Lizard Tales (14 page)

No one in the room even broke stride. They kept yelling “Push!” and telling one another what to do. The machines were beeping, the lightning and thunder were banging away outside, and I felt like I’d swallowed a hornet’s nest.

Someone kept asking me, “Are you OK? Do you need to sit down?”

“I got this, no sweat!”

Then the baby’s entire head came out.

“Here she comes! What do you think, Daddy?” the doctor announced gleefully with a little chuckle.

Well, I looked down and all I saw was a blank face—no eyes, no nose, no mouth. And I fired up like a nitro car on a Friday-night drag strip. My eyes went blank. I got madder than a bag of wet hens in a hammer throw. I reached over and grabbed that doctor right by the throat, trying to pop his head off like a two-day-old pimple. I slammed him back up against the wall and I screamed, “You find humor in this?! My child has no face! She’s blind. She’ll never speak. What kind of daddy can I be?”

I was screaming at the top of my lungs and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was as scared as a big-eyed toad in a hailstorm. Then I heard a baby cry. The nurse had jumped in and finished the delivery.

“Mr. Shirley, would you like to cut the cord?” she asked.

I let the doctor go and just stood there speechless. The whole room stared at me.

“How did she get a face?”

The doctor pushed me away and headed back to the baby. “Babies are usually born facedown,” he said, looking at me like I was so dumb I would slap my own reflection. The nurses were probably all thinking that I was the kid whose parents probably just pissed in a boot and raised a blooming idiot.

“Am I correct in my assumption that you didn’t take the classes on childbirth?” the doctor asked.

I just muttered, “Doc, is a pig’s rump made of pork? I had no idea babies were born facedown!”

My new daughter was crying, I was crying, the nurses were laughing—and one even said, “Thank God she didn’t breach and come out feet first. He probably would’ve thought she had extra toes on her head!”

I just smiled. There was this loud crash of thunder and a bright streak of lightning. I looked at that baby’s perfect little face, her soft lips, her tiny fingers, and I began to sob all over again.

It was pouring outside and my emotions were raging inside. And I thought, Rayne—a ray of sunshine in a flood of emotions: that’s what I’ll name her. We called our baby girl Alexa Rayne.

I screamed out,
“Rayne! Rayne! Baby Rayne!”

A nurse said, “Mr. Shirley, it’s been doing that since we got in here … and it doesn’t look like it’s gonna stop.”

With that, I busted out laughing. Luckily, the doctor understood. He turned to me and asked, “Did you learn anything today during this life-changing experience?”

“I sure did, Doc,” I replied without breaking stride. “Sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you’re an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt.”

With that, he smiled and walked away. I stood there holding my Rayne, and was never afraid of the storms or the lightning again, because now I had a reason to survive any rising waters.

[Mad]

[Tough]

N
ow, Sandy was always the baby of the family. We spent the first half of her life torturing her and the second half protecting her from guys like us. Most kids had little toy soldiers and maybe, at times, played with some sort of baby dolls; but in my house, you’d rather eat a razor-blade sandwich and drink a glass of saltwater than to be caught doing such a thing. So I decided that Sandy was like a life-size doll and a brother’s job was to see how much we could get away with.

I remember the time when we wanted to play war but didn’t have a hostage. So we tied up Sandy’s arms and legs, duct-taped her mouth so she couldn’t scream for Momma, and hid her under the shed as we set up our base. Well, there was two problems with doing things like this: First, you can’t go to dinner and forget to bring your hostage! We had left her out there when that dinner bell rang. When Pops asked where she was, I got real starry eyed and mumbled, “I don’t know.” It didn’t take me long to remember when he jacked me up like a Sunday-afternoon steak and told me not to piss on his back and tell him it’s raining. So I led Pops and Momma to the secret base. That brought us to problem number two: I didn’t know duct tape had a fondness for long hair. Worse yet, the glue on the tape had melted (due to the heat in the shed). When we tried to take it off, she was hollering like her face was on fire and we were trying to put it out with track shoes. Both
Pops and Momma were hotter than a shaved rat in a wool sock in the sauna. She lost most of her hair that day and Pops skinned me like a Texas turkey at Thanksgiving. But we won the battle and saved the hostage—of course, no one found any consolation in that.

Then there was the time we wanted to play war with bottle rockets but couldn’t find enough guys to have a full firefight with. So me and Jason set up camp outside the back door of the house. We got some long metal rods and Jason taped a few bottle rockets together and loaded them in the back with the fuses hanging out. We were both smiling like blind possums in a persimmon patch, just waiting for Sandy to come out the back door. I knew this was one of my best-laid plans yet—this idea was so good it could bond a bad marriage back together. Well, what we didn’t plan on was Sandy having friends over after school that day. So when the back door opened, we lit those fuses and figured we would send her running faster than a jackrabbit on moonshine. Just about the time them gals rounded the corner, the rockets took flight and I couldn’t stop ’em. They looked like three bobcats caught in the middle of a forest fire with gasoline-dipped tails. Me and Jason went to rolling around laughing like two hyenas in a crack house—till we realized that Sandy’s hair was on fire! (I don’t know what it was about me and Sandy’s hair.) I had set her entire head ablaze—and her friends’ hair too! Well, they all went running for the swimming pool and jumped in. When they came up, they looked like they had dipped their heads in peanut butter and rolled ’em around the bottom of a birdcage. I knew when Pops got home, I had better go ahead and give my heart to Jesus, cause my butt was gonna be his! And he didn’t let me down. He not only beat me like a burlap bag full of wet mice in a dryer, he got some clippers
and let Sandy shave my head. (Now, you can imagine this big, tan redneck boy with a bright, white gourd that looked like someone had beat my skull with a softball bat. Needless to say, if I had a dog that looked like I did that day, I’d shave his butt and make him walk backward!)

