Lizard Tales

by Ron Shirley

  “Bo! What were you thinking? You had the keys! I bet your momma used to get drunk just so she could breast feed you and the buzz never left!”

  Brooks never said a word. For the next ten minutes he let me ride him like a broken stallion, and I was getting hotter than a nine-inch rear end at the drag strip with no grease. Finally, we pulled into a store down the road a ways and I screamed, “I oughtta make you get your own ride home! That repo was gonna put us on the map Bubba, and you blew it!”

  He just started grinning like a mule in a watermelon patch and said, “I won’t have to walk.” Then he held up the ignition key for that Caddy. In all the turmoil, Brooks had slipped the key off before handing that ring back to the owner. “I couldn’t drive off while the neighbor still had the driveway blocked, so I figured I’d think this one out, and I took the key. See, you’re wrong sometimes, Ronnie. I do have moments where you don’t need to water me.”

  I couldn’t even talk, due to my ears connecting at the corner of my jaws. I spun that truck around faster than a frog on a fly in a maggot farm, and we headed back toward that Caddy. We parked about half a mile out and snuck down through the woods to the back of the house. Now it was time for some old-fashioned “Roncon”—the Lizard Lick version of recon. So we eased around the back of that place, trying to be slicker than a harpooned hippo in a banana tree, and saw that the Caddy was still sitting there, prettier than a Polish sausage at a pig roast. The lights and TV were on in the front room and the debtor was sitting in his recliner.

  I told Brooks to ease over to the car, and when he got in it, to hit me on the two-way walkie and I’d bang the back door so the guy inside would run to the back of the house while Brooks fired that baby up. He had a straight getaway down the driveway, so it seemed like a perfect plan with everything in our favor: we had keys, we had the element of surprise, and we knew the layout of the land.

  So Brooks eased around to the Caddy, and I went to the back door. Of course, we made more noise than a blind elephant in a china shop, so it was no surprise when I got into position that the back porch light came on and I was face-to-face with the business end of that double-barreled shotgun … again. I heard that walkie crack and Brooks said, “I’m in! I’m in!”

  Before that man could spin Abe Lincoln’s head around at a penny toss, Brooks fired that Caddy up. That ol’ guy broke to the front of the house like Carl Lewis out of a cannon and forgot all about me. I heard Brooks mat the pedal and I could see a rooster tail of dirt all the way from the backyard. I knew we had just licked this repo—but I wasn’t gonna sit around and gloat, ’cause I didn’t want to meet the inner workings of those gun barrels.

  I sneaked back into the woods and got a great viewing spot to see Brooks fly down the driveway with the man in tow. All of a sudden, I was as confused as a tailless cow during fly season. Brooks wasn’t leaving the yard! He was doing donuts all over the man’s flower bed! The guy was screaming and Brooks was giving that Caddy heck. I ain’t never seen either of the Duke boys make a car talk like that! He went from doing donuts to making figure eights all over the yard—and from where I was sitting, it was better than Friday night at Talladega in turn four. I haven’t laughed so hard and had so much fun since the pigs ate my brother.

  Brooks was driving that thing like he was stealing it—which he actually was doing—and that debtor was getting hotter than a blistered pecker in a wool sock trapped in a sauna.

  I was just amazed at how Brooks was holding that car in those tight turns around the yard and between all the trees. Finally, Brooks got her straightened out and headed down the driveway with the man running behind him screaming, “Stop!” (Of course, that man had about as much chance of Brooks doing that as he did of selling ketchup to a tomato farmer.)

  Apparently, stopping turned out to be pretty good advice, because about halfway down the road I saw the lights come on and heard the brakes lock up. Brooks must have slid forty feet before stopping. There he was, in the middle of this guy’s driveway, the guy running down the path behind him with a loaded shotgun, and he had the bright idea to stop! I was thinking right then and there that he was so stupid he thought Cheerios were doughnut seeds!

