Mamba Point (12 page)

“All right. Have fun being grounded.”

“Ha.” He didn’t actually laugh, just said “ha.” I hung up, knowing it really was me who got him into trouble. I found Eileen’s number in the directory and called. Her dad, or somebody, answered the phone, but Eileen was home. My heart raced while he went to get her.

“Hello?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to come over and play Atari,” I told her. “This is Linus. We just got a new Atari.”

“I’ve got an Atari,” she said, like she was confused by the invitation. “I never play it, though.”

“Well, you could still come over,” I said. I tried to think of anything else to do, and blanked. “You can bring Bennett if you want.”

She was quiet for a while, and I guessed she was thinking it over.

“I think I’m going to stay at home and read,” she said. “Do you want Bennett’s phone number? Maybe he’ll want to do something with you.”

“Okay,” I said. She recited it, but I didn’t write it down.

“See you around, Linus.”
Click
.

Mom was trying to decide which umbrella was best for the short walk to her gabfest, which was hard because they were all practically the same. She finally picked one with a slightly nicer handle and left.

“Have fun!” Dad shouted. He folded up the newspaper and set it on the ottoman. “What would you say to a grilled-cheese sandwich?” he asked me.

“I’d say, ‘Prepare to be eaten by me.’”

“Grilled cheese it is, then. What about you?” He looked at Law, who’d just walked in.

“Huh?”

“Cheese sandwiches. I’m grilling them.”

“I’m going to the teen club,” Law said. “I’ll grab a burger at the rec hall, or something.” He found his own umbrella and left.

Seconds later there was a
pfft
noise and all the lights went off.

“Well, there goes the power,” Dad said.

Great. I couldn’t go swimming, I couldn’t play Pellucidar, and I couldn’t play Atari. I couldn’t go to the teen club
with Law, either—not until December, when I would actually be a teenager. I could draw, but I was sick of copying out of comic books. I wanted to draw something real. Well, the drawing book showed how to draw fruit and stuff, but I wanted to draw something real and also not dumb.

“I’m going to go borrow a book from Matt,” I told Dad. I ran down the steps, slowing as I hit the last flight of stairs. The sleepy guard was on duty, or at least on the clock. He didn’t even notice me tiptoeing to the entrance. I stood there in the sheltered area with the guard, waiting. I didn’t say anything, I just thought: Come on, snake. Here I am.

I knew it would come. A moment later I saw it creep around the wall, almost out of sight. You’d have to be looking for it to see it. It really put on the gas to cruise across the open courtyard.

The snake shimmied up my leg and wrapped around my waist. It was wet and cold and heavy. I pulled my T-shirt out and let the hem hang down over my stomach, then went upstairs. The guard didn’t even budge the whole time.

“Back already?” Dad shouted from the kitchen. I guessed he was making cold cheese sandwiches since our stove was electric.

“Nope. Still down there!” I shouted. Dad has never minded a little well-timed smart-aleckiness on my part.

“Oh, all right, then. Get home soon. Lunch is nearly done.”

I hurried to my room, then shut the door and braced it with a chair.

I used my T-shirt to towel the snake off as best I could.

“Better?”

The snake answered by dropping to the floor and slithering to the corners, exploring. I balled my shirt up and tossed it to the dirty-clothes corner, then got a dry one.

My dad rapped on the door. The snake hurried off to the closet. I didn’t know if it was startled into it, or just knew what to do. I shut the closet door, then moved the chair out from the bedroom doorknob and let my dad in.

“Grilled-cheese sandwich!” Dad told me, handing me exactly that. It was toasty on the outside and melty on the inside.

“How did you do that?” I asked. I didn’t think we had a camp stove in our air freight.

“Old army trick,” he said mysteriously, wandering back down the hall. My dad was in the
air force
, not the army. He didn’t mind a little well-timed smart-aleckiness on his own part, either.

