Lizard World (5 page)

      
Smedlow nodded politely, gambling on appeasement. The distress of his bladder was beginning to become intolerable.

      
“Well, mister, yer chassis don’t look none too good. But if yer kidneys is as good as you say, I guess you’ll do.”

      
“Can I have his watch?” said the other.

      
“Yer Uncle Earl said if we got ourselves a specimen, he’d take care a the overhaul, which ain’t too much to ask, seein’ as how I seed him through the diptheria when he weren’t no bigger ’n a flea.”

As
the full horror of their plan now flashed upon him, Smedlow again began to groan and struggle. Chafing his hands on the ropes, he managed to pick the chair up with him, but only lurched forward a few feet before crashing sideways on the floor.

      
“Mister, that ain’t gonna do no good,” said the man.

      
“My kidney’s ain’t been right ever since I was abducted,” explained the woman.
  

      
Smedlow now felt his chair being lifted off the floor and turned upright. He debated emptying his bladder, but resolved to remain a martyr to civilization. He felt a hand resting on his shoulder, the warmth of bad breath on his face:

  
   
“Now if you was a good boy,” said the voice, “I just might take off the blinders and let you go potty.”

   
  
Smedlow nodded vigorously, croaking his approval. Hadn’t he read that, under optimal circumstances, prisoners of war had been able to enlist the sympathy of their captors? He tried to look cooperative, even pleased, as he felt the watch being pulled off his left wrist, the hand searching through his pocket:

  
   
“Well, lookee here: he’s got fifty dollars in his wallet!”

  
   
“Well, his clothes ain’t worth a damn,” mused the woman. “But his eyes and his liver gotta be worth somethin’ to the trade . . . and we can junk his fancy car . . . and that expensive-lookin’ antique map you found in the glove box, maybe we could auction it on Ebay.”

Smedlow
was beginning to find composure difficult: they would chop him up, use what they needed and sell the rest; but first they would fatten him up with slops; what’s more, they had the priceless map for which he’d so idiotically risked everything. He tried to distract himself from his misery by doing his best to remember the location of the Conquistador’s fabled fountain -- the place names, the rivers and contours of the seacoast preserved in faded ink on the ancient drawing. But this was impossible since he began to think of what he’d endured to get this far, how everything had gone wrong. . . . And it had all seemed so ridiculously easy -- that whimpering old hag in the nursing home with the abscessed molar, the signed photos of dead TV stars on the wall and this extraordinary map which she seemed to think was just one more kitsch memento -- handed down from some undoubtedly equally clueless ancestor who had been present when Ponce de Leon had drawn it on his deathbed. So of course -- the minute the demerol kicked in and the old girl was snoring -- he, Max Nathan Smedlow, had taken the map off the wall, driven all night to Florida . . . and found himself here in the swamps. And now he’d reached the summit of humiliation -- held captive for his meat like a head of common cattle.

      
“Well, hon, since you’s such a good boy, we’re gonna let you go outside to the powder room.”

      
His bladder almost mutinied in anticipation of relief. He felt his eyebrows being torn off as the duct tape was removed and sudden light tore into his eyes: in the aftershock he saw the vast interior of the barn, the chickens, the troughs, the piebald backsides of cows and, to this right, the huge alligator burying her eggs in a mass of golden hay.

      
“Berenice won’t harm you none, mister,” said the woman. “She’s all tired out from layin’.”

      
There was, as Smedlow had suspected, a window to his left (a ragged cloud, a goat, the blessed outhouse) and -- on the shelves above the window -- huge dunnish glass jars catching the first rays of morning sun. Looking more closely at one of these jars he thought he saw eyes, blonde hair, emaciated arms and what looked like the hindquarters of a mackerel.

Chapter V.

Containing Mr. Frobey’s proud reflections upon the accomplishments of his family; with an encomium upon the art of splicing and an explanation of the Frobey Debt.

Lemuel Lee
had heard tell that, as far back as three hundred years ago, one of his ancestors had spliced a monkey’s head onto a spaniel. Of course that particular splicer hadn’t lived for more than a month, but the thing back then was to do yer splicin’ just before the circus opened. Since the circus was only in town for maybe five days, yer splicer didn’t have to stay fresh much longer than a gallon a milk. Some a them real old splicers that by now had begun to grow moldy or to fall apart was pickled and stored in the barn. Lemuel Lee liked to think of that collection as his own private museum. After all, Uncle Earl always said that splicin’ was an art and that just as you wouldn’t never throw out a damaged Leonardo, it was a sign of respect to the old masters to preserve their achievement for posterity. But of course the really topflight and well-preserved splicers was on display for the general public in the Gardens of Sodom. It had long been Uncle Earl’s policy to charge a separate admission to the Gardens of Sodom, not only because that meant an additional source of revenue, but also because it tended to discourage little kiddies and thereby allowed him to maintain that he was protecting the innocent while displaying Sodom’s monsters as living symbols of God’s vengeance upon the wicked. The laminated deck of playing cards -- bare-tittied lamias, voluptuous hermaphrodites cavortin’ with goats -- fulfilled the same educational purpose and sold like hotcakes at the Lizard World gift shoppe.

