How many were there? I counted once, then started over because I’d gotten busy looking at the drawings and lost track. On the third count I knew I was stalling. I didn’t want to do this, was why. The drawings meant something to me. I was proud of them. It wasn’t that they were that good, but I’d worked really hard on them, and they were mine.
Also, I didn’t want to sneak and lie my way out of this. I’d always been a ’fraidy-cat, but I was no coward. I would have to tell Law and Mom and Dad about the snake. It would probably get out and everyone would think I was a freak. I wouldn’t have a single friend the entire time I lived in Africa. I had to do it, though.
If I knew anything about facing fears, it was that waiting made it harder. I had to tell them right away, before I changed my mind. I looked out the window and saw the faintest red glow behind the city. It was nearly morning. I could take a taxi to the hospital. No, I didn’t have any money, and even if I did, I didn’t have any shoes. But I didn’t need money or shoes, I realized, when I glanced in the corner of the room and saw Matt’s disco skates.
What Law told me later was that he was on an old, beat-up bus heading deep into the jungle. He was the only American on the bus. The rest of the passengers were African. Men and women returning to their childhood homes, or visiting long-lost relatives, he guessed. He realized only after they rumbled to a stop that he himself had no friends deep in the jungle, and no place to stay. It would be dark soon. He looked around for his luggage, and couldn’t find any.
“You’ve got to get off,” one woman told him. She touched his arm gently and led him off.
“Where should I go?” he asked her, but she shook her head sadly and disappeared into the crowd.
He wandered through dirt streets, past buildings that all seemed to be shutting down for the night.
“You’d better get off the streets before dark,” one man told him, pulling the metal gate down over his own store, locking it tight, and then running down the street.
As he wound through a maze of streets and alleys, it got so dark Law didn’t even realize he was walking out of town until he ran into a knot of trees. He turned every which way, but couldn’t see the lights of the town. He must have wandered pretty deep into the jungle.
The evening gradually gave way to absolute darkness, but he moved on. He stumbled over roots and stones, brushed vines and cobwebs from his eyes. He was surrounded by strange and terrible noises as things moved in the night all around him. Sometimes he found enough of a clearing to see the faint crescent of the moon surrounded by a trillion stars. He felt almost like he could leap into the air and soar into the infinite night sky, but wasn’t sure he’d be able to come back down.
He heard something behind him—something breathing hard and moving heavily through the jungle. He tried to walk faster but got tangled in ropey vines and snagged on bushes. The thing closed in until he could almost feel its breath on the back of his neck. He turned, ready to fight, although he knew it was futile.
There was a sudden, blinding light. Law shut his eyes tight against it, feeling the beast, or whatever it was, clutching at his wrist. But that was all—no teeth or claws ripped into him. He opened his eyes and saw a hospital room.
He saw Mom and Dad, and a surprised nurse who had come to check on him. Then he saw me: breathless, sweating, with skinned elbows and knees, carrying gaudy roller skates in one hand and shaking his wrist with the other.
“Law,” I said, still trying to catch my breath.
He looked at me a long time, trying to find the strength to speak. “Oh, Linus,” he said at last. “It’s only you.”
He sat up and blinked at everything for a while, then lay back down. “This place smells funny,” he said.
“You’re at the hospital,” Dad explained. “Do you remember what happened?”
Law concentrated. “I had a party.”
Mom and Dad looked at each other.
“There was a snake,” Law continued. “In the living room. It bit me. That’s what happened.”
“It was a mamba,” Dad said. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“What’s this about a party?” Mom asked. “And how did a sn—”
“It was my snake,” I blurted out. “I was keeping it in my laundry hamper but it got out.”
“What?” Mom stared at me with wide eyes. It was worse than her being mad. She just looked confused and sad.
“Since when did you play with snakes?” Dad asked. “I thought you were smarter than that.”
“I guess I just do dumb stuff sometimes,” I said.
“Well, this might be beyond dumb,” Dad said. “It was thoughtless. You didn’t think for one second about your brother, or me or your mother, or even yourself.” He shook his head. “You might as well bring home a live hand grenade.”
“It’s all right,” said Law.
“No it’s not,” Dad shouted. “You nearly died.”
“I didn’t, though,” Law said. “It’s all right, Linus.”
That was what I was hoping he’d say, but I still didn’t feel better.
“I’ve done lots of dumb stuff in my life,” he said. “You guys don’t know half the stuff I’ve done.”
Mom reached out and touched Dad’s arm, and he calmed down a little but he wouldn’t look at me.
“If it makes you feel better, I killed the snake,” I told Law.
He looked at the ceiling a moment, then closed his eyes. “Nah, it doesn’t,” he said.
The drive home felt long, and Dad wouldn’t say anything. I wished he would just talk about boring stuff, like Buckeye football or how he needed to fix a wobbly knob on the closet door—the things he used to talk about when we drove around in Dayton. I thought about it for a few minutes, and something occurred to me.
“It was the iron,” I said.
“What?”
“Mom was going to that gabfest and she ironed her skirt, so it was still hot.”
“So you finally figured that out, huh?”
