Lizard Tansy District 10

[Appearance]

[Personality]

The job’s simple enough, but there’s always a few of ya as don’t know yer ass from yer elbow, Offerman, the foreman sniffs from his place above them all on his cart, a camel coloured Stetson tipped down over his small beady eyes, moustache bristling at them. I need eight boys for the round up. And only eight. There are eleven present, which means three men ending up hungry.

Pay’s twenty dollars for the week. You’ll get supplies for your meals but you gotta cook yerselves, I aint yer goddamn mommas. Anybody who complains about the food won’t get none. You answer to me. No questions, no sass, my goddamn cows, my goddamn show and my goddamn say. You can’t do that, you wont get paid. You don’t get me enough of my cows, you won’t get paid. You fuck up or piss me off in any way you will not get paid. You all understand that? Offerman looks at Lizard specifically here, though no one present can afford to have any problems with the terms. Lizard shrugs nonchalantly. He doesn’t do well with authority, tends not to listen and gives them that same brazen look he does with everyone where other men might tip their heads to the ground. Offerman knows it; he’s worked this round up before, wrangled a couple of fillys for a season when he first got out of the reapings- Lizard’s a pill who pisses off the other cowboys and stinks out the tent but he has a way with animals like no other, draws them in like the pied piper with his magic flute, makes even the most difficult horse shrink back inside of himself like Lizard squeezed a hold of his balls and ripped them off. He knows he’s getting picked, Offerman knows it to.

And god help the men who get stuck in a tent with Lizard. Like all the kids in his family, he got dragged up wild and poor as dirt, pissing and shitting where he wanted, stealing what he needed. They fought a lot, like a pack of dogs. Some little misstep that upset the dominance laid down and two boys, maybe more at a time, would always end up biting and beating- even the girls did it sometimes too and the old habits die hard. Especially when you love the old habits. He’s not opened his mouth yet, like most cowboys he knows how to stay silent- but with a bottle of whiskey in his belly and a tin of beans in his hand around a campfire, he simply chooses not to.

He’s always been interested in animals, ever since he was a kid, finding dried up dead armadillos to pull them apart and see what they’re like inside, squishing up bugs between the flat of his palms to see how it feels. Like a scientist. These days his favourite animals are people, quietly watching and listening, finding the perfect way to pull a man apart and see what’s inside. And if it makes them hit him, kick on his head til he gets punch drunk and pumped full of endorphins then that means he’s won. Makes him feel all….funny….inside, like he wants to ride up to the old boarding house right at the edge of the eastern wall where a man with skin as brown as a nut named Scarecrow keeps whores around.

It’s the roundup and the drives that puts their blood up. A bunch of eight or so fellas out there in the open without even a hint of a girl….he’s been on drives with females before, but sometimes that just makes it worse, even if she’s some brawny, ruddy type more cow than girl it makes their heads get even more dizzy and their blood warmer. It never ends well for her. Lizard’s seen that, she sniffs back her tears (not so brawny and tough now, ay sister?) and never talks about the roundup again, can’t see men on horses travelling in packs without feeling sick to her stomach. He can be charming to girls, the feral animal inside of him interests them a lot and some could call those jagged cheekbones and hungry eyes of his striking. Lizard knows how to tell a joke and the held eye contact, the careful listening makes them feel real special. But he can also be…not so charming. Aint his fault. Try telling a shark not to go into a frenzy when it smells blood in the water, these things aint easily stopped. Human nature. Base instincts.

And Lizard is a man who, above all, gives into his base instincts. He aint dumb, no, no, not by a long way, is actually surprisingly well read for a dirty ass cowboy- possessive of a natural sharpness. After long nights spent out on plains and fields he can name all the constellations, the Pleiades spread across the sky like freckles out in space. But if they think he’s dumb, aint like Lizard’s gonna correct them. He’s never cared about what other people think.

Like all pack animals, Lizard is fiercely protective of his siblings, two boys and two girls- Cyst, Goggles, Pluto and Ruby. A lot of his wages still get sent back home since Ruby is still pretty young though he doesn’t always see them much anymore, spending so much time on the road looking for work. However, when the Tansy kids do get together, carnage usually tends to follow with so many hot tempers, quick fists and violent personalities clashing. It’s considered a good family get together when someone breaks a bone. They guard their property savagely and don’t take kindly to anyone trespassing on their land; Lizard would as soon as gut a man who laid a finger on his sisters, hell, he’d do it if he even thought someone was thinking about doing it- get in there first before anyone got a chance. And…he’d probably have fun doing it too.

The roundup starts tomorrow, five am sharp. Anyone aint there on time and I’ll find someone else, don’t think I won’t. Cowboys are ten a fuckin’ penny. Offerman finishes, when he’s made his selection- a guy in his sixties, a kid with a lazy eye built like a toothpick and a haggard mangled looking man with a deformed arm hanging limply at his side left to kick the dust angrily and wonder what they’re gonna do about getting food all season while the others have only the open plains, saddle sores and beans that taste like puke to look forward to, with the promise of a few dollars in their pocket at the end of it.

