by John Godey
The good feeling he got when he first spotted the rat went away and he began to feel sour again. Walking on south, he swore out loud whenever a car or truck went by on Seventh Avenue. Mean as he felt, better not let nobody fuck around with him. One bad look and he would burn somebody. Saturday Night Special couldn’t hit no rat halfway across the street, but point blank up against somebody it would blow half their ugly face off. The sun was lighting up the sky, though it was still gray down below as he crossed Cathedral Parkway, sauntering, ignoring a couple of trucks, making them blow their horns at him, making them hit their brakes. Screw them. Street belong to me every much as it do to them. He went into the park through the Warriors Gate. Still pretty cool, though in a few minutes the sun would start hotting it up. Remembering the heat and stink of the apartment, he was glad he had that ruckus with his aunt, it give him a good excuse to split. Get away from heat and old Uncle Tom aunt at one and the same time.
Silly old bitch didn’t know the score. Thought dope was bad, thought chicks was bad, thought school was good, thought church was good. Knew he had the gun, she would probably call the cops in. Mostly he didn’t pay no attention to her, but tonight she was waiting up for him, and her jaw just go like a express train—fifteen-year-old boy have no call to come in four-thirty in the morning, and et cetera. He sassed her and sassed her, and finally old auntie get mad and take a swing at him. When he like to fall down laughing at her, she come on with the big black skillet, and could have bust his arm if it land. So he dodge around the kitchen, and finally get around back of her and take it away and smash the table with it, and then run out the door.
Have to get something going for hisself and split for good. Too old for living with old auntie and the rest of the kids. Needed a pad anyway, tired of balling chicks on rooftops. Come to think of it, in his whole life never had no chick in a bed. High time. Have to promote hisself some bread. Meanwhile, shit, what he doing in this dumb park? What he care about grass and trees and such shit? And don’t forget old snake. Old black mamba. Old nigger mamba. Didn’t scare him. Old snake come dancing along, he pull his piece and blow old snake’s head away. He laughed at the image of a headless snake.
He ran up a hill, and looked down the Meer to the east, with sun on the water now, and straight ahead of him the long stretch of the North Meadow. He raced down the far side of the hill, sliding on his sneakered feet, grabbing at branches as he went. His momentum carried him down onto a walkway, and he had to put on the brakes or run right into the railing and bust his balls.
At the West Drive, a car came along, with its headlights still on. As it went by, a red face under a hard hat poked out and shouted jeeringly at him.
“Honkies,” he shouted back, “motherfuckers, shit-eaters.”
The car slowed, and a muscular arm hung out of the window, feeling for the door handle. Alvis’s heart began to thump. He reached under his shirt for the hard blunt shape of the piece. If they got out of the car he would gun the mothers down! The car picked up speed and went on. The beefy red face was hanging out the window, mouthing words that were lost in the sound of the accelerating car. Alvis shouted, “Pink-face! Shit-face! Motherfucker!”
The car disappeared around a curve.
He grinned, and crossed the roadway jauntily, forcing another car to squeal its brakes. He smiled, feeling good, and ignored the shouts that drifted back from the car.
At the Reservoir, the early-bird joggers were out, most of them dressed in white shorts and T-shirts and expensive sneakers. Dudes were soaked in sweat, red in the face, and sucking air like they was gonna die very next step. One was a pretty young chick with silky blond hair flying behind her and little tits that bounced like crazy under her T-shirt.
“Hey baby,” he yelled at her, “how you like some real exercise?”
After that, he started jiving most of the joggers. “Look, dads, you too old, you gonna have a heart attack.” “Hey, man, you look like a busted-down hoss.” “Look at the great tits on you, mister.” A young black man came sailing along, slim and high-kicking, barechested, wearing a yellow sweat band around his forehead. “Show them honkies how to do it, brother,” Alvis yelled.
