In my room, alone, I realized I’d had too much to drink. I got tired of waiting for Cramer and went out for a walk on the beach. Paz means “peace.” I walked along the Malecón, which means “street by the sea.” The sidewalk was wide. I sat and watched the sea. Another first. Teenagers cruised the broad street.
There would be chances to scuba dive, snorkel. I’d never done either of these things, though I could swim all right. Maybe I’d try.
At a white gazebo in the Malecón Plaza musicians played trumpets, violins, guitars, and great big fat guitars. I thought this might be mariachi music, but I wasn’t sure.
I saw Cramer and Laura walking together but they didn’t see me. I thought for a minute that I’d been mistaken all along. That I was the “cover” for Laura instead of the other way around. But I was too tired to care. No, not tired. I was relieved. I was taken by surprise. I’d had too much to drink, but I could see clearly. I’d made an important discovery. I went back to the hotel and lay down on the bed.
But just as I was falling off to sleep, there was a knock on the door. Cramer. I hadn’t been mistaken after all. But it was Laura.
Laura was upset because Cramer was meeting somebody else. She didn’t know who. She’d thought he’d invited her to the conference because … She burst into tears.
“You’re a Ph.D. candidate in biology,” I said.
Laura nodded her head.
“So I shouldn’t have to explain this to you.”
“Explain what? Why this scientific conference is just a big fuck fest? It’s disgusting. If I report this to the dean, Cramer will be in deep shit. He’ll lose his job.”
“Is that what you want to happen?”
“This whole place is nothing but a big whorehouse. Everybody’s gearing up for an orgy. It’s disgusting. These people are in heat. You can smell it.”
“How old are you, Laura?”
“Twenty-five.”
“When was the first time you got laid?”
“None of your fucking business.”
“Right. And if Cramer gets laid, it’s none of your fucking business. Besides, it’s not a big deal. A man and a woman go to bed together. So? Their brains get saturated with certain neurotransmitters, and hey bingo.”
“Phenylethylamine and dopamine,” she said.
“What?”
“Those are the neurotransmitters.” She was still crying, sitting upright on the bed, not bothering to wipe away her tears.
“It’s human nature,” I said. “You’re a biologist? You know that people, or animals, who really want to get laid pump more genes into the gene pool than people, or animals, who don’t. After a while you’re left with a lot of people who really want to get laid. That’s where we are now. That’s what you want too, isn’t it? It’s what everybody wants? But no one wants to admit it. Well, some people admit it. I admit it. And you should admit it too before you start laying down the law.”
“I’m not an animal.”
“You haven’t been paying attention.”
I got some toilet paper from the bathroom. Laura’s eyeliner was smudged. Her eyes were like big hollows. I handed it to Laura. “Come over here and lie down.”
I patted the bed. She lay down, and I started to rub her back. I was reasonably pleased with myself. “In France,” I said, “people have petits aventures. Petits aventures are part of the fabric of French life. It’s what everybody wants. Well, almost everybody. Deep down.” I was thinking of the explanations of French sex in the books Jackson had given me for Christmas.
“So, you think we should be more like the French?”
“I don’t know what I think, Laura.” And I didn’t.
Laura was asleep by the time Cramer knocked on the door. We went up to Cramer’s room, two floors up. We took the stairs.
“Ms. Cochrane,” he said, closing the door behind him. He stood in front of the window, solemn, as if he were about to deliver a lecture. “This isn’t a game for me,” he said. “I don’t make a habit of bedding my students. I’ve never done it before, in fact.”
“I wish you’d told me sooner,” I said, laughing. “Are you sure you want to do it now?”
“You’re strong, you know. Or maybe you don’t. Like a big rattlesnake. And you’re not afraid of anything.”
“Well, I’m not afraid of rattlesnakes.”
“And you’re not afraid of me.”
“Why would I be afraid of you?”
