Chapter 14

Friday, July 26

Friday morning, I determined to get all my weekend chores done while Emily was at work. I had just changed into my yardwork garb, which included work boots, socks, and a pair of jeans, despite the mid-July weather. The clothing was due to rattlesnakes. I usually found one or two of a summer, and they seemed just as unhappy to encounter me as I them. None of the clothing was snake-proof -- well, maybe the high-top, lace-up boots were -- but snakes were known to get snagged in clothing or have their fangs not penetrate as deeply because clothing interfered. It was enough assurance to allow me to mow the lawn without succumbing to the heebie-jeebies.

I had rigged an inverted bucket for capturing and removing the rattlesnakes so that I could release them much deeper in the National Forest. Non-venomous snakes were welcome to join my battle against rodents. I never chased them off. Only the poisonous creepy-crawlers weren’t welcome.

But snakes weren’t to be my only problem.

I had just finished tying the second boot, and was pulling on an old T-shirt, when Greta called to me.

“Gary, we need to go to the grocery store.”

“Soon as I finish with the lawn, Hun. I want to hit it before it gets any hotter out.” There was a narrow window between the dew evaporating from the grass and the high heat of mid-day,

She held up a laundry detergent box. “I’m out of laundry soap, and we need some other stuff.” Greta’s weekend chore was laundry, though I folded and put away my own clothes. We both cleaned the house. I specialized in kitchens and bathrooms.

I said, “I’ll run down to the store and get some detergent, and we can go shopping for the rest later.”

“There’s no point in going just for the detergent. While you’re getting that, I can shop for the other things.”

“Then why not just go shopping by yourself?”

“Cause I’ve got clothes in the washer and I’m out of detergent.”

I think I could see where this was going. “Let me see if I have this right. The only possible sensible solution is for us to go grocery shopping right now.”

“Well, duh.”

“Okay, I’ll go with you, but only if you can come up with three plausible reasons why it’s not the best idea. They have to be written out, or at least in a computer document, and they have to be plausible. Nothing about guns, or aliens, or forest fires. Meanwhile, I’ll be cutting the grass. Call me when you’re done, and we’ll go.”

Before cranking up the mower, I went to the camper and located the container of single use laundry detergent packets we carry with us. I took it back inside and set it on the counter.

She looked at it and wrinkled her nose, as if I’d brought her a tub of chicken guts. “That’s not what we use.”

“It’s what we use when we’re traveling.”

“We’re not traveling.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s not the same.”

“What’s different about it?”

“Ours has blue specks. That has green specks.”

I looked from one container to the other. “Tell you what, go ahead and use one of these, just on my clothes, that way only I’ll suffer. Then come back and compare the ingredients or whatever they call them. If they’re not the same, and I’m wrong, well then I’ll...” I looked around for a suitable penalty, “I know: I’ll do the trimming, too, before I allow myself to do anything else. But call me anyway when you get those three reasons done, even if I was wrong about the detergent ingredients.”

I kissed her forehead and went out to the garage to get the lawnmower and get to work on our nearly half acre. It wasn’t all lawn, of course, the driveway, the house, and the decks covered a big chunk, and then I’d let the back fifty feet go natural, throwing in lots of native perennial flower seeds. The rest of the lawn was pretty straightforward. It had a gentle downslope, back to front, but the yard had few obstructions, so I enjoyed cutting the grass in different patterns.

Greta was just playing dumb. She wanted to go shopping and thought she could Gracie Allen me into it. Thing was, I could play that game better than she could and she knew it. Plus, while she usually sounded petulant, I slathered my approach with bogus concern and sham sincerity. The trick was to never show frustration or exasperation, and to treat even the most outlandish illogic as if it were perfectly reasonable.

When I was a little kid, my Mom used to game me when I’d get whiny while she was shopping, as I begged for some toy or treat she had no intention of purchasing. After about the third refusal, she’d say, “Okay, we’ll get it.” And I’d shut up.

Then, as we approached the checkout line, I’d say, “What about the whiz-bang (or whatever). We didn’t get the whiz bang.”

“I told you we would, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then.”

“But we didn’t get it.”

“Gary, did you ask for a whiz-bang?”

“Yes.”

“And what did I say?”

“You said we’d get one.”

“Did you want me to say something else?”

“Uh, no.”

“There you go, then.”

“But we didn’t get it.”

“Didn’t we just talk about this?”

She was so sincere and reasonable, I was never quite sure what went wrong. And we’d be out in the car driving home by then.

When I got a little older, I realized what was going on and I’d try every which way to trip her up -- or at least every which way in a little kid’s inventory. I’d even ask for stuff I didn’t want, just for another chance to match wits. One time I asked for a candy bar that was mostly coconut and had been advertised heavily on TV.

