· Web viewHe barely knew her, and what he did know was, in a word, off-kilter. He dumped the muddy contents of his coffee cup in the sink and went to the freezer. He opened the

“Crawl on Your Belly All the Days of Your Life,” W.J. Donahue, 12/4/2018

Blind snake, Ramphotyphlops braminus

Adaptations such as a blunt snout and opaque scales covering its vestigial

eyes have made the blind snake a skilled burrower. The combination of its

small size and earthmoving nature has enabled it to become something of a

world traveler. Undetectable in the root structures of plants used in

commercial agriculture, the blind snake has made its way to every continent

with the exception of Antarctica, far from its native soil in the tropical forests

of the New World. As a result, it has earned the sobriquet “flowerpot snake.”

Of note, the blind snake is one of the world’s few unisexual snakes, with no

males of the species having ever been discovered.

It was Friday evening, a few ticks shy of seven p.m., the day in its dying

minutes, about to give itself over to the purples and blues of dusk. Another

week of breaking his back, staked through its heart. He envisioned his

outlook for the next two days: no lifting of anything heavy, no sweating in the

sun. He pulled into his usual spot in front of the Lea at Barrows and turned off

the ignition, exhaling with the knowledge that he wouldn’t have to climb back

into the driver’s seat until dawn on Monday morning. He keyed his way into

the building and climbed the stairs.

A week had passed since Sid last saw Holly. He’d knocked for her three

times, and each time his solicitation went unanswered. He chalked her up to

a lost cause. From here on out, he figured, they would trade occasional

niceties as neighbors coming and going, but that would be the extent of their

1


relations. He turned the corner on the landing leading to the third floor and

saw her standing there, leaning against the wall.

“Howdy, stranger,” she yelled, her arms outstretched.

Her hair was completely different—pigtails gone, each strand dyed

platinum gray.

“Hey, you.” He couldn’t help but smile.

“I know, I know,” she said. “I’ve been the busiest beaver—busy, busy with

work, just like the rest of the world. I’ve been a real shit. I get that way

sometimes.”

“Shitty?”

“Really shitty.”

He climbed the last five stairs and stepped into a cloud of her scent.

“Life been kind to you?” he asked.

“Okay as Oklahoma. You busy, like, this exact moment in time?”

“Not as busy as you’ve been, apparently. I figured you went into

hibernation.”

“Hardy-har-har, smartass. Up for a brisk walk?”

“It’s dark out.”

“No, it’s not. It’s getting dark, but it’s not yet dark. Besides,” she added,

settling into a fighter’s stance, waving her balled fists, “I’ll protect you.”

“Of course you will. Just give me a minute.”

He slid through the door to 3B, without letting Holly see inside, and kicked

off his caulk-caked work boots. He tapped on the glass of Sweetpea’s cage as

he went to the closet to fetch his sneakers. Thirty seconds later, he stepped

back into the hallway, nearly bowling Holly over.

2


“Okay,” he said. “Where to?”

“Show me the trails you walk.”

“It’s not really an established trail, per se, just a cut through the woods.”

“Show me.”

“You sure? Sun’s almost down. We’ll be walking in darkness.”

“I’m like a kitten-cat—a killer. I can see in the dark, and anything that

moves the wrong way I’ll slash with my kitten-cat claws. Let’s go.”

A chorus of crickets chirruped as they walked across the lawn. Flecks of

rainwater speckled his shins, the grass still wet from a passing shower. He led

her past the communal fire pit, to the edge of the woods. As they approached

the trail entrance, he turned to see her just a step behind him, eyes wide and

smiling like a madwoman.

“Couldn’t help but notice the new ’do,” he told her. “Looks nice.”

“This ol’ thing,” she said, patting the side of her head.

“You ready?”

“And willing. Passersby will think we’re a couple of randy teenagers,

sneaking off to the woods to shotgun wine coolers and finger bang. How

scandalous!”

He turned to her and shook his head.

“What?” she asked.

“You always the wrong thing to say.”

He held up a leafy branch and stepped into the woods. The world went

dark, all detail absent. His eyes detected only vague outlines.

“A flashlight might have been a good idea,” he said. “One of us should go

back and get one.”

3


“What’s a walk in the woods without the risk of certain death?”

“Or at least losing an eye.”

He knew the trail well, but not being able to see his steps, of leading

someone who did not know the way, of not knowing if something or someone

was prowling the shadows, waiting to pounce—the whole experience

electrified him. Mostly it was Holly’s presence, less than a yard away.

