The Serpent's Bite

by Warren Adler

  He looked toward his sister, no longer feeling any sense of attachment, either as sibling or lover. The idea of endless love that had dominated his brotherly passion and had very nearly destroyed his life was over, dead and gone. A weight had been lifted from his psyche.

  “Just promise that you’ll do all in your power to get me back,” his father had reiterated.

  “That’s a given, Dad. Why would you think otherwise?”

  His father nodded but did not offer an answer. A long silence ensued. Temple had closed his eyes and seemed on the verge of sleep, then opened them again.

  “Son,” he said. “I have lived with another burden. I know what you and your sister did.”

  Scott had felt his heart thump in his chest. He swallowed hard and tried to respond, but his voice would not come. His father’s hand reached out, held his arm as he raised himself on his elbow, and whispered into his son’s ear.

  “I know about the diamonds. Your mother and I knew that they could only be taken by you and your sister.”

  Scott made every effort to respond but could not find words. The revelation stunned him.

  “And you know why?” his father continued. “Just hear me out. We knew what you did with it. No need to respond, Scottie. We found out. Don’t ask how. It began with a call from a customer in New Jersey. Then your mother and I hired an investigator. We learned about the abortion, and we found out where you sold the diamonds, which we bought back. We knew, too, what a heroic effort it was on your part to help your sister! Obviously Courtney was in trouble. Believe me, we agonized about revealing what we knew, but we promised each other never to tell. Your mother went to her grave with this secret. But I feel compelled to confess it, to clear the slate. Now is the perfect moment. No one else knows. I did not tell Muriel.”

  “You knew?” Scott felt himself on the verge of blacking out.

  “No need to explain, son. In the end, we felt you had done something to help your sister out of her dilemma. We did not know how she had gotten herself into that situation. We could never find out who had impregnated her, but when the matter was closed, we just let it go. It was pointless to pursue it further. We knew it had to be an act of desperation. We were parents after all and did not want you to submit to our judgment. We were hopeful that it was the end of it, and thankfully it was. You never stole from us again, and your sister went on with her life.”

  “Why now?” Scott had whispered, wondering if knowing it earlier would have changed his mind about going into the business. No, he thought. There were two parts to that guilt. He wondered what his parents would have done if they had known who had impregnated his sister. A wave of nausea had gripped him. “Does Courtney know?”

  His father shook his head.

  “No need,” his father sighed. “Leave it be. Not now. Why bring back a memory like that? She has other things on her mind. Maybe some day after I’m gone.”

  “You’ll be around for a long time, Dad. Just rest now.”

  Despite his concern for his father, the irony was telling. After a while, his father opened his eyes again.

  “I’m losing it, Scottie,” he mumbled.

  “That’s crazy, Dad.”

  “No. I misplaced my camera, and this morning …” He paused and swallowed. “My damned blood pressure pills. I can’t find them. I think I left them back in the camp. The altitude. I think I’m paying the price.”

  Scott felt himself on the verge of confession, but he held back. There was no way he could tell him about Tomas and the camera. Dismissing the idea, he focused instead on the blood pressure pills.

  “Where did you keep the pills, Dad?”

  Beyond the question was a small tingle of suspicion.

  “Usual place, my toiletry kit, where I always kept them. I guess I must have forgotten to put them back when I took them yesterday morning.”

  “Maybe they dropped out.”

  “I can’t understand it. I’m usually so careful about them.”

  “Just get some rest. It’s been a rough day.”

  His father closed his eyes again, and soon he had fallen asleep.

  Suspicion grew in Scott’s mind. Courtney had made no secret of her desire. Had she become so fiendish and diabolical, that she had chosen to steal their father’s pills as if it were an obvious weapon of choice? A sudden chill made him tremble.

  Peripherally, he had noted that she was deep in discussion with Tomas. Why? They had seemed conspiratorial.

  His father was a good man, and his revelation had moved Scott profoundly. His children had disappointed him, but the bond had not been broken. He had been set adrift by the loss of their mother and was finding a new life. They should be supportive and respectful.

  Of course at this moment, his own guilt pummeled him: the stealing of the diamonds years ago, the incestuous relations with his sister. Studying his father’s face, he had contemplated that this might be the moment of his own confession. He felt himself on the verge, in need of this final expiation. But just as he sensed himself ready, his father had closed his eyes and drifted into deep sleep. He allowed the moment to pass.

  Another issue intervened as well. His father had begged, cajoled, nudged but not demanded that he enter the business. Scott had demurred for reasons that suddenly, in the light of reality, seemed ludicrous. Here was his father agonizing over family, fairness, and continuity, and he had eschewed the legacy of taking over his business because of what he had done decades ago. Yes, in fact, he was ashamed.

  Wasn’t it equally as honorable to embellish what his father and his father before him had created? Business was, after all, business. Trading in gemstones was no different than trading in food. Why had he been so adamant? He sensed in himself a life-changing moment. Had he made a turn on the wrong path? He suddenly felt a growing sense of obligation.

  Again and again, his father’s words echoed in his thoughts. Soon, he seemed to have tranced out, lost in his ruminations, as they moved closer and closer to Eagle Pass. The rain continued steady and relentless, softening the ground.

