Lizard People (12 page)

“The greenies come, we may have to circle back here away from the road,” she said. She got out and wrapped a long black shawl painted with bright yellow skulls over her black T-shirt and red plaid jeans.

The greenies?… Park Rangers?

From the backseat she grabbed a necklace made out of rubber costume store rattlesnakes woven together, and put it around her neck outside the shawl. She made sure her combat boots were tied, and finally, she ran her fingers along her sideburns, the only hair that wasn't spiked for tonight's spookfest. Her face was glow-in-the-dark white, her lips black. I looked down at my wrestling sweatshirt and blue jeans. Hmmm.

“We'll walk the road, but if a car comes by, step behind a tree. We'll probably see the Rangers' strobe lights before we have to jam,” she said. “I won't leave without you.”

I nodded.

“Until then, raise hell and no puking.” She snake-danced away toward a knot of people with multicolored hair and enough metal on their faces to pick up a Chicago radio station.

My eyes were adjusted to the dark and stayed that way unless I looked directly at one of the big black cylinder candles. Or I guess they weren't all black. Some were red. Looked like they were homemade in gallon coffee cans. Decent light and pretty safe in the winter woods. There was no moon, but occasionally stars shone through broken clouds and pine limbs.

There was a tub—a trough? People were dipping cups in it, and I could make out empty bottles lying beside it. Vodka, tequila, Mountain Dew, and something with Asian characters on the label. I picked it up. It smelled like brake fluid.

“Quaff it, Chip.”

A wiry guy in a baseball uniform, battered Uggs, and a blue bus driver's hat was standing beside me, waving his empty cup. I left him and went looking for a beer that hadn't been opened. Surely these folks also drink beer?

“Hey, Z tells me you're a mere child. Let me be maternal.”

This from a girl or young woman wearing what looked like silver underwear over black mechanic's coveralls. She had an inch or two of height on me, a smile that showed a split between her front teeth, and crimson lipstick that was smeared just enough to remind me of my mother.
No way.

I shook her hand like I was an imbecile and fled without speaking. Near the cemetery fence, I fell in with a tangle of party animals dancing together to a boom box barely visible in the middle of their group amoeba. I squished in.

“Watch my toes,” a possibly attractive girl warned me. She didn't look old enough to be in college. For some reason, she had covered her face in black dots.

“Will do,” I said, waiting for the next time she was facing my direction. “My name's Ben.”

“Ben,” she said, like she was tasting it. “Sounds trashy.”

“Funny, luv!” said a heavyset guy beside her. He was bulging in an orange hoodie and orange workout pants, with a piece of black garden hose hanging down behind him like a tail. “Trash
bin!
Good one!”

“Ben,” she said again, continuing to turn and bump. “Franklin?” she asked, facing Orange Guy, instead of me. “You should be high as a kite.”

This wasn't going anywhere I wanted. I extricated myself from the body blend and looked for Z. Edging along the fence, I kicked something that clanked. Bottles. A cooler. Beer!

“Dollar a bottle, you want one.” A blondish smooth-faced guy in a sportcoat stopped dancing and walked over to me. Was that a costume, or was he a bank trainee in real life?

“First-timer?” he asked.

I ignored that. “Ben,” I said, meeting his hand for a quick shake. “Yeah, I'd like two.”

The light in that spot was very dim, but he reminded me of somebody. I couldn't think who … Marco? I shook off that thought. No Marco tonight!

He dug under the ice and handed me the two beers as he pocketed my bills.

“Whose party is this?” I asked him.

He smiled. “Not sure, really,” he said. “You just got to know somebody who's clued where it's going to be. I'm one, but you don't know me, so that won't work.”

“What's your work?” I asked him. Curious if I was right.

“University,” he said. “Admissions,” dancing back to join his group.

I went off to find Z. It wasn't easy because everybody stayed pretty close together, even if they were in separate little groups. I found her on the right fringe, doing some kind of alien tango, clamped tightly to two other people, no music. The three of them collapsed to the ground, laughing.

