Lizard Tales (22 page)

We were arguing with Brian about going back to shore. But then I saw a huge cloud come up next to the boat.

“Did y’all see that?” I said. “Did y’all see that? What in the world was that?”

The only fishing poles we had on the boat were bait casters for bass; we didn’t have any real ocean rods. I saw this big swirl come next to the boat again. Brian’s boat was twenty-three feet long and this animal was as big as the boat. It was the biggest animal I’d ever seen. Bo, I intended to land that critter like the old man in the sea and tie it off to the boat and make history.

“Go! Go!” I yelled to Brian. “Get me next to that fish!”

I had Gotcha plugs and I threw one out to set a hook in the critter. I snagged him! I threw another plug out and then another one. By the time I was finished, I’d snagged
that critter with four poles. All the poles were bent over, bobbing up and down, and about to break in half. I ran into the cabin and found Brian’s daddy’s ocean rod. It had a huge treble hook on it. It looked like a collard green on Miracle-Gro.

I threw out the treble hook and snagged the critter again. This time, the critter got hotter than an ol’ sitting hen setting eggs in a wool basket in the summertime. It turned around and rammed the front of the boat. The front of the boat literally stood up out of the water. I still don’t know how that boat didn’t flip.

I finally saw what I’d snagged: a twenty-foot basking shark. They’re not meat-eaters, so I wasn’t worried. There wasn’t any way I was going to bring in a basking shark, but I didn’t know any better because I’d been drinking all day. I even grabbed the anchor and tried to snag the shark again to tie it to the boat. I figured the anchor would be a big enough hook to wear him down. Of course, I was never known for my massive intellect. But as I was fighting the shark, Brian was flipping like a dolphin at Sea World during a fish-feeding show. Then Brian did the unthinkable as I was wrestling this mammoth like Hulk Hogan on Ric Flair: he ran up to the front of the boat and cut all my lines.

“Bo, what are you doing?” I screamed.

“Saving my boat,” Brian said.

After that, I was hotter than a tick on a dog’s testicles. We argued for about an hour, and then it took us about four more hours to get back to shore. When we finally got Brian’s battered boat loaded back onto a trailer, a couple of game wardens drove up to us.

“Did y’all catch anything?” they asked.

“No, but we had the biggest fish in the world hooked,” I told them. “It was a basking shark.”

They started laughing at us.

“You know what would have happened if you’d pulled up here with a basking shark?” one of the game wardens asked me. “You would have faced about ten years in prison and a fifty-thousand-dollar fine. A basking shark is an endangered species.”

Well, Brian looked at me and I looked at Jason and we all just looked at the boat or what was left of it. After about a minute, I looked back at the game wardens.

I said, “Y’all know what we all learned here today? That a fisherman is a jerk on one end of the line waiting for a jerk on the other.”

And with that we headed back to suburbia to deal with Brian’s wife.

[Redneck Ponderings]

O
ne of the toughest repos I’ve ever attempted was actually on some vehicles belonging to a funeral home. I received an order to repossess both the hearse and the family car. Now, it just seemed to me that bad karma was on the horizon if we got those vehicles, but my job is to find and take anything that floats, flies, sinks, rolls, or swims. Besides—no matter how you clean a skunk, he’s still gonna stink, so I figured, since at the time I was as broke as the Ten Commandments, I’d better figure out how to get the hearse and car.

I also felt that, with as much as those places charge for a permanent bed and a plot of ground, the only place they were gonna find any sympathy around here was between “symbolic” and “syphilis” in the family dictionary. So I started trying to figure out how I was gonna get both vehicles and do it in a respectful manner.

Several times a day I’d ease past this funeral home, but I never could locate the vehicles outside. So one night, I decided to park down the street and sneak around some, to get a better layout of the place and see if I could spot them. Sure enough, when I eased around back of the garage and peeked in, I could see them both sitting inside, shining and prettier than a freshly cooked baked-bean sandwich. So day after day and night after night, I continued to try to catch those vehicles outside. I knew there was always more than one way to choke a dog than by just feeding
it peanut butter, so I started devising a way to get to the vehicles—since they weren’t coming out to me.

Now, it just so happens that my wife, Amy, is a licensed mortician. But I would rather eat a cold scab sandwich and wash it down with a mug of snot than to give her the satisfaction of figuring this one out before I did. She told me, “Ronnie, they are only gonna pull them out for cleaning and for use, so your methods are gonna be about as useful as a dog with no legs.”

But I’m the type of guy who will hang in there like a hair in a biscuit until I get the job done. So I figured I’d wait till there was a wake, sneak in with the crowd, ease out to the garage, locate the keys, hit the door opener, and then make like a tree in the fall and leave. If I took one of my guys with me, we could even drive both vehicles out at the same time. We could pull all this off and no one would even know, ’cause they’d all be inside.

I proudly announced to Amy that I had a foolproof plan, and I went into detail about my covert operation. Amy busted out laughing and told me it would never work. She started to tell me why, but by then I was hotter than if I’d been playing hot potato in the Sahara Desert because she’d shot my idea down. So I told her, “Honey, I’m riding this chicken. You’re just holding the head.”

She said, “OK. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” And she left, laughing hysterically.

So I called my tow manager and cousin, Brian, and told him my plan. Then I started watching the obituaries, bound and determined to prove to Amy that, when it comes to repossessions, she couldn’t hold water if she was carrying a ten-gallon bucket.

