Reptile House Page 7

  The cab cut east some miles. The moon set. The searchlights lay down. The cab halted nose up on a dune that looked exactly like a cresting wave. Mel got out and kicked the tires. Mike sang a marching tune, the stars faded to a slice of sun.

  “Get out and dance,” Mel said. “You’re a happy man.”

  “Something with local flavor,” said Mike, and clapped a drumbeat. The cabbie stood by the dune.

  “Like a wedding!” said Mel.

  “He’s stubborn,” said Mike.

  “Make him spin.” Soon after, Mike spun the cabbie.

  “Tie his hands.” Soon thereafter, Mike tore his shirt, wrapped the head in his right sleeve and the wrists with the left.

  “Now, give him a kiss goodbye. We best get walking.”

  “I’ll not,” said Mike, but he touched the soft temple above the sleeve. “Sayonara, amigo,” he said.

  “On your knees,” said Mel. Mike pushed the cabbie down.

  Way back, this desert lay at the bottom of the sea, ten million years, or some time, the reef rose and fell, the acid bath receded, and there in the end were caves. Rain and snow dripped and prettied them up: columns formed where drippings met; the gypsum chandeliers were unsurpassed. When Jim’s fingers found a match by his toe and struck light, Jim kissed his own hand. The fishes in the pools thought it was the moon. The caves are grander than the pyramids on the Nile, more lavish than a cathedral in Rome. These caves are so big as to fit ten cities, with balconies and bridges of gold and pearl. The caves’ ceilings, too, are something to look at. See there, fanged and curtained, towered and peacock-tailed, pocked, razored, fancied and filigreed over every silken wall. See here: every inch buzzing nectar, now cold as lava, from yonder buttress. There, the apple-pears bangle from a marble girl’s arms. Behold and wonder: The stone bear licks great stone paws! There, the winged snails sleep in lace forever in mother’s kitchen garden. Ten-foot turtles stampede, off to war, and with what speed, while their golden riders squint and aim for the spleen and pit of the tall sweet terrible sad. The world is full of beauty! The world is full of beauty! I am down on my knees to tell you!

  They spent one bullet on the cabbie. They spent one match and the rest of the shirt on the cab. The fire was pale and disappointing at the beginning of day. They emptied their boots and retied the laces. Mel wiped his nose, which was blue and smeared and sore. They warmed their hands as the frost dripped off every thorn and made a damp place in the sand that a flea would drink up in a week. In one hundred years it would be a puddle of respectable size, in ten thousand years, a pool with a fish. In seven hundred thousand, a modest lake, ten million and fifty-two, a smallish sea and the caves drowned.

  “I wish I had my belt,” said Mike. The boys got walking south. They would have followed the sun but some clouds had come in. They turned their backs to the mountains and followed some animal’s trail. They looked up for jets.

  “They must have been grounded.”

  “Maybe they’ll send dogs.”

  “We’d hear if they sent dogs.”

  The cactus pointed the way. It was far to walk and they tired. Some bats flew up from nowhere, as if the bats could stand it no longer. They turned east, maybe they were birds, they turned west. Far away a thing cried out. Sand beat on their faces. They turned north, then east again, behind a still ridge of rock. They walked south since the sun was high, the ridge rolled over and settled back down. They took turns with the sombrero. The red balls on the rim glowed in the sun, joyful and good.

  Up north, a farmer planted his field seed by seed in black dirt. He saw no mountains at all. The tractor coughed and the farmer stopped on the third pass to lift the hood: the boy ought to have changed the oil. A black fly buzzed his ear as he tinkered. The farmer waved with his hat and slapped at his neck and when the tractor turned the fourth row, a rocket ship flew over. A black fly crawled to his nest, happy, with the lump of farmer’s neck in his thorax.

  “Good morning,” said the man on the trail. The man was neat and trim, but tall as two men with hands big as plates. His trumpet was gold and tied by rope to his belt. His skin was red, but by nature or by sun, it was impossible to say.

  “You better come with me,” the big man said. “You boys look lost!”

  “We have to get back. Can you help us home?”

  “Of course, I’ll lead you,” said the big man. “But first, come see a wondrous sight!” He lifted the trumpet and played.

  They turned with the big man toward the mountains. He told all about his life: his gal back home who was fine; his last best meal which was sausage and beans stirred in one pot. He told about his late great horse and many other stories. “Such successes form a man’s soul,” he said. The stories did lighten the mood.

  The boys walked on and on. They tired and rested sometimes. In this way, the day passed. A gull flew over. They looked back from time to time and smoke curled up from their abandoned fire, as if they’d not walked a mile.

  They suffered and shivered, but the big man did not break a sweat. Once, he offered a canteen and something that looked like bread. They did not sleep at night, but walked. Another day came and went, seeing double, like crabs, and a third day and a fourth. On the fifth day, the big man whistled in a pair of seahorses from the green pasture yonder: twelve feet at the shoulder, one dappled, one bay. They’d been nibbling clams. They were less than keen on the bridle, pawing the grass and tossing their heads. These were no gentle steeds. But the man was firm and they came to him. He called them deary and sweetheart, and my-precious-little-one. He petted their thick rough muzzles. He fed them sugar from his palm, which they licked clean with footlong tongues that curled and forked and roved his enormous forearm. In this way, the beasts were made tame for the journey.

