Linwood groaned.
“In coffeehouses, with beatniks,” I said. “I want to wear black sweaters and write poetry.”
“Me too,” said Stan.
Linwood groaned again.
We all smiled and let it rest. Every now and then, you could tell we were a family. We had our jokes; we were loved. It was even rather pretty out the windows, in a chilly mid-November way. The cornfields we were passing through had been harvested. The sheaves of stalks were tied together, just like in picture books. There was a kind of rosy center to my chest. Life could be very simple and very pleasant. You didn’t have to have bad men and strange rides and magic necklaces.
If only things were always simple.
But they never would be, not for me. In the last week or so, I had carried my burden of crime and secrecy. Today, I’d think, will be Sammy-day. But every place we went that looked like his sort of place was closed.
“Anyhoo,” said Stan.
What an obnoxious expression.
“Anyhoo, in a week, we’ll be drinking rum punches and watching the marlin leap in the Gulf.”
“Pet and I get to drink rum punches?”
“Deane,” Linwood said dreamily, “always loved Ernest Hemingway.”
Actually, I loved Hemingway too. I’d only read parts of The Sun Also Rises, snuck from their bookshelf, but if I couldn’t be a beatnik, I wanted to have short hair and wear men’s hats. Those Paris cafés. And poor old Jake. He got around okay for a man with one leg.
“I’m sure she still does.” Stan was annoyed. “She isn’t dead, you know.”
Not yet, I thought.
“Snake-A-Torium!”
June was shouting in my ear.
Was that supposed to be a word?
“There’s a Snake-A-Torium up ahead!”
My head was thick, my brain groggy. I must have nodded off, as usual. The day had moved from early to mid-afternoon.
“Snake-A-Torium!” June shoved my shoulder, hard.
Sure enough, a dingy billboard advertised:
Terrible turtles? I thought about Rose and Pansy, released into Gaylin’s safekeeping.
“I need to send Gaylin a card,” I said, to no one in particular.
So nobody answered.
“Are we stopping?” June demanded.
“Why break our record now?” said Stan. “We’ve hit every grisly roadside stand between here and L.A. We wouldn’t want to miss one.”
“I hate snakes,” said Linwood.
“But you wouldn’t want to deprive the girls, after all I’ve made them suffer.”
Deep silence.
I started to point out that I wasn’t especially keen on snakes either, when I remembered—Sammy! Of course. Where was my mind, anyway?
Clearly, this was his sort of place.
Without any further negotiation, Stan parked in the gravel lot in front of the Snake-A-Torium. For a moment, no one moved. In the thin late-autumn sunshine, the spectacle before us was especially depressing.
A wooden fence, presumably surrounding the gift shop, the snake pit, and the outdoor animals, was painted with all kinds of cartoons. A man fell into a cluster of alligators, and the largest one snapped, “Glad you could drop in for a bite to eat!” Something about the clumsiness of the drawings and the way they were streaked with rain gave you that uh-oh feeling. Already you wanted to wash your hands.
“Well?” Stan asked.
“Let’s go!” June’s voice sounded false.
We climbed out, staring, but we tried not to, at the other drawings. Naked women with snakes wrapped about their waists, children without hands or feet. One particularly lifelike drawing—the “best”—had a big, fat gator smacking his chops, with drips of blood.
“I don’t know, Stan….”
“Girls?”
“I want to go in.”
Everyone was surprised at me. They stopped and looked. Linwood placed her cool palm on my forehead.
“Life’s supposed to be an adventure, right?”
“Not for children.” Stan was always much more put out by pictures of naked women than Linwood was.
“If you guys don’t hurry up, we’ll miss Sally the Snake Queen!” June beckoned from the doorway.
“Just a minute.” I opened the car door and pulled Nanette from the backseat. She had the big bills in her bag. Then I shut the door and caught up with the others. The underwear pockets bulged pleasantly beneath my armpits. Perhaps too much so, as Linwood had asked me the other day if I was “developing.”
The first thing you noticed inside the Snake-A-Torium was the dinginess and the powerful odor of animals, unhealthy animals. The second thing you noticed was the old man at the ticket counter. He was wearing a torn Hawaiian shirt (more bare-breasted maidens) over his considerable belly. His unshaven face was sprinkled with gray, and he chewed on a squashed cigar stub.
“Two adults, two children.” Stan’s teeth were gritted. He hated to see animals in pain. Once he caught Deane using spurs on Ace—that was the only time he ever hit her.
“Pet!” June shouted. “Look at this!”
I picked my way through the dusty reptile cages. They were so old and filthy, the place looked like a museum and not a zoo. It’s hard to feel sorry for a deadly black mamba, but you did.
In the center of the snake room there was a big hole in the floor with a railing around it. June was leaning over, gawking. The hole was The Snake Pit, about thirty feet deep and circular. The sides of the pit had been decorated with crudely painted palm trees, dinosaurs, and volcanoes. It looked like something a six-year-old might have done. There were some monkeys, too, and they were drawn so they looked bigger than the trees. I was only a child, but even I knew a little something about perspective.
“It’s time for the show.” June pointed at a fake cardboard clock down in the pit. It hung above the only doorway, and a sign said, THE NEXT SHOW WILL BE AT: and the clock’s hands showed four-thirty.
I glanced over my shoulder. Linwood was looking into a smeared display case. Stan, a horrible expression on his face, was peering into the various snake cages. No one else seemed to be in the room.
Especially not Sammy.
“Here she comes!”
The door opened, and out stepped a large woman wearing a spangled circus costume, one of the ones that look like your stomach shows but really it’s flesh-colored leotard. Her legs were heavy and her hair was an artificial red color that was almost purple. She had a lot of makeup on, but her face still looked old and unhappy. A little hat with feathers rose jauntily from her puffy hairdo.
She curtsied halfheartedly without looking up. If she’d known only June and I were watching, she probably wouldn’t have curtsied at all.
Then she left for a moment, returning with a hefty black and white reptile.
“Aw, it’s a king snake, like Stripey!” June was disappointed. “Anyone can pick up one of those.”
An old record of tinny-sounding hootchie-kootchie music came on. “Sally the Snake Queen!” Someone announced over the loudspeaker.
I turned around and, sure enough, it was the old guy at the counter. He held an oversized microphone up to his mouth, and he was still gnawing away at the cigar.
“Every day, ten times a day, no day a holiday, Sally handles her poisonous vipers!”
Absolutely no expression on her face, Sally wrapped the lethargic king around her shoulders as if he were a stole. Then she tied him around the impressive girth of her middle. Finally, she hauled him between her legs, which gave me a twinge. What a weird thing to do.