“Tell me about the snakes again,” Jesse said. He reached for a sour grape. “About that time you went on maneuver.”
“Maybe later.” Mr. Redding finished his tea and set his glass next to Jesse’s, which was empty, too. “Maybe another time when you come.” He didn’t refill the glasses, and Jesse knew it was time.
Mr. Redding waved, but he didn’t get up. He rocked in his redwood chair. “Come see me if you need me,” he said. “It don’t matter if it’s late.”
His mother had started taking classes at H&R Block. She went on Wednesday afternoons, and she said it was their secret. They’d go for ice cream once she had her certification. She’d be done in September and they’d go on the West Side to the creamery and eat at the sundae buffet, but he needed to keep quiet in the meantime. He had to take care of himself those four hours every week. She was at Safeway if anybody asked. Safeway and the pharmacy and she’d be home any minute. She said it, and she grabbed his hand, but he already knew. It was a secret like his teardrop, and they’d go driving when she was done. They’d leave Colorado and go to Arizona and maybe farther west. She’d have marketable skills. That’s what she called it. She’d find a job from nine to five and help folks with their taxes.
They’d make stops along the way. She’d show him the Four Corners where the Indians had built houses in the cliffs. They’d go sledding in the sand dunes. And there was a forest of petrified trees and petrified forest rangers guarded them, and she laughed when she said it. She laughed, and her eyes were like amber. They were flecked with orange and brown, and she held his wrist so tight it started hurting, but he didn’t pull away.
It was the hottest August on record. That’s what the newscasters said. People stayed inside and slept down in their basements, but Jesse didn’t mind. He carried the stone when he rode his bike and when he worked in the field. It was like one of those crystal balls the fortunetellers use. He looked into it, and the colors were always different. He saw his mom and she was taking notes in class and he saw her when she cried. She’d parked someplace he didn’t know, and she was slumped behind the wheel. The rock was older than his mom and Mr. Redding or anybody else alive in the world. Old as the pyramids or those big redwoods on the coast.
The snakes they like the gentle light. At night they come out from their holes. Mr. Redding rocked in his chair. His hands were folded across his belly, and he was sweating even in the shade. It was an August day like this one, maybe even hotter. A hundred twenty men somewhere east of Pueblo. He was just an E-3 back then and skinny as a noodle. They slipped sometimes because their boots had leather soles. Nothing like those sneaker boots the army uses now. They slipped with all their gear and it was stranger than Mars how the rocks were shaped and the dirt was red and gray. There were coral snakes and rattlers out there. He could see their tracks where the sand was soft.
Jesse reached into the grape bowl. He used Mr. Redding’s Swiss Army knife to cut himself a cluster. Mr. Redding was in a chatting mood. He was telling all his stories.
It was just before sunset, and he’d gone behind the tents so he could take a pee. That’s when he saw it coiled beside his boot. So close he could see the horns above its eyes and how it moved its rattle. He stood there with his pants open, and the snake reared back its head. “I never saw a thing like that,” Mr. Redding said. “How it moved like a single muscle.” He shook his head like the snake was a beautiful thing. He’d be dead as Abe Lincoln if it got him. He’d die alone behind those army tents. But something happened in that moment. Something kept the snake from biting or coming any closer. It moved away instead. It unspooled itself and slid across the sand. It went away like water, Mr. Redding said. Like one of them belly dancers.
It was two days before he could piss again. His insides were clenched up tight. And still he was grateful afterward. Even the army rations tasted good. “Look how strange the world is,” Mr. Redding said. “You don’t know when God’s grace will touch you. It can raise us if we let it.” And Jesse nodded, but he didn’t agree. It wasn’t grace that saved Mr. Redding. No, the snake was just being a snake, and maybe it found something better.
Mr. Redding looked tired when Jesse left. He slumped a little in his chair. He pointed to the Swiss Army knife on the redwood table. “That one there has got your name on it,” he said. “The day you turn twelve it’s yours.”
