Lights Out in the Reptile House (5 page)

“Oh, leave the poor boy alone,” her mother said, working into an anger. “You have to badger him as well?”

“Do I badger you?” Leda asked.

Karel shook his head, his mouth half-closed.

“There,” Leda said, without triumph. “See?”

“There's no sense arguing with you when you're being impossible,” her mother said stiffly. She left the room.

“So don't,” Leda called after her.

“You'll just disagree with whatever I say,” her mother said from the kitchen.

“So test me,” Leda said. “Tell me the NUP are idiots.”

“I
don't
like you using that
word!
” her mother yelled. She was standing in the doorway, brandishing a large stirring spoon.

Leda quieted, frightened. Her mother left the doorway.

Karel cleared his throat. He put his palms together in front of his mouth.

Leda swung her legs around and hauled herself from the chair and suggested a walk. “We're going to go get into trouble, Mom,” she called from the front step, and then shut the door behind her when her mother didn't answer.

On the walk Karel asked about Nicholas, to change the subject.

“That's one good thing,” Leda said. “The NUP says too much aid goes to places like mental institutions. Naturally. They probably all escaped from one. I'm hoping they'll just abolish the whole thing and send him home.”

“Where do you read all this stuff?” Karel asked. Leda shot him a look, and he didn't pursue it. “You don't like Nicholas's … place, huh?” he said instead. “I thought they teach them skills and things.”

“I'll tell you what the kids learn,” Leda said. “They learn to clean filthy things. They learn to sweep. Sometimes to count. I asked Nicholas once what he was learning and he said he was learning to be quiet.”

Karel nodded sympathetically, chagrined that this topic too had exploded. He hadn't had any idea things were that bad there.

“I don't know whether to cry or hit people when I go there,” she said. “It's so terrible.”

“I'll go with you next time,” he offered. Another, shadow part of him said,
Are you out of your mind?

“You want to?” Leda asked, and stopped, and looked at him closely. “Thanks,” she said, and squeezed his arm. “That's nice.”

He was pleased with the squeeze and nursed the feeling for a while.

They continued walking, and he asked where they were going. Leda said the cave with the bats. Did he know about it? She'd show him.

How did
she
know about it? Karel asked. She said David had taken her.

The sky was red and violet in streaks. He walked along thinking of the endless number of things in this town he knew nothing about. Leda stopped opposite a shallow-looking niche in an exposed rock formation. She said, “It's late. But we won't go far.” She sat on the ground and then lay back and edged sideways into the niche. She disappeared.

“Come on,” she called, her voice muffled. There was some scraping. Karel sank to his hands and knees and saw a much darker slot deep in the niche, through which the top of her head bobbed. He crawled in, trying to stay low, and banged his shoulder on the rock. His exclamation of pain echoed around him. At the slot he slid over sideways and his legs tumbled down onto Leda shoulders, and he apologized until she said it was okay, already.

They settled themselves in a black oblique space as big as a car backseat. He was excited at being this close to her. She was moving stones. He spread both hands on the dark rock around him and said something inadequate to express his enthusiasm. This was amazing. She was a girl. She said, “This part's narrow,” and started in feet first on her back, using her elbows on the sloping sandy floor of the tunnel. With everything but her head and shoulders in, she hesitated, and twisted around to look back at him. “You sure you want to do this?” she asked. “You won't be scared? The bats if you see them are pretty ugly.”

Karel made a dismissive spitting sound. He asked her if she wanted him to go first. She shook her head and slipped into the darkness, making a light scraping noise. It reminded him of a shovel being drawn over sandy soil.

He eased himself into the hole feet first when he judged her far enough ahead. It was cold on his back, and he took a last look through the entrance up at the sky, already deep blue in the twilight, and then began edging downward.

He could just make out the rock face, three or four inches over his. He could raise his head only a little, and couldn't see over his feet down into the darkness anyway. He thought of scorpions and heavy bird spiders, and the back of his neck prickled. How was it she wasn't scared? “Hey,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “Hey.” He stopped.