  Now, I have intimidated and annoyed plenty of people when they upset me like this fellow did on our first attempt at repoing his car, but I have never been so bold as to take my chances when a shotgun was involved. I figured that Brooks was getting ready to get skinned like an Alabama river gar when I saw the door to the Caddy swing open. I knew then that Brooks was about to take a long walk off a short pier. So I broke into a full run across the yard to help him. I was about twenty yards closer to Brooks than the guy with the gun, and I started screaming, “Go, Brooks! Go-o-o!”

  Brooks started screaming at me, “Get back, Ronnie! Get back!”

  I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why—till I saw a big ol’ turtle head popping out the Caddy’s door. Only problem was, it wasn’t attached to a turtle. It was hooked on a big ol’ Rottweiler! I could see the teeth and slobber everywhere. That ol’ boy was barking and growling and biting at the air, and Brooks was pushing him out of the car.

  I froze. Brooks got him out the door and matted the gas again, and I watched as he disappeared into the darkness. That’s when I realized I was standing there with a rabid-looking dog and an owner with a shotgun! I figured you could just butter my butt and call me a biscuit about that time, ’cause I was getting ready to be done. But I broke back for the wood line as I heard that ol’ guy screaming, “Sic ’em, Caesar! Kill ’em, boy!”

  That dog lit after me like he was about to eat the tail end out of a rag doll. But I noticed he wasn’t really gaining ground and I could hear him sneezing between barks. I got to that wood line and ran all the way back to the truck. Limbs slapped me in the face, briars ripped into my arms, and by the time I got into the truck I felt like I had just been eaten by lions and crapped over a cliff. I rolled out and called Brooks: “Meet me about two miles down the road at that little store!”

  When he stepped out of the car, Brooks looked like he had been dipped in honey and thrown to the hornets. He was cut up, his shirt was ripped, blood was everywhere, one shoe was missing, and he was shaking like he’d just fallen out of a tree. That dog had been on him like a rubber-beaked woodpecker on a petrified tree.

  “How’d you manage to drive like that with that dog all over you?” I asked.

  “Drive?” he answered. “I wasn’t drivin’! I was fightin’ the dog! When I jumped in the car he was layin’ down in the backseat and I didn’t see him. About the time I cranked that Caddy, he was on me like a hungry bee on a sugar-dipped flower. When he jumped in the front seat, I couldn’t get out; my foot hit the pedal and away we went! I never even touched the steerin’ wheel until I finally got my can of mace out and sprayed him. After that, I couldn’t see ’cause I sprayed myself, too! So I just grabbed onto the wheel with one hand and the back of his neck with the other and tried to hold on. When I could finally see again, I got her straightened out and opened the door to let him out. Then I saw you runnin’ toward us. But I had to swim or drown, so I figured you could fight him awhile.

  “Ronnie, the whole time, the dog was drivin’ more than I was.” He added, “And just so you know, I’m done for the night.”

  “Brooks, I have never seen anyone drive like that! You looked like Richard Petty on crack.”

  “Bo,” he said, “I felt like a Goodyear on the New Jersey Turnpike!”

  We both laughed. Then we loaded that vehicle on the back of the rollback and headed for home. When we got in the cab Brooks said, “You know, I thought that was gonna be an easy one. We had everything planned out and it should have been slicker than summer snot on a doorknob.”

  I said, “Yeah, we should’ve known better. Like Pops always told me, ‘Bubba, when everything is coming your way, you’re either in the wrong lane or driving backwards.’ ”

  [More Ronosophy]

