John Godey - The Snake

"I'm not using a flash. I'm doing a time exposure with a very fast film.

ASA 400, It should work with the light from the streetlamps."

Something was moving to her right. She turned quickly and saw two points of light. She gasped, and clung to Jeff, and then realized that an animal was watching her through the bars of its cage. It was a shadowy gray bulk, and she couldn't make out what it was.

"Jesus!" Trembling, she rested her head on his chest. "It scared the shit out of me."

"Relax, you're with Jeff, okay?" His voice was soft, he was a terrific whisperer, an ace, better than she was herself, and he was patting her ass caressingly. "I like these apples, too."

"Please, not in front of the animals." She pushed him away, took a deep breath, and decided that she had herself together again. "Let's go to work."

She moved on to the next cage. The plaque read: BARBARY SHEEP. She peered inside. At first the cage seemed to be empty, but when her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she could make out the sheep. There were two of them, lying toward the back of the cage, tan animals with strongly curved horns. Both were motionless, asleep.

"I'm going to get these. Please keep quiet."

He watched as she opened the telescoped metal legs of the tripod and fitted the Hasselblad to it. She adjusted the settings, sighted through the finder, then decided to make an adjustment. Behind her, Jeff gave a tiny cluck of impatience and breathed heavily on the back of her neck.

She sensed that he was about to pat her ass again, too.

She said, "You're making me nervous. Go take a walk, okay?" He grunted and looked surly; he didn't like being dismissed. He didn't like standing around and doing nothing, either. He needed something to do, even if it was nothing more than a brush with a mugger. "What I mean — check out the other cages, see what I can shoot next. Okay?"

"Okay."

He strode off to the south end of the line of cages. She sighted on the sheep and felt for the shutter release. Before she could press it there was a sudden outcry, shrill, panicky (or so it seemed to her), and then pandemonium. From nearby cages and from within the animal houses she could hear the roar of big cats, the chatter of monkeys, indefinable screams, whines, snarls, even the barking of the seals in their pool.

Through the finder she saw the sheep bound to their feet, bleating. He's done it, she thought, the clumsy oaf somehow startled them and woke up the whole fucking zoo. She whirled, catching up the camera and tripod, and started toward him angrily. Then she stopped dead. He was crouched, his back to her, facing a snake, the longest and lithest looking she had ever seen or even imagined. Its head was high off the ground, its mouth was agape.

She let out a cry of terror, and knew in that instant that her reaction was no different from that of the other animals. The urge to turn away and run was overwhelming, but she knew she couldn't desert Jeff. The snake horrified her, but there was something thrilling in the way Jeff faced it-in the knotted back muscles standing out against his damp T shirt, the alertness of his posture, the athlete's grace and self-confidence.

He was moving the forked stick toward the snake and whispering softly, encouragingly, laughing a little at himself: "Toro. Ho, toro, make your move."

The snake was erect, tensed, threatening, hissing hollowly. Its body seemed incredibly long and slender, the neck swelling on a vertical aids, the eyes wide and menacing. Barely aware of what she was doing, she planted the tripod and put her eye to the finder. She placed her finger on the shutter release. Peering through the finder, holding her breath, she saw Jeff extend the stick at full length. She pressed the shutter release almost by reflex, and it seemed to trigger off movement. The picture in the finder became unfrozen. The snake and the stick seemed to meet, and then Jeff dropped the stick with a clatter. He cried out. She shut her eyes, shaking with fear. Jeff's voice came from directly in front of her. "The bugger ran up the stick and bit me."

She opened her eyes. His left hand was clasped over his right forearm and he seemed flushed, but he was calm. "Oh my God!"

"It's okay," Jeff said. "It's gone. It ran away."

He lifted his left hand from his arm and she saw two small spots of oozing blood an inch below the crook of his elbow.

"Oh, Jeff, Jeff, what can we do? We have to get you to a hospital."

He slipped his belt out of his trousers, looped it around his arm just below the biceps, and pulled it very tight. "The thing of it is," he said quietly, "the thing is to keep calm, because if you get excited the heart pumps quicker and the poison circulates that much faster. So everybody concerned has to relax, okay?"

Behind her, a voice called out roughly, and she turned, her heart thumping. A figure was moving toward them hulkingly out of the shadows.

A brilliant light came on and blinded her.

For a brief time, Jane Redpath had company in the waiting room, a middle-aged black man with a deep laceration under his right eye that seeped sluggishly into his bloody handkerchief. He was naked to the waist above a pair of blue jeans and bed slippers, and he chatted amiably while he waited to be tended to. He had actually been on his way into the emergency room when they had come in-she and Jeff and the two cops-but he held no resentment at being superseded. The cops had been called by the menagerie night watchman, the man who had flashed his light at them after Jeff was bitten. At first he had been more concerned with their trespassing than with getting help, but he had moved quickly when Jane had screamed at him in a hysterical rage. Jeff had quieted her, and apologized to the watchman.

The police car had responded quickly, and driven them to East Side Hospital, where Jeff was rushed into the emergency ward at once. They had not allowed her to accompany him. He had walked in under his own power, smiling at her and telling her not to worry, and to go home and catch some sleep. He'd give her a ring later on.

The man with the injured eye told her that his wound had been inflicted by his wife, wielding a high-heeled shoe. They had quarrelled, and she had waited until he was asleep before hitting him.

"But she was real sorry, you know," the man said. "She didn't mean to hit me in no eye, but only in the head. But in the dark, she aimed bad."

Jane murmured something, sitting on the edge of a soft chair and wishing that she smoked. The nurse at the desk was busy writing up reports, and she would frown at them from time to time, as though the man's soft voice interfered with her concentration.

"She would not have hit me in the eye on purpose," the man said. "She know where her bread is buttered. 1 am a jeweller, and with this hurt eye it will be trouble putting the loupe in the eye. You understand?"

But you can use it in the left eye, Jane thought dully.

"You might say I could use the loupe in the left eye," the man said, "but I never could use the left eye for that. You understand?"

"Habit," Jane said.

"Habit," the man said with satisfaction. He examined his bloody handkerchief and then returned it to his eye. "That's what it is, Miss, just old habit."

The telephone rang. Jane watched as the nurse answered it briefly. The nurse told the man with the injured eye to go into Room E. The man nodded politely to Jane and went into the emergency ward. Jane got up and walked to the reception desk. The nurse looked up from her papers, frowning.

Jane said, "Can you find out how he is?"

"I can't disturb them now," the nurse said. "There's a whole team in there working on your…" She paused.

"Friend," Jane said. "We're awfully close friends."

"The best thing is to sit down and compose yourself. They're doing everything they can in there to help him."