruit juice. I’m lucky, and there’s no one in the restroom. I lock the door behind me and vomit into the toilet, revisiting my breakfast. I sit down with my back pressed against cool ceramic tiles and try not to think how dirty the floor must be. I can smell urine even over the pungent, antiseptic stink of pink deodorant cakes, even over the stink of my own puke. I shut my eyes for a moment, fighting another wave of nausea. I’ve always hated vomiting, and I don’t want to do it again.