Snakes (Part Two)
Tom seems disinterested in the bush and its snake. I want him to be very interested in that snake, but it’s unfair to call a man about a snake that lives in the insulation under your living room floor and then expect him to look for a snake that lives outside in a bush. I take a deep breath and lead Tom up the steps and into the house. We’ve owned the house for forty-six days, and I’m past the point of telling people to watch out and to breathe through their mouth. If they can’t smell the cat urine that coats every horizontal and vertical surface four feet and below in the house, then I have decided not to care. I can smell it, and that’s all that matters.
I let Tom step into the dining room ahead of me, and I hear the little intake of breath he makes when he sees the wreck of our house. It doesn’t mean as much when I hear it come from a stranger, but the week before, our good friend Ron had come out to help us rip out ductwork. When he got out of his car, he enthused about the view and the fresh country air and the beautiful drive; but when he came into the house, I saw the light dim in him. I saw the weight of our house settle on him, and although he tried, I knew he was thinking ‘thank god it isn’t me.’ That, I found, depressed me.
“I can smell it,” Tom says, and I have a small burst of affection for him.
“Not everyone can,” I say. I point toward the living room. We have ripped the carpet and subfloors off the joists, and now the inner bowel of the house stands exposed. Fluffy white insulation billows up between the joists over the crawl space, and part of the floor is open to the basement below. The insulation smells sour—different than the acrid pneumonia of the cat piss. “We saw the snake in there.”
Jesse has followed us into the house, and he takes the lead now, pointing out where he tried to chop the snake in half, describing with some animation how long it was and how thick. Tom wobbles over open joists to the spot and steps into the dirt crawl space. He kneels down and sifts through the insulation with his bare hand. After sorting through many handfuls of it, he finally declares that the pieces of the dead snake are not in the insulation.
“Are you sure you killed it?” he asks.
“God, I hope so,” I say, but my comment is mere editorializing, meant to keep the situation lighthearted.
“I don’t know,” Jesse says. “I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure.”
“My mother says ‘where there’s one, there’s two,’” I say. “My mother says that I should expect to open drawers and closets and find snakes in them. My mother says we have a nest and—”
“Your mother,” Jesse says, “does not know what she’s talking about.”
“It’s true,” Tom says. “One doesn’t necessarily signal two, but don’t worry, I’ll check the whole house for you.”