One night over dinner he suggests they should see other people. He isn’t thinking of himself, he says, but she knows what it means. It means he is tired of her. There is a photographer who has been calling, who doesn’t stop asking her to dinner. Peter Ryles, a South African, famous for shooting retired dictators, thirty-foot crocs, and the world’s most beautiful women. He is in Beverly Hills for a week doing movie stars. Jack encourages her to accept the invitation, tells her he needs time alone to reflect on his father. The book, she says. That’s it. Jack is once more a free man, unburdened from the duties of love.
He keeps a hatchet sunk in a stump next to the fireplace that sometimes he takes up to the Platform to throw at a tree. He’s never gotten it to stick, but it’s exhilarating to try. He is up there hurtling it when he sees the snake. It’s at least five feet long and black as licorice.
Exposed, but easy in its own display, the old rattler is making its way across the Platform. Jack comes closer. The snake hesitates an instant, then continues. Jack baby-steps alongside it to the edge of the Platform. The snake slides off the concrete into the dry yellow grass and disappears under a stone beneath the pile of rotting lumber.
He could have cut its head off with his hatchet. The snake could have coiled and bit him in the ankle. Instead it has slithered into a hole, but not completely. It has left about a foot of its tail exposed. Jack counts the rattles. Eight. He waits for it to disappear; it doesn’t happen. With an index finger, Jack touches it. The silk of its ebony skin, like the smooth coolness of a gem. But alive.
Suddenly, without a thought, he pulls the snake back out into the light. It whips around, lifting its head to strike, but Jack has stepped back out of range, rubbing his hand as if he’d been bitten. Coiled, but not rattling, the snake waits to see what will happen. Jack thinks about the rats in his attic and wishes he could give it one. He is inspired. You are one hell of a decent snake, Blacky. A snake of distinction. Blacky slowly uncoils, slides back to his hole. Jack knows something important has happened. The oak rattles. Jack looks up at the flickering leaves. He almost weeps.
On the floor, under the space of his elevated bed, he keeps a pomander of cloves Stewart had made and given him to keep snakes away, an old Chinese custom. But after his run-in with Blacky, he tosses it in the creek. It’s more than simple fondness; he feels like Blacky is a harbinger of good things to come, the thrill of a riddle come to visit him. Blacky had been courteous for a reason.
Even though they haven’t talked in three days, Stewart is still his closest friend, the one he needs most to tell his story to. He leaves a message for her to call him back. By nightfall she still hasn’t. By midnight he stops leaving messages, at four a.m. he stops calling.
She once said she would do anything for him, loved him so much she would even have sex with another man if he asked her to. But did she love him so much that she wouldn’t? The night is hard passing. At nine a.m. he brings the phone to bed but is afraid to use it. He will wait until noon. Just before twelve it rings. He hears the difference in her voice. Jack tries for nonchalance. Did she just get home? Stewart never lies. Did she spend the night with Peter Ryles? She did. That was fast. Yes, it surprised her too. Did she have an orgasm? Three. There is nothing to be done. She is sorry. Jack wants to see her. She has to get some sleep. Dinner? She’s promised to have dinner with Peter. He is only in town a few more days. She is sorry. Jack needs so much more than that, he needs to see her. Stewart needs to sleep; she has a fitting at the end of the day. She hears an imploded sob. She waits. Jack? He throws the phone against the wall. It breaks. He tries to find the old phone. A little voice at the bottom of him says, As soon as you get her back—if you can—as soon as you do, you know you won’t want her. But that voice doesn’t stand a chance. He finds the old phone under some shoes and calls her back.
In the next three days she will visit him twice. He will go to her place twice. But she won’t make love to him. He will beg her to tell him she is in love with Peter and no longer in love with him. If she will just say it, he promises to leave her alone. But she won’t say it. She says she’s confused.
