Snake Stories

  

That time she stepped into the outhouse—she’d have been four or five—and one dropped from the ceiling. The cold, slick muscle of it sliding down her arm, then slipping away through a gap in the boards. Such a pretty blue, she held her scream tight in her throat. Held it secret. Did her business in the woods until her sister caught her. “Only a racer,” said her sister. “Harmless less you’re a mouse. Are you a mouse?”

~

That time she was out in her sister’s yard, spinning her niece like an airplane, and they heard the rattle. Nothing like the thin chitter in the John Wayne picture shows. In real life, from beneath her sister’s azaleas, came a vigorous, bass buzzing. Her niece was eight—old enough to run and get the shotgun, walk it back muzzle up, one hand on the stock, the other on the barrel. Old enough to know no good comes from running with a gun.

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That time her son, the middle one—a desert of years between him and his older sister, his younger brother not even a mirage on the horizon—was toddling with the dog in the sandy front yard. Not far from the porch where she rocked, fanning herself and murmuring with the other adults. Church and dinner and dishes comfortably behind her. The baby, undressed to his diaper what with the heat, began to fuss. That tiresome afternoon plaint of a child in need of a nap. A gasp from her mother-in-law. “That dog!” A wail from the baby. The dog had him by the seat of his diaper, dragged him backward. Her son yearned forward, reached for the pretty diamondback glistening in the grass.

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That time the same child, half-grown, full of talk and swagger the way boys of a certain age get, saw a glint of tail flick beneath the shed. An old wreck set up on brick pilings, its floor a foot off the ground. Her husband and son each took a gun, stepped up into the dim, stomped across the planks. She waited just outside, clutched the new baby. Sure enough, that furious buzz. A nest of them under there in the cobwebby dark. “Well,” said her husband, winking at her as he nudged the boy back outside, “you found em. Get under there and clean em out.” His idea of a joke, and she wanted to clean him out. Her son, suddenly small for his age, poked the muzzle of his .22 behind the brick pilings. She grabbed the boy by the britches, pulled him back to safety, glared a warning at his father. Another burst of rattling from beneath the shed flattened her husband’s grin.

~

That time she was hoeing her leggy tomato plants, tidying the yard before her grandchildren came. The locusts stilled their chirring. The hairs on her arms prickled. She looked up and saw its black eye gleaming at her, not ten feet away. She rose slowly, her grip sweaty on the hoe, tossed her hat in front of it. (Give them something to look at, her mother always said.) The thing snapped its head around, tracking.

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That time she was walking the trail back by the swamp. Looking for signs of hunters. If they came to the door and promised to pick up their trash, she’d direct them to the good places. But more and more they snuck into her woods without asking, leaving candy wrappers and shell casings behind them. She came round a bend and there was a bold one, tail pointed heavenward, coiled right in the path. A cloudy day and no hat on her head. She stripped off her dress, hung it from a pine branch. Her husband was long in the ground, her children long grown and miles away. No one around to glimpse her bare flesh, innocent of sunlight since childhood. Race back through the woods. Grab the shotgun from the rack over the kitchen door. Cartridges already loaded because her son thought it wise. (Don’t think—just take a breath and shoot, her daddy always said.) Would the snake even still be there? She crept round the bend and there it was, head swaying as the breeze fluttered her dress.

~

That time it wasn’t a rattler. Just a bitty old garter snake, racing stripes down its sides, right in front of the television set. A bug catcher, really, and heaven knew the house could use one. But Cora, her favorite health aide, was perched up on the sofa arm, shrieking. The aides didn’t like coming out to her house. Too hot during the day, too dark and quiet at night, too solitary with no neighbors in shouting distance. Wait til word went round about this little snake getting inside. Nothing to be done but lever herself up out of the chair, step away from the comfort of her space heater, take hold of the fire poker and lay the poor thing out right there on the carpet. Afterward, Cora, still whimpering, refused to touch it, and the cat was circling. So she draped the carcass over the poker, carried it to the back door, flung it—not far; she wasn’t strong like she used to be—into the yard. The raccoons would do the rest.