Jim Shepard - Lights Out in the Reptile House

He stayed in bed the next day until late afternoon. He thought about the way as a child he’d collected geckos by sliding them headfirst into empty beer bottles. He thought about the speckled lizard that came every morning onto his stone table to share his breakfast on their old patio in the city. The lizard had been fond of brown sugar, and when it drank the water he set out in a shallow dish it rested its throat on the lip.

When he got up and went downstairs his father was preparing drinks for himself and a man named Holter, whom Karel had met once before. Holter had met Karel’s father while they still lived in the city and had told him about the opportunities out in the desert. Karel knew that his father hated to keep pushing Holter about it, but also resented the fact that Holter hadn’t come up with anything yet, and had more or less ignored them. Holter nodded at Karel as if he lived there. It turned out he was talking about a possible job. Karel’s father wouldn’t say what sort of job. When Karel asked Holter, the man put his finger to his lips and mimed a shushing noise.

His father was making the horrible mint-and-grain-alcohol thing he called the Roeder Specialty. Karel stood in the kitchen doorway. The sensation of the bats’ claws on his neck and arms refused to go away. He closed his eyes tightly and opened them again. His father asked if he’d seen the pestle. Karel doubted they’d ever had one. His father told Holter they needed a pestle to do the job right and then ground the fresh mint leaves into the bottoms of their glasses with a fork. The fork made an unpleasant noise on the glass.

His father held one of the drinks up to the light. The mint leaves swirled helically around the glass, creating the impression of swamp water.

Karel sat down at the table, overcome with unexpected affection and sadness. His father only wanted some purpose to his life, to be happy, to be unashamed of himself and his accomplishments. What did he lack? Some sort of energy? Will? Luck? He’d once told Karel in a café during one of his lowest periods that all he was doing was prolonging himself.

His father continued scuttling his fork around as if with enough work the drink would become appetizing. He smiled at Holter, and Holter looked at him curiously.

What sort of job was being offered Karel didn’t know. He didn’t like Holter. Though he knew it was wrong he hoped things wouldn’t work out.

Holter extended his feet and flexed them at the ankles, looking at them with satisfaction. “I work so hard that afterward I’m too tired to enjoy myself,” he said.

His father cleared his throat and asked Karel about school. He looked ready to give up on the drinks.

Karel told him flatly that he didn’t think he’d like the new subjects. The same reptile study sheet was still on the kitchen table. For some reason it depressed him.

His father said he’d study the subjects he was given and like it, but Karel recognized in his voice the tone he assumed when talking tough as a way of compensating in advance for giving in.

There was trouble in the schools, Holter told them. The schools were still a problem area. These things didn’t happen overnight. The Party was governing on an ongoing emergency basis, with the Praetor holding the government in trust until the new constitution could be worked out. It was unclear to Karel, toying with his study sheet, who was working on that problem. Holter added that anyway it was hard for anyone to imagine a constitution that would be preferable to the Praetor.

“People forget,” Holter said, “how much had to be overcome simply to unify us. We’d been at each other’s throats for years, a conglomeration of selfish interest groups, the plaything of other nations.”

Karel’s father lifted Holter’s glass and the bottom fell out. He stood with the empty cylinder raised as if in a toast.

Karel was set to work mopping up. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Holter eyed the mess.

His father lifted the other glass, and again with a faintly musical rush the bottom and contents stayed behind, inundating Karel below with a fresh wave. The grinding had been too much for the glassware.

Holter was only with difficulty persuaded to stay.

They sat in silence, Karel squeezing out great patters of mopped-up liquid into the sink. Holter started in again: everyone had taken advantage of their good nature and internal division; for too long this country had been satisfied with too little. Did they know twenty-one percent of their country received less than eight inches of rain per year?

That was the kind of thing it was good to know, Karel’s father said, and they hadn’t known it.

No navigable rivers, Holter said. Few forests. And meanwhile, to the north, he asked Karel, what were their nomad neighbors doing?

Karel waited, flapping the wet dishrag. “I’m not completely clear on that,” he ventured.

Holter sat back impatiently. Karel’s father said, “We need more, I’ll go along with that.”

Holter got up, shaking his head, and announced he’d overextended his visit as it was. He shrugged off protests. He thanked them and left, waving from the street.

They watched him go, and then Karel’s father sat down disconsolately, looking at the glass cylinders.

“I don’t like the Party,” Karel said, after a while. He thought about what Holter had called the preventive police measures: people around town had already disappeared magically, like the objects in the flashing reflection of a rotated mirror.

“What do I care?” his father said. “What does that have to do with this?” He indicated the wet floor. “Why am I always talking with you about this? What am I even doing here?”

Karel put his head in his hands. He was going to take another bath. He could still smell the guano.

“I don’t need lectures from you,” his father said. “You can’t be any help, keep to yourself.” He got up and turned off the light and left the room. Karel sat where he was for a few minutes and then carried the glass cylinders and bottoms to the garbage pail and threw them out. He went to his room. He lay spread-eagled on his bed, feeling the house get darker as his father switched off the lights one by one.

When he finally got back to the zoo, a lot was changed. There were new black-and-white signs in the shape of the National Unity eagle proclaiming new rules, the zoo’s history, or pertinent facts (occasionally wrong) concerning an animal group. Odd, arbitrary areas where no one would want to go such as the trash heap behind the food kitchens were now marked PROHIBITED, and walkways and benches were marked ACCESS ALLOWED. Two corners of the administration building had been appropriated for Party advisers. A huge willow older than the zoo that shaded the east end of the Reptile House had been cut down, sawn into segments, and left in a heap.

The new main sign greeting visitors was as tall as Karel and obscured the long view of the antelope and wild sheep enclosures. It read:

DEAR VISITOR: WELCOME to our National Zoo, West. We hope very much to give you an experience both pleasant and edifying during your sojourn with us. We ask of you the following:

1. PLEASE, DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS! Many of them do not know when to stop. They spend the day begging, eat too much, lose health, and die. We desire to preserve their health and encourage breeding .

2. DO NOT TEASE THE ANIMALS. They need resting hours not only at night. Do not expect them to be active when each individual citizen passes by. Do not throw stones or verbally abuse them .

3. DO NOT DISTURB THE ANIMALS’ TRAINING. If not trained, they become bored and aggressive. They are kept chained from the evening on, since a chained animal cannot steal his neighbor’s food .