“What was that called?” I asked her when she stood again. I handed her a beer.

“Thanks,” she said, giving me a look like I was actually a friend instead of a chore. “I don't know,” she said, giving a mini-shrug. “The Bango Fandango?”

Her friends were still on the ground, snuggling and giggling.

She saw me watching them. “Hey,” she said, “want to fox-trot?”

“I don't know how foxes trot,” I said, still sober but feeling giddy.

“Well,” she said, “I think in eighth grade they taught you how boxes waltz.” She grabbed my beerless hand, stepped into me, and began leading.

I never would have imagined the waltz could feel so good.

I saw the multicolored lights flipping through the trees before I heard the burst of a siren. Z grabbed my hand and we bushwhacked back to the trailhead and got in her car. Listened to her CDs on the way home, while I tried to think of something to say to her.

She stopped in front of my house and smiled at me, and then she was all business. “Might want to shower before you go to bed,” she said. “Lot of poison oak out there.”

“Hey, uh, thanks for thinking of me. I really … that was great.” I wanted to kiss her hand or her cheek or something, but I didn't. She might have hit me. I just got out and stood at the curb.

My block was dark and quiet. Somewhere way behind me, a dog barked once. The air was chill and clean and full of the peppery trace of neighborhood spruce trees. I watched her taillights make their way down my street until they blinked one last time and were gone.

Lizard History

One
evening, I think to make contact, to get some kind of response, I did something the doctors said I should never do. I asked Mom about the Lizard People.

Her eyes came up to mine as soon as I said it. Watching. To see if I was serious.

I nodded. Once. Unsure.

She looked off to the side and then closed her eyes.

“They're real,” she said. “No one knows where they came from. They were the earliest Indians, before the Anasazi, but they were Lizards and they had to live below the surface. They built big underground cities, a labyrinth in the Los Angeles…” She opened her eyes and looked at me again. Was I listening? Was this a trick? Did I believe her?

I met her gaze and stayed absolutely still. I had not heard so much strength in her voice for weeks.

She closed her eyes again.

Did that help her keep the lid on?

“Four thousand years ago,” she said, “the Hopi Indians … a chief told his tribe about the Lizard People. They were all part of the before time. The Lizard People built these cities to protect against a big fire, like, uh, missiles, er, media showers—”

“Meteor showers?”

She didn't pause. “Meteor showers, and they ruined the crops and killed everybody, but the Lizards were down in these caves they built, so they were safe. Most of them, for a while. Well”—she glanced at me to see if I was following her—“they're coming back now. Up to the surface. To get everything. To take everything!”

“Why? Why would they do that?”

“They think…”

Mom looked puzzled. She cocked her head farther to the side as if listening to a faint whisper.

“They think that, uh, this is their time. And that we, all of us, we are not real. They think we aren't real!”

She looked at me then, eyes wide. Alarmed.

I was up immediately, holding her shoulders. “It's all right, Mom. It's okay right now. It's okay.”

I held her until her breathing quieted. My arms cramped, but I kept holding her until, after a while, she dozed off.

I kept physically motionless, but I was anything but calm. Why
four thousand
years ago? Why that number? What did that mean,
this is their time?

Over the next several days, Mom stayed stable. We didn't have any more outbreaks of insanity. She didn't mention the Lizard People again, and I sure didn't ask. She began to put on a little weight. She needed it. Betty Lou joked that it was the Mander Board and Care, Ben Mander, proprietor. But it was no joke. It was true.

Once in a while I fished in the late afternoon while Mom napped. I loved the quiet, just the sound of the moving water. I loved the feel of the current pushing against my legs, and how my body would begin to automatically keep its balance against that pressure when I waded over slippery rocks. And I loved the rhythm of the casting. Back, forth, stop the rod, and the line would shoot out. Thoughts left me, and I was free.

Three or four times I dropped by Marco's place, but I kept missing him.

Mom went to Manteca with Arvin on a Saturday near the end of February, almost a month to the day after her reptile scene at my school. Saying good-bye to her was awful. She tried to smile and cried instead. I hugged her.

