Fender Lizards

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “But no backwards jumps over metal bars, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said. He picked up his skates, which he had laid on the seat, and got out of the car. As we were walking he laughed out loud.

  “What is it,” I said.

  “Back at the emergency room,” he said. “They gave me the wrong shoes. I didn’t even notice till now. I’m wearing some other guy’s shoes.”

  We both laughed then.

  (24)

  As I said, I didn’t have work early the next morning, so I slept in. When I woke up I felt like my head was stuffed with cotton. I lay in bed for a moment and thought about the date the night before and the kiss I had missed. I was some piece of work. I lay there a long time before I got up and dressed. I got my clothes out of the closet, and when I pushed them back on the rack I could look at the derby poster. I had taped it up there, behind the clothes. I liked looking at it. I tried to imagine the girl on the poster as me. So far, hadn’t been successful doing that, as she looked tough as a free steak, but I kept working on it.

  In the kitchen Elbert, still wearing the patch on the back of his head, was at the table dipping a spoon into a bowl of cereal, talking with his mouth full. Mom had gone to work, and Frank was watching TV on the couch. He didn’t even look at me when I came into the room. I’d be glad when summer was over and he was back in school.

  Grandma was sitting at the table with Elbert, sitting in a chair that was sagging under her weight. She was laughing. She shook so much when she laughed I was afraid the chair was going to explode.

  “You didn’t say that?” she said.

  “I did,” he said. “I said just that.”

  Elbert lifted his eyes at me, and Grandma turned her head and said, “Elbert was just telling me how he hit his head.”

  “Were you?” I said to Elbert.

  “He said he did it skating,” Grandma said. “That he was trying to show you a jump at the Dairy Bob.”

  “That’s right,” I said. Elbert had told the truth. I was pleasantly surprised.

  “He was telling me a funny thing he said to a nurse,” Grandma said. “He has such a sense of humor.”

  I didn’t remember anything funny he had said to a nurse, so maybe I was pleasantly surprised for a reason. I got a bowl and spoon and sat down at the table and poured milk and cereal.

  “How was your date?” Grandma said. “Are you in love?”

  “No, I’m not in love,” I said. “But it was good. He was nice.” I decided not to mention how odd I had acted, and hoped Elbert hadn’t spilled the beans.

  “Seeing him again?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Must not have been that good a date,” Grandma said.

  “You put me off boys, and now you want me to date one,” I said.

  “No,” Grandma said. “I want you to finish school. You’d be the first of us to do it. Not a one in the family has ever got past the tenth grade, unless you count six months your mother had in the eleventh but had to drop out because she had you. Also, now that I think about it, she spent most of that six months in detention for one thing or another. That’s where dating boys gets you.”

  “She wasn’t dating boys when she was in detention,” I said.

  “Detention ended at three-thirty, Miss Smarty Pants,” Grandma said.

  “Not everyone who dates gets pregnant.” I said.

  “No,” Grandma said. “But it seems in this family they do.”

  “Maybe we need to change our water supply,” I said. “It could be in the water.”

  “Trust me,” Grandma said, “it isn’t.”

  I decided there was nowhere to go with the conversation, so I said to Elbert, “So, you going to teach me some of those skating moves from last night, minus the part where you try and jump a rail and smack your head and go to the hospital?”

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  “Sure you’re up to it?” I asked.

  “I skate with my feet, not my head.”

  “Last night you didn’t,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, there was a moment there,” Elbert said.

  We ate and drove over to an abandoned lot where cars had once been sold. A few years back the car lot had gone out of business, and so far no one else had taken over. There were some newspapers and soda cups being pushed around in the lot by the wind.

  We put on our skates, and Elbert began to give me pointers. He showed me how to swirl around him when he came up alongside me. How to cut him off with sharp angles. He showed me how to turn real quick and skate backwards. Showboating, he called it. He said you got ahead and you wanted to give the spectators a little something cool to look at, and thumb your nose at the other team, that’s what it was for. He said, truth was, it was risky and probably ought to be avoided and he wished he hadn’t shown it to me. I learned how to do it anyway.

  He showed me all manner of tricks. I did pretty well the first day, and by week’s end I was styling a little. I talked to the other girls, and got in contact with Miranda, and we started having Elbert train us. We weren’t always able to work as a team, but as many of us as could manage to get together at one time did.

  When Gay first got there, she had on some cute shorts and a kind of dressy top, like maybe she was going to a photo shoot for sportswear. Elbert had used his own money, wherever that came from, and bought us all knee pads and he had us put them on. We were going to get helmets next. Right now the rule was don’t fall on our heads.

  When Gay had on her knee pads, she said, “Don’t I get a stick?”

  “That’s hockey,” I said.

  “Oh,” Gay said.

  “And they skate on ice,” I said. “We don’t.”

  “Oh, okay,” Gay said.

  Gay was terrible. She could skate all right, but she didn’t have any idea of the rules, no matter how many times Elbert explained them to her. Elbert had used chalk to draw a kind of roller rink on the concrete. It wasn’t what we needed, of course, but it was something. Gay kept thinking you could skate either way, and she couldn’t understand the concept of the chalk lines as the roller rink. When anyone got close to her, even if they weren’t touching her, she laughed like she was being tickled.

