Lizard World (28 page)

      
Dumpling! For years Smedlow had resented the way Agnes fussed over her high-strung pedigreed Yorkie, wasting money on perms and pedicures and spoiling her with ice-cream cake and pork chops. Now he watched the fat little glutton offering her rump, chewing on the wreckage of his fibula.

      
“Why, this is yer little doggy friend, now ain’t it? Yer little long-lost pal? Kinda makes you feel like bawlin’, don’t it? Yessir, I sure do know how comin’ home can get a body all choked up and chock full a memories.”

      
Smedlow watched him pausing to survey the gloom, the shadowed corners crammed with junk, the floor piled high with cardboard boxes.

      
“Hell, I bet you got all kinds a dandy stuff in here . . . all kinds a precious shit that’s gonna make you think a times that ain’t never ever gonna be again.”

      
Smedlow saw his captor stride into the deep shadows near the furnace, reach up and pull a string: the bare bulb revealed a doctor’s stool and deluxe automatic chair, Smedlow’s high-speed drill, his cuspidor, his stainless steel instrument table (heaped with his syringes, his saliva ejector, his diamond point burs, his hand mirrors, his scalers, his periodontal probes), and -- in a row upon a shadowed

shelf -- his grinning plaster casts of overbites, underbites, cross-bites and class-three malocclusions.

      
“Now ain’t this a kick in the nuts?”

      
Smedlow could see that the nitwit had come upon some kind of oversized book that now he was leafing through, clicking his tongue and nodding his head to signify his relish.

      
“Looks like you was one damn fat little kid,” he said, shoving the photo album in Smedlow’s -- R.W. Griswold’s -- face so that now he could see a thirteen-year-old Smedlow in swimming trunks staring back, the blubber of his midriff all but blocking out the background of the Camp Tecumseh pool. Other pages, flipping by, displayed his former body at several more stages of its ghastly metamorphosis: with cradle cap, smeared with pablum and sucking on a bottle; in a coon-skin cap, surrounded by the little demons of Mrs. Kravitz’s third-grade class; in a rented white dinner jacket, flushed with youthful hope and standing beside his beaming prom date, the late and buxom Judy Klepner.

      
“Brings back a shitload a memories, don’t it?” Hell, it wasn’t no goddamn brainbuster. It was plain as day the old gentleman couldn’t keep his eyes off all them photos. “Yessir, you sure did fool my old Aunt,” he said, pilin’ the album and a bunch a other junk onto the prisoner’s lap: “Yep, she told me I was seein’ things. But now I got it proved -- real scientific -- that it’s just gotta be you in there.”

  
Hardly a minute later Smedlow found himself being wheeled out of the cellar, hurried down the brick path and lifted into the backseat of the limo. The back door was still open when he saw that Dumpling had followed them out -- with the German Shepherd trotting close behind, tail-wagging and sniffing at her rump.

      
“Well, now look at that: I guess yer little fancy doggy has decided to come along with her new boyfriend for a ride.”

      
The limousine had just begun to pull out of the driveway when Smedlow saw the headlights coming toward them. In another instant he had recognized the Volkswagen’s rusted fender and, behind the wheel, the twilit contours of a familiar bouffant mop above a mousey face dominated by black plastic horn-rimmed glasses. As Agnes passed, their eyes met only for an instant -- but long enough for him to see her surprise -- and that she had noticed her own dog, Dumpling, barking at the window.

Chapter XVII.

Containing an interment and a chirurgical operation, by attending which the reader may learn how Mr. Potter conceived a grievance

and Dumpling made a discovery.

The garbage
bag beside him kept on swaying back and forth as the limo weaved and bolted through the lanes of highway traffic, now slumping to the left as they swerved off the exit, now leaning on Smedlow’s shoulder as they made the sharp turn beyond the Tastee Freeze, now rocking gently as they bounced down the long, bumpy, dirt road to the dump. Anger, horror and nostalgia overcame him. As if his first homecoming had not been bad enough, now he was being taken back to visit a far more intimate and cherished home -- the priceless, buried refuse of himself. The thought occurred to him that perhaps he could resurrect it somehow, by some miracle of surgery transfer himself back into his former body and, in a word, undo all the hideous damage they had done.

