Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013)

by T. Jefferson Parker

  I went down to the evidence room and asked the deputy for the case no. 98-1145 boxes, just logged in. I signed for it, then looked through Frances’s heavy box of smut, but the pink envelope wasn’t there. It wasn’t in any of the other boxes we took, either.

  I went back upstairs to see if Frances might still be around. She was. I saw her sitting in Sheriff Jim Wade’s office, intently leaning toward him as she talked. There was no sense in interrupting. Whatever was eating at Frances wasn’t mine to know. There would be some rational explanation for the missing envelope. Besides, I had two listing agents waiting for me, and ten more to go after that.

  Shopping Carter was gone when I came down the steps a few minutes later.

  NINE

  Hypok pulled his van into the last parking area in Caspers Wilderness Park, circled the lot once, then backed the vehicle into a space. He always drove his van rather than his car when he had interesting things to accomplish. There were no other vehicles this deep into the fragrant scrub woods, and there was a nice circle of shade from a big oak tree behind the lot. He turned off the engine and wiped his face with his hand. He pulled the half gallon of generic tequila from under the seat and took a long drink. Then another. The big bottles lasted him two days usually, but the stuff evaporated faster if he was under particular stress. Lots of that lately, he thought. Frankly, this was the last place he imagined he’d be this afternoon, after last week’s failed mission. But now he felt great.

  He looked in the back of the van at all his jars and pillowcases and burlap bags, filled with snakes again. They were active because it was warm back there, and he could see the bags and pillowcases moving. He wondered again at how easy this was to do now, compared to how hard it was to do last week. Now it felt right again, overwhelmingly right, now was a time for change, for the shedding of skin, for renewal. After all, it was springtime, wasn’t it? Look at his own new, clean-shaven face. His freshly cut, bleached and swept-back hair. The new white paint job for his van—an impulse, really, not quite a precaution, just an urge to change its color. Now, letting some of his snakes go. It felt right. He felt giddy about it all, but still right.

  He reached back and lifted one of the glass jars. Holding it between his legs he opened the lid and pulled out the nice mountain king snake he’d caught up in the San Bernardinos years ago. It was a beautiful thing, he thought: red and white and black, with a curious little face and the sweetest disposition. He let it explore his arm. He thought about what he was doing. There was some sadness in this, for sure. Still, he was committed now, he was consolidating himself, trimming his past, becoming whole. He felt capable. Capable of this act. Capable of rational things like letting his beloved creatures go free, like changing the way he looked again, things like convincing Collette to take her house—his house—off the market, when he had convinced her to sell it in the first place. What a sane, bold stroke the unlisting had been. An example of capability and consolidation, of course correction. He smiled to himself, picturing that listing agent traipsing through his place with her provocative perfume, instructing him on all the things he’d have to do to sell it, I mean what your sister will have to do in order to sell it. He’d been quite drunk at the time. He hadn’t quite foreseen that people would be allowed to just show up and go through his home. And what about the guest house in back? How could he possibly find a better setup than that? He’d called Collette two days later and all but ordered her to take it off the market. Collette could care less, of course, so long as she either made money on a sale or continued to save taxes and build equity in something she didn’t have to pay for.

  Solid.

  Capable.

  Firm.

  He had already put the bags and jars in cardboard boxes, and knew it was going to take four trips if he carried one box at a time. They weren’t heavy, really, but they were fairly large and wouldn’t stack well. Besides, who knew how far he’d have to hike in order to find the perfect spot?

  He got out and locked the front doors, then slid open the side and brought out one of the boxes. The pillowcases on top were all moving as he set it on the ground, and the rattlesnakes buzzed in their jars, coiled and looking up at him. He shut and locked the side door, then picked up the box and headed down the trail with it.