  Rabbit’s Foot

  “Fight on the roof!” A steel door slammed above.

  Tommy clapped his hands. “Let’s go.” He jumped two steps at a time and Billy followed skipping three steps at a time up the stairwell to the roof party.

  The fight was more of a skirmish: two guys, one girl, someone’s dog. It was mostly played out by the time Tommy and Billy slammed through the door. The contestants were still chest-to-chest at the burn barrel. Snow was falling on their jackets and their hoods were pulled up.

  “Hey, Tom,” people said, and Tommy said, “Hey.”

  “Be good,” their mother, Rose, had said a thousand times. She spoke loud in Polish to her seven boys and they all understood.

  “Come on,” said Tommy to his little brother.

  The fire in the barrel burned old kitchen chairs. People were breaking them up with their boots and other people were stuffing the chair parts in the flame.

  “We should build a snowman or something,” someone said, but no one did.

  There was snow on the TV. The extension cord was completely covered up until it appeared in the gap under the stairwell door and snaked away to some plug-in below. A La-Z-Boy collected snow on old leather. A girl with a blanket watched a sports channel, pitches in slow motion, a jockey tossed off his horse over and over, trampled over and over, commentary, golf scores. The stereo speakers thumped. The people stood in groups near the edge and swayed and drank and laughed in the green light of the hotel sign high across the street. Billy shifted his eyes just in time. Girls clustered, an amoeba, or a many-headed amoeba with smoke from its nostrils and slanty mouths. Or a dragon. The girls weren’t pretty. He’d thought they’d be pretty. The pretty ones turned to check Tommy out. Billy was still just a kid. People and girls sat on the brick ledge swinging their legs over pedestrians four-floors down. Billy tied his laces. He zipped his coat to his chin. He breathed on his hands and made friends with the stairwell wall.

  The card table was in the middle of the roof under a saggy beach umbrella. It was lit up by a construction work lamp that someone had dragged up there. Buckets were turned over for seats. Tommy was looking over the players’ shoulders. Tommy wanted in on the game but it was the last hand before int
ermission. The hermit crabs had arrived. The crab handler had a brown bag he held over his head. He circled the table. When the hand was over, he dumped ten crabs on the table by the potato chip pile. Some crabs balled up in the cold. The live ones were going everywhere on the table between the bottles and half-empty cups. The derby would begin momentarily.

  “First one to the edge wins,” someone said.

  Tommy put ten dollars down to buy into the derby. He picked up his crab, chugged his beer, and drew the starting line with cheese whiz. The crabs lined up. Tommy’s was medium-sized, built for speed, black and healthy looking.

  Tommy said, “My crab will kick ass.”

  He chugged a bottle that was near.

  “He’s Billy Super Crab for my baby brother.”

  A few people looked over at Billy on the wall. Billy liked peace. Billy was scrawny, fourteen and slim, but taller by the day, a rocket on the launch pad at T minus ten seconds.

  “On your mark, get set . . .”

  They were off in the first heat.

  The flag over their building was only a block and a half away but MIA in this snow. Billy closed his eyes and could see it anyway. The flag was the same year and model as Neil Armstrong’s moon flag. Same dye lot, same bolt of cotton. Their granddad’s company made the moon flag. When he died, he left Rose a stack of backups. The boys would divvy them up when she died. They were folded in plastic in the front-room closet. Rose was conservative with replacements. She made repairs until there was no other option. But if too much city grime had caked the cloth, or if cracks had formed along the stripes, or if the field of blue began fading into the stars, Rose went to the closet. She shellacked the fresh flags on the fire escape for fumes. They dried on the grating in the sun until they stood straight out like zero gravity. When the flag was absent for repairs or replacements, the old neighbors yelled complaints.

  “Billy, where the hell’s our goddamn flag?”

  “Sean, tell Rose to hurry it up with Neil Armstrong.”

  Rose had the boys rig up a spotlight system for nighttime viewing.

  Billy could not see the moon either. The snow. The smoke billowed thick from the burn barrel and people’s liquored breath made him dizzy-headed. He would never see grandpa’s original. Hardly anyone got to go to the moon.

  People gathered under the umbrella for the second heat. Billy Super Crab had won the first heat by better than five lengths, though three other crabs never even stuck a leg out to try. The money on the card table was divided with little controversy.

  “Give it to me, baby,” said Tommy, and he kissed his crab for luck which stirred the crowd.

  “On your mark.”

  Billy inched off the wall.

  “Get set.” He stepped closer.

  “Go.”

  A boy might walk the ledge on his hands. A cartwheel. Billy inched closer to Tommy’s back. Billy stuffed his hands in his pockets and watched the racers go. When the race was won, he opened a beer for himself.

  Billy Super Crab kept winning.

  “He’s a natural athlete,” said Tommy.

  “Mine was half dead when it got here,” said one of the losers. “I should get my money back.”

