Lizard Tales (2 page)

Just as we saw a big blue Pontiac top the hill, I lit the fuses and eased Rover to the white line. About the time the car entered the curve, ol’ Rover launched right out in front of it. We heard the brakes lock up. White smoke went rolling. And that car turned sideways right there in the middle of that curve.

Jason was as nervous as a pit bull crapping thumbtacks on a balloon ride, but I was rolling in the ditch laughing like a clown on crack—until I heard the car door slam. I looked up and standing over me was one of the biggest women I’d ever seen. It wasn’t just the fact that she looked mean enough to scare the balls off a low-flying duck; you could tell she was wound up tighter than a minister’s wife’s girdle at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. She started in on me and Jason about how we could have got that poor dog killed by running him out in the road like that, not to mention that someone could damage their car trying to avoid him. I ran over, picked up Rover, and said, “Calm down, lady. He ain’t even real—see?” And I showed her
the fake dog and the wheels, thinking this would calm her down a little. But I could see the fire light up in her eyes and could tell she was getting ready to slap me so hard that when I woke up my clothes would be back in style. So I did what any self-respecting older brother would do: I blamed it on Jason … ’cause I knew he could run faster!

“Lady, I was just out here watching! That guy built it and brought it out here.” As soon as she turned to Jason, I became as scarce as hens’ teeth. Poor ol’ Jason was pinned down by that woman, stuck there like a bumblebee in a bucket of tar.

Now, apart from not being too bright, Jason was also known to have a mouth big enough to stick a hook in. As I ran by, I heard him yelling, “Lady, if I wanted to hear from a butthole, I’d fart!”

Before I knew it he was passing me, running across that field. And when we got to the tree line we stopped, looked back, and saw that lady standing in that curve waving her arms at us and looking meaner than a skillet full of snakes. We couldn’t make out much of what she was saying; but after all the hand gestures, I am pretty sure she figured me and Jason were the reason God gave people their middle finger.

We spent the next few hours lighting bottle rockets, watching cars slide off the road, and running into the woods. We were having more fun than a Texas tornado in a trailer park, but we were getting low on propulsion fuel and needed breakfast, so we figured we would get us one more and call it a day.

As a black truck topped the hill, Jason lit Rover and we got ready to run. About the time the truck hit the curve and Rover hit the line, we had already started laughing, just waiting for the brakes to lock and the white smoke to
roll. Instead, I heard that truck motor rev up and kick into passing gear. The driver had floored that mug and was swerving directly toward Rover. Next thing I know, Rover had taken flight and exploded on impact. Pieces of him were flying everywhere. Me and Jason just looked at each other in disbelief, not even realizing the truck had stopped until I heard both doors slam. Right then my rear drew up tighter than a mosquito’s butt in a nosedive, and I looked up to see the same lady from earlier in the day. Only this time, she had brought her husband back—and he wasn’t none too happy.

This ol’ boy looked like he got left in the outhouse when lightning had struck. He reached down and yanked us both up by our earlobes. I don’t know what he was madder about: running over Rover in front of his wife, or the way Jason had spoken to her that morning. But I knew we had to get out of there before he took us to Momma and Pops, and it appeared that was gonna be harder than herding heartless chickens.

Well, he was holding us, and the lady was scolding us like sinners at a prayer meeting, when I noticed Jason sliding the rest of the bottle rockets into the back pocket of that man’s overalls. I looked up at the man and told him, “You’d rather shove a wet noodle up a wildcat’s butt with a hot poker than not let us go.” But he just snatched up on our ears a little harder and told us to pay attention while his wife screamed at us some more.

I watched Jason ease the lighter toward the fuses, and the woman’s voice just seemed to fade away as me and Jason both started laughing. Well, of course, this just aggravated the man that much more. He looked down at me and said, “At what point are you gonna realize that I’m the
big dog here and you’re gonna respect my wife and listen to what she’s saying?”

