The professor grinned and slapped my shoulder. "The beauty of it is, there won't be a kid—including you, Smith—who can sled across my yard next winter without hitting the rocks."
With that. Whitman walked off to the house, leaving me to do the dirty work. I had to hand it to him. He'd come up with a punishment that fit the crime.
24
AS THE WEEKS PASSED, I GOT USED TO WHITMAN. FOR AN old guy, he had a pretty good sense of humor. Sometimes he actually made me laugh. He knew how to tell a good joke, but not the kind I could pass on to a girl.
There was no denying he drank like a fish. I hardly ever saw him without a bottle in his hand. The garbage can was full of dead soldiers, as Donny used to call the old man's empties. You'd think Whitman was still killing off the Nazis.
Mrs. Whitman didn't approve of the professor's ways. She was always giving him peeved looks and making comments like, "That's your third beer, Roland, and it's not even one o'clock yet."
He never paid any attention to her, except to pat her rear end and say, "Oh, Hazel, relax. A few beers never hurt anybody."
That's what he thought.
One afternoon, I was wrestling boulders into place in the rock garden. Whitman was watching me from the front steps, a bottle of beer in his hand as usual. It was a warm day, and I was sweating up a storm, but I felt good. Almost happy. The week before, the money had come from Grandma's estate, and Stu had made a down payment on the house Barbara wanted so bad. Hard to believe, but soon I'd have my own room in the basement, just like Barbara had said. Privacy at last.
While I was struggling to lift an especially heavy rock, I saw Lizard walking along the streetcar tracks that ran past the Whitmans' yard. At school, she still looked at me from time to time, but I hadn't had a chance to talk to her for ages. She and Magpie had joined the chorus for the spring musical, and they were always at practice. They didn't even have time to take Brent to the playground.
But there she was, all by herself, looking in every direction but Whitman's yard. It was a warm sunny day, and she was wearing a white blouse and a pair of blue shorts. Grandma would have said she was rushing the season, but with legs like hers Lizard could rush all she wanted.
Without thinking, I whistled long and low—I just couldn't stop myself.
If Lizard hadn't seen me before, she sure saw me now. Glaring down at me from the tracks, she said, "Get fresh with me, G.A.S., and you'll be sorry."
"Can't blame the boy for admiring a pair of good-looking gams," Whitman said between swigs. "If I were Gordy's age, I'd whistle, too."
Lizard's face turned scarlet and she started to walk away, snippy little nose in the air, rear end swinging.
I stood there with the shovel in my hand, staring after her. As usual, I'd cooked my goose. And the professor had helped me do it.
Whitman winked at me. "You've done enough hard labor for today. Smith. Those rocks aren't going anywhere. But that cute little gal is. I'd go after her if I were you."
He didn't need to tell me twice. Dropping the shovel, I ran after Lizard. "Hey," I called, "wait up, will you?"
"Why should I?" she yelled without looking back or slowing down.
I managed to get in front of her and block the path. "Don't be mad. Lizard. Whitman's crocked as usual, he didn't mean anything."
She looked me in the eye. "What's your excuse?"
"Me? I was just whistling while I worked—you know, like the three little pigs."
"It's the seven dwarfs who whistled," Lizard said. "Not the three little pigs."
"Huh?"
"In Snow White, dummy. The dwarves whistled while they worked."
"Come on. Lizard, don't be sore."
She gave me a mean look. "Get out of my way, G.A.S."
I stepped aside, but I didn't leave. "Where are you headed?"
"No place special."
"Me either." I strolled along beside her. It was a free country. I had just as much right to walk along the streetcar tracks as she did.
I expected her to tell me to get lost or something, but she didn't say a word—just kept walking like it was normal for us to be together.
"See that house right there?" I pointed to the Smith family's future home. It was nearly finished now, at least on the outside. "We're moving in May."
"Barbara told me that a long time ago," Lizard said.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and tried to think of something else to say. Nothing came to mind. It wasn't easy talking to girls.
