Chapter 5
The Chicken Man must have slipped the card into my pocket. He was a pretty good magician, there wasn’t any doubt about that. Back in my house, the whole thing didn’t seem so scary. The Chicken Man didn’t seem mean, just weird and spooky. I got the TV warmed up. There was a game show where the contestants jump into a deep pit with greased sides. They have to wear a special suit with no pockets. At the bottom of the pit there’s a million dollars in small bills. They have half a minute to stuff as much money as they can into their mouth, and scramble up the greased sides of the pit. The audience screams a lot. Nobody ever winds up with much more than a hundred dollars.
The oven timer went off just as the news program started. I got my fried chicken and watched the news. I wasn’t really able to pay attention. I kept thinking about Herr Doktor Professor Horace Kupeckie, Plt.D., and the trick he had done with the lizard. It was sort of bothering me. I guessed a good magician could make something appear like that—but a lizard! How did he know I was thinking about lizards? The doorway where I met the Chicken Man was not far from the empty store window where I was looking at the lizard album cover. Maybe he saw me looking at that, and guessed that I’d be thinking about a lizard. I had seen a magician at a school show who would tell you to pick a card and then think about it, and then he would show you the card. It was kind of odd that Doktor Professor Kupeckie had a lizard in his pocket. On the other hand, he kept a chicken under his hat. Maybe he had a whole lot of animals stashed in his raincoat. I felt a little embarrassed about running away like that. Probably I had hurt Professor Kupeckie’s feelings. He may have just been trying to be friendly and show me a trick.
Roger Mudd was telling how the President likes to eat cottage cheese with catsup on it for lunch—the telephone rang. It was Mom calling to see how things were going. I told her that everything was fine. She wanted to talk to Leslie, but I told her she went bowling with Gloria Schwartz. Then she wanted to know if I had eaten my supper. I told her I was eating it right now. Then she wanted to know what I was having, and I told her. Then Dad got on and asked me all the same questions. Then Mom got on again, and she asked me all the same questions again. Then Dad got on and gave me a bunch of advice, mostly the same stuff they had told me before they left. Then Mom got on, and she said everything that Dad had said. I was trying to stretch the telephone cord so I could see Roger Mudd. It was hard to see the screen, but I thought I saw a little lizard head peeking over Roger’s shoulder—just for a second. Mom and Dad finally hung up, and I ran back to the TV, but there wasn’t any lizard. I wasn’t sure if I had seen it or not. I decided I was for sure going to wait up for the lizard band.
I had a look at the TV listings. There was nothing about the lizards. The late movie was Invasion of the Pod People. It sounded good. I wondered why Roger Mudd would have a lizard on his shoulder. Some people keep lizards as pets, but Roger Mudd wouldn’t bring his lizard on television. I mean, maybe he would, but Walter would never do such a thing, and he wouldn’t let Roger do it either. I probably imagined it (not that I go in for imagining things—I’m not that sort of kid). Still, I was pretty shook up earlier when Professor Kupeckie did that trick, and I was sort of starting to get lizards on the brain.
Right after the news there was one of these animal programs. There have been a lot of animal programs lately. They are all about alike. They show some kind of wild animal and tell about how in a few years they will all be killed off, and it’s a shame and all the fault of human beings. Most of the programs are sponsored by companies that make dog food and stuff like that. I heard Walter Cronkite say that they use whale meat in dog food. I always wonder if the sponsors of the animal programs use whale meat in their dog food. I like the animal programs pretty well; it seems that everybody likes animals, now that they’ve killed most of them. This time the program was about lizards. I might have known. It was getting to be national lizard week, or something. All of a sudden, I was running into lizards every five minutes. “I’ll bet a lizard could get elected president,” I thought.
The program was very interesting. There are a lot of different kinds of lizards—all sizes and colors. They didn’t seem to have much in the way of personality, but some of them were very pretty. Sometimes I wish we had a color set. The program showed lizards eating bugs, and frogs, and other lizards. It showed them running around, and fighting, and shedding their skins. It didn’t show any of them playing the saxophone.
After the animal program there was a police program, with lots of head-bashing, and shooting, and crashing cars, and men hitting women, and dope addicts going crazy, and all that stuff. Those shows are always the same. I worked on my model airplane and sort of half-watched it. Even the commercials were dull. Some big company, maybe an insurance company or an oil company—they didn’t even say what they made—they just talked about what a great country America is and showed all these pictures of dumb-looking families smiling at the camera. The other channels all had police shows too, so I was stuck. For part of the time I dozed off on the floor, with my chin resting on the newspaper I had spread out under my model. As a result of falling asleep, part of the wing got glued on crooked. I was holding it while the glue dried, when I dozed off. I had a lot of trouble getting it straightened out, and it still didn’t look too neat by the time the late news came on. I hate sloppy work on model airplanes—it sort of ruins them. I’m usually very careful not to have any splops of glue, or lumpy paint, or anything like that. It really frustrated me that my DC-10 had glue bumps on the wing. I hoped the paint would cover them.
