Fender Lizards

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “He stole your cookies?”

  “The jar and the money in it,” Elbert said. “I was out of cookies. I don’t reckon thirty-five dollars got him all that far.”

  “So how come we’re just now hearing from you?”

  “Good question, darling. Good question. And I don’t have a good answer.”

  “You were living where?”

  “In San Antonio, Texas,” he said.

  “That close, and we haven’t seen you until now?”

  “It’s five hours southwest of here,” he said.

  “Now you’re starting to sound like Daddy. He never did like an inconvenience. Wow. Five hours. That’s less than my shift at the Dairy Bob.”

  “Reckon I am sounding like him. All right. Here’s the truth. Not long after your daddy showed up I decided that robbing the local bank wouldn’t be all that big a sin, as they had foreclosed on a lot of good folks, one of them folks being me.”

  “You’re a bank robber?”

  “I tried. But I guess you need a gun for that. I didn’t bring one. I just sounded threatening. I even used some harsh language. Not as effectively as I had presumed.”

  “What happened?”

  “They wouldn’t give me any money,” Elbert said. “There was an argument. I asked for the money. I never said I had a weapon, but I acted like I had one. But the teller, a young lady with the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen… Well, not as blue as yours.”

  “My eyes don’t matter,” I said. “Just go on with the story.”

  “She wasn’t intimidated,” he said. “She wouldn’t hand the money over. I had to leave. But they had already called the cops and they caught me down the street. I made the mistake of parking my car too far away because they didn’t have a parking meter that worked. I parked at one first, but it wouldn’t take coins. It was jammed up. So I parked down a ways where there wasn’t one.”

  “You didn’t want to break a parking meter law, but you tried to rob a bank and parked your getaway car too far away?”

  “Kind of silly, huh?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “The law and the judge thought I ought to go to prison for awhile, so I did. I mean, they didn’t give me a choice.”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “I didn’t have the parking meter fine to worry about though,” he said.

  “Good to know you got that going for you.”

  “So, that’s where I been, and that’s why I didn’t come see you when you was little.”

  “You just got out of prison?” I asked.

  “I did a little stretch up at Huntsville, got out, tried to get a job, but didn’t do all that good at it. I opened up a little detective agency for awhile in San Antonio.”

  “Detective agency? You’re a criminal.”

  “Wannabe criminal, to be precise. I didn’t rob anybody. Remember, I didn’t get any money.”

  I turned off the main highway into the Wal-Mart lot and found a parking place. I turned off the lights, but I didn’t get out. “A wannabe criminal is the same thing as a successful criminal in my book. The same thing, Elbert. I hope calling you Elbert is okay, because I don’t want to call you uncle. I don’t want to call you at all, actually. Even on the phone.”

  “You speak your mind, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. I like that.”

  “It don’t matter if you do. It’s not like it’s on the auction block. You can take my attitude or not.”

  “That’s quite a way for a young woman to talk to her elder.”

  “You’re an elder I don’t know all that well, and in fact, I don’t know I should have rode over here with you to the store. Sometimes I think my mama leaves her brain in her dresser drawer.”

  “You don’t think I’m some kind of pervert, do you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what you are. Not yet. But I do know you’re a bank robber.”

  “Attempted bank robber.”

  “I told you how I feel about that,” I said. “Unsuccessful or not, you are still a bank robber. And you can understand right now you don’t smoke in my car.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “Just in case the thought came up,” I said.

  “It won’t come up,” he said. “That was my last one back there at the trailer. Truth is I never smoked any before tonight. Well, some when I was young that I got caught for and got in trouble at school. I was nervous tonight, so I bought a pack. It just stinks up your clothes. I can smell it on me.”

  “So can I,” I said. “But I still don’t know why you’re here.”

  Elbert nodded. “One day I got to thinking that I had family I didn’t even know. Did you know you had an uncle?”

  “It wasn’t mentioned,” I said. “Dad wasn’t a big talker about anything that mattered, just stuff that didn’t. If mama knew about you, she never mentioned it.”

  “Your mama was very nice to me,” Elbert said. “And she didn’t know about me. I can’t believe Jethro would never mention me or run off like he did.”

  “Well, he did,” I said.

  “Thing is, darling. I want to try and make up some of what your father didn’t do. And I want to make something of my life, and I thought being a real uncle to you might be part of it.”

  “You didn’t have a job when you came here, did you?” I said. “I mean, this isn’t a vacation, is it?”

  “No.”

  “And you don’t have a place to live?” I said.

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “So, what you really did is come here to get some free meals and a spot to hole up.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “Yeah, but it’s some of that, isn’t it?”

  “You are very tough, darling.”

  “I’m very tired,” I said. “I’m very worn out. And I don’t know you any better than a cat in the shadows.”

  Elbert was unfazed.

  “Shall we go in the store?” he said.

  I opened the door and got out and started toward the store without waiting for him to follow.

  Such was the beginning of our friendship.

  (4)

  “So you skate the food out?” Uncle Elbert said. “On a tray?”