It was about then that those rockets went to screaming and popping and exploding. That guy let go of us and started running around more confused than a five-legged cat trying to cover crap on a marble floor. Jason and I broke free and were outta there faster than a blind dog in a dodgeball game. We looked back and saw the man’s overalls had caught fire and he was on his butt, sliding across the ground, trying to put out the flames.

When we got halfway across the field, we couldn’t run anymore, ’cause we were laughing so hard watching him. He finally got back to his feet and was hog-tied and pigeon-toed all at the same time. It was obvious he was hotter than the hinges of hell on a Halloween night, and he was yelling for us to come back. He was picking up parts of Run Over Rover and slinging them toward us. I yelled back at him, “Next Saturday—same time, same place. But remember: this is a dog-eat-dog world, so don’t come around here wearin’ no Milk-Bone underwear!”

Me and Jason grabbed our bikes and ducked into the woods, knowing that next Saturday we were definitely sleeping in.

W
hen we were coming along, my pops took great pleasure in being more aggravating than an army of jock-itch ants. He was one of the few people I’ve ever met who could drive a wooden Indian out of his mind. He especially got a thrill out of annoying my younger sister, Sandy.

Since we never did have money to buy pets, we caught or dug up everything we ever raised. One Easter, Sandy wanted a pet rabbit more than anything in the world. And even though Sandy is usually diagonally parked in a parallel universe, me and Jason wanted to make her Easter wish come true. So we spent every afternoon for a week after school building homemade rabbit boxes. We were busier than a stump full of smoked ants. We figured we’d put them out Friday night, then take Sandy with us Easter Sunday morning to check them, in the hopes we’d catch one and she’d be happier than a horsefly trapped in an outhouse.

Well, as Pops was prone to do, he found a way to throw a wrench into our plans. We didn’t know it at the time, but Pops had caught an old, wild tomcat in the barn earlier in the week. Now, he knew me and Jason and Sandy would be checking those traps Sunday morning, so he went out Saturday night and loaded one up with that ol’ tomcat. I guess he figured we’d open it up right there on the spot and that crazy cat would be on us faster than a crackhead
on his pipe. He knew that ol’ cat would be wilder than a two-mouth bass at an earthworm family reunion.

Now, our momma always told us the early bird gets the worm, but the persistent bird finds the feeder. So after a whole week of building traps, we knew Easter morning we’d get Sandy her rabbit. Me and Jason and Sandy got up before church and went to see if God had answered our prayers. Now, I’ve learned that God is sometimes slicker than hot snot on a goat’s glass eyeball, and though we don’t understand why, He always gives us what we need—even if it’s not exactly what we want.

So there we were, heading to the rabbit boxes with about as much gracefulness as three blind Rottweilers at a china factory. All of a sudden, Sandy started screaming like her hair was on fire and her tail was catching. She’d noticed that the door on one of the boxes was down, which meant we had caught ourselves Peter Cottontail. Luggin’ the box between us, we high-tailed it back to the shed behind the house faster than a jackrabbit on moonshine. We got inside, locked the door, and went over to the makeshift cage we had built for Sandy’s little Easter bunny. Then we pulled the door of the rabbit box open so he could hop on in.

When that ol’ tomcat shot out of that box, we were more surprised than a blind dog under a treed raccoon! That ol’ cat went to hissing and showing his teeth, his hair standing up on his back like he’d just been blow-dried by a Hoover. Thinking the cat was rabid, I told Jason to sit tight while I ran to get my gun to smoke that ol’ cat like wet pine straw at a trash burning.

It was about then that Sandy went to screaming and crying and begging us not to put that ol’ stray out of his misery. She looked sadder than a sow that had just lost her slop trough, so me and Jason agreed we wouldn’t hurt him.
She even talked us into helping her try to tame that yellow fur ball, because she said everybody gets Easter bunnies but she was the only girl around with an Easter
cat-bunny!

