Lizard Tales (15 page)

He looked up and said, “Ronnie, you might want to leave the room so I can talk to the doctor. And see if you can get Sandy here.”

I said, “Bo, you’d be better off shoving an umbrella up your tail and standing outside waiting for a hurricane than to say what I think you’re gonna say. ’cause even a dog knows the difference between being stepped on and kicked. The only person I’m calling is my momma.” (Well, you know when a country boy breaks down and calls his momma, it’s time to brace the doors, nail up the windows, and call the dogs in, ’cause it’s on like Donkey Kong.)

He started screaming, “Don’t you call your momma!”

I said, “I’m calling Momma!”

So there we were in the middle of the ER. He was buck-naked and his nether regions looked like a war zone for bull ants. Doctors and nurses running around in a frenzy, machines beeping, people looking around the curtains—and we were having an argument about me calling my momma. Just then, Sandy came running in with tears in her eyes and was yelling at me, “What did you do to him? What did you do to him?”

I said, “Baby, I just brought him here to the ER. He called me ’cause he couldn’t get you, and he says
you
did that to him.”

Well, that was about as subtle as an unflushed toilet. So then she was yelling at him. I was telling him I was gonna call Momma. He was crying and begging me not to. Meanwhile, he was trying to talk to Sandy.

Finally, the doctor yelled, “Wait a minute!” He looked at him and said, “Son, there is a white gel around your buttocks and down your leg. Have you got into anything?”

Still in pain, he said, “No, Doc. I took a shower and when I got out I just started burning. I looked down and this is what I saw.”

The doctor asked, “Son, what did you use in the shower?”

“Just my normal shampoo. Oh—and I was out of body wash, so I used my girlfriend’s.”

But Sandy jumped in: “Honey, I don’t use body wash; I use handmade soap. What did the bottle look like?”

He said it was a bluish-color bottle with white body wash that had a real funny smell. (At this point, I’ve gotta say, he was looking as confused as a monkey trying to do a math problem.) Sandy hit the floor, rolling in laughter while me and the doctors just stood there in wonderment.

Still in tears, the ol’ boy asked, “What did I do that was so dang funny?” Sandy finally stopped laughing long
enough to say, “Baby, you’ll be just fine—trust me.” And she whispered something in the doctor’s ear.

The doctor just smiled and told the nurse to go get some gauze and burn cream.

I said, “OK, now that y’all got me more curious than a new puppy with two peters, let me in on what’s goin’ on here.”

Sandy smiled and said, “I know that y’all think life is always easier when you plow around the stumps, but you have to make sure you’re not riding in a barbed-wire harness! And if you’re gonna use something on your body, read it before you apply! Nair apparently has some very adverse side effects.”

I looked over at that ol’ boy. “Now, don’t that just dill your pickle? You used hair-removal cream for a body wash!”

He said, “I don’t know about dilling it. To me it feels more like deep-fried!”

[Happy]

[Fun]

W
hen I first started in the repossession business, things were much different from the way they are now. Back then, you had to work harder than a rented mule to get a car. There were no auto-loader wreckers, so we collected cars the old-fashioned way: usually on a rollback, which is a kind of flatbed trailer. Pops always told me to work smarter, not harder; but everything he ever learned I think he got from watching
Gilligan’s Island
. Nevertheless, I talked to my buddy Brooks, and he agreed to help me nights doing repos. I figured the two of us working together would be smarter.

Now, when you repo on a rollback, you have to let the bed down, pull out the cable, crawl under the vehicle, hook it up, and then drag it on. So the process is about as slow as a herd of snails going through a field of peanut butter. Meanwhile, you’re very exposed when you’re doing all this. On one particular night we were searching for a Mazda Miata in a high-end neighborhood. Diving around there in that old beater rollback of mine, we were worse off than ducks sitting on the water on opening day of shotgun season. Every light in every house was flipping on, so I knew that me and Brooks were about to be in as good shape as a freshly screwed fox in a forest fire.

We rounded a bend in the road, and sitting right there in the driveway, shining like a five-carat diamond in a goat’s butt, was our Miata. I told Brooks to run the VIN number
on it as I backed up, and he was also to be the lookout while I crawled up under the car to hook the chains. Now, I’ve learned in this business (as in much of life) that it’s always darkest before the dawn—so if you’re gonna steal your neighbor’s newspaper, that’s the time to do it. And even though they could see us coming, with it being so late I’d have time to get hooked up before the debtor got out of bed and ran outside. In retrospect, I think I would have rather been superglued to a tornado in an Oklahoma pigpen than to have Brooks running blocker. Don’t get me wrong: Brooks is a great guy. But in stress-filled situations he is about as useful as chicken crap on a pump handle.

