Lizard Tales (18 page)

After the man’s Catholic funeral, I decided I was a little thirsty and took a swig of the communion wine. When I hit it, I was more confused than a blind man trying to open a revolving door. It was real wine! I started drinking more of the wine, and then the priest walked into the room.

“I have to drink four more bottles of wine,” the priest told me.

“Well, I’d be more than happy to help you,” I told him.

“No, you can’t help me, son,” the priest said. “I blessed the wine so I must drink it.”

I scratched my head and told him, “Well, if you bless me and the wine’s already blessed, then I can drink the wine. See, the way I see it is you got the power and I got the tolerance and we go together like Pamela Anderson and Botox, monsignor.”

The priest blessed me and said a few ritual statements over me, and then we started in on the four bottles of wine. Now, I ain’t saying I was having fun, but I felt like an invisible kid in a dodgeball game. We were on it like a harpooned hippo on a banana tree. The priest and I started having a shot contest right there in the back of the church. I went and got a Ping-Pong ball from the recreation room and we even played wine pong. I’d pop a glass and he’d
hit the wine, and then he’d pop a glass and I’d hit the wine. Needless to say, after about an hour, we were more screwed up than high-top flip-flops. There wasn’t a drop of wine left in the four bottles, but brother, I was surely blessed and felt rather angelic at the time.

But let’s not forget that the priest still had to do a graveside service. The priest stood up and tried to walk, but he went about as straight as Boy George. He couldn’t talk, either. He sounded like
Hooked on Phonics
in Japanese to me. We were just hammered.

Amy came back to the room, took one eye swipe at us, and said, “What have y’all done?”

“We haven’t done nothing, I was just helping this priest out with his Catholic duties and felt the lead to do so,” I told her.

She told me to take the priest to the graveside service while she cleaned up the back room and to mind my manners. She had no idea we were as messed up as a blind man trying to open a revolving door. The priest and I went out to the parking lot and he tried to get in the driver’s seat of my truck, so we started having an argument about who was going to drive to the graveside service. Keep in mind that the cemetery was located just across the highway from the church, but we still had to drive over there. Neither of us could see the ditches, so there was no way to keep between them.

“Bo, I’m going to drive because you’re drunk,” I told him.

“No, Bo, I’m not drunk,” the priest told me. “I’m just filled with the Spirit.”

“Bo, let me assure you,” I told him. “That’s not the Spirit you’re feeling right now—at least, not the Holy Spirit but maybe Boone’s Farm spirit.”

We didn’t realize our argument was getting louder and louder by the minute, or that everyone in the parking lot was looking at us. The priest looked at me and condemned me to hell in front of everyone. I told him I’d been there, but was so mean they kicked me back out and if I could drink with a priest, I could fight with one too.

“Bo, I’m about to smack you so hard the picture on your driver’s license is going to be swollen,” I told him.

About that time, Amy and the owner of the funeral home came walking up. The priest was so mad, he was about to fight me. He really wanted to fight me! I told him it was a whole lot easier getting on this 250 pounds than getting off, but he told me he had God on his side.

I said, “Priest, I don’t think God boxes.”

The priest replied, “You never seen the Ali phantom punch?”

Well, it was on like Donkey Kong after that! He sailed on me, and I hip-checked him to the ground and then there came the funeral staff.

Amy broke us up and didn’t say a word. I knew from the way she was looking at me I was as done as a Thanksgiving turkey at a chicken slaughterhouse. She snatched the keys and drove us to the graveside service. That priest was like a pine tree in a tornado during that service, swaying back and forth the whole time. I felt like a chimpanzee on a laced bunch of bananas. I was just as tore up as he was. I don’t know what’s in that wine, but that holy wine is some good stuff. I know when Jesus turned water into wine, that must have been a heck of a party!

The family was really upset. They were ranting and raving, and the priest was just trying to finish the service. I looked over at Amy and just saw rage in her eyes. I knew
I was in for it now. She was hotter than a mess of collard greens on the back burner of a four-dollar stove.

All of a sudden, Amy’s face turned bright red and she started screaming. I thought at first I might need to say my last prayer ’cause she’d had enough. But then I looked down, and Amy’s legs were covered in fire ants. It looked like she was wearing red socks. I’d heard of being hotter than a mess of fire ants in a flash flood, but this gave it a whole new perspective. She’d stepped right in a mound of fire ants and didn’t know it! I dove toward Amy to get the fire ants off her legs, and I guess the priest had caught on too. He dove at about the same time to save her. When we reached Amy, we collided and bumped heads. Well, you know that went over like a trapdoor in a rowboat, and when I stood up, the priest was knocked out cold.

