Peaceable Kingdom (mobi)

by Jack Ketchum

  She sat down on her rug, her legs giving out completely, her heart pounding, and tried to calm Katie. Or calm herself by calming Katie.

  The dog continued to bark. And then to growl. And finally just sat there looking out toward the lanai and panting.

  She wondered if that meant it was gone.

  Somehow she doubted it.

  She was glad it was President’s day weekend and that Danny was with his grandmother and grandfather at Universal over in Orlando. The trip was a present to him for good grades. She was glad he wouldn’t be coming home from school in an hour as usual. Wouldn’t come home to that.

  The dog was still trembling.

  So was she.

  It was two o’clock. She needed a drink.

  She could pinpoint the moment her fear of snakes began exactly.

  She had been eight years old.

  Her grandparents had lived in Daytona Beach, and Ann and her parents had come to visit. It was Ann’s first visit to Florida. Daytona was pretty boring so they did a little sightseeing while they were there and one of the places they went to was a place called Ross Allen’s Alligator Farm. A guide gave them a tour.

  She remembered being fascinated by the baby alligators, dozens and dozens of them all huddled in one swampy pen, but seemingly very peaceful together, and she was wondering if maybe the reason they weren’t biting one another was that they all came from one mama, if that were possible. She stood there watching pondering that question until she became aware that the tour had moved on a bit and she knew she’d better catch up with them but she still wanted an answer to her question about the alligators so when she approached the group she did what she’d been told to do when she had a question, never mind how urgent.

  She raised her hand.

  As it happened her tour guide had just asked a question of his own. Who wants to put this snake around his neck? And Ann, with her hand in the air and thinking hard about the peaceful drowse of baby alligators found herself draped by and staring into the face of a five pound boa constrictor named Marvin, everyone smiling at her, until her father said I think you’d better take it off now, I don’t know, she looks kinda pale to me, and she’d fainted dead away.

  There had been green snakes in the garden by her house and they had not bothered her in the slightest and there were garter snakes down by the brook. But nothing like a five pound boa named Marvin. So that afterwords she avoided even greens and garters. And shortly after that she had the first of what became a recurrent dream.

  She is swimming in a mountain pool.

  She is alone and she is naked.

  The water is warm, just cool enough to be refreshing, and the banks are rocky and green.

  She’s midway across the pool, swimming easily, strongly, when she has the feeling that something is . . . not right. She turns and looks behind her and there it is, a sleek black watersnake, lithe and whiplike, so close that she can see its fangs, she can see directly into the white open mouth of it, it is undulating through the water toward her at stunning speed, it’s right behind her and she swims for dear life but knows she’ll never make it, not in time, the banks loom ahead like a giant stone wall bleeding gleaming condensation and she’s terrified, crying—the crying itself slowing her down even more so that even as she swims and the water thickens she’s losing her will and losing hope, it’s useless, there’s only her startled frightened flesh driving her on and the snake is at her heels and she can almost feel it and

  She wakes.

  Sometimes she’s only sweating. Twisted into the bed-sheets as though they were knots of water.

  Sometimes she screams herself awake.

  Screams as she’s just done now.

  Goddamn snake.

  Seven feet long and big around as a man’s fist. Bigger. The snake in her dream was nothing compared to that.

  She got up and went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of vodka, added ice and tonic. She drank it down like a glass of water and poured another. The shaking stopped a bit.

  Enough for her to wonder if the snake were still outside.

  The dog was lying on the rug, biting at a flea on her right hind leg.

  The dog didn’t look worried at all.

  Take a look, she thought.

  What can it hurt?

  She unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped out onto the lanai, then slid the door closed behind her. She didn’t want Katie involved in this. She picked up a broom she used to sweep up out there. Behind her Katie got to her feet and watched, ears perked. She scrabbled at the door.

  “No,” she said. The scrabbling stopped.

  She peered through the screens.

  Nothing by the door.

  Nothing in the yard either that she could see, either to the left, where the snake had first appeared and the hibiscus grew up against the picket fence, nor to the right, where a second, taller plant grew near the door. The only place she couldn’t see was along the base of the screened-in wall itself on either side. To do that she’d have to open the door.

  Which she wasn’t about to do.

  Or was she?

  Hell, it was ridiculous to hang around wondering. There was every chance the snake had gone back through the fence the way it had come and was rooting around for mice down at the banks of the canal even as she stood there.

  Okay, she thought. Do it. But do it carefully. Do it smart.

  She opened the dented screen door to just the width of the broom and wedged its thick bristles into the bottom of the opening. She peered out along the base of the longer wall to the left.

  No snake.

  She looked right and heard it hiss and slide along the metal base near the hibiscus and felt it hit the door all at once, jarring its metal frame.

  She slammed it shut.

  The broom fell out of her hands, clattered to the concrete floor.

  And then she was just staring at the thing, backing away to the concrete wall behind her.

  Watching as it raised its head. And then its body. Two feet, three feet. Rising. Slowly gaining height.

  Seeming to swell.

  And swaying.

  Staring back at her.

  It was nearly dusk before she got up the courage to look again.

