East of Denver

by Gregory Hill

  I said, “I think we burned it.”

  “We didn’t.” We did. Didn’t matter. While Dad went to the house to look for the grabber, I crawled under the juniper and tried to see this snake. There wasn’t a snake. Pa had been poking on that bush ever since I moved back to the farm. There was never a snake.

  The ground under the bush was dry. Lying on my back, I could feel yesterday’s warmth thru my shirt. I decided to rest there for a while until Pa either came back or forgot what he was up to. Then eat. Then what? Wait, I guess.

  * * *

  I closed my eyes. A fly landed on my forehead.

  I heard a hiss.

  I’ve seen dozens of snakes in my life. I watched my old dog Jumper torture a blue racer to death. I saw a king snake before they disappeared from the plains. Garter snakes, of course. Hognose snakes. You ever seen a hognose? They have a flipped-up snout for digging holes. If you surprise one, it’ll play dead. If you keep poking it, it’ll stop playing dead and flatten its head like a cobra. They’re harmless. You can play with them all day long.

  Even so, it doesn’t matter what kind of snake it is, your first reaction on seeing one is always to yelp. It’s born into us all, I suppose.

  So when I opened my eyes and saw a tongue flick from the head of an actual, honest-to-shit snake, I yelped. I yelped right at that snake.

  The snake’s head swerved back and forth in front of my face. This wasn’t a hognose or a bull or anything good. I was looking at a big-cheeked, slit-eyed goddamned pit viper of a prairie rattler.

  I’d only seen a rattlesnake once in my whole life. It was during wheat harvest when I was a kid. I was driving the grain cart and had some time to kill before the combine filled back up with grain. I stopped the tractor and got out to take a leak. Right in the middle of my piss, a rattler crawled over my foot. I yelped. It didn’t pay me any attention. It just went over my foot and then disappeared into the wheat stubble. I was so scared I zipped up my britches and climbed back into that tractor and didn’t get out again until that field was harvested.

  This was scary in a whole new way.

  * * *

  You think about the things you’ve heard. First, I concluded that there was no mistaking this thing. It was a rattlesnake. I couldn’t see the tail. I couldn’t hear any rattles. But its body was covered with diamonds and that head, it was an arrow, ready to fly.

  I thought about the TV shows where Australians pick snakes up by their tails. About illustrations in pamphlets that tell you to back away slowly. I didn’t recall anything about lying flat on your back under a bush while a snake stared at your nose.

  Venom. If you get bit, pull out your pocket knife and make an X over the bites and suck the poison. Or don’t. But whatever you do, stay relaxed. The less your blood pumps, the less the venom can spread. Baby rattlers were the worst. Why where babies the worst? Because they have more venom. Or because, because, because they had the same amount of venom but they couldn’t regulate how much they spit out. When a baby rattler bites, it shoots its whole wad. An adult can control itself. Adults sometimes bite without releasing any venom at all. The snake in front of me was definitely not a baby. That was good.

  What you gotta do, what you gotta do is make sure not to threaten the thing. I just had to relax and wait for it to go away. Then ease out from under the bush, walk to the house, and eat some room-temperature salty tomato soup.

  Sweat was running down my temples. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop breathing. The goddamned snake crawled over a branch and dangled its head right up against my nose. The grassy tongue tickled my nostril.

  It opened its mouth. The fangs were pressed flat against the top of its palate. The jaw stretched wide and the fangs unfolded. Then that goddamned biting fly landed on my forehead again. It dug its snout in and started chewing me up. I wanted to swat and shout and shrivel up. Still, that snake looked down on me, yawning, with its tongue flicking in and out.

  The snake brought its mouth to my ear. I could hear it breathing in little raspy wisps. The tongue pushed against my hair.

  * * *

  It bit me on the neck, just below my right ear. There was a popping sound as the teeth punctured the skin, like pushing a straw thru the lid of a soda cup. Then the bottom jaw grabbed on and squeezed the fangs down. The snake just sat there, with its mouth clamped on my neck. It didn’t feel like anything.