He laughed. “I’m the village atheist. I scare a lot of people. They agree with me in theory, but they still go to church. They’re afraid to fly without a net.”
I patted the bed and he sat down beside me. I asked him if he was nervous and he nodded.
“It’s all right,” I said. I could feel the balance of power shifting.
“We share the same values,” he said. “You combine all the qualities I admire …”
“In a woman.” I finished the sentence for him.
“Honesty,” he said, “intelligence, scientific curiosity, backwoods sassiness …”
I put my hand over his mouth and pushed him down on the bed because I was afraid of what he was going to say. I hadn’t wanted Jackson to propose to me in Paris, and I didn’t want Cramer to declare his love in a hotel room in La Paz.
I had a great time at the conference, which lasted a week. I went to a lot of sessions, including Cramer’s and Laura’s, and heard some really interesting papers on rattlesnakes. I learned that new techniques in molecular biology were going to give us a more complete picture of snake evolution in spite of the patchy and incomplete fossil record. I learned that the “burrowing ancestors” theory of snake evolution had come under attack. I learned that many types of squirrels are resistant to rattlesnake venom and that by isolating and synthesizing venom-neutralizing proteins in their blood, biomedical researchers were developing a new antivenin effective against the numerous species of rattlesnake, including Crotalus horridus horridus. I learned that certain California ground squirrels will chew up a rattlesnake’s skin and smear it on their fur to mask their scent from predators.
At the end of this particular session I asked a question about the squirrel-rattlesnake confrontation I’d witnessed when we were catching the snakes we were going to translocate. I thought everyone would look at me and shake their heads as if to say What a stupid question, but I didn’t care. The speaker, Aaron Matthews from the University of California at Davis, said the behavior was called “flagging” and was not very well understood. The squirrel, which was immune to rattlesnake venom, was probably protecting its pups, which were not immune, but it wasn’t clear why “flagging” seemed to deter rattlesnakes.
At the banquet on the last night I was a little nervous about the mariachi singing, which was going to follow the speeches. Laura had gotten over her funk. Her paper on rat snakes had been very well received, and because of her excellent Spanish, the leader of the mariachi band had put her in charge of rehearsing the students. She divided us up into two groups, those who knew Spanish and those who didn’t. The sheet music was in Spanish and Laura improvised translations of the choruses. I had to admire her. Her Spanish was perfect, at least as far as I could tell, and she managed to help everyone in such a nice way that you didn’t realize you were being corrected. There were a lot of “la la la’s” and “ba ba ba’s,” which both groups sang. Then several verses in Spanish, and then the rest of us, the non-Spanish speakers, would sing our parts by ourselves.
The food was good. I started to imagine Jackson in Paris, but at the same time I was also thinking I was where I wanted to be. It was amazing how much fun people were having. Even during the speeches at the banquet before the singing. I usually tuned out speeches, just the way I learned to tune out sermons. There were resolutions honoring the recently dead and resolutions honoring the volunteers who kept ASIH functioning; there were resolutions condemning various ecological atrocities and resolutions on standardizing the common names of new species; a resolution allowing un
derage students to drink alcohol at all future ASIH meetings; a resolution proposing that the first letter of common names of fishes and snakes be capitalized in accordance with the Little, Brown Handbook.
The old guys in charge weren’t exactly stand-up comedians, but they didn’t seem to have any sense of self-importance. I liked that, and for the rest of the evening I didn’t have any sense of self-importance either, and when it came time to sing, I didn’t hold back. There were “la la la” and “ba ba ba” choruses and some verses in Spanish and in English, and then we sang the first verse again in English:
I’m a strong-headed steed, no one can reach me,
I’m a little naive in love, perhaps you could teach me,
I see that you’re lonely, and your heart could use mending,
And I don’t believe in unhappy endings.
