The Snake

One

The box was two feet long, a foot and a half wide, and a foot and a half deep. Its outside was plywood, its inside a lining of burlap stitched into cardboard. There were air holes drilled into the top and sides. Together with its contents, the box weighed sixteen pounds. For anyone less than Matt Olssen's size it would have been an unwieldy burden, but Matt carried it comfortably under his long arm.

Even so, a few times along the way it became a drag, and he was tempted to walk away from it. Once, without meaning to, he had actually forgotten it. By the time he got back to where he had left it, two characters had hefted it up onto the bar and were struggling with the knot in the blond sisal twine looped around its width. He had been half inclined to let them get a look at what was inside the box, but he had been warned that, although it would probably be lethargic, he wasn't to count on it; it might come out of the box like a shot. So he kicked ass, picked up the box, and moved along.

He had taken it-box and animal together-from some Greek or other in a poker game in Lourengo Marques (Maputo, they called it now, a no-class name) in exchange for a handful of markers in Malawi dollars, which was the funny-money they were playing for. The Greek claimed it was a rare specimen that he had bought at a bargain price from some nigger cop in Elisabethville who was said to have confiscated it in the bush country from another nigger, who had staked it out as a booby trap on a dark path in front of his brother-in-law's house, with intent to kill. It hadn't worked out. The brother-in-law had a flashlight and spotted it in time, and then hollered for the cops. Matt had accepted it, as an alternative to beating up on the Greek, with the notion of turning it loose in the downtown area of the city for laughs. But later, sobering up, he decided instead to bring it back to the States and try to sell it to a zoo. He stowed the box away under the bunk in his cabin, and aside from sprinkling some water through the air holes a few times, paid no attention to it on the ten-day voyage back from Africa.

His ship had docked in Brooklyn in early morning. By the time he had finished supervising the off-loading it was noon, and 92 degrees, and he was nearly dehydrated. He cleaned up, put the box under his arm, and staggered to a waterfront joint a block away from the ship's berth. It wasn't until three o'clock that he remembered to phone his wife.

"Betty? It's me."

"Oh, Christ."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, you come and go, don't you?"

So it was going to be an uphill fight. Tuning his voice up to a little boy's sweet upper register, he said, "Baby, your little Mattsie is dying to see your beautiful face. You know?"

"Look, you bastard, don't come on with that cutie-pie act. You ask me if I know? I know."

"Hey, baby, be nice to me. I been six months at sea-?'

"Six? I haven't heard from you in over a year."

"— and every single night when I turned in I dreamed about my beautiful Betty."

She snorted. "Well, dream on. I'm hanging up."

"Wait, no, I have to tell you something."

In the steaming phone booth he was pouring sweat and booze vapours. He glanced through the glass of the door at the box, standing on end near his bar stool. Nobody was paying any attention to it; he had promised to break the nose of any man who went near it.

"What you said about not hearing from me?" He wiped a rill of sweat off the side of his face with the phone. "I swear to Jesus Christ God I wrote you once a month like clockwork. Don't tell me you didn't get my letters."

"You lying bastard, I'm hanging up on you."

"You can't hang up on me. I'm your husband."

"In name only. I'm hanging up."

"I have to see you, Betty. God, how I missed you."

"I'm busy. I have to go now."

"No. Listen. I know the way to your heart, you bitch, and to everything else, too. "I got something for you. A present."

She paused for a moment. "Well, if it's another dumb statue like last time, you know what you can do with it."

"Every port we made I worked my butt off, so I didn't even have time to buy you something." He smiled slyly into the transmitter. "So I'm just gonna have to give you cash instead. You mind, baby?"

Her voice came alive. "You're gonna give me money? How much?"

"Ah, don't let's spoil the surprise. But I'll give you a little hint. It's in the four figures."

"I could certainly use some money. You got no idea what it's like, just keeping up the apartment, and buy a few clothes once in a while."

"I would have mailed you money, like I promised, but these crummy ports, they would steal it right out of the envelope in the post office. I'll be over in an hour or two, soon as we're finished unloading the ship. Okay, sweetheart?"

"Well, okay. But don't get rolled or anything. I really have to have the money."

