Lizard World Read Online Free PDF Page B

abducted,” explained the woman.   
           Smedlow now felt his chair being lifted off the floor and turned upright. He debated emptying his bladder, but resolved to remain a martyr to civilization. He felt a hand resting on his shoulder, the warmth of bad breath on his face:
           “Now if you was a good boy,” said the voice, “I just might take off the blinders and let you go potty.”
           Smedlow nodded vigorously, croaking his approval. Hadn’t he read that, under optimal circumstances, prisoners of war had been able to enlist the sympathy of their captors? He tried to look cooperative, even pleased, as he felt the watch being pulled off his left wrist, the hand searching through his pocket:
           “Well, lookee here: he’s got fifty dollars in his wallet!”
           “Well, his clothes ain’t worth a damn,” mused the woman. “But his eyes and his liver gotta be worth somethin’ to the trade . . . and we can junk his fancy car . . . and that expensive-lookin’ antique map you found in the glove box, maybe we could auction it on Ebay.”

    Smedlow was beginning to find composure difficult: they would chop him up, use what they needed and sell the rest; but first they would fatten him up with slops; what’s more, they had the priceless map for which he’d so idiotically risked everything. He tried to distract himself from his misery by doing his best to remember the location of the Conquistador’s fabled fountain -- the place names, the rivers and contours of the seacoast preserved in faded ink on the ancient drawing. But this was impossible since he began to think of what he’d endured to get this far, how everything had gone wrong. . . . And it had all seemed so ridiculously easy -- that whimpering old hag in the nursing home with the abscessed molar, the signed photos of dead TV stars on the wall and this extraordinary map which she seemed to think was just one more kitsch memento -- handed down from some undoubtedly equally clueless ancestor who had been present when Ponce de Leon had drawn it on his deathbed. So of course -- the minute the demerol kicked in and the old girl was snoring -- he, Max Nathan Smedlow, had taken the map off the wall, driven all night to Florida . . . and found himself here in the swamps. And now he’d reached the summit of humiliation -- held captive for his meat like a head of common cattle.
           “Well, hon, since you’s such a good boy, we’re gonna let you go outside to the powder room.”
           His bladder almost mutinied in anticipation of relief. He felt his eyebrows being torn off as the duct tape was removed and sudden light tore into his eyes: in the aftershock he saw the vast interior of the barn, the chickens, the troughs, the piebald backsides of cows and, to this right, the huge alligator burying her eggs in a mass of golden hay.
           “Berenice won’t harm you none, mister,” said the woman. “She’s all tired out from layin’.”
           There was, as Smedlow had suspected, a window to his left (a ragged cloud, a goat, the blessed outhouse) and -- on the shelves above the window -- huge dunnish glass jars catching the first rays of morning sun. Looking more closely at one of these jars he thought he saw eyes, blonde hair, emaciated arms and what looked like the hindquarters of a mackerel.
            

                    

    Chapter V.
    Containing Mr. Frobey’s proud reflections upon the accomplishments of his family; with an encomium upon the art of splicing and an explanation of the Frobey Debt.

    Lemuel Lee had heard tell that, as far back as three hundred years ago, one of his ancestors had spliced a monkey’s head onto a spaniel. Of course that particular splicer hadn’t lived for more than a month, but the thing back then was to do yer splicin’ just before the circus opened. Since the circus was only in town for maybe five days, yer splicer didn’t