  “Maybe we can use her as back up,” Elbert said. “You know, in case all the rest of you die, or something.”

  We practiced pretty hard. I was doing better than anyone else in the skating department, and started to get a bit cocky. Herb came out to watch a few times, and of course that made me show off a little.

  We girls started working together well enough, though, as I said, we didn’t always have all of us in the same place at once. That was the next part of our plan, to have more than three at a time show up. As Elbert explained, it took five to make a team, not three.

  Raylynn turned out to be a fierce competitor. Or would have been, had we had a team to play against. Right now we were just working drills to understand better how to skate. Still, sometimes I skated alongside of her, and we did this drill where she tried to get past me, and she always did. She usually managed to do it in such a way that I got a bruise or two and we exchanged curse words as we went around in a circle.

  “A lot of anger in you two,” Elbert said about me and sis.

  Raylynn said, “You know, this makes me feel good. When I’m out there, I feel pretty much in control. Like I could skate around the world, and only stop once for a light lunch.”

  “That’s good,” Elbert said.

  “I think so,” Raylynn said. “Yeah. I think so.”

  (25)

  Later that week I had some of the cockiness knocked out of me at work. I was skating up to a car, and a guy sitting on the driver’s side, not looking, opened the door right in front of me. I guess he was going to get out and use the restroom or something. But the thing is, he was talking to the guy sitting on the passenger side, and didn’t see me, and suddenly, there was the door.

  I had a tray full of food. I lifted it high with one hand, an
d shifted on my skates. Let me tell you, it was a thing of beauty. I went right around that door, using a move Elbert had taught me. I thought, wow, cool, because I was as graceful as that Greek god with the winged shoes. My body swayed perfectly. I balanced the tray without losing the drink on it, or a single French fry. I was grace in motion.

  Then a lady in another car on my right side, opened her passenger door. I caught it full square. The tray went flying and so did I. As the old joke goes, the ground broke my fall. I somehow twisted my ankle in the skate. The pain was so intense I passed out. The last thing I remember right before I blacked out was a full cup of ice and soda, a fist full of French fries falling down on me; in that hazy moment the ice cubes looked like large diamonds and the fries like thin fingers.

  When I came awake Bob was bending over me, brushing off ice and French fries. “Dot? You okay? Dot?”

  “Not so much,” I said.

  “You hit a door.”

  “I kind of figured that,” I said.

  “You dropped a tray of food,” he said.

  “Pity,” I said.

  I tried to get up with Bob’s help, but no luck. My ankle was twisted and it burned like fire. I had concrete raspberries on my elbows and one of my knees; I could feel the rawness of it rubbing up against the inside of my jeans. I felt like I was going to throw up.

  Bob picked me up like a baby and carried me into the Dairy Bob and sat me in a booth with my foot sticking out. He went in the back and got a mop bucket and turned it over and raised my foot up on it.

  In the moment he had carried me, I remembered times when I fell asleep on the couch, watching television, and my dad had picked me up carefully and toted me to bed and tucked me in, patted my head before he went out. I never opened my eyes during all that time, because I didn’t want him to make me walk and miss out on being in his arms. I felt safe. I thought it would always be like that.

  It was an odd feeling, and I felt like crying, and did a little. Bob thought it was because of the pain in my foot.

  “Wait here,” Bob said, as if I had a lot of choice.

  Bob went outside. The two cars, the one with the man, and the other with the woman, had driven off. They didn’t even leave a note. Maybe some gas fumes, but no note.

  When Bob came back inside, he said, “You okay?”

  “Of course I’m not okay,” I said. “I’m the same injured girl I was two minutes ago.”

  “Your mouth still works,” he said.

  I was unlacing my skates. The skate on the uninjured foot came off easy, but the other didn’t. It had already swollen too much. Trying to pull it off hurt like fire.

  Bob went in back, came out with a pair of scissors large enough to trim trees, and went to work on the skate. “I can’t afford new ones, Bob.”

  “I can.” He cut the skate off and gently examined my foot. It looked like a full grown turkey stuffed tight in a sock.

  “That’s not good,” he said. “It makes me a little sick to look at it.”

  “Don’t hold back, Bob,” I said. “Don’t spare my feelings.”

  “I wasn’t,” he said, not understanding that I was being sarcastic. Bottom line was it hurt, and it hurt bad and I was a little scared it was broken.

  Bob left Sue in charge and drove me to the hospital, right where Elbert and I had been a few nights back. They X-rayed me and looked me over and said I had a bad sprain, but no break. They gave me a kind of reinforced shoe to wear. It was big and had a lot of foam it. It had metal braces on the sides.

  The doctor who came in and looked at me and told me not to skate for a few weeks. I thought: Really, did he think I was going to strap on some skates right then and go for it?

  When it came time to pay, they put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me to the reception desk. Bob showed them his insurance card. It was the first time in my life there had ever been insurance for anything. I thought if I had had the injury in that old car lot, they’d have had to put me down like a broken-legged horse in those old Western movies.