Feeling okay, doing well, things running smoothly, could never keep Jack’s attention, but this trauma has legs. Howling at the moon resonates in the myth of himself. Stewart is decent, patient, and guilty, but knows better than to say yes when he asks her to marry him. She thinks it best they don’t see each other for a while. He wants specifics. She wants time. Tomorrow is time. He calls her. She says something about too little too late, but gets it wrong. He is angered on both counts, but mostly it’s the cliché that pisses him off. He has the sense to keep quiet, bide his time, endure another day.
Jack comes up for air. First time in a week he stands naked on the Platform. Stomach in, chest forward, spine straight. The Tadasana position. He contemplates the word. Pictures the line over each of the a’s, the dot under the d. Maybe he is wrong and this is the pose known as Vrksasana. Meaning erect like a mountain. He isn’t sure. At least he’s trying. He thinks about making juice, maybe going down to the beach. Right then, on the road below, he sees her car flash by, returning from another night with Peter Ryles.
Jack has had it. No place to turn except to her, and she is gone. He lifts his arms to the sky and sputters, Please let me die! Then collapses on the hot concrete and says it again. He hears the hum of the bees and doesn’t care. The rasp of the oak leaves in the breeze and doesn’t care. He wants death, so badly wants it he thinks maybe it has already happened.
He can’t hear the bees anymore. The world has closed. But he hears something. Light as a finger running its tip along a length of silk, and it’s coming closer. Jack turns his head, opens his eyes. It’s a foot away, coming at his face. In a flash Jack is on his feet. His sudden rising causing the snake to coil. It’s Blacky! He begged for death, death came, about to crawl under the hollow of his neck. If he hadn’t heard it, he would have been struck. He stands staring down at the dark embodiment of his wish. Without so much as a rattle, Blacky unspools and slides past the man to the place he was headed, the little hole in the shade under the rotting lumber. This is where Blacky lives, thinks Jack. I was lying at the serpent’s door.
Jack the fatalist believes life to be random. Turn right, you get hit by a bus. Turn left, you get laid. He called for death, death came. But he was saved. The ocean is twelve miles distant. Jack is almost two thousand feet above sea level, but suddenly he can smell its tang. Blacky has been a benediction. Jack can have what he wants, or not have it; either way, he is himself again. Stewart can hear the difference in his voice, adores the story about him and the snake. A week later they are making love again. She will marry him.
Jack has just taken her to the airport. A job in Trieste. She will be gone a week. He is relieved. He will have to address this marriage thing when she returns. He doesn’t want to believe it couldn’t be anybody, but knows it can’t be her. For one thing she wants children. The idea of harvesting an infant in Rat Hall makes him laugh. He walks into the cool dim of the front room and abruptly stops. Blacky is stretched out on the floor in front of his bedroom door.
Thrilled, the welcoming host goes into the kitchen, pours a splash of milk into a saucer, brings it back, places it on the floor three inches from Blacky’s incredible head. The thin black tongue slips in and out, reading the offering. But Blacky doesn’t move; neither does Jack. It occurs to him that Blacky has come to stay.
Have you heard? Jack has a new pet. Stewart will tell all her pretty friends that her fiancé has a pet snake. Not a fashionable python, but a mean, highly venomous, five-foot rattler is what he’s got, and he feeds it by hand.
Now Jack wants to lie on his bed, contemplate the wonder of what has happened. He knows true faith will not suffer doubt. If he is to step over Blacky, it must be done in absolute compliance with the conviction that Blacky will not strike. Slowly, Jack slips off his clothes, inhales and
exhales a lungful of prana to integrate his kundalini. He pictures the painting by Edward Hicks, of man and woman, lion and lamb, and all the green world in passive accord, The Peaceable Kingdom. Then, with his eyes closed, he steps over the snake and into his bedroom.
Jack rolls up onto his bunk, lies back to reflect. Spring and summer, Rat Hall’s climate is favorable to reptiles. Rats from the attic scampering the premises at night—Blacky could get a plump one anytime he wants. And in the winter, the dark beneath the bed is perfect for hibernation. Rat Hall has everything a big snake needs.
In a reverie of connection to the nature of things, Jack recognizes that Blacky is no mere pet, but an actual avatar who deserves a proper name. Blacky . . . Black magic . . . Merlin . . . King Arthur . . . and there it is. He whispers, Arthur! and falls asleep.
