Mamba Point (22 page)

“Oh.”

“Well, you left it lying out. I saw a lot of snake pictures, and they looked like they’d been drawn from real life.” He let out a gasp of air, like he hadn’t properly breathed since he’d gotten upstairs. “You probably didn’t mean to hurt anyone?”

“No.”

“And you’re not training an army of snakes to do your evil bidding?”

I laughed. “No.”

“Drat.” He snapped his fingers. “I was hoping I could call on them sometimes.” He glanced back at the stairs. “Guess I’ll go home.”

“Thanks for bringing my stuff,” I told him.

“No problem.” He headed for the steps but turned back. “Was that the cool thing you were going to show me?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. I’d tricked myself into thinking the snake wasn’t dangerous to people, or that I could control it,
or something. I’d done exactly what Sekou told me not to do, which was forget it was a wild animal.

“I’m glad you didn’t, but it’s really cool that you thought about it.” He bit his lower lip. “Hey, I have another idea about how to help that guy find a job. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Okay, cool.”

I went back to my bedroom, tossed the bag on the floor, and lay on the bed, paging through my sketches. I’d gotten better at drawing, I realized. At least, I’d gotten better at drawing snakes. It was hard to believe the ones toward the back were by the same guy who drew the twisty nylon stockings at the front. If I kept practicing … Except there wouldn’t be any more snakes, I remembered. The mamba was gone. The new Linus might be gone, too, but right now I didn’t care about that. I just missed my snake.

I thought about Law lunging at me, the snake bolting out from under the couch and striking. It thought Law was attacking me. It was protecting me, and I’d repaid it by killing it.

I felt something inside of me burst, and cried until I ached.

Mom finally came home without Dad or Law.

“Your father made me come home,” she explained, going straight to the living room and collapsing into a chair. Her hair was stringy and gross, and her face seemed to have a lot more lines than it had a few days before. “They’ll both be home tomorrow.”

“What time tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “Tomorrow morning, maybe. Can you make dinner? I’m exhausted.”

I heated up a can of bean-and-bacon soup for dinner, mixing in ketchup and mustard because I like it that way. When the soup was hot, I grilled two cheese sandwiches, using the stove instead of a hot iron.

“Oh,” Mom said when I brought it to her on a tray and set it on the coffee table. “What service!” She plunged a corner of the sandwich into the soup. “Puke and bees, huh?”

“Sort of.”

She fell asleep on the couch, still holding a wedge of dripping sandwich. I took it out of her hand and set it down, found a blanket for her, and went to bed myself. It was still light out.

I felt like I could still see through the snake’s eyes, just an occasional glimpse of something gray and stony, but the visions were blurry. I slept in fits, and when dawn came, I was already wide awake.

Mom had gone to her bedroom, but her half-eaten dinner was still on the coffee table. I was taking the tray to the kitchen when I heard the front door open. Law was home! For a second I felt like I did when it was my birthday and Mom and Dad brought in the presents.

“Good morning, little boss man.”

It was just Artie. Of course—it was Monday. He didn’t know that Law was in the hospital, and he didn’t know it was my fault. I didn’t want to tell the whole story, so I pretended everything was normal. Except for the fact that I’d kicked him out on Friday.

“Artie, I’m really sorry about what I did.”

“You were angry,” he said, drawing out the word and widening his eyes to express how angry I must have been. “It was for your friend, though,” he added. “You should not feel sorry if you were angry for a friend.”

He put down his bag and took the tray from me.

When he reached under the sink to get the trash, a roach scurried out. He took a few quick steps after it, trying to stamp on it.

“The lizards should get it,” I said.

“Little boss man, I don’t see the lizards for a long time,” he said. “They all ran away. I don’t know why.” I saw a little mist in his eyes.

“That’s too bad,” I said, realizing that my mamba had either eaten his lizards or scared them off. I wondered if Artie had a
kaseng
with those little bug-eyed things? If so, he got the short end of the stick, as far as
kasengs
go.

Well, I didn’t have a
kaseng
at all anymore, I remembered … unless the snake was still, somehow, alive? Those little glimpses through the snake’s eyes the night before—they felt
real
. But if they were, the snake was barely alive, not able to move, its vision fading.

I heard the shower come on down the hall.

“I have to go do something,” I told Artie. I knew I’d better go before Mom was out of the shower, or there was no way she’d let me leave. “Tell Mom I’ll be right back.”

