“We don’t have rattlers around here,” I whisper, my voice thin and far away like it belongs to somebody else. “See those yellow stripes? It’s a garter snake.”
“You got to be crazy to go for one that big.” Philippe turns and heads for the stairs.
“Get back here,” I croak. I try to muffle my fury so I don’t scare the snake, but this isn’t easy to do. “Here, take the flashlight and hold it up.”
“But, Rosie, that snake’s gigantic.”
I could jump down his throat. I would do anything for my dog, even this.
Quietly I raise the snake stick, shaped like a perfect Y, over my head. Don’t make a sound, slowly, slowly, slowly, I tell myself, and I thrust the stick, fast as a bullet, aiming so I can trap the snake just behind the head.
This snake must not have seen anybody in a dozen years—or however long snakes live—because it doesn’t startle and it doesn’t move until my stick pins it to the floor. Then it whips its thick tail back and forth—back and forth—lashing against my shins, thrashing against Philippe’s coat.
“Get it, get it, get it!” Philippe screams.
“Quick, the suitcase!” My voice is dry as toast.
Philippe waves the light. “It’s over there.” The snake twists under the stick, and the whole length of it writhes out from behind the oil burner.
“Over there?” I look behind me.
Philippe points to the stairs.
“Well, go get it.” I am at the boiling point as Philippe goes back for the suitcase, tripping a little over his coat. I sink to my knees to try to keep from losing my balance.
“Here,” says Philippe after about a million years, and he holds the suitcase out, only of course I can’t take it because my hands are tight on the snake stick.
“Open it, open it, open it.” I hold tighter as the snake writhes.
I think about this for a long time later—how the sound of the latches snapping open was very loud and why I didn’t brace myself just like you do in a horror movie when you know the monster is under the bed. But I don’t brace myself, and when Philippe unsnaps the latches, one after the other, I jump and loosen my grip on the stick just the tiniest bit and the snake thrashes away in one powerful thrust and disappears into a space in the stone foundation.
At first all I can do is kneel in the dirt. Then I stand, breathless with fury. Something twists inside me. I whip the flashlight away from Philippe.
“You are the worst friend ever!” I scream, not caring if anyone can hear us all the way down here. “You are no help at all, so you might as well just go home.”
Philippe sinks into his coat a little more and watches his black high-tops. His chest rises and falls. Then, without looking at me, he turns and plods along the dirt floor until he reaches the steps.
“And, Rosie?” he calls, looking back at me. “I’ve heard of dumb ideas before, but this is the dumbest plan ever in the history of the universe.”
Then he feels his way up to the top, opens the door, and slams it behind him. The padlock thumps, and I am left in the darkness alone.
Fine.
I will catch a snake myself, I will take it out to Swanson’s by myself, then I will get my dog, all by myself.
I pull my shirt over my nose and remind myself that plans that are a little fuzzy around the edges work best when you do them all by yourself so you can improvise.
My breath is slow, steady, hot. I pick up the suitcase with one hand and the snake stick and flashlight with the other and begin feeling my way around the cellar walls.
Harry told me about the crawl space that runs under the barbershop, and also about how snakes like it there because it is cramped and cool and damp. Folks kept baskets of apples and squash and potatoes in there before anybody had refrigerators—that’s how old this building is.
My flashlight blinks off and I whack it back on. The ceiling in the crawl space is waist-high and cobwebs make long sweeping curtains. I am not this brave.
I hear my mum say I will never amount to anything. Grizzlies roar behind my ears. My head throbs.
I push the cobwebs aside and pull myself through the narrow space, navigating with my hands, pressing forward, feeling something lumpy poke at my hip.
The musky smell is strong. Harry says there are snakes in here, but where? I shine my flashlight into the dark space. There is a pile of stones on the far side and, thanks to a chink in the foundation, a little light. My shoulders ache from crouching.
I begin pulling away the stones, shining my light into the crevices. After a few minutes I give up. There is no snake.
