Lizard Music (7 page)

“If you fell into that pit, they’d gobble you up in two seconds flat,” someone said. I looked around. The zoo guard was standing nearby. He had a green uniform, like a police uniform, and a badge that said Zoo Police. He also had one of those rectangular black plastic nameplates with his name on it in white letters, Anton Anolis.

“Did you speak to me?” I asked.

“I was just observing that the alligators have no manners at all,” Anton Anolis said. “Most of the reptiles, even the real poisonous ones, will treat you just fine if you are polite. Those alligators would eat anyone. They’d eat the President of the United States if he fell into that pit, which is why I hope he never comes here.”

“Did they ever actually eat anyone?” I asked.

“Well, not that I know of, but I dropped my lunch down there by accident once, and it was gone in a flash—two salami sandwiches, a tangerine, and a jelly doughnut—snapped up by one of those monsters. Then there used to be a keeper names Jones who vanished without a trace—never heard of him again. Some people say that the alligators were smiling for a week after that. Maybe he got eaten, maybe he didn’t. I kept an eye on the alligator pit for maybe a shoe, or a zoo badge, but I never found anything. I guess you’re really interested in reptiles,” Anton Anolis said.

“I am sort of getting interested in them,” I said, “but the reason I’ve been here for such a long time is that I’m waiting for a friend. You don’t know anything about someone called the Chicken Man, do you?”

“The Chicken Man?” Anton Anolis said. “Never heard of him. Come this way.” Anton Anolis led me to a side door of the Reptile House. The door opened onto a little sort of courtyard with trees and benches. Sitting on one of the benches reading a newspaper was the Chicken Man. It wasn’t a regular newspaper; it was in some foreign language with a different alphabet. The letters were funny-looking loopy things with thick and thin parts, and the Chicken Man was turning the pages backwards. He saw me and folded the newspaper.

“Ah, Victor! Glad to see you. Come and sit down,” the Chicken Man said. I sat down on the bench.

“I see you’ve been enjoying a visit with the reptiles,” he said. “I never go in there anymore, ever since poor Jones disappeared.” The Chicken Man looked off into the distance. He seemed to be thinking about something. He didn’t say anything for a long time. I sat there, keeping quiet. I was getting uncomfortable.

“How’s Claudia?” I said finally.

“Ask her yourself,” the Chicken Man said. He took off his hat, and there was Claudia—sleeping. She opened one red eye, gave me a cluck, and settied back to sleep. The Chicken Man put his hat over her again.

“Now, what in particular did you want to see me about?” the Chicken Man asked.

“I’m not sure why, but I think you can answer a lot of questions that have begun to bother me,” I said.

“Very likely,” said the Chicken Man. “Such as—”

“Such as, where are the lizard programs on television coming from? Such as, why did you make that lizard appear in your hand the other day? Such as—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” the Chicken Man said. “Just hold the thought for a minute while I get set up here.” The Chicken Man dug around in his raincoat and came up with a huge pipe, a curved one. He stuffed it full of tobacco, struck a match on the sole of his shoe, and lit it, making huge clouds of blue smoke.

“A bowl of Latakia always helps me listen, and I perceive that you have a complicated problem. Proceed, Victor,” the Chicken Man said. I had sort of forgotten where I was in my questions, watching the Chicken Man light the big pipe.

“I have some notes here,” I said. I got out my notebook. “By the way, what
is
your name? I’ve heard about fifteen names for you so far.”

“It’s true, I am known by a variety of names,” the Chicken Man said. “Which one do you like best?”

“Charles Swan,” I said.

“Call me Charlie,” the Chicken Man said.

“It was you in the taxi, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“Sure, you knew that, didn’t you?” Charlie said.

It was hard to keep a conversation going in one direction. The Chicken Man, Charlie, had a way of getting me off the track. “Now, about the lizards,” I said.

“Oh yes, did you have a look at the iguana in there?” Charlie pointed his pipe at the Reptile House. “They have a fine double-crested basilisk. Quite rare, really.”

“Was that the one that runs around on its hind legs?” I asked.

Charlie was doing it again. “Yes, that’s the one—interesting family, the iguana.” Charlie puffed on his pipe.

