I'm Fine, but You Appear to Be Sinking

by Leyna Krow

  As for the cob snakes, their origin is less clear. They, too, are naturally found in warmer places—specifically low lying hills in Central America. One theory of how they came to the Palouse is that a single pair were imported illegally as pets and later set free, or escaped. These two were the Adam and Eve of Washington cob snakes, a lone couple begetting offspring who then rapidly begat more and more offspring.

  The other theory is that the cob snakes were always here, but had somehow gone unnoticed until the Greenspree arrived.

  Whatever their story, they love the ferns. They live in the ferns, sun themselves in patches of light that cut through the ferns, feed on the rodents that burrow beneath the ferns, lay eggs in the burrows, and then hibernate there in the winters. It’s the ferns that give the snakes their safe haven and the snakes that give the ferns their distinctive look. On cool summer nights, the snakes grow restless, ready to move and hunt and writhe, sliding through the ferns en masse, a sea of green-black bodies, surveying all that is theirs.

  I work as a copyeditor for Spokane’s daily newspaper. One of my co-workers, Catherine, is also from the Palouse. When we were kids, she lived just a few miles from my family, but I never knew her. As she tells it, her parents were “religious nut-jobs” who chose to home-school their daughter to protect her from the sinful influence of public education. This, according to Catherine, was a wasted effort. Like most Palouse kids (Kenton and myself included), Catherine moved to Spokane as soon as she was old enough. In addition to working for the newspaper, she moonlights as a nude model for the art school and fronts a punk band called Indigo Christ Punch. Her parents, however, remain faithful as always. When the Greenspree first started to spread, they took it as a sign of the impending rapture and fled to a compound in New Mexico.

  On the Monday after Kenton and I make our second salvaging trip out to Dad’s house, Catherine comes into my cubicle, holding a copy of National Geographic.

  “There’s a big article on us in there,” she says.

  “Us?”

  “The Palouse. About the Greenspree and everything.”

  She sets the magazine down in front of me, and flips to a page near the middle. There’s a panorama of the rolling hills, the iconic red barns, and the neon ferns, which, coincidentally, are a height and color similar to wheat in the spring, before it’s ready to be harvested. So you actually have to look close enough at the picture to pick out the weird shape of the Greenspree’s leaves in order to tell anything’s amiss.

  “It talks about how species from one area can go crazy-out-of-control when they’re transplanted to another area because of lack of predators or climate or whatever used to keep them in check not being there. This isn’t the only place it’s happened.”

  I nod. “It’s nice to finally be getting some national attention.”

  “And then there’s this,” Catherine says, opening a centerfold pullout to reveal a full-length photo of a cob snake, almost actual size, surrounded by facts and figures about the species. I quickly push the centerfold closed with Catherine’s hand inside.

  “Jesus, Catherine. Could you not?”

  She laughs and picks up the magazine. “Sorry,” she says. “I always forget.”

  I’ve never liked snakes. It’s not that I’ve ever had a bad experience with one—in fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever had any experience with one. But I have always disliked them. It’s something about the way they move, the shape of their heads, their quickness and coldness. Even pictures of snakes evoke a visceral response. Like a shiver. I can’t control it.

  Had we been different sorts of kids, this is a phobia my brother might easily have exploited. But he didn’t. In fact, Kenton has always made a special effort to protect me from things I find distasteful or unpleasant. He’ll warn me when cookies have nuts in them, or when the road to his house is icy. In high school, he went through the “Reptiles” chapter in my biology book and put Post-it Notes over the snake pictures so I could study without ever having to look at them.

  After Catherine leaves, I read the National Geographic article online (in text-only format so I don’t have to see the images). It’s mostly information I already know except, as Catherine mentioned, the part about how what’s happening here has happened other places too. In Minnesota, a mysterious aquatic plant clogs lakes, making them uninhabitable to most native fish. In West Texas, Eurasian wild boars, originally brought to North America by Christopher Columbus, have become so prevalent they threaten to destroy entire species of trees and shrubs with their constant digging and foraging.

