Fender Lizards

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “That sucks,” Gay said.

  “You’re Helen of Destroy,” Elbert said, “and that’s that. Raylynn, Dyno-mite.”

  “She got a good name,” Gay said.

  “Hush, Gay,” Elbert said. “Miranda you’re Little Gorgo.”

  “What’s a Gorgo?” Miranda said.

  “It was a monster in Japanese movie,” he said.

  “Sweet,” Miranda said.

  “Sue, you’re Baby Hammer.”

  “I’m not sure what that means,” Sue said. “But alright.”

  “Know your name if it comes over the speaker,” Elbert said. “Might be nice to know who they’re talking about. There will be a guy on the speaker keeping people up with the action.”

  “Can’t they see what’s happening?” Sue said.

  “It’s just a thing to keep the crowd worked up,” Elbert said. “Now, you all know your positions. Any questions?”

  We looked at one another.

  Nothing.

  “All right,” Elbert said, looking at the ringers. “You two have anything to say?”

  “Don’t get killed,” Thunder Bomb said.

  “Okay,” Elbert said. “Good advice.”

  About that time we saw Bob open the gate on the far side of the rink, come through, close it back, and hustle over to us. When he got to us, he said, “I saw them.”

  “And?” Elbert said.

  “Well, the rumor was they were a bunch of juvenile delinquents, or at least looked like it, but after seeing them, I can say that they look more like prisoners the governor commuted off of death row. I thought I saw their tattoos crawling.”

  “Damn, Bob,” Elbert said. “That doesn’t boost moral.”

  “Actually,” Bob said, “I sort of felt I was playing it down.”

  Elbert looked at us. “They’re not that bad. They’re just girls, like you.”

  “Only older and meaner and bigger,” Bob said.

  “It’s in the team work,” Elbert said. “And we haven’t seen them skate, so we don’t know how mean they are. How good they are.”

  About that time the guy with the white cowboy hat came walking up to the gate across the way. He had on a yellow cowboy suit tonight, and his boots were yellow leather, shiny as the sun. He opened the gate, and then we heard the whirl of wheels, and along the side, outside the rink, on the wooden path in front of the bleachers, we saw the other team, the carny killers, they were called.

  When they came through that open gate and skated out on the rink, the crowd went wicked crazy, standing and cheering and throwing popcorn and the like. The Carny Killers beat on their chests and let out a yell so loud and scary I have to admit, my bowels went loose.

  (45)

  The CARNY KILLERS were mostly bigger than us, except one, a black girl who was low to the ground and wide at the shoulders, looked like she could pull you out of your skin, toss your bones away.

  They started around the track, showing out, getting cheers. They went faster and faster. The wheels on their skates sang. It was a perfect sound, everyone working together. As they made their second round, they all turned their heads toward us and smiled and pointed, said together: “You.”

  The one in the lead, Death on Wheels, had a mouth piece that had teeth painted on it; big nasty teeth. She had her hair pulled back and tied up with a piece of leather.

  “We’re dead,” Gay said.

  “They’re just trying to scare you,” Elbert said.

  “It’s working,” Gay said.

  “Look, they look tough, and they can skate pretty,” Elbert, “but what else they got?”

  “Team work,” Sue said.

  “Experience,” Miranda said.

  “Well, we got heart,” Elbert said.

  “Mine’s in my mouth,” Raylynn said.

  “Just play the way we practiced,” Elbert said.

  “Mostly with Cub Scouts,” I said.

  “You girls got it in you,” Lightning Strike said. “Maybe tonight, you want it bad enough, we can pull you out of the fire, if you listen and watch us, and you reach way down deep inside for the glory.”

  The announcer started up then, calling out the names of the other teams skaters: DEATH ON WHEELS, BLOODY MARY, ROCKET SHOT SAM (Samantha to her friends, he said), LADY DRACULA, ROLLING DOOM, TINA TORNADO and last but not least, BETTY DIES. Betty was the short, stout black girl. She was their jammer.