There was a rustling ahead and then silence. “What?” Leda said.

“How are we going to see anything?” he asked.

“I've got a candle,” Leda said. Karel could hear her crawling again.

He scrabbled downward for minutes, trying to estimate the distance they were traveling, his rear and elbows thumping along. He wondered what sort of reptiles they might come across. Some skinks, some blind lizards, the sort of translucent, helpless-looking things he saw in books. It was stupid, he supposed, to just climb into places like this, but then he told himself that if Leda knew about it, it must be pretty well traveled. He kept crawling, not very reassured. He thought about finding and bringing back a new species of something, docile and unique. He thought he should have brought his hoop snare and specimen bag. He passed a part of the wall that was dripping, and he felt colder. He could smell guano. He hoped that that wasn't what he was feeling along the walls and floor. “Yick,” Leda said, ahead of him.

He bumped his tailbone painfully on a ridgelike rise. He stopped, easing down off his elbows and lying flat on his back.

“Hey,” he said again. He could feel cold air sweeping up from below, over him.

“
What?
” Leda said, a little exasperated. She was much farther ahead.

“How much farther is this?” he asked.

“We can go back if you want,” Leda said. The guano smell was much stronger. Then she said, “You hear that?” Her voice came up the shaft like a whisper.

He stopped and rubbed his lower back, chilled. He craned his head up as far as he could and looked over his feet down into the darkness. He listened.

“What
is
that?” Leda asked. Karel couldn't hear anything. He strained, frightened. He began to pick up the faintest puffs, bursts of air, chuffings, like someone in a distant room displacing air with sheets of paper. There was a scratching, and Leda lit her candle and the yellow glow radiated up the circular tunnel. Karel could see his feet and Leda's head, and her hand cradling the flame. The walls around him were covered with long sheetlike stretches of guano. He groaned.

“It's the bats,” Leda said, and one spiraled up the tunnel with supernatural finesse, planing over her head and looping and undulating right over Karel with a whispery sound, its tiny black eyes glittering.

He was going to remark on that, delighted, when down the tunnel a huge wind seemed to be building, and Leda gave a cry. Another bat fluttered by, faster, like some black, wrinkled fruit, and he looked down and the roaring grew louder and the bat shapes exploded out from below the darkness, extinguishing Leda's candle and filling the tunnel top to bottom and roaring all around them. He jerked back and crossed his hands over his face. They were a torrent, unbearably thick and furious in the darkness, colliding with the walls, the ceiling, his head, rocketing and pinballing by and landing on him everywhere, piling up in confusion below his feet, climbing him awkwardly, stumbling as others buffeted them from behind. He felt them squirming into his pants legs and he shrieked and thrashed. The crawlers were reaching his head and arms, fighting for position and leaping into flight, tensing their little claws on his forehead and ears, propelled by his violent twisting. His cheeks were brushed and swept with fur and leathery flapping, and he revolted, turning left and right, slapping and clawing at his face. He could hear even through the din Leda's sobbing. He tried to get to her and couldn't. He turned his face to the rock and tried to submit, but they didn't let up, and he was suffocated by the smell and the sound and the overwhelming feeling of being crawled on everywhere, and he cried out for her and for help and wanted to bang his head against the rock wall until it stopped, and he stamped and kicked the walls and scraped his hands until finally, suddenly, they began to subside. He could hear again, the volume dropping steadily, and then there were only a few stragglers flitting by, or laboring up his shirt front. He beat them off, hurting himself with his violence. They made tiny squeals.

Leda was still sobbing. He shivered and shook and furiously scratched and rubbed himself. He crawled down to her and tapped her with his foot, to reassure her, and she shrieked and started crying again. He rested a foot on her shoulder, unable to reach her with his hands. Together, after a wait, they climbed back up the tunnel. The darkness beyond the cave was complete enough now that they had to negotiate their way out slowly, sniffing and choking, by touch. Outside the cave they held on to each other, sobbing, and then Leda pulled away from him and ran home.

