Lizard Tales (19 page)

O
ne of the things I’ve dreaded most over the last few years is Saturday-morning breakfast at Momma’s house. Now, don’t get me wrong. Everyone knows her cooking is so good it could make your tongue jump out and lick the eyebrows off your head. And if she ever got to making them cat-head biscuits and molasses, my tongue would pure drill a hole in the roof of my mouth and slap my brain around till it told my mouth to take another bite. The problem was Amy.

See, she always pulled a double shift at the funeral home Friday night into Saturday, and that meant she had to pick up bodies at various places and transport them. She drove this big ol’ spooky van that we referred to as the meat wagon. Normally, I’d rather have hemorrhoids the size of grapefruits than to be around when she showed up in that thing. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t take a liking to being around the deceased or anything that had to do with them; it just really always creeped me out. But if Amy had a call, she would always swing by Momma’s in that meat wagon afterward, roll up inside like nothing was different, and sit down to breakfast with us.

Now, needless to say, every time this happened I was outta there like a one-legged man at a breakdancing contest. Amy always found it funny. And she knew if she called and told everyone she was on the way, then there would always be plenty of food—’cause once I got that
info I’d feel sicker than Lady Gaga’s blind date after the introduction.

My momma could slap-cook some country breakfasts, and it got to where Amy was ruining them almost every week. So I finally broke down and told Momma I was gonna fix Amy the next time she came by on a Saturday morning. I figured I’d leave like I normally did when she arrived; but instead of driving off, I’d park up the road, run back through the woods to Momma’s house, and climb into the back of that meat wagon. I’d hang out there until Amy started down the road, then I’d jump out and scare her so bad her eyes would bug out like a toady frog in a hailstorm. I figured this might break her from the habit of coming over if I started messing with her every time she did. Problem was, I told Momma my plan in front of Jason.

You’ve gotta remember that Jason’s sneaky enough, but when it comes to smarts, if brains were gas he wouldn’t have enough to run an ant’s go-kart halfway around a Cheerio. Now, Jason is the type of brother who is just like a billy goat—hardheaded with a stinkin’ tail—so I should have known at some point he was gonna throw a kink into my plan.

Well, sure enough, the next Saturday rolled around and we were eating hot grits and link sausage with red-eye gravy when the phone rang. It was Amy and she was coming over. I will tell you I was happier than a starving bullfrog at a blow-fly convention. She rolled in, gave me a kiss, and asked me if I was staying and eating with her—with that smart smirk across her face that she does so well.

“If you believe I’m staying here with you and that van, you must think Grape-Nuts are a venereal disease and Peter Pan is a hospital utensil.”

She just laughed as I kissed her good-bye. Then I made
like a baby and headed on outta there. I just couldn’t wait to sneak back around and finally ruin one of
her
Saturday mornings! As luck would have it, she left the door unlocked. So I climbed in and then froze. I’d forgotten how horrified I was of this van in the first place! Once I got in, I realized this might not be the brightest idea I ever had. Then I remembered that Pops always told me courage was being scared to death but saddling up anyway, so I eased into the back.

I had never seen the inside of one of these things. There were two stretchers lying there: one on each side. Problem was, they both had these black body bags laid on them—but one was full and zipped all the way to the top. Now, I could tell that wasn’t a bag of dirty laundry in there and I was more nervous than a three-legged cat trying to cover crap on an icy pond. I knew Amy never brought bodies over, but maybe this time she was in a hurry. I decided it wasn’t gonna take me but an instant to get out of that van. But when I turned to head out I saw her coming out the door. I was trapped—I knew exactly how a long-tailed mountain lion feels in a room full of rat traps.

Well, I figured I could either man up or cut and run. But since I was this deep in the water, I figured I might as well finish swimming. I jumped into the other bag and zipped it almost to the top. There wasn’t a zipper on the inside, so I knew I had to let my hand hang out of the hole so I could get it unzipped when it came time to climb out to scare Amy.

Man, that bag was hotter than two furry rats banging in a wool sock in a sauna; I was sweating like a pig at a hot-dog plant. I could hear Amy get in. She cranked up the van and then turned up the radio. This was great because it would cover any noise I made getting out of the bag. I felt the bumps as we went out of the driveway, and
I could feel the van turn to the right and pick up speed. Now, I had no idea that this ride would be as bumpy as the back of Fat Albert’s head, but she nearly slung me off the stretcher three or four times. It was a good thing that the folks who usually rode in this wagon weren’t alive, ’cause if they were she’d have killed ’em with her driving!

After a few minutes of being shaken worse than a pit bull crapping hatchet handles, I decided to spring into action and give her the scare of her life. I eased that zipper about halfway down. I could hear Amy singing along with the radio, so I knew she wasn’t paying any attention to what was going on behind her. I slipped over to the side of the stretcher, just waiting until we got to a stoplight so she didn’t wreck when I jumped out at her like a bucktoothed mule on a patch of briars.