That night Laura went off to a party with the mariachi band. Cramer and I went back to the hotel. I hadn’t worn my cami cache-coeur outfit for him, and I was still wondering what version of myself I wanted to be, wondering how my own version of myself would differ from Jackson’s. From Cramer’s. These were deep questions. I’d been hoping I could settle them in bed, but it didn’t work out that way. Maybe it never does.
Afterwards we walked along the Malecón, where I’d walked by myself the night we’d arrived. We walked past the cafés and the restaurants and looked at the bay and the sailboats and yachts. It was after midnight, but the musicians were still playing in Malecón Plaza. We stopped to listen, and I thought that this trip had taught me what I needed to know, even though I couldn’t understand the words.
I couldn’t understand the words, but I could understand the songs. I didn’t need Laura to translate. Longing, lost love, the difficulties of love. Joy. Sadness. Post coitum triste.
We sat on a bench and looked at the water, which glowed as if there were little candles under the surface. We took our shoes off and waded in up to our knees, soaking our clothes. I was imagining Jackson in Paris. Walking along the Seine with Suzanne. They were speaking French, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“Bioluminescent dinoflagellates,” Cramer explained. “Single-celled algae. They absorb light during the day and then give it off slowly at night.”
20
Under Arrest
When I got back to the house on Tuesday morning—after several delays—there was a phone message from DX saying Jackson had been serpent bit by DX’s two-headed snake. And it was like looking along the beam of light that Jackson was always talking about. My heart started kicking me in the chest. Hard kicks.
I called DX right away. “Jackson’s in Paris,” I said.
But he wasn’t in Paris. He was in Earl’s trailer. I called Earl and told him to get Jackson to a hospital.
“He don’t want medical attention.”
“Earl, get him to the hospital.”
“The Lord’ll look after him.”
I called the small hospital in Rosiclare and told them a man had been serpent bit and needed help right away. I gave them Earl’s address and directions. They had only ten vials of antivenin, probably not enough for a serious bite. I thought of Paducah or Evansville, but they probably wouldn’t cross the state line. Memorial Hospital in Carbondale was about sixty miles from Naqada. Good roads. Plenty of experience with antivenin. He could need up to thirty vials. I called Cramer and he came to the hospital in Colesville and signed for me to pick up some antivenin. He offered to go with me, but I said no.
Six hours later I was in Naqada. But Jackson wasn’t in the hospital. The ambulance had come back empty. Jackson was still at Earl’s. Earl had sent the paramedics away. The trailer and yard were full of people, drinking coffee and praying. Serpent bites were social occasions. Jackson was stretched out on the bed in the back of the double-wide. The bed that Earl and I had shared for thirteen years. Earl followed me into the room. “He don’t want no medical attention,” he said.
I rushed to the bed. He was unconscious. His arm was black, swollen to three times its normal size. It was enormous, as big as his thigh, and hard as a rock. The skin was breaking open from the pressure.
I picked up the phone from a stand next to the bed and started to dial 911, but Earl slapped the phone out of my hand. I was glad I’d brought the pistol.
“Earl, we’ve got to get him to a hospital.”
“I told you, Fern, he don’t want no medical attention. You don’t believe me, you ask DX or Sally or Mawmaw Tucker.”
I started to argue and then thought better of it. I started to back out of the room. “Earl, I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”
“You can hold it a while longer. I got some things to say.”
“This is crazy, Earl. You’ll never get away with it.”
“There’s nothing to get away with. It’s all up to the Lord now.”
“Earl, how could you send the ambulance away?”
“Sit down. You’re not going anywhere till you hear what I got to say.”
“God damn it, Earl. I’ve got to pee.”
“There’s no call to talk like that. You didn’t learn that from me. No, I reckon you learned that kind of talkin’ up north.”
“He thought you were his friend.”
“I am his friend and I never gave him no reason to doubt it. He come to me wantin’ to handle that two-headed snake while you was off with another man.”
“He’s going to die, Earl, if we don’t get him to a hospital.”
