One inky night on a Texas dirt road, my father stopped our car and got out. Walking in the surreal glare of the headlights, he removed a large snapping turtle from our path. He used to bring them home and set them loose in the living room to annoy the dogs and terrify us children. I was three or four and I still remember watching him crouch over the big shell in the twelve volt illumination to get a safe grip. Suddenly, out of the star-shot darkness, there descended a pair of outstretched talons under massive brown wings surmounted by a big pair of yellow eyes.
In a pool of light cast by the car, a big screech-owl was preying upon my father’s toupee. Dad wrestled the raptor for his expensive hairpiece in a downright mythological scene. He managed to keep both both his scalps and to avoid serious lacerations. When he re-joined us in the car, it was the first time I had ever seen him visibly shaken. At the time, I didn't know the symbolism of that event until I learned about owls. It was not a good omen. It was a close call for my father, who felt her feathers brush his face before the silent one flew off into the pines.
We were living about thirty miles west of Houston, Texas, in what used to be Indian country. My family was living in a house set amidst three undeveloped acres and tucked away between several large working farms. One day at our house, my elder sister and I were practising the art of tricycle riding. We raced up and down the smooth new concrete driveway all day long. It had rained the night before and there were several prodigious mud-puddles off the apron of pristine pavement. I rode through the dark mud, inked my tires and then up on the canvas of white concrete, I wove Celtic patterns with my three wheels.
Our acreage had been duly plowed and planted with tomatoes by hired gardeners. Father also had some men install a giant aquarium and stock it with all types of fish that he had chosen. With no knowledge of which species were compatible, it proved to be a nouveau riche accident waiting to happen. All the fish were eaten by one voracious individual over the course of a month and when that mighty specimen outgrew the tank, it flopped out of the tank and fell victim to our cat.
During the property tax avoidance gambit of clearing and planting acres of tomatoes, the labourers cut dozens of native snakes into cruel sashimi with the tines of their rototillers. The greatly disturbed habitat did not bode well for the survivors and one big Western Diamondback Rattlesnake deemed it prudent to cross the apron of fresh cement during our tricycle morning and try his luck in the uncut brush beyond.
He made it halfway across before we began to circle him, fascinated by his serpentine locomotion and the beautiful patterns on his back. He paused, checked our baby-sweat scents with his pink forked tongue and then decided to make a peaceful dash for it. Completely accidentally, my five year old sister’s circular path intersected his neck just abaft his large venomous head.
Only that seemingly random physics kept her from being struck on her chubby little leg. The poor stricken viper gasped, spasmodically worked its jaws, writhed in tubular agony and mercifully, died quickly. We left it where it lay and resumed our play, vaguely aware, having seen the fangs, that it might be dangerous. On a deeper level, we were both feeling shaken by the unintended violence, like a roof shingle pried loose by a gust of unbidden wind.
In the late, late afternoon, when the Texas sun was reddening near the horizon and the cicadas were singing loudly, our father rolled up in his car and parked at the bottom of the driveway. He immediately walked over to the half-baked snake. His metal heel guards clacking over the hot cement was a sound that I learned to dread for many years to come.
He picked the carcass up by its large tail, counted the rattles, swung it three times over his head and flung it far out into the weeds. He greeted us children briefly and then stood surveying my woven mud patterns on the bright pavement. He asked us who had made those tracks and who had killed the snake. My sister and I answered with great pride in claiming ownership of our separate deeds.
A moment later, my father chose my deed to provide him with a trigger for a new tradition of severe beatings that I would endure for years. I was denied supper, ordered to take my clothes off and to wait in my room contemplating my crime. After my father had his meal and came to the room, I was required to provide a confession of my guilt.
That done, I was informed that the process was going to hurt my father far more than it was going to hurt me. He doubled his leather belt and snapped it briskly three times before commencing. At first the feeling was like frostbite, then like boiling water. During the beating I was trained not to cry out loud. Over time, I became unable to cry.
as my body
twitched and kicked
on the bedspread
my soul wandered
among the illustrations
on printed cotton fabrics
and my spirit learned to fly
through a mesquite scented
obsidian bowl of silver stars
that was a Texas night
off into the pines undamaged
unencumbered, unchanged
and undefeated
fin