Jim Shepard - Lights Out in the Reptile House

Karel took another sip and then got up and brought the mug with him. He knelt on the floor by Kehr’s legs. He could smell urine from the ringtail somewhere when he got this low. He surveyed the tools in front of him and picked up something plausible. “Is this it?” he asked.

Kehr leaned his chin on his chest from inside the cabinet to look. “That’s it,” he said. “You know your tools.” He took it and went back to clanging. Why specific tools were important if he was just going to bang away, Karel didn’t know.

Nobody’d done anything about this plumbing for a while, Kehr remarked.

“My father always said he was going to,” Karel said.

Kehr didn’t answer. There was the high metallic wrenching sound of the threading on the pipes going.

“You’re going to have to hold the catch basin here a minute,” Kehr said. He guided Karel’s hand to the piece and showed him where to support it. Karel braced his other arm on the floor. The ringtail had curled around a kitchen chair in the far corner of the room and was working on one of the legs with its fine, saw-edged teeth.

“We’ll handle this,” Kehr said. “The two of us will straighten this out.”

“I wanted to thank you for the picture,” Karel said. He got a better angle under the catch basin. “Do you have anything else like that?”

Kehr made an appreciative noise and shifted around on his back. “Look at this,” he said. “Come in here a little farther.”

Karel shifted hands on the basin and edged into the darkness under the cabinet. He was stretching over Kehr in the tiny space. He waited for his eyes to adjust.

Kehr pointed with a hand near his cheek at the part of the wall laid open for the feeder pipe. Karel waited and then could make out coiled movement inside. He looked closer. It was a thin black snake with a long head. It opened its mouth at them, and Karel could see the pale eggs it encircled.

“Whip snake,” Kehr said. “A striped whip snake.”

“That’s right,” Karel said. “How’d you know that?”

Kehr snorted. “Zoology is a school for precise feeling,” he said. “‘The eye of the naturalist is as penetrating and as scrupulous as the eye of the sniper.’”

Karel made a puzzled face for his own benefit in the darkness. He asked what that meant.

“That means there’s a lot to be gained by doing what you do, by learning what you know,” Kehr said.

“There is?” Karel said.

“There is,” Kehr said. He was unwrapping old joint-sealing tape from an S-shaped piece he wanted to extract. “I’m always interested in people who take the time and effort to study what’s around them. They’re practicing seeing with clarity and precision.”

“I guess that’s true,” Karel said.

It was true, Kehr said. It was both a gift and a discipline. There was a thump and a light clatter, and then a tiny lapping sound: the ringtail had turned over the dish of water and was drinking off the floor. It was what his country required of him, Kehr said. And it was what his country needed: more people who could do that.

“How’d you know I knew about stuff like that?” Karel asked.

“Abilities like that are hard to hide,” Kehr said, and Karel felt flattered. Then it occurred to him that there were nine thousand books and study sheets on reptiles up in his room.

“I grew up almost completely alone,” Kehr said.

“You did?” Karel said. As close as he was in the darkness he couldn’t see Kehr’s eyes.

“I did,” Kehr said. “Nature for me was something I could learn about and lose myself in, something that demonstrated order and reason: comparative study, classification, the relations of the total design.”

“I don’t know,” Karel said uncomfortably. “I think I just think reptiles are great.”

“And so they are,” Kehr said. “Look. Look at the way her head scales are edged in white. Little crescents.” The whip snake raised its head farther, watching them with sidelong intent.

Karel saw. Kehr was not quizzing him and not judging him. “See the way she tries to distract you from the nest?” he said.

Kehr murmured he did. They were still close in the darkness under the cabinet, and Karel began to register the heat and stillness. His arm ached. He was still supporting the catch basin.

“Let’s finish this and leave Mother alone,” Kehr said.

The threads on the pipe section that was the problem were now stripped and had to be refiled. Kehr had him let the catch basin down, and they climbed out from under the cabinet. He gave Karel a part of the filing job and showed him how to use the reamer and how to smooth and clear the diagonal grooves.

“Do you work with animals?” Karel said.

“Not technically,” Kehr said. “I work with people. But the training with one helps me with the other.”

“How?” Karel said.

“I’ll tell you sometime,” he said. “What I do is a lot of questioning.” He hesitated before the word. He nodded toward the door. “If you and I walked into your shed, we could see certain things in some of the rabbits, couldn’t we? Which ones were like this, which ones were like that.”

“I guess,” Karel said. “You mean like who’s most scared and stuff.”

“That’s what I mean,” Kehr said. “And when you pick one out for dinner, you don’t do it randomly, do you?”

“No,” Karel said, realizing that fully for the first time. While Kehr worked he thought about that.

“So you had no interest in joining the Party,” Kehr said, as if summarizing an old story. He was absorbed in the pipe. “Did you ever consider joining the partisans?”

Karel was immediately alert. “No,” he said. “Nobody asked me. I don’t know any partisans.”

Kehr arched his eyebrows. “I don’t have much against the partisans,” he finally said. “They’re simply activists, like me. They act. If I weren’t doing what I am doing I’d probably be doing what they’re doing. If their fathers hadn’t been Republicans they’d probably all be in the Civil Guard right now.”

“Aren’t they killing people and sabotaging things?” Karel asked cautiously.

“They’re frustrated,” Kehr said. “It’s natural. They want to act. They want more of a voice. They feel all the exchange with their government’s one-way. It’s like the son who wants to get his father’s attention so he can explain himself. Do you see what I mean?”

“Umm-hmm,” Karel said. He put his section of pipe down and stood up. The ringtail was on the stove, its tail curled down the front like a potholder, and its mouth open in some sort of silent communication.

That night Kehr brought some tea up to Karel once Karel was already in bed, and they sat in the dark. Karel was under the covers with his back against the wall. Kehr sat at the desk. The photograph of Karel’s mother was on the table between them, illuminated by the light from the window. Karel thanked him for the tea. Downstairs in the spare room Stasik and Schay were moving things around. Here he was in his bedroom with a stranger from the Civil Guard and a picture of his mother and there was something comforting to him about even this ghost of a family. Kehr told snake stories in a quiet voice as if they’d had plenty of talks like this before. Karel cupped his tea in his hands and listened to the occasional shooting in the distance sounding like the popping of grilled corn and was glad somebody was in his house. Kehr told a story about a constrictor that had swallowed a rolled-up rug because it had been used by a dog for a bed. He talked about the Party and the way it was like something out of nature, always growing, organic. Had Karel seen all the building going on around town? It was like that all over, and in all different ways — the whole idea was to keep doing, keep growing, so that the movement itself was always changing and becoming more radical, leaving even its own members psychologically one step behind it. Could Karel recognize that kind of excitement?