"So how do you like working for Professor Whitman?" Lizard asked after a while. "Is he as crazy as everybody says?"
I shrugged. "He's not so bad. Drinks a lot, though."
Lizard stepped on one of the rails and walked along, balancing herself with her arms. I hopped onto the other rail and staggered along beside her.
"Daddy told me you could've gotten in big trouble throwing those cherry bombs," she said. "You were lucky Whitman let you off so easy."
"You try digging a bunch of rocks out of the ground and moving them someplace else, along with a ton of dirt. Then tell me I got off easy."
"Oh, poor G.A.S.," Lizard said. "It's better than reform school, isn't it?"
I glanced at her. "Your father was pretty decent about the whole thing," I said. "Knowing what you think of me, I thought he'd lock me up and throw away the key. Get rid of G.A.S. forever."
Lizard didn't look at me, didn't say anything either. She just wobbled along like she was crossing the Grand Canyon on a tightrope. If she took her eyes off the track, she'd fall to her death.
By now we'd reached Garfield Road. Lizard's house was a couple of blocks to the right, and the playground was a couple of blocks to the left. I figured she'd say good-bye and go home, but she stood on the track, arms outspread, chewing gum so hard I could see her jawbone move under her skin.
"Want to go to the playground?" I asked her.
"What for?"
I shrugged. "Something to do."
She thought a minute. "Okay."
We walked up Garfield Road together, Lizard and me. I noticed the buds on the maples had turned red and the willows' long branches were yellow-green with new leaves. A robin hopped around, pecking at the grass. Something smelled sweet—flowers, I guessed. Or maybe it was Lizard. Whatever it was, spring was definitely here—warm days, blue skies, sunshine.
A bunch of kids were playing on the ball field. One of them was Pritchett. When he got up to bat. Lizard and I both saw him hit an easy fly. Everybody on his team yelled at him. Three guys had been on base. What could have been a grand slam home run became the third out.
"Dope," Lizard muttered.
My heart gave a funny little hop and jump. "You really think Pritchett's a dope?"
"He had no right to say mean things about your family," Lizard said. "He shouldn't have hit you so hard, either. Your face looked the way it did in grade school when—"
She stopped and scuffed the ground with the toe of her sneaker. I guessed she'd said more than she'd planned to. "It made me mad," she muttered. "That's all."
I stared at her. "You wrote that note to Mueller, didn't you?"
"What if I did?" Lizard glared at me. "It was mainly because of Stu. What Bobby said wasn't fair. Stu's so nice, he's—"
"I can be just as nice as Stu," I cut in. "That is, if I want to be."
Lizard's blue eyes bored into me. "Hah. You couldn't be nice if you tried, Gordy Smith."
"I could so!"
Lizard chomped her gum and studied my face. "Prove it," she said. "Do something nice."
"Like what?"
She went on chewing, thinking hard. Finally she said, "You can start by calling me Elizabeth. That's my name, you know. Not Lizard."
"Elizabeth," I tried it once, then tried it again. "Eee-lizabeth. Uh-lizabeth." I shook my head. "It's too prissy—like a Puritan or something. And you're—well, you aren't—I mean, you..." I gave up. If I said the wrong thing now, she'd walk off and that would be the end of it.
Lizard thought a second. "Well, how about Liz? Does that sound better?"
"Liz." It wasn't nearly as hard to say as Elizabeth, but it still didn't fit her. "What about Lizzy? Do you like that?"
"Liz," she said. "Not Lizard, not Lizzy—Liz." She paused a second and added, "If you keep calling me Lizard, I'll call you G.A.S.—or, better yet, Yuncle Poopoo."
"Okay, Liz, okay. Anything you say, Liz. You're the boss, Liz." From the way she grinned, I guessed she thought she'd won. But the truth was, no matter what I called her to Her face, she'd always be Lizard in my mind.
We walked to the sandbox and sat down next to each other on one of the wooden sides. Lizard scooped up a handful of sand and watched it run through her fingers.
