Lizard World Read online

  “Fatty’s rockin’ the boat,” complained Lemuel Lee. “You better sit still, mister, or I’ll smash you again.”

  Now that the motor was off, there were no sounds except the lapping of the river and the splashing of the beast as they got near. They were twenty yards away before Smedlow saw the second alligator underneath the first -- a greenish snout just barely visible above the surface of the water. The larger beast -- perfectly white and at least fifteen feet in length -- was splashing so hard that the boat lurched, making the goat stumble, crushing its warmth against the side of Smedlow’s thigh. The air was thick with mosquitoes and a languorous perfume, a cloying sweetness like the smell of orange soda.

  “You smell it, don’t you fatty? It’s that perfume that makes the gators wanna do it.”

  “I said shut up,” said Uncle Earl.

  Lemuel Lee glared like he was gonna talk back, but shut up like he was told and then went off to fetch the nooses and the net. When he got to the foredeck, Vergil was already loading the gun with sedative.

  “Try not to waste that stuff,” he said.

  But moments later Vergil had missed twice before he’d hit the albino in the leg and the smaller reptile in the tail. They began to swim, but Vergil noosed them both. Meanwhile, Lemuel Lee had thrown the net and now was pulling for all he was worth: the water roiled with thrashing jaws and splashing tails. Uncle Earl was strutting like a madman and spouting Scripture:

  “Canst thou draw leviathan with a hook?” he shouted. “Or his tongue with a cord? Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.”

  By the time the subdued beasts were entangled in the net and being pulled on board with the electric hoist, one bleary eye was looking out through the mesh.

  “Damn! They’re still awake,” said Uncle Earl: “Better give ’em another dose.”

  Smedlow pulled back his feet to avoid the puddle. For by now the large, dripping, groggy reptiles had been lowered on deck and securely tied with ropes. The woman (kneeling down so that her skirt rode up upon a massive calf) was poking -- first one and then the other -- with a remarkably dirty glass syringe.

  Smedlow knew, by long experience, that many women -- even of the most fearsome and unyielding variety -- could be brought to heel by just the right quality of studious attention. After all, women of every stripe, from debutantes to dowagers, had sat with open mouth in his dentist chair and submitted to the keening of his drill. So now he did his best to counterfeit an expression of sudden and delighted admiration, as if this kneeling woman were -- not a jaundiced slattern with the buttocks of an ox -- but some mysterious beauty at a formal ball revealing a glimpse of elegant leg.

  “This one’s got good glands,” she said, suddenly aware of his persistent gaze and reaching beneath the tail to explore the cloaca of the huge albino.

  “Well, there she is!” said Uncle Earl.

  At first glance Smedlow only saw the sphinxes and -- on the lintel above and between them -- the words

  Serpent of the Nile Company

  Elixirs and Fine Perfumes

  just barely legible above a rotting door ahead of them. The brick walls of the factory were crumbling so that it was possible to see inside into a vast room of weeds and rusted tubs. There was also an immense ruined chimney in there and a hill of bottles glimmering in the moonlight. A cornerstone, nearly overcome by vines, read 1846. Small lizards darted about among the debris.

  “Yer gonna be spendin’ a long time here, ace,” said Lemuel Lee, who had already tied the boat up to a sapling and stacked the cigar boxes on the muddy shore. “Besides the gators, mister, we got six different types a reptiles here that’ll kill you in one way or another. We got moccasins and diamondbacks, corals and canebrakes, copperheads and pygmies. Some a the cells here is filled with ’em and they wouldn’t like nothin’ better than to sink their fangs into a juicy fatty. If you try to run, they’ll get ya -- or the quicksand will. That big can a yours will pull you down like a lead sinker. You can wave yer paws and scream till yer blue an’ no one’s gonna care. Now I know you mighta been some kinda big deal back where you come from, but right here, pal, you ain’t no more than cattle. If we wanna take yer meat, then that’s what we’re gonna do. So it ain’t no use blubberin’. Just listen good to what I tell you, cause I’m the only friend you got.”