  This time she used a shovel from the garage instead of the broom. If it came after her again with a little luck she could chop the goddamn thing’s head off.

  It was gone.

  She looked everywhere. The snake was gone.

  She took another drink by way of celebration. The idea of spending the night with the snake lying out there in her yard had unnerved her completely. She thought she deserved the drink.

  If she dreamed she did not remember.

  In the morning she checked the yard again and finding it empty, let Katie out to do her business, let her back in again and then went out the front door for the paper.

  She took one step onto the walkway and hadn’t even shut the door behind her when she saw it on the lawn, stretched to its full enormous length diagonally from her mailbox nearly all the way to the walk, three feet away. Head raised and moving toward her.

  She stepped back inside and shut the door.

  The snake stopped and waited.

  She watched it through the screen.

  The snake didn’t move. It just lay there in the bright morning sun.

  She closed the inner door and locked it.

  Jesus!

  She was trapped in her own home here!

  Who the hell did you call? The police? The Humane Society?

  She tried 911.

  An officer identified himself. He sounded young and friendly.

  “I’ve got a snake out here in my yard. A big snake. And he . . . he keeps coming right at me. I honestly can’t get out of my house!”

  It was true. The only other exit to the condo was through the kitchen door that led to the garage and the garage was right beside the front door. She wasn’t going out that way. No way. No thanks.

&nb
sp; “Sorry, ma’am, but it’s not police business. What you want to do is call the Animal Rescue League. They’ll send somebody over there and pick it up for you. Get rid of it. But I gotta tell you, you’re my third snake call today and I’ve already had four alligators. Yesterday was even worse. These rains bring ’em all out. So the Animal Rescue League may make you wait awhile.”

  “God!”

  He laughed. “My brother-in-law’s a gardener. You know what he says about Florida? ‘Everything bites down here. Even the trees bite at you.’ ”

  He gave her the number and she dialed. The woman at Animal Rescue took Ann’s name, address and phone number and then asked her to describe the animal, its appearance and behavior.

  “Sounds like what you’ve got is a Florida Banded,” she said. “Though I’ve never heard of one that big before.”

  “A what?”

  “A Florida Banded watersnake. You say it’s seven, eight feet? That’s big. That means you’ve got maybe thirty pounds of snake there.”

  “Is it poisonous?”

  “Nah. Give you a darn good nasty bite, though. The banded’s aggressive. He’ll hit you two three four times if he hits you once. But again, I never heard of one goin’ after you the way you’re saying. Normally they’ll just defend their own territory. You sure you didn’t go after him in some way?”

  “Absolutely not. My dog, maybe, at first. But I pulled her away as soon as I saw the thing. Since then he’s come at me twice. With no provocation whatsoever.”

  “Well, don’t start provokin’ him now. Snake gets agitated, he’ll strike at anything. We’ll be out just as soon as we can. You have yourself a good day now.”

  She waited. Watched talk shows and ate lunch. Stayed purposely away from both the front door and the lanai.

  They arrived about three.

  Two burly men in slacks and short-sleeved shirts stepping out of the van carrying two long wooden poles. One pole had a kind of wire shepherd’s crook at the end and the other pole a v-shaped wedge. She stood in the doorway with Katie and watched them. The men just nodded to her and went to work.

  Infuriatingly enough, the snake now lay passive on the grass while the crook slipped over its head just beneath the jawbone and the v-shaped wedge pinned it halfway down the length of its body. The man with the crook then lifted the head and grabbed it under the jaw first with one hand and then the other, dropping his pole to the grass. Its mouth opened wide and the snake writhed, hissing—but did not really seem to resist. They counted three and hefted him.

  “Big guy, ain’t he.”

  “Biggest banded I’ve seen.”

  They walked him across the street to the vacant lot opposite into a wide thick patch of scrub.

  Then they just dropped him, crossed the street, got the pole off the lawn and walked back to the van.

  She stood there. She couldn’t believe it.

  “Excuse me? Could you hold on a moment, please?”

  She walked outside. The bald one was climbing into the driver’s seat.

  “I don’t understand. Aren’t you . . . moving him? Aren’t you taking him somewhere?”

  The man smiled. “He’s took.”

  “That’s supposed to keep that thing away from here? That street?”

  “Not the street, ma’am. See, a snake’s territorial. That means wherever he sets down, if there’s enough food ’round to feed on, that’s where he’s gonna stay. Now, he’s gonna find lizards, mice, rabbits and whatever over there in that lot. And see, it leads back to a stream. When he’s finished with this patch he’ll just go downstream. You’ll never see that guy again. Believe me.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “ ’Scuse me?”

  She was angry and frustrated and she guessed it showed.

  “I said what if you’re wrong! What if the damned thing is back here in half an hour?”

  The men exchanged glances.

  Women. Don’t know shit, do they.

  “Then I guess you’ll want to call us up again, ma’am. Won’t happen though.”

  She wanted to smash furniture.

  She talked to Danny in Orlando that night and told him about the snake. She must have made it sound like quite an adventure because Danny expressed more than a little pique at missing it. By the time she finished talking to him she almost thought it was an adventure.