  “That’s right,” I said. We were back at the trailer, sitting at the table. Mama had fixed him a spot on the couch and moved Frank, whose bedroom was usually the couch, to a pallet on the floor in her bedroom.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Elbert said, looking legitimately surprised. “When I was a kid, they had them kind of things, but I didn’t know they still did it. And the place is called the Dairy Bob?”

  “Yeah. Still called that.”

  “I used to skate.”

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  Our little talk hadn’t discouraged his friendliness in the least, and after he had a microwaved Hungry Man Dinner in him, his second meal of the night, he felt pretty fit again.

  It was real late and we were in the living room and Mama and Grandma and Frank had wandered off to bed, and made Frank go, and I was still trapped, listening to Uncle Elbert. The conversation had dwindled to the dregs, but I had to admit, he was a likeable enough guy, if you could put the bank robbing aside, and the fact that he was a blowhard.

  “Well, I got to get to bed now,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “Do you make good money?”

  “So-so.”

  “Well, so-so is better than none.”

  “I suppose,” I said. “You’re not looking for a loan, are you?”

  “I could use a couple bucks,” he said.

  I glared at him.

  “I’m just kidding,” he said. “You going to take the GED?”

  “Mama told you about that?”

  “She did. You going to take it?”

  Uncle Elbert had a way of tagging a conversation at the end of each sentence so you were always nailed for further comment.

  “Mama really does talk a lot,” I said.

/>   “I have a year of college.”

  “Good for you,” I said. “It certainly has proved fruitful, hasn’t it? Goodnight.” I started for the bedroom.

  “It is a good night, I’ll say that. I really am glad to be home.”

  I thought: You mean you’re glad to be in our home. But I didn’t say that. I said, “Yeah. Well, you got blankets and pillows. The couch is pretty comfortable. Goodnight. And leave something in the refrigerator for the rest of us.”

  “That’s just mean,” he said.

  I darted for the end room, which is the one I share with Grandma, and eased inside and closed the door before he could tag another line. Safe at last.

  I actually figured that come morning I’d go in there to find him gone and all the food eaten up and maybe something stolen. It was a cheap price to pay to get rid of him, I thought.

  It was dark in the bedroom, but I knew my way around, and I tried to be quiet about it, because Grandma is a light sleeper.

  When I got into bed, which is a little rack in the corner of the room, I heard Grandma shift in her bed like a hippopotamus trying to make a wallow.

  “What you think of him?” she asked.

  “Kind of odd him just showing up all of a sudden out of the thin air.” I started to add: “And did you know he’s a bank robber?” But it was too late to get all that started.

  “He’s got your father’s nose,” Grandma said.

  “Won’t he need it?” I said.

  “What?”

  “His nose. If he’s got my father’s nose, won’t my father need it?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  I crawled under the blankets and pulled them up tight to my neck and tried to come up with something good to think about, some kind of thing that would spur a good dream. I almost had hold of something when I heard Grandma laugh.

  “Oh, I get it,” she said.

  “What?”

  “About the nose,” she said. “I get it now. It was a joke.”

  “Good for you, Grandma,” I said.

  She snickered a little and I closed my eyes again.

  (5)

  I was sleeping till about nine or ten in the mornings. I’d get up, have breakfast or an early lunch, and then go into town to run errands even if I didn’t have any. After that I went to work. The shifts change. But right then I was on the six to midnight.

  Breakfast or lunch isn’t much of nothing, and is often the same thing. Toast or some kind of cereal, usually with enough sugar in it to make a diabetic let out with a scream and drop dead after about two spoonfuls.

  For supper I can get something free at the Dairy Bob. Bob lets us workers have one meal on the house, and gives us discounts on others. I find you can also slip a French fry or something or another now and then without it really hurting anybody, especially if you don’t get caught. You get caught, you get yelled at, and Bob threatens to take it out of your pay.

  How much would that be? A penny a French fry? Five cents an onion ring?

  Anyway, so far it’s just been threats and he hasn’t done nothing about it.

  But Bob, he’s all right. When I got my driver’s license and was able to quit riding to work with my sister, Bob gave me five dollars for gas, and a hot dog with French fries for what he called a “car driving present.”

  Personally, I think they ought to make this a holiday. Everybody gets their license, they should get five dollars and something to eat that isn’t good for you. Wouldn’t that be cool? All of this at a restaurant of your choice.

  Anyway, this was my life, day in and day out, and then one morning Raylynn didn’t come to work, and things changed. She didn’t call in or nothing, just didn’t show up.

  Bob phoned over to her trailer from the Dairy Bob a couple of times, but didn’t get an answer. I called twice and didn’t get nothing either. He told me she ought to have called in, then told me I had to take her shift, which was kind of silly, since we worked the same time slot. I guess he meant I had to do her work and mine too.

  During my break, I called on my cell phone, which I figured I’d lose shortly because I hadn’t paid my bill, but I didn’t get her to answer either.