  * * *

  Dad’s feet crunched toward me. The snake took its head off my neck and disappeared into the bush. I dunno. Maybe the whole thing took a split second. What’s certain is that just as Pa’s shoes came into view, that bite started to hurt. I scuttled out from under the juniper and jumped up, ran, staggered, and fell on my hands and knees. I put a hand to my neck and pulled it back. Two drops of blood on my palm.

  Pa was carrying a five-gallon bucket. The tomato bucket. He said, “What’s your major malfunction?”

  * * *

  I was dizzy and jazzed and upside-down. “I got snake-bit.” My tongue felt like a shoe.

  Pa put the bucket on the ground. He seemed concerned, almost fatherly. “What kind of snake-bit?”

  “Rattler.”

  His voice caught. “You sure?”

  I nodded. I pointed to my neck. “Right here.”

  Pa looked at the snakebite. “You got bit by something.”

  “Rattler.”

  “You sure?”

  I nodded. This was a way of dying.

  He touched my neck. “Does it hurt?”

  I nodded. It was getting hard to move my neck.

  “Those snakes don’t always give you a full shot of their juice. It might not be too bad.”

  I was about to cry. I looked toward the sky so the tears wouldn’t fall out. “It hurts, Pa.”

  Pa bit his lip. He was worried. He was my father and he didn’t know what to do. He said, “Call the doctor?”

  “Telephone doesn’t work.”

  Dad’s eyes darted to the juniper bush. He rushed over, stuck his arm in the branches, and pulled out the snake by its neck. It was as long as he was tall, wagging and flopping. He pushed the snake’s face to the ground and stepped on it with the heel of his tennis shoe, twisting back and forth until red spilled onto the dirt. The snake’s tail twisted here and there and then it lay still. Pa dropped the snake in the bucket and brought it to me.

  “Recognize this?” He was smiling.

  “We gotta get moving.” We didn’t have any gas. We couldn’t get moving. My right ear was starting to ring.

  * * *

  I lay down. I heard Pa messing around. Touching things in the shed. “Pa, I’m snake-bit. We need to do something.”

  He said, “I know. I’m making it happen.”

  I rolled over so I could watch him. He was dragging a tarp along the floor. “That deal there.” He pointed to the item that had previously been covered by the tarp. The jet-engine tractor. The last thing he worked on before he lost his mind.

  “That thing.” My throat was pinched. “It don’t work.”

  “It might. In a coon’s age.” He climbed on the tractor seat. It had originally been a John Deere R. Made in the fifties. No cab. Squat and green.

  He had reversed the seat and the steering wheel so the rear wheels pulled and the front wheels dragged behind. The engine was out and in its place was a jet turbine. He put his hand on the housing. Pa was gonna make that thing work. I wouldn’t die on that slab of concrete.

  I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I heard Pa climb onto the seat. He clicked some switches. Then he said, “Vrooooooooooooooooom!”

  I looked at him. He was bouncing on the seat, moving the steering wheel back and forth. “Whoooooosh!”

  I straightened out my crossed eyes.

  “Pa.”

  “I’m driving.”

  “Pa. I
need help.”

  “Sounds like a personal problem.”

  I pushed myself upright and crawled to the WBC Rocket where it was propped up on its kickstand. I draped myself over the frame and tried to climb on. I held onto the handlebars, stood up. The bike fell over on top of me.

  Dad jumped off the tractor and lifted the bike off me. “Why’s your neck so?”

  “Snakebite,” I hissed. “I got one.”

  “Black. Your neck is black.”

  I noticed the hair on his hands was singed short. Smoke floated around us. Pa looked around, worried. Then he smiled. “The trash is burning.”

  I nodded forward.

  * * *

  We are on the road. I’m balanced on the Rocket’s seat. Pa is standing on the pedals. My hands are around his belly. They’re tied together at the wrists. The world passes by slowly. I roll my face off of his back and see the five-gallon bucket hanging from the left handlebar. It’s banging against the front fork. The engine goes putt-putt-putt. There’s a quarter gallon of gas in the fuel tank. Where can we go?

