Lizard Music (3 page)

I was walking fast. I wanted to get to the record store before the rain got heavy. I didn’t make it. There was a flash and a crash, and I ducked into a doorway just before it hit. It was as though a big bucket had been turned over. What a rain! It made a noise like rattling marbles in a can. I thought the rain was making a clucking noise like a chicken, too, until I looked around and saw that I was sharing the doorway with the Chicken Man.

“Claudia doesn’t like this rain very much,” the Chicken Man said.

“Is Claudia the name of your chicken?” I asked.

“It isn’t the name of my lizard,” the Chicken man laughed, a high weird laugh. It scared me. I was scared the minute I saw him. I’m not used to black people. There are only five black kids in our school, and you never get a chance to talk to them, because there is always a crowd of kids around them showing how they’re not prejudiced. I had made up my mind to get a chance to talk to this one kid, Melvyn. He’s the smallest black kid, and he wears glasses. I figured I’d start with him and see how it went. The Chicken Man was not only black, but old and scary, and he had that weird laugh, and his skin fitted him like an old raincoat.

“Did you say lizard?” I asked.

“No, did you?” Then the Chicken Man laughed again. I wished he wouldn’t do that.

“I saw you on the bus today.” I wished it would stop raining hard so I could get out of there.

“Claudia sure doesn’t like this rain,” the Chicken Man said. “It makes her bones hurt—arthritis, I suppose—she’s a very old chicken.” Claudia was making angry, muffled, clucking noises under the old man’s hat.

“Is that what you do?”

“What?”

“Just go around with the chicken—”

“Claudia.”

“—with Claudia, and do tricks and stuff?”

“I saw you on the bus too,” the Chicken Man said. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly looking for anything.”

“Yes, but did you find it?”

“Find what?”

“Maybe you’re looking for something, and don’t know what it is,” the Chicken Man said. “Maybe you don’t even know that you’re looking. You sure looked to me like you were looking for something.”

“When? Just now?”

“Just now, just before, on the bus—all the time. You look like you’re on the track of something or other.”

“Well, just now I was thinking about looking for a record. I was just going to look for a record store when the rain started.” Claudia was making a sort of moaning noise.

“I sure wish this rain would stop. Claudia is getting uncomfortable.” The Chicken Man was stroking his hat, trying to calm down his chicken. “What’s your name?”

“Victor.”

“Look here, Victor.” The Chicken man held out his hand. It was like the branch of a tree; the fingers were dry and wrinkled and bony. I looked into his palm. It was like a really old baseball glove.

“What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“Just look—see what you’re looking for.” I looked into the Chicken Man’s empty palm. Claudia was clucking to herself, the rain was thumping—all of a sudden there was a little green lizard thrashing around in the Chicken Man’s palm. That did it! I was four blocks away when I drew my next breath. I ran through the rain all the way to the bus terminal. A McDonaldsville bus was just pulling out, and I jumped on at the last second. I fell into a seat. I was soaking wet. I was shaking too. That lizard had surprised me. It didn’t scare me—I’m not afraid of snakes and spiders and things like that. It wasn’t even seeing it appear like that. I knew the Chicken Man could do tricks. The thing I kept wondering about all through the bus ride home was how the Chicken Man knew about the lizards. Did he really know, or was it just a coincidence? My shirt was sticking to the bus seat, and my back was sticking to my shirt. There was a fairly large puddle forming under my seat. I was still dripping when the bus stopped near my house. I stepped off into a puddle about four feet deep and sloshed home.

I decided I’d better come in through the kitchen door so I wouldn’t soak the carpet. Just as I came around to the back of the house, there was a clap of thunder, and another cloudburst—just to make sure I was
really
wet. I just stood in the kitchen, dripping. I decided I’d undress in the kitchen, wring out my clothes over the sink, and then throw them down into the basement where the dryer is. First I took all the stuff out of my pockets and piled it on the kitchen table. I got my clothes off, threw them down the basement stairs, and went to get a towel and some dry clothes. Once I was dry, I looked at the clock—news time soon. I put a TV fried-chicken dinner in the oven. I started putting the stuff from the kitchen table back into my pockets. Everything was there—house keys, wallet, knife, police whistle, comb in handmade leather case (from camp the summer before), some ballpoint pens, a little notebook, a magnifying glass, a pipe (I don’t smoke it. It’s a cracked one of my father’s, just like Walter Cronkite’s pipe).

