neighbor

The neighbor had his gun.  Alice watched him put it into the glove compartment of his minivan while his wife was helping the children into their seats.  He carried it with them whenever they left the city – for protection, he’d said one afternoon last summer when she’d been walking past and he’d come out of the house carrying it.

“Protection from what?” she asked, a little stunned to see it in his hand like that.

“Don’t you watch the news?” he said and turned his back on her.

Ever since, she’d kept her eyes on them.   They were a strange couple, private, reclusive.  The children were a little strange too, pale, dark-haired creatures that barely ever saw the light of day.  If they did come out into the yard, the mother came too, sitting on the porch with a book in her hand, talking to them in her soft voice while they organized piles of trading cards or picked dandelions apart with their fingers.  The oldest one, a boy, had received a bike for Christmas and sometimes he rode it in a wobbly circle around the perimeter of the yard.  Alice watched from her living room as he learned to ride it, assuming he’d take off down the block when he had it mastered, but he never did.  He just came out occasionally and made the circuit of the yard, unable to get enough momentum going for a smooth ride, walking the bike back to the garage after a few minutes effort.

Today the children were waiting in the van while their parents traveled back and forth from the house to the car with blankets, a cooler, the badminton set.  Alice put a leash on Daisy and went out for a walk.   When she got to the street, her neighbor was putting plastic bags of food into the back of the van.

“Nice day for a picnic,” she said loudly.  He turned and gave her a nod.  She let Daisy wander into their yard, so she could have an excuse to talk to him.

“Going somewhere fun?” she asked.

“Just out to Hopper,” he said, slamming the back hatch. “My brother’s kid is having a birthday party at the park out there.”  He was a big man, with a full beard and thick arms.  He crossed them over his chest while they stood together which made him appear even bigger.  The bulk of him was intimidating and she couldn’t help thinking he liked to make people aware of it.

“Hopper’s a nice little town,” she said, pushing the button to reel Daisy’s leash back in.   “It’s good to get out of the city sometimes.”

He scowled.  “Bunch of idiots out there.  Place is getting taken over.”

She’d heard this from him before.  His work at the water plant was being taken over by females.  The school his kids attended was being taken over by illegals.   She didn’t know what was going on in Hopper, but she understood the idea.

“Well, the park should be fun anyway,” she said, waving to his wife as she came and stood beside them and scratched Daisy’s head. Natalie was pretty, long-haired and delicate with grey-green eyes.  She looked like she could be in a Waterhouse painting, crimson-robed, draping her long, smooth arm into a lilypad pool.  Alice smiled at her.  

“It will be nice for the kids to be able to have space to run and play.”

Natalie nodded and smiled politely and Alice took that as her cue to say goodbye.  She‘d walk down to the park, let Daisy chase squirrels for a few minutes.  She’d almost reached it when she saw the minivan go by.  What was it like for those children with parents who were so defensive about the rest of the world?  Her own kids had grown up in the neighborhood and had the run of it, riding their bikes up and down the streets until the sun set, playing ball in this very park.  She thought of the boy on his wobbling bike and felt a wave of compassion for him

.Later that week, when the neighbor was gone to work, she went across and asked Natalie if the children could come over and help pick her grapes.

  “I’ll be with them,” she said, when Natalie stood up to come along.  “You could get a little alone time.”  Natalie hesitated, but after giving the children some low-voiced instructions, she agreed.

Annake and Beth, the younger girls, and the boy, Aiden, followed her across the street and into the house, hesitating inside to look at her things with solemn eyes, taking in the art work, the baskets of yarn, the drawing table.   She offered them cookies and cups of milk to help them relax and then showed them the backyard garden and the grape arbor she’d had built.  She told them to go ahead and go under the canopy, which they did hesitantly, the girls clinging to each other’s hands.  She stood outside and listened as their whispers turned to happy chatter.  It was cool and dark in there, a space that longed for children.  When they had come back out again, grape leaves clinging to their clothes and hair, fingers sticky with the grapes they’d eaten, she showed them how to choose the ripest bunches and cut through the stems, lay them neatly in the basket she’d brought from the house.