Don’t look at Russell or his fat white hands. Don’t look at the marks on his cheeks. Those aren’t pimples, he always said. It’s the caffeine that makes me flare. Build a fort and hide inside. Use your desk chair and your table. Use milk crates if you have them and extra blankets from the closet. You’ll come out when he’s gone. When you hear the truck door close and the music from his radio. On Wednesdays when she’s at class you’ll stay outside even if it storms. Droplets big as quarters and they’ll puddle up your field. The wind will blow, and you’ll dig through that mud and work it with your fingers.
The tomatoes in Mr. Redding’s front yard were parched. Their leaves had started to curl, and Jesse took the watering can and emptied it into their pots. Mr. Redding wasn’t out back. He hadn’t been out there all day. Flies were gathering around the old man’s tea. They were pulled in by the sugar, and one was floating inside the glass.
Jesse knocked on the patio door. “Mr. Redding,” he said. “I found a piece of mica.” He slid the door partway open. “You won’t believe it when you see.”
The house was dark the way Mr. Redding liked it. The window units were all running. It was cool inside, and when Jesse stepped into the kitchen he saw the old man’s foot. It was sticking out from the bedroom doorway. It was blue and swollen like a water balloon, with the skin stretched tight across his ankle. Jesse came a little closer. The old man had fallen just inside his bedroom. He lay on his back like somebody taking a nap. His eyes were open and covered with strange brown spots, and all around him were Tylenol pills from the bottle in his hand.
His mom said sometimes our brains get hurt. Sometimes we bleed too much up there, and other times our blood gets clotted and can’t make its way through. That’s what happened to Mr. Redding. His brain got starved of blood, and now he’s gone to a better place. He’s gone to be with Mrs. Redding and they’re back together the way they used to be. She stroked Jesse’s hair when she talked. “Sometimes people go away,” she said. “They leave the earth and go to heaven, and you keep them in your heart.” Jesse stopped listening when she started talking about heaven. He went inside his room.
Mr. Redding’s three nieces came from Durango and started packing up his house. They had the U-Hauls parked, and their husbands moved the boxes. They didn’t water the tomato plants or pick the last grape clusters. Jesse went over there when they left for the day. He watered the lawn with the hose. Mr. Redding wouldn’t be happy with the way things were going. His lawn was already brown. Jesse watered the garden the way Mr. Redding would want, and he weeded between the grapevines. The birds still came even after the feeders were empty. The blue jays and the finches and all the roses dropped their petals, and his mother was wrong, he knew it for certain. All her talk about heaven like it was someplace far away. Heaven was here on this crooked patio where Mr. Redding used to sit.
Three rose quartz crystals and a milky chunk of chalcedony. Mica that splintered if he wasn’t careful. A piece of agate with black squiggles that looked like a ponderosa pine. A bucket of green and amber glass that was smooth around the edges, but no arrowhead, not a single one, and no other Apache tears. He sorted the crystals and kept them in egg cartons on his desk, and each new thing he found was a reminder that summer was almost over. After Labor Day he’d be back in school.
There wasn’t any reason why Russell came home early that last Wednesday before the holiday weekend. His truck came up the street, and it wasn’t even half past four. Jesse was digging. He was filling up his buckets. The driveway was empty because his mother was still at class, and Russell came out with his lunchbox and his big metal thermos. He pounded
on the door. Jesse set his shovel down. He crouched between the holes. The street was empty except for two of Mr. Redding’s nieces, who were sitting in the shade. They fanned themselves with magazines and drank tea from the old man’s pitcher. Russell pounded with one hand and fished in his pocket with the other, and his face was splotchy from the coffee he drank. Jesse could see the marks all the way across the field.
He came running before Russell called. “Where is she?” Russell was asking, and his cheeks were redder than they’d ever been before. Jesse opened the door for him, and Russell went straight into the kitchen. He leaned against the sink and pushed the curtains back.
“She’s at Target,” Jesse said.
Russell turned around. “Why didn’t you go with?”
“I dunno.” Jesse stood there, and he held out both his hands. “I didn’t feel like it today. My throat’s a little sore.”