I took the sandwich and ate it, dipping it in the puddle of ketchup he’d squirted along the edge of the plate. It tasted normal. My mind raced through the possibilities, the things Dad might have done with pie tins and candles, and nothing seemed likely. It was like magic. I scooped up the last of the ketchup with the last bit of sandwich and prepared to eat it when I saw the snake watching me. I dropped the triangle back on the plate and set it on the floor. The mamba flicked its tongue at it, but decided it wasn’t interested.

“More for me,” I said, scooping it up for the last bite. The snake continued to explore.

It was gray outside, but with the blinds open there was enough light to draw by. I grabbed the notebook and pencil. Drawing the snake had been my whole excuse for going downstairs and getting it, after all.

It was the perfect subject, too. For one thing, the mamba was all shades of black and gray, anyway, so it didn’t matter that I was using pencil. For another, a snake is probably one of the simplest animals to draw. It’s just a thick, tangled line, right? A scribble with eyes? Even a beginner like me could draw that.

My scribble wouldn’t sit still, though. The mamba wound itself around a chair leg, making its way up the back of the chair to the desk. It looked around, flipping its tail back and forth and whapping a pencil sharpener across the room.

“You’re like the Pete Rose of snakes,” I whispered.

It found the desk lamp, coiling around it and inching up until it could stretch across to the dresser. It wriggled itself all the way over, then reached up with its head, flicking its tongue. It looked like a charmed cobra.

“Oh, stay right there!” It was an awesome pose, but I barely got a squiggle on the paper when the snake was off again, first poking its head at the mirror until it figured out there wasn’t another snake there, then sliding back onto the floor and continuing to explore.

“I know.” I got off the bed and opened the closet door,
grabbing a handful of empty wooden hangers. I hooked one onto the rod, then dangled another off of that, and kept adding hangers until I had a flimsy ladder. I braced it with a couple of belts.

“Come on.” I jiggled the bottom hanger, and the snake came over. It tested my handiwork, then worked on up to the next rung. It zigged and zagged around the chain, tying itself up in what looked like an elaborate knot. It finally poked its head over the top, then slid along, coiling around the rod. Even after it looped itself three times, its tail was still twined around one of the bottom hangers.

“Wait right there!” I commanded, and again tried to sketch the contours of its body, but the snake moved on, disentangling itself by moving forward, then inching back toward the floor. I dropped the notebook and lightly touched its body, feeling its muscles contract and expand as it pushed itself along the rod.

“You’re a strong snake,” I said. I went back to my notebook, trying to reproduce the loops and coils from memory.

The mamba continued to explore, clambering over furniture and poking its head along the floorboards.

When the power came back on, the sudden light and the noise of the air conditioner spooked the snake, and it hurried off to the closet.

“Sorry, bud,” I told it. “I thought you mambas were brave snakes.” The snake looked me right in the eye, and I felt like it knew exactly what I was implying and didn’t appreciate it.

“Just kidding.”

I went to pick it up, but it slithered away under the bed. I crouched down and looked at it, cowering in the back corner like Joe’s cat did when it was just a kitten. His mom told us to stop chasing it around the house and let it get used to us first. Later, when we were watching a movie, it skipped along the back of the couch and plopped into my lap for half an hour. Snakes were probably the same way, except when the kitten got mad and hissed at us, it was cute, and when it bit us, it was just a little nibble that didn’t even break the skin.

“This thing is not a kitten,” I reminded myself.

I stretched out on the bed, waiting for the snake to come to me, and it did. I picked it up with both hands and then put it in my Mork bag. It was probably time for it to get home.

I slipped out without Dad noticing and let the mamba go in the courtyard. The guard didn’t see me, either—he was still sound asleep.

I was playing Pac-Man later, waiting for dinner, when Mom let out a huge screech like I’d never heard. I dropped the joystick and ran into the kitchen, sure that my snake had somehow gotten back in.

“What’s going on?” Everything looked normal. Mom was just crouched by the lower cupboard, pulling out a pot.