"See you in an hour, baby. Wear a see-through, will ya?"

Ten hours later he had drunk better than a quart and a half of whiskey, spent almost three hundred dollars, and had two or three causeless fights.

He had moved from joint to joint on a course that led in slow stages generally northward through Brooklyn, across the East River into Manhattan, and on up the West Side to Columbus Avenue in the Seventies. Now he was the last remaining customer in the dump, and the bartender had just shut off the air conditioner to chase him.

"You want me to go, tell me man-to-man to go, and I'll go," Matt said. "But don't he the air conditioner broke down, you crumb."

"I don't want no more trouble with you," the bartender said. His right hand was under the bar, and he gave Matt a glimpse of a fat sawed-off bat.

"Whyn't you just call it a night, sailor?"

"You crumb, if I felt like staying here I would make you turn it on again."

He was pouring sweat again even though the air conditioner hadn't been off more than a couple of minutes. "But my dear little wife is waiting for me, and man, I got a terrific load saved up for her."

He heaved the box up on the bar, paid his bill, and threw the bartender a ten-dollar tip. The bartender mumbled his thanks and then, as if to underline his gratitude, pretended to be curious about the box. "What you really got in there, sailor?"

It was a question that had been put to him often during the long hours since he had left the docks. Depending on the variable temperature of his mood, his answer had been either "a little pussycat" or none of your fucking business." In all cases he had made it evident, by virtue of his size and attitude and general air of recklessness, that the subject was closed. In the only instance when a questioner had persisted, Matt had grabbed him by the collar and run him out the door.

Now he simply winked at the bartender, hiked the box up under his arm, and went out into Columbus Avenue. The September heat had hardly relented since sundown, trapped by pavement and steel and concrete. Considering that it was nearly 2 A.M., there were a surprising number of people on the streets. In front of him, a couple slouched along with their arms clasped limply around each other's waist. Across the street, a man and two women were standing at the curb singing. Before him, a young man, bare-chested, wearing floppy shorts, bore down toward him on a collision course but sheered off at the last moment. A few cars were heading south, their headlights bouncing on the ragged road. Here and there, above the street, people leaned out of darkened windows, their arms and elbows cradled on pillows on the sills, trying to distil some refreshment out of the hot moist air.

He turned east toward Central Park, his gait rolling, part swagger, part stagger. The street was dark, with almost every other one of its lamppost lights shattered. The curbs were lined with garbage, some in plastic bags, some simply strewn. A few windows were dimly lit, and there were sounds of voices or music drifting into the street. Near the end of the block, a cluster of Hispanics sitting on a stoop, wearing shorts and nightgowns, laughed at him and called out insults. He stopped, and challenged them to come down off the stoop and fight, the whole lot of them, men, women, children, and knives. They laughed, and saluted him with their beer cans.

He told them that they were a bunch of dirty cabrones, putas, and hastardos, and when they applauded his command of their language, he bowed to them and moved on. He wasn't ignorant of the streets of New York-and of Rio and Genoa and Marseilles and a hundred other ports — but they held no terrors for him. He knew that his size was intimidating; and if it failed to intimidate, he was ready to fight, confidently and with enjoyment.

At Central Park West he checked the street sign and looked at the building on the comer in bafflement. From the lobby, a uniformed doorman looked out at him cautiously. He checked the street sign and the building number again. Dumb ass. She lived east, the other side of the park. He set the box down near the curb and waved his arms wildly at an approaching cab. The cab slowed and stopped, then suddenly shot off. Matt took a wild swing at the trunk of the car as it went by. In the next five minutes two more cabs passed him up.

He glared into the street, cursing loudly. But he knew what the problem was-the yellow bastards were scared of him. He was wearing what he called his "shore uniform." He had begun to put it on, item by item, at that dockside joint in Brooklyn and now, fifteen hours later, he was fully dressed. There was a footprint on the crown of his white nautical cap, and the yellow braid on the black bill was hanging by a couple of threads. A sleeve of the white linen jacket was separated at the shoulder. The T-shirt beneath it was grimy and soaked with sweat and spilled drinks. The duck pants were filthy and ripped at one knee. He had a smear of dried blood at the corner of his mouth from a cut lip, another smear on the lapel of the linen jacket, and spatters on his white shoes.