Alvis decided to run, and he began to breeze past the joggers, giving them a little grin as he went by. But after one circuit he quit. Too hot, man. He started back to the north, going off the walkways and climbing up a hill whenever he saw one. It was a good feeling being up high. He liked it even better when there was also a lot of trees and bushes, like being hid out in a jungle. He hacked his way out of a jungle, came down into the open, and then ran at a big steep sloping rock. Hey, man, watch this move, up the rock like a fly climb a wall. His sneakers gripped and his momentum carried him to the top. And there, stretched out about a mile long, was a big mother of a snake.
***
The stone struck the rock in front of the snake, and skittered away. The snake’s long body stirred into movement at once, gliding over the rock, taking up its own slack. Its head rose upward on a taut column, and its tongue flicked out. When a second stone landed just in front of it it recoiled for a moment, and then its head rose higher. Its eyes picked up the flight of the third stone while it was still in the air. The stone fell, and almost hit the snake in the arc of its bounce. The snake turned and crawled down the slope of the rock, its scutes pushing back against the irregularities, pressing the long body forward in a powerful twisting movement off the face of the rock and into the underbrush.
Alvis could hardly believe the speed of the snake. It moved like it had a revved-up engine. With a yell, he came out of concealment and ran up the side of the rock. He stopped for a second and took out his piece, then ran down the outer side of the rock in the path the snake had taken. He stopped again at the bottom and peered into the tangle of brush.
At first he didn’t see anything, and then he picked up the snake’s movement, and saw it wriggling down under the brush. Got me these great eyes, he thought. He leveled the piece downward at the snake, but it was too tough a shot. Still, it felt good, pointing the piece, and it kept him from getting scared. He tracked the snake with the piece, and then, suddenly, it disappeared. He stared at the brush where he had last seen it. Not there. Nor was any of the brush moving.
“Be fucked.”
He picked up a stone and tossed it down where he had last seen the snake, in a mess of dead branches, vines, last year’s brown leaves, the trunk of a rotten tree. The stone landed where he wanted it to, and he watched good, but there wasn’t no movement.
“Be fucked.”
He thought about it for a second, then edged forward real easy into the brush, moving sidewards, so that if old snake came at him he could swivel around and hightail it for the rock. He had this funny feeling in his feet, but he wasn’t gonna let no snake bluff him out. He held the piece pointed downward, with his finger on the trigger. He took a little jump onto the fallen tree trunk. He hunkered down on the tree for a good look all around, but he couldn’t see no sign of the snake. Then, just when he was about to stand up, he spotted the hole. It was under the tree, and twigs and like that all around it. No wonder nobody could find old snake. Well, he thought proudly, they don’t none of them have the good eyes like Alvis. He laughed gleefully, then clapped his hand over his mouth. Didn’t want snake to hear him.
“Gonna ice you, snake.”
He stepped down from the tree trunk, one foot at a time, slow, not making a sound. Then he crouched to one side of the hole, and slowly reached around with the piece, curving his arm so the muzzle was pointing right into the hole. He felt real cool, but playing it safe in case old snake decided to pop out suddenly. Laughing softly to himself, he steadied the piece and slowly flexed his finger against the resistance of the trigger.
***
In the hole, the snake hissed harshly as the light at the entrance to the burrow darkened. Its tongue brought in a strong odor of threat. It pushed forward in a sudden powerful thrust, and surged out through the exit hole. It stru
ck twice, in rapid succession.
***
The piece fired into the hole and recoiled, and at the same moment Alvis felt a sharp sting on his neck, and then another sting, and the second time he saw the snake, the head up tall and the mouth wide open. He jumped up and ran backwards a few steps. The snake was watching him, hissing and swaying. He clapped his hand to his neck, and saw there was a little smear of blood on it. Sonofabitch had done bit him, crept out through another hole, and done bit him. Motherfucking snake! Shouting, swearing, Alvis backed up a few more feet, raised his piece, and fired twice before the piece jammed. He saw the slugs hit the ground and raise dust and bits of leaves, and he knew he had missed. The snake started to crawl toward him, coming like an express train. He wheeled around and ran for the rock, and he went up it like a fly up a wall. No time to put no fancy moves on. Just keep running or he would get catched up.
