What does a person say under these circumstances? he wondered. ‘Help’? ‘Get me down!’? ‘I’m stuck in a tree’?
He settled on “Hello.”
He called out his hello, waited for an answer, called again. Called in all directions. Only the guinea fowl in the next tree answered.
He sagged on the bough, discouragement rising in him like the rising flood. He was very thirsty, very hungry. His wounded arm ached. He tried to get a look at it in the morning light, but it was on a part of his arm that he couldn’t see, no matter how much he tried.
He decided to check his pockets, make an inventory. Billfold with credit cards and ID. Money clip with a hundred and sixty in cash, more or less. Thirty-seven cents in loose change. House keys. These, and the Timex on his wrist, seemed to be the sum total of his resources.
He felt something in his shirt pocket, and fished it out. Opened the box. Saw the lily-shaped pendant on the necklace, saw dawn light winking off diamonds and rubies.
For Arlette. He looked at the golden lily in his palm. He would have to survive for Arlette. Nick felt a stinging bite on the back of his right arm and slapped at it with the left. Felt another bite, made another slap. Then he felt a bite on his back, and after slapping it away looked behind him to see what was the matter.
His heart gave a leap. Down the bole of the tree behind him poured a red river of insects. There were so many that the tree seemed to shimmer with the reflection of their glittering eyes. He spasmed forward along the tree limb, slapping furiously at his back and behind. There were red ants all over his body. He moved forward along the limb, feeling it dip under his weight, leaves trailing in the water. The mother opossum, from somewhere in the clump of leaves, gave a cry of warning. Nick threw one leg over the limb, turned to face the tree, swung the other leg over. An implacable swarm of ants marched along the bark toward him. He beat at them with his palms, then slapped at his body where other ants were still biting.
He wondered where the ants were coming from and looked up: a huge glistening ball of ants pulsed on the bole of the tree, only a few feet above where he’d laid his head all night. The ants must have evacuated their nest when the river rose, carrying with them their eggs, pupae, and queen; and now their nest was composed principally of their bodies, a ravenous scarlet sphere boiling with angry life, now wakened by the dawn and gone in quest of food.
There was a squawk above him, a flurry of beating wings, and a pair of grackles, cawing furiously, burst free of the foliage and thundered madly into the air. Apparently the ants had just invaded their perch. For a moment he considered abandoning the tree in favor of another. But there was no guarantee that a new tree would be any more hospitable, or that he would be able to climb it as easily as he climbed this one.
Besides, something in him resisted dropping into the cold water below. He could all too easily get caught in brush or debris, and drown.
He reached behind him to one of the cottonwood’s many small branches, and wrestled it back and forth until he succeeded in snapping it off. Then he used the leafy branch as a broom to sweep the tide of ants off the limb.
Another large bird squawked and flapped out of the tree. Nick didn’t see what kind, he only heard it. The ants were hungry, or angry, or both.
There was more thrashing in the tree, and Nick saw a raccoon, big as a dog, bound out of one branch and to another, clawing madly to get a firm grip. Once safe on the new limb, the raccoon began a frenzy of frantic scratching.
“Be thankful, man,” Nick said, sweeping with his branch. “It could be worse. They could be fire ants.” The raccoon gave him a resentful look and kept scratching.
Nick looked up at the ant nest, the ball of glittering angry insects, and he considered attacking it directly. Maybe with his branch he could knock them into the river by the thousands.
On the other hand, maybe he’d just piss them off.
He decided it was worth a try. He edged along the limb until the knot of ants was within easy sweeping distance of his branch, and then he cocked the branch back and slapped it against the ball of ants. He was surprised at how easily it worked—the seeming solidity of the ball of ants had made him think they would be harder to dislodge. A large chunk of the ant nest was knocked off the tree and fell in the water. He was surprised that the knot did not disintegrate: the ants clung to each other, forming a nearly solid raft as the current swept them away.
When they hit another tree, Nick thought, they’d all climb it.
A catbird gave its mewling cry of alarm and fluttered to safety. Another bird burst from the higher branches, dropped low across the water before gaining altitude. Some kind of owl, he saw, a big one, with horns. Didn’t like the ants, either.
He cocked his arm back, swept again. More ants spilled into the water.
He swept a third time. And then something flashed white and tan in the tree, and glittering fangs clamped on the leafy twigs. Cold primordial fear shot up Nick’s spine.
Cottonmouth, he thought.
His father had taken him all over the world when Nick was growing up. Nick had grown up on Army bases in Europe, in Korea, and in Thailand. But he had spent much of his youth on bases in the American South. And, like every Southern child who shares his swimming hole with nature, he had learned terror of the cottonmouth moccasin.
Snake! some boy would cry, and there would be a flurry of arms and legs and white water, and the boys would stand panting on the shore while a cottonmouth, long and thick as a grown man’s arm, prowled the water in search of something to kill.
Coral snakes and rattlers were shy, avoided humans when they could, and never bit unless threatened. A cotton-mouth moccasin was afraid of nothing, would aggressively invade territory occupied by others, and would bite without hesitation. Their venom, unlike that of the copperhead, was deadly.
“A cottonmouth will bite you just to watch you die.” That’s what the old folks told their children. And when the children grew older, fear and hatred of all snakes was buried so deep that it might as well have been seared on their bones. A lot of the children with whom Nick had shared his boyhood swimming holes grew up to kill every snake they saw, whether they were poisonous or not. That was what the fear of the cottonmouth could do.
Nick had never been as afraid of anything in his life as he’d been of the cottonmouths he’d seen when he was young. And that deep-buried fear had never gone away.
The distinctive white mouth tissue flashed again and again as the snake struck repeatedly at Nick’s branch. The snake was a big one, too, four feet long.
Its thick body was covered with furious biting ants. It was in agony. And it was angry enough to kill. Fear clawed at Nick’s brain with fingers of fire. Nick kept thrashing at the snake with the branch. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. His branch was too small and light to knock the snake off the tree, but at least the flailing leaves distracted it, kept it from biting at him. He found himself retreating along his limb, backing up until his butt came up against a nest of branches and he could back up no farther. The cottonmouth advanced, half-falling down the tree as it writhed in pain. It gathered itself on Nick’s limb, raised its head, hissed. Furious ants swarmed over it. Nick thrust the branch at it again, and it struck.
The raccoon gave a warning yelp and made a hasty jump for the water. It was as scared of the cottonmouth as Nick was.
For a half-second Nick considered following the raccoon’s example. But the cottonmouth was an aquatic snake, it could swim better than Nick could. If it was angry enough to follow Nick into the water, then it could kill him easily, while he tried to thrash his way through the waterlogged brush below. The cottonmouth writhed closer. Nick batted at the snake with the branch, but the leafy broom was too light to budge it from its perch. He could see his reflection in the snake’s unblinking eyes, and felt his blood run cold. Grab it behind the head, he thought, that was the safe way to handle a snake, but he couldn’t think of a way to grab its head without letting the cottonmouth strike at him first. Nick reversed the branch, thinking perhaps that he could use the sharp broken-off butt end as a dagger. He held it like an icepick in his right hand, eight inches or so from the end, and gave a huff of breath as he stabbed at the snake. The sharp wood skiddered on bark, blunted itself. Leaves waved. The snake reared, hissed. Nick stabbed again, a cry of anger and fear breaking from his lips. The snake struck. There was an instant of terror as Nick realized that the snake was striking too fast for Nick to snatch back his hand.