We devised a plan to keep him in the shed and sneak him table scraps every chance we got. Now, we should’ve caught on pretty quick when Pops kept asking us what we caught. We told him “Nothing,” but he wouldn’t let it go.

I guess at that age the intellect is rivaled only by garden tools, and Pops kept saying, “Did you check the trap by the big rock? I know there are rabbits around there.”

Finally, after the entire ride to church and we hadn’t let on we had us a cat-bunny, Pops said, “What did y’all do with that cat I slipped in that trap?”

Now, right then you could bar the doors and tie down the stools, ’cause Pops went and told on himself! Momma was madder than a cowboy at a fashion show. She started in on him for putting the cat in there; me and Jason was mad he had planned on letting that ol’ pole cat tear into us like a great white shark at a sushi bar; and Sandy was bawling because she knew Pops didn’t like cats and he was gonna make her let it go.

So after ten minutes of riding the old man like a borrowed Corvette, to make everyone happy, Pops said we could keep the cat. We decided to name him Wildman and set out to make him not only tame, but part of the family. Of course, if he was gonna be part of the Shirley clan, he’d better get used to Pops aggravating him.

After a few weeks, we had somewhat domesticated that ol’ feline, and we were outside playing when Pops came to the front yard and asked us if we knew what a sandwich was. We just looked at him like he was a few fries short of a Happy Meal. He smiled and said, “Well, I just invented a cat-wich!” Sandy’s eyes bugged out like a toady frog in
a hailstorm. Then she looked around Pops and saw Wildman buried from the neck down in the sandbox.

A few days after that, we came home and couldn’t find Wildman anywhere, so Sandy asked Pops where he was.

“He’s probably just hangin’ out,” he told her. We knew we’d better find him quick, and sure enough, we found Wildman hanging on the clothesline dripping wet, his back feet tied together. Sandy was mad enough to stump whip chitlins. See, Pops had made up his mind that he was gonna get this cat to leave or aggravate us enough to give it away, but Sandy is more stubborn than a harnessed Sunday pack mule—and that cat wasn’t backin’ down none either.

A few Saturdays later, we were having some friends over and Pops walked by us outside and said, “Y’all wanna see a magic trick?”

Of course, we were more excited than a hockey player with his first fake tooth, so we all chimed in, “Yes!”

Well, just outside our house is a huge old cedar tree, about twenty feet tall. Pops reached down, grabbed that cat, and slung him like a Babe Ruth pop fly right up to the top of that tree. “Look,” he said, “I made a cat disappear!”

I don’t know if that cat just liked the tree, or if he took that toss personally, but he set up a permanent residence right there in those thick branches, and from then on that’s where you’d find him. I guess he’d also been taking all those weeks of aggravation to heart, ’cause from then on anyone could walk by that tree but Pops. If Pops came by that cedar tree, ol’ Wildman would pounce out quicker than a three-armed tobacco picker on a hot day looking for a glass of ice water. He’d claw that man’s legs all to pieces and then run right back up into that tree.

In fact, this started becoming a daily occurrence. It was
like that cat would just sit and wait. And since the tree was right outside the front door, we used to sit on the porch and wait for Pops to get home, just to see which one of them would be slicker than snot over smashed bananas and win the battle of wills that day.

Finally, Pops got smart and started keeping a garden rake at the door. When he’d go to his truck, he’d run that cat back under the tree with the rake, and then he’d toss it in the back of the truck for when he came home. Well, that ol’ cat was a quick learner. It didn’t take him too many times being in the Kool-Aid to guess the flavor. Pops, being Pops, also never could leave well enough alone. So one evening, he came home, and we were sitting on the porch. Pops went to walk by that tree and out jumped ol’ Wildman. Pops ran him back under the tree with that rake, but then he started beating all the lower branches, screaming at the cat and trying to flag him out. We knew right then that was gonna go over like a pregnant pole-vaulter. Sandy started screaming at Pops, Momma ran out to see what Sandy was screaming about, Pops was yelling at the cat—and me and Jason were just dying with laughter.