Peaceable Kingdom (mobi) (50 page)

It darted, struck, and fell into the black mud at Katie’s feet. The dog had shifted stance and backed away and was still backpedaling but the snake was not letting it go at that. The snake was advancing.

“Katie!”

She ran out. Her eyes never left the snake for an instant. She registered its fast smooth glide, registered for the first time actual
size
of the thing.

Seven feet?
Eight
feet? Jesus!

She crossed the distance to the dog faster than she thought she’d ever moved in her life, grabbed her collar and flung all seventy-five pounds of golden retriever head-first
past her toward the door so that it was behind
her
now,
shit
, head raised, gliding through the mud and tufts of grass coming toward her as she stumbled over the dog who’d turned in the doorway for one last look at the thing and then got past her and slammed the screen in the goddamn face of the thing just as it hit the screen once and then twice—a sound like a foot or a hammer striking—hit it hard enough to dent it inward. And finally, seeing that, she screamed.

The dog was barking now, going for the screen on their side, enraged by the attempted intrusion. Ann hauled her away by the collar back through the lanai and slid the glass doors shut and even though she knew it was crazy, even though she knew the snake could not get through the screen, she damn well locked them.

She sat down on her rug, her legs giving out completely, her heart pounding, and tried to calm Katie. Or calm herself by calming Katie.

The dog continued to bark. And then to growl. And finally just sat there looking out toward the lanai and panting.

She wondered if that meant it was gone.

Somehow she doubted it.

She was glad it was President’s day weekend and that Danny was with his grandmother and grandfather at Universal over in Orlando. The trip was a present to him for good grades. She was glad he wouldn’t be coming home from school in an hour as usual. Wouldn’t come home to
that
.

The dog was still trembling.

So was she.

It was two o’clock. She needed a drink.

She could pinpoint the moment her fear of snakes began exactly
.

She had been eight years old.

Her grandparents had lived in Daytona Beach, and Ann and her parents had come to visit. It was Ann’s first visit
to Florida. Daytona was pretty boring so they did a little sightseeing while they were there and one of the places they went to was a place called Ross Allen’s Alligator Farm. A guide gave them a tour.

She remembered being fascinated by the baby alligators, dozens and dozens of them all huddled in one swampy pen, but seemingly very peaceful together, and she was wondering if maybe the reason they weren’t biting one another was that they all came from one mama, if that were possible. She stood there watching pondering that question until she became aware that the tour had moved on a bit and she knew she’d better catch up with them but she still wanted an answer to her question about the alligators so when she approached the group she did what she’d been told to do when she had a question, never mind how urgent.

She raised her hand.

As it happened her tour guide had just asked a question of his own.
Who wants to put this snake around his neck?
And Ann, with her hand in the air and thinking hard about the peaceful drowse of baby alligators found herself draped by and staring into the face of a five pound boa constrictor named Marvin, everyone smiling at her, until her father said
I think you’d better take it off now, I don’t know, she looks kinda pale to me
, and she’d fainted dead away.

There had been green snakes in the garden by her house and they had not bothered her in the slightest and there were garter snakes down by the brook. But nothing like a five pound boa named Marvin. So that afterwords she avoided even greens and garters. And shortly after that she had the first of what became a recurrent dream.

She is swimming in a mountain pool
.

She is alone and she is naked
.

The water is warm, just cool enough to be refreshing, and the banks are rocky and green
.

She’s midway across the pool, swimming easily, strongly, when she has the feeling that something is
. . . not right.
She
turns and looks behind her and there it is, a sleek black watersnake, lithe and whiplike, so close that she can see its fangs, she can see directly into the white open mouth of it, it is undulating through the water toward her at stunning speed, it’s right behind her and she swims for dear life but knows she’ll never make it, not in time, the banks loom ahead like a giant stone wall bleeding gleaming condensation and she’s terrified, crying—the crying itself slowing her down even more so that even as she swims and the water thickens she’s losing her will and losing hope, it’s
useless,
there’s only her startled frightened flesh driving her on and the snake is at her heels and she can almost feel it and

She wakes.

Sometimes she’s only sweating. Twisted into the bed-sheets as though they were knots of water.

Sometimes she screams herself awake.

Screams as she’s just done now.

Goddamn snake
.

Seven feet long and big around as a man’s fist. Bigger. The snake in her dream was nothing compared to that.

She got up and went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of vodka, added ice and tonic. She drank it down like a glass of water and poured another. The shaking stopped a bit.

Enough for her to wonder if the snake were still outside.

The dog was lying on the rug, biting at a flea on her right hind leg.

The dog didn’t look worried at all.

Take a look, she thought.

What can it hurt?

She unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped out onto the lanai, then slid the door closed behind her. She didn’t want Katie involved in this. She picked up a broom she used to sweep up out there. Behind her Katie got to her feet and watched, ears perked. She scrabbled at the door.

“No,” she said. The scrabbling stopped.

She peered through the screens.

Nothing by the door.

Nothing in the yard either that she could see, either to the left, where the snake had first appeared and the hibiscus grew up against the picket fence, nor to the right, where a second, taller plant grew near the door. The only place she couldn’t see was along the base of the screened-in wall itself on either side. To do that she’d have to open the door.

Which she wasn’t about to do.

Or was she?

