The Twelve-Dollar Alligator

           Growing up in Clearcreek meant there wasn’t a shortage of wild pets to capture. I mean, after all we were surrounded by forests, and within them, lived everything from opossums, raccoons, groundhogs, rabbits, snakes, turtles, and a lot more. One thing there wasn’t any of... was alligators.

           Now, this was a time when you could pick up a comic book, or some magazine and flip through the last pages of it. Pages, filled with all sorts of dreams every kid in Clearcreek hoped they could own. Monkeys, yep that’s right. Squirrel monkeys for just nineteen-dollars-and ninety-nine-cents, plus shipping, stared back at me in black and white. As cute as they were, they were way out of my price range. Below it, and I don’t why, a plunger looking device to remove zits. I didn’t have any zits to suck off my face, although I'm sure it could have been a great tool for other uses.

           On down the column, chinchillas with a poor picture of one of them and underneath it in bold print “Start your chinchilla ranch today!” Wow, what a lucrative business, I thought. I pictured me on a horse, the brim of my worn cowboy hat pulled low over my eyes, my Winchester rifle in a leather gun case bouncing against the bellowing ribs of my steed as I cut figure eights herding my chinchillas. “Get along, Hee yaw,” I’d shout. Then later, sitting around a dying campfire while drinking hot coffee, and washing down the last remnants of baked beans cooked up by a bearded old cook who rattled the pans as he put them into the back of a covered wagon. I’d speak softly to the other ranch hands with tired faces from herding chinchillas all day long. “Good job boys, way to keep those chinchillas in line. Tomorrow, we’ll make Kansas City.”

           I left Kansas City behind when I saw underneath the lump of a chinchilla, another ad for a real, honest to goodness, alligator. It was priced at 15-bucks, and it struck a pose looking back at me face to face. It stood on legs like a bulldog, and its mouth was open. I felt like Marlin Perkins for a minute at the kitchen table. I looked at my dog, Ralph curled up by the small coal stove in the corner of the kitchen.

           “Ralph?” he opened one sleepy eye.

           “I want an alligator.” Ralph yawned wide and his high-pitched whine passed his curled pink tongue. The black and brown terrier mutt rose up and stretched. He walked to me, and I slapped my leg. Ralph jumped up on my lap, and I pointed at the alligator, showing him. He sighed, curled up and my lap instantly became his bed. I leafed through the pages until I heard the command from the living room.

           “Bedtime.”

            I rolled up the magazine, slid Ralph under my arm, and went to bed. That night I dreamed of the alligator walking ahead of me on a leash. I watched the crowd of kids parting when I appeared with it. I walked the gauntlet in my white pith helmet, and khaki cargo shorts, and matching short-sleeved shirt. Some dirty face kid reached out to touch the alligator; I stuck out my hand, “Are you crazy? This is an Amazon caiman; it can take your hand off with one snip.” The wide-eyed kid backed up. The cute girls with frightened eyes watched my every step. I was king of my domain; I was Marlin Perkins, and Mutual of Omaha didn’t require a bushy white mustache, although I stroked my bare lip like I had one. One of the girls pushed out a half-empty bottle of Derby Shake chocolate drink my way. I waved it off. Another reached out to wipe a bead of sweat of from my forehead with a lightly perfumed handkerchief. That, I allowed. Then I woke up, it was time for school, and I dressed, and headed out to the bus stop down the lane separating the two small houses.

            I had alligator on the brain from the moment I took a seat on the old bus, until school ended for the day. When I got home, my sister who lived in York, Pennsylvania was there. It was the weekend, and I was informed that I could ride there with her, and she would bring me back on Sunday. Most kids would have been thrilled to leave Clearcreek, but I’d ridden with her before. She took the turnpike. She put on makeup and lipstick at one-hundred-miles per hour. I shook my head that I would go, because I knew there was a pet shop there, and they had alligators. I was willing to make that sacrifice. I climbed into her new car, it was a monstrous vehicle.

