Free Lizard Music by Daniel Pinkwater Page A

Dogs. The people come out of their houses and watch the last of the fat men floating upward. Then someone says, “Do you suppose they’re gone for good?” and someone else says, “We must always be prepared. Never again shall earth be taken by surprise without an arsenal of jelly doughnuts.”
    A pretty good movie, I thought, if a little weird. The lizards appeared on schedule, but tonight the reception wasn’t very good. There were all those little dots jumping, like when there’s no signal coming from the station, and you could just make out the lizards behind the dots. The sound wasn’t too good either. It was just as well—I really needed to get to sleep at a decent hour if I wanted to be fresh for my adventure in the morning.
    In the morning, I woke up early enough to take a shower. I hadn’t had time for one the past few days, and I was starting to get sort of grimy. I put on my bathing trunks under my clothes, picked up the bag with the lunch, twine, and so forth, picked up a forgery to mail, and went to the bus stop. I didn’t bother with breakfast, because I was planning to have something to eat at Shane Fergussen’s candy store.

Chapter 12
    I was sitting at the counter of Shane Fergussen’s candy store having a grape soda and a jelly doughnut for breakfast, when Charlie walked in.
    “That looks good,” he said. “I’ll have the same, Shane.” I looked at my new $2.98 watch—it was 9:45. The bus from McDonaldsville had been crowded with commuters. “A grape soda and a jelly doughnut for my good friend Albrecht Dürer,” Shane Fergussen said.
    “I thought your name was Charlie,” I said to the Chicken Man.
    “—or Charlie for short,” Shane Fergussen said.
    Charlie had a big bag with him. It was made out of some kind of rough cloth. “You’re a good swimmer, aren’t you Victor?” he asked.
    “Sure,” I said.
    “Do you like boats?”
    I wasn’t sure—I had never actually been in a boat. I said I supposed I liked them.
    “Fine, because we’re going for a boat ride today,” Charlie said. We paid Shane Fergussen and left the candy store. It was 9:58.
    “What boat ride?” I asked.
    “Out to the middle of Lake Mishagoo,” Charlie said.
    Lake Mishagoo is this big lake that Hogboro is right next to. It’s not just some little pond. You can’t see to the other side of it, and it gets pretty choppy sometimes. Mishagoo is an Indian word. It means “lake-so-big-you-can’t-see-the-other-side.” That’s the sort of thing they teach us in school.
    It was just a few blocks to the lake. Charlie was carrying the big bag over his shoulder. It looked heavy. He was wearing his hat, so I assumed that Claudia was under it. Charlie didn’t say anything; he just puffed along carrying the bag. When we came to an intersection, he’d set the bag down and wipe his face with a handkerchief.
    “Do you want me to help you carry that?” I asked.
    “The guide carries the bag,” Charlie said.
    To get to the lake you cross a street, and there’s a little park. The park stretches along the lakefront, and in some places there are beaches. In between the beaches are stretches of rocks along the shore. We wound up on some rocks.
    “The lake! The lake! We made it!” Charlie said. This struck me as weird—we’d only gone about eight blocks from Shane Fergussen’s candy store.
    “Where’s the boat?” I asked.
    “Wait,” Charlie said. Out of the big bag he dumped a big shapeless yellow thing. He spread the yellow thing out on the rocks. It was shaped sort of like a flat bathtub; it was made of something like rubber. Charlie found a valve and started blowing into it. It was one of those war surplus, blow-up life rafts. As it inflated, it looked more like an out-of-shape doughnut than a bathtub. The doughnut part was what got filled with air. There was a rubber floor, and Charlie dug a pair of collapsible oars out of the bag.
    “Our yacht,” he said, when he had finished blowing it up.
    “Where