Fender Lizards

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “How come?” I said. “I thought you wouldn’t like it.”

  Raylynn considered for a moment, said, “Last week, I wouldn’t have. But now I’m looking for change. And there’s the money.”

  “So what’s up besides the money?” I asked.

  Raylynn shook her head. “I guess I want to change something about myself. I guess I want to have some kind of hope that isn’t tied to a man.”

  “Tim is a boy,” I said. “He always will be.”

  “Boy or man,” she said. “I’d like to be worth something without one or the other. I keep fastening my string to balloons that burst.”

  “You are worth something,” I said.

  “Thanks for the lie,” she said.

  “I was thinking of human organ sales,” I said.

  Raylynn almost smiled.

  “What do you think about our Uncle Elbert?” I asked.

  “I just met him. But he’s odd. He doesn’t even look like the rest of the family.”

  “Different mother,” I said.

  “I have a different father, but me and you favor a lot,” she said.

  “No explaining genetics,” I said.

  “I thought scientists did explain it,” Raylynn said.

  “Let me rephrase that,” I said. “No way two Fender Lizards can explain it. Grandma claims he has the same nose as Dad.”

  “It’s a nose,” Raylynn said. “It looks like a lot of noses.”

  “Did you know he’s been to prison?”

  “What?”

  I told her the whole story.

  “And he’s living in our trailer?” Raylynn said.

  “Last time I looked.”

  “Wow,” she said. “What is he? Dad’s younger or older brother?”

  “I think Elbert’s the oldest.”

  “Wow,” Raylynn said again. “Our very own bank robber. And he’s done prison time.”

  “I guess I’m following in the family tradition of crime,” I said.

  “Look at you,” Raylynn said, “all proud and stuff.”

  “Ha.”

  “Dot?”

  “Yep.”

  “Thanks for pulling me out of that trailer. It’s tight where I am now, with the kids and all of you irritating people. But I don’t wake up worried every night that Tim might hit one of the babies, or me, and for no good reason at all other than the mood might strike him. Thanks, sis.”

  “Does this mean you’re not going back?” I said.

  “I think so.”

  “Think so?” I said.

  “That’s the old me talking,” Raylynn said. “No. I’m not going back. I’m going to be a roller derby star. Probably with a broken leg. But I’ll be a star… Well, at least I’ll show up.”

  (13)

  When I got to the house Elbert was out in the yard, and me and Sue stopped to greet him. He was sitting in a lawn chair drinking a bottle of beer, eyeing his van, which had the door slid back.

  It was clean inside. Several black plastic trash bags were tied off and sitting just outside of it.

  Raylynn spoke to Elbert, and he hugged her. Then she went inside the trailer. I said, “Doing a bit of house cleaning?”

  “You could say that. I threw away about ninety percent of that junk. Everything was worn out. I have a little money saved up and I went to the Goodwill and bought a few things to replace them, but mostly, I’m keeping it simple.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “I got a little mattress in the van, and I’ll sleep out here nights now. Raylynn and the kids need the room. Some of them can sleep in the living room if I’m out here instead of everyone jammed up in the bedrooms.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I said, and meant it.

  “Yeah, well,” he said. “I’ll move on before long. I still got a little money left after my shopping spree, and I been thinking about picking up some day jobs to pack in a few dollars, and then I can go.”

  I pulled up a lawn chair. “You thinking about it or checking around?”

  He grinned at me. “Mostly I’m thinking about it. Thing is, majority of people aren’t big on hiring an ex-con.”

  “I’d hesitate to put a bank robber in my business,” I said.

  He nodded. “True. But I served my time. I’m out now and I’m rehabilitated. I made a decision I was going to do things straight and narrow. Come see you guys, connect with my family.”

  “There’s that whole thing about past behavior being a pretty good indicator of future behavior,” I said. “That’s something Bob told me.”

  “This the Bob at the Dairy Bob?” Elbert asked.

  “Yep.”

  “So he’s your go to guy for philosophical thought?” Elbert asked.

  “He’s what I got. You see, my dad, your brother, he ran off. And I just recently met you. You kind of showed up when I was pretty much raised. So it’s not like I have a lot of choices as far as male guidance goes.”

  “Okay. You got me there.”

  We sat silent for awhile. It was solid dark now and the crickets were sawing in the grass. Not far from our trailer were other trailers. They all looked pretty much alike, with their little pathetic patches of grass out front. In that moment, I can’t explain it, but depression pressed against me as heavy as a big old rock.

  I decided to quit thinking about it. I said, “You said you used to skate. Were you yarning me, Elbert?”

  “No,” he said. “I did. A lot. I made my living at it for a while.”

  “Skating?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I learned to skate when I was young, and I was good at it. Few years before I changed my career to robber, I skated at a roller rink as a clown.”

  “A roller skating clown?” I said. “That’s priceless.”

  “Isn’t it? But I was good. This roller rink, it was up in Kansas. How I ended up there is a long story, and I’ll pass on telling that part.”

  “I can live with that,” I said.

  “So, there I was, in Kansas. And they needed someone to dress up like a clown and skate for the children, and to do children’s programs.”