“Oh, it was a cockroach,” she explained. “You know I usually don’t act like a silly woman in a 1950s TV show,
but it was …” She held her thumb and finger about two inches apart to show me how big the roach was.

“Mom, they may be big, but they’re still just bugs.”

“You’re not afraid of them?” she asked.

“No!” I thought she could have acted less surprised.

“Just asking.” She found the pot she was looking for and plunked it on the stove. “Anyway, why don’t you go find your brother? Dinner will be ready in an hour or so.”

“All right.” I headed for the embassy, figuring he would be at the pool, the teen club, or maybe the rec hall. I hadn’t seen him since he’d left that morning.

The car wash was closed on Sundays, and the traffic was a lot lighter. I walked past the wild grass, remembering when I’d been scared to do so. Now I was disappointed when my snake didn’t even come out and greet me. It was probably off doing snake things, I reasoned. Hunting or sleeping or slithering around.

I went in the back gate and tried the pool first. There were some little kids cannonballing all over the place, and some moms, and a lifeguard who looked like Bennett, only older. He told me to try the teen club, which was past the tennis courts and the clinic.

The teen club was a little green house on the embassy compound. A couple of teenagers were playing Ping-Pong outside in the garage port.

“I think he went down to the rocks,” one of the guys said. He served, and they went back to pinging and ponging.

“What rocks?”

They bopped the ball back and forth until it hit the net and rolled back at the server.

“Dude, you messed up my timing,” he said, shaking his head.

“Sorry.” I didn’t think I had anything to do with it, but didn’t see any point in arguing. “What rocks?”

“You know, the rocks.” He waved his hand vaguely toward the side of the house.

“Thanks.”

“That must be little Law,” I heard the other one say as I walked around the house. I was at the back of the embassy compound now. There was a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire, and behind that a rocky slope going down to the ocean. I walked alongside the fence until I found a gate, which was padlocked, but I could hear some voices on the other side. I saw that the padlock wasn’t actually fastened. I went through and made my way down the rocks until I saw Law and two other guys smoking cigarettes. The second he noticed me Law dropped the cigarette, probably hoping I hadn’t seen it.

“What are you doing here, Runt?” he asked. He’d never once called me Runt before, and as far as nicknames went, I didn’t care for it.

“Mom sent me to find you. It’s nearly dinner.” Carrying a message from Mom was exactly what a little brother called Runt would do, I realized.

“Tell her I’ll be home in a bit.”

“Why don’t you just head back with me?”

“Why don’t you just head back without me?” He waved toward the gate. The other two guys snickered.

“All right.” I clambered up the rocks and through the gate. On impulse I threaded the padlock back through the loop and snapped it shut. Even if those guys had the key, they wouldn’t be able to get at the lock from the outside.

So Law was late for dinner. As punishment Mom made him wash the dishes by himself. I expected him to bang into my room when he was done and yell at me.

If he thought about it, though, he totally had it coming. First of all, even if I played a joke on him and his friends, he should be glad I didn’t tell Mom and Dad he was smoking and hanging out at bars. Second, he called me Runt, which was not my name. I called him Law, so the least he could do was call me Linus. Third, if he’d just followed the coastline, it would’ve taken him right home, and probably in time for dinner. I would point all of those things out when he was done yelling.

I drew while I waited, trying to fix up a sketch from earlier. I erased shaky lines and tried to draw them in sharper, but my pencil would skew off on its own when I wanted it to go straight. After I wore a hole in the page with the eraser, I gave up. I turned to a clean sheet and started over, working from memory.

I wished the snake was there so I could have it for a model. Besides, I liked having it around. I wondered if it was a boy or a girl. I figured it was a boy, but it was hard to be
sure. You couldn’t just flip it upside down like you did with a puppy.

I heard Law finishing up in the kitchen, going to his own room, and putting on music. So he was doing one worse than yelling at me. He was giving me the silent treatment.

Fine. I would silent-treat him back.