“Call her.” Russell pointed to the phone. Water was dripping from the faucet, and it was the only sound inside the house.
“I think she went to Safeway, too,” Jesse said. All his mother’s warnings and he didn’t remember what he was supposed to say. “She went to Safeway and the pharmacy to see about my throat.”
Russell took the phone from the cradle. He set the phone to speaker and gave it to Jesse, who dialed her cell phone number.
“Sweetie,” his mother said. She was talking in a low voice, just a little louder than a whisper. “Is everything okay? You’re not supposed to call when I’m in class. My teacher doesn’t like it.”
“Things are fine,” Russell told her. “They couldn’t be any better.”
You need to know the difference between bad snakes and the good ones. Sometimes they look alike. You have to watch for the little things. You need to pay attention. The bad ones have flat heads usually, and their skin is different colors, except for water snakes but they don’t matter because they don’t live up in the mountains. Mr. Redding always said Colorado was better than Florida and those other states down South. Snake pits, he called them, but the barbecue was good. Mr. Redding knew the snake rhymes, and he taught Jesse how they went. Red touches yellow it can kill a fellow, but red touches black is okay for Jack. The old man’s voice was lousy from the cigarettes he used to smoke, but he sang anyway and Jesse sang along. They ate sour grapes together and rocked in the redwood chairs, and the air was soft the way it sometimes gets. Jesse was sorry when the sun went down and when his mother called. Come see me tomorrow, the old man said. Come show me what you find.
The last time he heard her voice she was working in the kitchen. “What’s wrong with my taking a class,” she was asking, but it didn’t sound like a question. “I was only trying to help.” She talked about how sales were slow at the dealership, and she’d make $7.50 an hour doing taxes plus a ten percent commission on every return. That was good money. Better than she could hope for, and she’d wait until Jesse was back in school and she wouldn’t neglect the house. The faucet started and stopped again. She started the dishwasher and closed the cabinet doors too hard. Jesse heard it all from his room.
“Maybe I should leave,” she was saying. “I should have done it years ago,” and Jesse wanted her to stop. He set his hands together the way the nuns had taught him at the Divine Redeemer school. He was only six then. It was a long long time ago, before his daddy left and his mother met Russell and they moved into this house. He prayed, and there was a crashing in the hallway and the sound of breaking dishes. There were thumps against the wall like somebody was knocking.
She’d come for him any second now. They’d walk together out the door and drive into the desert. They’d take the highways where the prospectors went a hundred years before. Where the Indians fought their battles and left behind their tears. She’d talked about how the dunes looked just as the sun goes down. The sand is soft as powder, she said. It changes with the wind. Her eyes were gold and she reached for him, and sometimes she held his wrist so tight her fingertips left bruises.
There wasn’t any lock on Jesse’s door. He set a chair beneath the knob how they did it in the movies. He tilted it until the fit was tight, and then he turned off all his lights. He went inside his fort where it was darker still. He sat in there and waited, and he could hear the beating of his heart. He waited some more, and a golden light was shining through the blanket walls. He poked his head out and looked. It came from the doorway and the window. It came from the stone that was sitting on his desk. It moved like firelight against the walls. It flickered and cast strange shadows.
There were footsteps in the hallway and the sound of something heavy being pulled across the floor. The screen door opened with a bang. It opened and closed, and more footsteps came and they stopped right outside his room. The light was getting brighter. Jesse stood up and went to the door. He wanted to cover his eyes. The knob began to turn. Russell was standing on the other side. Jesse could see the shadows from his boots in the crack beneath the door.
Jesse reached for the knob. He felt it turn inside his hand. He squeezed it harder, with all the strength he had, and Russell was breathing on the other side of the door. The planks creaked under his boots. They stood like that, the two of them, and Jesse didn’t let go. He held the knob even after it had stopped turning. After the shadows were gone from under the door and Russell had started up his truck. The room went dark and the stone did, too. The dishwasher finished its cycle.
