Fender Lizards

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Now you’ve seen it,” Elbert said.

  “I’ve seen the house,” I said. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “So, do you get out and knock on the door?”

  “Maybe.”

  I sat there and thought about that, but wasn’t quite up for it. Not yet.

  “You hungry?” I said.

  “Hungry?”

  “Yeah. Let’s eat first and come back. I’ll work up my courage.”

  Elbert let out his breath, like someone fresh rescued from a deep dark pit. “All right,” he said. “Let’s do that.”

  But right then a man came out of the house, through the carport. He was pushing a lawn mower. He was a tall man, a nice-looking man, and though he seemed to have aged some, I knew who he was right away. It was my daddy.

  (29)

  Daddy pushed the mower out to the edge of the street and pulled the cord and started it up. He looked in our direction, but didn’t take much notice. He started pushing the mower into the grass.

  “That’s dumb,” Elbert said. “It’s too wet to mow. All the grass will bunch up on the blade.”

  “What are you?” I said. “Ground maintenance?”

  “Just an observation,” he said.

  I watched Daddy struggle with the mower, pushing it along. Elbert was right. It was too wet to mow.

  “I’m going over,” I said.

  Elbert reached out and touched my arm. “You’ve seen him,” he said. “You know where he is, that he’s okay. You could just let it go.”

  “No,” I said. “No, I can’t.”

  I got out of the car on my crutches, worked my way across the street. I made it all the way to the edge of the property where Daddy was mowing. He had his back to me. He hadn’t seen me come up, and he couldn’t hear me because of the mower. I leaned there on my crutches.

  I heard a car door slam behind me, and knew Elbert was coming over. His shadow fell down beside me.

  It was uncomfortable just standing there, but I couldn’t bring myself to go over and touch him, make him aware I was there. I waited until he turned the mower and saw me.

  He did a kind of startle, like something had flown into his face. Then he stopped pushing the mower and stood there with his mouth open. He looked at me, then Elbert.

  Finally, he swallowed. It was a big swallow. He hit a switch on the mower and turned it off. When he did, he didn’t move. He just stood there, his hands on the mower handle.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hello, Dot,” he said. “You’ve grown.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It happened while you were gone. What are you doing here?”

  He came across the yard then. He said, “I live here.”

  “I didn’t think you had a job mowing the grass,” I said. “We saw you come out of the house.”

  Daddy looked at Elbert. He said, “I don’t get it. What are you doing here, Elbert?”

  Elbert didn’t answer. He just looked at the ground.

  “Did you find your cigarettes?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, Dot,” Daddy said.

  “Why?” I said.

  “Why what?” he said.

  “Why what?” I said. “Did you actually say ‘Why what’? You go out for cigarettes and disappear for years and I find you mowing a lawn in Bullard, and you say, ‘Why what’?”

  “How…how did you find me?” he asked.

  “The internet,” I said. “I found your name and address on the internet.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “You don’t want to see me?” I said.

  “I didn’t say that,” he said.

  “So, you been in Bullard, and you forgot where Marvel Creek was, or that you had a wife and daughter, and step daughter, and a son.”

  “How is your mother?”

  “Waiting on you,” I said.

  “What happened to your foot?” Daddy asked.

  “I fell down,” I said. “Look, I didn’t come here to talk about my foot.”

  Daddy looked at Elbert again. “I just don’t understand why you’re here, Elbert.”

  “There’s some explaining to do,” Elbert said. “It’s complex.”

  “I’d rather not talk here,” Daddy said. “Can we go into town. I can meet you there. Say, the Dairy Queen.”

  “Are you going to go there by way of around the world?” I asked. “Is this another one of those I’ll be right back situations?”

  He shook his head. “No. I live here. So, I’ll come back.” Somehow, him saying that hit me as hard as if I had been shot with an arrow through the heart. He had lived with us too, but that hadn’t stopped him from going away.

  “Please,” he said. “I don’t want to disturb anyone in the house.”

  “Disturb them?” I said, and I found myself lifting my crutch like I might hit Daddy with it. I had the same kind of anger going through me I had when I hit Tim with that two-by-four.

  “It’s all right,” Elbert said, touching my shoulder. “We’ll meet you there.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not all right.”

  Daddy gave me a look that was as sad as any I had ever seen. I felt sorry for him in spite of myself.

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “But you better not run out on me, mister. You better not.”

  “I’ll be there,” he said.

  (30)

  We had passed the Dairy Queen when we were looking for Daddy’s address, so we knew right where it was. When we got there we stayed in the car. About ten minutes after we arrived, Daddy pulled up in the old Ford. He got out and opened the back door of my car and slid in on the back seat, moving my crutches so he could.

  “It’s good to see you, Dot,” he said.

  “Is it?” I said.