“So you’re a daddy,” she said to his back.

“Twice,” he said. “A son and a daughter. He’s thirteen. She’s eleven.”

“I’ve never seen them around.”

“That makes two of us. I lost them in the divorce. Or I gave them up. I

suppose either would be accurate.”

“How does that happen? I mean, unless you’re an absolute loon. … Wait,

you’re a loon, aren’t you?”

“Through and through.”

“Thank the Maker.”

“My wife wanted to torture me, and the judge seemed to think having the

kids stick with her was a good idea, too. Based on everything that happened

—or, more accurately based on everything I did—I felt it was hardly my place

to disagree.”

“You screwed up, you mean. Most people aren’t honest about stuff like

that.”

“Am I? Honest?”

“People tend to say everything’s fine and life is all sunshine and cotton

candy and the fuzzy nuts of koala bears. You have nothing good to say.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

4


“It was supposed to be a compliment.”

“I’m a realist. Besides, the fireworks were almost entirely my fault.”

“Must have been one hell of a divorce.”

“Hell seems fitting, yes. The word epic comes to mind.”

“So, I suppose you’re obligated to tell me everything.”

He stopped to orient himself. He extended his arms and reached out to

either side, until his fingertips touched leaves and tree bark. Triangles of gray

light shone through breaks in the canopy.

“How much farther do you want to go?” he asked.

“All the way, baby.”

“I’m talking about the trail,” he said, regretting the joke as soon as he let

it slip.

“So, you were saying. The divorce.”

“Right. The short story: I had an affair that ended badly—her name was

Gwen, Hurricane Gwen—but I had survived it, meaning it was all behind me.

Free and clear. A few years later, Gwen’s sister called me out of the blue to

tell me their father had died. Like a moron, I went to the funeral. A

misunderstanding ensued. The cops came. I ended up in jail. That’s when

Lydia found out. Lost my job. Lost the house. Lost the kids. The end.”

Holly clapped behind him.

“Fine storytelling, Skin Carver. Okay, so Act One has ended. Now you’re

heading into Act Two, the recovery.”

“I have a good ways to go then. I fell pretty far, hurtling into the

crevasse.”

5


He could feel her presence behind him, her aura consuming them both.

Her hot breath warmed the back of his neck. If he stopped suddenly, she

would slam into him, penetrate him. His quickened his steps.

“What was the misunderstanding at the funeral?” she asked.

He explained the whole scene: his procession to the front of the church,

Gwen losing her mind and slapping her palm on the casket, her husband

coming at Sid swinging, Sid backpedaling toward the nearest exist, the melee

spilling into the marble-floored narthex and then the parking lot, the priest

and altar boys trying to restrain Sid and Gwen’s husband, Sid accidentally

striking one of the altar boys, the cops pulling into the parking lot, Sid getting

handcuffed and ushered into the back of a cop car, Gwen’s spit trickling down

the window.

“I’d never been inside a jail cell before then,” he added. “I don’t intend to

go through that unpleasantness again anytime soon.”

“No more felonies on your to-do list? Bo-ring!”

“We should turn back. Nightfall is nearly upon us. Already is, in fact.”

“We’ll do no such thing. Come on, man! We’re five minutes from

civilization. Even if we wander off trail, no lions, tigers, or bears are likely to

pop out and gobble us up.”

“As long as you’re comfortable. So you said work has been crazy?”

“We’re not done with you yet. Do you miss your kids?”

“Of course. I’m a moron, not a monster. I’ll see them next weekend. My

son, Tern, is in a play at school, so I’ll see him then. He’s not exactly a fan of

mine these days. We haven’t been on speaking terms since the wheels feel

off the bus of his parents’ marriage. He hates me. I deserve it, I suppose, but

6


he hates me. My daughter, Murray, she’s a different story. She still loves her

dear old dad.”

“Tern and Murray? Interesting names.”

“Both kids are named after birds—seabirds, to be precise: Tern and

Murrelet, Murray for short. The names were my wife’s idea. My ex’s idea.”

“Weird, but I sort of like it.”

“I’m just glad Lydia didn’t insist on Swallow and Titmouse.”

“Did you have your own names picked out?”

“I’m sure mine would have been stupid, or at least more traditional. Lydia

had strong opinions on the matter. She wanted our kids to have distinctive

names, like their father, I suppose.”

“How so?”