[History]

They gather in a bar later, the eight men to celebrate their new job; the money aint great, the work will be hard and Offerman never makes life easy for anyone on a round up but a job is a job and some of these men have mouths to feed. Lizard is with them, hungrily staring at a thick middle aged tart slumped over her drink. When her eyes meet his, he slips away from the assembled company over to her. Two of the men, friends from way back watch him go and the darker of them turns to his buddy.

You heard the story aintcha? He begins, his voice wafting on the air like the scent of turpentine and whiskey; ‘bout that Lizard kid’s momma, cigarette hanging out of his mouth like a limp dick. Biggest whore in the East, she was. Five kids by five different fellers, never married, dozens of them on the go

The other man snorts. So? That aint that special. My momma weren’t exactly no virginal type neither, rest her soul.

I’m gettin’ to it. Hold yer fuckin’ horses. So anyway she gets in with a wrangler, real jealous type and sooner or later he finds out what she done. Then…you know what he did after that?

Well fuck. How am I supposed to know? He gave ‘er a kiss, yeah? Flipped her over on the kitchen table an’ went at her like a horse in heat.

The dark man’s shrill crow laughter breaks the air like glass. He grins hugely, showing each of his smashed up graveyard teeth.

No. No he did not.

The grin drips off his face like candlewax.

He plucked one of her eyes out and left the other in so she could watch when he chopped off ‘er hand, cooked and ate up all the meat on ‘er fingers. Ran ‘er through with a knife until she was leakin’ like a sieve. Then he shoved that same knife up inside ‘er, you know how I mean like and kicked her head in ‘til she weren’t breathin’ no more. Right in front of her kids.

Shut up. That aint never happened.

True as anything I swear.

He didn’t cook ‘em, a voice pipes up behind them. The two men blanch as Lizard Tansy stands at the bar, a dollar held out to signal the landlord, the thick middle aged woman on his arm. The fingers. He ate em raw. For a minute Lizard stares at them with the dead dark eyes of a rag doll. And then he grins wide and warm, hands sneaking to take up the watered down beer the darker man had been drinking. It’s the same colour as piss, it tastes a little like piss too but Lizard opens his gullet and seemingly takes it all in with one huge gulp. See ya tomorrow fellas.

He’s laughing as he leads his lady friend away. The gossip never gets it right, always over blows everything into strange hyperbole. The truth of the matter is that Lizard Tansy was born the eldest child of five, five children by five different father's that much was true. And maybe their momma was the biggest whore in the East, not that Lizard had ever seen a league chart or anything- isnt entirely sure how something like that gets decided. Royal Tansy was a woman without prospects, tall with straggly blonde hair and twisted up features, aged horribly from working in the sun. They didnt have much, still don't really- just a few pigs and a house.

She used to drink and get into fights, ranting about her brother running off with her inheritance, passing out on the floor in the afternoon so that Ruby and Goggle took to using her as the foundation of their building block houses. They'd pile colored chunks of wood onto the small of her back and though she'd snore and rumble like an earthquake below ground, Royal never once woke up from her slumber. Safe to say she enjoyed getting drunk.

The fights weren't for fun though- not the way it is for Lizard. She just had a habit of running her mouth off, rubbing people up the wrong way and when that happened she'd be the first one to reach for the bottle, pitching herself about the place like her own personal windstorm. A calamity in cut off denim shorts. She was, Lizard still has to admit, more than a little bit magnificent.But she got what was coming to her in the end. He didn't cut out her eyes, or eat her hand or any of the other stuff like how people were always saying- but he did make the children watch. Lizard can still remember quite clearly the scene; the narrow stretch of their kitchen, with brown floor tiles and the shutters always kept closed because when Momma wasn't drinking Momma was hungover and stressed, leaving a trail of ciggarette ash behind her as though to guide her way home- like how it went in the fairy tales.

Lizard's thirteen years old, and Ruby's in her high chair, flinging mashed peas around the kitchen while Cyst is trying to feed her. Momma and her boyfriend bring the fight to them, a smashed bottle like their curtain call, proceeding the unfurling the second and final act. Faces flushed, contorted with rage, they're yelling about someone or something and it hardly seems to matter anymore. Contrary to popular belief it's Lizard’s Momma who picks up the knife first. Not a sword or a lance, like Cyst said she'd heard some people say at school- this is real life not the fucking hunger games- just a run of the mill kitchen knife, they kind they used to cut an apple up with in summer. Sitting out on the porch, it got divided into six; a segment for Lizard, for Cyst, for Goggles, for Pluto and one sliced real thin for Ruby to suck on. It must hurt when he finally manages to wrestle the knife out of her hand and plunges it into her gut. It's not been sharpened in a long time, they dont get the handy man down their way because the Tansy kids like to sit on the roof sometimes and hurl spitballs through homemade hollowed out pea shooters.

And then there's blood and he's whispering, Oh Fuck Roy, shit, but he has to get the hell out and fast because Lizard and Goggles go for him, with teeth and nail- not even checking to see how their Momma's doing. Secretly they might be more excited for the excuse to kick the tar out of someone. They chase him up past the house with sticks, but somehow they lose him in the dark of the open plains- no electricity to speak of, no houses with flickering candle light to guide them. Nothing but the endless stretching sky overhead. And by the time they get back to the house their Momma is dead, grey as a concrete slab with a wide eyed stare, her eyes turning a strangely milky shade of blue.