After they finished picking enough grapes, she brought them back inside and they made juice, pulling the fat grapes off their stems and cooking them down in a big pot.  Annake poured in the sugar and Aiden stirred it with a wooden spoon while she and Beth wiped the counters clean.  They were eager learners, quiet and attentive, willing to work.  After a couple of hours, Natalie came to check on them.  Alice gave her a bowl of grapes and poured some of the hot juice into a bottle for her to take home, told her that the children had been a great help and she meant it.  Standing side by side, she saw how Aiden and Natalie had the same frail air, the long limbs, the unusual beauty.

“There will be more grapes in a few days,” she said, surprising herself.  “Would you all like to come back?” And they did, picking the grapes until they were gone, then the figs, then helping her tidy up the garden, harvest what was left of the late summer produce.  Natalie often came with them, sitting on the back steps with her book in hand while the children talked and worked with Alice.

The children were back in school by this time and they chatted to Alice about what they were studying, their classmates, the elaborate rules of the playground.  Aiden was lonely, she could tell, but Beth and Annake seemed to fit in fine.  Only once did they complain about a teacher – that was Beth, who had begun second grade and was dismayed at the amount of writing the teacher, Mr. Lasko, expected from her.  Annake, who was in the fourth grade, and the most outspoken of the three, said matter of factly,

“It’s because he’s a Jew.”

Alice was so taken back she nearly dropped the bowl of beans they’d been picking.

“What does that have to do with it?” she asked, a little sharply.  Annake’s face took on a sullen look.  She was most like her father, Alice realized, intelligent, but quick to blame, quick to be defensive.  She was about to say something more when Natalie left the porch and joined them.

“Beth,” she said gently, “tell me something about Mr. Lasko that you do like.”  She began to help Annake with the beans.

“He doesn’t yell,” said Beth after a while.  “And he doesn’t let Nathan Banner take cuts in the lunch line like Mrs. Perry did.”

“Does he still have the prize jar if you finish your homework during the week?” asked Aiden.  He was deadheading the flower border and there was the peppery smell of marigolds in the air.

Beth nodded.  “It’s mostly just stickers and candy though.”  She twined a bean tendril around her finger and pulled it out to examine the spiral she’d made.

“I like Mr. Lasko,” said Natalie, and she smiled at Annake before looking at Alice.  Not frail, Alice realized, there was strength there.

After that, she began to notice all the ways Natalie worked with the children, redirecting their conversations, listening to what lie behind the words, bringing them to the conclusions she wanted them to have.  It was done so neatly that the children barely realized they were being guided.  For the first time she considered what Natalie was up against every day, and how she resisted it.  The children were remarkable, really, when she came to think of it.  She thought of Aiden and his bike. He was carrying the bowl of beans into the house and she watched him with a surge of affection.  There was persistence in them, a kind of defiance she hadn’t known to look for.

She stood and wiped her hands on her jeans, said, “This looks good.  Shall we be done for the afternoon?” They gathered up the tools and put them away, coiled up the hose, locked the garden gate.  About this time of day their father came home, and the children were always anxious to greet him.  He was not unkind to them, she’d learned that much at least through their conversations.  They washed their hands at the spigot, trailed out through the backyard gate and across to their own house.   Natalie followed behind, turning at the edge of the yard to say “thank you” as she did every time she came.    Did she realize what Alice had thought of her and the children all this time? Probably, she decided with some dread.  She thought of the first afternoon she’d invited the children over and imagined what Natalie had said in that low-voiced conversation:  

“Mrs. Inman is very kind.  What a nice neighbor to invite you all over.”   Alice’s cheeks grew hot.

“Thank you,” she said quickly, pushing the gate closed.  “It’s been so nice.  Really.”

Natalie stopped and asked, “Would you like to come to dinner sometime?”

Alice hesitated, imagining eating dinner in their house, her neighbor’s heavy presence across the table, the inevitable discussions that would make her burn and have to bite her tongue, and she began to make an excuse, find some way of permanently delaying it, but then she caught Natalie’s gaze and she understood what was being offered, what was being asked.

