Lizard Tales (3 page)

It was at that point that I saw my first cat-bird. As Pops kept beating that tree, me and Jason saw Wildman leap out from the top. He had climbed all the way up and launched himself, but he wasn’t heading to the open ground. He had a spot already marked: he landed right on top of Pops’s head and latched on to it like a big-nosed mosquito at a blood bank.

Pops threw his rake down and went to running around, scared as a sinner in a cyclone. Wildman was hissing and biting, and Pops was beating himself half to death trying to get that cat to turn loose! There was a small bucket filled with rainwater that we always left out for the animals
to drink—Pops grabbed hold of that bucket and doused his own head! Wildman jumped to the ground … but he wasn’t done. He started in on Pops’s leg like a duck on a June bug, and Pops, having been disarmed and now rake-less, broke into a run down the driveway screaming for Momma to help. Ol’ Wildman was in hot pursuit, chasing Pops and hissing. I swear I ain’t never seen my dad run so fast! He was moving faster than ice cream at a Jenny Craig convention, and all you could see were feet and yellow fur as Pops was screaming, “Judy, get this damn cat! Judy, help! Judy … Judy, help me!”

All three of us looked at Momma to see what she was gonna do. She just smiled and said, “That oughtta teach him that lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than putting him back in.” And with that, she went back inside.

I never did ask Pops how far he ran that day, but he and that cat had a come-to-Jesus meeting. From then on, Wildman stayed on the porch and Pops never messed with him again.

[Surprise]

[Unlikely]

T
here are a few things in life that you never forget; things that stick with you like stink on a billy goat. Most folks never forget their first car, their first kiss, or their first fight, and everyone remembers their first puppy.

When we grew up, me and Jason were so poor we had to ride double on our stick horse, so there was no way Pops was ever gonna spend money on a dog. He always told us we’d go out and get us a sooner—which, to him, meant the dog would sooner be this than that; but we always wanted a dog with a pedigree (even though, at the time, we just thought that meant he ate fancy dog food and had the right to wear a collar). Me and Jason figured the only way we were ever gonna get a real dog was to buckle down and start earning our own money to buy one, since we knew we’d rather be chewing on buttholes than to ask Pops for any money to spend on a dog.

At the time, the big sensation was pit bulls. Every kid around had one and they would tie an ol’ lead rope on the dog’s neck and prance them jewels up and down the roads, high-stepping like a rooster in wool socks. So we decided we was gonna get us one of them pit bulls—even though everybody told us they were the meanest dogs on the planet and we would rather go skinny-dipping in a fifty-five-gallon barrel of calf slobber than to own one. So we did what all kids who loved their dad and respected
his opinion would do: We went straight to Momma for permission.

Now, Momma always told us to ride hard, shoot straight, and tell the truth. And we didn’t mind doing that … as long as Pops didn’t find out. So we told her we wanted to work all summer in the tobacco fields and do odd jobs on the weekends to get us enough money to buy a pit bull. Momma thought this idea made as much sense as putting a screen door on a submarine. She didn’t understand why we wanted a dog with such a vicious reputation; she was dead-set against it. Me and Jason knew convincing her would be harder than pulling fly poop from a pepper shaker, but we also knew with a few “pleases” and a lot of tears we could convince her. Then she’d convince Pops.

After two weeks or so of constant badgering, she finally gave in and told us if we could raise the money by the end of summer she’d talk to Pops. Of course, she knew as well as we did, if you’re gonna drive cattle through town, do it on a Sunday when there’s less traffic and fewer people to fight. She decided she wasn’t gonna tell Pops unless we raised all the money first. We had no quarrels about that. So me and Jason started working right away and continued working all summer long.

We learned two things that summer: First, those farmers will work a young kid harder than a ten-year-old government mule; and second, two can live as cheaply as one—if one of ’em doesn’t eat. So we kept every dime we made that summer. We didn’t go to any movies; we didn’t buy any baseball cards; we didn’t even go to the store for our weekly Pepsi and Moon Pie. We put every single cent we made aside.

At the end of the summer we took all our money out and
counted it. Then we looked through the ads in the Sunday paper with Momma to see if we had enough. I’ll tell you one thing: people sure are proud of their dogs. Reading those ads in the Sunday paper made us think some of these dog owners were more proud of their pit bulls than a camel jockey with a three-humped camel. We scanned every ad, and with each one, we got to feeling lower than a snake’s belly in a wheel rut. Then, in the last ad, we saw that someone was selling registered pit bulls and the price was exactly the amount we had saved up! Jason and I were both as happy as a short-legged, fat pony in a high field of oats.

We reminded Momma that she had to hold up her end of the bargain and get Pops on board with the plan. ’Course, we knew this was gonna be harder than three-day-old snot on an oven door … but we also knew Pops would rather be pecked to death by a beakless rooster than to cross Momma. So we went ahead and started thinking of names for our new pit-bull puppy. Well, by the time Momma was done with Pops, he looked like he’d been eaten by bears and crapped over a cliff. We were grinning from ear-to-ear when we heard him make that phone call and set us up an appointment to look at the puppies.

The trip took about an hour, and the whole way there Pops just kept telling us we’d rather grab a wildcat by the tail with our teeth than to own one of these dogs—that they weren’t nothing but trouble. But his words were falling on deaf ears and he knew it. Finally, we arrived at the end of this long dirt driveway and turned off the main road. Now, I’ve always been taught to know how well country people are doing by looking at their barns, not their houses. As we drove down this driveway, every barn I saw had fallen in and there was more trash blowing around than at an
abandoned trailer park after a tornado. But I might as well have been pulling up to the White House, ’cause we were getting a pit bull.