  These stories are alarming, but in a way, they’re also comforting. This isn’t a new problem, and it isn’t an isolated problem. Ecosystems around the world are constantly under siege. They shift and struggle and adapt and move on.

  So it’s important to remember that what’s happening to the Palouse isn’t a catastrophe, necessarily. Just a change. Things change on Earth all the time. Mountains get taller and canyons get deeper. Glaciers melt. A new species of fish is discovered, on average, once every twenty-two days. Honey bees are going extinct. So are polar bears. One New Year’s Day, 200 blackbirds fell from the sky, dead, onto the street of a small town in Arkansas.

  The only difference is, this time it’s here, where I live, and the displaced creatures are people I know. My dad, for one.

  Ironically, just as Dad’s world is shrinking, Kenton’s is expanding. After almost a decade of slow, steady growth, Kenton’s one-man graphic design company has experienced a sudden boon, and he’s acquired new accounts not just here in Spokane, but from around the Northwest. On top of that, his wife, Elsa, is five months pregnant. The afternoon Catherine shows me the National Geographic article, Kenton sends me a text: “Dinner at Dad’s @ 6. I’ll bring pizza.” I go over straight after work. When Kenton arrives, he’s carrying not only pizza and a salad, but also a plate of brownies coated in thick blue frosting.

  “Elsa’s having dinner with friends from her office. She told me to tell you guys ‘hi’ though,” Kenton says.

  “What are these?” Dad asks, pointing at the brownies.

  “Elsa made them. We found out today the baby’s a boy.”

  For a moment, we all just stare at the brownie plate. No one in our family is keen on sweets.

  “At least take a bite of one,” Kenton says, “so I can tell her you had some.”

  “A grandson, eh?” Dad says. “Well now.”

  I watch Dad’s face and I can see he’s thinking of what it will be like to have a little boy around and he’s pleased with the image. But I can also see this image isn’t set here in the condo. It’s at the old house: the boy bounding up the front steps, playing rough with Kenton out back. I watch his face as the image fades when he remembers.

  “Congratulations, Ken,” he says.

  We eat and I grill Kenton on possible names for the baby. Kenton admits they’ve got one picked out, but won’t say what. He claims they’re keeping it a secret.

  “Because it’s something embarrassing?” I ask.

  “No. Because we like having some things that are just ours, for now.”

  Kenton and Elsa have been married three years, but it still surprises me sometimes that he can have secrets with someone who isn’t me. I think back to my childhood daydream—that I would be the one with the secret life, the one to move beyond the world of my father and brother in ways they would not expect. And yet, it seems things have turned out exactly the opposite. Kenton and Dad have their private lives of which I am not a part and often do not understand, while my own life is, for them, an open book. This seems unfair.

  Before we leave, Dad’s got another request from the old house.

  “The wood-burning stove in the basement,” he says.

  “Okay,” Kenton says. “No problem.”

  “You kids don’t mind doing this for me, do you?” Dad asks.

  We shake our heads. “Happy to help,” we say.

  People who don’t know our dad well are often
surprised to learn he’s only sixty-three. The man looks and acts much older. He’s sort of shrinking in to himself, a skinny guy with stooped shoulders and knobby hands. He doesn’t talk much, either because he’s become hard of hearing or he’s run out of things to say. Most days, he doesn’t bother to shave or comb his hair. He was already like this before the Greenspree swallowed up his wheat fields, but on his old property, he was a curmudgeonly farmer—an archetype of sorts. Now, in his sparsely furnished condo with few friends and not much to occupy his time, he just seems withdrawn, resigned, and a little sad. “He’s got that widower look,” Catherine said the first time she met him.

  He is a widower, of course. Just not a recent widower. Our mother died when Kenton and I were three years old. We agree that we don’t remember her.

