by The Science
A town’s strength is in its health, he’d explained to Al. If you control a people’s health, you control their money. You control the people. And boy, had Al witnessed the accuracy of that aphorism. Balancing the books, collecting fees, rooting out any nurses or doctors trying to practice illegally. Selling folks on the necessity of visiting their doctor regularly. If they wanted to remain healthy, that is. Like his father, Al never personally resorted to violence, but that didn’t make his hands any less bloody. Yet, for all that his father had mentored him, Al had somehow developed a conscience. More fool him.
No one shadowed the church’s doorway while Al drank and waited and drank some more. Maybe the posse had given up hunting him, scared off by the stories of Stenvall’s Folly or else their anger slaked by the knowledge that Al was gone from Portico for good. Oh, his father had made himself perfectly clear regarding the severity of the consequences should Al return home, but as far as Al was aware, if he survived this chase, that threat ended at Portico’s borders.
Not that he planned to go back. He’d like to see the fruits of his work but could content himself knowing he’d done good. The town’s health and prosperity were its own again, though if he knew his father, there would be enough side business remaining that he and his daughter, Al’s sister, wouldn’t starve. Al hoped there was enough for the two of them to live healthy and happy, same as anyone else in Portico. Better than Al himself was likely to end up, anyway.
Between the inebriation and his own dark mutterings, Al didn’t hear dry scales slithering through the church’s back door. Didn’t notice the staccato click of a tongue darting between fangs to taste the air. Remained unaware that he wasn’t alone until he heard a sound behind him like bone dice clacking in a wooden cup, and he spun around to find himself face to face with a sixty-foot-long rattlesnake.
The thunk of a heavy key in a heavy lock wakes Al. It’s still mostly dark out, the sort of gray that heralds dawn. Apparently, Sheriff Stenvall meant out of town at first light literally.
Stenvall stands impatiently while Al stretches, rubs his eyes. “You mind?” he asks, tipping his head toward the chamber pot. Stenvall purses his lips but averts his eyes while Al completes his morning ritual. Neither speaks into the dark morning as Sheriff Stenvall escorts Al by foot through the waking settlement. Not until they are outside the town limits, standing beside Al’s mule-drawn wagon, the back of which is stuffed with the coiled body of the serpent. Amazing how tightly one can wind a very long snake.
“Well, sheriff, I guess that’s that,” Al says, climbing up to the driver’s seat and taking the reins. Whichever townsperson Sheriff Stenvall pressed into caring for the mule overnight did a fine job. Al’s grateful for that at least.
Stenvall lifts his hand to swat the mule on the rump and send Al away. “Take care now.” He opens his mouth, presumably to issue another of his not-so-veiled threats, but Al cuts him off.
“Don’t bother yourself, Sheriff. My charge in this camp is complete. Never again will I darken your streets or saloon.”
Stenvall pauses, his palm hovering over the mule’s flank. He wants to say something else—the man is not difficult to read—but wrinkles his brow, nods more decisively, and turns away. Al watches until he disappears amidst the clapboard and canvas buildings on the town’s outskirts, then he snaps the reins, and the wagon rolls off down the prairie road. Heading in no particular direction at the moment. Simply away.
“Did you have a pleasant night?” a raspy alto asks from behind him. Al glances over his shoulder and there’s Snake, her nose not two feet from Al’s own. Her tongue flicks out, and she dips her head to peer down her snout as sardonically as any snake ever could. “Because my evening was cold and cramped and more than a bit boring.”
“Don’t blame me,” Al grumbles. “That sheriff fancies himself an amateur interrogationist.”
Snake yawns, her jaws gaping open until they’re nearly perpendicular, and Al stares down her gullet as her two fangs stretch from their sheathes. If he didn’t know she’s simply scenting the air, he’d be terrified.
“Interrogator,” Snake says, “And being as he’s the sheriff, isn’t he a professional one?”
“He’s a dilettante’s skill at it then.”
“Having not properly met the man, I can neither agree nor disagree.” Pops and crackles as she writhes around the back of the wagon, working out the kinks formed during a long night of playing dead.
“See, that’s the thing.” Al watches Snake out of the corner of his eye to catch her reaction. “Seems the two of you are previously acquainted.”
Her tongue freezes mid-flick. If Snake had eyelids to blink in astonishment, she surely would. “I find that exceedingly unlikely.”
“Fella goes by the name of Stenvall. Sounds familiar to me.”
“It’s possible,” Snake says. Haltingly, softly. “A... predecessor. A prior incarnation. This sheriff, he may have met that Snake. Years ago.”
Snake’s never much liked to talk of her past, a similarity the two share. Centuries she spent alive before meeting Al, and he knows only the faintest outlines of stories from those years. But Snake doesn’t know much about Al before they met either, simply that he was driven out of his home, never to return. It’s an unspoken pact that they don’t press each other; living in the moment, focusing on the mission of spreading Snake’s life-improving oils across the frontier. Spreading the oil and its attendant health and happiness. Snake’s oil doesn’t precisely make the folks who imbibe it better people. But it does make them want to be.
Someday, Al will need to pry the full story of what happened to Stenvall’s Folly from Snake’s jaws, but not today. Today, they ride in silence down the road, passing gold and green fields of wheat and maize and sorghum that turn to expanses of wild grasses and purple-headed thistle. Trees sprout in clumps across the range, like some massive hand scattered their seeds as an afterthought thousands of years ago.
“He didn’t seem pleased to see you again.”
“No, I don’t suppose he would.”
Silence again. Al has the feeling that he won’t get any more from Snake, not now at least. Not without offering up a bit of his own history, spilling some of his own curdled blood.
“Would it be too much to hope that you brought a snack?” Snake asks eventually.
Al snorts. “Keep your eyes on the prairie. There’s sure to be some moa out there. You snatch yourself one of those big old birds, you’ll be set for days.”
Snake hisses agreement, the rattle at the end of her tail shivering in anticipation.
“So, then, which direction shall I point us?” Al asks. “Which far-flung frontier outpost is next to receive our beneficent visitation?”
Snake doesn’t answer until Al twists around in his seat to look at his reptilian friend. “What?” Al asks. “Where’s next on your agenda? All we’ve seen these years, ain’t nothing you can say is going to quail me.”
“We’ve been as deep into the frontier as we can go,” Snake says. “As deep as it’s worth going anyhow. The goodwill, the elixir, it’ll spread. Peace will travel with it.”
“Lovely,” Al says, “but I’d bet your next words aren’t going to be that our work is done and we can rest.”
“The only place left... is the last place to bring the elixir to. From there, you see... it can disseminate across the land in all directions, back into the cities, all over the continent, the wider world. It’s a risk, but it’s our one remaining move. It’s our last stop, the culmination of all our work.”
“Spit it out, Snake.”
“We’ve got to go to Portico, Al. You have to go home.”
“Might be you’ve got a point.” Al wasn’t lying about his lack of fear. They truly have journeyed places dangerous and deadly. Hearing that they need to go to Portico, the place that Al least wants to see again, and that wants to see him even less—even that doesn’t frighten him.
But his stomach does begin to churn cold.
<
br /> When Al’s heart resumed beating and he caught his breath, he responded to the rattlesnake’s hesitant, though friendly, greeting.
“Er... hello.”
“I know,” the snake said. “A talking snake. Not something you see every day. As far as I’m aware, I’m the last one left. If we’d met, say, two hundred years ago, you’d hardly blink.”
“Sure,” Al replied, his tongue as tied as the snake’s was long. And boy was it. Every time the snake tasted the air, Al shied back, unable to convince himself that she wasn’t about to strike and devour him whole. “Um, well. Pleased to meet you?”
“Charmed, I’m sure.” The snake hissed out something resembling laughter.
Fear still coiled around Al’s throat and innards, but he tried to shake it off. Why be scared now? Best he could tell, this beast had no cause to harm him, which was more than could be said of his pursuers. Which reminded Al why he chose Stenvall’s Folly to hide out in in the first place. What he wanted to ask now wasn’t the politest question Al could pose at such a moment, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Are you the reason for this? The destruction of the town? Everyone dying?”
The snake didn’t answer for long enough that Al began to doubt she would, and when she finally spoke, she didn’t look him in the eye. “That... wasn’t me. Wander around town, you’ll see old skins lying about. The snake that shed those, that’s where to cast the blame.”
“No blame for me to cast,” Al said, hands up, placating. “Merely making conversation, though I’ve been informed my curiosity does tend to rub the wrong way.”
“Don’t think twice,” the snake said. They lapsed into awkward silence. Al had to chuckle. Worried about sociality when speaking to an enormous rattlesnake like the ones out of myth. Truly, this was an unanticipated turn of fortune.
The snake chuckled too. “It’s been years since I’ve seen a human being. Spoken aloud even. I can’t say with certainty how long it’s been since I was last aboveground. So, thank you for pulling me from my wallow. Too long I’ve made loneliness my friend.”
Al nodded. Despite all the people he surrounded himself with, despite the rarely ceasing stream of words that spilled from his lips, he too was acquainted with loneliness’s dull bite.
“Please to meet you,” he said again, certain this time that he meant it. He didn’t extend his hand for a shake though. Not near those jaws. No use tempting fate. Besides, what would the snake shake with? “Aloysius P. McNutt. Everyone calls me Al.”
“Goodness,” the snake said. “I guess you can call me Snake.”
“Oh, come on,” Al scoffed. “A creature of your stature and history? That’s no name for you.”
The rattle twirled on the dusty ground, as if the snake was embarrassed. “Well, the people who lived here long ago, before this town, they called me the Glorious Serpent, Bearer of Health and Beneficence and Power.”
“Snake it is. But that other’s a name with a story behind it, if I’ve ever heard one.”
And so Snake explained to Al all about her oil and its capabilities. With each word, new schemes sparked in Al’s brain. Yesterday had been the worst, lowest day of Al’s life. Now this fell into his lap. The greatest salesmanship opportunity he could ever find. All he had to do was convince Snake.
“See here, I think we could help a lot of people, with those effusions of yours. Why, with a little elbow grease, we could very well spread health and good cheer across this whole damn frontier, from mountain to sea. Course, we’ll need fair compensation. Now just hear me out—”
“Deal,” Snake said, though Al knew to be wary of anyone who buys into a pitch too readily, he didn’t argue.
“If we’re to be partners, I should warn you,” Al said, “I’ve made some enemies.”
Snake nodded her massive, wedge-shaped head. “As have I.”
That didn’t surprise Al one bit.
Portico. Threshold of the frontier. Jewel of the prairie. A town of graded roads and running water. At least, it had been in the nicer parts, where the rich folk lived, devising their schemes to fleece the desperate men and women passing through on their way to make a living on the frontier. A living that would become much harder once they were taken for whatever meager belongings they had. And no one batted at eye at that. But try turning it around and conning the rich for once, and suddenly you’ve gone too far and get declared persona non grata. Fair play, Al had learned, to his unending chagrin, was not a virtue held by the city mothers and fathers of Portico. His own father least of all.
On the way to town, Al had tried to disguise himself with what sparse implements he could lay hands on. With the same knife he uses to play-battle Snake, he’d lopped off hunks of hair and crudely fashioned them into a push-broom mustache that he affixed to his upper lip with pine sap and prayer. He’d considered trying for a full beard but couldn’t commit to shearing off all the hair on his head. His hairline has been receding for years; no need to encourage it into a full retreat.
He is supposed to wait his customary one and a half days after Snake begins menacing the town—snatching livestock, hissing and snapping threateningly at passing stagecoaches, the old standbys—but Al’s impatience gets the better of him. This isn’t some newly erected settlement; the people of Portico will fight back, and hard. Despite Al’s warnings, Snake doesn’t truly savvy what she’s in for; doesn’t realize that this town may well outmatch them both.
Al rides into town at full speed, wagon clattering along the uneven dirt until he gets close enough that suddenly the road is graded and even and the wheels fairly slide along it. Snake is nowhere to be seen, hopefully hiding somewhere, biding her time between attacks, ensuring she is seen by enough people to cause panic but not so many as to put her in immediate danger. It’s a dangerous balancing act, their game. The trick to getting people to drink the snake oil is convincing them to fear the snake but trust the salesman.
A cadre of grim-faced men and women armed with shotguns and long rifles stand guard at the junction of road and town, sentinels against the encroachment of the untamed frontier. Any who can’t hack it out there wind up back in Portico eventually. Or dead. Al worries that today he’s going to end up both.
He slows the wagon as he approaches the group. Before they can see him clearly, he takes a deep breath, composes his face into his standard disarming grin. The wagon rolls up to Portico as languorously as if it’s carrying two lovers on a holiday ride.
“Heard tell you folks have a snake problem.”
“Bad news travels fast,” says a young woman, twenty years old if she’s a day. Streaks of blue dye color her otherwise stark white hair. Something about her reminds Al of someone he knows, but he can’t place it. A mustache hair has worked its way free and tickles upward at his eye, which waters and obscures his vision. The woman, the group’s apparent leader, steps forward. “Let me make a prediction—you’ve come to help us. You’ll kill the rattler, and all the pay you’ll ask is the chance to harvest its oil, to help heal our town.”
Al smiles coldly. The one time his reputation precedes him, and it’s here. Still, he can hope that the people of Portico only know the broad strokes of his story. Certainly they don’t know who he really is, or else someone would have come after him before now. He opens his mouth to introduce himself with a false name when the woman cuts him off.
“Aloysius P. McNutt,” she says. “We’ve been expecting you.”
So much for his disguise. He studies the woman’s face through teary eyes. Tries to blink away the hair. God, she’s familiar. More than vaguely. Probably someone he wronged. It’s a longish list.
“What an unalloyed pleasure to hear,” he blusters. Nothing for it now but to push ahead full tilt. “Dare I say, there is none on the frontier possessing the expertise that—”
“Stuff it, thief,” the woman says.
“Insults are hardly—”
“And take off the damn mustache. You look like a half-wit ignoramus.”
The
term jars loose a memory. That particular oxymoronic insult is a favorite of his father’s and one frequently directed at Aloysius P. McNutt during his formative years.
Inwardly, he sighs to recognize what’s become of his sister, but outwardly he smiles. “Hello, Althea,” he says. “You grew up.”
“And you just got old.” She smirks at her own wit. Al can’t help but quirk a corner of his mouth as well. Quick on her feet, his sister. A true McNutt.
This may require a less flamboyant tack than usual. Al fixes his eyes on his sister’s, and sincerity infuses every word. “Regardless of any past quarrels, the fact remains that a snake threatens this town. To right old wrongs, I am prepared to provide my services and the resulting elixir at a more than agreeable rate.” Spite from Althea’s eyes. “By which I of course mean free of charge. Call it restitution.”
“You threw away my inheritance!” Althea yells.
“I was born first,” Al snaps, emotion finally getting the better of him. “And I doubt the people who benefited from its theft considered it thrown away.”
“See for yourself how well it benefited them,” Althea says. “We’ll deposit you into one of the very cells they once occupied.”
Uneasy coughing. “Excuse me?”
“Illegally destroyed contracts remain enforceable in Portico, and any who attempted doctoring without the benefit of Father’s protection were punished accordingly. As for you—you are a charlatan and a thief.”
“Aspersions aside, someone needs to deal with the snake.” He’s trying to hide his rising desperation, but this is Al’s one chance, his sole hope to buy enough time to slip this trap before the jaws fully shut on him.
“I’ll handle that,” a voice says from the back of the band. Perplexed and annoyed as Al is, it takes a moment to place, but sure enough, stepping forward, vexatious as ever, is none other than Sheriff Stenvall, sporting an expression of combined satisfaction, cunning, and smugness. He must have followed Al here; slipped into town while Al waited for Snake to wreak her havoc. Can’t he leave well enough alone?