  There was a sudden howling sound -- and it wasn’t the wind. It came in bursts of agony like the death cries of an injured animal, an inhuman rhapsody of horrified bellowing. Just as suddenly it stopped and was followed by a series of staccato screeches like the chattering of monkeys. The goat, now grazing among the ruins, lifted its head and bleated.

  “Look! Here comes Hattie,” said Aunt Ligeia.

  A bent-over figure, waving her cane, shaking her head spasmod-ically as if she were electrified, had opened the rotting door between the sphinxes and was now hobbling toward them. Smedlow was distressed to see that her bathrobe was loose enough to expose a shrivelled dug. The moonlight was so bright that he could see that her curlers were pink, her bobby socks were green, and that she wore sneakers.

  This remarkably ancient creature had very bad, almost perfectly brown teeth and one brown eye -- while the other was a startling blue. She reminded Smedlow of pictures he had seen of unwrapped mummies with leathery skin pulled tight over protruding cheekbones. From earliest childhood, when he had been forced to kiss the lips of a mustached great-aunt who saved her spittle and smelled of Vaporub, Smedlow had retained an unconquerable aversion toward the very old. Now, as this one held a bony hand to her mouth (overjoyed, no doubt by the munificent gift of cigars), he felt a sudden fear that she might touch him. As it was, however, she merely seized on her booty and conducted them across the rubble to her shack.

  “You put glass in that window since I been here,” said Lemuel Lee.

  The dirt floor was littered with cigar butts. Flies studded the amber ribbons of flypaper hanging from the rafters. A glance took in the shelves of canned food, the striped mattress, the kerosene lamps and the gold-framed photograph of Rudolph Valentino. An old Spanish helmet, turned upside down and splattered with wax, held a burnt-out candle.

  “Mister,” said Aunt Ligeia, “this swamp’s got things in it you fancy folks don’t know nothin’ about. Take old Hattie here, for example. She don’t talk much. But she’s a hun’red and seventy-five if she’s a year. And folks say that English fella was nigh two hundred by the time him, Mosher and Hezekiah built this factory. It’s gator juice that does it. You can use every ounce of a gator, mister.”

  Oh God no, thought Smedlow, feeling suddenly nauseated, if what this slattern said was true, then this singularly repulsive crone was old enough to remember President Lincoln. But did he really want to live forever if it meant he had to look like her? And was Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth no more than the scent glands of a lovesick reptile?

  By now Old Hattie had opened a cigar box and was lighting up a stogie. There was a look on her face of beatific stupor.

  “And you got ten whole boxes of those, Hattie,” said Aunt Ligeia, who couldn’t help noticing that now, once again, that fancyman fatty was staring at her leg. Hell, she hadn’t had a man since Aldo Scalzi, the barber in Beaureard, had died of complications from a bypass. She had to admit that she was getting pretty tired of bondage videos and muscle magazines and that she sighed for the days when she and Aldo would retire to the backroom of his barbershop and she would whoop his fanny with a wire brush.

  “You can untie his hands now, Lem. He ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  Smedlow felt a sudden burst of hope. For, sullenly, that hateful Lem started yanking at the ropes, making sure to pull them tighter before reluctantly removing them completely.

  “Well, don’t you try nothin’, mister,” he said, thrusting a flashlight into Smedlow’s hand and shoving him out the shack door and onto the refuse heap outside.

  Smedlow found himself stumbling through the vast, unroofed room of rusty tubs and rubble. Now that
he was among the ruins, he could hear that the howling had resumed. It was softer than before, a low and sustained moan punctuated by periodic, louder, angrier bursts of what he thought might be gurgling, incoherent attempts at obscenity. The broken walls of the perfume factory frowned above him as the goat stood grazing in the moonlight. The others were following behind him and that Lem would kick him if he didn’t hurry.

  Beyond the ruined chimney a door creaked open into oblong darkness. Smoking her cigar, holding her lantern, Hattie led them down the slippery stairs. For such an old girl she looked remarkably spry in her high-topped sneakers. She looked pretty strong for a hundred and seventy-five: it was hard to believe that the Fountain of Youth was only alligator juice, although it was true he had heard stories about peasants in Russia who had reached a supernatural old age through a diet of honey and yogurt. Her cigar smoke made Smedlow cough, but masked the rotting smell that grew with every step. He was conscious of the lump pulsating on his forehead where the one they called Lemuel Lee had hit him: some day he would get that little schmuck. Behind him he could hear Lemuel Lee cursing and the goat bleating as it stumbled. The howling was louder now -- a horrified shriek on the verge of articulate speech.