“Yes,” she said, gladly. And she meant it.  

a good deal

The house was ten miles out of town, a hollow clearing inside a shelter of trees that thickened into deep woodland as it neared the river.  Mr. Brook, the property owner, said it was small, a succession of rooms that faced the wrong way, shunning the sun.  It had been built by the foreman of the old copper mine - another dark cave for his retirement.   There were gardens though, haphazard as they were, following the path of the sun around the yard.  Jay stepped gingerly around the remains of a bed sprawling with bolted lettuces, kale stalks thick and bending under their own weight.  She pulled off a leaf, turned it over to find clusters of silver aphids huddled in the crevices.  Everything would need to be pulled out, buried under layers of straw and leaves for a year.  They could get rabbits, spread their droppings over the mulch.  In a couple of years they’d have meat and vegetables.  More than enough.   They could build a coop under that elm tree, have some chickens, too, eggs.  She watched Charlie and Mr. Brook examining the pump for the well.  Charlie primed the pump, worked the handle a few times, the muscles in his thin brown arm straining against rust and disuse.  After a few minutes a gush of water spurted from the opening and he put a cupped hand down to catch some.  When he’d brought it up to his mouth he looked at her and grinned, his black eyes disappearing behind the folds of his cheeks, the space where he’d lost a tooth showing darkly against his otherwise white smile.  He raised a fist in mock victory.  It hadn’t been easy finding a place to buy, even though they had the money in hand.  No one in town would even consider selling to them, but Mr. Brook’s son had been in the war with Charlie.

Jay left the two men discussing the well and followed the faint sound of water into the woods.  There was a stream somewhere, Mr. Brook had said, though the beavers had dammed most of it further up, and not much water got down this far any more.  She pushed through fern and salal, a forest of mahonia, its sharp-edged leaves scratching at her bare ankles, until she found a thin trail – a deer path, probably – and the first sight of the stream.  From there it was easy to follow the water all the way to the beaver dam, a large conical structure of cut branches and debris massed against a tree stump.  Jay got as close as she could to it, kneeling on the bank, waiting for any movement.  She heard a splash near the opposite bank, but saw nothing. She imagined coming down here in the winter with Charlie, bundled up, watching for warm beaver’s breath to come through the vent in the top of the dam.  Mr. Brook said the property ended at the river and went to the rail line on the western side, so all this would be theirs -forest, trees, mahonia, stream, beavers.  She found herself hoping the privy was workable, the roof sturdy enough for Charlie to say yes.

She returned to the house.  She could hear Mr. Brook’s voice coming from around the back, near the privy, so she pushed open the front door, sneezed under the sudden assault of bird waste and dust.  A mourning dove startled and rose in the air, making an elegant escape out a window to her left.  Mr. Brook must have opened it before they’d arrived in hopes of airing the place out.   She was standing in the main room, a large space, divided into the kitchen and living area.  The kitchen consisted of a sink and a wood stove, a single set of shelves along the far wall.  At least there was a window above the sink so she could look out over the garden while she worked.  Charlie could build a counter so she’d have more space.  The living area had another window, a fireplace, room for a couch, a couple of chairs.  And they could put bookshelves in the corner.  She went through to the back and found two more rooms, a bedroom and what seemed to be a large storage closet.  It was the only room that held any clutter – a metal folding stool, a pair of well-worn boots, the tire from a small tractor, a pile of fabric – a shirt, perhaps - covered in mouse droppings.  Mr. Brook had said the miner was a pack rat and there’d been a lot to get rid of after he died.  He’d been lonely here, she suddenly knew.

When she came back into the front room, Mr. Brook was saying he’d give them some time to think about it, they could stop by his place on the way home and let him know.  Charlie was standing in the middle of the room, staring at a dark spot on the wall.  She hadn’t noticed it earlier.  There were more spots, smaller, traveling up the wall and onto the ceiling.  Mr. Brook cleared his throat, said he knew it was a hard decision.  Jay watched him, his big face going red, his eyes blinking.  He nodded, touched the brim of his cowboy hat, ducked his head to back out of the door.  She looked at Charlie, so slight in comparison, his denim shirt bagging, the sleeves rolled up over his forearms, the cracked leather belt cinched tight to hold up the khaki pants he favored.

“How did he die?” she said when Mr. Brook’s white truck had pulled away.  “The miner.”

Charlie turned to look at her.  He had an expressive face though he had long ago learned to hide that around others. She could read the story there, as well as his reluctance to tell her.

