The Serpent's Bite

by Warren Adler

  Noting the way her father had greeted them both, she grew even more hopeful that something momentous and wished-for would happen between them, a regeneration of parent-child dynamic, resulting in the genuinely copious gesture of generosity. Show me the money, she begged silently. For her this meant the longed-for freedom from financial stress, her principal objective. She was determined to focus all her energies and persuasive powers on that one goal. Be wary of any high hopes, she cautioned herself, having learned the primary lesson of an actor’s audition: expectations that were too high often made for deepest disappointment.

  Leading the mules and following behind Harry, riding a black horse, was Tomas, a runty deeply tanned bony-faced Mexican of clearly Indian extraction, with a surly look and a rare, joyless smile that displayed three gold-toothed front dentures. His features, shaded by a large, curly brimmed, sweat-stained cowboy hat, seemed expressionless, although his dark eyes betrayed a feral alertness that struck her as a studied attempt to appear deferential. He wore a dirty red bandana knotted around his neck and fancy worn snakeskin cowboy boots. His jeans featured a large shiny silver belt buckle embossed with crossed six shooters. She figured it was his own Mexican version of a movie cowboy.

  At the trailhead as they unloaded, Harry had introduced Tomas to them as the cook, wrangler, and jack-of-all-trades. Tomas acknowledged the introduction with a tiny indifferent nod.

  “Knows his business. Right, amigo?” Harry said, nodding toward Tomas.

  “Si, Señor Harry,” the Mexican muttered.

  “Only one helper?” their father asked, his expression skeptical. “Last time there were three. I think we talked about this. We had agreed on two.”

  “Hell, this little Mex can do the work of three,” Harry said, brushing off the accusation. “Wait’ll you taste his grub.”

  “But I thought …,” their father began, politely protesting. “We talked of two people helping. Wasn’t that part of the deal?”

  He was acting true to form, a perpetual questioner, detail-oriented and persistent, a man who needed to know what was behind every action. She speculated that their father was paying top dollar. A consummate businessman, he expected true value for his money.

  “I know my business,” Harry said with annoyance, his eyes narrowing. “We have two less helpers than last time, Temple, because the trip is shorter.”

  “I know,” their father pressed. “I thought we had covered this in our conversations. Didn’t we agree on two helpers?”

  “Trust me, Temple,” Harry said, visibly exasperated.

  Courtney was certain that her father was telling the truth.

  “What I promised was one helluva trek, and I aim to keep that promise. As for this fuckin’ Mex, you’ll grow to really appreciate the sumbitch. He’s one smart spic. When he’s not working, he reads all kinds of book shit. No kidding. Does the work of three. I swear it. You’ll see that I deliver what I promise. Besides, you came to me because I gave you one hell of an adventure a few years back, and by God, I’ll do it again.”

  “I’m sure you will, Harry,” their father said with some hesitation. “I just thought—” He broke off the argument, glanced at Courtney, and shrugged. “Too late” his look suggested. Harry quickly changed the subject.

  “You check the weather report, Tomas?”

  “Si, Señor Harry. Weather good now. Coupla days maybe rain.”

  “Nights cool, days comfortable?” Harry prompted.

  “Si, Señor Harry.”

  “Still …,” her father began, again showing an attitude of polite deference, his surrender not quite complete. She remembered his persistence when an idea consumed him. “It wasn’t quite what we agreed.”

  Despite his persistence, she could see he was surrendering reluctantly.

  “Trust me, Temple,” Harry said again, his face reddening, selling hard now. “I’ve been at this for more than thirty-five years.”

  His résumé was getting repetitive.

  “I know how many people I need to create a great wilderness experience. Believe me, this little fuckin’ Mex is great. Been with me on what?…more than a dozen treks, winter and summer. Knows his stuff. Great cook. Wait’ll you taste his stuff—biscuits, dumplings, corncakes. You ain’t ever tasted better trout than the way he fixes it. And what that sumbitch can do with meat and potatoes! Man’s a natural. Hell, he knows more ways to cook up chili than any man alive. Great wrangler, too. A lot smarter than he looks. Sumbitch obeys orders. Right, Tomas?”

  “Si, Señor Harry,” Tomas muttered without expression.

  Harry lowered his voice and chuckled.

  “Thinks he’s the Mexican John Wayne. Right, amigo?”

  “Si, Señor Harry,” Tomas replied with a joyless laugh, as if it were part of their regular routine for the benefit of clients.

  “Show him your Duke Wayne walk, Tomas,” Harry ordered the Mexican.

  Tomas smiled thinly on cue and did a passable imitation of a John Wayne walk. Like a trained monkey, Courtney thought, feeling a rising level of disgust. Her father shook his head and turned away.

  “Sumbitch, ain’t that something?” Harry guffawed, slapping his thigh, then with a wave of his hand he signaled the Mexican. “Let’s move ‘em out.”

  As Tomas began to unload the horses and mules from the trailers, Harry bent closer to her father and offered a stage whisper.

  “Knows on which side his bread is buttered, Temple. Works his fuckin’ wetback ass off if he knows what’s good for him.”