“Don't worry about me,” she was whispering into my hair. “I'm so sorry—”

“Don't, Mom.” I was trying to keep it together. “I love you. Just get better.”

Arvin had finished loading the suitcases. He came up to the porch to shake my hand and take my mom's arm. “Don't worry, son,” he said. “We'll take good care of your mom.”

In less than a minute, they were gone.

When she left, and I was alone in the house, I found myself crying. I'm not sure I can say why. The tears came and kept coming until I was as empty as a football stadium after the crowds have gone home.

Steelhead

The
next morning, loud knocking woke me. Dad? No, he'd have a key. When I opened my front door, Hubie was standing on the steps, wearing a photography vest and a cowboy hat. A cowboy hat? I rubbed my eyes. Nope. He was still there. Smiling.

“Let's go fishing,” he said.

“Fishing,” I said.

“You know,” he said patiently, “fishing. You love it. It loves you. Line, hook, pole.”

“Rod,” I said, trying to get a grip. Hubie doesn't fish. His dad doesn't fish. I shuddered to think about Z's opinion of fishing. The only way Hubie would ever fish was if it was part of a complex computer game.

“Hubie, did you take a strange vitamin this morning? Did Z give you anything to help you study? What is the matter with you?”

Hubie walked past me into our living room and sat on the couch. “Hey,” he said, “does something have to be the matter when a friend asks you to take him fishing? I'm ready to learn something new. Get outdoors. Go for the gusto! Be all that I can be!”

Okay, now I got it. “You think I'm losing it and that it would be
good
for me to go fishing. This is charity.”

“Yeah, you look like you've been living under a bridge, but hey, charity actually comes from the ancient Greek word ‘chair,' meaning ‘sit,'” Hubie said in his most professorial voice. “This is the exact opposite of sitting. Sure, I think it would be good for you, or anyone, to go fishing. Even me. Plus, it's a primo day! The golden orb is glowing, the raptors are screeching, the leaves are fermenting or whatever it is they do. Time to get out, bro. Time to attack the water, terrify the salmonids, occupy our rightful place as outdoorsmen!”

The more I awakened, the better the idea actually sounded. He was right. I could see the sunshine on the trees through our windows. Late February California!

Not many rivers were open for trout fishing, and we were a little past the winter steelhead season, but maybe it would be good for me to get away from my house for a day. It had been a couple of months since I'd gone out of town for steelhead. We could be on the Trinity in a little over an hour. The smell of fresh river, a little steelhead action. Could be great! I would set Hubie up with one of my old spinning rods so I wouldn't have to surgically remove hooks from the back of his head when he tried to fly cast.

“Okay,” I said, “give me fifteen minutes to do my stuff and get the gear from the garage. You sure you're up for this?”

“Does an elephant defecate in the veldt?” Hubie asked.

We parked off the road where the creek came in by Junction City. There were two other guys downstream a few hundred yards in a long straight run by the highway. I figured we'd walk across the rocks straight upstream and wade in where the river takes a ninety-degree bend. I was giving some instructions while we clomped along in our waders.

“Use the staff like a cane for stability whenever you move in the water.”

“Thy rod and thy staff?” Hubie asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “if you slip and fall in, you better pray, all right, cause you fill your waders with water and they'll sink you.”

“Okay,” Hubie said, “pay attention when I'm wading.”

“Right,” I said. “And I'm setting you up with a silver Castmaster. Just throw it across the river, let it sink and swing, and then retrieve it.”

“I can't just leave it alone and it'll come home, wagging its tail behind it?”

“Joke if you want to, but there's a real chance you could hook up with a jumping locomotive that'll stop your heart,” I told him.

“Now that sounds like fun,” he said. “Does Weaverville have good EMT services?”

“You fish ahead of me, right at the bend, and let the lure swing around the turn,” I told him. “I'll fish below you in the tail-out.”

“Thank you for not suggesting I've already gone around the bend.”