  He studied on my remark, said, “This is all so confusing.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I said. “Think how confusing it’s been for me. I didn’t know where you were. I don’t know why you left. I thought maybe you were dead. Sometimes I hoped you were dead. And here you are, saying things are confusing, like you aren’t the one made them that way.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” he said. “I just don’t understand why you’re here with Elbert.”

  “Forget Elbert,” I said. “You tell me, right now, why you left, and why you didn’t come back.”

  “It won’t be a very satisfying,” he said.

  “Told you,” Elbert said.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “All right,” he said, and leaned back against the seat. “I was unhappy.”

  I waited, but he didn’t follow up.

  “That’s it?” I said. “You were unhappy. Had a bad day and just took off? Really? That’s it?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Come on, Daddy, you have to give me more than that.”

  I was turned with my arm over the seat, looking at him. He was leaned back tight against the backseat. He looked very small. Not like the big man I remembered.

  “It wasn’t you, and it wasn’t Frank, and it wasn’t Raylynn, or your mother,” he said. “It was me.”

  “Of course it was you,” I said. “But why was it you? What did we do?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “You didn’t do a thing. I guess I just didn’t feel I was where I wanted to be. I had nothing but junk jobs, and two kids to feed, a wife who was doing most of the work, and I felt bad about that. One morning, I had had enough, so I got up and left.”

  “But Mom didn’t leave,” I said. “What if she left? You don’t think she isn’t tired? That it isn’t tough raising kids? You don’t think that?”

  “I know what I did,” he said, “and I’m not proud of it.”

  “I certainly hope not,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Elbert said, “that’s cold.”

  “Elbert,” I said. “You stay out of it.”

  “I still don’t understand what he’s doing here,” Daddy said.

  “So you left,” I said. “Tell me the rest.”

  “I went to
get cigarettes,” he said. “That was my plan. But when I got to the store and bought a pack and was going to turn around and go home, I didn’t. I just started driving. I had a bit of gas money, and I drove until I was in Arkansas. I didn’t choose it, I just ended up there. Can I smoke?”

  “No,” I said, “you can not. Not in my car. Just finish your story.”

  “So I was in Arkansas and out of gas, and I had to leave the car where it was, a motel parking lot. I didn’t even have money for my room, but they were looking for someone to clean rooms, so I started doing that. I guess I was there about six months, and then they fired me for something or another. I don’t remember what, and I was on the road again. I guess I drove all over the South, and then I started back home.”

  “But you didn’t make it?” I said.

  “No. I didn’t make it. I came across Elbert here.”

  “Came across,” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “I mean I met him in jail.”

  “You mean prison, right?” I said.

  “No,” Dad said. “Jail.”

  “I’m even more confused now,” I said.

  I looked at Elbert. He did a thing with his mouth that looked like he was trying to stick his bottom lip in behind his teeth so the rest of him could crawl in behind it. I turned back to Dad.

  “I got picked up for vagrancy,” he said. “That old car finally wore out and I sold it for junk, and then I was on foot. I hitchhiked. People don’t pick up hitchhikers that often, so it took me a long time to get back to Texas. But when I did get back, I didn’t stop in East Texas. I kept going. I ended up in San Antonio, and that’s where I got picked up for not having any visible means of support. I had about two dollars in my pocket, so I was glad to go to jail. And that’s where I met Elbert.”

  “What are the odds?” I said.

  “Odds?” Dad said.

  “Of meeting your brother in jail like that,” I said.

  “Brother? He’s not my brother.”

  I snapped a look at Elbert. “This is true, Dot. I may have lied a little bit.”

  “A little bit,” I said. “You…you’re not my uncle.”

  Elbert shook his head. “Nope, but I want to be.”

  My head was swimming. “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I,” Dad said.

  “I didn’t know him,” Elbert said, “but there is a true coincidence here.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” I said. I wanted to be mad, but I was too stunned.

  “I actually do have the same last name,” Elbert said. “So, we could be kin. Cousins or something.”

  “It’s a common name,” Dad said. “So, there we were in jail together, and when they let us out in a few days, told us to leave. We left together and decided we needed money, and so we tried to rob a beauty parlor.”

  “I thought it was a bank,” I said.

  “I may have exaggerated,” Elbert said.

  “We didn’t have gun,” Dad said, “and Elbert didn’t have the heart to do it right, so this woman ran him out of there with a hair dryer.”

  “Not one of the big ones the women put their head under,” Elbert said, just in case I might be suffering confusion, “but a small one, for close work.”

  “I was supposed to be a look out,” Dad said, “but instead, while I’m looking, Elbert here nearly runs over me running from the lady with the hair dryer. So there we were, two grown men jogging down the street with a little woman chasing us with a hair dryer.”

  “She actually hit me a time or two,” Elbert said. “Those things can hurt.”

  “Anyway, we got picked up again, and this time we went to jail and it looked like we’d go to prison, but since there was no gun, and we didn’t get any money, and the judge sort of felt we were just stupid, not dangerous, we just spent some time in jail.”

  “Not prison?” I said.

  “There’s not a lot of difference,” Elbert said.

