The Little Friend

Had he really set those snakes loose? From where he stood, he saw two lying in the open floor; another wriggling, energetically, towards the light. A moment ago it had seemed like a good plan but now he was fervently sorry: please, God, please don’t let it crawl over here.… The snakes had patterns on their backs like copperheads, only sharper. On the audacious snake—which was making brazenly for the next room—he now made out the two-inch stack of rattle buttons on the tail.

But it was the ones he couldn’t see that made him nervous. There had been at least five or six snakes in that box—possibly more. Where were they?

From the front windows it was a sheer drop to the street. His only hope was the bathroom. Once he got out on the roof, he could dangle from the edge before dropping the rest of the way. He’d jumped from tree limbs nearly as high.

But to his dismay, the bathroom door wasn’t where he thought it was. Down the wall he inched—too far altogether for his taste, down into the dark area where he’d turned the snakes loose—but what he’d thought was the door wasn’t the door at all but only a piece of particle-board propped against the wall.

Hely was perplexed. The bathroom door was on the left, he was sure of it; he was debating whether to move farther down or go back when with an abrupt pitch of his heart he realized that it was on the left side of the other room.

He was too stunned to move. For an instant, the room plunged away (great depths, soundless wells, pupils dilating in response) and when it rushed back again, it took him a moment to figure out where he was. He leaned his head against the wall, rolling it back and forth. How could he be so dumb? He always had trouble with directions, confusing left with right; letters and numbers switched chairs when he was looking away from the page, and grinned back at him from different places; sometimes he even sat down at the wrong chair at school without realizing it. Careless! Careless! screamed the red writing on his book reports, on his math tests and scratched-up worksheets.

————

When the lights swung into the driveway, Harriet was caught wholly off-guard. She dropped to the ground and rolled under the house—bump, right into the cobra’s box, which lashed angrily in reply. The gravel crackled and almost before she could catch her breath, tires roared by a few feet from her face, in a blast of wind and bluish light that rippled through the ragged grass.

Harriet—face down in powdery dust—smelled a strong nauseating odor of something dead. All the houses in Alexandria had crawlspaces, for fear of floods, and this one was no more than a foot high and not much less claustrophobic than a grave.

The cobra—who had not enjoyed being jostled downstairs, and tipped on his side—whacked against the box, with horrid dry slashes she could feel through the wood. But worse than the snake or the dead-rat smell was the dust, which tickled her nose unbearably. She turned her head. A reddish pan from the tail-lights slanted under the house, glowing suddenly over squiggled earthworm castings, ant hills, a dirty shard of glass.

Then everything went black. The car door slammed. “—that’s what started that car on fire,” said a growly voice, not the preacher’s. “ ‘All right,’ I said to him—they had me laying all proned out on the ground—‘I’m on be honest with you sir, and you can take me to jail right now, but this one here’s got a warrant on him long as your arm.’ Ha! Well, he took off running.”

“That was all there was to that, I reckon.”

Laughter: not nice. “You got that right.”

The feet were tramping toward her. Harriet—desperately battling a sneeze—held her breath, clamped a hand over her mouth and pinched her nose shut. Over her head and up the stairs the footsteps clomped. A tentative stinger pricked her ankle. Finding no resistance, it settled and sank in deeper, as Harriet trembled head to foot with the urge to slap it.

Another sting, this one on her calf. Fire ants. Great.

“Well, when he come on back home,” said the growly voice—fainter now, receding—“they all got to seeing who could get the true story out of him.…”

Then the voice stopped. Upstairs, everything was quiet, but she hadn’t heard the door open, and she sensed they hadn’t gone inside, but were lingering on the landing, watchfully. Stiffly she lay there, straining to listen with every ounce of her attention.

Minutes passed. The fire ants—energetically and in growing numbers—stung her arms and legs. Her back was still pressed against the box and every now and again, through the wood, the cobra whacked sullenly against her spine. In the stifling quiet, she imagined she heard voices, footsteps—and yet, when she tried to make them out, the noises shimmered and dissolved away into nothingness.