Snakes (standard:Suspense, 2243 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Sep 21 2007	Views/Reads: 4046/2389	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
When a hundred hungry snakes showed up in the parking lot, Horacio conjured up a mouse feast with his crude flute. And by the way, where were you?

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"Ixtah ptah heja-tectala, Gihxtetasufetia!"  I didn't have to know his 
dialect to interpret that.  Pinching his cheek, I shouted "Hombre, tell 
me how do you appease snakes?"  Horacio put his elbows on his knees, 
clapped his vice-like hands to his head and groaned, 

"Is that what you woke me up to ask?" 

"For God's sake, man, what do we feed them!" 

"You'd make a good meal yourself." he grumbled. 

Clearly, Horacio wasn't going to cooperate.  I went to the bookshelf and
found a single isolated volume of an encyclopaedia.  The volume was 
"S".  In a few seconds I learned that snakes sleep.  Could we turn on 
the gas until they nod off?  I learned they get very sluggish in cold 
weather.  All we need is another ice age.  The last one left us with a 
Western mountain range and the Peruvian Trench.  I learned they shed 
their skin.  That snakes steer with forked tongue.  Could we draw the 
snakes to something tasty?   I visualized dicing some rats in a blender 
and sprinkling a Pied Piper path of snake-vittles.  How did St. Patrick 
drive the snakes out of Ireland?  Snakes use their sensitive hearing to 
pinpoint the location of prey (since their eyes -- on each side of the 
head -- can't do this).  If we shot off firecrackers, the deaf snakes 
wouldn't be able to strike. 

"Maybe there's more than one way to skin a snake." I said to Jose.  He
was, at this moment, clad in a snake-impermeable scuba suit, booted, 
helmeted and equipped with a compressed-air harpoon. 

"Cat" I clearly heard him say behind the faceplate, "Cat." 

It was obvious what he meant, but where would I get a mongoose at this
hour of the morning.  Besides, how many snakes could a mongoose eat?  
Could it handle a Tic-Polonga?  a water moccasin?  an Anaconda? 

Horacio appeared, looking like yesterday's fried potatoes.  He rubbed
his eyes, washed his mouth out with orange juice, swallowed and ran his 
fingers through his hair a couple of times.  Then he reached into his 
carriel and with painstaking care drew out a fresh coca leaf, put it 
between his teeth and began to chew.  In a ragged voice, he asked: 

"Show me the snakes?" 

Jose nodded behind his mask. Shielded by the scuba suit and boots, and
using a stiff push-broom as a low fence, he opened the door against it. 
 We peeked and saw clusters of snakes right on the doorstep.  One went 
for the broom, and Jose quickly shut the door.  At that point, I really 
became afraid.  They were hungry, alright.  Something awesome, 
monstrous, overwhelming was out there.  Were we doomed to fall victims 
to a freak accident. 

"Never!" I said, rather loudly. 

"Never what?" asked Horacio. 

"Never mind," whispered Jose.  "Hush up.  We don't want everyone awake. 
Now let's come up with something.  Too many to shoot and besides, we 
don't have enough guns.  We could throw them a meal..... 

"Not on your life," I interrupted, "the girls wouldn't go for that." 

"Well, then, what do you suggest?" 

Horacio intervened about this point.  He placed his machete on the floor
between us, blade edge up. 

"Listen," he said, "I think I remember how to do this." 

"These aren't your home-grown garden variety of snake, you know," said
Jose. "A mistake could be fatal." 

There was a moment of silence, then Horacio announced: 

"I'll ask Grandpa. Do you have any garlic?" 

Jose knew what was going to happen.  He got up, stripped off the suit,
went into the kitchen and turned on the electric stove.  I followed 
Horacio.  From the spice cabinet, he chose saffron, cumin and dried 
basil, angelica, garlic and coriander. After pulverizing them, he made 
a ball of the mixture in his hands, then rubbing his palms together, 
let the spices trickle onto the red-hot burner.  Wonderful smells and 
intoxicating smoke filled the room, along with a cloud of aromatic ash 
flakes. Horacio was chanting in a low voice and his grandfather came to 
us. 