When we got to the end of the road there was this old, single-wide trailer. One end of it was jacked up about six feet in the air, and most of the underpinning was missing. This old man came out of the door wearing nothing but a pair of faded overalls, and he was holding his teeth in his hand. Right behind him was what I reckon to be his wife. She was a very healthy woman; in fact, I think that was the VCR she had on her hip for a beeper!

The old man put his teeth in, then stuck out the same hand for me to shake. “Hey, I’m Roland—and these here are Roland’s bulls.” He pointed to a pen that looked like it was put together with tin cans and electric wire.

Now, it wasn’t bad enough I had to shake this guy’s hand (’cause, with Pops standing there, I’d rather go skinny-dipping in a pool full of porcupines than to disrespect someone); but then, when I looked in that pen, there were six of the mangiest mutts I’d ever seen. Every one of them puppies looked like they suffered from zackly disease: Their heads looked zackly like their butts.

To top it off, the old guy’s wife was on him like a green worm on a tomato plant from the second those two came out of that trailer. It was quickly obvious, however, that he was a master at selective hearing, and he just went on like she wasn’t even there. She kept saying, “Roland, if one of those mutts gets out after my cats again, I’m gonna shoot ’em.”

The old man just ignored her and went on telling us about the dogs.

Well, Pops was looking at me, and I was looking at Jason, and both of us had eyes on the door of Pops’s old
truck, itchin’ to get outta there. But Pops is more stubborn than a harnessed mule and he was dead-set on making us ride this one out.

Ol’ Roland stepped inside that pen and you’d have thought someone had thrown a big ol’ steak bone in there. The two biggest pups went after each other like two June bugs on an electric nightlight. They were tearing each other apart! They rolled into the doghouse and sounded like two tin skeletons in a Texas tornado. Roland dove into that doghouse headfirst after them and, faster than you can skin a flathead catfish, one of the dogs came flying out and landed across the pen. Roland crawled out of the doghouse, smiled, and said, “Dogs will be dogs.” That’s when we all noticed that he didn’t have any bottom teeth. Then the other pup came out of the doghouse—with Roland’s teeth sticking out of his mouth, grinning like a steamed raccoon!

Suddenly, Roland realized his teeth were running across the pen—and so did the other pup. Before you could blink, the three of them were chomping around after each other like they were playing Pac-Man. Roland grabbed one dog by the neck and snatched him up faster than a whore’s drawers on Sunday morning. He yanked his lower set of teeth from the dog’s jaw and chucked him outside the fence. That ol’ pup must’ve known he was in trouble ’cause he went and crawled up under Pops’s truck.

None of us three had yet to say a word. Roland yelled to his wife to grab the puppy so we could look at it, and she started trying to crawl under the truck. It wasn’t bad enough that she was so big the only thing we could see was her bohaunkus, which looked like two Buicks fighting for a parking place while she was trying to get under that truck, but she was also so ugly she had to sneak up on a
glass of water to drink it. I don’t know if that puppy was as scared of the view as I was, but I was ready to leave. Unfortunately, we weren’t going anywhere until that pup was out from under Pops’s truck.

While this was going on, Roland was screaming at his wife, she was screaming at the dog, and the dog was yelping (because she must’ve been tuggin’ on its leg or ear). In the middle of all this commotion, an old, three-legged cat came hobbling by. Now, I don’t know if this cat was deaf or just plain dumb, but as soon as that dog under the truck saw it, he set off after that cat like a brown cow on chocolate milk. He ran that old fleabag right under the trailer and up an old piece of flexible duct tape that was hanging down. As that cat ran by us on his way to cover, I could see he was already missing an ear and an eye, and his tail was half chewed off.

All at once the old woman started screaming so loud it curled the ears on every dog out there. Roland just took his hat off, sat down on an old stump, and started scratching his head. She was yelling, “Roland, I’m gonna git my gun and kill that mangy dog of yours! I done warned you if they messed with my cats again I was gonna kill ’em graveyard dead!” Then she took off for the house and came flying back out with a big ol’ pistol! She started crawling under the trailer, giving us a view that was just way too much pumpkin for a nickel. She cussed and screamed at that dog—I hadn’t ever heard words like she used. You could’ve grown potatoes in her dirty mouth.

Meanwhile, the cat was howling and clawing and we saw the dog come dragging it out by one of its three legs, shaking his head back and forth the whole time. The woman was screaming and trying to aim the pistol, when suddenly the gun went off and the dog went limp.

She crawled out from under that trailer with what looked like a regurgitated fur ball in her hands. “You see that, Roland! They done killed another one!” She stormed back in the trailer and slammed the door behind her.

Roland looked up at Pops and said, with the straightest face I’ve ever seen, “The dead one’s free and I still got five live ones to choose from, if you’re interested.”

Pops’s jaw dropped so far you could’ve put forty dollars’ worth of ten-cent gumballs in it. He just smiled and said, “Roland, we’ll think about it.”

By that time, me and Jason were already back in the truck. As we drove back out the driveway, Pops said, “Well, what do you boys want next?” Me and Jason knew this was usually the warm-up for the “I told you so” speech. But the only other thing Pops said on the way home was, “From now on, boys, when you have bright ideas, just come to me first and tell me what you need. Then I’ll tell you how to get along without it.”