There was also a card. I didn’t remember seeing it before. It was printed in blue letters on pink paper, and it was soggy. I picked it up.

The Chicken Man must have slipped the card into my pocket. He was a pretty good magician, there wasn’t any doubt about that. Back in my house, the whole thing didn’t seem so scary. The Chicken Man didn’t seem mean, just weird and spooky. I got the TV warmed up. There was a game show where the contestants jump into a deep pit with greased sides. They have to wear a special suit with no pockets. At the bottom of the pit there’s a million dollars in small bills. They have half a minute to stuff as much money as they can into their mouth, and scramble up the greased sides of the pit. The audience screams a lot. Nobody ever winds up with much more than a hundred dollars.

The oven timer went off just as the news program started. I got my fried chicken and watched the news. I wasn’t really able to pay attention. I kept thinking about Herr Doktor Professor Horace Kupeckie, Plt.D., and the trick he had done with the lizard. It was sort of bothering me. I guessed a good magician could make something appear like that—but a lizard! How did he know I was thinking about lizards? The doorway where I met the Chicken Man was not far from the empty store window where I was looking at the lizard album cover. Maybe he saw me looking at that, and guessed that I’d be thinking about a lizard. I had seen a magician at a school show who would tell you to pick a card and then think about it, and then he would show you the card. It was kind of odd that Doktor Professor Kupeckie had a lizard in his pocket. On the other hand, he kept a chicken under his hat. Maybe he had a whole lot of animals stashed in his raincoat. I felt a little embarrassed about running away like that. Probably I had hurt Professor Kupeckie’s feelings. He may have just been trying to be friendly and show me a trick.

Roger Mudd was telling how the President likes to eat cottage cheese with catsup on it for lunch—the telephone rang. It was Mom calling to see how things were going. I told her that everything was fine. She wanted to talk to Leslie, but I told her she went bowling with Gloria Schwartz. Then she wanted to know if I had eaten my supper. I told her I was eating it right now. Then she wanted to know what I was having, and I told her. Then Dad got on and asked me all the same questions. Then Mom got on again, and she asked me all the same questions again. Then Dad got on and gave me a bunch of advice, mostly the same stuff they had told me before they left. Then Mom got on, and she said everything that Dad had said. I was trying to stretch the telephone cord so I could see Roger Mudd. It was hard to see the screen, but I thought I saw a little lizard head peeking over Roger’s shoulder—just for a second. Mom and Dad finally hung up, and I ran back to the TV, but there wasn’t any lizard. I wasn’t sure if I had seen it or not. I decided I was for sure going to wait up for the lizard band.

I had a look at the TV listings. There was nothing about the lizards. The late movie was
Invasion of the Pod People
. It sounded good. I wondered why Roger Mudd would have a lizard on his shoulder. Some people keep lizards as pets, but Roger Mudd wouldn’t bring his lizard on television. I mean, maybe he would, but Walter would never do such a thing, and he wouldn’t let Roger do it either. I probably imagined it (not that I go in for imagining things—I’m not that sort of kid). Still, I was pretty shook up earlier when Professor Kupeckie did that trick, and I was sort of starting to get lizards on the brain.

Right after the news there was one of these animal programs. There have been a lot of animal programs lately. They are all about alike. They show some kind of wild animal and tell about how in a few years they will all be killed off, and it’s a shame and all the fault of human beings. Most of the programs are sponsored by companies that make dog food and stuff like that. I heard Walter Cronkite say that they use whale meat in dog food. I always wonder if the sponsors of the animal programs use whale meat in their dog food. I like the animal programs pretty well; it seems that everybody likes animals, now that they’ve killed most of them. This time the program was about lizards. I might have known. It was getting to be national lizard week, or something. All of a sudden, I was running into lizards every five minutes. “I’ll bet a lizard could get elected president,” I thought.

