James Smith - The Flock

Stopping at the gate, he was surprised to hear the not too distant yelp of a dog. A dog that was obviously in a great deal of either pain, or panic. The Berg Brothers engineers built up the road on a tall berm, a wise move, for this part of the country could get plenty soggy. Each side of the four lanes had a wide, solid-looking shoulder covered with a manicured coat of Bermuda grass. Taking his foot off the accelerator, Ron coasted to a stop on the right, where a bike-and-foot path crossed the ditch on that side.

Over the idling of the motor he heard the dog yelping again. And then he could hear a human voice, joining in with that of the dog. There was cursing: a man's voice. Ron switched the motor off and climbed out.

He stood beside the truck, glanced once at the U.S. Fish amp; Wildlife Service painted on the door, and walked briskly around the back of the vehicle and started down the paved pathway. This was the outer edge of Salutations, what the company propaganda was calling "a natural greenway surrounding this pristine community." He'd read their spiel and had some detailed maps of the area in his truck. It seemed they were having trouble with prior residents, and that's what had brought him there. He took a few strides down the pathway, noticing as he did some of the vegetation around him. Even a cursory glance told him that several threatened plant species grew here. There was no way these bike paths should have been allowed.

The dog yelped again, and once more he heard a man cursing.

"Dammit! Hold still, dammit!"

Ron looked to his left, where the patch curved down toward an arm of the waterway that meandered into the forest. There were lily pads floating on the still surface, mirroring the action just beyond the pool.

"Hold still!" A paunchy man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, dressed in white shorts, white short-sleeved shirt, white socks drawn almost up to his knees, and a pair of even whiter Nikes, seemed to flail madly at a silvery poodle that was bounding even more madly around his feet. The fellow's white porkpie hat was sitting at an odd slant on his balding scalp, and he was trying vainly to land a blow with his polished walking stick: solid oak, Ron realized. Attached to the dog's left foreleg was an impressive snake struggling vigorously against all odds.

Before Ron could announce his presence, the man finally landed a blow on the snake's thick body, a blow which was little more than a glancing thump that bounced off. Even if the strike had been aimed a little better, Ron knew it wouldn't have had much effect. This snake was a constrictor and heavily muscled. A healthy specimen, too, he noted-six feet, at least.

"Hey," Ron yelled. "Hey, there! You! Stop that."

The older man looked Ron's way, bringing his right hand up and knocking off the precariously perched hat. And Ron saw that the dog was tethered; the leash twisted around the man's left forearm and looped around the fellow's left ankle. He probably thought he was going to be bitten, too. A couple of long strides brought Ron up to the man and his frightened doggie.

"Hold still," Ron told him.

The man had drawn his walking stick back again, but held it there. "What are you going to do?" he asked, puffing out the words.

"Just hold still," Ron told him again, kneeling quickly and grasping the dog firmly by the nape of its neck. He reached around with his right hand and gripped the black snake tightly at the base of its jaws, applying a lot of pressure there. Quickly, the snake's jaws opened wide and Ron extricated the reptile's needlepoint teeth from the dog's flesh. The teeth were so fine that he spotted no blood as he pulled the snake free.

Standing, he let the snake loop itself around his right arm, and he chuckled in admiration at the strength the reptile displayed as it constricted, doing what it was born to do.

The man knelt and retrieved both dog and hat. The dog had begun to bark in anger at the black snake. "Prissy. Are you okay, girl? Is Prissy okay?" The man stared at Ron and his cold-blooded cargo. "Is it poisonous? Will she die?"

Ron smiled reassuringly at the transplanted Yankee. "No, sir. This is just a common black snake. They're pretty darned harmless, actually, unless you're a rat or a rabbit or something small."

"Harmless? I'd hardly call it harmless!" He pulled the twenty-pound poodle to his face and rubbed his nose in its neck. "Poor Prissy," he muttered.

"These guys are fine animals. An important part of the forest ecology around here." He indicated the pine and oak forest around them. "Their population fluctuates with that of the small game they hunt," he began, but noticed that the dog owner was scowling at him.

"I don't care about it. Are you going to kill it, now?"

"No, sir. Absolutely not. I'm going to release it." He took a couple of steps off the asphalt trail and into the woods, setting the snake down between a couple of palmetto bushes. It uncoiled from his arm and raced off into the underbrush. In a couple of seconds it was just another silent shadow in the trees.

He turned to see the man gaping at him. "Why didn't you kill it? I can't believe you did that! You let it go."

"They're completely harmless."

"You said that. Try to tell that to Prissy." He held the poodle out to Ron.

"They're harmless, Prissy," he said.

The man, his face red with either too much sun or the excitement of the day, gaped again. "You're a crazy man," he said.

"No, sir. Just with the Fish and Wildlife Service." And he turned and went back down the trail to his truck. Once there, he paused and looked back, seeing nothing but the now empty path and the forest. "By the way," he yelled. "You're welcome."

As Ron continued on he was impressed with the beauty of the surrounding forests. It seemed ironic that this place, having been within the confines of the Edmunds Army Base and Bombing Range, had been spared the commercial exploitation of so much of the rest of the state. Certainly the military had been unkind to some of the property, but largely the forests and streams and wetlands had remained completely pristine. He thought again of the rumors that Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers were there, tucked away in the lower bottomlands. He personally doubted it, had passed it off as wishful thinking from some of the environmental activists who were trying to save the place.

But seeing another deer posing by the road, and spying the ever-present raccoons poking at the verge of the roadside waterway, he was ready to believe the improbable. The pines were thick and tall, the oaks sturdy and old, the cypress trees green and ancient. One never could tell, he supposed.

And then there was Salutations proper. He passed another of the old warning signs from the military days, before the recent round of base closings, and saw the garish yellow-on-white sign proclaiming Salutations, USA. Beneath those six-foot letters, somewhat smaller: Another Berg Brothers Production. Cartoon characters cavorted along the base of the sign, which formed a bridge over the roadway twenty feet overhead. He did an approximation of the voice of Sid the Squirrel. "Welcome Home, Everybody!"

There was a pair of guardhouses, yet another remnant of the base days. But, while they had been repainted and refitted with the latest in air-conditioning, there was no one manning either of the stations. Since this place was still what amounted to a gated community, he was surprised to find no one there, at least to hand out propaganda on what a wonderful and perfect place this was to live.

Salutations was spread before him, what there was of it, so far. He had to admit that if one was into the middle class ideal, this was certainly the place to be. The town was quite impressive. The Corporation engineers had laid the town out pretty much along the lines of the existing streets and structures of the old military base. Everything was there in almost perfect grids. Everywhere there were patches of grass and manicured shrubs. Even old-fashioned village greens right up front, a great white pagoda standing in the middle of that brilliant grass almost glowing in its limed and fertilized glory.