  It bothered me. Not big time, but some. It wasn’t like Raylynn to miss work, and if she was going be late, she was good about calling in, and she always had a good lie if she was going take a day off. She didn’t just go in for I’m sick, she had really good stories that managed to fall slightly short of I’ve got rabies from a rabid cat bite, or I been kidnapped by aliens and have had an anal probe. Or I’ll have to miss next week too because I have to go back with the aliens for a follow up.

  During the day she’d leave the kids at the day care because she couldn’t leave them with Grandma who had a habit of falling asleep at odd moments. Mama had to work, and had warned her she’d already raised her kids and wasn’t looking for a second shift.

  I called over to the day care and found out she hadn’t brought the kids in.

  With Raylynn not calling, and not coming in late, and not being at home when we called, and the kids not being at day care, well, that pissed Bob, because he was thinking she took a holiday. Me, I was worried. I wanted to drive over there, but we were covered up in customers, and Bob didn’t want me to go.

  One car full of people had me going back for this and that, and ordering more, and getting new drinks and such. They run up a good bill. When they paid, they told me, like they were big spenders, “Keep the change,” which turned out to be twenty-two cents and some pocket lint.

  I skated back inside and checked my cell. Raylynn hadn’t called. I told Sue when she skated up that I was worried. Sue is the sweetest girl you could meet. She’s all Southern in attitude, but she’s part Pakistani and Mexican, and she said there’s a few Irish folk in her background somewhere; my guess is a Leprechaun. She has smooth, dark skin that doesn’t know a pimple, the greenest eyes you’ve ever seen and flame-red hair. I’ve never seen anyone that looked like her unless it was out of a comic book and they got their looks from radioactivity or something.

  Well, I told her I was worried about Raylynn, and she gave me that sort of sleepy-eyed look of hers, said I ought to go no matter what Bob thought. “It ain’t like this job is so coveted that you ain’t back in thirty minutes you’re gonna have to fight off the Employment office trying to stick in someone new.”

  There was a truth to that. Hard as it was to come by a job, there weren’t many who wanted to be skating fast-food waitresses, considering how hard the work was and how little pay we got. It was a job only slightly coveted above field work.

  Gay heard us talking, and she felt different about me running off to see how Raylynn was. She’s this drop dead gorgeous black girl. She looks so good that when boys drive into the Dairy Bob and see her, it’s like they’ve stumbled over a trip wire and a bomb has gone off. They practically shoot drool onto the windshield. She gets big tips and the like, and she’s the worst worker ever because she’s always on her cell phone. Bob doesn’t fire her because there’s a ton of boys and men that come there just to see her, like maybe they’re coming to take a peek at the Mona Lisa, provided the Mona Lisa’s black and built like an athlete and has more sex appeal than a football cheer squad and a couple of underwear models.

  Gay already has interest from modeling agencies. She is very girly. Not stupid, but someone who puts what brains she has on the back burner. I think it’s her style. I think she likes to make the guys think they’re smart because she figures that’s how a gal ought to be. I figure any guy wants a gal like that, he can just get an internet avatar.

  She’s certain the reason she washed out of college is she was so pretty no one took her seriously. Me and Sue and Raylynn think it had to do with her math scores and the fact she only went about once a week, and probably spent most of her time in a university bathroom talking on the phone.

  Anyway, she didn’t think I should go, but she didn’t have any reason behind it. It wasn’t like
she was sharing her strong work ethic with me. My guess is she didn’t want me to leave because she and Sue would have to take up my slack.

  About eight o’clock, I told Bob I had had all I could take, and that I needed to drive over and see how Raylynn was, even if it chapped the Pope’s rear end. I told him that with Sue and Gay he had enough help to do what was needed for a short time, as the crowd had slowed. I also added that I thought I could defy him because I was now independently wealthy with my twenty-two cent tip. I had hoped he would find that humorous, but he didn’t.

  He grumbled about it, but didn’t give me a lot of flak, maybe because he thought I might take off anyway and not come back if he made me mad. Then he’d have to hire another girl that could skate, or if she couldn’t, get one of the other girls to teach her. That would take time, and sometimes, you just couldn’t teach a girl to skate, least not while carrying a tray loaded with chili dogs, drinks and onion rings. And there was that thing I mentioned before. It wasn’t a job that everyone was salivating over. It looked fun, but it wasn’t.

  I told him I’d just run over and make sure everything was all right, then I’d come right back. I told him I thought she might have the ringer on her phone turned off, and that’s why she wasn’t picking up.

  This didn’t explain why she hadn’t called, or about the kids, but it was all I could come up with.

  My car is one of those that burns about a quart of oil a day. An old Ford. And I have to carry some cheap cans of oil in the trunk to run it so that it doesn’t blow up. It probably wouldn’t hurt if I had some spare parts in the trunk, along with a mechanic, but I got what I got.

  I went out back of the Dairy Bob and put the hood up and poured a can of oil in, then drove over to see how Raylynn was doing. I was feeling nervous and itchy and gradually starting to feel afraid.

  (6)

  Being how it was dead solid summer in East Texas, it was still bright enough out to see good, though the sky was starting to show some dark. It was sticky hot too. Without an air conditioner in my car, I felt like I had been dried out in one of those big industrial dryers at the Washateria.