  They skated off, not down into the center with us, but one behind the other until they went right back out of the gate the cowboy was holding open. They piled up there, waiting. The cowboy looked at Elbert and smiled. Elbert shot him the finger.

  “That’s not very nice,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Elbert said, “but it felt good.”

  Bob said, “I let you girls off work a lot, so try not to get killed, because come tomorrow, I’m going to need some of you back there, carrying trays.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk,” I said.

  “Okay,” Elbert said. “You girls warmed up some, but now it’s time for you to go out there and skate. Here’s the line up.”

  He told us how to go, and I was last in line, since I was the jammer. That’s how Elbert wanted to play it. He gave Bob the list with our new names on it. Bob took it over to the announcer, and we went out on the rink in the planned order.

  We went around once, and when we went around the second time, we were low down and skating hard, and as we passed the Carny Killers, without any of us having planned it, we all turned our heads and looked at them and grinned, and I started up with a yell, and then the other girls followed. We skated faster and faster around the rink, and when we passed them again, we all let out with a war hoop that shook the tent; it was maybe louder than the one the Carny Killers had given out. Gay kicked up one leg and grabbed her ankle as she did, going around on one skate. She kept her leg held up, tossed back her head, styling.

  When we skated back to the center, Elbert said, “That’s the way to go, girls. You plan that little stunt, Gay?”

  “Ballet lessons,” she said. “It just came to me.”

  The announcer went on with some talk about this and that, about how Marvel Creek was a great town, him saying that without having to live there, and then he asked the crowd were they ready for some serious roller derby action.

  The crowd let out with cheers and hoots and yells and foot stomping on the bleachers. They sounded a lot more ready than we were.

  Elbert looked at Lightning Strike and Thunder Bomb. He said, “I’m going to start with you two, Gay, Raylynn and Dot. Sue, you and Miranda will hold out until later.”

  “Well,” Sue said, “you get me in as soon as you can. I figure I’ll get rid of my butterflies soon as I’m out there and get hit. Or lose an eye.”

  “I feel very similar,” Miranda said, “without the eye loss part.”

  “On the track,” Elbert said.

  (46)

  On the track we got into our positions, me and their jammer at the back, ready to rock and roll. I glanced out at the crowd, searching. And then I saw him. Dad. Top row on the far side. I tried to look at him without him seeing me look, like it was a casual glance. But he saw me. He had his hands on his knees and he lifted one of them in a small wave. I acted like I didn’t see it.

  Someone blew a whistle, and we were off. I felt as if I were skating through a dream made of molasses and cotton. I couldn’t hear anything. Everything I was looking at was in a tunnel, the sides closing in on me, dark as the grave. And then the Carny Killer skating next to me, the other jammer, Betty Dies, opened the world to sight and sound again when she said, “What do you like to do after school, little girl, play with dolls?”

  Then she was gone like a shot. She was moving past Raylynn before Raylynn knew she was there, getting a point for passing, and there I was, hanging behind like the tail on a kite.

  She passed Miranda and then Sue like they were nailed to the floor. I tried to catch up, but the Carny Killers were skating in front of me
every time, blocking my path.

  Then I saw it. A gap between Death on Wheels and Lady Dracula. It was wide open. Wide, wide open. It was beautiful. It couldn’t have been any better had it come with an invitation and a party favor.

  I skated fast, my head down low. I felt giddy. As I was about to shoot through that gap I realized I had worried too much. This wasn’t that hard.

  Just as I was closing fast, about to dart through, those two came together with a snap of their hips. I hit Lady Dracula in the butt with my head because I was down so low. It was like hitting a brick wall. Next thing I knew I was spinning and flying, and then scraping along the track. I went around and around on my rear end, felt like a mouse in a centrifuge.

  By the time I got up, Betty Dies had already passed everyone but Gay, who had somehow ended up at the forefront, skating like a demon, probably trying to get away from the whole thing.