  The pain in his knees awoke him to reality. He had already popped four ibuprofen tablets, and he found he needed more. He took the vial from his shirt pocket and took two more. As he did so, he noted that again his father, who was riding ahead of him, was beginning to list in his saddle.

  “You okay, Dad?” he called out.

  His father lifted his hand and nodded his head, clearly suggesting that he was hanging on. He looked at his watch, noting that they had been riding for nearly two hours.

  Tomas lifted his hand, and the train stopped. Scott noted that they had reached the trailhead of Eagle Pass. Tomas dismounted and moved forward on foot assessing the pass.

  From the perch on his horse, Scott looked upward. A fog was beginning to settle on the mountain, and the rain was continuing in a steady downpour.

  “Are we going up in that mess?” Scott asked.

  Tomas observed the sky.

  “We go over. We be okay. Horses take us. No problem.”

  “We can’t very well stay here,” Courtney said, pulling up her horse. “Tomas is right. Let’s move. We’re wasting time.”

  Scott remembered how it had been on their earlier trek, how they had to dismount to traverse the narrowest of the switchbacks. Again he observed his father, who was hunched over and listless. His complexion was ashen.

  “My father is beat,” he said. “This is not a good idea.”

  Courtney reined her horse to pull up beside her father.

  “You okay, Dad?” Scott heard her say. Her hypocrisy filled him with contempt. He turned his attention back to Tomas, who had mounted his horse.

  “He won’t be able to walk on the narrow switchbacks,” Scott said. “It will be too dangerous.”

  “He stay in saddle then,” Tomas said. “I lead his horse.”

  “That means you have to lead two horses.”

  “I tole you. I take care.”

  He remembered Tomas’s words
in referring to Harry earlier. A chill ran through him. He looked up at the sky.

  “Just be careful.”

  “No worry. I take care.”

  Tomas nodded and turned away, his eyes scanning the ascent. Scott returned to where his father sat on his horse. He looked wan, enervated.

  “We’re going to start the ascent,” Scott explained. “You’ll stay mounted. Tomas will lead your horse in the tight spots.”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Courtney interjected. “We’ll be on the other side in no time.”

  Tomas signaled that they were ready to move out. He had changed the order of the string with Temple’s horse directly behind him, followed by Scott, and Courtney holding up the rear. As Tomas moved his horse forward, Temple followed, but Scott held back and let Courtney pull abreast of him. He leaned toward her.

  “I know about the pills,” he hissed, watching her expression. He hadn’t been certain up to that moment. Her expression clearly revealed her guilt.

  “Fuck you,” she said, her teeth clenched, her jaw raised belligerently. Suddenly he saw it all, her intent.

  He had glanced her way while having his intimate conversation with their father. She and Tomas were in deep conversation. He and his father were so thoroughly involved that he had paid little attention. Only now, watching her, the memory of them together, their odd intimacy suggested something conspiratorial and ominous. An epiphany exploded in his mind, a sense of danger so compelling that it prompted an instant reaction. As if by rote, he knew what had to be done.

  “And something else, little sister.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She cocked her head, waiting. Intuitively, he sensed that Tomas and Courtney had conspired about taking some action, although he could not be certain.

  “He changed his will,” he blurted. “We’ve been virtually cut out. He will change it back to where it was when he gets home. And he will instruct his bankers about our stipend. It means that if he doesn’t survive this, we’re shit out of luck.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “But he had promised Mother—”

  “Broke it, kiddo. He reassessed.”

  “Are you bullshitting me?”

  She looked toward her father, who was already out of hailing range, following Tomas who was not looking back. Temple was slumped over the saddle. The rain had become more intense with the wind shifting, so that it came at them from the summit in slanting gusts.

  Scott shook his head, fearing that any further explanation would reveal his sudden ploy.

  Courtney replied but a burst of thunder prevented Scott from hearing her response. Suddenly, as if it were a fit of temper, she kicked her horse and tried to put it ahead of his. He quickly blocked her and turned into the pelting rain to begin the ascent. He could barely see ahead of him. Looking back, he saw Courtney following. The trail was narrowing, and it would be impossible to get ahead of him.

  Looking into the oncoming rain, he could see no sign of Tomas or his father.

  Chapter 24

  Tomas had navigated the twenty-three switchbacks on ten-thousand-foot Eagle Pass numerous times. Often he had shut his eyes and dozed as the horses lumbered steadily and carefully upward then downward through the terrain. He had been here through heat, cold, rain, and snowstorms and was familiar with every turn and potential hazard.

  Harry had led a horse train over the pass for years without a single mishap and was proud that he could give his clients this touch of danger, which he exaggerated in his effort to prove that he was giving them their money’s worth. To many it was the highlight of the trek and gave them lots to talk about for years.

  Tomas had been a cook in a broken-down motel at the outer edges of West Yellowstone. Harry had found him the day his boss announced that the motel was being bought by developers, who were putting together a pricey resort for upscale people who wanted to enjoy the Western experience and the newly developed ski slopes beginning to dot the area.

