Free Neverland by Douglas Clegg Page A

their pop eyes came just above the water, the bumpy ridge of their tails like tiny spikes in a perfect trail behind them. “I bet they get real big.”
    “Yeah, huh,” I replied.
    “How much you think they are?”
    “Ten dollars.”
    “I bet twenty.”
    “No way. Ten.”
    “It don’t matter, anywho,” he patted me on the back, “ ’cause I’m gonna get one for free.”
    “Yeah, huh .”
    “If I have to kill fat old Diane to do it.” He managed to undo one of the staples from the screen. He slipped his hand down into the tank, into the far corner, away from the resting Caymans. His fingers squished into the old raw hamburger and pulled it up. When he’d freed his hand from beneath the tank’s screen, he lifted the hamburger to his nose. “Smells like a toad turd.”
    I wrinkled my nose. “Gross me out.”
    Sumter popped the disgusting meat into his mouth and swallowed, snapping his teeth together so they clicked. “I was getting kinda hungry.”

2
    I hated fishing.
    But what I hated more than fishing were the stories Uncle Ralph would tell in the little dinghy we rented to go out on Rabbit Lake. We launched it into Rabbit Lake, our feet stinging with damp prickers, mud oozing between our toes. Sumter was up to his butt in the water before he leaned into the boat, head and arms first, feet last, sliding in, his teddy bear tucked under his arm.
    When he got all settled in, he said to me, “Bernard doesn’t like you.”
    “It’s just a stuffed toy,” I said, “and your daddy’s right, you’re too old.”

    “If you keep talking like that, I’ll be mad enough to spit tacks, and Bernard’ll eat you before you can blink.”
    “That thing ain’t gonna eat nobody, it’s just gonna lose its stuffing.”
    “A good bear can tear you limb from limb. I read up on grizzlies, and they’re the meanest. Bernard is part grizzly and part something else.”
    “Yeah, huh,” I said, reading the label beneath Bernard’s tail, “part polyurethane.”
    “Quiet,” Uncle Ralph whispered, swatting at the air. “You’ll scare the fish away.”
    Uncle Ralph was an avid fisherman, wasting no time: The sun was almost completely up, it was nearly six a.m., and his bad jokes could wait no more. “There was this fella who goes to his doctor and the doctor says to him, ‘I’m gonna need a urine sample, a stool sample, and a sperm sample,’ and the guy goes, ‘Well, hey, why’n’t I just give you my underwear?’” Sumter laughed so hard he started hacking, and Uncle Ralph had to slap him on the back. Sumter hawked a loogie out the starboard side, and we watched it splash down and create ripples. A small sunfish came up to nip at it.
    “Good one, Daddy, but tell the one about you know the guy who you know gets caught on a you-know-whatever of spit.” Sumter tied a lead weight to the end of his father’s line. Whenever Sumter played with hooks, I stayed as far away from him as possible. He had poked half a dozen hooks through Bernard’s ears, and probably would’ve been just as happy to put them through mine, too. “You know, Daddy, that one about drinking spit. You know .”
    Uncle Ralph had a face like a moose, and his blubbery lips parted in a smile-snarl as he chomped down on a wad of tobacco. “Okay, there’s this guy walks into a bar and he goes, ‘Ain’t got no money, but I’ll do anything for a drink,’ and the bartender goes, ‘Howsabout you take a sip from the spittoon and I’ll give ya a shot of bourbon,’ and the guy goes—”
    “Ralph, I think you should stop while you’re ahead.” When my father spoke to his friends or family, his voice was low and authoritative; the stammer he had in his business life never carried over into personal matters. I
used to stand in front of a mirror and try to imitate that deep, unaccented sound, but never could.
    Uncle Ralph paused momentarily, but went right on, “Reminds me of this one about this guy . . . ”
    We sat in muddy water, me in the