  “That must have been hard with a bottle of beer in your hand,” I said.

  “I am still your elder, Dot, and I’ve about had enough of that.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and almost meant it.

  “I skated and did skating tricks, and I was really good. And, you know, I really liked it. I seriously enjoyed it. To have the kids laugh at me was great. It was a good feeling. The money was nothing special, but it was money enough, and it was an alright job. I wish I was still doing it.”

  “I don’t like clowns,” I said. “They scare me. A skating clown might have caused me to have a heart attack.”

  “Fortunately,” Elbert said. “Not everyone feels that way.”

  “Then why aren’t you still skating and wearing a red nose?” I asked.

  “It was a painted nose, actually,” Elbert said. “If I use one of those regular clown noses, something in them breaks me out.”

  “Tragic if you’re a clown,” I said.

  “Naw, I looked all right. I learned to paint myself up real good. I met this make up guy once, worked in the movies, and he showed me how to do things.”

  “You didn’t answer me,” I said. “Why did you quit the clown job?”

  Elbert went quiet. Something I didn’t think he could do. The expression on his face told me he was gathering up his thoughts, lining them up like soldiers.

  “It was a birthday party,” he said. “It was a special Saturday afternoon gig. Rich guy. His son. I guess the kid was turning eleven. There were lots of kids there. Pretty well off kids. Well, to get to it, the eleven year old boy invited a girl that was outside of the financial rodeo, so to speak. Someone, who at least from this kid’s background, was poor. And black. Only black kid there.

  “So, what happens is the kid comes. A pretty girl, and she doesn’t bring a present. I don’t know. Forgot. Didn’t have the money. I don’t know. No big d
eal to the boy. He was glad to see her. It was pretty clear to me he had a kind of sweet crush on that lovely little girl. But the dad didn’t like it. I think he didn’t like his lily-white son being with someone from across the tracks, someone black. He started criticizing the girl for not bringing a present. Kind of joking, but mean joking, and she got her feelings hurt, which was understandable, and went off crying. The rich man’s son was devastated. He skated after the girl, who had reached the edge of the rink and was unfastening her skates. The father tried to stop him, and I stopped the father.”

  “Stopped how?” I asked.

  “I just meant to touch his shoulder,” Elbert said. “You know, get his attention. Say something like, ‘Hey, man. It’s okay. Let him go.’ Didn’t work that way.”

  “How did it work?” I asked.

  “When he turned around to see who had him, saw me in my clown get-up, he just freaked out. Said to get my hand off of him. He’d decide who his son should chase and shouldn’t, and then he said something that went all over me. He called her the N word, as they say now days.

  “I hit him, Dot. I hit him so hard it seemed to me the lights in the building dimmed. He went down like a dead tree falling. Unconscious. When I looked up, all those kids at the party were looking at me. The clown had cold-cocked the father of the birthday boy.”

  “He had it coming,” I said.

  Elbert shook his head. “He had it coming. But that doesn’t mean I should have done it. Traumatic stuff. You come to a birthday party and the hired clown on roller skates knocks the birthday boy’s father on his ass. It didn’t make the situation better, me trying to stand up for the girl, it made it worse. I skated out of there and went home, and the next day I got an assault charge slapped on me. I deserved it. He said something rotten about that little girl. He was a jerk. But he didn’t try and hurt me physically, and I hit him. An impulsive thing. I felt good about it for about fifteen minutes, and then all I could think about was what if he had hit his head real hard on the floor things could have gone real wrong real quick? I thought about all those kids seeing me doing it. That’s an image they have for ever. Bozo the Clown goes rogue.”

  “Are you trying to tell me something, Elbert?” I said. “Maybe something you’ve already told me?”

  “Telling something once has never stopped me from telling it again,” Elbert said.

  “I believe that,” I said.

  “I’m saying it made me feel good in the moment. He had it coming. But it was a bad move. I did a couple days in jail, and finally got someone I knew to go my bail. What I’m saying is you did something where someone deserved it a lot more than my rich fella deserved it. He was just a jerk. Raylynn’s boyfriend was beating on her. But it still doesn’t make it right. A temper like that, you got to get hold of it. You can do more damage than you can ever imagine, no matter how right you are.”

  “All right,” I said. “I get it.”

  “I’m not trying to tell you how to run your life,” Elbert said. “But I’m trying to tell you some of the stupid things I did that could be a lot like stupid things you might do. Or have done.”

  “You’re saying do as you say, not as you did?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said with a nod. “I’m also saying I’ve learned from my mistakes. Or I’ve tried to.”

  “What happened to the birthday boy and the girl?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I never saw any of them again,” he said.

  We sat there in our lawn chairs with the night all around us, the stars up above. Just listening to the crickets work. It was a comfortable night. The summer having given up some of its heat to a bit of cool wind down from the North. I didn’t mention to Elbert that I had already passed on his bit of wisdom to Sue, and that he was talking to the converted. Well. The almost converted.