  I got on my feet and started out again, angry I had been tricked. I glanced up just in time to see Betty skating wide left, Gay on the right.

  Just for meanness, Betty Dies looked over at Gay, and she was so loud when she said it, I could hear her clear as a bell. “Don’t you got to stop and get that diaper changed, sweetie pie?”

  Gay wheeled to the left real hard and came across the track, screaming like a banshee. Betty Dies jerked her head in Gay’s direction. That sound Gay was making was enough to lift the hair off your head.

  Gay swung her arm out like a log on a chain. It caught Betty Dies just above the nose, on the forehead. It was some lick. It knocked the mouthpiece out of her mouth and into the bleachers, picked Betty up so high her skates swung up and maybe touched the moon. She landed on her butt, rolled along the track like a bowling ball, right into the empty middle.

  I thought she was dead for a moment, her nickname more fitting than she could imagine.

  Gay was still skating, just going along like nothing had happened. She had a smile on her face. The kind of smile someone who has just slipped a cog might have.

  A whistle blew.

  Gay was pulled off the track for a foul.

  We all ended up in the middle again. The cowboy came over and yelled at Elbert. Elbert yelled back. The guy with the whistle, who I just now realized was a kind of referee, which lets you know how well I knew the game, came over. The announcer was going on and on about this and that. Betty Dies was up and in a chair. Her head was hung. She shook it a little. Her team was around her.

  “That’s cheating,” the cowboy said to Elbert.

  “Yeah,” Elbert said. “It is. And of course none of your girls would do such a thing.”

  “Did they?” the cowboy said. “Did they?”

  “Give them time,” Elbert said.

  The cowboy went away.

  The referee pointed at Gay, said, “This gal is out, least for a round. We won’t take her out altogether if Betty comes back. We got loose rules here.”

  “No joke,” Elbert said.

  “She kills someone though,” the ref said, “just watch how quick she comes out.”

  Gay was standing up, looking across at the other team. “I don’t like them,” she said. Her voice seemed as if it might be coming from some place distant, where it was dark and scary and everyone wore Halloween costumes all the time. She looked like she could take an axe to all of us at any moment.

  Thunder Bomb patted Gay on the shoulder, said, “Find your happy place.”

  Lightning Strike looked over at Betty Dies. “She don’t even know what dimension she’s in. She’s still moving between worlds.”

  “I really don’t like them,” Gay said, staring at the other team. “All of them. They are nasty bad people.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, that’s all right. It’s okay not to like them. Why don’t you stay put for awhile, and think about, oh, I don’t know, what Thunder Bomb said. A happy place. Something pleasant. Puppies, maybe.”

  Gay sat down in one of the chairs and kept staring across at the other team. They, to put it mildly, looked mad. If Gay was thinking about puppies, they all wore spiked dog collars.

  I turned to Raylynn, mouthed, Oh My God.

  “We have created a monster,” Raylynn said.

  When the ref was gone, Elbert gathered us around him, except Gay, who was still sitting in the chair. Elbert was looking out at the crowd.

  “Dot,” he said, “you know that lady I told you that threw the green beans at us, back when I was in the derby?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I think I saw her in the stands,” he said. “But she’d be really old now. A hundred maybe. Her arm would be bad, don’t you think?”

  “Elbert,” I said. “You’re being paranoid. She’s not out there. I don’t even know her, and I can tell you that.”

  “Maybe so,” he said. “Maybe so. Okay, here’s the thing. Go back out there and… Well, skate fast, don’t get killed.”

  “That’s some real strategy you got there,” I said.

  “Look,” Thunder Bomb said. “I got a suggestion. That all right, coach?”

  Elbert nodded.