After a few days, there it was: a seven p.m. wake at the funeral home. I called Brian and told him to dally up; we
had an old friend we had to pay our last respects to. Now, you have to keep in mind: Brian is straight off the farm. The only thing he wears bigger than his belt buckle is his hat. And my neck is redder than nine miles of Georgia asphalt on a summer Sunday, so we tend to stand out just a tad. Brian showed up at the house decked out in his best John Wayne lookalike duds and Amy said, “Are y’all really gonna attempt this?”

I said, “Does a fat puppy hate fast cars? In an hour you’ll be gagging on crow—and I ain’t giving you no gravy to dull the flavor!”

She just smiled and said, “When you come back empty-handed, let me know, and I’ll get ’em for you.”

Now, at that point it was personal: she was calling me out, and I would have rather slid down a barbed-wire banister with a bucket of alcohol than to come back without at least one car. So off we went. I got a real uneasy feeling when we pulled into the parking lot around seven thirty p.m. The place was packed. There must have been more than a hundred vehicles in the parking lot, so at least it would be really busy and no one would notice us snooping around. We got out of Brian’s jacked-up, extended-cab Chevy truck (which happened to be the biggest truck in the lot, but we just figured everyone drove their Sunday vehicles). This guy in a suit opened the door for us and we rolled on inside. The entire lobby was empty. The doorman said, “Everyone is already inside the room. Go to the third door on the left.” At this point, we were as confused as a turtle on the center stripe, but since there was no way for us to sneak around, we headed to the room. Well, we opened the door and walked in, and it was right then I knew why Amy found so much humor in us going to this wake. I didn’t realize that the funeral home specialized
in certain religions, and it seemed me and Brian had just walked right into a Buddhist funeral!

There were all these people in orange robes singing these weird chants with all this incense burning. When we walked in, I was wound tigher than a three-day clock. There me and Brian were with the facial expressions of two mules eating briars. And you could have called the dogs and pissed on the campfire when one of the priests walked up and asked how we knew the deceased. Before I could simply say we were just in the wrong room, Brian spouted out, “Oh he was my momma’s cousin.” I don’t know what bothered me more: the fact it was obvious we weren’t related or the fact I forgot to tell Brian the wake was for a lady. Needless to say, I left him standing there like he was so ugly his momma had to feed him from a slingshot.

When Brian finally got back to the truck, he was grinning at me like a baked possum for Sunday lunch. Sometimes I actually wonder if Brian could put a gopher back in a wet hole. But regardless, I knew I had to go back and face Amy, and I would’ve rather been set on fire and put out with the bottom of a golf shoe than to watch her gloat.

When I arrived home she was sitting on the couch smiling ear to ear. Right next to her was a life-sized mannequin. Now, at this point, I was feeling like I wanted to take a long walk in front of a short bus, and I wasn’t about to ask her any questions. She stood up and said, “I don’t see a hearse outside.” Me and Brian just looked down sheepishly as she continued: “Just sit down, boys, and I’ll show you how to lick this repo.”

First, she told me and Brian to go lay the mannequin in the bed and cover him with a sheet. Then she grabbed the phone and called the funeral home. She explained to them that she had a pickup and needed the hearse because the
family was on the premises. When I heard this plan, I was as happy as a bucked-tooth horse eating corn cobs through a picket fence. Amy told us they always leave the keys in the car on pickup, and so she sent Brian outside to hide around the side of the house while I stayed inside to make sure nothing got out of hand.

Sure enough, two guys in suits pulled up and Amy led them through the house. They had the stretcher for the mannequin. When we got to the bedroom and pulled the sheet back, both of their jaws dropped so far you could’ve filled the space with ten dollars’ worth of forty-cent jawbreakers. Both those fellows were as confused as noseless rats at the cheese mill. Amy explained to them we had a repossession on the hearse, and by the expressions on their faces, I knew for sure that they were gonna be madder than a bobcat tied up in a piss fire. In the meantime, Brian had already gotten into the car and was headed down the road. He called in on the cell phone to let us know he was clear. I was gearing up for a Texas tussle with these two rather large fellows when, in the most eloquent voice, the larger one said, “I knew something was amiss when we walked in, because we have never done a Caucasian family. I should have caught on. You, ma’am, are a very innovative agent.”

I chimed in, proud as a heifer of her first calf, and said, “Yep, that ol’ girl is slicker than a hound dog’s fake tooth.” Everybody just looked at me like I had kicked a cat.

Amy went on to tell them we also now had their stretchers, and she knew they had a graveside the next day, so the only way they could have them back was to give us the family car also. The bigger guy spoke again: “You must be aware that, due to ethics, I can’t cause a scene or I’ll be in jeopardy of a reprimand by the state board.”

Amy smiled and politely responded, “Yes, I’m a licensed mortician and funeral director. That’s why I knew how to handle this situation. In this business, it’s not always power and lead that gets the job done.”

Amy said she was leaving with those two guys to get the family car back at the funeral home. Now, the expression on my face must’ve been a sight, ’cause to me she added, “Ronnie, if I had a dog that looked like you did right now, I’d shave his butt and make him walk backwards.”

The rest of the week I couldn’t even look at Amy. Her mouth was running more than a boardinghouse toilet. She told everybody about her repo and how she had pulled one off that even the great Ron and Brian couldn’t get.

I must admit I had to swallow a lot of crow that week. After two days I finally broke down and asked her why she let me make such a fool of myself. Why didn’t she just tell me about the inner workings of funeral homes instead of letting me look like the dog who caught the parked car?