Just as we began to ease up to a stoplight, I could see out the window that we were in front of a church—and the church was having a wedding. There were flowers all over and people standing around outside. I thought,
Man, I’m gonna scare her so bad she’ll jump out and make a fool of herself in front of this whole wedding party. I bet she won’t ever mess with our Saturday-morning breakfasts again!

That’s when I heard some moaning that seemed to be coming from the other bag. I figured I was just hearing some feedback from the rear speakers, ’cause there wasn’t any way that a dead person would be making those sounds!

Or maybe the truck had a whine that sounded like a moan. But it kept getting louder and louder. It was at that moment I saw my life flash before my eyes.

I was as scared as a sinner in a cyclone and couldn’t even speak. I wanted to call to Amy, but she was up there just looking at the light and singing—and I couldn’t even mumble. That’s when it happened. I would have rather
been a short-legged rooster in a high-water hog pen than to see what I saw next: the bag started moving—like someone was trying to get out!

I knew I would rather be pecked to death by a crow with a rubber beak than to be in the back of that van at that moment. I looked around and saw this broom-shaped thing lying on the floor next to me. Then I did what any tough-as-nails feisty young redneck would do: I grabbed that thing and started screaming for Amy as I laid into the body bag like a fat boy on a chocolate cake.

I was screaming and swinging, and the moaning turned into yelling: “Stop! Stop it! Uhh! Ohh!”

The more it yelled, the harder I swung. I was on that bag and whatever was in it like a pack of cracked-out dogs on a three-legged cat. I was gonna make sure when I was done with whatever had come to life, it was as useless as a cow with crutches.

Next thing I knew, the back door swung open and Amy was snatching me out so fast I thought I was stuck hub-deep to a Ferris wheel. She was screaming for me to stop—and I was screaming for her to run.

“I don’t know what it is, honey, but I’m gonna beat the brakes off of it!” Then I sailed back into the van and onto that bag like a bobcat with climbing gear on a phone pole full of catnip.

Amy jumped back in and lay across the body, which had stopped moving and groaning by then. I just looked at her and said, “Are you crazy? Move so I can kill it … again!”

She reached up and grabbed the zipper. That’s when I screamed, “You’d rather be superglued to the Tasmanian Devil in a phone booth than to let that thing out!”

But she pulled the zipper to the bottom and slung the sides of the bag open. Now, about this time I realized that
we were at a major stoplight in Raleigh and there were people all around the van. Half the wedding party had come outside and cars were stopping all over the road. I could hear sirens from a police car barreling down the road toward us. I jumped out and said, “Everybody, back up! I think we have a live dead body in here!”

They just looked at me more confused than a wiener dog in a bun factory. Amy jumped out and pulled the stretcher from the van. All you could see was a body with blood all over it. But it was still moving and groaning and had both hands covering its face. The policeman ran up and wanted to know what was going on; people were all around us trying to see; and there I was with Amy, standing over a stretcher of what I thought was supposed to be a dead man turned zombie. Then he moved his hands and I saw the dead man was Jason.

Seems he had called Amy when he heard my little plan, and they had made a plan of their own. Problem was, when Jason closed the bag, he zipped it too far and couldn’t let himself back out. Well, I learned a long time ago that the early bird gets the worm—but the late bird never gets shot. And if you’re gonna get one over on the Ronster, you’d better be slicker than a skinned Georgia catfish soaked in baby oil.

I had beat Jason so bad with that broom he looked like he had run a forty-yard dash in a thirty-yard barn full of razor blades. He was split wide open and needed some stitches in his face—not to mention I had broken some of his fingers.

Amy was trying to explain the whole thing to the cop just as the news van pulled up and the reporters jumped out. The cop caught on and started trying to disperse the crowd while the reporter was trying to talk to me and find
out what had just happened. Amy helped Jason back into the van and said, “Come on. I’ve got to call work and tell them I have to take him to the hospital.”

I said, “Baby, after that I’d rather fight a pack of wild tigers in the dark with a switch than to ever get back in that van. I’ll call a cab and meet y’all at the hospital.”

Jason was still pretty much out of it. Amy strapped him in the stretcher and pushed it back into the van, then sped off with the police car giving her an escort. I just stood there with the news guy, who kept asking me to explain what had happened.

“Bo,” I told him, “I’m not real sure. But I can tell you I’d rather jump off a ten-foot ladder into a five-gallon bucket of calf slobber than to ever go through something like that again. I did learn one thing, though.”

“Please tell the viewing audience what you learned, sir.”

“I learned there ain’t no sense in beating a dead horse—but apparently it can’t hurt none neither.”

Then I tried to flag down a cab.

[Uglier]