  Temple shrugged, obviously offended by Harry’s treatment of the Mexican, although he made no comment. It was obvious that Harry McGrath was not the sure-footed confident outfitter of two decades ago; he exuded an air of desperation.

  Harry’s hair had turned chalk white, he had bulked in his middle, and the once-handsome tan and burnished face was a map of prunelike wrinkles, but his cerulean eyes, like blue pools plunked in a network of red wiggly lines, seemed tired and less alert than Courtney remembered. There was a boozy effluvial mist that enveloped and moved with him like a cloud, despite efforts to disguise it with some clove-scented mouthwash or lozenge, which only made the odor more pronounced.

  Hair of the dog, Courtney thought. The guy is a drunk. She guessed he might be on the wrong side of sixty, and his desperation suggested someone far past his prime, barely hanging on. She had never forgotten his earlier admonition on that long-ago journey that his guided trek through the wilderness was “short on luxury but long on adventure,” and she was certain that the slogan continued to describe what they could expect, only more so.

  His girlfriend then, the cook on their first trek, was apparently long gone from his bed and board. Courtney recalled, too, that there was another person, a blonde teenager who acted as wrangler. There was one other, a quiet skinny kid who was an all-around helper.

  She speculated that this reduction in personnel was quite obviously a sign of lean times for Harry’s outfitting business, which he had pretty well confirmed earlier. She recalled that her father had remarked that the first trip had to be booked a year in advance, which did not seem to be the case for the new one.

  Harry had greeted them with what struck her as exaggerated enthusiasm, although she suspected that his memory of them, after more than two decades of similar treks with different people, was, at best, vague. Oddly, her own memory of that earlier trip had deepened as she forced her recall. It was, indeed, a glorious and loving time with genuine affection between parents and children and a hopeful and, as it turned out, naive optimistic outlook. There was also the other, she mused, with a brief glance at Scott.

  There had been an element of real danger in the earlier trek, although Harry had not dwelled on such possibilities during his introductory remarks then. She did remember one caveat: the necessity of holding the reins of the horse, which, he pointed out, was the horse’s preprogrammed steering mechanism. If the reins are dropped and the pressure eases, he warned them, the horse might suddenly feel out
of control and panic, exposing the rider to be dangerously unseated by low branches or bucked off by a sudden burst of speed. And, of course, she could not eliminate from her bag of fears, an encounter with a hungry predator like a grizzly.

  A ranger had visited their campsite on their earlier trip and, with deliberate relish, recalled a then-recent episode involving a grizzly that had devoured a half-digested peanut-butter sandwich in the belly of a female trekker, in a lip-to-stomach nosh that killed the poor woman. She had never forgotten that story. On that previous trek they had encountered evidence of grizzlies but, thankfully, no intimate visitation.

  A lightning strike also presented a danger. A bolt could be attracted to a horse, which, as Harry explained then, was ninety percent water and ten percent metal, making it a prime target for a strike. When a thunder-and-lightning storm intruded, they had been forced to dismount. As it turned out, they had been lucky, since a bolt had actually felled a nearby tree and missed their party by a mere couple of feet. She did not relish Tomas’s weather prediction of an impending rain.

  The most dangerous event was their return to civilization through the ten-thousand-foot Eagle Pass, with its twenty-three narrow switchbacks traversing sheer drops into deep canyons. Some of the path was so narrow that Harry had ordered them to dismount and lead the horses by their reins. Her mother had been close to hysteria, but they managed, through false bravado and encouragement, to keep her moving. More than once she had stopped, closed her eyes, and squatted on the trail, unable to proceed without considerable cajoling on their part.

  A misstep meant a fall into a canyon hundreds of feet below and certain death. Such apparent danger had salted the earlier adventure, especially in retrospect, and kept it in Courtney’s memory along with the now legendary sense of family bonding that had become a quintessential event for her parents.

  Thankfully, her father had eagerly agreed that the Eagle Pass adventure would no longer be part of the new trek. That earlier trek had, indeed, been a family-bonding experience, a powerful and nostalgic loving memory, and forever a conversational focal point. For her and Scott, the experience was far more explosive than mere bonding. Their parents hadn’t a clue to what had been unfolding right under their noses.

  Apparently her father still believed strongly in the bonding power of the old memory, and Courtney clung to her speculation that this new trek was designed as an unabashed attempt by him to bring the broken family back together and undo the corrosion that had set in since. For her it was strictly business. Show me the money, Daddy. For that, she would act the part of a loving, caring, devoted daughter, contrite over past offenses and eager to repair any misunderstanding. She was convinced that Scott would play his own assigned role in this little drama for less contrived reasons.

  In pursuit of comfort and authenticity, she had come well prepared, with padded bicycle pants to cushion her crotch and butt, a straw cowboy hat with a stampede string, cowboy boots, long underwear, a miner-type flashlight that fitted over her forehead for tent reading, mosquito spray, extra supplies of sunblock, and plenty of ibuprofen and vodka.

  Her father had called her out of the blue, catching her on her cell. At first, as she had done on his previous attempts to contact her, she was tempted to hang up. But years had passed, and she had always held out hope of a change in his attitude and generosity. Perhaps, as had been her prediction and her wish, he was obviously resurfacing for an important reason. She hadn’t heard his voice in four years but its tone had lost none of its authority.

