Reptile House Read online

  “Slow down,” said Mel, and the cab slowed. Mike jumped out of the cab still rolling. “I’ll take care of this.” The girl sprinted down an alley and Mike did too. They disappeared at the end of it.

  The cab waited in the street. The station played a mariachi, which finished with a flourish of trumpets. The announcer said, “Tomorrow will be hot,” and another song started, a waltz. Awnings leaned down and fire escapes wound up, dark and peaceful. Steps dropped away. Another cab rolled near. The drivers signed to each other and the high beams flashed. The other cab was green, unusual for the area, a new model. The green cab will pass on, will be crushed in a head-on the day Kennedy is shot over in Dallas, so neither the bloody car wreck nor the funerals will be much noted in the papers: invisible, inconsequential.

  The green cab passed on. It was any dark street again.

  “Who’s that girl?” said the cabbie. “Why’s he chasing that girl?”

  “She’s no one,” said Mel. “Some bitch. Mike takes care of things for me.” Mel swigged and blood from his nose smeared on the neck of the bottle. “Maybe I know that girl,” said the cabbie. “We live near here.”

  “You don’t know her,” said Mel.

  There was a brass frame hanging from the rearview mirror. “These are my kids in here,” said the cabbie and touched the frame. “Richie, Consuelo, Kiki, and Gloria, the baby. I tell them stories sometimes to make them sleep. Like King Arthur and Lancelot, or General Grant, Alexander or Abraham Lincoln. Big stories and how they should live in the future.”

  “How should they live in the future?” said Mel.

  “How to be good men and girls,” said the cabbie.

  “Then all your kids will be good little men and girls.”

  “I tell them all about the desert sometimes too. I have ten books about this desert and the mountains and caves in it. We have the most stupendous caves out there in our desert.”

  “Well, fine,” said Mel. He shifted the sombrero and drank.

  “I have three books on it in the trunk,” said the cabbie.

  “That’s just swell,” said Mel. “A regular rolling library.”

  It was a dark street at that hour. The cabbie looked down the alley. “He won’t hurt her,” said the cabbie.

  “Only if she deserves it,” said Mel. “Only in that case.” The headlights beamed down the street in two cones of light that flicked from high beams to low beams with the cabbie’s finger. High low, high low, and the street shifted and moved: the brick walls rose and fell, the trash bins were boulders, then sawed down trees, then trash bins, and so on. Holes and doorways blinked like hungry things.

  “Might as well shut her down,” said Mel. “Cut the lights.” The sombrero dipped down over his face the old fashioned way, like napping at high noon in some pueblo. But the cabbie did not shut down the engine or lights. The cabbie watched the empty alley. The red balls on the rim were now black. Mel tipped his head, breathed blood back in, and the balls tipped up like the ride at the June fair. The kids would love that ride, the Ferris wheel, wave down from the top. The cabbie twisted the radio dial. The yellow cab hummed. A curtain pulled shut up in a second story window. The shadow of a stray dog darted out and back into shadow. They waited for Mike. A slow song sang with a chocolate voice.

  There once lived a cowboy named Jim White. He’s known and famous across the globe as the discoverer of the world’s most colossal, most beautiful, most spectacular, most stupendous, and all-around best caves. Now, these caves he found happen to be right here in our very own desert. On a clear day you can look out that window and see the mountains they’re in. The caves are eight hundred feet down, a maze of three hundred caves at least, gigantic bubbles in the solid rock. A few are big enough to fit a town. Jim found the entrance to the caves one day while herding calves: a tunnel two hundred feet down—the blackest hole you ever saw.

  What did Jim do when he found the blackest hole you ever saw? Did he say, “I’m tired. I think I’ll go back to the ranch for a nap”? Or, “Well behold, there’s a mighty big and interesting hole in the ground right there, but I have no ladder to reach it with”? Did he say, “Some other man can explore that hole, for I have no expertise”? No, Jim didn’t say any of that. He went and built a ladder two hundred feet tall. Then he climbed right down in the hole on his new ladder, then three miles down the sloping tunnel, like plumbing the belly of an immense stone snake. Sometimes Jim crawled on hands and knees. He had no friend with him and only the small glow of his lamp to see by. His reward was the biggest cave anyone’s ever seen, that’s a man for you. Later, Jim brought a boy with him, a Mexican, a pony-tender and ranch hand, since the other cowboys were too scared to come. But Jim mostly explored the caves alone. He plumbed pits with no bottom and wandered chambers with no ceiling. He saw sights too strange and marvelous to speak of.