Panic swelled in him as he realized he had slipped up. He hesitated for a

moment, until his brain decided he could trust her. Something about her

suggested he could trust her with fragile things others might be tempted to

break.

“Few others in this world possess the knowledge I’m about to give you,”

he said. “Most people figure Sid is short for Sidney. Not in my case. My birth

certificate says Siddhartha Quincy Carver—Siddhartha, as in the Herman

Hesse book, as in the character from the Herman Hesse book. My parents

loved it.”

“Siddhartha? Your first name is Siddhartha?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Why in hell would you call yourself Sid when you have a perfectly good

name like Siddhartha just sitting there, accumulating dust?”

7


“When you’re a kid, you want to be anything but different, and a name

like Siddhartha doesn’t exactly facilitate blending in. Besides, having a name

like mine tends to make people think you’re from India or Pakistan or some

other part of the world where bad things happen—they think you’re ‘the

other.’ My mom still calls me Siddhartha, but that’s it. Besides Mom, Lydia,

and the kids, no one else even knows my full name. So you’ve made your

way onto a very short list.”

“I’m honored. So … Siddhartha. I just might remember a name like that.

It’s almost as good as Skin Carver.”

“Almost.”

“I’m surprised by your wife—Lydia, is it? Asking for sole custody of the

kids is taking things pretty far. But I guess I don’t know her at all.”

“She can be as nasty as a dog with a bone, especially when she’s been

made to look like a fool, which is exactly what I did to her. I knew what I was

doing, for the most part, but I did it anyway.”

“Did you love her?”

“Well, sure. Sure, I did. More so, I felt indebted to her.”

“Indebted?”

Even though he had met Holly a little more than a week ago, he felt a

comfort with her he hadn’t felt with anyone in years. Not with Lydia, not with

Gwen. Neither had shown more than a passing interest in his stories, in the

way he saw the world. Then again, he figured, he wasn’t particularly

interesting, so who could blame them?

“Lydia saved me,” he started. “Well, I guess you could say she saved me

from myself, as strange as that may sound. She helped me reinvent myself

8


after a weird time in my life. Got me to go to college. Got me through college.

Got me a job—a good job—in a business I knew nothing about. Put me on

track to make a lot of money. Made me into the man I am today.”

“A sweaty roughneck swinging a hammer?”

“Okay, strike that. She made me into the man I used to be.”

“And you just said, ‘Fuck all that, I’m going to screw around with someone

else.’”

“Yes.”

“Good for you.”

“Not necessarily, no. Look at me now.”

“I can’t. It’s dark as fuck out here.”

She swatted her bare calf. Mosquitoes, he assumed.

“Enough of this,” he said. “We’re going back.”

He turned abruptly, and they smacked into each other. Her teeth hit his

chin, and her breasts bounced off his chest. Taking two steps back, she bent

at the waist and started laughing. She then turned and started walking, and

he couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. She didn’t seem the type to cry

easily.

“Holly, are you okay?”

“Just fine, Siddhartha. So you said your wife helped you on your path to

reinvention. Tell me about it.”

“It’s a long story.”

“Your voice will keep the beasts in the trees at bay.”

“I was in my early twenties, no idea what I was doing. I was …”

She noticed his pause.

9


“You were?”

“In a band.”

“You’re a musician?”

“I was a musician, past tense. If you want to call the stuff I played music.

We played hardcore punk.”

“Like The Clash or The Ramones?”

“Sort of, just harder, dirtier, angrier.”

“That’s awesome!”

“It was. We had way too much fun, burned pretty hot, and for a while I

actually thought music would be my life. I was twenty-two, twenty-three,

starting to get somewhere after four or five years of playing out. Then I

started to notice what was happening to the people around me—the other

guys in the band, and the guys we hung out with every night: always drunk,

always high, always getting into fistfights, both on stage and off.”

He explained how the band spent its nights on the road, too far to drive

home to Stony Creek, holing up anywhere they could find. Some nights it was

a boarded-up crackhouse, an abandoned office building, or a parking garage,

and others it was a disgusting apartment inhabited by show-goers, with

roaches in the sink and shit on the floor—piles of shit, literally, curly-cued in

the middle of the kitchen linoleum.

“I saw no future in that life,” he said. “So I stopped. I left. I became

someone else.”

“You played what, exactly?”

“Bass guitar. I was a bass player.”

“That’s the one with four strings, right?”