“The house is good, Jay,” he said.  “The roof, the well, the foundation.  He built it strong.”

“Was it here?” she asked.  How had she not noticed the stain at first?  It was so prominent against the pale wood.  She went to touch the edges of it with her finger.

“We’ll paint,” Charlie said.  He wasn’t trying to convince her.  They both knew this was more than they had dared hope for - their own house, land to grow vegetables, raise animals.  She nodded.

“Mr. Brook is a good man,” Charlie said.  “He’s giving us a good deal.”

“Because no one else is desperate enough to buy it,” said Jay sharply and looked away.  They were silent then.

After awhile, when they had taken it in and accepted it, and the quiet had begun to fall over their hearts again she said, “I saw the beaver dam. And there is a lot of mahonia in the woods.  I can make jelly this summer, tea for the winter.”  An image came to her mind of white walls, herbs hanging in the kitchen, rows of canned goods lined up along the shelves next to the wooden bowls her mother had brought over from Japan, Charlie in the garden tying up beans.

They walked through the rooms once more, made a list of things to buy at the hardware store, closed the windows and locked them.  At the door, Charlie turned back and made a deep bow to the interior of the house.  Jay could feel the gratitude he was offering flowing through the rooms like a cool breeze.  This humility was how he had survived, how he had made a life for them.  She reached for his hand and bowed herself, sending out her courage, her willingness. Home. Happiness began to rise in her like a dove.   

a shard of orange light

At first it was only flashes of color, a light show behind the eyelids.  Sky-blue when the woman spoke, green when it was the man, a tumble of browns and yellows when the other woman came near.  She touched his hand sometimes, whispered to him, and this was orange, a bright shard of it.

Green was the doctor, he learned later, when he could open his eyes and make sense of the images.  The first time he’d opened them had been a shock – a flood of bright white, a flurry of shapes moving faster than he could track, shadows and flickers, a stab of black, then dark red.  He’d closed them again just to keep from throwing up.  The sky-blue woman had leaned across him to adjust his pillow.  She smelled of chemicals, sweat, a brush of floral when her hair swept across his cheek.  The nurse.  Eventually he learned there was a succession of nurses, all of them sky-blue, some of them male, all quick and gentle, sweat, antiseptic, floral.

He slept most of the time.  When he was awake there was a throbbing at the front of his skull.  He imagined his brain shrinking and expanding, pushing up against bone, retreating again.  If it was quiet in the room he could travel inside the rhythm, let himself be buoyed by it, a wave, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, until he fell asleep again.

Often, he was woken by the burst of orange light.  This was always the first sense, then the smell of lemons, soap, something stale.  After that he would register the touch.  Her hand on his arm, or a brush across his forehead, delicate, tentative.  Sometimes a movement across his groin, down his leg, slower, more sure.

Some days he would feign sleep until she left.  Others, when the throbbing in his head was not so bad, he would peel his eyes open slowly, see the rounded, soft shape of her and will himself to focus, but she never crystallized.   Once, while he stared at her, she rose up and loomed over him, all soft brown and yellow, touched her mouth to his.  He could smell coffee on her breath.

After a few days he understood she was saying his name. “Eric.  Eric.”  A low voice, nearly a whisper.  That was all.  He didn’t respond.

When his eyes began to work again, when the blurred shapes became people, faces, he sorted out the brown ponytail, the pale mouth, the glasses with their lenses that reflected the overhead lamps, making it seem she had lights instead of eyes.  She came close, rubbed her thumb briskly across the side of his face, as if he’d been crying, as if there were tears she had to wipe away.

One day he woke and she was standing with her back to him, her shoulders hunched up, holding something to her ear. 

“Well, he needs me now,” he heard her say and a memory flashed before him of her standing in a room – their room, he suddenly realized – her body turned away, her hair bound into a pony tail by a black elastic band, wearing a yellow sweater, just as she was now.

“Jody,” he tried to say, but his voice would not work.  She hadn’t heard him, didn’t turn around. The nurse arrived, and his eyes closed.  He fell asleep.

