Lizard Tales (4 page)

[Slick]

[Mouthy]

W
hen I was younger, my parents always took me and my brother to Topsail Island for summer vacation. Now, money was as scarce as feathers on a toad in those days, so once we got there we spent most of our time on the beach or the pier instead of at the arcade. Well, this one particular summer they let me take a buddy of mine named Shane with us. We spent all morning on the pier, but the fishing was so bad we couldn’t have caught a cold naked in the deep-freeze that day. So we started devising other ways to entertain ourselves.

Now, Shane was a great guy, but at times he was so dumb you’d have to water him. And my intellect back in those days was such that, if brains were dynamite, I couldn’t blow my nose. So usually I followed right along with his plans. Well, we got to noticing all the seagulls at the end of the pier and the people throwing them Cheetos. Those birds would come down, practically eat out of their hands, and then fly away. This gave Shane a brilliant idea. He said, “Let’s go under the pier, take the fishing rods, and put some Cheetos on the hooks. Then we can catch us a seagull and fly him like a kite!”

Even though that made about as much sense to me as giving a grizzly bear a backrub with a handful of razor blades, I had to admit it would be pretty cool to have a live kite, so I was all over his idea like a hobo on a ham
sandwich. We scoured the pier and found some chips and Cheetos, and then headed out to do a little “fly” fishing.

We got set up, gave about a twenty-yard buffer from where we set the bait, and hid with a rod in hand behind one of the pier legs. Didn’t take but a few minutes before a gull swooped down and jumped on that Cheeto like a monkey in a banana warehouse. So there we were, with our live kite about fifty yards in the air, thinking this was the coolest thing since ice cream, when a huge crowd gathered on the pier. About that time we both realized that maybe we didn’t think this thing through, so we started trying to reel that gull in with the intention of letting him go and getting our tails on outta there. Problem was, the gull was stronger than our reel and all he was doing was pulling drag. Shane started yelling at me, I started yelling at the bird, and everyone on the pier started yelling at us. That’s when I saw the blue lights coming down the beach.

The cops rolled up in a four-by-four jeep and jumped out, heading straight for us. They looked madder than wet hornets. One of them yelled, “Do you kids know it’s a five-thousand-dollar fine to harass seagulls out here?”

With that, Shane was off like a prom dress, and I was nervous as a dog crapping peach pits. One cop broke out after Shane and the other threw me into the sand and slapped on the handcuffs. He wasn’t no small cop either; in fact, he was fatter than an outhouse spider. So when he picked me up and slammed me on the hood of the jeep, I assure you he was about as gentle as a peach-orchard boar in a patch of strawberries.

So there I was, lying on the hood of the patrol jeep looking down the beach, scared as a whore in the front row at church about what Pops was gonna do to me, when I saw the other cop hauling Shane back to the jeep. Problem was,
Shane didn’t have his britches on! In his quest for freedom, he had tried to swim for it. I don’t know where he thought he was gonna go, but there wasn’t a lot of chlorine in his gene pool. Shane told me later that when he jumped in the water, he figured the cop wouldn’t follow—and he was right. The cop just stood on the shore knowing he had to come back … because he had nowhere to go. After a few minutes of treading water, Shane had the same epiphany and headed back to shore. But when he had nosedived into that water like a skeeter in a tailspin at a blood bank, he’d lost his swimming shorts. Unfortunately, it was colder that day than my mother-in-law’s heart, and there’s Shane free-balling it! I was covered in sand, with my face pretty bloodied up from the gentleness of the good cop, and everyone on the pier was laughing and clapping.

We both got loaded into the back of the jeep, headed for jail. I just knew when Pops got a hold of us he was gonna stomp a mud hole in our butts and then walk it dry. But Shane managed to find humor in the situation. He said, “You know, Ronnie, you can pick your friends and you can pick your boogers, but you can’t wipe your friends on your seat.” I just sat there petrified as to what was about to happen.

After Pops bailed us out, we got in his car and no one said a word. We drove about five minutes before Pops spoke. And when he finally did, all he said was, “Son, from now on, remember: When you think you have a brilliant idea, the light at the end of the tunnel is usually the headlight of the oncoming train.”

Looking back, Pops always had a way of giving good advice. And since that day, I’ve spent much of my life trying to avoid trains—and trouble.

W
hen it comes to animals, my daddy loves them more than he loves his people. If you mess with Pops’s animals, he gets madder than a blind man at a nude beach.

When we were growing up, they’d have twenty-nine-cent hamburgers at Hardee’s every Tuesday. The cheeseburgers were thirty-nine cents. My daddy would take us to Hardee’s and he’d refuse to spend the extra dime for cheese. Pops would always tell us we could put cheese on them when we got home. I mean, Pops was so tight at times, I’ve seen him squeeze blood out of the eyes on a penny. But every week, Pops would still buy ten hamburgers and ten cheeseburgers. As soon as we walked out of Hardee’s, Pops would unwrap the cheeseburgers and throw them to the two dogs in the back of his truck. That always made me and Jason hotter than a wildcat in a forest fire with an overcoat on.