10


“Right. Any moron can play bass, in the sense that any moron can bang

on the drums or strum a guitar. But if everyone plays well enough together,

even something basic can sound like something some people might call art.”

“What was your band’s name?”

He hesitated before saying, “It’s sort of embarrassing.”

She turned and placed a hand on his chest. Her fingers folded against his

flexed pectoral. “Tell me,” she demanded.

“It’s a horrible name. Just awful.”

“Good. Now fucking tell me.”

“Cum Sock.” He laughed.

“Cum Sock?” she repeated, whispering the first word.

“I’m not going to explain it.”

“No, I get it,” she turned and kept walking, toward the trail’s exit. “Were

you guys any good?”

“By some measures, yes. At least, other people thought so. We recorded a

bit; I still have a few of the seven inches we made lying around somewhere—

you know, the little records. We played with a fair number of bands you might

have heard of: Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, Cro-Mags.”

“I don’t know any of them.”

“Dag Nasty? Negative Approach? D.R.I.?”

“Nope. Should I be impressed?”

“I was, at the time. I thought we’d end up getting some sort of record

deal, touring the country, making enough money to live on. Didn’t happen, of

course. I don’t think having a name like ours did us any favors. The band kept

going a year or two after I left. Then there was an accident.”

11


The woods had gone completely dark. His eyes trained on the whiteness

of Holly’s calves, hoping she could see where she was leading them.

“I haven’t thought about it in a while,” he added. “The singer and the bass

player—my replacement—died in a car wreck. I hadn’t seen any of those

guys since the funeral, since Oscar’s funeral. Oscar Tuttle was his name. He

was the singer. Other than Sweetpea, he was my closest friend all those

years.”

“Who’s Sweetpea?”

He’d slipped up, yet again. He had forgotten that she had no knowledge of

Sweetpea or the other reptiles living rent-free in his apartment. From his

experience, no one likes to know there’s a twelve-foot-long, potentially lethal

constrictor living on the other side of the drywall.

“Just another friend,” he said, covering. “After the funeral, I never saw

those guys again. Cum Sock died with Oscar. The band went on to become

something else.”

“Barber-shop quartet?”

He smiled out of courtesy, not that she could see it. “Ever hear of a band

called Groinhammer?”

“That’s a name you don’t forget,” she replied. “Right up there with Cum

Sock.”

“They actually did well for themselves, though by that point they had

stopped playing hardcore punk in favor of god-awful noise metal. You might

recall their name from the headlines about five years ago. Some deranged

fan climbed on stage and slit the lead singer’s throat with a straight razor. I

didn’t know the guy. Bled out right there on the stage. Everyone thought it

12


was a prank until he fell off the stage and went limp, bleeding all over

everyone in the first two rows.”

“How festive. Do you regret leaving all that behind?”

“Not the car crashes and straight razors, no. I don’t miss the drugs. I don’t

miss getting blind drunk and waking up with a crushing hangover and then

having to drive two hundred miles in a windowless van with four other guys

who smell like crotch and rotten meat. But sometimes I miss the people I left

behind. Guys like Oscar Tuttle. It’s sort of like leaving a cult; once you say,

‘I’m done,’ it’s like you’re kicked out of the club forever. You become the

outcast—not that I blame them. You go from spending forty hours a week

with these guys to not seeing them at all. They’re just gone from your life,

almost like they never existed, like all the things you did with them never

even happened. It was a waste.”

Holly lifted a tree branch and stepped into the open space behind the Lea

at Barrows. She stared into the unused fire pit, barren with the exception of a

charred log and a pair of crushed beer cans, the labels burnt off the

aluminum.

“And Lydia was there to break your fall.”

“She was, but I don’t really want to talk about her.”

“We survived our hike through Danger Thicket.”

“Indeed. It’s early. Would you like to go somewhere and get a cup of

coffee? Maybe a diner?”

“That sounds lovely, sir, but I’m suddenly quite tired. I’ll take a rain

check.” She held out a hand for him to shake. “Thanks for sharing, Skin

13


Carver—or maybe I’ll just call you Siddhartha from here on out. You have a

good night.”

Sid’s eyes followed her as she entered the building, watching her through

the windows as she ascended the stairs. He stood there alone, confused by

her sudden departure—another sudden departure, better put. He sat in a wet

chair by the fire pit and stared up at the white pinpricks dotting the heavens.

The cool air chilled his bones.

###

In the light of day, Sid stood at his back window, eyeing the woods behind the

Lea at Barrows, as he ran through his memories of the previous night.