Like his size, his shore uniform proclaimed a violent man, and it was forbidding.

A cab stopped for a red light on the north comer of the street. Matt picked up the box and ran toward it. The driver watched him for a moment through the windshield, then put his car in gear and shot the light.

"Fuck it. Fuck you all, cabrones," Matt yelled.

He tipped the leading edge of the box forward and shook it for balance, and the animal slid drily inside.

"Don't get restless, pussycat," Matt said. "Relax and you'll live longer."

He tucked the box securely under his arm and crossed the street toward the park.

Torres, sitting on a bench backed against the stone retaining wall that bordered the park, watched with sour lack of interest as the big sailor tried to get a cab. But he came alive as the sailor started crossing over to the park side of the street. When the sailor hitched up the box he was carrying, and started walking north, Torres had to talk to himself to keep from running after the guy and jumping him right then and there.

"Wai', stupid, see what he gonna do."

When the sailor was fifty or sixty feet up the street, Torres eased off the bench and began tailing him, walking close to the retaining wall, so he could crouch against it if the guy looked back. But the sailor didn't turn around. He stopped once, and looked across the street at the Museum of Natural History, but only for a second. He kept walking north, and a couple of times he paused and looked toward the park, as if he was thinking of going in.

"I'll wait if you promise to go inna park," Torres said softly. "You wanna know how to go in? Transverse coming up on Eighty-first."

The sailor was a giant and looked tough-he carried that box under his arm like it was a feather-and Torres realized that it would be risky to tackle him one-on-one, but he was desperate for a score. The way the weather was, people were wearing hardly any clothes, and they didn't have no place to carry their money so they left it home. That was what had happened the last two times, and he got mad the second time and pistol wbipped the score real good. But pistol-whipping didn't put no money in the bank.

So he knew be wasn't going to let the sailor's size or anything else stop him. Besides, the way the sailor was walking he looked pretty drunk. Torres made up his mind. Even if the sailor went past the transverse without going in, he was gonna hit him anyway. There wasn't nobody walking on Central Park West, and only a few cars, mostly cabs, and no goddamn cab driver was gonna stop if he saw somebody being worked over, unless it was one of those moonlighting cops that drove a hack, and even then he might look the other way. Still, it was dangerous.

The sailor stopped at 81 st Street, at the entrance to the transverse.

"Go in," Torres said. "Go inna park, you stupid fuck. It's bullshit what you hear about danger. Ain't no danger, it's real safe, anybody can walk through and be safe. Don't be afraid, go on, walk inna park." But the big guy crossed the street past the transverse opening. "Aw ri'," Torres said, "aw ri', I'm gonna do it to you anyway."

The sailor stopped again. Torres held his breath. The sailor was turned toward the pedestrian entrance, a broad entry between two squat pillars.

Better than the transverse, Torres thought, no cars, no nothing. Go on, go in, man, he pleaded silently, and in an agony of wishing used body English, like with a pinball machine, to get the sailor to turn into the park.

It worked. The sailor turned into the entrance, and as he hurried after him, Torres said, "Beautiful. Thank you, God."

He touched the short-barrelled.38 he carried in his belt under his loose shirt.

A short while after he began walking through the park, Matt Olssen realized he should have gone through the transverse, which would have taken him on a direct line to the east side. Here, the walkways branched and wound, and he would have to use a little navigation to keep from wandering in circles.

Well, he was a sailor, wasn't he? Steer by the stars. He looked up. The sky was overcast, with a reddish tint, and there wasn't a star in sight. He thought for a second of going back, of trying to retrace his steps to the entrance and then taking the transverse, but it seemed like too much trouble. Screw it. At least the park smelled a little better than outside.

As for little Betty, she'd wait no matter how long it took him. Expecting money, she'd wait all night, and then some. Little Betty. He smiled, envisioning her in the apartment, probably fallen asleep, lying on her back in the air-conditioned bedroom in her see-through. He would have to lean on the bell to wake her up, and she'd be pissed off, but not fatally, because she would be thinking about the money he had promised her. He would take a nice slow shower-maybe get her to take it with him-and then into the kip.

