The Things They Carried

Wash is too old to play with dinosaurs; you knew that, right? But he keeps them all the same, keeps them close, and talks to them every day. He tells them their stories, recalls the glory times as he was told them himself, and he says their names to them over and over again, lets them fight and play and live to fight another day. Wash keeps those dinos alive.

And they keep him alive, too. They keep alive in Wash the memory of when he first met the dinos, though he was too old to play even then; when he first learned their names and watched them fight to the death as if they would live forever, days when the hours were long but seemed to run quick, all too quick of a sudden and he couldn’t stop them running out like meds in the drip and dirt back into the hole. Heavy, silent days when just a man with a prop could’ve saved them, could have saved them all, not just the dinos.

He keeps those dinos alive and they tell him every day why he learned to fly and exactly why it is he keeps on going.