Other people came.  His father, bearded, grayed, who stood at the bedside with his coat on and cried when he asked, “Where’s mom?” His sister, who looked strangely aged.  She talked with the nurses and gestured a lot and when Jody was in the room, spoke with a loud cheerfulness that even he understood was a lie.  Gradually he came to understand he’d lost time, maybe as much as a decade.  The things before were there – he remembered his childhood, his siblings, high school, the year off to travel the country, coming back home, the job with Uncle Dennis, finding he was good at construction and that he liked the work, meeting Jody at the church he’d visited once or twice.   She looked the same then, hair always neatly brushed and pulled back, the calm gaze, the smile that took her from pretty enough to noticeable.   He remembered their wedding, the apartments they rented while they saved enough for a house, dinners around the thrift store table they’d bought, cooking together after work, the succession of burnt, dry, tasteless meals they managed until they learned how to cook.  He remembered that.

Gone was everything after.  His mother.  She’d died of breast cancer, his sister said, eight years before. But he was sure he’d seen her recently, that she’d been at the apartment.  She’d been wearing that silly baseball cap, the one they got at Joshua Tree, a gray top, white stripes. He remembered pouring her a cup of coffee, sitting across the table.  Last week, maybe?  The week before?  His head ached and he retreated behind his eyelids again until the lights dimmed and the room went quiet.  They’d come again the next day with more of their memories, feel they were doing something helpful by telling him everything he’d lost.

When the doctor came the next morning on his rounds, he feigned a migraine, asked for darkness, silence.  The nurses turned them all away.  Except Jody.  She came in noiselessly, carried the room’s only chair into the corner and sat there, just outside his peripheral vision.  He never turned his head towards her, she never spoke, he didn’t understand why.  It was worse, almost, to remember only the falling into love, unable to remember the falling out.

Later, after he’d been discharged, gone back to make a life in the strange house they owned, he would wonder when she’d become this way, if the calm and poise he’d taken as contentment and self-possession, had really been lassitude, a disinterest in the world.  The only things she seemed to take pleasure in now were the hardships he was causing her – the time off from work to take him to therapy several times a week, buying him new shirts because he’d stained the old ones with his clumsy hands which were still unable to bring food, or a coffee cup, to his mouth without trembling, the extra cleaning because the nurse would be coming by the house.  She recited these burdens to him in detail whenever he asked how she was, becoming suddenly loquacious, voluble.  He would have to close his eyes then, and this too she collected.  He imagined her preening over his offenses while she worked, polishing their edges, gathering them up to be presented to him each night the way other wives brought home armfuls of groceries, a bouquet of flowers.  He grew to dread the sound of her tread on the porch that signaled her return from work.  It was autumn now.  When she opened the door, the sun would be beginning to set and he would see her as he’d seen her first in the hospital, shadowed, dim, soft.  Behind her the sky would be changing its clothes, a flash of purple and pink, the underside of clouds rimmed in yellow, where the sun was sinking, a bright shard of orange light.   

morrisey and park

It was Wednesday, the 5:26 stop at Jefferson St.  She focused on her book, tried not to notice when he stepped into the train, took his usual spot by the door, set the black briefcase between his feet, nodded at the passenger next to him, reached for the bar to steady himself when the train lurched forward again.  The long coat he wore was unbuttoned and hung open, underneath it she could see he’d worn the navy blue trousers again, the pale blue shirt with the pinstripe.  She caught his eye and he smiled at her, held her gaze.  She could feel herself blushing and ducked her head again, let her hair fall around her face.  They’d been doing this same thing for two weeks - one or the other of them looking up, their eyes catching, his wide smile, her ridiculous blush.  She could almost never bring herself to look up at him again after the first smile, but she could feel him glancing over at her.  Annalise, she wanted to say.  My name is Annalise.  And for the twentieth time in the last two weeks, she wished she looked like her name – willowy and dark, with delicate hands, big eyes, a smile as wide as his.  She pushed a lank of  brown hair behind her ear, sat up straighter, tried not to hate her legs, the soft curve of her belly.