  On the first landing a blue iron door secured by a deadbolt and a massive padlock looked ghostly in the lamplight. Aunt Ligeia paused to wheeze: “Hold up, Lem,” she said and did her best to breathe slowly and look calm. Breathin’ real slow like this always made her feel better. Yep, she could damn well master this panic from her emphysema, but this wasn’t nothing compared to the kidney attacks which came on without warning like a knife stab in the back. Last night, for example, when it woke her, she’d begun to sweat and vomit cause her back had hurt so bad. Catching the prisoner here had been a stroke of luck, of course, but if she couldn’t get Earl to overcome his egghead scruples and transplant one damn little kidney, she’d be just one more carcass for the Beauregard stiffyard.

  She looked like a large yellow toad standing there in her polyester housedress, the folds of her double chin wiggling as she tried to catch her breath. Smedlow thought it might be as good a time as any to crack her in the head with his flashlight. But if he tried to make a break for it, then that vile Lem would chase after him -- and at best he would be lost at night in the swamp. Suddenly behind him he heard something croak, felt something pulling at his coattail: through a barred window in the blue door a filthy hand was reaching out, tugging at him with blistered fingers.

  “Hands off, Darrell!” commanded Lemuel Lee -- and the hand retracted through the bars. “Don’t pay no mind to goddamn Darrell, mister.”

  The howling was coming from somewhere down below. The atmosphere of dust, mildew and unnamed foulness was now so thick that Smedlow reached for his handkerchief and covered his mouth and nose. Open door after open door exposed the clutter and the shadows of vacant rooms.

  At last they reached a hallway with another locked door, this one green. Glass bottles and rusted iron cans littered the floor. Lemuel Lee pulled the goat down the last few steps: but instinctively it drew back and released its urine. The howling suddenly stopped. The smell was now almost unbearable.

  Lemuel Lee looked in through the bars, then removed the padlock, drew the deadbolt. As the goat was shoved in quickly, bleating in vain, Smedlow forced himself to look into the chamber: from the hindquarters of an alligator emerged a chest, arms and head which were still recognizably human. It was scratching itself with unbelievably long fingernails. It must have found something of interest in its hair, for now it brought thumb and forefinger to its mouth and began to chew and slaver. Dung, blood, chicken feathers, stale bread and rotting meat strewed the stone floor on which it slowly waddled closer to the bleating sacrifice.

  “He’s family, Earl,” said Aunt Ligeia and held her kidney for emphasis: “We gotta take care a family.”

  “I know it, Ligie. But if he gets loose, the way he done before, well, we’ll be in a heap a trouble.”

  Smedlow looked away, but heard the shriek, the scuffle, the last gurgling bleats, and then the quieter sound of tearing.

  “That’s Mosher Poe, mister,” said Aunt Ligiea, “or what’s left a him. The old folks tried, but the splicin’ didn’t take. Back in eighteen and forty-six Uncle Mosher built this here perfume factory along with Hezekiah Frobey and that English fella. That English fella was the first one since Cleopatra, Queen a Egypt, to make perfume outa Crocodiles -- or outa gator juice, which is pretty much the same.”

  She turned and placed her scuffed black boot on the first step.

  “It don’t pay to get too nosy, mister,” she said. “That fella Darrell upstairs made that mistake. One day Uncle Mosher here got loose and folks got talkin’ about a swamp thing. Newspapers got real curious. So Darrell Butz came a-snoopin’. That was back in nineteen and sixty-eight. Ever since then, Darrell’s been our guest.” She held her hand to her back, trudged up another five steps, but then stopped again to wheeze: “I used to think Darrell would come in handy. But Darrell, see, he don’t have good kidneys neither.”

  Chapter VIII.

  In which the Prisoner bares his bum.