  “What we do is we all get in the center of the track. We start a snake movement, left to right, weaving, crossing as right and left, wide as we can without getting too far apart. The head of the snake, that will be me, staying steady. The other three swinging left and right in a big wave, the jammer on the tail end, coming up on us fast after the take off. You got to block, though. That’s the purpose of the snake. A unit. To make it work better, everyone behind me grab the other girls hips. Jammer on the end, so that Jet has got some serious momentum when we pop her loose.”

  “They’re going to be really mad, aren’t they?” Sue said, looking at the other team mounting the track.

  “Yep,” I said.

  (47)

  Back on the track, we lined up. Sue was in, Miranda was still out, and Gay was cooling her heels for being mean as a snake.

  Beside me was their new jammer, Lady Dracula. She was tall and made of lean muscle. Her hair was died black and her lipstick was black too. Her eyes were painted up so heavy with eye liner I was surprised she could hold her head up.

  Betty Dies was still sitting in a chair in the center with her head down. Gay sat across from her. She had turned her chair so she could stare straight at her.

  “So,” I said to Lady Dracula, “Betty Dies taking a little break?”

  “I’ll get you,” Lady Dracula said. “We’ll get you all.”

  “Who does your tattoos,” I said. “A third grader?”

  “Oh, that’s really rich,” she said.

  “What I had on short notice,” I said.

  “Jet,” she said, “I’m gonna stall your engines.”

  The whistle blew.

  Around we went again, and Lady Dracula broke out ahead of me. When I tried to pass, she weaved in front. Without looking back, she always seemed to know where I was going. She took another weave and passed Sue, a.k.a., Baby Hammer.

  Up ahead, Thunder Bomb was leading our girls, trying to bring them together into that snake-shape plan, but it wasn’t happening. Lady Dracula was dodging between our girls, scooting up front, easy as if she was threading a needle.

  I saw Raylynn gaze over her shoulder, pick up Lady Dracula’s position. Then Raylynn turned, started skating backwards, always in front of Lady Dracula facing her, showing her the war face, passing a few words to her you wouldn’t want on your gravestone. Lady Dracula was so preoccupied with Raylynn, so busy trying to express all of her vocabulary, I passed Lady Dracula so quick and so close, another layer of skin cells and we’d have been using the same legs.

  Thunder Bomb snapped a look back, gave us the link up nod. Our team started doing just that, all but Raylynn who was still skating backwards, darting in front of Lady Dracula when she tried to pass; that skating backwards trick Elbert had taught us was coming in handy.

  Lightning Strike was in front of me. I grabbed her hips. She grabbed Baby Hammer’s, and Baby Hammer grab
bed Thunder Bomb’s hips. We started weaving that snake. We bumped hips against the other team, moved them, but kept clutching to one another. It held.

  We rounded the curve, the snake snapped like Thunder Bomb planned, and I broke loose, went around that track so fast I was surprised I didn’t see a checkered flag. I lapped all of their team. The crowd cheered.

  It was magnificent.

  So magnificent we got cocky.

  When I came back around again, Lightning Strike said, “Whip.”

  I knew what that was from watching her and Thunder Bomb do it in practice. It’s where a partner you’re passing grabs your hand and flings you forward, causing you to gain more speed than you might get in a curve by yourself.

  I stuck out my hand and Lightning Strike grabbed it, and as the track curved, she swung me around it. I could feel the wind blowing so hard I thought it was going to take the hair off my head. I straightened out that curve, and kept going straight, which is not what I had in mind. Right before I went over the railing and into the crowd I thought from here on out Grandma was going to have that room in the trailer all to herself.

  I don’t really remember hitting the railing or going over it, I just remember waking up in the front row stands with a crowd around me.

  One of the crowd was my Dad, another was High Top in her shorts and tee-shirt and work boots. The rest of the bunch were my family, and Herb, though there was a little girl with pig tails I had never seen there too.

  I looked at High Top. “You made it.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Dad said, “Dot, are you okay?”

  “Define okay.” I said.

  “Can you sit up?” High Top said.

  I sat up.

  “Wow,” I said. “I saw birds for a minute there. Big ones.”