Hell, it was ridiculous to hang around wondering. There was every chance the snake had gone back through the fence the way it had come and was rooting around for mice down at the banks of the canal even as she stood there.

Okay, she thought. Do it. But do it carefully. Do it
smart
.

She opened the dented screen door to just the width of the broom and wedged its thick bristles into the bottom of the opening. She peered out along the base of the longer wall to the left.

No snake.

She looked right and heard it hiss and slide along the metal base near the hibiscus and felt it hit the door all at once, jarring its metal frame.

She slammed it shut.

The broom fell out of her hands, clattered to the concrete floor.

And then she was just staring at the thing, backing away to the concrete wall behind her.

Watching as it raised its head. And then its body. Two feet, three feet. Rising. Slowly gaining height.

Seeming to swell.

And swaying.

Staring back at her.

It was nearly dusk before she got up the courage to look again.

This time she used a shovel from the garage instead of
the broom. If it came after her again with a little luck she could chop the goddamn thing’s head off.

It was gone.

She looked everywhere. The snake was gone.

She took another drink by way of celebration. The idea of spending the night with the snake lying out there in her yard had unnerved her completely. She thought she deserved the drink.

If she dreamed she did not remember.

In the morning she checked the yard again and finding it empty, let Katie out to do her business, let her back in again and then went out the front door for the paper.

She took one step onto the walkway and hadn’t even shut the door behind her when she saw it on the lawn, stretched to its full enormous length diagonally from her mailbox nearly all the way to the walk, three feet away. Head raised and moving toward her.

She stepped back inside and shut the door.

The snake stopped and waited.

She watched it through the screen.

The snake didn’t move. It just lay there in the bright morning sun.

She closed the inner door and locked it.

Jesus!

She was trapped in her own home here!

Who the hell did you call? The police? The Humane Society?

She tried 911.

An officer identified himself. He sounded young and friendly.

“I’ve got a snake out here in my yard. A big snake. And he . . . he keeps coming right at me. I honestly can’t get out of my house!”

It was true. The only other exit to the condo was through the kitchen door that led to the garage and the garage was
right beside the front door. She wasn’t going out that way. No way. No thanks.

“Sorry, ma’am, but it’s not police business. What you want to do is call the Animal Rescue League. They’ll send somebody over there and pick it up for you. Get rid of it. But I gotta tell you, you’re my third snake call today and I’ve already had four alligators. Yesterday was even worse. These rains bring ’em all out. So the Animal Rescue League may make you wait awhile.”

“God!”

He laughed. “My brother-in-law’s a gardener. You know what he says about Florida? ‘
Everything
bites down here. Even the
trees
bite at you.’ ”

He gave her the number and she dialed. The woman at Animal Rescue took Ann’s name, address and phone number and then asked her to describe the animal, its appearance and behavior.

“Sounds like what you’ve got is a Florida Banded,” she said. “Though I’ve never heard of one that big before.”

“A what?”

“A Florida Banded watersnake. You say it’s seven, eight feet? That’s big. That means you’ve got maybe thirty pounds of snake there.”

“Is it poisonous?”

“Nah. Give you a darn good nasty bite, though. The banded’s aggressive. He’ll hit you two three four times if he hits you once. But again, I never heard of one
goin’ after
you the way you’re saying. Normally they’ll just defend their own territory. You sure you didn’t go after
him
in some way?”

“Absolutely not. My dog, maybe, at first. But I pulled her away as soon as I saw the thing. Since then he’s come at me twice. With no provocation whatsoever.”

“Well, don’t start provokin’ him now. Snake gets agitated, he’ll strike at anything. We’ll be out just as soon as we can. You have yourself a good day now.”

She waited. Watched talk shows and ate lunch. Stayed
purposely away from both the front door and the lanai.

They arrived about three.

Two burly men in slacks and short-sleeved shirts stepping out of the van carrying two long wooden poles. One pole had a kind of wire shepherd’s crook at the end and the other pole a v-shaped wedge. She stood in the doorway with Katie and watched them. The men just nodded to her and went to work.

Infuriatingly enough, the snake now lay passive on the grass while the crook slipped over its head just beneath the jawbone and the v-shaped wedge pinned it halfway down the length of its body. The man with the crook then lifted the head and grabbed it under the jaw first with one hand and then the other, dropping his pole to the grass. Its mouth opened wide and the snake writhed, hissing—but did not really seem to resist. They counted three and hefted him.

“Big guy, ain’t he.”

“Biggest banded I’ve seen.”

They walked him across the street to the vacant lot opposite into a wide thick patch of scrub.

Then they just dropped him, crossed the street, got the pole off the lawn and walked back to the van.

She stood there. She couldn’t believe it.

“Excuse me? Could you hold on a moment, please?”

She walked outside. The bald one was climbing into the driver’s seat.

“I don’t understand. Aren’t you . . . moving him? Aren’t you taking him somewhere?”

The man smiled. “He’s took.”

“That’s supposed to keep that thing away from here? That
street
?”

“Not the street, ma’am. See, a snake’s territorial. That means wherever he sets down, if there’s enough food ’round to feed on, that’s where he’s gonna stay. Now, he’s gonna find lizards, mice, rabbits and whatever over there in that lot. And see, it leads back to a stream. When he’s
finished with this patch he’ll just go downstream. You’ll never see that guy again. Believe me.”