I did the cookie and milk thing again, and settled down to watch the late news and the late movie. I turned off most of the lights and got ready to watch Bob Barney. Bob Barney really took my mind off my troubles; he did a first-rate news show again. Really, that guy has a fantastic future ahead of him. One of the things he did that I had never seen before was the man-in-the-street interview. This is how it works. Bob Barney goes out with a tape recorder and a videotape camera. He has a cameraman to work the equipment—Bob Barney just holds the microphone. There’s a question; this particular night it was “Should public employees have the right to strike?” Then Bob Barney waits around on a busy street and stops people and asks the question. The first guy was dressed in a suit, and he had horn-rimmed glasses and a little hat. Bob Barney asked him his name.
“My name is Lawrence Lawrence,” the man said.
Then Bob Barney asked him the question of the day, “Should public employees have the right to strike?”
“Golly, I never really thought about it,” Lawrence Lawrence said.
“Well, you must have some feeling on the question,” Bob Barney said. “What’s your basic reaction?”
“Well, I’d say, whatever turns them on,” Lawrence Lawrence said.
Then Bob Barney stopped a little fat woman with no teeth. Every time she said a swear word, they beeped it out, but you could see her lips moving. “You’re beep right! My beep son’s first wife’s cousin’s boy is a fireman. The way that poor beep has to work—it’s a beep shame. Let the beep city beep beep beep.”
In the background, coming up the street, was someone in a rumpled raincoat. He wasn’t coming straight up the street. He was doing a little turn now and then and sort of shifting from one side of the pavement to the other, snapping his fingers and sort of dipping at the knees. As he got closer, I could see it was the Chicken Man—he was dancing! He was dancing along the sidewalk. Just as the beep lady got through with the question, the Chicken Man was almost filling the picture behind her, dipping and turning and snapping. Next he was on camera, and Bob Barney was asking him his name.
“Lucas Cranach, Jr.,” the Chicken Man said.
“Should public employees have the right to strike?” asked Bob Barney.
The Chicken Man was still dipping and snapping his fingers. “Public employees must, of necessity, be divided into two general groups,” the Chicken Man said, “those whose function is vital to the health and welfare of the community, and those whose function is mainly clerical, or administrative. Functionaries, such as police, fire department personnel, sanitation workers, and public health workers, have a responsibility which extends beyond the limits of an ordinary job. Although all Americans have the right to collective bargaining, this constitutes a gray area, which has been the subject of much debate. It is to be hoped that, at least in our city, matters of budget and arbitration will be conducted in such a way that the question remains academic.”
“Thank you very much, sir,” Bob Barney said.
“Dig it,” said the Chicken Man. “Can I say hello to my friend Victor?”
“I’m sorry,” Bob Barney said, “Federal Communications Commission rules prohibit using the media for personal messages.”
“Dig it—forget about it, Victor,” the Chicken Man said, and the Chicken Man, also known as Herr Doktor Professor Horace Kupeckie, Plt.D., also known as Lucas Cranach, Jr., dipped and spun and snapped off camera.
This last weird thing knocked me out completely. I didn’t know what to think. Except that every kid in my school has taken a battery of psychological tests—and I came out 100 percent normal and average in every one—I would have thought that maybe I was going crazy. I never heard of so many coincidences! Lizards! And the Chicken Man turning up everywhere! And saying hello to me on television! It was too much!
The late movie snapped me out of it. I was mainly worrying about all the crazy things that had happened to me all day, but the picture caught my interest, and soon I was paying pretty close attention to it. It was almost as good as the one I had seen the night before.
In this movie, Invasion of the Pod People, little seeds from outer space float down into everybody’s basement. Then the seeds start growing into giant pods—like watermelons, only much bigger. Nobody ever finds one. After the pods get to be full grown, they break open, and out steps an exact replica of each person who lives in the house. The replicas sneak upstairs and eat the people. Then they take their places. They are exactly like the other people—the real earth people—in every way, except the pod people have no emotions and have terrible taste. The earth people have no idea that they are being replaced.
Then this one earth person finds out what is happening. He goes around spotting pod people. The pod people smile all the time and put catsup on everything. He tries to save himself and his girl friend. It turns out that they are the only two people in town who have not been replaced. Their replacements are waiting to eat them, but they can only do it if the earth person is asleep. Finally they get the girl friend, but the one guy escapes. He’s going to warn the rest of the world, but he doesn’t know if the rest of the world has gone pod or not. It just ends there—with the guy on the highway trying to hitch a ride, and all that passes him are trucks full of big pods. A great movie—much better than your usual science fiction, because the outer-space creatures win, or at least have a chance. And the movie leaves it up to you.
I was pretty tired after all I had been through during the day, and I actually had to hold my eyes open for the last part of the movie. I was determined to wait up for the lizards to come on. They did, but I must have fallen asleep almost at once, because when I woke up—on the couch again—I hardly remembered anything about the lizard show. I barely remembered that they had been on; it seemed like a dream. In fact, everything that had happened the day before seemed sort of like a dream. I felt woozy and tired out, the way you feel when you’ve had a whole bunch of bad dreams. I almost had decided that it was a dream, when I saw the Chicken Man’s card on the kitchen table, with the corners curling up.