Slowly, inch by inch, I crawl around the floor, feeling into every corner, touching cobwebs, running my fingers along damp foundation stone. The scabs on my knee open and I should probably stop and clean the dirt out, but I don’t. The damp air fills my chest like cotton. Cobwebs cling to my cheek.
Finally, behind an old oilcan on a little ledge I see a snake no bigger than a ruler. I’m not sure if it is big enough to scare anyone, but at least it will fit in the suitcase.
I’m in one of those slow-motion movies, reaching behind me, picking up the snake stick, but there’s not enough room over my head to get it to swing right.
My fingers yell at me not to even think about trying this without the snake stick—these snakes may not be poisonous, but maybe they bite.
And my toes snap: How will you explain a snakebite to Harry?
I tell all the parts of me to shut up, and I raise my arms and silently take three tiny steps forward.
When I pounce, I am catlike, and I land in the tight space with my fingers outstretched, my nails out, and wrap my fingers around the slender body just behind the head and clamp hard, pinning the snake to the ledge. It thrashes and whips its thin tail around, exposing its cream-colored belly, which oddly reminds me of Philippe’s hair. I reach down and grab it behind the neck. It opens its mouth. Its eyes glint.
My shoulders shudder. My breath is lost somewhere in my belly. I concentrate on holding the snake behind the head as tightly as I can. I remind myself that I have a very good plan, that distraction is the thing, and that if I can scare Swanson enough, she might not notice if I run off with my dog.
Forcing myself not to scream, I lift the snake and drop it into the suitcase, snap the lid shut, and sit back on my heels, panting.
I did it.
Slowly the roaring in my ears stills, the grizzlies drift off, and when I find my breath again, I begin the long crawl out of the cramped dark space, dragging the suitcase behind me, feeling the lumpiness sliding back and forth inside.
I beam.
I am magnificent.
I tell Harry he is dumber than a bag of hammers. This doesn’t go over well.
“Now!” he bellows.
I wrap myself deep in my army blanket, tighter this time so there’s no way he can unroll me.
“I am not going to the doctor. You can’t make me.”
He stomps over, grabs the blanket. I roll tighter, pressing the edges together like pie dough. My bed braces itself. My toes wince.
“I can’t keep enough ice in the house for all those headaches. Now get up.”
Harry pulls. I grab the bedpost. He yanks so hard the room spins and I flip, but this time he catches me before I hit the floor.
“Now!” he growls into my ear.
—
The doctor’s office is on the first floor of one of the old houses on Main Street. It has a little sign on a post that says DR. MONROE WALTERS. It swings when you open the gate. Inside, everything smells like Pine-Sol. Aluminum blinds clack when the breeze picks up.
I yank my sleeve from Harry’s grasp. “You don’t have to pull me.” When my papa brought me here, we’d do the Highlights puzzles together so I wouldn’t worry about the shots. Now I push those memories away and consider how long a snake can survive in a suitcase.
When the nurse calls me in, Harry stands up. “I don’t need you to come,” I snap.
“Ri
ght,” he mutters, his ears turning red.
—
The nurse hands me a paper johnny—“open in the back”—and she makes me sit on the chair and wait. The clock ticks, my johnny rustles, my head throbs. The sun is out—it would be a perfect day to get my Gloaty Gus.
Hornets whirl.
The nurse comes back and makes me stand on the scale. I hold the back of my johnny tight while she pushes the weight bar further to the left. “Can that really be all you weigh?”
I snap, “You would, too, if you had to eat sardine sandwiches all the time.” The nurse giggles nervously, unsure if I am telling the truth. She checks my eyes to see if I am lying, then she gathers up her thermometer and blood pressure cuff and leaves. I snort, pleased that I have put Harry in the worst light possible.
When the doctor comes in, his hands are very cold and smell of antiseptic. He checks my throat, feels both sides of my neck, and looks in my ears long enough to see Tibet. “Tell me about the headaches,” he says, shining his flashlight in my eyes.
I shrug.
“Show me where it hurts.”
I point to my head.