  Past a stand of live oaks, through the toyon, down a gully rimmed by prickly pear and wild cucumber, then into the meadow. The area looked different than when he was last here, dropping off Item #2, but that was three weeks ago and the season hadn’t really turned yet. It was also in another part of the park altogether: no reason to visit it again, really, because the cops, if they’re smart, might expect that. Now the purple lupine and yellow mustard smeared their colors on the hills and even the dour oaks were vibrantly green. Bees. Bees everywhere, buzzing, dizzying, hypnotizing bees.

  It was surprisingly hot. He could feel the sweat rolling down his sides and the dampness of the box up against his chest. He climbed a hillside and found a very nice outcropping of rocks just over the crest, the kind of place snakes love. He set down the box and looked around. There was a creek about a hundred yards away. It would be dry by summer, but the soil around it was dark now and that meant moisture. To his left the rocks clung to the hillside in a long band. There were rock roses with nice yellow blossoms growing in the cracks. Past the creek the hillside rose steeply, clotted with cactus and more rocks. Perfect, Hypok thought: the whole place is snake heaven.

  Though it made him sad, he let the mountain king snake go first. It was a hard one to catch—three years of hiking the mountains in the spring before he’d found one this big and this well marked. He knelt by the rocks and the snake slid off his palm and lay in the brush. Its tongue was working fast and its head was raised just a little: Hypok wondered what it must feel like to spend five years in a cage, then be suddenly released to the vast distances of nature. He watched its sides expand and retract slowly, slightly, as it breathed. The king snake lowered its shiny black head and eased into a crack in the rocks.

  “See you, little king snake. Kickie some buttie.”

  Hypok felt everything swell up inside him then, the sadness and the courage and the urgency and the excitement all boiling together. He waited for them to pass. That was always the way it was. Something had to give. That is nature. And nature is change. The shed had begun again and he would emerge from it soon, fresh and brilliant. Singular and unique. Composed and purposeful. Not stressed by contradiction and not paralyzed by doubt. He would be, finally, his true and actual self.

  So he worked quickly, trying to take his mind off of things, trying to focus on just one feeling at a time. He got the box and carried it a few yards before he felt positive about the location. He knelt again. The two red rattlesnakes buzzed lethargically as he opened their jar and held it upright over a large flat rock. They didn’t want to come out. Hypok noted that snakes almost always want to crawl back into confined space rather than explore an open one, and he couldn’t blame them for that. The world was full of threat. He pulled them bodily from the jar and tossed them, one at a time, into the grass before they could turn and bite him. Like the mountain king, the rattlers lay in the sun for a moment, stunned by their liberty, before gliding under the big rock. Then the Russell’s vipers from Bangladesh; the horned desert vipers from Kuwait; the dwarf adder from Little Namaqualand; the rhombic night adder from Botswana; the yellow eyelash vipers from Costa Rica; the green palm viper from Honduras; the eight-foot bushmaster from Peru; and the ferde-lance from Mexico.

  Hypok stood there for a moment and watched all the tails disappear beneath the rocks and brush. He loved the way snakes traveled silently and effortlessly. They were singular and self-contained. And so beautiful, too. For a moment he was happy. They were free. Then he was sad, when he thought that they would all probably die here, in habitat so different from where they had come. But who knew? They might thrive: reptiles were tough. Hypok was happy again. Then he was concerned that he was upsetting the fragile ecology of
a bioregion. But he cheered up again, comparing how little a few snakes could hurt the world when mankind had fucked it up so much already. He thought: wait until the hikers and tree huggers and bird watchers and eco-weenies get a load of these things. Wake them up to the real world. He giggled and watched the huge bushmaster slide down into the brush. He felt a tear form in the corner of his right eye.

  One down.

  He took the next box closer to the creek. There were only four snakes in this one, but it was heavy. Out came the pale olive nine-foot king cobra from the Philippines; the two yellow gold twelve-footers from The People’s Republic of China; and the eighteen-foot dark green one from India—a serpent so big and so deadly that Hypok trembled from twenty yards away as it eased from the burlap bag, reared its head six feet into the air and stared at him, quite literally, eye to eye. Hypok stood still for a full two minutes as the snake stared him down. Finally the majestic thing lowered its shiny, blunt head and slowly nosed its way through the blooming mustard toward the creek. Hypok was smiling while the tears ran down his face.