  I close my eyes again.

  * * *

  We are in a pasture. I’m curled on my side. Pa’s on his hands and knees. He’s digging the sand like a dog, scooping dirt out between his legs. I try to talk. My voice is a raspy squeal. I touch my face. The skin’s taut.

  Pa keeps digging. His eyes are closed, the lids dark with dust. The hole gets bigger. The sand is moist. I close my right eye and watch with my left.

  * * *

  “Look at this!” Dirt rains onto my face. Every piece of sand feels like a shot from a BB gun.

  I work my left eye open. Pa is holding a half-decayed animal by its tail. I don’t recognize it at first. Then it assembles itself in my head. The animal: cat. The cat: mine. We’re in the pasture for dead dogs. Boy, does my head hurt.

  Pa sets my dead cat on the ground. Then he grabs me by the wrists and drags me to the edge of the hole. I resist with all my strength, which is to say I barely resist at all. I’m on the edge of a grave.

  “A real molly rauncher,” says Pa. He picks up the bucket and tips it over the hole and out slides the dead rattlesnake. The scales hiss against the edge of the bucket and then it makes a thump and it’s in the hole. Pa picks up the cat corpse, drops it on top, says, “That’ll give him someone to talk to,” and then starts kicking the dirt back in.

  My belly shakes. I can’t breathe enough to laugh. I can’t move my mouth to smile. I feel a tear drip out of my left eye and slide down my nose. Its coolness makes my skin feel better.

  * * *

  We’re on the Rocket. My hands are tied around Pa’s waist again. He sings, over and over, “Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques . . .”

  The road is a smooth blacktop highway. I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know who I’m leaning against. It’s my father. He’s driving the Rocket. We pass the grain elevators of the Keaton Co-op. Why are we in Keaton? The hospital’s not in Keaton. It’s in Strattford, forty miles north and three miles west. We only have a quarter gallon of gas. The world’s a smear. There is only now, which hurts, and not-now, which is a mystery.

  CHAPTER 25

  REAPING

  It feels like someone’s trying to yank my hands off of my arms. I’m awake again. My nose is bent crooked in Pa’s back. I’m hanging on him like a cape. My hands are tied together around his neck.

  He’s walking me across the floor. My feet are dragging. I scan the room with my left eye. The floor is a crew-cut carpet, brown. People are sitting on the floor. There’s a sticker on the wall. I can’t read it, but I’ve seen it before. I know what it says: “Each depositor insured to at least $250,000. Backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. FDIC.”

  We are in the Keaton State Bank. This is significant. My right lid opens up to a slit.

  The people on the floor, they’re looking at us. There’s Mr. Pridgon, my old music teacher. He’s lost most of his hair. His pants are too short. He’s rubbing his ankles. There’s Jimmy Young of the electric company. Red-faced, like he’s been sunburned from the inside out. Too many electrons. There’s Ezra Rogers, ninety-nine years old. Sitting with his legs straight out. He’s staring at the knobby end of his cane. I can hear the breath pushing in and out of his lungs. I can see these people. They don’t look at us.

  Pa walks, drags me toward the teller window. Clarissa McPhail greets us. With my face behind Pa’s shoulder, I can’t see her, but I can hear her. “What’ll it be today, boys? Deposit or withdrawal?”

  Dad says, “If I told you I’d have to shoot you!”

  Clarissa laughs. Dad laughs.

  Clarissa says, “What’s the matter with Shakes?”

  Pa lifts my arms over his head and leans me against the teller window. My hands are still tied together. I’m able to stand, more or less. Clarissa is still pretty. She’s wearing a purple V-neck T-shirt. There are two plastic barrettes in her hair.

  Pa looks at me, staring hard at the right side of my face. He says, “You been rode hard and put away.” He turns to Clarissa. “How’s that go?”