  That was 1901, more than fifty years ago. Sure, other cowboys had seen the big hole in the ground in their wanderings, but none bothered to look into it further. The Indians of this desert must have known, since they make every root and rock their business. But it is well known that Indians are deadly afraid of the dark. Who else knew the caves? Not the bees nor the birds, though they surely swooped down for a peek at the tunnel’s mouth when the sun angled right. The bats knew, they lived in the caves, of course, as did the fishes swimming down in the cold black pools. But the bats and fishes are purblind creatures. What does knowing mean for such as them? The bat hears the stone and flies. The fish feels water and swims. It goes to show one thing sure: the greatest grandest things on earth are nothing at all until some man comes along, points it out, and says: “Hey lookie here!”

  Jim White never looked for fame and fortune. He appeared any regular man. He was born on a ranch no one’s heard of and was riding the range before he turned eight. His horse was his best pal. He wore a sombrero since it served him best. He was a freckled man since birth, a gringo, but good anyway, his heart was clean. Jim ate rice and beans with any man, and beef when there was some. He liked cattle and cactus, firesides, and tall tales with happy endings. He was poor with writing but managed a letter to Mother once a week her life through. Nor was he one for praying or dreaming up what God might carve if He set His hands to limestone. But once such sights invade a cowboy’s small parched brain, they cannot be rooted out except by death or terrible infirmity.

  Sleep now, my darling children.

  Another waltz played on the station. A light flickered on in a high window down the street, then off. Mike trotted from down the alley. He slid in the cab, slammed the back door, and smiled. “Drive on, Ricardo.”

  “Who’s that girl?” said the cabbie to Mike.

  In a few blocks Mike said to Mel, “That nose is a geyser.”

  The cab drove past the theater with the marquee lights out. At the cathedral a cat sat at the crack in the big doors. “I got married there,” the cabbie said, and pointed at the doors. “Funerals, baptisms. Everything is there.” The bell tower reached up, but no one looked. “I got married there right before they shipped me to France. My wife, she worries about everything. You boys married?”

  “What outfit?” said Mike.

  “The 4th infantry,” said the cabbie. “Where you boys from?”

  “Omaha Beach?” said Mike.

  “Utah Beach.”

  “Utah Beach my ass,” said Mel. “Damn it’s cold.”

  “My dad was in France in the First War,” said Mike. “I’d give my eye teeth for Utah Beach.” The houses were snug on the street like a tribe, low and dark behind stone walls: a pile of rocks, a pile of sand, a pile of tires covered with sand and rocks and glass in splinters and shards. Mike said, “They say the Channel was red a mile out to sea.”

  “I couldn’t say the color of the water,” said the cabbie.

  “They say it was a bridge of legs and backs,” said Mike. “You a fair swimmer?”

  “I swam to shore. I got this scar.” The cabbie showed the side of his neck under the stif
f collar. “My wife, she had our first while I was gone.”

  “That’s something,” said Mike. “That neck is really something. What I wouldn’t give.”

  “My youngest just lost her front tooth. Now my oldest kid’s teeth need fixing. Time flies.” The cabbie rubbed his fingers together like money. Mike and Mel passed the bottle between them. Blood from the neck smeared Mike’s hands and cuffs. Mike offered the bottle to the cabbie, who shook his head, and Mike and Mel drank again. The dash glowed green and the town thinned. The cab rolled up a low hill.

  “He could have nicked his neck shaving,” said Mel to Mike. “There’s a thousand ways to nick a neck.” The cab crested the hill. The river lay far below, just a black line.

  “Does it ever flood?” said Mike.

  “It floods,” said the cabbie. “It runs a thousand miles at least.”

  Mountains busted out ragged and parched from place to place and the cab rolled down the north side. Mel looked at the soft place behind the cabbie’s ear, “He could have read up on Utah Beach in any book.”