Well, we went our whole lives back and forth, but you couldn’t split a frog hair between me and Sandy when it came to brotherly love; we were tighter than the girdle of a Baptist minister’s wife at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast.

I used to run her boyfriends off like stray dogs—didn’t ever like any of ’em. Each time she’d bring a new one home, I’d tell him straightaway: “Everybody has the right to be ignorant, but when you started seeing my sister, you abused that right.” Some of the boys she’d bring home were greener than gourd guts and pretty easy to scare; others were tougher than two-dollar steaks and took some working on. But in the end, I was always slicker than a minnow’s pecker and found a way to run ’em off.

I don’t know why she always brought home the types of guys she did. A few smelled worse than the outhouse door on a shrimp boat, and the rest were clueless. If dumb was dirt, they’d cover half an acre.

Now, Sandy brought many of these ol’ boys over to see if she could rile me up—and a couple of ’em gave me a run for my money. But in the end, I’d teach ’em all that you’d rather eat a cold scab sandwich and a glass of snot than to cross me or date my sister.

Well finally, one day, she brought home this ol’ boy who was more country than a baked-bean sandwich. He was a lanky fellow; as a matter of fact, he was so skinny his pajamas only had one stripe! And he was a tall ol’ boy too: he stood about six-foot-seven. You could just tell he was a
good guy. But I wasn’t letting my guard down that easy. So when she introduced us, I told him to remember that getting on this train was a whole lot easier than getting off. He smiled and said, “Well, it’s a good thing I don’t like to ride trains.”

So I said, “Don’t think that ’cause you’re a tall fella that I can’t break you down. Bo, I am bad enough to uppercut a giraffe.”

He smiled again and said, “Then I reckon I shouldn’t ever go to the zoo with you!”

Well, I knew that this boy was slicker than the devil in velvet pants. When we got to talking, I found out he was a big-time hunter and he had more than four hundred acres of prime deer-slaying land. So I knew right then that me and him were gonna be tighter than Siamese ticks on a dead hound dog. His only downfall was that he was a little short north of the ears when it came to common sense. But his genuine good heart, the way he treated my sister, and the fact that he had those four hundred acres were good enough reasons to overlook it.

Now, like I said, I was very protective of my sister. So when I was at the house and got a phone call from ol’ boy and he sounded like he was in tears, I figured he had gone and done something that I was gonna have to make him pay for. He sounded like he had shut his tongue in the door when he was trying to talk, and all I could understand was “It burns! It burns!”

I said, “Slow down, Bo. If you plant a tater you get a tater—and I can’t help you plow if I don’t know what we’re farming.”

He begged me to come over, so I jumped in my old truck and hightailed it over to his house. Now, the entire time, I was trying to keep in mind that this boy is so slow he
couldn’t catch a cold; but I was sure hoping he hadn’t done anything to Sandy—otherwise I would be forced to make him as useful to society as a screen door on a submarine.

Well, when I pulled up, he was lying on the front porch in the fetal position, tears were streaming down his face, and he was holding his crotch area. Immediately, I thought,
Oh no! He’s gone and done something he ought to have known better than to do and Sandy has John Bobbited li’l boy!
But I didn’t see no blood, and he was still conscious. So I tried to ask him what was wrong.

He just said, “Please—get me to the hospital!”

I could tell he was circling the drain, so I loaded him up and headed into the city. He wasn’t making any sense in his mumblings and I couldn’t get it out of him where Sandy was. I kept trying to call her cell phone, but it was going straight to voice mail. The only thing I could make out was, “I’m dying! I’m dying!”

I said, “Bo, I don’t know what you’re dying of, but you’d better not get any over here on my side of the truck or I’ll be on you like a termite on rotten wood!” He didn’t even respond; he just kept wailing and stayed folded up all the way to the hospital—making more noise than a blind fox in a henhouse.

When we got to the ER, I carried his lanky tail in. That must’ve been a sight! I looked at all the people in the waiting room with their jaws open so far they needed Wide Load signs, and I said, “You’d rather have hemorrhoids the size of grapefruits than say somethin’ to me right now!”

We got him into the trauma room and the doctor tried to rush me out. I said, “Doc, you got a better chance of selling ice to Eskimos outside on Christmas Eve than me leaving. If this ol’ boy’s got something contagious, I wanna know so I can get cured too!”

Well, they stripped him down and gave him a sedative. And when they pulled his boxers off, I felt like a dog choking on peanut butter. It looked like someone had set his entire crotch area on fire and put it out with an ice pick and a bag of fire ants. Up until then, I had never been scared of nothing but spiders and dry counties—but I was fear stricken at that sight! And I said, “Doc, I ain’t got no dog in this fight, and I don’t want none of that. And I need to go find my sister, ’cause whatever it is has probably done ate her up too.” I grabbed the doc with concern in my eyes and said, “Is whatever that is catchable? I mean … am I gonna get infected too, Doc? Is my sister gonna be OK? She lives with this guy.”

Meanwhile, the nurse was ordering tests and blood samples; she was talking about a flesh-eating disease and VDs and asking about his sex life. I said, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! He dates my sister. So if he ain’t celibate I’m gonna be madder than a toothless dog in a meat house. You won’t have to worry about the cure, ’cause that problem is fixing to be a lot worse.”