There was another silence. It was frustrating. Charlie was real good at taking control of a conversation, and then he’d just let it die out. I wondered if he was charging me for all this pipe smoking, and stuff about iguanas, but I was embarrassed to ask him. It all reminded me of the chameleons walking in slow motion on their little branch.

“We’ve been invaded by people from another planet!” I shouted.

“Not people—creatures,” Charlie said.

“Will you please tell me what’s going on?” I screamed. “I’m only eleven years old, and some of this stuff has got me very upset!”

“There’s no need to get excited, Victor,” Charlie said. “Now just tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Lizards,” I said. “Lizards are on my mind, and pod people, and you—you’ve been turning up everywhere!”

“I know quite a lot about the lizards,” Charlie said, “somewhat less about the pod people as you call them. As to me turning up everywhere, I’ve always done that. It’s you who have taken to turning up lately. We were certain to meet once you started that.”

“Well, if you know so much, why aren’t you excited, or at least worried?” I asked. I hadn’t been bothered too much by the thought of the pod people invading the earth until that moment. “Don’t the pod people worry you?”

“If you mean the pod people in that old science-fiction movie, they don’t worry me at all,” Charlie said. “Worrying about them is a good way to become one.”

“I thought they came from outer space,” I said.

“No, not the pods—it’s the other ones who come from outer space,” Charlie said.

“The other ones—do you mean the lizards?” I asked.

“In a way—in a way the lizards are from outer space,” Charlie said. “I see you’re a little confused about this stuff.”

“I’m only eleven,” I said.

“Quite so,” Charlie said. “I will try my best to explain it to you, as well as I understand it myself. But first, I suggest we stop at the refreshment stand for a bite of something nutritious. It’s almost two o’clock, and I expect we’re both hungry.” There was no way to hurry Charlie. He said that he didn’t believe that people should talk about serious things while they were eating, so I had to listen to him carry on about the differences among various old violins while he put away six hot dogs. I had a hot dog myself, and a root beer.

Charlie suggested we take a walk around the zoo while we talked. “I gather you’ve only recently noticed the lizard programs on television,” Charlie said.

“Well, I don’t usually get to stay up late,” I said. “They’ve been on every night so far since I’ve been staying up.”

“And you observed that there was nothing about them in the daily television listings?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Perhaps you even called the TV station to inquire,” Charlie went on.

“I did that,” I said, “and they didn’t tell me anything.”

“Not surprising,” said Charlie. “They don’t know anything. Now, what’s this about pod people?”

“Last night I began to notice that there were these people on television—regular television—before the lizard programs. They aren’t regular humans—it’s hard to explain—something about them doesn’t make sense. They seem to—they seem to—”

Charlie finished the thought for me. “They seem to be going through the motions of being humans without really meaning it or understanding it.”

“That’s it,” I said. “They’re real, but they’re not. It got me thinking about this movie where pods from space come down, and replicas of the real people come out and replace everyone.”

“I’ve seen the movie,” Charlie said. “Everyone has. It’s an excellent film, but not entirely accurate. You see, the pod people, as you like to call them, are not from another planet. They are ordinary people who have developed in a certain way. It can happen to anyone, if they’re unlucky.”

“That’s even scarier than being invaded from space,” I said. I thought about the stupid people on the talk show. I was worried that it could happen to me. It had happened to my sister.

“What makes people get that way?” I asked.

“Nobody seems to know,” Charlie said. “There’s a lot of it going around. My personal belief is that it comes from eating too much prepackaged food, but that’s just a little theory of mine.”

“It’s a serious problem, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Oh yes, it’s a problem, but it doesn’t do to worry about it too much. Somehow, people who get all concerned about podism usually seem to wind up catching it.” Charlie’s voice was trailing off. He was looking at the rhinoceros. “You know, the white rhino isn’t white at all. He’s a grayish color like any other rhinoceros,” Charlie was saying. He was off again. “The term ‘white’ is derived from the Afrikaans word
weit
or ‘wide,’ having to do with the wide or squarish shape of the lip, thus distinguishing the white rhino from the black rhino, which isn’t black but gray and has a pointed or prehensile upper lip.”

“What about the lizards?” I asked. You just have to ignore it when Charlie gets off the subject.