  1. Two can live as cheaply as one …
if one don’t eat.

  2. There isn’t any point in beating a dead horse. Of course, it can’t hurt anything, either.

  3. You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t wipe your friends on the seat.

  4. Kind words aren’t yelled.

  5. If you lie down with dogs, you’re gonna get up with fleas.

  6. The best sermons in life are lived, not preached.

  7. It never took a big person to carry a grudge.

  8. Every path has a few puddles.

  9. Every day is a roll of the dice, and some days you get snake eyes.

  10. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

  11. You can tell a man to go to hell … but making him do it is a whole nother matter.

  12. If you wallow with pigs, expect to get up dirty and smelly.

  13. If you can’t race it or take it home to Momma, you don’t have no business with it.

  14. No matter how you clean a skunk, he’s still gonna stink.

  15. If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t hit his tail when he jumped.

  16. The early bird gets the worm … but the late bird never gets shot at.

  17. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

  22

  Rapture Isn’t What You Get When You Lift Something That’s Too Heavy

  The really cool thing about Amy is that not only is she as pretty as a possum eating persimmons in a pear tree, a world-champion power lifter, and a great mama, but she’s also a licensed mortician. When Amy and I first started dating, we didn’t have a lot of money. In fact, I had to fart to have any (s)cents in my pocket. But Amy was the perfect woman. She was so sweet, Willy Wonka wanted to sponsor her, but at the same time she was tougher than a woodpecker’s lips dipped in cement. Most important, she loved me for what I had, which wasn’t very much at the time, and that really hasn’t changed much over the years.

  I was so broke that whenever I drove by a cemetery and saw a freshly dug grave I’d have to stop. See, I wanted to give Amy things that would make her smile, and I knew how much she loved flowers. I also figured that since at times I was cheap enough to take the coins off a dead man’s eyes, who’s gonna miss a few flowers that would be rotten in a day or two anyway?

  Hence, whenever I saw a freshly dug grave, I’d pull over and make outta there with an array of flowers like an Eskimo at an ice-eating contest. So whenever Amy and I went on a date, I’d show up with two- or three-dozen flowers for her. But the problem was that they were always short-stemmed flowers. When a florist makes a casket arrangement, he always cut off the stems. Amy would always ask me where the flowers came from, and I always told her I bought them at Home Depot because they were priced half-off. Now, I ain’t saying she believed me but sometimes Amy wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack—or at least, she never pushed the envelope!

  But when Amy became a mortician and started spending a lot of time around dead people and caskets, she finally figured out that I was stealing flowers off graves. Bo, she was fit to be hog-tied and pigeon-toed! When I admitted it to her, she said I was about as useless as a one-armed mountain man trying to kayak across the Mississippi River.

  Since Amy knew my secret, I asked her to let me start going to funerals with her. I explained to her that it was a great business opportunity and though money can’t buy happiness, it sure can make misery fun. After a funeral, people always leave behind thousands of dollars’ worth of flowers at the church and they never even make it to graveside. I didn’t see why they should go to waste. I mean, those flowers could bring happiness to many folks and put a few dollars in my pocket. I could get flowers for my momma, or I could sell them on the side of the road.

  Amy finally agreed to do it if I would give 50 percent of my earnings to the local old-folks’ home. I love older folks anyway, and I knew she’d never figure out how much 50 percent of my earnings would be! I set up at the crossroads in Lizard Lick with about forty dozen flowers, and people could buy them for five or ten per dozen. Heck, after the first week I was high-stepping like a rooster with tube socks in deep mud.

  One day, Amy called me and told me to come to the funeral home because she needed help moving a body. I went into the embalming room and she was standing next to a dead guy lying on a table. See, it was about this time that I should have realized that the fish rot from the head down. She ain’t never called me before and asked me for help, but I was in love so I agreed to do it. Now, I don’t like dead people. They’re about as much fun as an inflatable dartboard.

  I didn’t like being around dead bodies, either. She knew I was as nervous as Rick James at a crack house. But when I started trying to back out, Amy started telling me about the process of embalming and preparing a body for burial. My stomach started turning, and I was feeling pretty light-headed. I didn’t need Amy to tell me about draining a man’s blood and releasing the gases in his body. I know I can get a good look at the T-bone by sticking my head up a bull’s butt, but I’d rather take a butcher’s word for it. I told Amy I’d heard enough and if she’d just shut her yapper I’d help and be done with it.

  Amy was standing at the dead guy’s feet. He was a very large man. He was so big that if he rolled over a dollar, he could make four quarters. Looking at his naked body, I could see why she needed help moving him. In all honesty, I had to laugh a little and told her there ain’t no way I was standing at the feet. I didn’t like the view. And when she chuckled, I knew I should’ve ran.