When she wanted to, Betty could fuck up a storm, and with the prospect of money she had the incentive.

Except for the sound of his own footsteps on the pavement, the park was silent. If there was anybody else around, they were keeping real quiet about it. He knew you weren't supposed to walk in the park after dark, but it didn't bother him. Any mugger got a good look at him he'd probably run away and hide. And if he didn't, well, another fight was just another fight, and he'd bust the sonofabitch up good.

There was motion in the box. He reached around with his free hand and tapped the cover sharply.

"Lie still, pussycat."

He tilted the box back and forth a few times. The movement inside became briefly agitated and then subsided.

It was clear to Torres that the sailor didn't know what the hell he was doing. First he went to the left, toward the kids' playground, then wound around back to the main path, heading east. He never once looked behind him, or even to the right or left. Nice sailor, Torres thought, you gonna win the medal for easiest score of the year. He let the guy get out of sight a few times, laying back, knowing that when the curving walkway straightened out, he would be there. No hurry. Let him get nice and deep inside the park.

No way of losing him. Even if he got invisible in the shadows once in a while, it was easy to pick him up again when he passed into the light of the streetlamps every few hundred feet.

When the sailor lurched across the West Drive, Torres whispered to himself, "Watch yourself, stupid, don't get hit by no car." The sailor crossed the roadway safely, and after a while Torres followed. When he saw him again, the sailor was stopped, facing to his right, toward the path that climbed up to the Belvedere Castle. "Hey, that's a good one, nice and lonesome up there," Torres whispered.

But the sailor turned away and went straight on. Ahead, on the right, was the Delacorte Theatre, and on the left the Great Lawn, with the baseball backstops sticking up and the patterned dirt infields, stretching north for about four city blocks. The sailor moved on past the big round theater without even looking at it.

Because the path was straight here, Torres hung well back. Above him, nailed to a tree, was one of those green signs: THIS PARK CLOSES AT MIDNIGHT. What's a matter, sailor, Torres said to himself, you can't read? You breaking the law, amigo, you committing a crime, so I don't feel sorry for you, what's gonna happen, you fucking criminal. He smiled to himself in the darkness, and closed up the gap a bit as the sailor lurched past the little Belvedere Lake, they called it, with the castle on the other side, sitting on a rocky bed, looming up against the sky like something from olden times.

After a while, as the sailor wandered deeper into the park, something occurred to Torres that made him worried. What if there was another mugger someplace, and he picked off the sailor while Torres was laying back? And suppose, from the way he was heading, suppose he stumbled into the Ramble, where all the fags hung out? Some of those maricons were rough people, and could rob the dumb bastard, besides cornhole him, too.

Cristo, 'rorres thought, I better pull the job before he gets hijacked.

He started to quicken his pace, and just then the sailor turned around.

Torres dove for the pavement. Sonofabitch had seen him! No, he was looking up, maybe checking out the buildings on Central Park West to see which way he was going. Just ahead was one of those arches, like a little tunnel. Go ahead in the tunnel, Torres said to himself. But instead, the sailor veered off to his left.

Good enough, Torres thought. He got up, drew his piece out of his belt, cocked it, and took off after the sailor at a light run. He had closed in to within a dozen feet when the sailor heard him and turned around.

Torres edged toward him a little.

"Aw ri', man," he said. "This wha'they call a mugging, okay?"

The sailor's eyes were blinking in surprise. He didn't look scared.

Torres raised the piece so the guy could see it.

"You be a smart guy and you don't get hurt. Right" He waved the pistol.

"Else you get blowed away. Okay? I wan' you lay down on your face. Okay?

Lay down, man."

The sailor laughed.

"You hear me, man? Lay down." When the sailor kept laughing, Torres began to feel uncertain. Sonofabitch was like an apartment house. But then the sailor laughing at him made him mad. He pushed the gun out at arm's length toward the sailor and yelled, "You lay down, motherfucker!"

"Okay, greaseball, I lay down."

The sailor shifted the box from under his arm and threw it at Torres, shoving it out from his chest with both hands, like a basketball pass.