  Dad dated occasionally over the years, but never remarried. When we were kids, he seemed so solid in his independence, like he’s never even needed anyone else. I respected that, and I like to think I’m the same in that way.

  Except, if I’m being honest, I know I’m not.

  So this thing with the stuff from the old house—that seems like another old man tic. It’s not hoarding, exactly. More like he’s stocking up, squirreling it away for a time when something will happen and he’ll have use for it all again, when the streets and condos of Spokane fall away and the whole county will just be empty space. We’ll need farmers like him then and he’ll need his old light bulbs and banister posts. Or maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe he just can’t stand the thought living apart from things he used to love. Still, I don’t ask and neither does my brother.

  After dinner, on the walk back to our cars, I grab Kenton by his shirtsleeve.

  “I want you to admit this is hard for you,” I say.

  “What’s hard for me?”

  “Dismantling Dad’s house. Dismantling our house.”

  Kenton shakes his head.

  “Maggie, you and I aren’t the same person. I understand how you feel. But it’s not that big a deal. This is just Dad being Dad—it is what it is.”

  I refuse to believe this.

  “I know you,” I say. “I know how you are.”

  Again, Kenton shakes his head. “If it bothers you so much, you don’t have to come with me next week. I can get the rest by myself.”

  This is why Kenton wins every argument. He side-steps things. He makes whatever we’re arguing about into something else. But I want to keep arguing about this particular thing. I want him to give.

  “I know you wanted that house,” I say. “For you and Elsa and your kid. I know you were planning on living there and working the fields.”

  This time Kenton laughs. “No,” he says. “You think I want to raise my son on a wheat farm? That’s not the life I want for him. Besides, I have my own business. What do I need Dad’s for? That was never the plan.”

  “Then what was the plan?”

  “Elsa wants to move to Seattle. She thinks it’s the next step for my company, to be in a real tech market instead of out here in some city no one’s ever heard of. Plus, the schools are better. After the baby’s born, we’ll probably start looking.”

  I am surprised by this, both that I was so wrong, and that Kenton, again, could have kept this secret. I want to ask if Dad knows. I want to ask if, in Kenton’s image of himself and Elsa and their boy in Seattle, I am somewhere nearby. But I don’t. Instead, I say, “No, it’s okay. I can come with you again on Saturday.”

  “Good,” Kenton says. “I’ll see you then.”

  That Friday, Catherine and I sit outside during lunch hour, eating sandwiches from the office’s deli cart.

  “Sorry about the giant snake picture the other day,” Catherine says.

  “It’s okay. It’s a stupid thing to freak out about anyway.”

  “I just wanted to fuck with you a little. Nobody else in your life ever fucks with you. I can tell.”

  She’s right about this. Kenton teases, but always gently. Dad, never. The handful of other friends I have are, on the whole, very polite.

  “Thanks, I guess?” I say.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ve heard they have this problem in Canada, too,” Catherine says. “In Manitoba. Only with a different kind of snake.”

  “Because of plants?”

  “No. I think just because snakes like Manitoba.”

  I am reminded again of the fickleness of nature. Or maybe what I actually mean is the precision of it. The right conditions in the right place can make all the difference, like in California where Joshua Trees refuse to grow outside of a few hundred feet of their preferred elevation. But where they do grow, they’re everywhere.

  “When your parents moved, did they take a lot of stuff with them?” I ask.

  “No, actually,” Catherine says. “Their compound wouldn’t let them bring furniture or decorations or anything because everyone is supposed to appear equal before the eyes of the Lord or whatever. All their cabin has is a bed and a table and chairs. They could bring their own cookware, but that’s it. Mom says she’s the only woman there with a fondue set, so she’s pretty popular. Everything else, they mostly just gave away.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “I got their couch and some bookshelves, so that was nice.”

  I ask her if she has been back to the house since then.

  “Oh God no,” she says. “As far as I’m concerned, the ferns and the snakes can have that place.”