Holly was a complete mystery. This fact made it impossible for him to

understand his willingness to tell her so much—more than he had told almost

anyone in his life. He barely knew her, and what he did know was, in a word,

off-kilter.

He dumped the muddy contents of his coffee cup in the sink and went to

the freezer. He opened the door and retrieved the brown paper bag stuffed

between the ice-cube trays and box of waffles, and then tossed the bag onto

the island. It landed with a thud, hard as a rock.

“Time for breakfast, Sweetpea,” he yelled.

He went to his python’s enclosure and tapped on the glass. The snake

lifted its head from the floor of its newspaper-lined enclosure. A bifurcated

tongue tasted the air.

14


“I just don’t get it, babe,” Sid told Sweetpea. “She asks me these

questions. She peppers his conversation with one innuendo after another.

She touches me all the time. Then she flakes out and just disappears. Is she

just screwing with my brain? It’s okay,” he added, “you don’t have to

answer.”

He slid across the glass pane of Sweetpea’s cage and reached in to

retrieve her water bowl. Sweetpea’s head darted to the side, neck curling

back into an S-shape. He went to the sink and scrubbed the bowl, chipping

clumps of hardened white feces off the lip.

“Am I just reading her wrong?” he called to Sweetpea. He filled the bowl

with fresh water and went back to the snake’s enclosure. “She’s making me

mental.” He slid the pane across and went to place the bowl back in its

familiar spot.

The strike was lightning-quick, the pain immediate. Within a second,

Sweetpea had coiled around his wrist and encircled his arm, up to his

shoulder. Her tail snaked around his throat, the tip stabbing the back of his

neck. As she pulled him into her cage, he braced himself against the side—

man and beast at a standstill.

The coils tightened around his arm, robbing the limb of all feeling, and

enclosed his throat. He slapped at Sweetpea’s coils with his free hand, but

fighting off an eighty-pound Burmese python was hardly a one-person job. He

needed help.

“Holly!”

The coils muffled his yell. He dug in his free hand beneath her tail and

wound it away from his throat.

15


“Holly!” he said, screaming this time. He repeated her name, and then

again, as loud as he could. Sweetpea’s recurved teeth sank deeper into the

flesh of his wrist, now warm and wet with his blood. “Holly!”

He was going to die, right there.

Then came a knock at the door.

“Sid,” Holly said. “Is everything all right?”

“Help.”

She jiggled the door handle.

“What can I do?”

“Help. Get in here.”

“Door’s locked.”

“Key’s above the jamb. Hurry.”

He could sense her hesitation, her fear of not knowing what she would see

once she crossed the threshold.

The door cracked open. Her face betrayed her horror at seeing Sid, red-

faced and ensnared by a twelve-foot-long python doing its best to strangle

him.

“What the fuck is that?”

“I know,” Sid gasped. “Get her tail.”

“I’ll call the cops.”

“Don’t you dare,” he said. “They’ll kill her. Just grab her by the tail. I’ve

got a hold on the dangerous end.”

Not really, he realized, but Holly didn’t need to know that.

She ran her fingers through her hair and then stepped gingerly toward

him.

16


“I’ve never seen a snake like this before,” she said. “Is it poisonous?”

“No, but she’s going to kill me if you don’t help. Now grab her by the tail.”

Her hand touched Sweetpea’s tail, and she winced at the feeling of the

snake’s skin against hers. She tried to unwind the tail but didn’t get very far,

as the coils started to ensnare her wrist. She screamed and backed away.

“I can’t do this, Sid. I just can’t. It’s disgusting.”

Sweetpea’s coils crushed Sid’s arm, tightened around his throat.

“Okay, okay,” he said, choking. “Holly, listen to me. Go to the pantry and

get the whiskey.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Just get it.”

She hurried toward the pantry, not taking her eyes off Sweetpea. Bottles

jingled against each other.

“There aren’t any more of them like that around here, are there?”

“Hurry!”

She came back with a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and knelt on the

floor beside him. He could feel the veins bulging in his temples.

“Do you need a glass?”

“Just unscrew the cap and hand me the bottle.”

She did as Sid asked, and he grasped the bottle with his free hand. He

took careful aim, and then dumped the bottle’s amber-colored contents into

the coils protecting Sweetpea’s head. A second later, the python released its

grip, hissing as it wriggled into a corner, mouth open to expose the soft-pink

lining of its throat. Sid crawled away to regain his breath.