  “Grab him by the head and help me lift him on the gurney,” Amy told me.

  I was about as uncomfortable as a hooker sitting in the front row of church. Amy picked up his feet, and I grabbed the back of his head—but nothing came with it! Now, right about then I knew I was more screwed than a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader after a twelve-pack in the locker room when the game was over. I looked down and saw that I was holding nothing but the man’s head! I dropped it on the ground and blood started pouring out of the back of it. I was screaming like a dog wearing a shock collar for the first time peeing on an electric fence. Amy was rolling on the floor, laughing like a hyena at a Grateful Dead concert. The poor man had been decapitated and she had set me up like pins at a bowling alley.

  Amy sewed the man’s head back on to his body, and after I had emptied about four gallons of gut fluid and dry heaved for thirty minutes, I started thinking about them flowers and helped her get ready for the funeral. It was the first time Amy had been involved in a Catholic funeral. The man’s family and friends were going to take communion during his funeral. I didn’t know until after the funeral that if a Catholic priest blesses a bottle of wine, the bottle has to be drunk. See, if he blesses it, the wine becomes holy and then I reckon he’s responsible for it. Heck, if I’d known that fact at twelve, I would’ve been a converted Catholic my whole life! If you bless four bottles of wine, and only one bottle gets consumed during communion, the priest has to drink the other three bottles. It’s Catholic law. And the best part is, they use wine as real as Uma Thurman’s breasts!

  Before this funeral, the priest blessed five bottles of wine. Well, only about thirty people showed up for the man’s funeral. I guess he was as popular as Godzilla in Tokyo, but all I was thinking was it was gonna be a slow day for flowers. Afterward, I was collecting the flowers to take back to Lizard Lick with me. I was happier than a mule in a briar patch. I guess all the folks who didn’t show up sent flowers, and I had my truck as full as a sumo wrestler at an all-you-can-eat buffet. It was a Friday-morning funeral, and I knew I was going to make about four hundred dollars selling flowers because all of my buddies were going to buy flowers from me to take to their dates on Friday night. Where else could you buy a dozen roses for five bucks? They were going to be on those flowers like Charlie Sheen on a high-end hooker.

  We grew up going to church, of course, but I wasn’t real keen on other religions outside of my own. In our church, when the pastor said, “I’d like to ask Bubba to help us take up the offering,”
five guys and four women would stand up. At my church, the opening day of deer season was recognized as an official church holiday. We always used grape juice for communion, unless someone snuck in a few drops of Boone’s Farm.

  After the man’s Catholic funeral, I decided I was a little thirsty and took a swig of the communion wine. When I hit it, I was more confused than a blind man trying to open a revolving door. It was real wine! I started drinking more of the wine, and then the priest walked into the room.

  “I have to drink four more bottles of wine,” the priest told me.

  “Well, I’d be more than happy to help you,” I told him.

  “No, you can’t help me, son,” the priest said. “I blessed the wine so I must drink it.”

  I scratched my head and told him, “Well, if you bless me and the wine’s already blessed, then I can drink the wine. See, the way I see it is you got the power and I got the tolerance and we go together like Pamela Anderson and Botox, monsignor.”

  The priest blessed me and said a few ritual statements over me, and then we started in on the four bottles of wine. Now, I ain’t saying I was having fun, but I felt like an invisible kid in a dodgeball game. We were on it like a harpooned hippo on a banana tree. The priest and I started having a shot contest right there in the back of the church. I went and got a Ping-Pong ball from the recreation room and we even played wine pong. I’d pop a glass and he’d hit the wine, and then he’d pop a glass and I’d hit the wine. Needless to say, after about an hour, we were more screwed up than high-top flip-flops. There wasn’t a drop of wine left in the four bottles, but brother, I was surely blessed and felt rather angelic at the time.

  But let’s not forget that the priest still had to do a graveside service. The priest stood up and tried to walk, but he went about as straight as Boy George. He couldn’t talk, either. He sounded like Hooked on Phonics in Japanese to me. We were just hammered.