"So where's good old Magpie today?" I asked. Not that I really cared. It was just something to say.
Lizard raised her head and frowned. "If you mean Margaret, say Margaret."
"Oh, come on, Liz."
"Call Margaret Margaret. She doesn't like Magpie any more than I like Lizard." She paused. "I mean it, Yuncle Poopoo."
I sighed. Girls—there was no satisfying them. "What if I call her Maggie?"
Lizard tipped her head to the side and thought about it. "Yeah," she said, smiling. "Maggie and Liz—that's what we'll call ourselves. It sounds more grown-up than Margaret and Elizabeth, don't you think?"
"I guess." I didn't really have an opinion on such things. Like I said, no matter what I called them out loud, they'd always be Lizard and Magpie to me. "So where is good old Maggie?"
"At the dentist." Lizard started drawing circles in the sand with a stick. Her hair swung forward and hid her face. I wanted to reach out and brush it back, but I had a feeling that might be a mistake.
Instead, I picked up a stick of my own and made a few doodles in the sand beside Lizard's. I wished I could say something to make her laugh, but sitting this dose to her, I couldn't come up with a good wisecrack—or anything else. In desperation, I mumbled, "Nice day, huh?"
Lizard nodded, but she didn't look up from her little pile of sand. "It sure is."
That pretty much took care of the weather. It was a dumb subject anyway. What did William say he and Linda talked about? Books, movies, how they felt. I wasn't ready to spill my guts just yet, so I asked Lizard if she'd seen any good movies lately. That seemed safe.
"My brother, Joe, took Margaret—Maggie, I mean—and me to see Song of the South," Lizard said. "It was soooo good. Especially the cartoon parts. I just love Disney movies."
After Lizard told me the whole plot of Song of the South, I told her about The Big Sleep, my favorite movie. She wasn't crazy about Humphrey Bogart. Like most girls, she went for Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, and Clark Gable.
"Speaking of Clark Gable," Lizard said, faking a little swoon, "haVe you ever read Gone With the Wind?"
When I shook my head, she told me a little bit about the plot. The war part sounded pretty good, but the rest was definitely girl stuff. Hoping to improve her taste in books, I told her about White Fang.
And so it went. For the first time in our lives, Lizard and I were having a real conversation. She'd say something and I'd say something back. Like a tennis game—her turn, my turn. No insults. No dumb cracks. William was right—you could actually talk to girls, especially if you had one all to yourself.
When we ran out of books, I took a deep breath, looked Lizard in the eye, and said, "Would you like to go to the movies with me sometime?"
I tried to sound like it didn't matter whether she said yes or no, but my voice came out as squeaky as one of June's doll babies.
"The Yearling's coming to the Hyattsdale Movie Theater next month," Lizard said. "I saw the previews last Saturday. It looked pretty good."
"Does that mean you'll go with me?"
Lizard smiled one of those heart-stopping smiles she was so good at and shrugged. "Maybe."
She hadn't said yes, she hadn't said no, but something in her eyes told me we'd soon be sitting in the dark side by side, eating popcorn and watching a movie. A sad one, too, from what I'd heard—so sad Lizard might need comforting.
The biggest grin I'd ever grinned spread across my face. I wanted to jump up and run laps around the baseball diamond, climb the tree beside the sandbox and shout "Hooray" from the very top, make a long-distance call to William and say, "Hey, I've got a girlfriend, too."
Of course, I didn't do any of those things. I sat where I was, trying to act like nothing special had happened. After all, I hadn't forgotten I was a Smith—which meant I had to be on the lookout for bad things around the comer. It didn't pay to be too happy.
I glanced at Lizard. She was drawing in the sand again and humming the "Too-Fat Polka." I wanted to kiss her, but I was too scared of messing things up to try. So I took a deep breath instead and let it out slow and easy.
No matter what happened to me in my life, I knew I'd never forget this day and how it felt to sit and talk with Lizzy the Lizard. Liz, that is—Liz Crawford.
As Ever, Gordy Page 13