A horn blared outside and the train lurched to a stop.  People were always trying to beat the light at Morrisey and Park, darting over the tracks so they wouldn’t be stuck waiting while the train passed.  This time there were voices in the street, people yelling.  She leaned forward to look out the window but she couldn’t see anything.  The intercom crackled and the driver’s voice leapt into the car, loud, but obscured.  She heard only, “delay” and “tracks,” that was enough.  She stole a glance at him.  He was watching her; he smiled again, raised his eyebrows, nodded his head toward the empty seat next to him.  She hadn’t imagined it; it was a clear invitation.  She tried to picture herself standing up, gathering her things, walking down the aisle and sitting next to him.  She put her head back down, tears stinging her eyelids.  Was it some kind of game he was playing?  Some kind of sick, frat boy thing? Would he tell his friends later over drinks, laughing at the absurdity of it:  I just nodded my head at a chair and she stood up and waddled over like a pet dog.  She looked again.  He was still smiling, but he shrugged, looked almost embarrassed.

The intercom shouted again and this time she made out enough to know that there was a car on the tracks, they were going to be awhile.  The woman next to her groaned and the doors slid open as if on cue.  People began zipping up coats, packing up bags, leaving.  The handful who stayed talked loudly, raising their voices above the sound of the road outside, whatever activity was going on at the front of the train.  She pulled her sweater closer around her.

“I hope no one’s hurt out there,” a voice said.  She looked up.  It was him.  He pointed to the empty seat in front of her.  “Is this…?  Do you mind?”

She shook her head, felt the back of her throat tightening.  He was reaching a hand over the seat. 

“I’m Wes.”

“Annalise,” she said, so softly he had to ask her again.  His hand was warm and dry and she didn’t want him to pull it away, but he did.

“Annalise,” he repeated, and she had a sudden urge to be home, to close herself away from the crack opening up in her chest, this bright little hope that was making her mouth turn up, making her want to ask him a thousand questions, learn all his secrets. But he was talking now, telling her that he was glad for the chance to finally say hello since they’d been riding the same train for weeks.

“Yes,” was all she said, and she looked out the window.  There were red and blue lights reflected in the glass, but she hadn’t heard the sirens.  What made someone reckless enough to dart in front of the train?  Were they so anxious to get somewhere they couldn’t wait five more minutes?  Was it really worth risking everything? She stole a look at Wes, who had turned slightly away, was looking out the window himself, a small dejection in his shoulders.  Maybe not a game then.  Maybe she was being foolish.

“Do you like Thai food?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Yes?” he said, and the smile was back.

“I eat lunch there at the place on the corner sometimes.  I don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck here…”

He stood, picked up the briefcase.  “I’m starving.”  His hair was red-gold and he had freckles across the backs of his hands and she sat for a moment, felt something break loose inside her that made her laugh out loud.

His face registered no surprise when she stood. He waited in the aisle, reaching out his hand to hold her bag while she shrugged into her coat, almost as if he already knew she’d need time to steady herself, as if he’d already seen the limp and taken it as part of her.  When they exited the train, he went first, waited on the bottom step so she could grab his arm and use it for balance.  A cool evening wind greeted them out on the street and the sidewalk glittered with an earlier rain.  A block ahead they could see the knot of fire trucks and police officers, bystanders huddled in groups, pointing, shaking heads.  They turned and went the other way, to the little restaurant with the pink and white neon in its dingy window, sat at a table by a poster of a Thai goddess, admitted to each other they couldn’t use chopsticks, ordered curry and green tea, the little salad rolls which they dipped into a common cup.  He worked for the city planner’s office as a consultant, she worked as a paralegal for immigration attorneys.  He loved to hike and climb and was a high school swimming champion.  She made a face and gestured at her leg.  She’d always wanted to play competitive sports, but…  He said he liked movies too, and staying in.  She said she should get out again, start with an easy hike.

When the bill came he tried to pay, but she reached out and put her hand on his arm, said, “Let’s share it,” and this was important to her, that she not be someone who had to be taken care of, but someone who was his equal, right from the start, and he watched her, seemed to understand that this was what she needed and took her card, slipped it into the black book with his, told the waitress to split it evenly.

Outside, the tangle of the accident had been cleared and the train was already gone.  They stood on the sidewalk and laughed and he called rides for them both.

When hers came he leaned in and said, “Can I see you tomorrow?”  And she asked herself, how had this happened?  She was lit up inside, wound like a fully charged engine.  She was racing the light, watching the upcoming tracks, her eyes forward; maybe a train was coming, but maybe not.