  
   
“Well, now, here we are,” said Lemuel Lee, pullin’ the limo up between a heap a rusted frigidaires and one humongous pile a crushed-up cars, stompin’ down on the emergency brake, and lookin’ up so as he could see the the reflections of the two prisoners in the rearview.

      
“Now I know you two love-birds back there wouldn’t like nothin’ better than to park all night and snuggle. But the time has come for you kids to say goodnight.”

      
Of course the best thing was to dig a hole somewhere safe on Taffy’s property instead of on the public landfill, cause that way the bag wasn’t near so likely to get dug up by accident by one a them goddamn department a sanitation power shovels. But then again tellin’ what was Taffy’s land wasn’t none too easy -- not only cause right now it was real foggy and dark as hell -- but also cause that old chainlink fence was mostly all tore up or knocked over and covered with trash, which made it so there wasn’t no real obvious boundary between where Floyd’s family’s junkyard ended and the garbage dump began. So that’s why, he thought, grabbin’ the shovel from the trunk and lookin’ at them dim lights in the distance, the only smart thing was not to get too far from Taffy’s trailer.

      
“Okay now, you two,” he said, tossin’ down the shovel, openin up the back door, leanin’ over and doin’ his goddamnedest to get his arms around the bag: “Kissin’s over. Upsy-daisy.”

      
As the green bag was being lifted off the seat, Smedlow thought he saw something -- a pale, transparent nose, a dim mirage of brow and wig -- floating on its plastic surface. He tried not to see this filmy apparition congealing into a solid, monstrous lump of lifeless eyes and skin and hands. But he could no more withstand than doubt of what was happening. Indeed, albeit he endeavoured to the uttermost to keep on seeing his captor lifting the green bag off the backseat, yet he could not chuse, instead, but see -- ever more distinctly -- my man Potter dragging out this dead bookworm Barnaby from my coach.

      
By and by this rascal Potter and young doctor Fludd had carried up this pedant’s carrion to my chamber and there did forthwith deposit it upon a rude wooden table most exceeding unsuitable for my bed-room -- but which did elsewise serve most acceptably for the cutting-up of pullets, mutton and swine below-stairs in my kitchen.

      
No sooner did this scurvy book-monger lie out-stretch’d, than young Fludd fell roundly to his business. ’Twas the first time that ever I saw Frobin give him leave to wield the knife. ’Twas not, I doubt, owing to old Master Frobin’s kind complaisance -- but lest he be bit and scratch’d at by his daughter, a one-eyed monster and the most foul and feeble-brain’d brute that ever I expect to see. Young Master Fludd had truck’d with this animal and gotten her with child, so that now she did revere him and attack upon his bidding like a dog. Therefore was old Frobin fain -- to forestall this creature’s ire -- to admit Fludd to the mysteries of his blade. And therefore, I ween, did young Fludd now remove my ears from off this beggarly dead bookseller.

      
Whilst this was doing, a little officious apothecary, whom my surgeons had inlisted to my service, did farce me with all manner of nauseous physick against the hideous pains of my ordeal. For not alone was I to be requited for the ears which I had lost, but moreover ridded of the tail which I had got owing to the fell advance of my immortal and reptilian distemper. I do confess that I was not over and above desirous of suffering the dolours of chirurgery. But this I was the willinger to do forasmuch as I had need to possess me of these ears and to doff this snakish flesh in order to the wooing and the bedding of my charmer.