Jesse was still holding the doorknob when the policemen came. It was warm outside, but they covered his shoulders with a blanket. Two cruisers with their lights flashing and they took him to the station. They let him take the stone along, and it was cold inside his hand. A lady doctor came and asked him questions. She wanted to know about school and his mom and his favorite TV shows. She bent down beside his chair. “I hear you know about crystals,” she said. “They tell me you’re an expert,” but he didn’t open his hand for her. He didn’t let her see it.
Lay My Head
Babies weren’t frightened of her face. They didn’t yet know sickness. They saw only her eyes, how big they were. There was a baby girl before her in the aisle. A little round-faced girl, no older than two. Her ponytail went straight up like a paint brush, and her mother had tied a pink ribbon around it. The girl stood up on the seat while her mother read magazines. Angela smiled at her. She set aside her book and covered her eyes with her fingers and uncovered them again. The little girl giggled at that. She grabbed the fabric of the headrest and squealed. She reached for Angela and for the stewardess who was pushing the drinks cart up the aisle. Her mother patted her on the bottom. Felicia Marie, she said. You better hush. People are trying to sleep. The girl squealed again, and her cheeks were dimpled and shiny like apples. The mother looked between the seats then. Her face went dark when she saw Angela. Get down here, young lady, the mother said. Get down here right now, and she moved quickly. She pulled her little girl away from the headrest. She held her baby against her chest. She held her there and didn’t let her squirm.
The roundness in Angela’s cheeks went first. Her skin went from olive to yellow. She’d spent all those mornings on her deck, but the sun didn’t warm her, not even in September when LA was hottest. She’d shivered and watched the neighbor kids splash around in the pool. They worked their squirt guns and wrestled in the water, and they were happy even when their parents fought. How little children need to be happy. How little it takes, and still things go wrong. She watched them all summer and into fall, and the roundness was gone and from one day to the next the veins popped out on her forearms. Her hands were spotted like her grandma’s had been. Liver spots, grandma called them, and Angela had wondered why.
Her belly grew round like a pregnant lady’s. Like Mr. Hogan from the old neighborhood who drank beer every morning and tossed the cans onto his wife’s compost heap. In the last few weeks the bones in her throat had started to show. There was a hollow between them, and her mother would notice this right away. She’d see it and know. Thirty year
s married to a U.S. soldier, and her mother still thought like a German farm girl. She’d been right about Angela’s father. She knew he was sick from the smell of his breath. He’s got the mark, she’d said. She knew it months before the doctors did, and she’d see the mark on Angela now, too. Her girl who’d been pretty once. She should be a model, that’s what all the people said. And what did it matter. Every day brought another loss, and her prettiness was the least of them. It fell away like the burden it was.
Her mother was waiting at the luggage carousel. She carried the same winter coat, the extra one she kept for guests because it was cold even in November. Angela didn’t remember that old plaid coat until she saw her mother standing there in her winter boots. She’d brought it along every Christmas when Angela came home from college. Look how you’re dressed, she’d say back then. You’re always in short sleeves. You need to cover up. Angela would pretend she didn’t feel the wind when they went through the sliding glass doors. She’d say she was warm in her sandals or the loafers she wore without socks. Anything was better than letting her mother be right.
The coat smelled like mothballs. It was years between visits now. Years when it used to be months. Her mother walked too quickly at first. Angela couldn’t keep up, and the air outside was sharp in her throat. It squeezed her chest. She’d forgotten how thin the air could be up here. This was probably how fish felt when they were pulled from the water. She slowed and stopped and set her hand against the retaining wall where the juniper bushes grew. Her mother stopped, too. She came close and fixed the collar on the old plaid coat. She took her scarf off and wrapped it around Angela’s neck, and her eyes were black when she spoke. “You need to cover your mouth,” she said. “The wind’s picking up. All those years in California and you’ve forgotten how it blows.” They walked slowly to the car. Her mother always parked in one of the farthest spots, out by the long-term lot. There were patches of ice in places. Angela slipped and caught herself, and the mountains were dark already against the sky.
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