  Then she remembered the hissing, racing through the grass. Rising up to stare at her.

  As though it knew her.

  She fell asleep early and missed the evening news and weather report. It turned out that was the worst thing that happened to her all day.

  The following morning she cleaned house from top to bottom, easier to do with Danny gone, and by noon had worked herself up into a pretty good mood despite thinking occasionally of her lawyer and the money. She had considered how she might raise the cash for his retainer but had come to no conclusion. Her ex-husband had seen to it that her credit was shot so that a loan was out of the question. Her car was basically already a junker. And her parents barely had enough to get by on. Sell the condo? No. Everything in it? Dear God.

  Once in a while she’d go out and check the yard. And maybe those guys were right, she thought. Maybe they knew their business after all. Because the big banded watersnake had not appeared again.

  She showered and dressed. She had a lunch date for Suzie over at the Outback set for one-thirty.

  Suzie, too, had missed the weather the night before and when they came out of the restaurant around three—aware that it was raining but not for how long nor nearly how hard—the parking lot was ankle-deep in floodwater. Hurricane Andrew be damned. Here they are, standing in the midst of the worst damn rainstorm of the year.

  “You want to wait it out?”

  “I was cleaning. I left the second story windows open. I can’t believe it.”

  “Okay. But be careful driving, huh?”

  Ann nodded. Suzie lived nearby, while her house was over a mile away. Visibility was not good. Not even there within the parking lot. Sheets of rain driven by steady winds gave the grey sky a kind of thickness and a warm humid weight.

  They hugged and took off their shoes and ran for their respective cars. By the time Ann unlocked hers and slid inside her skirt and blouse were see-through and her hair was streaming water. She could taste her hair. She could see almost nothing.

  The windshield wipers helped. She started the car slowly forward, following Suzie out through the exit to the street where they parted in different directions.

  Happily there was almost no one on the usually congested four-lane street and cars were moving carefully and nobody was passing. The lane-lines had disappeared under water. She was moving through at least a foot and a half of it.

  Then midway home she had to pull over. The windshield wipers couldn’t begin to cope. The rain was pounding now—big drops sounding like hailstones. The wind gusted and rocked her car.

  She sat staring into the fogged-over rearview mirror hoping that some damn fool wouldn’t come up behind her and rear-end her. It was dangerous to pull over but she hadn’t had a choice.

  She looked down at herself wished she’d worn a bra. It was not just the nipples, not just the shape and outline of her breasts—you could see every mole and freckle. The same was true of the pale yellow skirt gone transparent across her thighs. She might as well be naked.

  So what? she thought. Who’s going to see you anyway? In this.

  The rain slowed down enough so that her wipers could at least begin to do their job. She moved on.

  The water in the street was moving fast, pouring toward some downhill destination.

  Curbs were gone, flooded over.

  Lawns were gone. Parking lots. Sidewalks.

  The openings to sewers formed miniature whirlpools in which garbage floated, in which paper shopping bags swirled and branches and bits of wood.

  In one of them she saw something that chilled her completely.

  A bro
ken cardboard box was turning slowly over the grate. The box was striped with black and brown and the stripes were moving.

  Snakes. Seeking higher ground and respite from swimming.

  She had heard about this happening during storms in Florida but she’d never actually seen it. Everything bites, said the man.

  This goddamn state.

  She turned the corner onto her street.

  And she might have guessed if she’d thought about it, might have expected it. She knew the street she’d turned off was slightly elevated over her own. She’d noted it dozens of times.

  But not now. Not this time. She was too intent on simply getting there, on getting through the storm. So that her car plunged into three and a half feet of water at the turnoff.

  She damn near panicked then. It took her totally by surprise and scared her so badly that she almost stopped. Which would no doubt have been a disaster. She knew she’d never have gotten it started again. Not in this much water. She kept going, hands clutching at the wheel, wishing she’d never dreamt of having lunch with Suzie.

  The water was halfway up the grille ahead of her, halfway up the door. The car actually felt lighter, as though the tires had much less purchase than before.

  Almost crawling, expecting the car to sputter and die any moment, she urged it on. Talking to the car. Begging to the car. Come on, honey. Her condo with the open second-story windows was only four blocks away.

  You can do it, honey. Sure you can.

  One block.

  Going slowly, the car actually rocking side to side in the current like a boat, her foot pressing gently on the accelerator.

  Two blocks.

  And her home just ahead of her now, she could see its white stucco facade turned dull grey in the rain, seeing the wide-open window to Danny’s bedroom like a dark accusing eye staring out at her, the front lawn drowned and flooded with water.

  And as she passed the third block, going by the overpass to the canal, she could see the roiling.

  At first it wasn’t clear just what it was. Something large and black moving in the water ahead like some sort of matter in another whirlpool over another sewer grate only bigger.

  Then she came closer and she almost stopped again because now she saw what it was clearly dead ahead but she didn’t stop, my God, she couldn’t stop, she inched along with her foot barely touching the accelerator, letting the idle do the work of moving the car forward like a faintly beating heart somewhere inside while she desperately tried to think how to avoid the writhing mass of bodies and what the hell to do.