  Then the box of venomous little jewels from across the states, which he carried over the next rise and down into a green swale littered with oak stumps and wild tobacco: the Willard’s rattlers and the bright coral snakes from Arizona; the pygmy rattlers from South Carolina; the sidewinders and Mitchell’s rattlers from California; the copperheads from Florida. Hypok just opened the jars and tossed the creatures into the air, watching them land all around him. Snake rain. Serpent drops. Yes, he felt happy again.

  He saved his favorite snakes for the last. He trotted back to the van and got the box. Holding it to him and making his way back through the woods with them he felt all those rampant emotions vying for attention inside himself again. The box was heavy, filled with timber rattlers from the east, his beloved Crotalus horridus horridus, and the thought of setting them free was almost too much for him. But was it too much excitement, or too much sadness, or too much anger?—he couldn’t really say. His brain buzzed and his heart felt heavy but fast and his face was sweating but cold. He told himself this liberation was necessary as a part of who he was becoming.

  He’d put most of the horridus into pillowcases because they were too big for jars, all except for a couple of foot-long yearlings that had been born last summer. In a shaded oak glen not far from the creek he set down the box amid the sharp dry leaves and sighed deeply. Within the pillowcases the big horridus were moving, their heads pressed tightly into the corners—Hypok had reinforced those corners himself, by hand, with needle and thread—feeling for a way out I know how you feel, he thought: change, progress, release.

  First he let go the females, four five-footers he’d had since they were hardly more than seven inches long. They buzzed vigorously as he stooped and untied the bags. Hypok then gingerly lifted the bags one at a time by a corner and poured the snakes onto the ground. He watched them coil and face him, rattles high and blurring, heads back and lowered for a strike. He just loved the spirit of the horridus.

  Strangely, all four of them stopped rattling almost at once, and Hypok could hear the April breeze in the oaks and the dry chatter of the leaves moving against each other at his feet. It was a sad sound and he was smiling.

  His heart jumped into the sky when he heard the voice.

  “Hello, there! What are you doing?”

  He reeled and dropped the two empty cases.

  The park ranger was still thirty yards away, but his voice had sounded like he was almost on top of him.

  Hypok felt a rapid shudder of nerves down his body and a shortness of breath. The ranger was already making his way across the swale toward him, his arms swinging with certain authority and his head—with that funny Smoky-the-Bear hat—cocked at a stern angle.

  Okay, he thought.

  Solid.

  Capable.

  Firm.

  Contain yourself. You have rights.

  He raised a hand in greeting and smiled.

  “Just letting some snakes go, Officer! That’s all.”

  Hypok looked down into his box. Two pillowcases containing the four big male horridus and the glass jar with the young ones were all that was left.

  The ranger trudged toward him with his head still angled for seriousness. He wore the droop shades you’d see on television cops. He looked heavy and out of place in his stiff tan shirt with the golden badge on it, and green pants. He carried a citation book in his left hand. No gun.

  “Good afternoon,” said Hypok. He could smell his breath after he spoke, but he thought his voice sounded masculine.

  “Afternoon.”

  His badge said Stefanic. His boots were shiny and his forearms thick. He stopped a few feet away, looking at Hypok, then down into the box.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Releasing some snakes, sir.”

  “Those look like rattlesnakes in the jar.”

  “They are. I discovered a den near my house in Orange. I live by a field. Some boys were crushing them with rocks, so I interceded and saved the last of the juveniles.”

  The ranger looked at Hypok again. “I’d like to see some ID.”

  “My wallet’s back in the car. I’d be happy to get it for you.”

  Hypok stepped back as if to head toward his van, but Stefanic raised a palm his way, in the manner of a cop directing traffic.

  “Not yet.”