“You gave me an ironed cheese sandwich,” I said, grinning at the thought.
“It was more an old bachelor trick than an old army trick,” he admitted. “I lived in this apartment for a while with no stove. No microwaves back then, either. All I had was an iron and a toaster, and then the toaster broke.”
“What other food can you iron?”
“Oh, pizza. Spaghetti. Soup.”
I snickered.
“You can make anything with an iron,” he said as we pulled up to our building. “You’re still in a world of trouble, you know.”
“I know.” What would they do to me? Ground me for a hundred years? It didn’t seem like enough for almost killing somebody.
As soon as we got upstairs, I staggered back to my room to sleep. I had a brief vision through the snake’s eyes like I had before. It was a muddle of shadows and cold gray stone, and only lasted a moment.
* * *
Matt woke me up, banging on the front door and hollering my name. I looked at the clock and saw it was one o’clock. I wondered for a second why Matt was waking me up in the middle of the night, until I realized there was sunlight pouring into the room. I got up and went to answer the door.
“I brought you your stuff,” he said, giving it to me. “I heard about Law waking up, too. Your dad called my dad.”
“Did you hear about me and the snake?”
“Yeah, I heard.” He glanced at the stuff in my hand. “I looked at your notebook.”
“Oh.”
“Well, you left it lying out. I saw a lot of snake pictures, and they looked like they’d been drawn from real life.” He let out a gasp of air, like he hadn’t properly breathed since he’d gotten upstairs. “You probably didn’t mean to hurt anyone?”
“No.”
“And you’re not training an army of snakes to do your evil bidding?”
I laughed. “No.”
“Drat.” He snapped his fingers. “I was hoping I could call on them sometimes.” He
glanced back at the stairs. “Guess I’ll go home.”
“Thanks for bringing my stuff,” I told him.
“No problem.” He headed for the steps but turned back. “Was that the cool thing you were going to show me?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. I’d tricked myself into thinking the snake wasn’t dangerous to people, or that I could control it, or something. I’d done exactly what Sekou told me not to do, which was forget it was a wild animal.
“I’m glad you didn’t, but it’s really cool that you thought about it.” He bit his lower lip. “Hey, I have another idea about how to help that guy find a job. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Okay, cool.”
I went back to my bedroom, tossed the bag on the floor, and lay on the bed, paging through my sketches. I’d gotten better at drawing, I realized. At least, I’d gotten better at drawing snakes. It was hard to believe the ones toward the back were by the same guy who drew the twisty nylon stockings at the front. If I kept practicing … Except there wouldn’t be any more snakes, I remembered. The mamba was gone. The new Linus might be gone, too, but right now I didn’t care about that. I just missed my snake.
I thought about Law lunging at me, the snake bolting out from under the couch and striking. It thought Law was attacking me. It was protecting me, and I’d repaid it by killing it.
I felt something inside of me burst, and cried until I ached.
Mom finally came home without Dad or Law.
“Your father made me come home,” she explained, going straight to the living room and collapsing into a chair. Her hair was stringy and gross, and her face seemed to have a lot more lines than it had a few days before. “They’ll both be home tomorrow.”
“What time tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “Tomorrow morning, maybe. Can you make dinner? I’m exhausted.”
I heated up a can of bean-and-bacon soup for dinner, mixing in ketchup and mustard because I like it that way. When the soup was hot, I grilled two cheese sandwiches, using the stove instead of a hot iron.
“Oh,” Mom said when I brought it to her on a tray and set it on the coffee table. “What service!” She plunged a corner of the sandwich into the soup. “Puke and bees, huh?”
“Sort of.”
She fell asleep on the couch, still holding a wedge of dripping sandwich. I took it out of her hand and set it down, found a blanket for her, and went to bed myself. It was still light out.
CHAPTER 21
I felt like I could still see through the snake’s eyes, just an occasional glimpse of something gray and stony, but the visions were blurry. I slept in fits, and when dawn came, I was already wide awake.
Mom had gone to her bedroom, but her half-eaten dinner was still on the coffee table. I was taking the tray to the kitchen when I heard the front door open. Law was home! For a second I felt like I did when it was my birthday and Mom and Dad brought in the presents.
“Good morning, little boss man.”
It was just Artie. Of course—it was Monday. He didn’t know that Law was in the hospital, and he didn’t know it was my fault. I didn’t want to tell the whole story, so I pretended everything was normal. Except for the fact that I’d kicked him out on Friday.
“Artie, I’m really sorry about what I did.”
“You were angry,” he said, drawing out the word and widening his eyes to express how angry I must have been. “It was for your friend, though,” he added. “You should not feel sorry if you were angry for a friend.”
He put down his bag and took the tray from me.
When he reached under the sink to get the trash, a roach scurried out. He took a few quick steps after it, trying to stamp on it.
“The lizards should get it,” I said.
“Little boss man, I don’t see the lizards for a long time,” he said. “They all ran away. I don’t know why.” I saw a little mist in his eyes.