  “Oh, yes there is,” I said.

  “Anyway, when they let us out, I started back home, and I made it to Bullard. I got a job at a filling station there. I thought I’d come home with a little money in my pocket, and then I met Bonnie, and well, we been together ever since.”

  “Bonnie?” I said.

  “We live together,” Dad said.

  “The tricycle in the yard,” I said. “That your child’s.”

  “Not by birth, no,” Dad said. “But Bonnie had a little girl when we met. Her husband had run off.”

  “Like you,” I said.

  “Yes,” Dad said. “Like me. And what I saw was a chance to start over, to fix things. To be a husband and a father. And I have been. I don’t have much of a job, night shift at a store/filling station, some handy man work, but its honest work, and we get by. Here’s something special, considering me and Elbert got chased by a lady with a hair dryer from a beauty shop. Bonnie is a beautician.”

  “Of course she is,” I said. “So you took up with a woman with a child, and left your wife and two children, and just started over, doing not so much that was different than before.”

  “That’s the size of it,” he said. “It’s not bigamy, though. I mean, me and Bonnie aren’t married.”

  “That makes it just fine then,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “It doesn’t. I been meaning to get a divorce from your Mama.”

  “You have to communicate with her for that,” I said.

  “And I’ve meant to,” Dad said.

  “Sounds like you mean to do a lot of things,” I said.

  “I’m not much good, Dot,” Dad said.

  “I’ll second that,” I said.

  “But I thought I was dragging you and Frank and your mother down,” Dad said. “I thought if I left it would be easier, not harder.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “Easier on who? You mean easier on you.”

  “Maybe so,” he said. “I just sort of collapsed. And when I got it back together, I felt it was too late. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. Things just worked out another way.”

  “But you have kids,” I said, “and I’m one of them. People divorce, but they don’t have to divorce the kids.”

  “I know,” he said. “I wish I had some kind of good answer, but I don’t.”

  “Do you ever think about me and Frank at all?” I said.

  “Everyday,” he said. “I promise. I think about you everyday, and everyday I think should go and try and fix things, but I don’t. I don’t know why. I just don’t. I guess I’m ashamed, and it’s been so long now, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Do you love Bonnie and the kid?” I asked.

  “I do,” he said. “I learned some hard lessons. I’m trying to do right by them.”

  “Get out and go back to them,” I said. “And be sure and treat them better than you did us.”

  “Dot,” he said. “I want to try and make it up to you.”

  “Get out!” I said. “Get out of my car.”

  “Okay,” he said. “All right.”

  He opened the door and got out.

  (31)

  Elbert drove back onto the highway and started us toward home.

  “So we aren’t kin?” I said.

  “We do have the same last name,” he said.

  “Let me ask it again. We’re not kin, right?”

  “Right,” he said.

  “I want to be really mad right now,” I said.

  “You have every right,” he said.

  “I do at that,” I said, “but you know what? I’m more confused than mad. At Dad, I’m going to be mad.”

  “You can’t do that,” he said. “You have to let go of the anger. You don’t have to forget, but you have to let it go.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That fixes me right up. Just tell me why you came to us and parked in our front yard and told us you were our kin.”

  “Because I wanted to be.”

  “And you aren’t a bank robber,” I said. �
�You’re an attempted robber of a beauty parlor.”

  “Now you’re calling me an attempted robber as an insult,” he said. “Before, attempted didn’t count.”

  “I thought it was a bank.”

  “That’s why I lied,” he said. “Bank robber sounded better. More romantic. More dangerous. I wanted to be interesting.”

  “Oh, you’re interesting, all right.”

  “I meant in a better way,” he said.

  “And you weren’t in prison?”

  “Jail,” he said. “For awhile. With your father. You see, we met up, and we sort of drank a little too much, and drinking and desperation, they don’t go well together. We decided we’d team up and rob that beauty parlor. Only it didn’t work out. We went to jail, and then the lady we tried to rob felt sorry for us, wouldn’t press the charges, and she let us out. I asked her for a date. She turned me down.”

  “Imagine that,” I said.

  “While I was in jail, your dad and I, we talked. He told me all about you. About his family. I guess he had to tell somebody, and though I wouldn’t say we bonded, we were together, and it was on his mind.”

  “I guess that’s something, that we were on his mind,” I said. There was a wet drop on my cheek for some reason. I wiped it with my sleeve.

  Elbert shifted his eyes toward me. “He said all this good stuff about you, and your mother, your brother, your sister, and yet he walked off. I guess I should add he didn’t like your grandmother.”

  “She saw him for what he was,” I said.

  “I guess.”

  “Why would he walk off like that?” I said. “I still don’t know even after talking to him. I imagined that day for years. That some day I’d talk to him, and he say something I might not like, but it would be an explanation. He didn’t say anything. Not really.”

  Elbert shook his head. “He told me pretty much what he told you. I don’t think he knows why. Not really.”