“Gary, you don’t even like coconut.”

But I kept begging.

“It has semi-sweet chocolate. You don’t like semi-sweet chocolate.”

“Please, Mom, please.”

“You won’t eat it.”

“I will, I promise.”

At that, she reached over and plucked one from the rack. I’d never heard of a Pyrrhic victory, back then. I just knew that this purchase di dnot bring the joyous feeling of triumph I had been expecting.

Mom fed the candy bar to me in quarter-inch slices, one a day, for the next three days. To my advantage, Mom liked both semisweet chocolate and coconut, so I think I came out on the short end of that candy bar.

And so I learned the art of logic dodging at the feet of an expert, and had been a practitioner all my life. Greta never stood a chance. I think it reassured her, though, the quality of my inverse convolutions and non-conductive connections. She knew that, when I brought my A-game, she was important to me. And she was, more than she could grasp.

But it wasn’t to be my morning.

I opened the big door and then went to pull the lawnmower from it’s customary parking spot. I was immediately rewarded with the unmistakable rattle of an annoyed pit viper. I skittered backwards until I bumped into the Accord. I couldn’t see the snake, though the sound had come from beneath the mower when I moved it.

My best guess was that the snake was wrapped around the blades. Hmm. That suggested a rather obvious solution, but my first concern was that I did nor want a rattlesnake loose in the garage. I took hold of the handle and started backing slowly toward the door, pulling the mower. The rattler renewed his protest.

I figured the important thing was to get the snake out in the open, so I started moving faster and the snakes rattling became continuous.

It struck me that this would be a great joke, a fake rattle concealed under the deck of a lawnmower, and protected from the turning blades. But that was for another time.

I made it out of the garage and to the middle of the driveway. With the car still in the garage and the camper parked on the gravel pad in the side yard, I had a twenty by forty foot expanse of concrete with which to deal with the snake. I still couldn’t figure out why a snake would be attracted to the underside of a petrochemical-propelled machine.

While waiting for the snake to determine its exit strategy, I went to get my snake trapping and transporting equipment. It consisted of three parts, four, if you wanted to count the rake. The components included a five gallon pail, a two foot square sheet of aluminum, and a snap-down lid for the pail, the lid sporting an eight-inch square cut-out covered by hardware cloth, a wire mesh product.

I turned the bucket over to reveal two loops of chain into which I wedged the end of the rake handle. The pail could turn on the rake handle, but not freely, so the rake and the inverted bucket were, more or less, an integrated tool. I could lower the bucket over a snake at a distance and hold the bucket firmly in place while I approached.

Then I’d slide the aluminum sheet under both the bucket and the snake, turn the bucket over, then slide the aluminum out while holding the lid against it, over the bucket. Aluminum slides out, lid drops in place, Bob’s your uncle. Just be prepared for the snake to strike at you when the metal mesh hardware cloth is exposed.

Rattlesnakes belong to a group called pit vipers. They have small pits on their heads, between their eyes and nose, on each side. Those pits contain heat-sensing organs. Mammals generate heat. We are mammals. Welcome to the world of prey.

I had used this set-up three times before with no problem. Once the lid was on, I could deal with the snake at my leisure. Usually I’d drive deeper into the forest and release the snake there.

Greta came out into the garage. “I thought you were going to mow the lawn. What are you doing?”

“There’s a rattlesnake under the lawnmower.”

She walked past me and looked out at the driveway. “Why did you do that?”

“I suspect the snake is on the blades of the lawnmower. It had gotten into the garage and was on the mower when I went to move it.”

“Just start the mower. Problem solved.”

“Except for the blood and meat residue everywhere which will soon start to putrefy.”

“Putrefy,” she said. “There’s a word you don’t get to use very often.”

“I can’t figure why the snake was attracted to a lawnmower.”

She kicked at what looked like an old tree leaf. “It’s molting, There’s some snake skin. They like to rub against things to help shed the old skin. Molting usually adds another segment to their rattle. They can molt more than once a year.”

“And you know all this because...?”

“Somebody gave my Dad a rattlesnake rattle and he gave it to me. When I had to do a science project I made it about the rattles on rattlesnakes.”

“You never mentioned this before we were married. Now here we are, eighteen years in, and I find this out.”

“Our tenth anniversary is in September, Gary.”

“Seems longer.”

“I can arrange for you to find out what ‘longer’ feels like.”

The snake proved to me more of a problem than one would expect. It just wouldn’t come out. I wanted to turn the mower on its side, but I’d had other mowers that always spilled oil when I did that.