Torres saw the box coming at him, tumbling in the air, and, behind it, the sailor moving toward him fast. An edge of the box caught him on the shoulder, and then it went sailing past him and he heard something crack as it hit the pavement. The sailor was right on top of him when he pulled the trigger. He shot three times, the last two with the muzzle of the gun right against the sailor's chest, and then the sailor's weight was bearing him backward.

They hit the ground hard, with the sailor on top, and Torres heard his own breath whoosh out of him. He struggled wildly, threshing with his legs, chopping at the back of the sailor's neck with the barrel of the gun. He braced his feet against the pavement, arched his back, and heaved upward, and the sailor rolled off him. He scrambled to his feet and trained the gun downward at the sailor's head. But the sailor wasn't moving. His eyes were open and staring up at the sky. His shirt was bloody, and Torres realized that all three bullets had gone into his chest and that the sailor was already dead when he fell on top of him.

"Sonofabitch," Torres said. He felt awed. It was the first time he had ever wasted anybody. Then he felt a surge of pride. Big like an apartment house and he had wasted him! Okay, beautiful, but think about it later on. Three shots, and if there was cops cruising through the park they maybe heard it.

Hurry up and make the score and split.

The sailor was lying a couple of feet in front of the box. The wood had split when the box hit and the cover was broken. Torres started toward the sailor, and his eye was caught by something moving in the box. He saw two points of gleaming light and a dark shape moving slowly from side to side.

The dark shape moved upward on a long column, and Torres, staring, realized that it was the head and neck of a snake. As he watched, frozen, the snake started to slide out of the box. It slithered over the rim, pouring out in a continuous motion. It kept coming, slow and smooth, no end to it, and Torres thought he must have been dreaming.

"Madre de Dios!"

He looked on in fascination as the snake poured out of the box, drawing itself into a loose coil until finally a thin tail flipped out. Then the snake raised its head up high on its stiffened neck and stared at Torres.

Its head was small and flattened and its eyes were bright and shining in the darkness. Some of the coils were practically touching the sailor's body. The snake was flicking its long tongue in and out, and its head swayed over the sailor's body, like, Torres thought wildly, it was guarding it.

Torres couldn't believe his eyes. He had seen some big snakes before in Puerto Rico, in the interior, but never one like this sonofabitch. It scared him. He wanted to turn and run away, but he wasn't gonna split without getting the money. He thought of trying to shoot the snake, but he knew it would have to be a very lucky hit, and if he missed it might get the snake mad.

The snake kept looking at him with its gleaming eyes, and the tongue kept sliding in and out. It was like they were both hypnotized, Torres thought, staring at each other across the sailor's body. But Jesus, man, Torres said to himself, you can't stay here all night. The cops might be trying to locate where the shots had come from. He had to make a move.

The snake had started to hiss at him, and it had its mouth wide open.

Suddenly, remembering a movie about India, Torres had an idea. He held the gun out in front of him and moved it to the right, and the snake's head swayed to follow it. He moved the gun back to his left, and again the snake's head moved with it.

"Stupid snake," Torres said, and, to himself, Hey, man, you got it made.

He edged forward to within three feet of the sailor's body. Cautiously, he moved the revolver left and right a few times, and always the snake's head followed it.

"Okay, man," Torres said, "now we make the score."

He extended the revolver as far out to his right as his arm would reach, and when the snake's head turned to stare at it, hissing, he quickly crouched, and with his free hand reached inside the breast pocket of the sailor's bloody coat. His fingertips had just touched the wallet when the snake's head shot forward, so fast that it was a blur, and he felt a sharp stinging pain in his thigh. Before Torres could move, the snake struck again, launching itself over the sailor's body, and he felt it hit in almost the same place.

Torres shouted hoarsely and jumped back. The snake was erect again, hissing, its mouth gaped open. Torres retreated half a dozen paces and looked at his thigh. His beige pants were slightly reddened by a few tiny spots of blood. It didn't hurt there, just a feeling like pins and needles. When he looked up again the snake's body was in motion, curling forward over the sailor's body, moving toward him.

"Cristo, save me," Torres screamed. "Cristo, please save me from this fucking snake!"

He turned away and began to run at top speed.

The snake crawled off the walkway into the grass. It held its head high, and its black forked tongue darted in and out. It disappeared into the darkness.