  By then, Tomas had been in El Norte for two years, having jumped the border from his village in central Mexico. He had worked on a ranch in Mexico and was familiar with horses and the hard life it entailed with little compensation. He was the middle child of seven children, and because he had done well in school, his parents had hopes that one day he would return from the states a rich man and rescue them from a life of poverty and drudgery. His girlfriend had promised to wait.

  In desperation, he had followed the well-worn trail to the States, hoping to make enough money to send back home to his impoverished family and build a nest egg for marriage to a girl he had known almost all his life.

  He had learned all the survival skills of being an illegal alien in a country that offered better wages, opportunity, and upward mobility while dodging the authorities that viewed him as a renegade and interloper. He had learned by the example of others in his predicament to camouflage himself, fade into the background, armor himself against any insult or abuse, and use silence to obliterate any expression of understanding from his features and body language.

  He had quickly learned all the back alleys and secret pathways to negotiate through the spiderweb of interconnecting strands among his outcast countrymen that kept him free to earn wages triple what he could earn in Mexico. Working his way from Los Angeles to Montana, he had acquired cooking skills, learned from watching chefs at various restaurants where he had done menial labor in LA, and easily found work at various short-order rural beaneries eager to employ illegals with useful skills at low wages.

  Since he had no family ties and because of his circumstances, he was wary of any relationships with men or women. He could work long hours to earn more money even at below-legal wages. Because he was alone with his thoughts and observations most of the time, he had learned to study the Anglo people with whom he had to interact. He had self-trained himself to listen and watch them carefully and adapt himself to what he imagined was the way he should be safely perceived by them.

  In the little spare time he had, he had taken up reading fiction, finding used paperbacks in both English and Spanish, mostly mysteries and thrillers, that gave him a broad picture of what he assumed was an accurate depiction of human nature in all sorts of circumstances.

  Reading filled his mind with plots, images, and ideas about pitfalls he might encounter and of what was realistically possible to achieve in his own life. Although the English editions were difficult at first, they eventually improved his vocabulary, however not his accent, and they had developed in him an understanding of the American idiom.

  Through the treks with various clients, he had learned the ways of the gringo, who could be observed intimately in the isolated setting of the wilderness. Many, he had discovered, were arrogant and spoiled and would ignore his presence as if he wasn’t there. Admittedly some were pleasant and kindly, like Temple, but the bulk seemed to take him for granted, a working prop for their gratification.

  His strategy was to make himself absolutely indispensable to Harry, whose alcoholism was cutting into his expertise as an experienced outfitter. But Tomas had watched him and listened carefully until he was able to absorb all the wilderness skills that Harry had acquired. He already knew a great deal about horses, mules, and other animals, and he quickly learned to do any chore assigned to him and was able to carry out any order that Harry or his clients could command, without visible complaint.

  He knew he was treated as someone alien and practically invisible but had intuited that a display of competence as an employee in whatever capacity and a willingness to obey orders and do whatever was required to please his employer would insure his employment. Harry had offered a perfect marriage of what he required, long stretches away from prying eyes, work that he could do with competence, a knowledge of horses, camping skills, hardships, and living under minimum conditions of comfort. In his tent away from Harry and his clients, he read his paperbacks by searchlight.

  In addition to adopting a si
lent expressionless persona, he was an extraordinarily skillful cook and all-around wilderness handyman who could easily adapt to Harry’s escalating abuse. Short, with a dark complexion that was a sure sign of his Indian antecedents, he knew exactly the way he was perceived and had developed a stance that could skillfully put himself in the same category as a pebble, to be hardly noticed and largely ignored.

  In the four years he had worked for Harry, the man’s drinking had changed what was once a tolerant personality to a cruel and mean-minded person, whose abuse of Tomas had escalated in direct proportion to his growing alcoholism. By making himself indispensable to his drunken boss, he had begun to sense his own growing domination over his employer, for whom he could play the role of lackey and actually encourage his drinking by burying large quantities of booze in designated spots at various campsites.

  Occasionally there were perks. Forced by circumstances to be largely celibate, he occasionally visited prostitutes in those parts of Montana that were safe for illegals to fornicate among their own, and it was not uncommon to fuck a horny, usually older, female client who stayed back in camp while Harry took the others on his various side adventures. He had learned, by careful observation and surreptitious listening to the conversation among Harry’s clients, intimate details about their lives and what kind of people they really were.

  Stripped of the amenities of civilization, he had learned that people tended to reveal more of their real selves than they did in their more orderly lives in urban environments. Lately, he had begun to realize that while he was sending money home, his own life was passing swiftly by and his vague hope of financial independence was an empty dream. Worse, his last phone call to Mexico had revealed that his sweetheart had tired of waiting and had married someone else.

  With eyes wide open and attuned to find a way out of his static circumstances, he waited for the moment, meaning an opportunity to better his life. In his mind, that meant money. He had come to El Norte for money. He had grabbed at every miserable employment for money. Money was the route to his salvation. Money was the manna from heaven. He had learned that only money could free him from this forlorn and lonely life. Nothing was worse than being without money. In Mexico this had been the perpetual condition of his family.