“Umm? What’s that?” Charlie asked.

“The lizards,” I said. “You said that the lizards come from outer space.”

“In a way, in a way they do. It might be more proper to say they come from
other
space.”

I was having a hard time making any sense out of what Charlie was saying. “Are you explaining or guiding?” I asked.

“Explaining. Why?” Charlie asked.

“I just wanted to know if I was going to have to pay for any of this,” I said.

“No, no, as I told you, there is no charge for explanations. However, there is a charge for guiding. I’m a licensed guide,” Charlie said. “Does this mean that you’re ready to start out?”

“Start out? Where to?” I asked.

“To find the lizards,” Charlie said.

“How much will it cost?” I asked. I was pretty sure that the explanations had gone about as far as they were going to go.

“Two-fifty per day—you bring your own lunch,” Charlie said.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Charlie looked at his watch. “It’s almost five o’clock. Claudia and I have a show to do on the Clark Street bus. I’ll meet you in the
A.M.
at Shane Fergussen’s candy store,” Charlie said. With that Charlie took off. He had a kind of sideways style of running.

There was nothing to do but go home and wait for the
A.M.
The zoo was about to close anyway. The McDonaldsville bus was crowded with commuters coming home from work. When I got home there were two postcards in the mailbox, one from Mom and Dad and one from Leslie. They were both about the same—having fun, wish you were here, etc.—except that Leslie’s card also said, “If you ever tell, I’ll kill you.”

I had some time before the news. I thought about what to have for supper. I looked in the freezer. The neat rows of TV dinners in boxes turned me off. I thought about what Charlie had said. I didn’t really understand what he meant by prepackaged food, and I couldn’t see what that could have to do with pod people. Still it sort of spoiled my appetite for those TV dinners. I thought about something not prepackaged to eat. I had already done the egg thing. The frying pan was still soaking to get some of the black off. I didn’t feel like cooking again.

I was looking around the kitchen, thinking about what to have for supper, when I noticed the calendar from the Pizza Palace. Every so often my family orders a pizza from the Pizza Palace. They bring it right to the house. The only thing is, nobody in my family likes anchovies. I mean, they hate anchovies. Not one of them can even stand to look at an anchovy. It makes them sick if they even think there’s an anchovy in the same room with them. I love anchovies. I don’t know how I found out about them—it sure wasn’t at home. Now, there is nothing to prevent ordering a pizza from the Pizza Palace and telling the man that you only want anchovies on half the pizza, or a quarter of the pizza. We do that with sausage because we all like it except Leslie. Of course she doesn’t hate sausage—I mean she doesn’t want to have a war against sausages. She just doesn’t care to have sausage on her pizza. It’s perfectly reasonable. She doesn’t want sausage, she doesn’t have to eat sausage. As I understand it, that’s why America is a great country. Nobody has to eat sausage if they don’t want to. But anchovies are a different story. Especially Leslie, but Mom and Dad too,
freak out
about anchovies. They won’t let me eat them in their presence. Even if I were to take my special anchovy slices of pizza away and eat them in another room, Leslie would start screaming that she could taste anchovies in her pizza and gagging and carrying on. Therefore I almost never get to have pizza with anchovies, although I am an American too.

I called the Pizza Palace and ordered a pizza with double anchovies. I switched on the TV and sat down to wait for my pizza. I had already checked the icebox—there was plenty of milk. That’s another thing they can’t stand. I like milk with my anchovy pizza. They won’t even let me talk about it. The only time I ever get it is when I am over at Howard Foster’s house. I have rights, just like anybody else.

The quiz program, the one where the people climb out of a greased pit with a mouthful of money, was just ending. The announcer was telling how they spray the money with Lysol at the beginning of each show so the contestants won’t get sick from the germs on the money. The doorbell rang—that didn’t take long. I went to the door. There was Charlie! He was carrying a big cardboard pizza box.

“Hey, Victor!” he said. “Is this where you live?” Apparently Charlie delivered pizzas part-time. He handed me the box. “Anchovies, ugh!” he said. “That will be three dollars.” I paid him. “I’ve got to run—lots of pizzas to deliver,” Charlie said. “Are we still meeting at Fergussen’s place in the
A.M.
?”