  “You hear that, Ricardo?” said Mike. “Mel says you read up on Utah Beach in a book.”

  “Sure. I read it in a book. I was never in Normandy, never saw Paris, my barber nicked my neck a good one, better tell my wife where I was all that time. You boys are smart as whips.”

  “Don’t let Mel get your goat,” said Mike.

  “Sure,” said the cabbie.

  “That nose needs ice.”

  “Sure,” said the cabbie.

  Mel pressed his nose to his collar.

  “How many kids you got?” said Mike.

  “Two boys and two girls.”

  “And some’s got crooked teeth,” said Mel. “A shame.”

  “People hate people with crooked teeth,” said Mike. “It’s a sad fact of nature.”

  “My girl tripped on the foot of the table, the tooth came right out,” said the cabbie. “Of course there was blood, any girl would have cried. I found the tooth, cleaned it. The roots of a baby’s tooth are exactly like a screw. You know that? I never did. So I set that tooth back in her head like new. Didn’t know if I could, it was just last week.”

  Mel said, “Crooked teeth, crooked soul.” He drank.

  The land rose again, fell again, rose again. The dogs barked from chain to chain in the yards behind the walls, barked from house to house. Now the last house, the last parked car, the last liquor store with lights out, the sign that said, “Come back soon, y’all.” The edge of the desert. The sombrero tipped up against the back glass and blotted the town. The music played out strong and joyful till miles of sand killed the trumpets.

  Jim White did not just stumble onto his caves by chance. He was invited in. Here’s how:

  From a distance he had thought it was a volcanic eruption. Or the end of the world. The calves he’d been driving agreed, fled to high ground at the sight of black swirling spew. Jim’s horse shied and bucked too, refused to go closer. But he was the very best sort of horse, and Jim tied his shirt across the horse’s eyes and roped him to a bush, which soothed him. Jim crawled on hands and knees to the edge of the hole where the cloud poured forth.

  Millions and millions of bats. The bats swarmed and banked around him. They fanned his face with ten million soft wings. The bats tipped and turned around the sombrero and the sombrero fell and they banked around it. They squeaked and chattered, the echo doubled them, so pretty a sound it was! They made Jim weak and strong at the exact same time. “There’s no end to these bats,” he thought, but still he waited because there’s an end to all things, a cowboy learns this much. When the bats were done and gone, the hole they left was black as a solid wall. Jim dropped a stone down and listened. Stones and hours dropped and the day passed. The calves, lonely, came back and stood with the horse and they all chewed weeds. Jim built a fire. He flung down a flaming arm of cactus that arced and landed far below. It burned as bright as it could, but, in all that dark, barely gave a hint of the width of the bats’ vast doorway. Jim never saw the hat again.

  That night at the bunkhouse, Jim talked of cows and branding and listened to cowboy jokes. He let his horse lick the plate clean, as always, then bunked in. But how could he sleep? Next day, Jim gathered an ax, some wire, and a bit of rope. He filled the kerosene lamp to overflowing, packed his kit and departed on his horse, looking out for likely trees along the way. He’d need many to build his ladder.

  Once, later on, when he’d been up and down the ladder so many times that the bats were pals to him, Jim found a dead man in the caves. A skeleton sleeping in a crotch of rock. The size of him was twice as big as any man Jim had ever seen, though the skull was exactly normal. At first sight, Jim thought he’d found some breed of giants, Red Men from the Plain who lived in the caves, then died. But when Jim touched the big man’s arm, every bone crumbled to dust. Every bone but the skull. Scientists later explained the chemistry: limestone and water dripping, bloating the bones.

  Jim carried the skull out of the cave like a treasure. He lent it to a doctor in Carlsbad, who lent it to a doctor in Cloudcroft, who lent it to a doctor in Weed. In this way, the skull was lost. That skull would have been the prize of Jim’s famous cave museum.