That’s just the way Pops is about animals. Whenever Pops cooks steaks, his dogs are eating steaks on the floor before we even get our plates. When it comes to his animals, I truly believe Pops loves them more than he loves his own family. But they are always there for him. See, Pops is a hard man to get along with, and he’s more stubborn than the northern end of a southern-bound pack mule, and them critters can’t talk back.

Of course, Pops’s favorite pet was always Wildman, the stray cat we caught in the rabbit trap and gave to my sister.
Even though Wildman hated Pops and used to attack him as soon as he climbed out of his car, Pops learned to love the cat over time. Even though Wildman would attack Pops like a one-legged man at IHOP, their hatred for each other really became their bond. It became a chess game between the two. It would take Pops five minutes to get from his car to the house, because Wildman was always hiding in places and waiting for him just like a kid. It was the funniest thing you ever saw. A grown man running from a tomcat looking as scared as a blind mouse in a rattlesnake pit is an image I’ll never forget.

Eventually, Pops wouldn’t let you mess with Wildman. I remember one day when my grandfather saw Wildman attack Pops. Grandpaw picked up the cat and said, “Y’all want to see this cat disappear? Best magic trick I know.” We all nodded our heads in excitement. The closest thing we’d ever seen to magic was Mickey Mouse on a cartoon. Grandpaw picked up that cat by the back of the neck and swung him into the top of a tree. He said, “Look boys, he disappeared.” Bo, my daddy jumped on my grandfather like nothing you’ve ever seen. He was like a Viking in a panty raid. It was then we knew we’d better never mess with Wildman.

One day when Pops came home from work, he climbed out of his car and started looking around for Wildman. The cat didn’t attack him. He walked into the backyard, and Wildman never attacked him. He walked inside the house and still couldn’t find Wildman. Pops was starting to get worried; he looked like a banker at an IRS audit. Wildman never came out, and you could tell it was really bothering Pops. He started getting mad at us, thinking we’d done something to the cat, like we’d locked him in the shed or something. Pops was madder than a bobcat in a forest fire.

“Pops, I swear we haven’t done anything to him,” I told him.

Pops sent us outside to find Wildman. We looked in the sheds outside, under the porch, in the woods, and everywhere else. We couldn’t find him. But then I saw a big orange spot at the end of the driveway, right next to the road that runs in front of my parents’ house. I didn’t wanna go see what it was and I sure didn’t wanna go tell my pops. I’d rather jump in a five-gallon bucket of armpits off a ten-foot ladder, but I was the oldest and it was my duty.

Pops saw the cat lying at the end of the driveway. Now, my daddy is a man’s man—he never cries or get upset. But I’m telling you, he was torn up over losing that cat. To this day, I can still remember the look of sadness on his face. He was more upset than Kirstie Alley when McDonald’s runs out of French fries. I’d never seen my father that upset. I worried he was going to have a heart attack over a dead cat. Pops looked like a dead pig in sunshine.

I went to the shed, got a shovel, and picked up Wildman. We brought him into the backyard, and Pops made Jason and me dig the cat a grave. We went inside the house and built a small wooden box for Wildman’s casket, and put pictures of Pops and the cat in the box. Then we went into the backyard and had a full funeral service for Wildman and buried him in front of a small tree. Pops even wrote a eulogy for Wildman and etched an epitaph on a piece of plywood for a tombstone. It said:
OUR BATTLE MAY BE OVER BUT THE WAR WILL RAGE ON. YOU’LL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN YOU WORTHLESS CUR
. I guess he had to make it seem manly, but we never spoke a word.

It took us two hours to bury the stupid cat. By the time we were finished, I was happier than a bullfrog at a blow-fly convention. I would have taken that cat down the road
and thrown it into a lake. I love animals, but an animal is still an animal. A two-hour funeral for a cat was about as much fun as a nosebleed.

For the next two days, you couldn’t speak to my father. It was like Pops lost a kid. He was so torn up about it. Pops would come home and sit in his car for thirty minutes. It was almost like he was out there waiting for Wildman to attack him.

The following weekend, Jason and I got up early because we were going to go fishing. I tried to get Pops to go fishing with us.

“Pops, I know you’ve been upset,” I told him. “Why don’t you come along with us?”

“Nah, I don’t want to go fishing,” he said.

I kept pestering Pops to go because I was really getting worried about how upset he was at losing Wildman.

Pops finally agreed to go with us. We walked outside to get our fishing poles and tackle box out of the shed. Then we climbed into our little Ford Ranger. Now, the Ranger was only used on the weekends, for things like hauling trash off or heading to the fishing hole. So we hadn’t been in it for a few days—as a matter of fact, since the day before Wildman went missing.