“Someone was prowling around last night,” I informed Eddie the next morning.
“Hog.”
“How could you tell?”
“They short, fat, got hooves,” Jasmine added, putting a hand over her mouth to hide her smile.
“It sounded like a person to me. But when I looked out the window, I didn’t see anybody.”
“They short . . .”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I bet that hog was lookin’ for snakes,” Buster said.
“You have a lot of snakes here?” I asked. Somehow the homebaked biscuit in my hand never made it to my mouth.
“Right smart,” Eddie said. “We got some dandies.”
“What kind?”
“What kind do you want? We got all kinds. Mostly moccasins and copperheads.”
“Snakes like farms,” Jasmine said.
“We keeps the ground clear around the house,” Ella said.
“One lives in the outhouse,” Buster announced.
“It don’t live there,” Ella corrected. “We just seen it a few times.”
“One what?” My throat was so dry my voice cracked.
“A cottonmouth water moccasin,” Jasmine said.
“How big is it?”
“I reckon that one will run you ’bout three or four feet,” Eddie said.
“Now don’t you go scarin’ Mr. Morton . . .”
“Tom. You can call me Tom.”
“Don’t scare Mr. Tom,” Ella continued. “That snake won’t bother you if you don’t bother him.”
“I’m gonna kill it with a stick.”
“Buster, you leave that snake be, you hear?” Ella looked at him hard to make sure he understood.
“Yes’m,” Buster mumbled with lowered eyes.
There was a cottonmouth in the outhouse. A snake that moved like water and stung like fire. The place had been bad enough before, standing like a lone sentry box in the tall weeds at the edge of the backyard, with wasps and flies hovering around its splintery seat. The daily walks out there were an ordeal. One night, when a sudden fright wrenched me to the guts, I was in torment: should I foul the bed or face the snake? Finally, shame proved stronger than terror, and I made my hasty way to the jakes, trying not to imagine what might be slithering at my feet.
I soon learned the degrees of fear: the uncontrollable shakes; the cold sweats; the clattering teeth; even the “pucker factor,” where your anus gets a notion to shrivel back to the amoeba state and migrate elsewhere. But I was also growing accustomed to barnyard noises: that metal clinking sound wasn’t a redneck cocking his gun but the pony shaking its chain; that rustling sound wasn’t stealthy footsteps but the cow munching grass. I had been accepted by the family and by the horde of mongrel dogs who prowled the neighborhood. At first they swarmed around me showing their fangs, so that I had to stop at the top of the street and shout for somebody to come quick and rescue me. But after a week I was part of the scenery—barely an eyelid twitched as I walked by.
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