***
The snake pursued as far as the rock and stopped. It held its posture of threat for a while after the figure disappeared over the top of the rock. Then it returned to the burrow. Its tongue at the opening brought in a disquieting smell, sharp and acrid. The snake didn’t enter until the smell grew lighter. It went in cautiously, and didn’t relax its tension for a long time.
***
Got to get me to a hospital, Alvis thought, but not to no honky hospital. You black, they treat you like shit in them places. One time, some kid on the block OD’d, and they kept him waiting so long that when they got around to him the poor fucker was dead. Uptown, the patients were black, and so were some of the doctors.
So he ran northward through the park, sometimes touching his neck, and feeling okay because it wasn’t bleeding no more.
He wasn’t running real good, feeling some tired, but he reckoned he wasn’t gonna die because he was young, not old like them other ones. He wasn’t breathing too good, but shit, you wanna feel great if you bitten by a mile-long crawler?
He stuck to the walkways. They wound around a lot, but it was easier to run on the flat surface. Chest felt funny, and legs going heavy, but he kept running, kept putting ’em down one after another. He could hear the sound of his sneakers slapping down on the pavement. Old sun was up hot now. He felt sleepy and like to lay down. He ran around the Cliff, and tried to turn on more speed. Almost out now. Then the wall was coming up in front of him. He had some trouble getting over it. Legs heavy, heavy. But finally he cleared it, and was out of the park.
He started to cross Cathedral Parkway and began to stagger. Car coming down at him, have to turn on the speed. But his legs was folding up under him. He heard the car screeching its brakes, coming on big as a house. At the last second he tried to put on a move, but his legs was noplace, and the car hit him and tossed him, and he was dead when he came down.
***
Converse stood in the center of the North Meadow, facing east. The invisible presence of the sun, hidden beneath the rooftops of Fifth Avenue, backlit the buildings and turned them into cut-out silhouettes. On the Meadow, the parched grass looked gray. Above, the sky was a mottled gray; to the west, it was still dark.
The approach of daylight was reassuring, and it evaporated the remnants of uneasiness Converse had felt when he had entered the park from Central Park West and begun to walk along the eerily deserted walkways. Although he wasn’t a particularly scary type, he was aware of the city’s legendary perils, and he kept his nerve up kiddingly by imagining himself making a nice move with the Pilstrom tongs, ringing a mugger around the throat, and popping him into the pillowcase. Being careful, of course, not to get bitten.
The tongs and pillowcase were well on the optimistic side, considering the intimidating size of the area he had to cover. Already, in his short walk, he had seen half a dozen heavily overgrown sites that might suit a black mamba as a hiding place. The question was where to start. At the moment, with the rim of the sun just beginning to appear over the buildings, he simply didn’t know. The vastness of the park made it all seem hopeless.
No. He shook his head, as if to reprove himself. He was a good herpetologist, he knew snakes, and he would turn up the black mamba no matter how much territory he had to scour. The real problem was that everyone was in such a bloody hurry. Well, there wasn’t any way to do it in a hurry. The watchword was patience.
The sun was a whitish watery semicircle above the rooftops, and already he was beginning to feel its heat. And so would the black mamba. At this very moment it might be moving, in its swift elegant glide, toward the rock it would bask on. Maybe. In this alien terrain it might feel safer climbing into the top branches of a tall tree, basking, and then swinging back down to shade in the thick foliage below. The green mambas did that as a matter of course, and so did the blacks when they were so inclined.
He hoped its inclination would be otherwise; it would be very difficult to spot in a tree. As a general rule, black mambas weren’t all that shy. They were secure in the knowledge of their speed and the potency of their bite, and since this one was obviously a highly aggressive specimen, it was reasonable to expect that it would choose to bask on a luxurious rock.
Okay, Converse told himself firmly, so much for pure reason. Let’s get organized. No point trying to check out any rocks today, too random, not likely to produce any results. The sun was already up, and climbing fast. The snake wouldn’t require much exposure; in this heat it wouldn’t lose much body temperature through the night. Best idea would be to explore the whole northern sector, east to west, from the 97th Street transverse to the end of the park, marking out likely places for closer examination.