“Yes, I understand that. In one spot or all over?”
I make my hand sweep across my entire head, back and forth, up and down.
“I see—that bad, huh? When do you get them? In school?”
I nod—especially in school, but now all the time.
The doctor sits on his little rolling stool and points to the eye chart on the wall. “Read the third row.”
I read it perfectly. He presses his thumbs into the skin on both sides of my nose, deep against my sinuses. “Does that hurt?”
I shake my head. He types something in his computer. “We’ll get you a blood test, and some more tests after that if we need to. But I have a question I want to ask you.”
I hold my breath. The clock ticks.
“Headaches can originate for all sorts of reasons, and stress can be a factor. Your father’s stroke and your feelings about that could certainly contribute.”
I glare at him while tigers shred my heart.
“I don’t need a blood test.” I pull the johnny so hard it rips and I have to hold it together until he finally leaves.
I just need my dog. Why doesn’t anyone understand that?
The doctor is talking to Harry when I walk past his office, and Harry answers, “Well, I had planned on being retired”—mumble—“and playing poker”—mumble mumble—“if you want to know the truth.”
I creep back. The doctor’s voice is thinner than Harry’s gruff Marines growl. “Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you want, you know that as well as I do, Harry.” Mumble mumble. “It may be too much for you.”
My grandpa clears his throat. Mumble mumble mumble. “The ice cubes?”
“They do absolutely nothing.”
“That’s what I told her,” Harry says.
I scoff.
“Now, visiting her father, that might help.” Mumble. “She’s stuffing all those emotions inside. But I will order the other tests, just to be sure.”
Harry snorts. Mumble mumble. “We don’t need more tests. In my day we filled a hot water bottle and went to bed.”
Mumble mumble mumble. Then: “You need to get her mother back in the picture, anyway. You’re not a young man—too old to be raising a young girl like that.”
My breath bursts inside me and I let the door slam behind me. I live inside one of those snow globe things and everybody is always shaking it up.
It rains. For three days it rains so hard that water pours over our streets, pushing leaves and branches and grit along the roads, clogging culverts and turning Main Street into a choppy ocean.
Water rises to the top step at the barbershop and Eddie piles sandbags out front. Trash cans float and empty soda cans bounce along new rivers that rush down our sidewalks. Potholes split the cement outside the donut shop, and the noon train makes a wet slapping sound as it sloshes into town.
You can’t ride the Blackbird through raging rivers, so I have to wait days to get my Gloaty Gus. This makes my head throb even more and I jump down Harry’s throat when he comes home with half a dozen new tins of sardines and a box of saltines.
I punch airholes in the little suitcase so the snake can breathe and hide it in the back of my closet, where Harry never goes. My World Book is no help on snake care, so I sprinkle drops of water and catch a spider and a couple of ants in the pantry and slide them inside.
I hear my dog whining in the middle of the night—a whisper on the wind—and my heart cramps from all the wanting. In the morning my chest muscles ache. I twirl my spoon through my cornflakes, not liking them one bit more than I did when I moved in with Harry. I let them float until they are too soggy to eat and throw them in the trash.
I go back to bed and pull the army blanket to my nose. Elephants stomp behind my eyes. The rain thrums against my window and looking out is like opening your eyes at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Harry walks through the soaking rain to check on me. He doesn’t bring up Mr. Peterson or the work I’m supposed to do in the notebook. Instead, he carries our little television into my room, and while he is plugging it in, he says, “You should come with me to visit your father. The doctor says it might help.”
I dive deeper under my army blanket. The hornets whir.
“Acting like it never happened is making it worse, Rosie.”
“Go away.” When my grandpa leaves for the donut shop, I wet one of our thin towels with ice water and cover my eyes.
Immediately the hornets hum themselves to sleep, which shows how little Harry really knows about anything.
“I love fishing. I never went before, but I know I just love it.”
Cynthia hops a little when she bounces down the steps and her voice rises at the end of her sentences: “I’m as happy as a flower bursting in the sun about going fishing. How about you, Rosie? Do you like fishing as much as me?”