  Smedlow awoke to find himself face down on a heap of straw with a feeble stream of daylight falling down upon him from a tiny window. He had no clear sense of how long he had lain there and only the foggiest memory of the goo they had forced him to drink, the sudden spinning nausea and the clicking of the lock. His beard, as he felt it, seemed like two days’ growth -- maybe three. During this time his captors had left, beside his bed, a Coke bottle of water and a clump of Velveeta on which ants and houseflies had begun to congregate. He had no sooner stuffed his face and slaked his thirst, than the dizziness returned -- and if he had not fallen back upon the straw, he would almost certainly have stepped upon the snakes. For he had seen at least a dozen of them coiled in the corner -- in a variety of colors like a rainbow of lifesavers.

  The sight of them made him draw back farther on his heap of straw -- although, come to think of it, there might be even more of them sleeping here in the straw itself. Gingerly he drew himself into a ball, clutching at his knees. Was there any way out of this horrid place? The little window far above him -- if he could somehow climb up there -- was obviously much too narrow. The door, just opposite him, was iron-plated and crossbolted. But even if it hadn’t been, he would hardly have dared to walk across the floor. In fact, the more he thought about it, the very dimensions of his cell now began to toy with his chronic claustrophobia: for it was excessively small, like a gent’s room in a hellish gas station, which it also seemed to resemble for general foulness -- the filthy porcelain of a nearby washbasin, a cigarette butt floating in a seatless commode.

  He had read somewhere -- hadn’t he? -- that reptiles are frightened of fire. It was this happy thought which made him now rummage through his jacket for his lighter -- only to discover that his wallet, his pager, his calculator, his keys, even his monogrammed handkerchief -- in fact every vestige of his former identity -- had been carefully removed.

  At last he reached into his pants’ pocket. It somehow seemed appropriate that this stupid silver lighter, which beaming Agnes had given him and with which he was supposed to have been absolutely delighted on the very birthday when he had expected her skinflint father to make him a partner in his dental practice, should have turned out to be the only so-called valuable his captors hadn’t taken. He flicked it open, twice thumbed the wheel -- and it leapt into flame. How fitting that its only purpose was to reveal the mildew on his prison walls.

  But then he looked more closely. For by the flickering of its light he now beheld a myriad of crossed-off lines scratched into the slimy stone of the wall beside him and read the name “Abner Cootes, age 19, 9th Infantry”; the name was written in large block capitals and beneath it, barely legible and in smaller letters, were the words “water badd,” “snaykes got Selby and Powell” and “Abigail my Luv.”

  Some illiterate yokel, no doubt, had written this. Oh
, it was easy enough to imagine the union blue of his uniform, the acned face of troubled youth. Had they been alive at the same time, Smedlow would not have cared to meet him. Nonetheless, so dire was his present sense of isolation, that he could not resist the sentimental impulse to touch this ghostly message from the past.

  The rock wobbled. A second and more forceful touch slightly dislodged a smaller rock from its position in the wall. He plucked it out, reached his lighter into the cavity, and saw -- not rock -- but pit-black vacancy. Within moments he had shoved his hand back into the hole, grabbed the large rock underneath -- and pulled.

  He had just managed to remove this larger rock, lowering it with difficulty onto the floor and then extending his lighter to illuminate the darkened tunnel he’d exposed, when suddenly he heard noises in the hall outside -- a gathering of phlegm and spitting, a jingling of keys. Hurriedly, he strained to pick up first the larger and then the smaller rock and replace them in the wall, mashing his right thumb painfully in the process, when he heard the door open behind him -- and slam shut.

  Turning around, he saw her -- the woman they called Ligeia.

  She had done up her hair in pigtails. She was wearing a red teddy, which was unfortunately diaphonous. For he couldn’t help noticing that nevuses speckled her swollen udders -- and that a bulging midriff with a convex navel slumped above her lilac garter belt. The thought occurred to him that he could knock her down and grab her keys, but a coral snake had slithered toward the doorway and he had a horror of hazarding that close. It seemed to make matters worse that the woman herself was not in the least bit frightened. Instead, her vast thighs shook like puddings as she began to pace his prison on stilletto heels, smacking a black wire brush against the palm of her left hand: