by The Science
Althea grasps Al by the collar of his shirt and yanks him with a strength Al hadn’t guessed at. He falls back; feels more hands grabbing his arms, pulling him toward the gallows. “Get out of here, Snake!” he yells. “Run!” The absurdity of telling a serpent to run is not lost of him, even at this harrowing moment.
Stenvall confronts Snake, shotgun raised to his shoulder. Narrows his eye as he takes aim.
Al jerks and twists and wrenches himself free from the guards’ grip, landing hard on his backside. Althea stands above him, revolver targeting his head. She draws back the hammer.
A rock the size of Al’s fist thuds off Althea’s shoulder, knocking the revolver’s muzzle askew. Even though he’s on the ground, Al ducks, covers his head, presuming the stone was meant for him.
“When my wife got the bitterblood fever, Albertus McNutt refused to sell her medicine!” one of the spectators, a man about Al’s age, shouts. “Claimed she’d waited too long to call for a doctor, that giving her any help would be ‘wasteful to those more deserving.’”
A woman steps up next to him. “Albertus McNutt fined me more’n a year’s wages because I had an abscess drained without getting his permission first. I could barely walk with it! Without the no-good son’s help burning up the credit records, I’d’a been ruined.”
Al furrows his brow at the “no-good” descriptor but likes the tack the mood is taking. Snake and Stenvall watch the scene unfold, neither moving, both tensed to strike.
Althea glares at the folks who’ve dared interrupt her moment of victory. “You all want to mourn this scofflaw, feel free. You can bring flowers to his grave.” To the guards, she snaps, “String him up.”
The guards who’ve been standing behind Al move between him and Althea. “You think anyone’d take this job who weren’t desperate for money?” one asks. “I’m still paying back Albertus McNutt long after he’s dead, and my family’ll be paying him after I’m dead too. No man who poked a stick in his eye can be all bad.”
Stenvall snorts a mix of disdain and bemusement. “I don’t need assistance to kill this snake.” He levels the shotgun.
“And I don’t need any to kill this one,” Althea says, her finger tightening around the trigger.
That’s the moment Snake chooses to make her move, darting away from Stenvall, her rattle clacking wildly, leaping in front of Althea as she pulls the trigger.
Al jumps too, away from his sister, toward Stenvall and his shotgun. Adrenaline spikes and slows everything down. He barely hears the simultaneous gunshots.
Buckshot rakes his right side from flank to ankle, stabs of sharp pain exploding down his leg. Dull pain joins it when he lands on his stomach, skidding along dirt and gravel. Al’s drank his share of snake oil elixir, but good as it is for what ails you, it has its limits. Blinking away tears, gritting his teeth, choking for breath against his lost wind, Al checks for Snake, praying the bullet ricocheted off her, that it didn’t hit a soft spot or angle in under a scale. She’s tough, but she’s not invincible.
Chaos rages around them. Guards and spectators have allied, and they grapple with Althea and Stenvall and his select few loyal men. Guns fire into the ground and sky, but quickly their bullets are all spent and no one has the opportunity to reload. The rebelling townsfolk wrestle Althea and Stenvall to the ground.
“Get out of here!” the formerly abscessed woman yells in Al’s general direction.
He scuttles through the fray, dragging his ruined right leg, making his way to Snake’s head, praying to every god he’s ever heard of and a few he’s made up. Blood leaks from a hole the size of a walnut. Blood, and something deep amber. Snake’s oil, blessing the ground where she lies dying.
Al’s good leg gives out, and he collapses into a puddle of blood and oil. His fingers curled into claws, he scoops up what he can, a mixture of vitality and dirt, and presses it against Snake’s wound. He doesn’t know why; simply wants to do something, anything, to staunch the flow, to keep Snake from succumbing to the wound she took for him. It doesn’t occur to him to do anything for his own wounds, but his moments scrabbling in the bloody, oily mud does something for him. He may be feeling an iota of strength return.
From behind, Al hears it. Rattling. Clacking loud like bone dice in a wooden cup, a sound to that should spark fear in the deep instinctual recesses of Al’s brain. He sobs a laugh.
Althea and Stenvall struggle against the rebelling townsfolk, and Al understands that eventually they will rise back up, both to their feet and to their social stature. The rich businessperson, the law-enforcer—they are the ones who wield power, and they will not relinquish it lightly, no matter how much snake oil they might take. It may provide health, it may inspire those who consume it to be better people, but there are limits. Always, there are limits.
Snake could end Stenvall and Althea right now. She could flick her rattle and snap their spines, spread wide her jaws and swallow each of them whole. Al wouldn’t blame her.
Instead, she makes a noise like a tin coffeepot boiling on a campfire and ripples the length of her body. Oil flecks off, droplets landing on Al, the guards, the spectators, Althea, Stenvall, all of them. Little of it, and Al doubts any gets into their mouths, but it’s something. Even now, Snake can’t help but share her gift.
She twists back, looks Al in the eye. “Things took a bit of a turn.”
Al snorts. “I’m inclined to agree. What say we skedaddle?”
Snake hisses and rattles in consternation. “Al? We can’t do that,” she says. “They need us here.”
“And we need our lives.”
“Do you remember what you told me when we first met? We were going to help folks. We were going to spread health and good cheer.”
“Can’t force happiness.”
“No, but we can create the circumstances for it to flourish.”
Al observes the dwindling chaos. Stenvall and Althea are subdued and bound. Al knows they aren’t the only powerful people in town. But these folks who stood up for him, who saved him and Snake, they aren’t the only oppressed people in town. Maybe they also aren’t the only ones willing to fight back, to grasp what is theirs and hold on tightly. He tried to help once and failed. Twice, technically. But maybe he can help now. It’s frightening, though. Who’s to say he won’t fail again?
He spits a gob of bloody saliva into the mud. Looks around for a canteen. He’s going to need a fresh mouth for all the salesmanning ahead. He’s got to sway a lot of people, got to convert a whole town from backstabbing and grift to community and magnanimity. It’s a tall order, but Snake will help, and so will the elixir. To an extent. What Al sells hasn’t transformed him into a better person.
It just makes him want to try.
© Copyright 2020 Timothy Mudie
