Max Booth III - We Need to Do Something

The rattlesnake slithers off his foot and the moment it’s no longer engaging in any physical contact, my father tries to edge away. His movement provokes the snake’s rattler. Dad screams and leaps onto the sink just as the snake strikes out at his leg, barely missing him. Most of the supplies Mom had rested on the counter scatter to the floor, further startling the snake.

Everybody’s screaming now.

Dad’s completely on top of the sink, looking down at the rattlesnake and flipping it two middle fingers.

“Yeah! Fuck you, snake! I’ll fucking eat your family for breakfast, you motherfucker!”

The snake does not seem fazed by these insults.

The rest of us pile into the tub, embracing each other, shaking, nobody taking our eyes off the snake that’s now slithering to the center of the bathroom, on my dead grandma’s repulsive blanket. Its rattler won’t stop going off, like a phone’s weather alert screaming about impending doom. It stops between the tub and toilet and settles into a ball.

“Did it bite you?” Mom asks Dad.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Standing on the toilet, he inspects his legs, then shrugs. “I don’t feel anything.” It’s a miracle he doesn’t lose his balance, hunched over like that.

“That was close,” Mom says.

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Where did it come from?” I ask.

“Someone has to put it in a basket,” Bobby says.

“ What? ”

“That’s where rattlesnakes go. In baskets. I saw a guy do it on YouTube.”

Dad lowers his jaw, at a loss for words. “Nobody’s putting that fucking thing in a basket, you lunatic.”

“What are we going to do then?” Bobby asks.

“Maybe it’ll just… just get bored and go back out the way it came,” Mom says.

“But what if it doesn’t?”

“…I guess we’ll cross that road when we get to it.”

Dad suddenly starts laughing. “One fucking thing after another. Jesus Christ. Can’t we get one fucking break?”

Outside, thunder cracks and heavy rain begins to fall, and we’re all gasping and holding each other tighter, except for my father.

His laughter only seems to get louder.

“I ever tell you guys I used to have a snake as a pet, back when I was a kid?” Dad says, still hiding on top of the sink. The snake hasn’t left the middle of the bathroom. It’s made itself at home here with us. No way is it going anywhere any time soon.

Bobby’s the only one who acts like he’s interested in what our father has to say. “You did? ”

Dad nods. “Mmm-hm. Sure did. A python.”

Bobby points at the snake on the floor. “Is that a python?”

“I don’t think it is.”

“Then what is it, Daddy?”

Dad takes his time answering, inspecting the creature a little longer, as if he’s suddenly some snake expert now, which of course he isn’t. “You know, Bobby, I’m not exactly sure.”

“It’s obviously a rattlesnake,” I tell them.

“Why do you say that?” Dad says.

“Because it has a rattler.”

Dad’s quiet for a moment. “That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of snakes have rattlers. Not just rattlesnakes.”

I want to call him a liar. I want to accuse him of not knowing what the hell he’s talking about. I want to tell him he’s so full of shit it’s overflowing from his eyeballs. What’s he gonna do? Get off the counter and try knocking some sense into me? Fat chance. Not with a snake between us. I open my mouth to let loose on him, but Mom pinches my arm and gives me a please don’t look, so I fall quiet.

Dad waits a moment to make sure I’m done, then continues. “You wanna know what his name was? My snake?”

“What?” Bobby asks, eager to find out.

“Monty.”

“What?”

“ Monty. ”

“Oh.” Bobby frowns. “Why?”

“Because of… you know… he was a python.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“What’s the matter with you? You don’t know Monty Python now?”

“Robert, why would he know what Monty Python is?” Mom asks.

“What’s Monty Python?” I ask, feeling dumb for having to ask the question.

Dad sighs. “Jesus Christ. You two. How are you even mine?”

“Sometimes I wonder the same thing,” I reply, not realizing what I actually said until the words leave my mouth.

But instead of screaming, he only lets out a soft laugh. “At least we know you’re your mother’s.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mom says.

“I think he’s calling me a bitch,” I tell her, enjoying the word as it leaves my mouth. Bitch bitch bitch. I can almost taste it.

Dad grins and he’s never looked more like a villain.

“What happened to the snake?” Bobby asks. “What happened to Monkey?”

“ Monty, ” Dad says. “His name was Monty. ”

“What happened to Monty?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what happened,” Dad says, licking his lips. “I loved that snake. I loved it so much. It was my favorite thing in the world. My mom, she got it for me for my birthday when I turned nine. I don’t even know why. I don’t think I had asked for one. I guess she just thought it would be a good gift. Or maybe she got a good deal. My mom, your grandmother, she’s always been talented at getting good deals. What I remember most about the snake is how I’d take him out of his cage, or whatever it’s called, the terrarium? I’d take him out and let him wrap around my neck and I’d walk around the house with Monty like he was a scarf.”

“Dad! You can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“Snakes will bite you.”

Dad shakes his head. “No, Monty was a good snake. He wasn’t a violent one or anything. He didn’t have any poison in him.”

“ Venom, ” Bobby says. “He didn’t have any venom in him.”

“Whatever the fuck. Who cares? The point is. He was my snake. And then one day, I come home from school and guess what? The terrarium’s empty. The lid’s been knocked off somehow and Monty’s nowhere in sight.”

“He escaped?”

Dad nods. “He escaped.”

“Where did he go?”

“We weren’t sure at first. I searched up and down the house the rest of the day, tearing everything apart trying to find him, but he was nowhere in sight. Almost like he’d never existed at all, you know? Like we made him up.”

“Like an imaginary friend?” Bobby says.

“Yeah, just like an imaginary friend, but that couldn’t be, right? I mean, we had the terrarium and everything. He’d been real. But where did he go?”

“Maybe someone broke in and stole him?”

Dad doesn’t respond at first. His focus seems to drift off to the corner of the room. Then he snaps back awake. “You know, that’s funny.”

“What?”

“Of all the possibilities that ran through my head back then, when I was a kid, I don’t think that ever even occurred to me, that some… some house burglar might’ve been responsible. Some guy, some weirdo pervert going around sneaking into all the houses in my neighborhood, stealing everybody’s pets.”

“I hope he didn’t put them all in the same bag,” Bobby says. “Not all pets get along. Sometimes they fight.”

“That’s very true. Sometimes pets fight.”

“Well what happened? ”

“We started hearing noises in the walls. Like, loud thuds. Crawling.”

Bobby goes wide-eyed. “The snake got into the wall? ”

“Exactly.”

“But how? ”

“My old house growing up, we used to have a real bad issue with mice. I remember sometimes waking up in the middle of the night, sitting up in bed, and seeing them on my bedroom floor. Just… I don’t know what they were doing. I used to think they were watching me sleep.”