“Holy fuck, Sid.”

17


“Holly,” he wheezed. “Meet Sweetpea.”

“This is your pet?”

“Thank you for the assistance. That could have been bad.”

“Could have? I’m traumatized.”

“I still need you.”

“Does it involve me touching that thing?”

“I’m afraid so, but shut the door first, would you?”

She padded across the carpet and closed the front door. She stood there,

near the exit, unsure.

Sid bent toward Sweetpea, and she struck again, awkwardly.

“She’s tired,” he said, regret in his voice.

Sid swooped down and grabbed Sweetpea by the back of her head. Blood

—his blood—splattered the off-white carpet. He picked her up, and her coils

encircled his right thigh, the tip of her tail poking him in the tender space

between his legs.

“Get the back of her, would you? She’s not going to bite. She’s calm now.”

“This is calm? You belong in a fucking asylum, Siddhartha Carver.”

She winced as she grabbed the tail, unwinding it from Sid’s leg. Sid guided

Sweetpea back into her enclosure, heaping coil after coil into the cage until

the snake was all the way inside. Only then did he release her spade-shaped

head.

He turned to Holly and placed his left hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you,” he said. As he pulled his hand away from her shoulder,

droplets of his blood marred the yellow fabric of her shirt. “What Sweetpea

just did, that almost never happens.”

18


“Almost never? Once would be one time too many for a normal person.”

“It was my fault. She must have smelled something on me she didn’t like.

I broke a rule, and she just reminded me.”

“You just gave me a story I didn’t think I’d ever have to tell.”

“About that. I’d appreciate your discretion. Eldridge can’t know about

this.”

She paused and said, “Know about what?”

His chest still heaving, he smiled and wiped his bloody wrist on his pant

leg.

“I can’t believe your poor wife put up with this kind of shit for so long,”

she added. “And your mistress, too! Your cock must be as long as a fire

hose.”

“And as thick as a soup can.”

She cackled at his joke.

“Seriously,” she said, still laughing. “Why do you have that thing?”

A moment later he walked Holly to the door, thanking her with every step,

and released her to the hallway. His back to the door, he saw a trail of blood

leading from Sweetpea’s cage to the carpet beneath his feet. He went to the

sink and wrapped his hand in a dishtowel, to study the puncture wounds from

Sweetpea’s recurved teeth. As the bleeding slowed, he did his best to scrub

the blood out of the carpet. To his horror, each crimson droplet turned into a

reddish-brown stain.

He then knelt by Sweetpea’s cage and cooed to her, apologizing for the

stress, and for pouring alcohol down her throat. The acrid taste would likely

burn her eyes and the lining of her throat for a full week.

19


It had been more than a year since Sweetpea had bitten him, since the

day he had to rescue her from his family home in Stony Creek.

The memory returned to him.

###

“Frizzle fry,” Lydia had told him. “A little lighter fluid and a struck match, and

that damn snake’s going to cook like a French fry.”

“Don’t you fucking dare, Lydia,” Sid said. “She’s done nothing to you. I’m

coming to get her now.”

He had spent the past two nights at the manse-like home of Henry Wilk,

the man who had since become his boss at the construction site. Three days

had passed since the incident with Gwen at the church, three days since his

anxious visit to the jail cell, three days since Lydia learned about everything,

and three days since she had told him his life was over.

“Come here and I’ll call the cops,” she insisted, calmly. “They’ll shoot you

dead.”

“Put Tern on the phone!”

“Goodbye, Siddhartha. Frizzle fry! Frizzle fry!”

The receiver went dead in his ear. He redialed the number, and it rang

and rang until the answering machine did its job. He repeated the same

sequence for the next ten minutes until someone picked up. It was his son.

“When are you coming home, Dad?”

“Where’s your mother?”

“She’s downstairs, with—”

20


“Listen to me, Tern,” he said, his voice firmer than he wanted it to be.

“Your mother isn’t thinking straight. Keep her away from Sweetpea. Do you

understand me?”

“What’s going on, Dad?”

“Go downstairs right now and make sure she does nothing to Sweetpea.

You’re the man of the house when I’m not there, and I need you to be a man

and make sure your mother doesn’t do anything stupid. I’ll be there as soon

as I can.”

He slammed the received into its cradle and bolted from Henry’s kitchen.

He made the drive to his family’s home in less than thirty minutes, leaving a

trail of blown stop signs and barely yellow traffic lights in his wake.