There were lots of likely places—wild, untended areas with heavy tangled brush, fallen trees, piles of leaves and dead branches. More of the city’s poverty; no money available to the Parks Department to hire enough groundsmen to prune and chop and clear and haul away. He moved slowly and methodically, resisting the impulse to look at this or that rock, to plunge into an inviting thicket.
When he heard a patter of footsteps he was taken by surprise. It was a black kid, running—the first human being he had seen since he had entered the park. Soon there would be others. He watched the kid for a moment. He himself was a jogger and, compared to his own stride, this kid’s was sloppy and disjointed. He watched until the kid disappeared behind a rise, heading toward the north end of the park.
***
Aside from a single crumpled dollar bill, a few coins, a pack of cigarettes, and a condom tucked away in a packet of book matches, Alvis Parkins’s pockets were empty. There was nothing to identify him.
Together with his effects, he was taken to the morgue, where he was tagged and assigned to a chilled drawer. Among other injuries, his neck was broken and badly lacerated, and the fang marks were obliterated. Not that anyone would have looked for them on the body of the victim of an auto accident.
The police began a routine effort to find his survivors. But there were no fingerprints on record, and nobody made a missing persons inquiry. His aunt, the only one who might have done so, was accustomed to the boy being absent for days at a time. Eventually, the Medical Examiner’s postmortem examination would turn up evidence that Alvis had been bitten by the snake in the park, but it would be ten days before the autopsy was performed, due to a heavy work load and the fact that several autopsists were on vacation. Since the cause of his death seemed clearly evident, Alvis Parkins was a low-priority case.
THIRTEEN
Within thirty-six hours after Jeff’s well-publicized death, the mood of the public had taken a sour turn—from ruefully amused acceptance of the snake as an appropriate symbol of their city’s magnetic genius for attracting disaster to something approaching mass neurosis. Much of it was hysterical and self-hypnotic. People began to talk about “that crawly feeling in the legs.” Some, before sitting down in a restaurant, would lift a tablecloth to look under the table; others would leave a play or concert or film before it was finished because they kept imagining snakes crawling around their feet in the darkne
ss. The worst were those who began to suspect their own apartments, hesitating to enter a dark room for fear a snake might be lurking there, looking under their beds, shaking out their blankets. Some conjured up snakes curled up on the floorboards under their feet when they drove their cars. Some went so far as to check their pockets or handbags before venturing in for a handkerchief or a coin. All over the city, people took to sitting in chairs with their feet tucked under them.
The new mood was nourished by the almost daily occurrence of what the newspapers took to calling “snake-associated” deaths. These events dulled all but the most insatiable appetites for sensation.
The first of these incidents took place in an apartment on Third Avenue, in the Seventies. A man, returning home in the evening, tiptoed toward his balcony, where his wife was watering her plants, and tossed a large kapok-filled novelty snake at her feet, at the same time screaming a warning. The woman whirled around, saw the snake almost under her foot, and recoiled from it in a spasm of revulsion. She struck the guard rail of the balcony with both feet off the ground, and with such force that she somersaulted backward, and fell to the street twenty floors below.
Another man planted a similar snake in his wife’s bed. She got under the cover, felt something odd, and turned on her bed lamp. (Many suggestible people, these nights, were turning on their bed lamps, only to discover that the “snake” was their own sweat trickling down their legs.) The woman leaped out of bed when she saw the snake, screamed, staggered toward the bedroom door, and fell dead of heart failure.
In a crowded movie house near Bloomingdale’s, a voice (whether female or a male screaming in falsetto was never established) called out, “Snake! The snake is here!” A few people rose reflexively, and then the entire audience was on its feet. In the panicky rush toward the exits people were injured badly enough to be hospitalized, and a young man who was trampled underfoot died when fragments of his shattered eyeglasses were driven into his brain. After the theater was emptied the police searched the house but found no snake.