To say they sort of panicked, afterwards, would be putting it mildly. God only knows how long they sit in the kitchen staring at the corpse until Cyst suggests they should just…try and sleep, and they can do everything they need to do in the morning, call peacekeepers and the coroner and everything else they are supposed to do. They all pile into their momma’s bed, Lizard, Cyst, Goggles, Pluto and little Ruby wiggling because she doesn’t really understand what’s going on. The rest of them do. But what they can’t understand is the strange numbness, like they are supposed to be sad…but it hasn’t happened yet.

She’s still there in the morning, sunlight streaming through the gaps in the shutters, reflected in the pool of blood beneath their mother, deep enough that it’s only begun to dry and to brown around the very edge of the stain. She’s still there to remind them, to put an end to the vague hope that they all must have had that at some point in the night she was gonna blink the life back into her dead milky eyes, wipe off the blood and shake her head at the wound in her gut before pouring herself a whiskey and soda for breakfast.

You gotta go into town, Liz, says Cyst with a sigh, shifting Ruby on her hip.

Shooing the dog, a thin, ill tempered mutt named Jupiter, Lizard pads across the kitchen and crouches down to his mother, picks up her wrist, the same alabaster colour as a crescent moon in winter before watching it fall limp with a spatter into her blood. Why? he asks because, seriously, why? They know what happens to children without mommas- and it seems likely that the family will be scattered to the wind like fine wisps of dandelion fluff. Those of them that know their daddies might be lucky enough to stay with them; Pluto’s was a dairy man who sometimes came to the house with clothes for his son, money for their momma and pails of pasteurised milk for the rest of the kids. It would be cold because his farm had a refrigerator, and with a straw stuck right into the pail there still aint many tastes that Lizard’s found as can beat it. Cyst was less lucky in her parentage though, a one eyed layabout who was quite frankly terrifying. The rest though, Goggles and Ruby and Lizard…they’d be stuck at a community home.

We can’t just leave her here.

Not here then. We bury her. In the backyard.

I dunno Liz, someone’s gonna wonder where momma is after a while. Aint they?

But deep down they sort of doubt it. How does the old saying go? Nobody gives a damn when a tramp dies. Goggles and Lizard roll her onto the sheet pulled from her bed so that they can drag her out to the yard, but it’s summer and the heat has parched the earth and makes it impossible to dig a hole deep enough. She’s slumped on the back porch, flies blackening her face in a strange foamy layer, frenetically moving over her features, in her mouth, over the blank hollows of her eyelids and they can’t leave her like this because she’ll start to smell. So the boys, barely teenagers with gangling weak limbs like newborn foals learning to stand, pile her into a shallow ditch in the ground, and all they can do is pile the dirt over her, like a long mole hill in the ground.

We shouldn’t have done that.

Shut your fuckin’ mouth. It had to be done. Now no one needs to know.

After only a few hours Momma starts to smell anyway, it’s the heat that gets in through the shallow layer of dirt they have piled over her body making it so the reek gets out. It gets worse over time, like garbage juice and vomit and sad, bad things that they can’t pull the windows open even when summer burns through the walls and sweat rises from their bodies. The kids have to hoink their shirts up over their noses and make a run for it across the yard everyday for school.

In the end it’s the dog and Pluto’s daddy, with his money and his milk what catches them out.

Shit kids, think somethin’ crawled under your porch and died.

It’s fine. Their smiles are fixed and desperate, a scream lurking behind five sets of eyes. Momma aint here right now, but we’ll say you came. Sure as shoot we will.

I can fish it out. No problem. He wants them to like him, some part of him still nursing a crush on their momma, hoping she’ll take him back. He hasn’t got no chance though, not with a woman buried in the backyard.

Aint no problem. I’ll just get a shovel.

No! Lizard grabs onto his shirt and in that very moment Jupiter scratches on the back door. Cyst knows to let him in fast, through the smallest slit in the door, but this time the stench of rotting meat blasts as conspicuously through the kitchen as a trumpet sounding. Jupiter’s paws are thick with the dirt, mouth full of something that stretches his mouth, giving him a wide, toothy grin.

Oh fuck kids, oh fuck what is that smell. Pluto’s daddy whimpers a hand coming over his face.

Jupiter drops his prize on the kitchen tiles. A blackened, half chewed hand.

There’s not much of a story after that really, just that they needn’t have buried her in the end. Pluto’s daddy took them in. Lizard graduated school, got through the reaping without much fuss and likes to spend his time on the road. More than anything sometimes he feels like he’s doing his best to escape the story. It comes up in bars so often, the truth twisted up and warped like Chinese whispers wrapped up in the heavy cigarette smoke. Sometimes he cut out both her eyes, sometimes it was the children who resorted to eating her when the money ran out the story changes wildly and he’s never heard it told the same way twice. Everyone always forgets it was the dog, though. And he didn’t even eat all the fingers- but Lizard hadn’t been lying earlier in the bar. He did have them raw.