“Yes,” she said.

“5:26,” and he grinned and shut the car door and when she looked behind her he had lifted his hand to wave and she lifted her own and everything inside her was saying, “Now!” 

talisman

 In the overgrown tangle that was the yard behind the house, he found a nest of new-born garter snakes.  That’s how he knew it was the right house.  He used both hands to pull apart the hedge of weed and bramble and peered in at the nest, the twist of infant snake bodies like a knot of bootstrings, each with a pale yellow stripe running along its sides.  He could see the hole in the earth that was their den, a small black circle deep in the hillside.  If they hadn’t come out looking for the sun just then, he’d never have found them.  He placed his hand carefully on the ground beside the nest and stood very still, waiting.  He could hear his parents and the realtor lady coming out onto the deck, the clomp of shoes on the wood, his father asking questions in the brisk voice he used for work.  He heard, “Do you have a copy of that inspection I could look at?” and he shifted his body into the shade, made himself smaller so they wouldn’t see him there.

He felt the cool ribbon of a snake pass across his waiting hand.  His grandfather said that stillness was the way to gain trust with an animal, and so he didn’t jerk or clench.  The snakes had to know he was safe, that he wasn’t the type of boy to swing them violently into the air or…other things.  The back of his throat rounded and he swallowed quickly, remembering Josiah and the way he’d twisted the snake they’d found, smashed its head.  He blinked his eyes, concentrated on being quiet, sending the message through his arm and down into his hand that he was safe, they could trust him.  He inched his hand closer to the mass of them, let his fingers lift up the thin bodies at the edges.  The snakes shrunk and expanded, weaving and testing, accepting, pouring themselves over him as if he were a natural part of their environment, a common stone, or stick.  He felt the shiver go up his arm all the way to the top of his skull and he smiled broadly.  This was the house.  He twisted himself gently to look at it, the straight lines, the pointed peak right at the center, the white walls and the empty windows that looked like they were just waiting to hold faces, the reflection of lamps, inside them.

His mother had seen him and was coming down the steps; he watched her picking her way through the tall grass, her soft pant legs catching and releasing, gathering a confetti of seed heads.  Be quiet, please be quiet, he pleaded with his mind but he could see on her face that she already understood this.   She knelt down beside him, bringing with her the scent of vanilla, warm grass, the coffee they’d bought from a drive-through on the way here. 

“What did you find?” she whispered, pulling branches back, leaning in to see around his arm.  He tented his hand, a tectonic shift that lifted the snakes and revealed his knuckles, the arch of his fingers.  She grinned, leaning back. 

“A whole nest,” she said.  “That’s lucky.” 

He turned his palm upright and closed the fingers before all the snakes could slip away.  When he lifted out his arm, two black ropes were twisting around his hand.  He held them out so they could watch them, the flattened triangular heads, the eyes like tiny marbles, the upcurved line of their mouths like a knowing smile.  One of the snakes explored the road of his arm, moving past his wrist and then twisting back down towards his hand, but the other stepped out into thin air, leaning itself down, reaching for the earth.  His mother extended her own hand, let it slip across. 

“The people who lived here were old,” she said.  “They got too old to take care of the yard anymore.”  She had seen the poisons in the garage, the fertilizers and traps.  The man had apologized, the realtor said, he’d broken his hip, couldn’t keep it green and tidy as he used to.  She knew this shamed him, because he’d insisted that the realtor explain to them, wanted them to know the house was cared for, but she was glad of it.  The snake she held reached out into the air again, searching for the ground, and she let it go, slanting it back toward its nest. 

“Snakes are a good sign,” she said, standing up and brushing at the grass seeds that clung to her.  “That means there are frogs and insects, birds.”  She breathed in.  “It’s not much to look at, but it feels right, doesn’t it?” 

She put her hands on her hips and smiled down at him. He was silent, watching the snake.  He brought it towards his face, tilted so he could look into the inky eye.  Animals speak with their bodies, his Grampa had told him, and he knew the snake was speaking now, its thread of a tongue tasting the smell of him, its eye taking in his strangeness, its gaze steady and unafraid, its lithe black body calmly coiling itself into a bunched ribbon in the palm of his hand.