Every time something like this happens to me, I promise myself to make
notes and take photos, but in truth I never managed to capture the 
phenomenon.  For an instant, the smoke seemed to coalesce, and then for 
maybe 5 minutes, I became the old man.  Horacio asked, in the old 
Chibcha dialect we used to speak when he was a little boy, 

"Beloved grandfather, may I respectfully inquire after your health?  Did
we not share many times the nourishing broth of Aunt Mina?  Humbly may 
I ask, grandfather, if you still enjoy the old pleasures?", and many 
questions along these lines.  Not all at once, because grandfather 
responded to each query.  The old man's voice came quavering out of my 
throat, talking in an obsolete language I had heard only in dreams.  
Not a single word made sense to me.  Eventually Horacio got around to 
the snakes.  I felt grandpa's shiver of repulsion at having to deal 
with more than one snake at a time, but he never held back.  Valiantly, 
he shared his know-how with Horacio.  It was frustrating because he 
used so many rasping, guttural words in that old dialect, my throat was 
becoming sore.  Only one word made sense to me: "the flute".  
Apparently Horacio understood, because he began raising his arms high 
and wide, bowing until his headband touched the floor and keening a 
shrill whine of profound thanks.  If nothing else, Horacio sure knew 
how to put on a good show. 

We stood there in the kitchen, peppered with spice-ash, smelling of
garlic.  Horacio's eyes were crossed in a trance. 

A half hour later, I found myself among the sleeping women in the
darkened room watching Horacio carve a flute, chanting, while 
mysterious smoke rills ascended majestically from a dozen or so incense 
cones. Horacio sat on a little stool in the corner doing things with a 
piece of broomstick.  First he opened his little pocket knife, bound it 
to a length of coat hanger and bored a hole from end to end with his 
bare hands, fire-maker style.  Next, he propped his machete between his 
legs, blade up, and began to fling and whack the hollow stick against 
it, until a row of finger-holes appeared.  When he blew into it, shrill 
notes came out, in a five-tone scale, not very far off tune. Outside, 
snakes were huddled up, trying to keep warm.  I could almost hear the 
wolves howling.  Was this really the age of computers, copiers and 
laser surgery? 

"It's a rat-fife," explained Horacio.  "I hope you've got plenty of mice
and rats."  Jose threw up his hands in despair and went into the 
bedroom. 

After a couple of practice trills on the flute, Horacio went to the
front door and opened it a hairline crack.  I stood on a chair and 
watched out a window.  Pretty soon he was piping out rhythms that made 
my skin crawl.  A rustling sound came from the crack in the door. 

Suddenly, a mouse shot out from under the sideboard and went straight
for Horacio, who opened the door a crack wider without missing a note.  
The little mouse leaped through, landed on the front step, bounded 
across the sidewalk and into the open jaws of a puff adder. 

What followed was not only irreverent, it was nauseating.  A mamba had
seen the mouse, too, and snapped at its hindquarters just as they were 
going down the adder's gullet.  Since the adder was bigger and its jaws 
were already unhinged, it simply went on eating up the green snake 
whose curved fangs were irretrievably embedded in  the mouse.  Nearby, 
a rattler was already interested.  Before the lashing tail of the mamba 
disappeared, the rattler pursued it right up and over the puff adder.  
This triple monstrosity thrashed and writhed over the sidewalk and the 
curb, until it wriggled out of sight down a storm drain. 

By this time, Horacio's playing had evoked a frantic migration of larger
mice -- some of whom might have been rats -- from all over the house, 
at maybe two or three a minute.  They came up to the door, squeezed 
through the crack and into the jaws of more hungry snakes.  Fascinated 
with horror, I could see dozens of vipers and serpents crawling this 
way to partake in the feast.  Transfixed with horror, I watched the 
multiple-meal phenomenon play itself out three more times! 

"Give them a little while to digest their meal and get sleepy," advised
Horacio, "then you can go anywhere."  In the bedroom we could hear Jose 
snoring.  Horacio took the sofa and went back to sleep.  I kept looking 
out the window. Deep down, I gave thanks that the women weren't awake 
yet. 

Pretty soon, it was sunrise.  A fleet of military vehicles came over the
hill from both directions -- half-tracks full of heavily armed men clad 
in hip boots, bullet-proof vests, arm pads, face shields, with grenades 
strung around their belts.  A couple were restraining vicious dogs on 
chain-link leashes.  Here and there, lumpy serpents were draped across 
the lawn and over the curb, docile as pieces of rope.  One by one, with 
nets and grapplers, the soldiers picked them up and put them in armored 
boxes.  Before long, it was safe to go outside. 

Behind me, I could hear the women waking up.  My throat was still sore.
Suddenly I had a craving for steak and eggs and fresh coffee.  Only one 
thought persisted, leaving me sad: all those little mice leaping 
happily into Paradise. 

*    *    *    *    * 

Seattle, Sept. 18, 2007 All rights reserved (from "Coffee". a novel  by
Gerald X. Diamond) 


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