  “Rode hard and put away wet,” she says. To me, she says, “You need some water?”

  My head is a brick on a spring. I nod and it wobbles. My chin ends up on my sternum. I’m snake-bit. Can’t she tell I’m snake-bit?

  Clarissa says, “Why don’t you fellas come this way?”

  Dad grabs me by the left armpit and we follow.

  She opens the wooden gate and leads us to the back, past the safe and the computers, to Neal Koenig’s office. Clarissa opens the door without knocking. Neal, my father’s classmate, master of the underhand free throw, bank manager, second in command under Mike Crutchfield, is sitting on the floor. His hands are duct-taped together and there’s an apple taped over his mouth. He looks at us with hopeful eyes. When he looks at my head his hope turns to confusion.

  I’m seeing better now. My right eye is mostly open. The skin on my neck and face still feels like it’s ready to burst. A woman is sitting cross-legged on Neal’s desk. There’s a shotgun resting on her knees. It’s a big one. Twelve gauge, I assume. This woman, her eyes are yellow.

  Clarissa says to the woman, “They just showed up.”

  The woman with the shotgun points her elbow at me and says, “What’s the matter with that one?”

  Pa says, “Hell if I know. I found him in a ditch.”

  I gurgle.

  Clarissa rolls a chair to me and helps me sit down. She fills a paper cup from the watercooler. I wonder why they need bottled water when they can get the same thing from a well, from the faucet. She pours some of it over my swollen lip and into my mouth. Most of it spills out. It doesn’t matter. The water running over my chin and spreading down my shirt, it’s a salve.

  Clarissa says, “You want more?”

  I lift up my hands, wave my fingers. My wrists are tied together with a bungee cord. With my eyes, I say, Please get this thing off me.

  Clarissa shakes her head. She fills another cup of water and gives it to the woman.

  Clarissa says, “Give him as much as he wants.” Then she puts her hand on Pa’s shoulder. “Emmett, I got a job for you.”

  She leads Pa out of the office and closes the door behind them.

  The yellow-eyed woman sets the gun on the desk and climbs off. She says, “Lean your head back.”

  I do, and she pours water into my mouth. I swallow some. My tongue takes it in like a sponge. My throat opens enough so I can breathe. When I exhale, steam comes out. My body falls into focus. My hands are numb from the bungee cord. My ass hurts from the Rocket ride. The skin on my face and neck is fit to split wide open.

  The woman looks at me, close. Yellow eyes. The blood vessels are little red rivers.

  “You don’t remember me.”


  I shake my head.

  “I thought I made an impression.” She falls to her hands and knees. “This help?”

  I shake my head. She turns to Neal Koenig and says, “Don’t look.” Then she lifts her shirt over her head. She’s not wearing anything underneath. She says, “How about this?” She bares her teeth, then bucks back and forth on the floor a few times so her tits hang and flop.

  I’m not the smartest person in the world and I’m even dumber when I’ve got venom in my neck. But I recognize her. She’s the woman on the mattress in the house that Vaughn Atkins’s grandpa never lived in. The house with the tapioca pudding. I nod.

  She laughs like a bully. “You can call me Miss Angie.”

  My right eye is completely open now. She pulls her shirt back on and stands over Neal Koenig. She says, “You looked at me just then, didn’t you?”

  Neal, with the apple stuck in his mouth, shakes his head. There’s snot coming out of his nose.

  Miss Angie kicks him hard in the knee and then does it again. He leans forward and weeps.

  She climbs back onto the desk, puts the gun across her knees. “I don’t mean to be rude, fella, but what the fuck is wrong with your face?”

  I try to speak. “I been snake-bit.” It doesn’t come out clear.

  Miss Angie leans toward me. I try again, forcing the muscles in my face against the swollen skin, “Rattlesnake.”

  She starts laughing. Neal Koenig stops weeping. With that apple taped to his mouth and the snot on his lip, he’s a sorry-looking creature. And he’s looking at me with pity.