I snort—no, I do not. Now that the rain has slowed to a drizzle, I am in an awful rush to get my dog, but Harry is making me carry the tackle box and the rod he keeps in his closet. “That boy needs to fish.”
I can’t help the screech that flies from my mouth. I don’t care if he needs to learn to fish or not. I am not even talking to Philippe, who right now is huddled in his coat and won’t look at me as we march outside. He is still mad about the cellar. My toes sizzle every time I even think about him saying the snake plan is the dumbest idea in the history of the world.
Plus, Philippe has been playing Monopoly with Cynthia—I know, because Mrs. Salvatore called me a lazybones and asked why I wasn’t playing with them. Fine, let him be friends with Cynthia—who cares?—but doesn’t he notice the nest in her hair and all the scratching?
Harry hands Philippe a pair of binoculars and Cynthia an umbrella that used to be my papa’s. She opens it and Philippe walks under.
“Don’t you know she cheats at everything?” I hiss, making my voice snap like a rubber band.
“Not as much as you do, Rosie.”
I kick at Philippe, but he moves closer to Cynthia. I snort and Harry snarls what am I being so snarky about?
Our first stop is the toolshed so Harry can get the shovel and we can dig worms. With all the rain, I haven’t had a chance to hide my bike after I got it out of the dumpster.
As soon as Harry gets the door open, Cynthia bursts: “Wow, it’s your bike! Did they catch you, Rosie? My mama’s old boyfriend got caught stealing from a dumpster and he had to go to pay a ticket and maybe even go to jail for a while.”
Harry glances quickly over to me, then steps closer to the Blackbird, which I left leaning against his old ladder. He coughs a few times to get the frog out of his throat, then runs his hands over the crunched metal basket and squeezes until his knuckles go white. I hold my breath. Cynthia tries to climb on. Tarantulas march behind my ears.
“Get off,” Harry barks at her, and he throws me the shovel. W
hen I just stand there waiting for him to say something about how my bike is back home, abracadabra (but crunched to smithereens from getting thrown in the dumpster), he changes the subject and growls, “Hurry up, we need two dozen worms and I don’t have all day.”
He pokes the kickstand with the toe of his boot. When it slips down, he wheels the Blackbird outside while I try not to explode. He grunts as he straightens the seat. “Come hold the handlebars,” he tells Philippe.
I push hard on the shovel, and the ground is so soft from the rain my foot sinks to Australia. The dirt is rich and brown out by the toolshed and a half-dozen worms come up wriggling in the first load.
“I can put the worms on,” says Cynthia, leaving the umbrella and skipping over to me. “I’ve never done it before but I watched my mama’s old boyfriend do it once and he did it really slow so I could see how he stuck the hook in so I know I can do it and I don’t get sad about things like that, I just close my eyes, so can I do it?” she says, turning back to Harry. “I always wanted to catch a fish my whole life.”
My grandpa bends the seat straight. “You can if you shut your trap. You talk too much.”
Cynthia is quiet for a minute—and it is a peaceful relief, I can tell you that, but you can see her eyes popping from the strain and you get the feeling you know what Noah felt when he wanted to hold back the flood.
“Hold it straight,” Harry tells Philippe, and then he goes inside the shed and comes out with his old toolbox, gets down on his knees—you can hear his bones groan—and tightens the wheel.
He must have practiced when this was my papa’s bike because Harry doesn’t strip threads the way I do. He tightens the kickstand and then the seat.
He tries to straighten the crunched fender, but Philippe isn’t holding tight enough and the bike slips and Harry jabs his knee. “How many times do I need to tell you to take that coat off,” he growls. “It’s ridiculous.”
Way deep inside me my heart pays no attention at all to how mad I am at Philippe, and it swells with a thousand oh nos. I hold my breath as Philippe locks down: he stiffens, his face goes pale as a bedsheet, and his jaws clamp shut.
Chasing Augustus Page 10