Amy just looked at me and said, “You’re about as useful as a restrictor plate on a Yugo!”

I said, “Yep, but I am now blessed and the priest says I’m filled with the Spirits—or, at least
a
spirit.”

She left me right there at the graveside madder than a toothless man eyeing a rib-eye steak. The man’s family left because the priest couldn’t finish the service. It was the most horrible thing I had ever been a part of. I might have lost my girl and definitely lost my best source of income. Man. I was as tore up as Noah with a woodpecker. I had to call Jason to come pick me up at the church. The priest was sitting with me and had an egg on his head about the size of a softball. It looked like he went headfirst into a bull. My arms were both swollen from the fire ants, and it looked like I had hemorrhoids the size of grapefruits growing out of them. I was just miserable.

The priest looked at me and said, “Well, there’s only one thing to do at a time like this.”

“What’s that?” I asked him as I started to bow my head.

“Bless some more wine,” he said.

I smiled and said, “Father, I like the way you think.”

I finally learned that day that rapture isn’t what you get when you lift something that’s too heavy.

[Ronnie’s Guide to Living]

T
he day I married my Amy I was happier than Hugh Hefner in a sorority house. With all the bad I’d had in my life, I had spent many a year feeling lower than a mole’s belly button on digging day. But for once, I felt luckier than a five-legged rabbit.

I had learned from my first marriage that you can turn a housewife into a whore but you’ll never turn a whore into a housewife. So this time around, I was bound and determined to be more successful than an ice-water vendor in hell. I decided to ask Pops what the key to a long and happy marriage was. After deep, intense pondering for about five seconds, he said, “Son, you have to be the king of the castle. From day one, you have to love her unconditionally but let her know who makes the rules and sets the standards.” Then he added, “Women are like tiles: if you lay ’em right the first time, you can walk all over ’em for life.” So I started thinking of ways to lovingly let Amy know that things were going to have to be “my way or the highway” between us.

We had decided to get married on Halloween and have a costume wedding. All my groomsmen were knights with swords; Amy’s bridesmaids were princesses; and we were the king and queen of Rontopia. All our guests wore costumes, and if you happened to drive by and see the festivities, you would have been as confused as a cross-eyed ’coon trying to cross the road.

Well, the wedding was a success and we had more fun on the honeymoon than a fat dog at a tire factory. When we returned home, I carried my bride across the threshold and remembered what Pops had said. I figured I’d better go ahead and lay down the foundation right away—but I also figured I’d have to be slicker about it than grease coming out of a barbecue biscuit. I set Amy down on our couch, walked into the bedroom, and came out with a pair of my pants in my hands. “Here, baby,” I said, handing them to her. “Try these on.” Amy looked at the pants and then looked at me as confused as a blind ’coon in a corn maze.

“Ronnie,” she said, “you know these are too big for me. I can’t wear them.” Smiling from ear-to-ear, I replied, “That’s right, honey, and you always remember that. You’ll never be able to wear my pants in this house. As long as we both understand that, we’ll be as happy as a mule munching on briars.”

Amy just smiled and said, “OK.”

I left that room stepping higher than a high-socked rooster in a pigpen. Well, a few hours flew by and we were getting ready for our first night in our house together as husband and wife. When I pulled the sheets down on the bed, there was a set of Amy’s jeans lying on my pillow.

“Baby, why are these on my pillow?” I asked her.

She walked in the room and said, “Oh, I wanted you to try them on.”

I just started laughing. “Amy, you know I can’t get into your pants. I’d have a better chance of trying to nail Jell-O to an oak tree.”

Amy just smiled. Then, as she got ready to turn out the light, she looked me in the eye and said, “That’s right, honey. You can’t get into my pants. And until you decide to let me wear yours, you’re never gonna get into them again.”

With that, she snapped off the light and I was surrounded by darkness. As I laid back on the bed, knowing that sleep was all I’d be getting that night, I realized two things: one, never take marital advice from a man who sleeps in his own room alone; and two, I had definitely married Miss Right. It just took me until that moment to realize her first name was “Always.”

[Leaving]

[Lying]