  For a moment the ranger stared into the box.

  “What’s in the pillowcases?”

  “Four adult animals.”

  “What kind of animals?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Rattlesnakes, also. Western Pacific rattlesnakes I caught out here a few weeks ago.”

  The ranger tucked his citation book under one arm, then lifted off his shades. He looked at Hypok as he slid them into the breast pocket of his shirt. He tapped the book against one leg.

  “What have you set loose out here, so far?”

  “Two rattlesnakes.”

  Oh, Hypok thought, what would Stefanic think when he saw the other three boxes and a dozen bags back in his van?

  “That’s all?”

  “And a small collection of king and gopher snakes.”

  “How many is small?”

  “Six specimens of each. All adults and quite healthy. I’ve had them for years.”

  Hypok was suddenly furious with himself for giving up so much information to this idiot. Why couldn’t he stay light on his feet, remain glib, move laterally?

  “Are you a commercial breeder?”

  “Strictly a hobbyist. By trade I’m a photographer and filmmaker.”

  Stefanic took a step forward, set his citation book over the corner of the box, then lifted out the jar of young timber rattlers. The snakes retracted and looked out at the ranger. One buzzed and coiled to strike.

  “These don’t look like our westerns or reds. These look like something else.”

  “I believe they’re the common viridis, sir, based on the distribution maps I’ve seen.”

  “Hmm. Awfully dark. No bands on the tails.”

  “The juveniles morph considerably, according to Klauber.”

  “You come here often?”

  “Not often. But I love the park. Especially in the spring because all the flowers and reptiles are out. Got to watch for those mountain lions, though.”

  Tighten up now, Hypok thought: hold your tongue and cut your losses. Stefanic seemed to be considering his mountain lion statement. A girl had been badly mauled here some years ago and every spring there was controversy about whether to open the park, and to whom. You had to be eighteen to be here without parents now, Hypok thought. Something along those lines. He felt a big runner of sweat drip down his back.

  “It’s illegal to keep venomous reptiles in the State of California,” said Stefanic.

  “I understand that, sir. It’s the reason I’m letting these go. I didn’t feel like I had a choice but to collect the small ones, with the boys killing them for no reason.r />
  Hypok entertained a brief vision of the eighteen-foot king cobra appearing now, raising its head six feet off the grass and charging forward to sink its fangs into Stefanic’s forehead. That would actually solve a lot of problems.

  “Let me see what’s in the bags,” ordered Stefanic.

  “Well, all right.”

  Hypok knelt down and unknotted one of the pillowcases. He used leather to make the ties. The case had a cream background with little rows of iris across it. One of his mother’s, of course. He grasped the corners at the top and lifted the bag, shaking it so the snake wouldn’t come flying out at him. Stefanic moved closer and looked in. He took off his hat because the brim was cutting off the light.

  “That’s a big one.”

  “Over five feet.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Out here, a couple of seasons back.”

  “You’ve been keeping it for two years.”

  “I have a safe setup and take good care of them. No children or other pets around to cause problems.”

  “What’s it eat?”

  “Rats.”

  Hypok wondered again if anyone in law enforcement would have had the breadth of knowledge to translate his pseudonym into the names of certain animals, then into the names of certain reptiles, then assume that he was a herpetologist, then extrapolate that he must keep a horridus as a pet, then recognize a horridus when they saw one. He didn’t think so when he signed his name to Item #2, and he didn’t think so now. But what if they’d gone that far, and asked around at the pet shops handling reptiles? What if an APB had gone out for anyone suspicious who was dealing with snakes? He couldn’t imagine that anyone could have found the big scale he’d folded so carefully and inserted into Item #2’s shed, although he’d privately wished someone would. But maybe those were some of the subconscious reasons he had for freeing the animals in the first place. Now this Stefanic.

  Don’t get scared, he thought. Let those in law enforcement behave stupidly. That’s their job. But it would sure be nice if Stefanic got his face a little too close, wouldn’t it?