Three minutes later, Jack opens his eyes, looks over the edge of the bed and through the doorway. Arthur is gone. He jumps down, steps into the dining room in time to see the snake sliding into the broom closet. No time for deliberation. Jack catches Arthur just before he disappears and pulls him out by the tail.
This time, the snake is in no mood for it, coils so fast Jack hardly has time to jump back before it strikes. Stunned, Jack backs away into the bedroom. Arthur slithers after him. Jack jumps up onto his elevated bed. Arthur is coiled and buzzing on the floor, hammerhead stretched high and cocked. Come on! shouts Jack. It’s me, calm down!
But Arthur’s head is almost two feet off the floor now, weaving like a thing in heat, the terrible little gun holes of his eyes fastened on Jack crouching on the mattress. There is no way Arthur can get up to him, but Jack, infected with panic, looks around for something to bash him with. He considers the phone. Probably it would break. He would be phoneless again. Then he spots the horn hanging just above him on the wall. A German hunting horn, a legacy from his father. He lifts it off the nail. But this precious coiled horn is not for throwing. Kneeled on his berth, Jack puts it to his lips, aims it down at Arthur, and blows. The blast fills the room.
The serpent, of course, is earless, reads the oscillations with its tongue. Arthur is stunned; the shrill abruption in the air afflicts him, and fearing for his life, he hurries back into the dining room and slips through the barely opened door into the broom closet.
Horn in hand, Jack slides off the bed, peers into the dining room, watchfully crosses it. Slowly he opens the broom closet door. Just a broom and dustpan, a can of paint, and the rat hole Arthur squeezed through to a safer world.
Jack knows the consequence of love is loss. Loss is the figment that stalks the land, the sea, and the night; blood and hope, sex and sky, loss is the big bang itself. Jack returns to his bedroom, climbs up on the bunk, and hangs his horn back on its nail.
On our way to the lake I meant to stop at Jack Master’s bait shop to obtain some night crawlers when the right rear tire blew out. The spare in the trunk turned out to be flat, which was good with me; I didn’t feel like changing a tire. Fishing was gonna have to wait.
It would have been about a five-mile walk either way, but it was too hot for that, so best thing was hang around till a Good Samaritan came along. That was not out of the question in this neck of the woods, and sure enough, in about twenty minutes, here comes Plaz Camel. I hadn’t seen him or given him a thought in probably five years, and there he was, showed up exactly when I needed such a person.
What I was doing with a Negro covered in tar didn’t seem to concern him. Probably he’d already heard something on that score, so we decided to go to his house because he said the gas station was closed but he had something in the automotive department I might like to have a look at.
I’d never been to Plaz’s house before; it was a place like something a little old lady might own, except there was a ’54 Chevy pickup parked in the front room. He tried not to show his pride in it, but it was clear that’s how come he brought us over. I ask him how he got it inside. Took it apart out front, he said, hauled the chassis in sideways, then put it all back together. Took him three years, just an idea he got so went ahead and did it, he says. You could go in the Guinness Book of World Records, I tell him. He said he didn’t like publicity, didn’t wanna be famous. I understood that.
There was no room to sit anywhere except in the truck, which was the idea, I guess. Even though Mot’s tar was dry, we had to wait for Plaz to bring out a couple towels to protect the seats before he let us get in. I never saw Mot stubborn before, but he wanted behind the wheel, and when I tried to push him over he wouldn’t budge, so I let him have it. I sat in the middle, and it was kind of cozy all of us being in the cab together, Mot bobbing his big head, making motor noises, steering like he was going somewhere. I could smell there was gas in the tank and looked to make sure there was no keys in the ignition. Put me in mind of a story Doc used to tell about how it was he got circumcised back when he was twelve.