  Anyway, I got to go home. I guess that was all right, but the bad part was I wasn’t making any money. If I wasn’t making any money, then the whole family lost out. And I couldn’t skate. I couldn’t get ready for the derby.

  When I finally pulled the doctor’s shoe off, pulled on my pajamas and got in bed with my foot wrapped, I felt pretty blue. Elbert, with a fresh patch on the back of his head, sat in a chair beside the bed and talked to me for awhile, told me how I shouldn’t worry about the roller derby thing, there would be other times, and so on. That just made me feel worse. I didn’t want other times. I wanted the time coming up.

  “I’m not giving up yet,” I said.

  “I didn’t think you would,” Elbert said. “You don’t seem much like a quitter, but I thought a pep talk was in order.”

  “Sometimes I feel cursed,” I said. “No matter what plan I have it goes awry.”

  “Welcome to life,” Elbert said. “Thing I learned is we all focus on the things that go wrong and not on the things that go right.”

  “Coming from a bank robber,” I said, “that’s very inspiring.”

  “It was an attempted robbery,” he said.

  “Yeah, okay. That’s right.”

  “On that note, kid,” Elbert said. “I’m going to leave you be. I have to go sit in the yard.”

  Grandma made me some dinner, and it was awful, as all her dinners are. I thanked her and ate it anyway.

  Raylynn was about to leave for her shift at the Dairy Bob, which had been moved to an earlier time because I was out of business. When Bob brought me home he didn’t hesitate to ask her to come into work a little early.

  She stopped in to see me before she left. I said, “Sorry, Raylynn. You work plenty. Sorry.”

  “I can use the money,” she said, taking the chair where Elbert had sat. “We all could. And, I have a little apartment I’m going to rent.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yeah. It’s small, and it’s a second story thing. I have to climb stairs everyday, tote the baby up, but I’m moving in next week. I put down a little deposit. They’re supposed to get rid of the smell.”

  “The smell?” I said.

  “Dead raccoon or something,” she said. “In the attic. There’s a hole in the roof, too. That’s how the raccoon got in. He gnawed through some wires and was barbecued.”

  “Poor thing,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, they got to repair the hole in the roof, but you know, it’s all right. I like it. I will like it. There’s enough room for me and the kids if one of us sleeps under the kitchen table.”

  I laughed. It was enough to shake me and make my foot hurt.

  Frank came in then. “Can I sign your cast?” he said.

  “I don’t have a cast,” I said. “I have a shoe.”

  “Let me sign the shoe,” he said.

  “No, I don’t want the shoe signed.”

  “I could be the first,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not going to have the shoe signed.”

  “I want to be first, not second,” he said.

  “If no one signs it you won’t be first, second or third,” I said.

  “Come on, let me,” he said.

  “Would you go on, you little fart,” Raylynn said.

  “Witch,” Frank said.

  “Weasel,” Raylynn said.

  Frank started to say something else, but Raylynn jumped up and moved like she was going to go after him. He darted out of the room.

  Raylynn grinned at me. “He still remembers when I used to chase him down and tickle him. He hates that. Look. I got to go. But, well, I don’t have much gas in my car. I’m down to fumes. Can I borrow yours?”

  “Sure,” I said. “See you later,” and away she went.

  Grandma brought me some magazines. They were about as interesting as dyeing a mouse’s hair. I dozed off and on.

  Later in the day there was a knock on my bedroom door. I said, “Come in,
” thinking it would be Mom home from work, but it was Herb.

  I hate to admit it, but I was mortified. There I was in my pajamas with little dogs designs on them, in a little bed with old sheets and blankets, in a room in a trailer, and there was Herb who ate at fine restaurants and traveled all over the world and felt good about himself and was so nice-looking it made my back teeth ache, and he was staring at me.

  “Hi,” I said. I know. It’s nothing special, but that’s all I had in me right then.

  Herb came and sat in the chair by the bed.

  “You didn’t have to come by,” I said.

  “I know that,” he said.

  “You found out awful quick,” I said.

  “I heard about it from Bob.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “He was coming into the Dairy Bob, and I was already there. I was looking for you, and the girl working there…Sue?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sue.”

  “She said you went to the hospital. I sort of panicked and was heading over there, but before I left, in came Bob. He told me you were home, and so I came over. How’d it happen?”

  “I was dancing nude in the highway and got hit by a truck.”

  Herb laughed a little. More than the comment deserved, but I was glad he did.

  “I hate I missed that,” he said. “The nude part. Not getting hit by a truck.”

  Then I told him how it really happened.

  We talked for awhile, about this and that. It wasn’t long before I felt a lot less self-conscious about where I was, about the way things looked. Herb had a kind of calming factor about him. I needed that. I was always revved up and a little angry about something or another, just like Elbert had said about me and Raylynn.

  After a bit, the door opened, and Mama came in. “Oh, baby, are you all right?”

  So we went through it all again, me explaining what happened, introducing her to Herb.

  Herb stood up from his chair and touched my shoulder and said, “I got to go. I have to study for a test. I’m doing a summer class. I’ll check back.”

  “Thanks, Herb,” I said, and he went out and closed the door.