She moved some of her makeup off the dash, there was more on the dash of her car then there was down at the cosmetic counter at the Rexall Drugstore in Coalport. I took a good long look at Clearcreek as we pulled out, and headed down the road. An hour later we were o the turnpike heading toward Harrisburg. Veteran truck drivers behind the wheel of huge, eighteen wheelers would pull wide to the side to let her pass. Everything whizzed by, the white guardrails looked like a solid wall, and she proudly said, “I don’t know who invented this thing they call cruise control, but I just love it. Pass me my lipstick.” I reached for a tube of it, and her eyes went from the road to the pile of tubes on the seat separating us, “No not that one.” I couldn’t believe she was checking out the colors, while cruising down the turnpike like an ambulance.

           “This one?” I asked, clenching a golden tube of “Persnippity Red,” she shook her head, no.” I dropped if from my sweating hands.

           “That one,” she said. She reached out and snagged a tube of, “Hellacious Hues,” and took both hands of the wheel to take the top off it, and twisted it until the red stick of lip paint appeared. I sat petrified, and hoped if we did crash and burn that it was quick. Then, I remembered her husband being told by the cop who gave my sister her fourteenth driver’s license test, that if she was his wife, he’d trade her in for a mule, and shoot the mule. My nervous eyes turned to watch her dabbing her lip with a Kleenex. Somehow, just a few hours later, I breathed again when we pulled into her driveway.

           I walked to the pet store that day, and stood looking at an Amazon caiman behind the glass, and my eyes settled on the price written on a card taped to the corner of the cage. “Special, 12-Dollars Only,” an affordable price, I thought. It’s do-able. If I make it back to Clearcreek alive, I thought. We did, make it back, and she slapped the hood of the big, blue Oldsmobile with her hand when we parked across the road from the house. I felt like kissing the ground. It was a Sunday, and I wasted no time in coming up with twelve bucks. It was wash day, and I pounded on all fourteen doors of every house in town. When I was finished, I returned home, fourteen dollars richer, and I knew my Mother and Father were going back to York to spend a week with my sister. I gave my mother the twelve bucks, and told her what I wanted. It was the longest wait of my eleven-year-old life, and when they returned, my sister actually drove the Oldsmobile up the rutted lane, and parked it near the house in the backyard. They all dove out of the car, because the alligator somehow got out during the trip and was hiding under the seats of the car. I retrieved it as easy as Marlon Perkins would have. Tail first, sliding it from under the seat, and its belly resting on my open palm. It was a foot-long, and it turned at me with its cat-eyes, and hissed. It was heavenly. Two weeks later, it was pretty much settled in.

           “Quit feeding that damn thing hamburger.” All of the hamburger amounted to about a golf ball size piece every two days. It was growing though. Then one day, the inevitable happened. It was a wash day. I had two younger brothers, and one of them decided to watch the alligator swim. I wasn’t around to stop it. The galvanized rinse tub sat on an old stool behind the wringer washing machine out on the back porch. My mom used plenty of bleach. It was not the ideal environment for an alligator. I returned from wherever I was that day to find the thing floating in the rinse tub, and it looked more like a rubber toy alligator than a real one. It was gone. It got quite a send off. I buried it near the chicken coop over by my Grandfather’s house.

* * *

           It was five-hundred-years later when a group of archaeologists from Penn State University gathered in Clearcreek. It was a sunny day, and the sounds of trowels, and brushes filled the dusty air. 

           “Professor, come quick.” The anxious words float across the archaeologist’s area of work. The professor moves from his place to the young assistant, and begins brushing away the dirt from the bones. His head shakes and he pauses to brush more, and then stops.

           “Oh-my-God,” the old man says to his assistant.

           The young assistant beams, it is his first real discovery.

           “This will change archaeology forever, all those years, all of our research,” the professor lifts his glasses to wipe away a tear.

           “So, Amazon caimans were native to Pennsylvania, this changes everything, Bargemen.” Bargemen, the second year student from Penn State, swallowed. The professor looked at him.

           “Call the press, and rope this area off,” The professor’s old fingers shook. Bargemen rose up from his knees, and made his way to the truck where his cell phone sat on the dusty seat. He picked it up and punched in some numbers. The professor stared at the fossilized alligator. He shook his head. Somewhere on the top of the pile of yellowed clay piled off to the side of the dig, the wrapper of a Tootsie Roll fluttered in the breeze. Faded, and old, it had been missed by the men. A gust carried it away across the hills, and soon the place was buzzing with reporters with a million questions.

Books by Ronnie Ray Jenkins.