Usually it was not much more than a creek, but because of some storm the Kanakoli was all swelled up, Doc and his dad having a drive to town alongside it. Sometimes a younger brother was included in the story, so there was three of ’em. To impress his daddy, little Doc tells him how he’s such a strong swimmer he could dive in the river and beat ’em to where it was they were going. Doc’s dad, who was a tough old bastard, plus also a doctor, stopped the car and told little Doc never to say he could do something unless he meant to do it.
Doc told me he didn’t really want to, but there was no choice at that point, so he takes his shirt off and dives in. Split his head open on a submerged log and would have drowned if big Doc hadn’t of gone in for the rescue. Little Doc woke up in the hospital, and since his daddy was a doctor and since little Doc was in for one thing, why not do the rest like sometimes they did in those days? Stitched up his head, circumcised him, and took out his appendix. Three birds with one stone, and nothing he could do for quite a while that didn’t hurt him, he said.
It could be that’s how come Doc became a doctor, never again wanting any doctors to have power over making decisions about what happened to his body again. Every time he told that story he’d get tears in his eyes for being proud about how his daddy saved him. But not about the next part, which I didn’t get to tell because right then something went wrong with Mot.
Started with a sneeze—not a little one, it made us jump. Next he’s coughing, then he’s choking, having what could be called a spasm, black stuff coming out his nose, him gagging and trying to get his breath like he was drowning. When something like this happens, you wanna get out of the way and hope it’s gonna stop. But it didn’t stop. Plaz yelled, Get him out of the truck! We did, but it wasn’t easy. Plaz got clipped in the head by Mot’s elbow, nearly knocked him down, and wouldn’t touch him after that so it was up to me getting him outside across the yard and into the backseat of the car. All Plaz did was hold the door open. I used one of the towels stuck to Mot’s back to wipe away what was coming out of his mouth, then it was step on it Plaz and we took off.
On the ride there I realized if Mot didn’t get better it was gonna be partly my fault because of how like a child he was in his dependence on me and how deep my responsibility to his situation went. If he didn’t improve, I didn’t think I’d be looking forward to any birthday parties because life wouldn’t be worth getting any older in. Dark thoughts, but down deep I believed Doc was gonna be able to fix him, because even in his current condition Mot was strong enough and good enough to beat this thing. On the other hand, if I was wrong, this thing might just go ahead and kill him.
Soon’s we got into Doc’s, I could see Plaz wanted to hang around, see what was gonna happen next, but Doc didn’t like too many cooks in the kitchen. Neither did I. Besides, him being a stranger was driving the dogs nuts, so I told him to go home. I’d catch him up on what happened later.
Of course Doc could see he was in trouble, but before he could pinpoint the problem Mot had to be toned down. I held him steady
while a shot was prepared. Doc gave it to him in the neck. That pretty much improved his condition, made him almost back to normal, far as I could see. But Doc said Mot was still in trouble, his skin couldn’t “breathe.” Problem was, if he peeled off the tar, Mot would be skinned alive and die like a snake.
Doc said the solution to this was what he called the solar petroleum treatment. Sounded fancy, but the principle was simple, about the same as getting an oil stain off the driveway, he said.
In the garage there was a five-gallon can of gas for emergencies, and that’s what this was. By way of a ladder we got Mot up on the roof of the house. Closer to the sun, I suppose; didn’t ask. Doc was a drunk, but he knew his business. We took off Mot’s shoes and poured the gas on him. I used a rag to blindfold him, make sure his eyes were safe, and whatever was in that shot kept him calm as a kitten. Like Doc said, either the gas and the sun was gonna do the trick or he was gonna die. I went down and brought him up a bottle of cola in case he got thirsty, then had a good look around, made sure there was nothing that could cause a fire. After that it was a question of time and pray he had enough sense to stay put and not walk off the edge of the roof.
Doc didn’t have any patients, so all we had to do was wait it out, watch TV, drink some beers. He wanted to talk about Mot, couldn’t remember how I got him, so I told that story again, left out the money part, but not the part about saving him. Doc thought he bore a resemblance to Cassius Clay. Surprised I didn’t think of it myself, because it was true.
Shape of the Final Dog and Other Stories (9781101600665) Page 6