  I know what Catherine has said is meant to be funny and so I laugh along with her. But I’m also tremendously jealous. I’d give anything to feel the same way.

  On the drive out to the Palouse on Saturday I think about my offer to Kenton from the previous trip—that I’ll strip the remnants from his old bedroom if he’ll do mine. But I decide this arrangement won’t make the job any easier. I don’t want to dismantle what little is left of Kenton’s childhood any more than I do my own. I am momentarily angry with Dad for asking this of us, as if he’s the only one affected by the Greenspree and the cob snakes and the loss of the house. But, of course, then I remember that in the grand scheme of things, Dad’s been hurt so much more by all our collective losses—like he’s the family punching bag, absorbing the worst of the shocks before they can get to me and Kenton. So who am I to begrudge him the last pieces of his home, if that’s his wish? Still though, I am ready to be finished with this project.

  It’s like Kenton’s read my mind, because when we pull off the highway he says, “How about we just get the stove and be done with it?”

  I agree to this plan.

  “If Dad wanted anything else specifically, he would have said so,” he adds. “Besides, it’s not like he’s got big plans for any of it.”

  “I think it’s supposed to be our inheritance.”

  Kenton smiles at this. “I would have preferred cash.”

  “You aren’t excited to pass the family light socket covers on to your son?”

  “I’ll let you keep those. I know how much you’ve always cared for them.”

  He’s teasing of course. His kind of teasing—harmless and meant only to get a smile out of me when he knows I need it. This is what I’ll lose if Kenton moves—a day-to-day connection with the one person who always understands. Or, if not always, at least ninety percent of the time.

  We park in the gravel driveway. It’s early in the day, too hot for the snakes to be active, and so the Greenspree is still. Down in the basement, though, the air is markedly cooler. There’s a stale, musty smell I don’t remember. I have no desire to linger here and it’s clear neither does Kenton. He leaves the door open and keeps wiping his hands against the front of his jeans like he’s just touched something gross.

  In all likelihood, the stove hasn’t ever been used. There’s no chimney for it and it’s in a weird spot, pressed against the wall next to a workbench. Kenton braces himself against the workbench and rocks the stove back and forth to move it from the place where its legs have
sunk slightly into the unfinished dirt floor of the basement. Once he’s done that, he gives the stove a push, moving it two or three feet toward the center of the room.

  “Heavy,” he says.

  “Duh,” I say.

  The wall the stove was blocking has a fist-size hole in it—like maybe at one point a pipe or wiring emerged from there. Or maybe the hole was an accident of some sort. Either way, it seems entirely possible the stove’s sole purpose has always been to cover it up.

  Kenton taps at the edge of the hole with the toe of his boot. He bends down and peers inside. Then he straightens up and jumps back.

  “Oh shit!” he says.

  From the hole in the wall emerges a cob snake. It sticks its head straight out and tests the air with its tongue, then lowers itself, face first, to the floor. A second snake immediately follows.

  I wonder if fear is always just a matter of degree—if, subconsciously, everyone is afraid of the same things. It’s just a matter of how close we feel to those things at any given time that determines whether or not our fear manifests in a way we can detect.

  Kenton puts an arm in front of me, steering me behind him. A protective gesture. I mean to remind him the snakes won’t bite, but of course I’m scared, too, so I say nothing, just stand and watch them try to navigate the rutted basement floor.

  “Shit,” Kenton says again. “It could be a burrow.”

  I don’t know if this can happen with cob snakes, but I’ve heard horror stories of other kinds of snakes getting into walls, taking over houses. We wait a moment longer, but no others come through the hole. These two are alone.

  “How did they get in there?” I ask.

  “How did any of them get anywhere?” he replies.

  I can tell Kenton’s initial surprise has worn off and he is no longer afraid. I’m also calmer than I would have expected. Weirdly, being in the same room with the cob snakes is less alarming than seeing pictures of them or looking at them in the Greenspree from a distance. They don’t seem to notice us at all.