  (14)

  I went in to see the judge, and it was different than I thought. It was just a little room in the courthouse. The judge, an older woman with red hair out of a bottle and a look on her face that made you think she had just bitten into an unripe persimmon, sat behind a long table with some plastic chairs pulled up to it. She wasn’t wearing a judge robe like I thought she’d be. She had on a green pantsuit. She was sitting in one of the plastic chairs, and there was a little, bald man in a black suit and white shirt and no tie, sitting in a chair near her recording all of it on a machine.

  There was a big bailiff down front near the table. He had a huge belly that pushed at his uniform, a shaved head, and enough fat on the back of his neck it had coiled there like a snake. His face was red and sweaty, even though it was air conditioned in the room. He had the kind of face that would have looked tired while sleeping, looked like at any moment he might blow a major hose.

  There were metal fold-out chairs out front of the table, and they were arranged so that they were divided in the middle, making a kind of hallway between them that led to the door.

  On my side of the room in the front row were Grandma, actually sitting in two chairs (If I’m lying, I’m dying). And there was Mom, Raylynn and Elbert, also sitting in the front row. Bob was there too. He had left Sue in charge of the Dairy Bob. He looked a little nervous, like he was thinking, meanwhile, back at the Dairy Bob the monkeys have taken over the zoo.

  I was sitting up front beside Bob.

  Tim came in. He had a lawyer. A guy that looked as if he had been on a six day drunk and had been angrily awake about five minutes. Bob leaned over, said, “Jim Cubert. A real ambulance chaser.”

  We all had to stand up and face the judge. Some formal stuff was said by the bailiff, and then the judge motioned me and Tim and his lawyer up front and everyone else was told to sit down. She said to me, “Do you have a lawyer?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “I couldn’t afford one.”

  “The court can appoint you one, you know?” she said.

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t know.”

  “Well, you can have one if you like, but I don’t think it’s necessary.”

  I probably should have said then that I wanted a lawyer anyway, but I didn’t. I was nervous and really wasn’t thinking straight.

  I looked over at Tim. He was a little rough looking from my going over him with the board, but he looked healthy enough, if maybe a little drunk, like his lawyer.

  “Tell me what happened,” the judge said to Tim.

  “I was coming home at night,” he said, “and this psycho jumped me from behind and hit me with a board. She knocked me out and left me in the yard.”

  The judge looked at his lawyer, said, “Does counsel have anything to add?”

  “Not at this moment,” the lawyer said.

  The judge studied Tim for a long moment, then turned to me. “All right, Miss. Tell your side.”

  “He was beating on my sister, and she was pretty bad off. Marked up and the like. I sat out in the yard under a tree with a two-by-four and waited for him to come home. I came up behind him and whacked him with the board some. I was afraid for my sister’s life. I was afraid he might hurt her bad. It wasn’t the first time he hit her.”

  “Did you hit him hard?” the judge asked.

  “I figured if I was going to hit him,” I said, “I might as well not waste my energy, so I went for the whole hog.”

  The judge nodded, looked at Tim. “Did you hit your wife?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “Not guilty.”

  “I didn’t ask if you were guilty or not guilty. I asked if you hit your wife.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said.

  “Liar,” I said. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

  The judge smiled at me. “We’re not in the school yard, young lady.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It just came out.”

  “Do you have proof he hit his wife?” the judge asked me.

  “I have his wife here,” I said. “My sister.”

  I turned and pointed at her.

  “Stand up,” the judge said to Raylynn.

  Raylynn s
tood. She still had a darkened face where Tim had hit her. The judge said, “Did this boy hit you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Raylynn said.

  “More than once?” the judge said.

  “Lots of times in lots of places,” Raylynn said. “More than once on more than one occasion. I was scared he’d hit the kids. Well, he did hit them some.”

  “How many kids?” the judge asked.

  “Two,” Raylynn said.

  “Are you married to this gentleman?” the judge asked.

  “No,” Raylynn said. “We live together. Or did.”

  “Is he the father of either of the children?” the judge asked.

  “One of them,” Raylynn said.

  “You know what’s causing that, right?” the judge said.

  “Ma’am,” Raylynn said.

  “You getting pregnant,” the judge said. “You know what’s causing that?”

  Raylynn was slightly caught off guard. She finally said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Just checking,” the judge said. “And the children were home when this alleged striking of your person took place?”

  “Nothing alleged about it,” my mother said.

  “You don’t talk,” the judge said.

  My mother, dressed in a polka-dot dress that made her look like some kind of spotted wild animal, said, “Sorry.”

  The judge leaned back in her chair and studied Tim. She looked at me. She looked at Raylynn. She looked at the ceiling. She looked back at Tim.

  “You’re a big strapping lad,” the judge said. “You shouldn’t be hitting women.”

  “I didn’t,” Tim said.

  “I think you’re a liar,” the judge said.

  “Objection,” the lawyer said.

  “Shut up, Jim,” the judge said.

  “That’s not right,” Jim said. “There’s a rule of law.”

  “Yeah,” the judge said, “and I’m going to save the court and everybody a lot of time by going around it. I think your client hit the girl. I think that makes him a scumbag in my book.”

  “This is out of order,” the lawyer said.

  “Last time I tell you to shut up,” the judge said.

  The lawyer went silent, found a spot on the wall to look at.