MY QUIENTESENTIAL  SUMMER  SNAKE  STORY!

                                      By Ric Polansky  ©

Summer is here. Waves rhythmically lapping on the beaches, the slight stir of pebbles as they rumble, gurgle and roll back into the surf. The distant screams of delighted children frolicking in the sands. Not a cloud in the sky and a blazing sun overhead. During the day your ivory skin will blush to tomato red. Ah-- another carefree summer. Still, peaceful, calm tranquillity merging into blinding serenity.

Too quiet if you ask me. Let me interrupt those all too pleasant thoughts with a snake story. I got lots of snake stories to tell. But the editors only print them on rare occasions.

Now I am not writing about dead road snakes, nor the quiet garden variety. But the authentic black coiled monsters than always lurk in the darker recesses of our minds.

Take a stroll in the woods whereupon you leisurely meander down a path less trodden. Un be known to you lying in the underbrush close by dark senseless beady eyes trace your every movement. The reptile’s darting forked tongue licks the dense air as you approach. But it’s his eyes that hold you captive even though you are not aware of him. What inconceivable force brings us so near to danger. Without reason or care before you can blink twice he has plunged his inch long fangs into your leg not once but twice.

SNAKES-- an innate whim of the creator or the twisted and perverse bonding of nature’s grand design keeping good and evil-- a quivering constant. Here is the first snake story I heard when I grew up. 

Joseph was a good man, but he worked long hours, was unfriendly and never shared a moment of frivolity. He was frugal with his affections, miserly with his love.  As a boy he had learned to speak English even though the mother tongue on the farm came from the old country.

Farm life wasn’t easy even amongst the fertile and lush rolling hillsides that bordered the Mississippi River.  The summer heat was hotter than the village blacksmith’s anvil and in the winter words seem to freeze in the air and shatter when the next word was spoken. The local natives had called the countryside “Iowa” which meant “beautiful land.” It was rich in game, thick with forests and the open land spurted a coal black soil in which newly planted corn could grow knee high within days.

Surrounded by all nature’s blessings Joseph prospered. He grew up strong and healthy. Before too long with the death of his parents he inherited the family farm which had grown considerably larger over the years. In raising cattle Iowa ranked second only to Texas but it was pigs that thrived. For those smelly critters Iowa was heaven. The sows gave birth to many young. The multifarious litters had plenty of miles of corn to gnaw upon daily, lots of mud to wallow in and on the weekends and if a rare delicacies was ever needed-- the occasional rattlesnake was perfect. Pigs were brought to Iowa primarily because they could endure the reptiles venomous bite, would trample it and gobble it up. No farmer lived without pigs in Iowa. They were as essential to the landscape as sunshine and rain.

Joseph considered his neighbours lazy as they never worked Saturday’s and heathens because they never attended church on a Sunday. He was his own man. And just because everyone else raised pigs— out of personal pride he didn’t. In all of Winneshek County, in fact in the entire state, and probably in all of the mid-west only one man was mean enough and lacked the common sense to balance bounty and the beasts.    

With the passing years Joseph’s good fortune continued and by the age of thirty he took a bride and within years an entire brood of children were raised under the roof of the rapidly dilapidating farmhouse. Joseph only cherished what he planted and grew and the farmhouse wasn’t that. In all the years he owned it he never allowed a visitor to come a callin’ nor did he even attempt the slightest of home repairs.

Joseph and his wife Mary had five children, four boys and a girl, the last being the twinkle of his eye.  The boys were lazy, or so he thought and he didn’t mind telling them as often as he had the breath to do so. Even when they grew older the young men stood a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a weekend off for any personal adventure or romance. Their lives were but prisoners to fill the cornucopia of their father’s desire. Joseph lived in the fields; time wasn’t important nor were inclimate conditions. He expected his boys also to revere that good earth and live for nothing else. He tilled the soil from dawn until dusk by his own rules and life style. His sons were berated to do the same, even if it meant missing school, weddings, communions or funerals. He relished the harvests and each years bounty was better than the rest. In secret the one pleasure Joseph harboured in his heart, when he had to return under the shelter of a manmade roof was the glowing smile of his darling daughter Suzie.

Little pleasure was found in the house and lots of nagging proceeded the evening meals. The boys wanted more free time. He insisted they work harder. The wife pleaded that domestic chores needed to be done around the house, the windows repaired, the porch mended, more firewood cut and stored. He turned a deaf ear. At night she cooed to him and tried to persuade him of his errant ways. She warned that the boys needed free time, she lamented that “she heard unusual sounds in the night, strange rustlings in the walls when he was away”. Unexplainable happenings confused her that a farm their size could have no mice, nor rats nor birds flew near. She was frightened. “A strange mysterious presence seem to abound within the….” But Joseph rolled over and went to sleep. He had crops to tend, weeds to fight, cows to be milked and a large harvest to prepare for.

Time passed marked only by the transitory and evident seasons. All else remained the same in their lives. The wife whimpered more and cried openly. Joseph remained unbending to her frights. He was a man of the soil even though the house continued to deteriorate around them.

One day it all changed. Wife and Mother Mary heard  screams and ran to the front of the house, there she witnessed the horrific happening. The daughter had fallen through old and untended timbers of the porch. She was screaming hysterically, and as Mary reached down into the abyss to pull her out she too was pricked unmercifully. Instinct forced her to pull her hand back, even from her child’s grasp and therein she noticed the obvious two pronged bites of rattlesnakes. Mary, not knowing what to do, screamed ecstatically before she passed out leaning forward into hell’s hole. Joseph was nearby in the barn and came running. Without thinking he ripped open the rotted timbers and crawled in below the porch to save his loved ones. No one ever came out. His screech soon diminished into moans-- then a deathly silence.

When the boys came home that night they instantaneously knew what had happened. There were snakes everywhere. Their den had been disturbed and they were crawling out from their disturbed lair. Thirty or forty were headin’ toward the barn while others were already in the house and could be seen festering through the windows.

That evening coroner pronounced all dead but would not go near the bodies. Mary, her  hand still reaching for the child’s, Joseph lying near by with snakes still slithering across his body as if to prove absolute dominance. He lay there face down, rigid but his posture told the story of his pock marked hand still extended toward his darling Suzie. There were just too many snakes to recover the deceased. Reports conclude more than a thousand of them. Each time one observed the grizzly scene more appeared as if leaving the bowels of hell to infest the entire world. But the people of Iowa knew, the pigs would stop them even if Joseph didn’t.