      
So Frobeys had been makin’ splicers for a long time, although nowadays county fairs wasn’t what they used to be and so there wasn’t much demand. Lemuel Lee was proud that it was a family tradition that Uncle Earl had continued and now was passin’ on to him. Uncle Earl’s daddy, Big Jake Frobey, had taught Uncle Earl and told him how he himself had learned it from his daddy, who had learned it from his daddy and so on -- all the way back to Hezekiah Frobey, the one who was married to Mad Rosalie, whose brother Edgar Poe was the writer. The first Frobeys in America had brought splicin’ all the way from England, cause they was carnival folks even back then, and they musta had Black Fungus back in England since without the Fungus you couldn’t never, for example, put a rat’s head on a rabbit seein’ as how the goddamn rabbit would reject it so the splicin’ wouldn’t take. Lemuel Lee had heard that families that was furriers passed on the secret formula for tannin’ hides from generation to generation; folks that was diamond cutters did the same with cuttin’ secrets, and he figured that splicin’ lore was a similar kind a guild secret and at one time just as valuable. In 1849 P.T. Barnum himself had paid a thousand dollars for a Frobey splicer -- and back then that was a heap a money.

      
Back in England, the greatest philosopher a splicin’ -- the one who figured out that a splicer has at least two minds like a schizo -- was Doctor Josiah Fludd, the first member of the family to get pieces off a dead folks. But the guy who invented splicin’ was Dr. Fludd’s father-in-law -- who went by the name of Meister Gerhard Frobin (cause back then they spelled the name a little different); and this Meister Frobin must sure as hell a been some kind a big deal -- or else that English earl (the fella Uncle Earl was named after) wouldn’t otherwise never have called him in to fix him up when his parts started fallin’ off or gettin’ lizardy or otherwise goin’ bad. Well, this old Frobin (who was the same guy who made that splicer outa the monkey) must a done a damn good job. Cause that earl fella was so tickled pink, he tells him that if the Frobeys was ever to come to the colonies (cause that was all they was back then) they could kill his pigs, farm his land and smoke up his tobacco -- and he wouldn’t never ask for nothin’ in return, except that if his old body ever got all messed up again, they’d honor the
Frobey Debt
and give him a spare part. So that’s how come they was all Americans now, eatin’ burgers, puttin’ up with all this goddamn bullshit and doin’ the best they could.

      
The greatest maker of splicers in the family once they was all settled in America -- the one who sold that splicer to P.T. Barnum -- was Hezekiah Frobey, Edgar Poe’s brother-in-law. Hezekiah was also the one who learned to make perfume outa gators and built that bad old factory in the swamp.

      
Lemuel Lee figured Edgar Poe was his great-great-great-great-great uncle. Some people even said he looked real similar, exceptin’ he was taller than his Uncle Edgar, but the black eyes was the same, and the slicked back hair, and now that he was tryin’ to grow a mustache, the resemblance was kinda spooky, though his mustache wasn’t growin’ in too good and he knew he’d never have his Uncle Edgar’s class. Once he’d seen some a Uncle Edgar’s old notebooks in his Aunt Bessie’s attic, but he guessed they’d been throwed out when the attic had been cleaned up and turned into bedrooms for his cousin Ida Frobey and her brats.

      
All in all Lemuel Lee was proud a where he come from and had a real family feelin’. If he didn’t have a family feelin’, he sure as hell wouldn’t be helpin’ his Aunt Ligie to get that brand new kidney she was always whinin’ about.

      
Of course the Poe gene was a bitch, but that was the way it was when you was favored with the gift. All in all, he figured that nine of his kin had killed themselves or someone else in one way or another. His Aunt Bessie had hanged herself. His Uncle Abner had stuck his head in an oven. His cousin Jeb hadn’t killed himself, but had killed an old woman by mistake when he was robbin’ a gas station. And they all wrote ballads or was good on the harmonica or could tapdance, which was why he himself was an artiste and his own moods went up and down like some goddamn rollercoaster.

Chapter VI.

In which the Artiste falls prey to melancholy thoughts.

While he
was cleanin’ up the surgery after yesterday’s operation, throwin’ away the itty-bitty pieces and puttin’ the big pieces in a plastic bag, Lemuel Lee was thinkin’ that one a the really good things about gators is that they’re useful even when they’re dead. Aside from the skin, which was made into wallets and change purses which made toursists go apeshit and which Uncle Earl sold in the Lizard World gift shoppe alongside the seashell art and coconut candies, a dead gator could be sold for meat. A dead cow or a dead sheep wasn’t none too good for sellin’, cause in that case you’re forced to compete with the A&P. But gator, though it’s tough as chewin’ on an inner tube, was somethin’ you could always sell for good money to the Magnolia diner, where tourists -- and especially their little brats -- always gobbled it up as a genuine Florida treat.

      
That was why, after he picked up his paycheck, Lemuel Lee drove his pickup truck to the Magnolia diner and delivered the mortal remains a Caesar’s alligator wife. Rico, the cook (a smart little Cuban who knew how to shut the hell up) had been given forty dollars to spend: as usual, Lemuel Lee would give twenty bucks to Uncle Earl, leavin’ him and Rico twenty more to split:

      
“Catch you later, man,” said Rico.

      
“Keep cool, “ said Lemuel Lee.

      
You’d think -- since it was payday and he had an extra ten dollars in his jeans -- that he’d be feelin’ good. But no, he was feelin’ mean enough to kick a cat.

      
Was it the Komodo? Not likely. Fortunately, the operation had been a success and the Komodo (so Uncle Earl had told him) would be almost good as new for the Monday show. No sir, that wasn’t it: there was other problems that Lemuel Lee felt gnawin’ on his innards, makin’ him sad and testy, bringin’ him down. Ever since he’d lost his lucky snake-rattle keychain, he’d just been feelin’ worse and worse. Too bad, too. Cause ordinarily on Fridays, after he’d got paid, he’d drive into Fort Myers, go to the Bijou Adult Cinema, jack off, eat some popcorn, then after the show stop off for a six-pack and some Slimjims at the Seven-Eleven and keep drinkin’ until he got all the way back to the trailer -- usually around three or four in the morning. But today -- hell, he just wasn’t up to it.