The program was very interesting. There are a lot of different kinds of lizards—all sizes and colors. They didn’t seem to have much in the way of personality, but some of them were very pretty. Sometimes I wish we had a color set. The program showed lizards eating bugs, and frogs, and other lizards. It showed them running around, and fighting, and shedding their skins. It didn’t show any of them playing the saxophone.

After the animal program there was a police program, with lots of head-bashing, and shooting, and crashing cars, and men hitting women, and dope addicts going crazy, and all that stuff. Those shows are always the same. I worked on my model airplane and sort of half-watched it. Even the commercials were dull. Some big company, maybe an insurance company or an oil company—they didn’t even say what they made—they just talked about what a great country America is and showed all these pictures of dumb-looking families smiling at the camera. The other channels all had police shows too, so I was stuck. For part of the time I dozed off on the floor, with my chin resting on the newspaper I had spread out under my model. As a result of falling asleep, part of the wing got glued on crooked. I was holding it while the glue dried, when I dozed off. I had a lot of trouble getting it straightened out, and it still didn’t look too neat by the time the late news came on. I hate sloppy work on model airplanes—it sort of ruins them. I’m usually very careful not to have any splops of glue, or lumpy paint, or anything like that. It really frustrated me that my DC-10 had glue bumps on the wing. I hoped the paint would cover them.

I did the cookie and milk thing again, and settled down to watch the late news and the late movie. I turned off most of the lights and got ready to watch Bob Barney. Bob Barney really took my mind off my troubles; he did a first-rate news show again. Really, that guy has a fantastic future ahead of him. One of the things he did that I had never seen before was the man-in-the-street interview. This is how it works. Bob Barney goes out with a tape recorder and a videotape camera. He has a cameraman to work the equipment—Bob Barney just holds the microphone. There’s a question; this particular night it was “Should public employees have the right to strike?” Then Bob Barney waits around on a busy street and stops people and asks the question. The first guy was dressed in a suit, and he had horn-rimmed glasses and a little hat. Bob Barney asked him his name.

“My name is Lawrence Lawrence,” the man said.

Then Bob Barney asked him the question of the day, “Should public employees have the right to strike?”

“Golly, I never really thought about it,” Lawrence Lawrence said.

“Well, you must have some feeling on the question,” Bob Barney said. “What’s your basic reaction?”

“Well, I’d say, whatever turns them on,” Lawrence Lawrence said.

Then Bob Barney stopped a little fat woman with no teeth. Every time she said a swear word, they beeped it out, but you could see her lips moving. “You’re
beep
right! My
beep
son’s first wife’s cousin’s boy is a fireman. The way that poor
beep
has to work—it’s a
beep
shame. Let the
beep
city
beep beep beep
.”

In the background, coming up the street, was someone in a rumpled raincoat. He wasn’t coming straight up the street. He was doing a little turn now and then and sort of shifting from one side of the pavement to the other, snapping his fingers and sort of dipping at the knees. As he got closer, I could see it was the Chicken Man—he was dancing! He was dancing along the sidewalk. Just as the beep lady got through with the question, the Chicken Man was almost filling the picture behind her, dipping and turning and snapping. Next he was on camera, and Bob Barney was asking him his name.

“Lucas Cranach, Jr.,” the Chicken Man said.

“Should public employees have the right to strike?” asked Bob Barney.

The Chicken Man was still dipping and snapping his fingers. “Public employees must, of necessity, be divided into two general groups,” the Chicken Man said, “those whose function is vital to the health and welfare of the community, and those whose function is mainly clerical, or administrative. Functionaries, such as police, fire department personnel, sanitation workers, and public health workers, have a responsibility which extends beyond the limits of an ordinary job. Although all Americans have the right to collective bargaining, this constitutes a gray area, which has been the subject of much debate. It is to be hoped that, at least in our city, matters of budget and arbitration will be conducted in such a way that the question remains academic.”