  The road outside town was a two-lane and smooth. It was built for buggies with spokes and horses, long before Fort Bliss, then improved. The road aimed at the spot where three searchlights swiveled together, green, red, and green. Dizzy and earnest. The cab buzzed north between the spines of mountains. Birds blew up across the headlights from time to time, but ten thousand others crouched in weeds. Dust devils eddied, spun up, and disappeared unseen. A snake S’d off the concrete at the cab’s first vibrations and was long gone before the cab whizzed past, disappearing with her fifty thousand twins. The sand spat at the glass, a trillion trillion grains per fistful, blinding the cab and shoving it across the road. The moon slit the sky, it silvered the mountains and cactus which stood in disordered salute to the road.

  Mel said, “I’m not tired in the least. I could drive out all night.”

  The framed picture swung from the rearview mirror, smooth like a pendulum. The cabbie’s finger stilled the frame: Kiki in front, holding Gloria in his lap, they grinned out at their father with Connie behind; the tall sister was turned to Richie, who was taller, saying something to him just as the shutter opened. The cabbie let the frame swing free. He tried the radio again but the static sounded like sand and he twisted it off. He rolled down the window, sand blew in. He rolled the window up.

  “They’d string us up as AWOL if we drove out all night,” said Mike. “I can take or leave desert.”

  The cab flew on like a bee.

  “Reveille’s at six,” said Mike. He leaned up. “It must be coming on four. I want some shuteye. What time is it?” If there was a clock on the front dash it was dead. The other dials glowed green in the cabbie’s face. The speedometer needle shivered as the cab sped on at 66 miles per hour. The gas was below half, plenty for an up and back to Base. The box for heat was at the cabbie’s brown-creased knee. It was cold. Mike sang:

  Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do.

  I’m half crazy over the love of you.

  It won’t be a stylish marriage. I can’t afford a carriage.

  But you’ll look sweet, upon the seat, of a bicycle built for two.

  “Shut that clap trap,” said Mel.

  “You shut it, Mel, I like that tune. What time is it?” He drank. “Reveille’s at six.”

  “Sing it on your wedding day,” said Mel. “You like that song, Ricardo?’

  “This desert, way back, was an inland sea,” said the cabbie. “Was once completely underwater. I know all about this desert.”

  “Open your eyes,” said Mel, who licked his lips. His nose was dry but the smell of blood had lingered for miles. “Open your goddamn eyes.”

  “Those mountains behind Base, they’re old coral reefs built up by clams, urchins, and such. Think of how many urchins. There’s c
aves in the ground famous the world over. Big enough to fit a town.” The cabbie’s fingers found the switch for heat and he flicked it on and off. The needle hovered over 68 miles per hour.

  “Last month I found a starfish by the latrine,” said Mike. “I sent it home to my folks.”

  “They’re the most beautiful caves you ever saw, gold and pearl swirled in the rock. They were made after the sea dried up. I tell my kids, ‘Squint your eyes. A giant squid is at our heels! Whales and sharks is winding around like one of Ike’s submarines, peaceful like lambs, eels and fishes missiling around, jellyfish, pink, orange, and green, waving their arms and legs, that would be fine.’ I say, ‘Wouldn’t it be fine?’”

  “You got kids?” said Mike. “I’d like some kids.”

  “Give me that bottle,” said Mel. He pressed his swollen cheek against the cold window. The sombrero was flattened by the glass. The glass was smeared with blood and sweat.

  “I got four kids,” said the cabbie. “I know all the cave stories by heart. They say, ‘Papa, tell again about the caves and the bats and the big man!’ and I say, ‘Alright then, I’ll tell it again when your heads are on the pillows.’”

  “I don’t care for caves,” said Mel and looked at his watch, which was too dark to see. “It’s cold. Let’s get some heat.” The cabbie flicked the switch on and off.

  “This certainly explains the starfish,” said Mike.

  “Your starfish makes a hill of beans,” said Mel and drank. “What does he know? Nothing.” A mile passed. The Base was a halo sprawled low behind the searchlights. “I could use some heat.”

  “The heat’s been busted for a week,” said the cabbie. A mile passed. The speedometer needle reached 72 then passed it, onward to 75 miles per hour. “Was that girl OK?” said the cabbie. “I’ve got two little girls myself.”

  “It’s a simple question of justice,” said Mike. “Try the heat again.”