9 Snakes
Buddy found the first snake. He'd gone with Danny, up ahead of Renee and me, and he found the snake by nearly stepping on it by the side of the creek. The snake slithered off into the shallow water of the creek just past the place where the creek bed twisted around a tree on a high bank, the tree's roots holding the bank together. The water opened up into a wide stretch and spread out into shallows on the left bank where we walked along going upstream. All I saw was a flash of brown, but Buddy claimed he got a good look and it was a cottonmouth for sure. Said he was lucky he didn't get a leg full of poison
My brother Danny said, if Buddy had been bit, he had his pocket knife with him and he’d seen in the movies how you sliced into the bite and sucked out the poison, and he would have done it to save Buddy from a slow painful death.
"Reckon I'm glad I don't have to count on you to save me from a slow painful death," Buddy grinned, a smirky grin, then shoved my brother in the direction of the creek. Danny stumbled to the edge of the water, the creek water just washing over the toes of his tennis shoes.
Buddy always tried to lord it over my brother. Maybe felt like he needed to, to let everyone know he was older, 11 instead of 10. The two of them were pretty much the same size. If anything, my brother was a little taller. Other than that, they didn't look anything alike, Buddy tanned dark with brown hair, my brother light with blondish hair and freckles just like the rest of us Mills. Buddy claimed his tan was a result of being a farm kid, out in the sun doing chores, not some coddled city kid. I thought it had more to do with how his mother and father were dark complected and ours weren't, cause he sure didn't do a whole lot of work that I could see.
My brother got his balance back and gave Buddy a shove, but Buddy was ready for it, his legs apart to keep his balance, and it wasn't a serious shove anyhow. By the time Renee and I caught up with them they’d stopped shoving and were arguing whether this was a good place to swim.
The two of them always made a game of finding the absolutely best place to swim. Sometimes we'd spend more time finding the place than swimming. Only on really hot days like today did they settle for the first place that looked any good at all.
Up ahead the water was too deep and the current too fast, for Renee anyway. Being only six, she couldn't swim yet. None of us was supposed to go in over our waists without grownups around. Course we did anyway, but not over our chests, and not in the swift current.
This stretch was so wide the water probably didn't go much above our knees, but the day was so hot I figured we'd stay here awhile, so I put down my towel, took off my tennis shoes and waded in. Renee and I wore our shorts and shirts to swim. They'd dry on the way back.
Renee followed me out nearly to the opposite bank. Trees with high shading branches grew all along the edge of the grassy bank but too high above the water for us to climb up to them. Near the high bank the water flowed deep enough to lie down in. The creek bottom felt like silt on my toes, so I floated face down and reached down to put my fingers into it, the water cool on my face.
By the time I came up for air the slow current brought me a long ways downstream and nearly back to the dirt shore. Renee still stood where I had started. She splashed herself with water and looked towards me. The water looked more inviting further downstream, deeper and narrower, but not too deep or too fast.
The boys must have decided to stay because they pulled their jeans off, leaving the swim trunks that had been underneath. I walked past them on my way back to Renee.
Before I reached her I passed a big stick in the water. I headed over to pick up the stick, something to stir up the silt. I stepped closer.
The stick moved.
One end came towards me, stopped, jerked back, and swam away in the opposite direction.
Snake number two.
It was gone before I started to be afraid.
My left leg shook, just at my left knee. It felt like it wouldn’t hold me, so I picked it up to stop it. Then I ran to the shore.
“A snake,” I shouted. My leg shook again and my breath went faster than it should have from that little run.
Renee splashed through the water behind me, stepping high like she didn’t want to leave her feet down in that creek water. “I saw it," she said. “It could have bitten you.”
"Where?" asked Danny. He pulled his jeans the rest of the way off and got to his feet.
I pointed. My breath came slower, almost normal.
Danny stood up straight, almost on his toes, and shielded his eyes with his hand against his forehead, looking just past us upstream.
"What color was it?" asked Buddy.
"Brown,” I said, “I thought it was a stick."
"Some stick," said Buddy, pulling the cord of his swimming trunks tighter.
"It looked just like a stick," Renee said. "It lay in the water, then Annie came and it swam away." Renee's wet shorts clung to her, but her red T-shirt was only wet on the bottom edge.
"Did it open its mouth?" Buddy asked. "If it opened its mouth it could have been a water moccasin. Normal snakes can't bite you under water, but water moccasins can. It probably wasn't a water moccasin, though, probably wasn't even poisonous, not like a cottonmouth."
I tried to remember. When it moved its head towards me did it open its mouth? I tried to picture it, and it seemed like I might have seen its mouth open just a little. I might have almost been bit by a water moccasin.
"I'm not sure," I said. "It might have opened its mouth. Did you see its mouth, Renee?"
Renee looked at me like she was trying to tell whether I wanted the snake to have opened its mouth or not, then she shook her head that she hadn't seen. I wondered whether a water moccasin was more poisonous than a cottonmouth, but didn't ask. Buddy would have an answer. The thing about Buddy was that he knew about everything, and he sounded so sure. I didn't always believe he knew what he was talking about, but since I knew almost nothing about snakes, there was no disputing him.
Buddy slapped his thigh and said, "Well, it seems to me that this creek is turning into a downright dangerous place to be, what with all these snakes. I say we put an end to some of them."
Most of the ideas that Buddy had were about hurting something, mostly me, but I kind of favored his idea about the snakes.
"Let's cool off some first," my brother said. He kicked at his tennis shoe.
“With all those snakes around?” asked Buddy.
Danny walked to the edge of the creek then into it and upstream for a ways in the shallow water, looking down at the water the whole time, then turned around and walked back, still looking down at the water. His legs, skinny and white, looked more bare than they usually did. Renee’s eyes stayed on Danny, and she didn’t look away until Danny stepped out of the creek and came back to us.
Danny looked at Buddy. He said, “I don’t see any more snakes. We’ve been swimming here all summer without being bothered by snakes. Probably it was just a coincidence that we saw two of them today. Probably neither one of them was poisonous.”
He reached down for a pebble, a good flat one, twirled halfway round to the creek and did a quick jerk with his wrist. The pebble skipped on the water, one, two three, up again in a half arc, then dropped straight down into the water.
Buddy moved another little rock with his toe, but he didn’t pick it up. He said, “Maybe the last one wasn’t poisonous, but that first one was a cottonmouth for sure.” He looked down at the ground, at the little rock, at his toe, then back up at my brother’s face.
My brother said, “May have been poisonous, but it had sense enough to get out of the way when it saw you coming.” He grinned his mouth-open grin at Buddy, the one with all his teeth showing, and Buddy grinned back.
Buddy picked up the little rock and didn’t even try to skip it because it wasn’t the right shape, just threw it hard into the water a couple of feet off shore. He said, “That’s right, none of them better show their ugly heads with me around.”
Danny said, “So, we’ll keep an eye open when we’re walking near the edge over here, and stay away from the bank on the other side. That’s the only place snakes might be. We’ll be safe enough.” Danny caught Renee’s eye when he said that. Then he said to Buddy,
“Afterwards we’ll go hunting for snakes.”
“Ok,” Buddy said.
"It looks better for swimming down there," I said, and pointed downstream where the water deepened and was shaded by trees on the higher bank.