  “Whine, whine. You got to want it. My guy wants it more.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “I could tell it about my boy first thing I saw him. He’s serious,” said Tommy.

  “Shut the fuck up,” said the loser.

  “My little brother’s my rabbit’s foot.” Tommy nuggied Billy into the circle under the umbrella. “Fuck off, all of you.”

  Rose’s magic child was born at the beginning and end of the astrological calendar, her Sweet William. Future President of the USA, and bulletproof. Future baseball star, a left-batting righty, future badass of Wall Street. Future ball-buster, and rich. Horses and pull-tabs would obey him someday.

  “Come on, baby, come on.”

  Super Crab triumphed again.

  “How old are you?” said one of the girls.

  “Seventeen,” said Billy.

  “You’re taller than your brother.”

  “Two inches.”

  “Your brother’s mouthy.”

  Tommy ate pretzels like a bear. He belched and the girls laughed.

  Billy Super Crab won the sixth race and the seventh. Someone turned the music off. Most contestants were in permanent hibernation, eaten by the dog, or lost in the snow with the dog digging. People were shivering. The beer was colder and they drank it fast. Only three crabs were still going strong. One guy offered a twenty for the Super Crab, but Tommy said, “Hell no.”

  “More beer.”

  A half-pretty girl showed up and Tommy knew her. She leaned in like Queen of the Rooftop. She stood by Tommy.

  In the next race, Billy Super Crab pulled away in the last six inches beating out a little orange speedster who came from nowhere.

  “Super Crab, Super Crab, Super Crab.” They pounded the roof with their boots and threw peanuts at the third place finisher who had not moved from the starting line. He gazed at the chips like warm sand, but Billy knew dead eyes. He drank. He picked up Mr. Third Place, blew heat on him, and put him in his pocket. The sirens whined across town in a swirl of blue flash far away.

  Rose made only boy children. She said she didn’t want girls since this world was a bad place for girls. Making boys was easy, she said, pound fast and hard for a minute and a half, and no more. It took five minutes at least to make a girl, and some pleasure. Billy’s dad slept on the couch in the front room. God had been nasty to Rose, she said, but it skips generations and a boy was a good thing to be: like the ending of a Sunday matinée, she said. Like the pilgrims in Technicolor starving for months and months then fine and saved when the Indians finally show up in loincloths. The big beautiful brown men enter from the edge of the big screen. Feathers and fancy leather. They have arms the size of Rose’s front door. The arms are looped around huge baskets of bread, and dried fish, and late red apples the size of this boy’s head. It is the camera angle. The enormous feast is set at the pilgrims’ table, grateful, THE END.

  In the second feature, Martians pack for travel at low velocity. Back home is far, Rose said. The mission is not really over yet either, since part of the mission is just looking around, hovering. Meanwhile, over at the saloon, the black hat draws but the white hat is faster. The ladies swoon while townsfolk watch the last loop of the last reel.

  Billy pulls off his shirt under the marquee. He stretches in the summer sun and yawns. He reconnoiters with his brothers at the corner and they cut down alleys, over fences, between buildings, then they pick up speed through the old bat’s yard just because they have all day. Since the old bat’s got her own patch of grass. Since the old bat doesn’t have to share. She stands in the window and hollers, “I’ll be calling Rose about this private property infraction!”

  “You do that, lady!” Alan calls over his shoulder. “See what Rose says! Hope it’s in Polish!”

  They stomp instead of walking. They clang chain-links and kick cans instead of stomping. Pretty soon Teddy’s making up a song which doesn’t make sense but it’s funny as hell with every cuss word known harmonized with the seven: Paddy, Matty, Alan, each louder, Teddy, Sean, Tommy, and Billy the loudest since Billy is the loudest word in the English language.

  “More beer.”

  Billy Super Crab was ready for the final. It will be sudden death against the only other crab still on its legs, a big pink-shelled bruiser twice Billy’s size. They were calling the challenger Pussy Crab for his losing record. Some guy was pissing on the ledge. The Queen of the Roof whispered something in Tommy’s ear. He tipped his head and slid his crab-cold hand up her shirt. She had no coat on.

  “Super Crab, Super Crab, Super Crab.”

  The racers were off fast. Pussy and Billy neck-and-neck. Billy was finally getting tired, he hesitated on his legs. His crab eyes shifted right to Pussy who saw his chance and surged. Then Billy collected himself. The
crowd leaned in for the photo finish. Both crabs went over the edge but Tommy was on the spot. He scooped Billy from midair, held the champ overhead, and pumped his arms.

  “The winner!”

  “Super Crab, Super Crab, Super Crab!”

  Pussy bounced off. The dog barked.

  Of course the race was under dispute. The construction lamp crashed over first. Then the table and everything on it. Tommy was after a big guy who was mad about everything and Super Crab went flying. The dog was running around and didn’t know who to bark at. Arms, fists, the usual, but the fight was green in the hotel sign that was extra dim from several missing letters and old bulbs too, while the crab was lost under all of this mess with only his ocean shell for protection. It had nothing to do with him. Hopefully he would tuck and hide, wait it out, what shells are for.