He vaulted up the flight of redbrick steps and shouldered his way through

the door. Lydia was standing in the kitchen, puffing on a Dunhill.

“I don’t want to fight,” he told her. “I don’t want any trouble. I’m just here

to collect Sweetpea.”

“You’re too late for that,” she said. “I butchered her with a steak knife.”

He found her words comforting, in a way, because she had a mild fear of

snakes, like most people, and would never get close enough for that kind of

dirty work.

Still, sometimes she surprised him.

“Go see for yourself,” she dared.

He descended the stairs and rounded the corner to find Sweetpea’s cage

undisturbed. The heat lamp shone its crimson light into the far corner of her

enclosure. His son, Tern, sat with his back to Sweetpea’s cage, weeping. Sid

called his son’s name, but Tern just sat there, hugging his knees to his chest.

21


“You all right, son?”

“I stopped her. Mom wanted to burn Sweetpea. She wanted to kill her. But

I stopped her. I told her Sweetpea was family. And she said you destroyed our

family. What does she mean, Dad? What’s she talking about?”

Sid sat next to his son, with his back to Sweetpea’s cage. His legs abutted

his son’s.

“I don’t know what your mother has told you …”

So he told his son as much as a philandering father can tell his twelve-

year-old son, about the mistakes he had made, about the trust he had

broken, about how different their life would likely be going forward.

When Sid finished, Tern ran from the basement. His steps echoed

throughout the house. Sid sighed, for he knew his son’s image of his father

had just collapsed into a pile, like the shards of a broken mirror, never to be

repaired. He turned and tapped on the glass of Sweetpea’s cage. The python

hissed in response.

“I guess I’m on everyone’s shit list today,” he said.

Sweetpea’s custom-built enclosure was too big to remove from the

basement without help, and Tern certainly wasn’t about to lend a hand. So

Sid went into the junk corner where the kids kept all of their discarded

playthings, including a sporting-goods store’s worth of barely used athletic

equipment. He eyed Tern’s Bauer hockey bag, filled to the brim with skates,

gloves, kneepads, and pucks. It was the only thing that would hold Sweetpea.

He dumped everything onto the floor and dragged the vinyl bag toward the

python’s cage.

22


He slid back the glass and reached in. Sweetpea struck and twined around

his arm. Her steely coils slithered up his shoulder.

This time it was Murrelet—his daughter, just ten years old at the time—

who would do the rescuing. She calmly helped to uncoil Sweetpea from her

father and guided her back end into Tern’s empty hockey bag. Afterward,

father and daughter stood in middle of the basement, his forehead touching

hers.

“I’m sorry for what’s to come, Murray.”

It’s all he could figure to say at the time.

Then he asked her to help him drag the vinyl hockey bag, stuffed with

more than eighty pounds of furious python, up the stairs and out to the BMW

he would soon lose the privilege to drive.

###

The memories of that day proved to be the worst of The Aftermath, as he

termed it a full year later. The flesh-and-sweat aspects of the affair aside, his

grandest errors concerned how he had handled the matter with his children.

Murray had forgiven him as best she could, and they would be fine going

forward, but Tern wanted nothing to do with his father. With the

abandonment coming at such a vulnerable time—on the cusp of Tern’s teen

years—Sid could understand the son’s hatred of the father.

Only time will heal this wound, he thought. That is, if it heals.

Sid went to the kitchen counter and riffled through the mail. Apart from a

circular for a low-rent grocery store and a flyer for a newly opened cash-for-

gold establishment down the street, Sid saw he had gotten the new issue of

23


Scales and Stripes. The telltale hood of a spectacled cobra graced the

magazine’s cover, with the accompanying headline, HOT, HOT, HOT: YOUR

GUIDE TO KEEPING VENOMOUS SNAKES, LIZARDS & ARTHROPODS. He placed

the magazine flat on the kitchen table and turned page by glossy page,

leaving a bloody thumbprint on every left-hand page’s upper corner. He

stopped at a page advertising upcoming events. He ran his index finger down

each column and stopped at a heading marked “Mid-Atlantic.”

An idea struck.

He immediately ran across the hall and knocked insistently on Holly’s

door.

As her door swung open, she said, “I’ve already done my good deed for

the day.”

He held up his copy of Scales and Stripes.

“You asked me why I have Sweetpea in my life,” he said. “Come with me

next weekend and I’ll show you.”

24

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