You nod and for reasons you cannot begin to understand, your eyes fill with unwarranted and irreconcilable tears. You turn away from your brother now because you do not want him to see, because he does not cry and so you will not either, and after a moment he says, Well, I’m going in, and you manage a quick, clear OK, and then you are alone and the sun is casting down beyond the edge of the mountains to the west and soon the whole of the desert is plunged into darkness.
TWO YEARS later, in the fall of 1978, you are perched on the edge of the tattered lime green sofa in your trailer’s tiny living room, Rick beside you, your mother in her recliner, while on the static-snowed screen of the television Marlin Perkins wrestles an anaconda in a muddy pool. Coils and coils of slick tan and black scales and muddy water. A moment of black hair. Hands frothing the surface. And when Stan Brock’s head once again appears, the coils are wrapped around his face, across his mouth, his jaw, and he struggles to pull them away. Marlin pulls at the beast’s head, his teeth clenched, gripping the great snake’s jaws between his fists, the rippling body wrapping around his legs even as it drags Stan yet again under the surface.
You are frozen, watching the screen. All three of you are. Your mother has offered a constant flow of words during the program, but even she is silent now, prone in the recliner. There is, for the moment, not even the sound of their breathing. As if the air itself has been sucked clean of the trailer and is gone. You are sixteen years old but Wild Kingdom is still a show that you do not miss, no matter what, and although Rick sometimes complains about your devotion to it, he manages to be there every Sunday night, arriving just when the opening credits begin and remaining until well after the show has ended.
On the screen, Marlin looks tired and perhaps even a little afraid. His characteristic khaki safari outfit is soaked through and his white hair is swept back from his face by the flow of the churning water around him, the beast’s head gripped in his hands, its mouth snapping the air. Then he is on his back, his face just above water, one leg out of the water and completely wrapped in the snake’s thick, crushing coils. Perhaps he will drown. Perhaps he will drown right now on national television and the snake will pull him down its endless throat.
And it is just in that moment when there is a knock at the door.
It’s open, your mother calls.
The door swings open and when there is no further sound, you look up briefly from the television. The man there hesitates before stepping inside. Betty, he says. Then he looks at you and at Rick and nods.
You nod briefly in response, not knowing what else to say or do. The man is the sheriff, not a deputy but the sheriff himself, in his full uniform, khaki and stripes and badge shining in the light from the television.
Oh, she says. I didn’t know it was you, Jimmy. I look terrible. She throws herself forward once, twice, and finally the giant chair swings itself into an upright position, the footrest tucking back into its base with a springy clang.
I’ll need to talk with you for a minute, the sheriff says.
In your memory of this night, the door will be open and a strange white light will run through it, into the trailer from the street. The sheriff will be in silhouette: a dark shape cut into that flood. A halo. A wash. A river.
Your mother is standing now and the sheriff looks across to where you and Rick sit on the sofa. Maybe you’d better send the boys to their room for a minute, the sheriff says.
What’s the matter, Jimmy?
The sheriff does not answer and after a moment your mother says, You and Ricky go on back to your room.
You complain briefly, since the show has not yet ended, although you see now that Marlin Perkins is free of the snake and they are bagging it in a huge burlap sack, but there is something in the sheriff’s presence that is unnerving and so you rise and tell Rick to come on and the two of you wander back to the bedroom you share with your brother.
What’s that all about? Rick says.
I have no idea. You flop onto the mattress for a moment and then reach down to slide your box of comic books out from the gap under the bed.
That was awesome with the snake, Rick says.
Yeah it was.
Hoo man, that guy’s a lot stronger than he looks.
I thought it was gonna get him, you say. For a minute.
He looked pretty wore out.
You pull a comic from the box and as you do so a sound comes from the front of the trailer. A weird high keening. You look up at Rick and he at you. A chill passes through you, starting in your center and radiating out in all directions at once, like a ripple in a pool of still water.
You call out into the front of the trailer: Mom? The comic next to you on the bed is called Chamber of Darkness. An old man caught up under the arm of some creature. Maybe a werewolf. Something else. The sound again. For the briefest instant, it feels as if it has come from the comic book. That keening. A sob.
When you enter the kitchen you find your mother in the arms of the sheriff. You’ll be OK, he is saying softly. Then you see that your mother is weeping.
Mom? you say again.
Oh god, she says. Then, between sobs: You have to tell him, Jimmy. I can’t do it. You have to tell him. Her voice is high-pitched, strained, frightening, and she does not lift her head from the sheriff’s shoulder.
OK, the sheriff says. I can do that. Let’s sit you down.
He steers her away from you, toward the sofa, and tilts her into it as if she would have been unable to sit on her own. You have no memory of your mother ever sitting on the sofa so the image of her there is incongruous. The recliner is empty. You almost tell the sheriff that the sofa is not her place but he has turned to you, and to Rick, and stands there for a long moment, looking at you both before he reaches out and lays a broad, heavy hand on your shoulder.
Listen, Nathaniel, he says. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Do you know that?
What happened? The sheriff’s face is liquid. Already you know that whatever it is, it will be terrible.
The sheriff clears his throat. So something really bad happened tonight, and you’re gonna have to be strong for your mom. You hear me?
You nod. Tears streak your face.
Your brother, Bill … well, look, he was in a bad accident. And he didn’t make it.
Didn’t make what?
He died, Nathaniel. Bill’s dead.
The sheriff’s eyes are wet too and his face warps and wobbles through your own tears. Everything flowing. Everything coming to pieces.
You’re gonna have to be strong for your mom, the sheriff says.
Bill’s …? you begin, but of course you cannot finish the statement.
I’m sorry, the sheriff says.
There is no ground beneath you. Everything is water sucking into dry sand. You are in a muddy pond and there is a snake around your body and it is pulling you under. You are in a muddy pond and there is no television crew to help pull you from its depths.
THEY WILL tell you later that he was drunk, coming back from a bonfire party out in the mountains by the gravel pits, and simply slid off the road, the truck’s velocity well over seventy miles per hour. When the sheriff leaves your trailer, your mother disappears into her bedroom. You think she will return but she does not and you sit on the sofa in the silent trailer and think about the new knowledge that you have no brother, that you will never see your brother again.
Three days later you stand on the cut lawn at the funeral in the shiny black shoes you have borrowed from a neighbor, the toes of which, even in your memory, are covered in thin bright blades of wet grass. You cannot imagine that your brother is in that box, is going under the ground, even though at fifteen you are certainly old enough to understand. Your mother weeps with drunken abandon. You look at her momentarily, then back to the casket. You try to speak but no words will come and the tears that fall are frantic and endless. The feeling of liquidity has not ceased, as if all that dead sea has risen around you and you stand on the rough sand of its lowest depths.