      
Indeed, ’twas looking on her likeness in my locket which did sustain me the whiles my most industrious surgeons did saw and cut and sew. Now did I guzzle down great store of brandy. Whilst making shift not to heed the sharpness of their knives, I did dote upon the luxury of her bosom and endeavour to bear in mind that full soon my knaves would lock her up in Mistress Felsham’s brothel. And yet, for all that I did my manly best, I could scarce endure the cutting and the cautering and, all this mean while, the little busy apothecary rubbing and smearing of my wounds with poppy, knitbone, elder flower, willow bark, wormwood and myrrh.

      
At the length, howsomever, when these chirurgeons had done with their stitches and their scissors and their stanching of my blood with a turniket and styptick, young Fludd did hold up my glass so that I might see therein the cunning implantation of my ears. And indeed, in despight of my dolours, I must allow that I was above measure pleased and heartened thereby, in token whereof I did straightways vouchsafe this young doctor the possession and whatever benefit might be got from the selling of this beggarly bookseller’s carcass.

      
’Twas upon this account, doubtless, that my man-servant, Potter, did fall into a most peevish, rascally and rake-shamed humour. Not, forsooth, that he did not assay to hide it in my presence. But assoon as ever my chirurgeons had done with their poultices and bandages and had taken out the leavings of this carcass from my chamber, I did hear his dogged grumbling in the hall. Thinking to have had the carcass for himself and much offended in mind that I did bestow it elsewise, he did now demand to get his full moiety of its value. Thereupon I did hear young Fludd retort that he might perchance be perswaded to give away somewhat of the clothes (which were of scarce more worth than rags), but that he would by no manner of means be bullied out of the least part of his boon, which he did intend to market for dissection by the surgeons. Thereafter I did hear nothing more. But anon, whilst lying all sewed up and plastered and looking out at window to my fore-court, I did see these fellows coming out a doors. And what a tosse this arrant varlet Potter yet was in!

      
For most distinctly did I see him now a-pulling at this wretched book-monger’s corse the which Fludd and this apothecary were endeavouring to the utmost of their power to continue on carrying betwixt them. Nor, indeed, did Potter soon leave off this inexcusable aggression -- not even when these fellows did at length contrive to load the corse upon the mean, ranshackled, wagon which this little apothecary, Master Poe, had brought hither to mar the elm-lined vista of my coach-way. Plainly did I see Potter making hard shift to pluck the carcass off the wagon. And plainly did I see young Fludd pulling fierce against him. But I could not now plainly see the broad-backed person of this apothecary whipping on his jade or why this horse’s
rump -- as it did make off at a trot -- did, on a sudden, beseem to be .
. . the haunches of a German Shepherd bobbing in coitus beside an open grave.

      
Through the transparency of the fading apparition Smedlow now also thought he saw a bulging green garbage bag, a shovel, a pile of freshly dug dirt and (underneath the larger dog and likewise illuminated by the limousine’s high beams) his wife’s fat, pedigreed Yorkshire Terrier -- Dumpling. Some sixty feet farther in the foggy distance, Smedlow’s tormentor now also appeared -- micturating on a mountain of discarded tires. My God! Wasn’t it there, right there, that this -- this overgrown insect -- had dug a hole and buried him?

      
It was several moments later, after he had watched his captor trudge back through the gloom, push the bag into the grave and shovel on the dirt, that Smedlow saw the larger dog get down off the Terrier -- and Dumpling start sniffing at the ground.
  

      
“Sure looks to me,” said Lemuel Lee, gettin’ behind the wheel, pattin’ Blitz on the head, and glancin’ up at the prisoner in the rearview, “like yer little fancy doggy wants to stay right here and keep on followin’ her nose.”

      
As he heard the purr of the ignition, Smedlow watched Dumpling’s wagging tail as she sniffed (by the glare of the headlights) past the piled-up wreckage of cars, through a cemetery of rusting stoves and dishwashers and refrigerators. As the emergency brake released and the limo started backing up, he could still make her out -- waddling through the fog, sniffing her way past toasters and TV’s, couches, bedframes, toilets -- until she stopped, sniffed the dirt and started barking beside a colossal pile of tires.