“That’s too bad,” I said, realizing that my mamba had either eaten his lizards or scared them off. I wondered if Artie had a kaseng with those little bug-eyed things? If so, he got the short end of the stick, as far as kasengs go.
Well, I didn’t have a kaseng at all anymore, I remembered … unless the snake was still, somehow, alive? Those little glimpses through the snake’s eyes the night before—they felt real. But if they were, the snake was barely alive, not able to move, its vision fading.
I heard the shower come on down the hall.
“I have to go do something,” I told Artie. I knew I’d better go before Mom was out of the shower, or there was no way she’d let me leave. “Tell Mom I’ll be right back.”
I had trouble picking out Gambeh’s street. It felt like a long time since I’d walked home with him, and I hadn’t really seen it then because it was dark. I did remember a couple of tall, skinny houses that looked like they were about to fall on each other. I went down that side street and found the outside steps leading up to an apartment over a store—that was where his mom had come out and scolded him for bothering me. I had hardly put one foot on the steps before the same woman came out. “Do you want Gambeh? Is he in trouble?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” I said. I almost never called women “ma’am,” but she scared me into it. “I just want to talk to him.”
“What do you want to talk about, oh?”
“A job?”
She nodded and went in. I heard her hollering for Gambeh, and a moment later he tore down the steps in bare feet.
“Hello, Linus!”
“Hey, I have a job for you. I can give you a dollar if you look for something, and five if you find it.”
“Wow.” His eyes widened at the mention of money. “What am I looking for?”
“A snake,” I told him. “It’s a mamba. Do you know what they look like?”
“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I won’t find a mamba for one hundred dollars. That’s a killer snake.”
“I know, but the snake I’m talking about is hurt really bad. It might even be dead. It won’t be able to hurt you if you don’t get close to it. You don’t have to touch it. Just tell me where it is. I’d look for it myself, but I’ve got to stay at home right now.”
“Where do I look?”
“It can’t be far from my building,” I told him. “It bit my brother and I threw it from the balcony.”
“It’s five dollars if I see it?”
“Yes. But don’t go too close to it. Just tell me where it is.”
“Don’t worry,” he said with a shudder. “I won’t get close to a mamba even if it’s dead.”
I hurried home, but it was too late. Mom was dressed and drinking a cup of coffee.
“Were you off finding a crocodile, or maybe a man-eating lion?” she asked me.
“I just had to tell Gambeh something,” I told her. She had a soft spot for those kids. I figured it would get me off the hook, but I was wrong.
“You’re grounded forever,” she said. “At least until school starts. And that includes”—she waved her hand toward the family room—“that game.”
“No Atari,” I agreed. That was easy.
“No Matt, and whatever that game is you play with him, either,” she said. “And no comic books. If you’re going to read something, it’s going to be something about how dangerous snakes are.”
“I actually already read a book like that.”
“And no television,” she went on, ignoring me. “No orange Fanta, no …” She ran out of things to deny me. “Just no,” she finished. “If it sounds like fun to you, the answer is no.”
So I drew for a while, trying not to enjoy myself. Artie saw the drawing and laughed.
“I say, oh, that’s very good.”
“Thanks.” I’d drawn a picture of Law, looking coolly out from under his bangs, kind of like he might look if he was on an album cover. I picked it up and blew off the eraser crumbs.
“I wonder if you can draw me?” Artie asked.
“Of cou
rse,” I said. I pictured him in my head with a little smile and one of those little lizards perched on his shoulder.
Mom and Dad and Law still weren’t back by lunchtime. Artie made me a bologna sandwich, just the way I liked them. I ate it without enjoying it very much, then took a nap on the couch. I felt connected to the snake again. It was lying on a hot surface, baked by the sun. All it could see was sea and sky. I hoped Gambeh would find it soon. I’d go help it no matter what Mom and Dad piled on top of the punishment I was already in for.
I snapped out of it when the door opened. Law came in with his arm around Dad, looking like an injured athlete hobbling off the field. He nodded at me, and they both headed straight back for his room. Mom walked in a moment later carrying a bag, dropping it in the hall.
“Artie?” she said. He followed her down to Law’s room. Nobody asked me to come along, and I felt left out.
They were still back there when I heard a quiet knock on the door. I probably wouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t been sitting perfectly still, trying to hear what was going on down the hall.
It was Eileen. “Hi,” she said in a small voice. “I guess Law is home?”
“How’d you know?”
She gulped. “I was waiting outside,” she admitted.
“He’s back there with our mom and dad,” I told her, letting her in.
“Do you think he wants to see me?” she asked quietly.
“Of course he does. You’re his girlfriend.”
“You don’t know.” She looked down at her hands, fiddling with her fingers.
“Don’t know what?”
“Law broke up with me a day before the party.”
“Really?” Law hadn’t told me, but he didn’t tell me much. “Why? I thought he really liked you.”
“So did I,” she said sadly. “But he said he didn’t want to get serious.”
That did sound like Law. Maybe now that he was a big stud, he figured he’d date all the cute girls, one at a time.
I went into the living room to sit down, but Eileen paced, pausing to smile at a framed photo of our family from two years ago, all of us in matching Christmas sweaters.
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