Finally, I got a piece of corrugated cardboard and laid it next to the mower to catch any oil. With my snake-capturing kit at hand, I took hold of the end of the mower’s handle and turned the mower on its side, then, keeping well clear, I walked out and around to view the underside.

Sure enough, there was a light-colored rattle snake entwined with the blade. He looked shaggy. Or she. It’s not likely a gender reveal would be in the offing. By the near continuous rattle, I concluded the snake was not happy. Well, that made two of us.

I went into the camper and got out the binoculars, then went to the rear window to watch the snake. It seemed to be sliding back and forth, or maybe undulating, along its length; I figured that was a molting move., but it didn’t seem that effective, not that I could express an expert opinion.

But it was frustrating my plans. Half the morning had been screwed-up by a molting snake. We couldn’t just leave it. I did not want an unsupervised viper on the property, especially a snake which had already displayed a willingness to enter our garage. But this waiting was getting old.

I went into the garage and grabbed a garden hose. Then I hooked it up to...

Really, what difference does it make? Do we actually need a blow-by-blow? To make an already too long story just a tad shorter, allow me to summarize: I used the water from the garden hose to encourage the snake to vacate the mower blades. At the same time, the cold water made him sluggish, so capture was easy. With the snake aboard, I set the covered bucket in the garage, and went about mowing and trimming the lawn.

I checked on the snake before I went in and decided to drive a couple 3-inch wood screws into the bucket, so he’d have something to rub against as he continued to molt.

After a quick lunch, we went shopping and got back in time to clean house before Emily got home. She hadn’t actually moved in with us, but was spending most of her nights at our place. Her name would go on the title when out relationship was formalized. Then she’d buy in to the equity.

The three of us were just heading out the door, looking forward to the guacamole dip at our favorite Mexican restaurant, Otto und Helga’s Authentischer Mexikaner, when my phone rang. I had the crisis call that week, and Greta said, “That’s just perfect.”

But it was Tate.

“I’m being serious here: you should probably sit down.”

“Okay.” I went over to a stool at the counter.

“What is ir?” Greta stage-whispered.

I said, into the phone, “I’m sitting.”

“Is Greta there?”

“Ye-ah.”

“What about --”

“Her, too.”

Greta and Emily had stepped around to the other side of the counter.

Greta demanded, in an incongruously loud whisper, “Who is it?”

“Best not put me on speaker,” Tate said.

“Like that’s gonna work. We’re way beyond that option.” I keyed the function. “You’re on speaker.”

“Everybody sitting?”

“Yes,” they said. They weren’t.

“Grant’s dead. It looks like he killed himself.”

Greta said “Oh my god.” Emily just covered her mouth with her left hand as she still had her purse on her right arm.

I said, “‘Looks like’?”

“Yeah, but there’s more.” He paused. “Jimmy’s dead. He was shot and then he drowned.”

“Holy shit!” I said.

Greta’s face went gray and I said to Emily, “Watch her.”

“Are you guys okay?”

“Greta’s a little punky. When they said they were sitting, they weren’t.”

“There’s more.”

“Fuck, Tate. Hold on ‘til I get these two sitting down.”

I said, “Living room.” Emily led Greta that direction and I grabbed a gallon plastic pitcher that was drying in the dish rack. They were both sitting on the couch and I handed the pitcher to Emily. “Just in case,” I said.

Then I set the phone on the coffee table and sat down on the carpet, with my legs folded under the table. “Go ahead, Tate.”

“The Schuster’s place has been burnt to the ground. I’ve been out there with the fire marshal the last couple hours. Everything out there is burnt down: the house, the garage, the goat shed, the pump house, the chicken coop, even the clothes line poles. Their car, too. Somebody used gallons of kerosene.

“And while I was out there, Sergeant Poitier called me with the rest of it. Jimmy was shot while he was waterskiing this morning. The daughters thought he was clowning and it took them a minute to realize he wasn’t. The bullet didn’t penetrate his skull, but it knocked him unconscious and he was floating face down. By the time they reached him, it was too late.”

Greta, who was looking better, said, “Brandon suggested where they should go to ski.”

“They staties are looking for Brandon. That’s how they found Grant. They were searching the buildings up at Coldwater Junction and they found Grant in the freezer. It looks like he went in there deliberately. The emergency shut off was epoxied closed and the outer door latch had been rigged to lock with some sort of weight and string set up. He had a Bible, and a bottle of sleeping pills, and a pad to sit on, but he was only in his underwear. There was a note in which Grant confessed to everything except the Lindbergh kidnapping, but he’d been in there overnight, so I don’t think he’ll be able to save Brandon from today’s rampage.”