Lizard Studies Rory Caskey

Lizard Studies

His hand reached up to hold the small plastic lizard toy. It was his son’s toy: his son was the one who had tied the tail of the toy to a piece of leather string.

“Because you like lizards, Daddy,” his son’s voice rang in his head.

When his voice was small, his son still saw him as a hero. Now the small voice was deep and was changing. It went from being rooted in love for his father to a newly formed voice that told him his father hadn’t changed in thirty years, that he hadn’t grown up. He could feel his son torn between expecting him to change and knowing that his father is who he is.

Tom remembered how not long after his son had gifted him the necklace he had taken a lighter to the tail, melting it to itself in a loop. He had made sure that the necklace would never fall off the leather string.

Now, Tom stared at the whiteboard in front of him. His scrawled partially illegible handwriting crossed the board going down in bullet points. The notes talked about the mating behaviors of the Trans Pecos Rat Snake. His small group of grad students had been interested, but they had walked out of the class hours ago while Tom had stayed. For the past month, they had been discussing the various reptiles they might run into on their research trip to Texas’ only National Park, Big Bend.

Tom’s other hand reached to touch the scar that had made its home across the underside of his chin. He smiled as he remembered his son’s reaction as he had tumbled down the twelve-foot drop chasing the very rat snake he had taught his class about that day. He remembered his son sliding down the drop taking his buff off his neck and holding it against his dad’s chin as the blood began to flow.

He heard his son’s laugh as he cursed the snake, finishing with “that bastard,” as they watched the snake make its way between cactus and

tumbleweeds away from the two men. It hadn’t even needed to come near Tom to cause him to leave the park with blood gushing down his face. The blood only partially slowed by the tie-dyed buff’s breathable material. Their first aid kit had been no help, as neither of them knew how to bandage a chin. They had decided to throw some gauze between the buff and the cut hoping to slow the blood as Tom held the pressure against his face.

The smile faltered as he thought about going on the trip without his son there to laugh when he missed an easy catch or when he narrowly missed being bitten by a rattlesnake while trying to impress his students.

He mostly understood his son’s reasons for the distance, before his wife passed she had given him a piece of her mind more than a few times about his spontaneity. Tom would give up everything just to have her fuss at him for coming back home, again, with a reptile, even if it was for research. “Lizards are for the lab, not the kitchen” she used to say.

Tom’s hand dropped from his plastic necklace. He looked to his desk reaching for his water bottle before looking at some of his published papers that sat in a stack on his desk. He glanced at the paper on the top of the stack “The Effects of Climate Change on the West Texas Population of Texas Alligator Lizards.” He glanced under the title where the author’s names glared back at him, “Tom M. Langley and Apollo T. Langley.” He blinked at the names then turned, digging his heel into the ground and began taking steps towards the door.

He had left the day after his wife’s funeral. Not permanently, but he had no plan to be back soon. The West Texas desert stretched out before him. The rays of the sun were not gentle, they did not ease the pain of his grief. Instead, the harsh rays sent sweat dripping from Tom’s forehead and seeping through his clothing. Tom’s breathing was ragged as he crouched over what would be his tent. thwack, thwack, thwack

The sound of the mallet pounding the stakes into the ground didn’t echo in the vast desert.

Tom sat outside his tent. He watched the sun slowly begin to creep towards the horizon. The air had finally begun to settle into a light simmer, a

welcome break from the roaring heat that had been there only an hour ago. Tom began to gather his gear. He wore a thick pair of gloves. She had insisted he wore them, not liking the idea of him handling snakes without some sort of hand protection.

“I know you like to impress your students by handling those things, but maybe consider also teaching them that safety isn’t just for the lab,” she had said, shoving the gloves into his hands.

Tom’s breath had caught in his throat as he stared at the desert that would soon be coming to life with the critters that he aimed to catch. The heat of the day was too much even for the cold-blooded creatures. His feet crunched on earth. Cracks reached through the ground like tentacles, searching for water where there was none.

A car made its way down the lonely two-lane road; it wouldn’t stop here. Nobody camped here in the summer, the heat was too much to brave. Tom slipped between piles of sandy rocks. Javelina footprints stamped the sandy ground. His eyes scanned the rocks searching for the critters that he hoped would begin showing up soon. He saw a quick movement underneath the overhang of a boulder that jutted out of the ground. Eyes clinging to that movement, he crouched down peeking underneath the rock. He saw the tail first, the light brown of the rattler first, poking out of the coil the snake had twisted itself into. The snake lifted its head at him, and it was then that Tom noticed the deep dark color of the rattlesnake. It was a black rattlesnake, the first one Tom had ever seen, not in a lab and alive. The instincts that would usually prompt Tom to begin trying to catch the snake did not kick in. Instead, he sat crouched staring unblinkingly at the creature.

He had been looking for one for so long, so long, and here it was. He had begun searching for the rare snake before he had even met his wife and now after she was gone he had finally found it, he had finally found it.