His father helped him clean up. He was covered with scratches and dirt and guano and acrid bat urine. He explained he'd been in a cave, and there'd been bats, but couldn't bring himself to say any more, and he started crying, waving his arms fruitlessly and ashamed to be so childish.

His father patted his shoulder and sat back on the edge of the bathtub, looking at him glumly. “What a mess, huh?” he finally said. He got up and opened the bathroom door softly, as if out of consideration. “What a mess your mother left me with,” he said.

He dreamed that night he was swimming under a featureless white sky in a dead-calm ocean, in complete silence. The horizon was flat and smoothed in all directions, and he had little trouble staying afloat. He could faintly hear his own splashing. It echoed claustrophobically like splashing in a bath. Brightly colored ceramic balls floated by every so often, the reds, oranges, and deep blues striking. The water was completely glassy, ripples from his exertions flattening immediately. The light seemed artificial. He gradually became aware that he was swimming near the clifflike black hull of a huge ship—a theatrical prop of some sort? he wondered—and in the far distance, while he watched, a silent and giant wave swept across the horizon, hundreds and hundreds of feet high.

He stayed in bed the next day until late afternoon. He thought about the way as a child he'd collected geckos by sliding them headfirst into empty beer bottles. He thought about the speckled lizard that came every morning onto his stone table to share his breakfast on their old patio in the city. The lizard had been fond of brown sugar, and when it drank the water he set out in a shallow dish it rested its throat on the lip.

When he got up and went downstairs his father was preparing drinks for himself and a man named Holter, whom Karel had met once before. Holter had met Karel's father while they still lived in the city and had told him about the opportunities out in the desert. Karel knew that his father hated to keep pushing Holter about it, but also resented the fact that Holter hadn't come up with anything yet, and had more or less ignored them. Holter nodded at Karel as if he lived there. It turned out he was talking about a possible job. Karel's father wouldn't say what sort of job. When Karel asked Holter, the man put his finger to his lips and mimed a shushing noise.

His father was making the horrible mint-and-grain-alcohol thing he called the Roeder Specialty. Karel stood in the kitchen doorway. The sensation of the bats' claws on his neck and arms refused to go away. He closed his eyes tightly and opened them again. His father asked if he'd seen the pestle. Karel doubted they'd ever had one. His father told Holter they needed a pestle to do the job right and then ground the fresh mint leaves into the bottoms of their glasses with a fork. The fork made an unpleasant noise on the glass.

His father held one of the drinks up to the light. The mint leaves swirled helically around the glass, creating the impression of swamp water.

Karel sat down at the table, overcome with unexpected affection and sadness. His father only wanted some purpose to his life, to be happy, to be unashamed of himself and his accomplishments. What did he lack? Some sort of energy? Will? Luck? He'd once told Karel in a café during one of his lowest periods that all he was doing was prolonging himself.

His father continued scuttling his fork around as if with enough work the drink would become appetizing. He smiled at Holter, and Holter looked at him curiously.

What sort of job was being offered Karel didn't know. He didn't like Holter. Though he knew it was wrong he hoped things wouldn't work out.

Holter extended his feet and flexed them at the ankles, looking at them with satisfaction. “I work so hard that afterward I'm too tired to enjoy myself,” he said.

His father cleared his throat and asked Karel about school. He looked ready to give up on the drinks.

Karel told him flatly that he didn't think he'd like the new subjects. The same reptile study sheet was still on the kitchen table. For some reason it depressed him.

His father said he'd study the subjects he was given and like it, but Karel recognized in his voice the tone he assumed when talking tough as a way of compensating in advance for giving in.

There was trouble in the schools, Holter told them. The schools were still a problem area. These things didn't happen overnight. The Party
was
governing on an ongoing emergency basis, with the Praetor holding the government in trust until the new constitution could be worked out. It was unclear to Karel, toying with his study sheet, who was working on that problem. Holter added that anyway it was hard for anyone to imagine a constitution that would be preferable to the Praetor.