“I reckon it’s up to the Lord. Or have you backed up on the Lord so hard you can’t see nothing plain?”
“Say what you want to say and let’s get on to the next thing.”
“What I got to say is that I’m your husband. Nothing you can do about that. You get down on your knees and witness the truth that I just said and you can call any dang one you want.”
“We’re divorced, Earl. It’s all legal.”
“Not in the eyes of the Lord it ain’t legal. You think that piece of paper that the lawyers fussed up makes one bit of difference to the Lord?”
“Earl, I’ve got to go.”
“All right, go then.”
I took my purse into the bathroom, which was not much bigger than the toilet on the airplane, except it had a little shower with a plastic shower curtain with yellow flowers on it. The curtain was new. I really did have to go. I sat on the toilet and took the pistol out of my purse. The toilet paper roll was on backward so the paper was hanging down against the wall. And it hit me: This was my old home. I’d sat on this toilet hundreds of times. Thousands. Three four five times a day for thirteen years. I’d washed my hair in the tiny shower. And now Jackson was in my bed. The bed I’d shared with Earl. I couldn’t remember my first night with Earl. I’d blacked it all out. But I remembered how Earl used to stand outside the bathroom when I was in it. He was standing outside the door right now. The door didn’t close tight. It didn’t lock. It never did lock right. Was Earl still dreaming about getting a big bass boat and setting up as a charter fisherman? Was he still preaching three or four times a week?
What I understood now that I hadn’t understood then was that in some way this would always be my home, just like every place you’ve ever lived will always be your home.
My hands shook as I took the roll of toilet paper off the roller to turn it around. I dropped the roller on the linoleum. I put the toilet paper back on the roller. I had some trouble fitting it back into the slot.
I still hadn’t peed. I had to calm down. I could sense Earl standing right outside the thin sliding door. I checked the pistol, trying not to make any noise. I held the barrel against my forehead. It was cool.
I flushed the toilet and checked the chamber, hoping the noise of the flush would cover the sound. The safety was off. I could have shot him right through the door, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I finally let go, wiped myself, and pulled up my panties, which I hadn’t changed since the flight back from La Paz. I was very tired. I turned on the tap and
splashed water on my face. There was rust in the basin. Brown stain, but the floor was pretty clean around the toilet. I was worried about opening the door with Earl standing right outside. The hallway in the trailer was very narrow, not much room to maneuver. I remembered a story from the Reader’s Digest about a polar bear. A man who lived alone up in the Arctic was sleeping when a polar bear climbed in his window. The man ran into the closet where he kept his guns. There was no room to lower his rifle … I didn’t want to shoot Earl. I wanted to talk to him.
I listened at the door. Earl was praying out loud. I couldn’t make out the words, but he was probably praying for my soul. Mumbling, murmuring, low voice. Then the tone changed. He was talking to someone. He moved away from the door. I slid the door open quickly and stepped into the hall. Earl turned and looked, registered the gun. He was so big he almost filled the hallway.
“Earl,” I said, pointing the gun at him. He smiled. “Let me call the hospital.”
“You gonna shoot me again?”
I nodded. “I will if you don’t let me use the phone.”
“He said he don’t want medical attention. You can ask DX; you can ask Sally. You can ask Mawmaw Tucker. I askt him straight out did he want medical assistance, and he said no.” DX was standing right behind him.
“He didn’t know what he was in for. He was out of his mind.”
“Because he was putting his trust in the Lord?”
“Don’t come any closer, Earl. I’ll shoot.”
“Bullet ain’t gonna do me no harm. You know why? ’Cause I feel the anointing. My whole body is anointed.”
“It put you right down last time.”
“I was backed up on the Lord. I wasn’t anointed.”
He took another step.
I took one step backwards, then another. I didn’t want to shoot him, but I didn’t want him to get close enough to slap the pistol out of my hand.
Snakewoman of Little Egypt Page 24