After backing up, I jumped out and ran to the back of the rollback, grabbed the cable with the J-hook, and ran toward the Miata. About this time I heard Brooks yelling that someone was coming outside, so I knew I’d better get those hooks on. I yelled back to Brooks, “Keep him busy till I get hooked up!” After that, it’s all hat and no cattle, ’cause there’s nothing the debtor can do.

I slid up under that Miata and started hooking up when I saw a set of feet running backward behind me. It was Brooks, and he was yelling, “Stay away from me, mister! Don’t swing that at me!”

There I was, under the car, possibly the worst position I could be in, and this guy had some sort of weapon—a bat or ax or shovel. I had no idea what it was, but before I had time to make a move I could see both his legs standing over me. So there I was, from the waist up under his car and him standing over me like a fat man at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. I started yelling, “Brooks! Move this guy!”

But Brooks was about as useful as buttons on a dishrag. He just said, “Ronnie, I can’t touch him.”

“Brooks, you’d rather wear pork-chop panties and run through a lion’s den than let this man stand here and whoop me.”

Brooks didn’t say another word. I could see his feet on the asphalt, but nothing was coming out of his mouth. Now, friendship can sometimes be kind of like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get that warm fuzzy feeling. Right about now, however, I was questioning the limits of our bond.

I gritted my teeth and slid out from under the car figuring if the debtor had something in his hand, I could take out one of his knees and buy myself a few seconds. Well, when I slid out between his legs, I was face-to-face with what Brooks was so scared of. Only, it wasn’t a stick, it was a snake—a one-eyed trouser snake! And that purple-headed creature looked like it was about to bite.

Now, don’t get me wrong: The guy wasn’t naked. He had some tighty whities on that had holes in them, and in his run to the car, his blue-veined doughnut holder had slithered out. So there I was, pinned to the ground, facing an irate man and his pet anaconda. I looked over at Brooks and saw that the reason he couldn’t speak was because he was laughing so hard.

There are some days that I’m about as sharp as a cue ball, but it didn’t take much sense to know that I was in a worse spot than a one-armed camel jockey with crabs. I said, “Mister, I’m telling you now: you would rather pole-vault over a barbed-wire fence with a rubber stick than to get any closer to me. If you’ll step away and let me up, we can talk this out.”

After a few seconds, he finally agreed to move over and let me up. The he flipped that monster up and put it back in its cave. I said, “Sir, I’m already hooked to your car, and
after the mental anguish I just went through, I ain’t letting it go.”

Brooks was still laughing like a hyena at a pot-smoking convention while I was letting the guy get his stuff out of the Miata. I finished loading up the car, we climbed back in the rollback, and I was hotter than two rabbits banging in a gunnysack. Brooks had finally gotten back to the point where he could talk, so I lit into him: “Bo, you were supposed to delay the guy and block him from getting near me so I could hook up and get out. What happened?”

“Ronnie, wasn’t nothin’ I could do! He came out swingin’ like a blind man at a prize fight, and I was havin’ no part of that.”

“Brooks, don’t ever let that happen again. You’ve got to keep people off me. I’m telling you now: I’d rather French kiss a rattlesnake than to be put back in that position.”

Brooks looked over at me and, with all seriousness, said, “Buddy, you just almost got your wish back there.”

We didn’t speak to each other the rest of the night.

[Dumber]

W
hen Amy and I started dating, it was like locking two Brahma bulls together by the horns and throwing a hot cow in the pasture. Now, I was pretty fit, bench pressing in the mid-six-hundred-pound range and entering strongman contests with Johnny Perry. Johnny and I had been training Amy and she had just won her first world title in powerlifting—not to mention the fact that she is a redhead and that’s like having a powder keg on the front burner of a five-dollar stove. Amy has also always been hotter than hell’s basement on the day of reckoning but more ornery than a blind mule pulling a plow backward uphill. So naturally, it was only a matter of time before we would have our first throwdown; and I was determined that, when it was over, she’d rather stare at the sun with binoculars than to ever tangle with me again.