  “Don’t hang up, Courtney,” he said. “Hear me out.”

  He quickly sketched out his proposal.

  “Too weird for words, Dad,” she told him initially. He persisted, selling hard.

  “It’ll be fun…like last time.”

  He had made more-than-two decades sound like yesterday.

  “Almost, but not quite. Just six days instead of ten and only one camp instead of two like last time. Surely you remember.” He was purring with good will and excitement. “I’ve lucked out and gotten a tentative booking with the same outfitter, Harry McGrath. He’s still in business and apparently in great demand. He had a cancellation. He gave us a great time then. Remember? Maybe it will give us a chance to get to know each other again.”

  “Renew auld acquaintance,” she said, with a touch of sarcasm.

  If he caught the implication, he tactfully ignored it.

  She turned it over in her mind. Perhaps it was the moment she had been waiting for.

  “Maybe we can be a family again,” he said.

  She knew he believed it implicitly. This had always been his perception of what family meant, handed down from his own parents who had brought him up, an only child, in what was apparently a cocoon of smothering love. In his mind, it was all about Mom and Dad and the children, devoted, caring, one for all, all for one, an impregnable family fortress. Had she once believed that as well?

  Somehow it had all gotten diluted by false expectations, by disappointment and disillusion, by passion gone awry, by dreams gone haywire, by bad luck, and by economic necessity. She prided herself on her insight into her father’s psyche but had miscalculated her own ability to manipulate his generosity. Was this an opportunity for a second chance to play the loving daughter and invade his pockets?

  “I’m not sure, Dad.”

  She decided to play hesitant and uncertain. Not too fast. Show restraint.

  “I haven’t been on a horse since that time,” she said, stalling, searching her mind for further options, seeking just the right word and truthful gesture to react to this sudden reentry of her father into her life after four years. His attitude seemed enthusiastic with no sign of either hostility or remorse, as if nothing had occurred to break the old fatherly bond. Her sense of time vanished, and she felt like the dissimulating teenager again, Daddy’s perfect innocent angel, the promising ingénue, a role she had played with gusto and great early results.

  Her opening gambit was to show daughterly concern.

  “You sure you can hack it, Dad? I mean healthwise.”

  She remembered vaguely that he had been diagnosed for high blood pressure, a condition that supposedly caused his mother, her grandmother, to die early of a cerebral hemorrhage.

  “I’ve been working out like a demon. I’m in terrific shape.”

  “Doesn’t high altitude affect high blood pressure?”

  “Under control,” he answered. “I take pills.”

  Her solicitousness seemed a knee-jerk reaction. Why such lingering concern for his health when her fondest wish was otherwise?

  “You’re over seventy,” she said.

  “Not by much,” he corrected her.

  She knew he was being disingenuous. He would be seventy-five in December.

  “I wouldn’t broadcast that,” he said. “Granted that the outfitter has a sixty-years age limit. Besides, I’m fit as a fiddle. And I don’t look my age.”

  “You could be taking a risk.”

  She hoped he would interpret her concern as genuine. Actually it opened up possibilities.

  “I can handle it,” he murmured. “Old is not as old as it used to be.”

  She supposed it was meant to be a joke, and she giggled appropriately.

  “What about Scott?” she had asked, deflecting the conversation.

  Her brother, younger by a year, thirty-seven now, was locked in another compartment of estrangement, although he did contact her occasionally. What they had in common was the same complaint: their father’s unwillingness to open his purse and the status of their inheritance.

  At one time, their father had been generous, more than generous. As an older dad with a lucrative business, he had the means to be generous. Then, abruptly, his businessman’s experience kicked in, and he had closed the spigot. For their own good, he had alleged. Granted, he might have been right, especially in the case of her brother, whose passion was more commercial than artistic and, to be honest, a lot less intense.

>   For Courtney, her obsession was her ambition. She yearned for celebrity status as a movie star, knowing she had the drive and talent, although she had passed what was the traditional age of breakthrough in the twenties. So far, she had not made much of a career dent, which did little to dampen her determination. There was the occasional tiny television part or extra role in a commercial crowd scene and the occasional free turn on one of the many live stages in Los Angeles.

  Still, despite all the setbacks, all the failures, all the rejections, all the pain of not being called back from auditions, and the lack of getting a respectable agent or manager, she remained unalterably committed to her pursuit, no matter what. Unfortunately the lack of her father’s funding was a devastating setback for her career plans and the maintenance required for her to keep going. Giving up was not an option.

  The joint financial issue with her brother, and the only real discussion between them on the rare times when they talked by telephone or communicated briefly by e-mail, was how to get this spigot reopened. So far they had both failed miserably. Courtney had bolted. Scott had not, maintaining a tepid telephonic relationship with his father. But then, he was always the weaker and needier sibling.

  There were other matters between them that were buried too deeply to ever resurrect in dialogue, although she knew they were ever present in their consciousness and, like all histories, could never be erased.

  “Scott is coming,” her father told her on the phone. “But it’s all contingent on your presence.”