I had trouble picking out Gambeh’s street. It felt like a long time since I’d walked home with him, and I hadn’t really seen it then because it was dark. I did remember a couple of tall, skinny houses that looked like they were about to fall on each other. I went down that side street and found the outside steps leading up to an apartment over a store—that was where his mom had come out and scolded him for
bothering me. I had hardly put one foot on the steps before the same woman came out. “Do you want Gambeh? Is he in trouble?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” I said. I almost never called women “ma’am,” but she scared me into it. “I just want to talk to him.”

“What do you want to talk about, oh?”

“A job?”

She nodded and went in. I heard her hollering for Gambeh, and a moment later he tore down the steps in bare feet.

“Hello, Linus!”

“Hey, I have a job for you. I can give you a dollar if you look for something, and five if you find it.”

“Wow.” His eyes widened at the mention of money. “What am I looking for?”

“A snake,” I told him. “It’s a mamba. Do you know what they look like?”

“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I won’t find a mamba for one hundred dollars. That’s a killer snake.”

“I know, but the snake I’m talking about is hurt really bad. It might even be dead. It won’t be able to hurt you if you don’t get close to it. You don’t have to touch it. Just tell me where it is. I’d look for it myself, but I’ve got to stay at home right now.”

“Where do I look?”

“It can’t be far from my building,” I told him. “It bit my brother and I threw it from the balcony.”

“It’s five dollars if I see it?”

“Yes. But don’t go too close to it. Just tell me where it is.”

“Don’t worry,” he said with a shudder. “I won’t get close to a mamba even if it’s dead.”

I hurried home, but it was too late. Mom was dressed and drinking a cup of coffee.

“Were you off finding a crocodile, or maybe a man-eating lion?” she asked me.

“I just had to tell Gambeh something,” I told her. She had a soft spot for those kids. I figured it would get me off the hook, but I was wrong.

“You’re grounded forever,” she said. “At least until school starts. And that includes”—she waved her hand toward the family room—“that game.”

“No Atari,” I agreed. That was easy.

“No Matt, and whatever that game is you play with him, either,” she said. “And no comic books. If you’re going to read something, it’s going to be something about how dangerous snakes are.”

“I actually already read a book like that.”

“And no television,” she went on, ignoring me. “No orange Fanta, no …” She ran out of things to deny me. “Just no,” she finished. “If it sounds like fun to you, the answer is no.”

So I drew for a while, trying not to enjoy myself. Artie saw the drawing and laughed.

“I say, oh, that’s very good.”

“Thanks.” I’d drawn a picture of Law, looking coolly out from under his bangs, kind of like he might look if he was on an album cover. I picked it up and blew off the eraser crumbs.

“I wonder if you can draw me?” Artie asked.

“Of course,” I said. I pictured him in my head with a little smile and one of those little lizards perched on his shoulder.

Mom and Dad and Law still weren’t back by lunchtime. Artie made me a bologna sandwich, just the way I liked them. I ate it without enjoying it very much, then took a nap on the couch. I felt connected to the snake again. It was lying on a hot surface, baked by the sun. All it could see was sea and sky. I hoped Gambeh would find it soon. I’d go help it no matter what Mom and Dad piled on top of the punishment I was already in for.

I snapped out of it when the door opened. Law came in with his arm around Dad, looking like an injured athlete hobbling off the field. He nodded at me, and they both headed straight back for his room. Mom walked in a moment later carrying a bag, dropping it in the hall.

“Artie?” she said. He followed her down to Law’s room. Nobody asked me to come along, and I felt left out.

They were still back there when I heard a quiet knock on the door. I probably wouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t been sitting perfectly still, trying to hear what was going on down the hall.

It was Eileen. “Hi,” she said in a small voice. “I guess Law is home?”

“How’d you know?”

She gulped. “I was waiting outside,” she admitted.

“He’s back there with our mom and dad,” I told her, letting her in.

“Do you think he wants to see me?” she asked quietly.

“Of course he does. You’re his girlfriend.”

“You don’t know.” She looked down at her hands, fiddling with her fingers.

“Don’t know what?”

“Law broke up with me a day before the party.”

“Really?” Law hadn’t told me, but he didn’t tell me much. “Why? I thought he really liked you.”

“So did I,” she said sadly. “But he said he didn’t want to get serious.”

That did sound like Law. Maybe now that he was a big stud, he figured he’d date all the cute girls, one at a time.

I went into the living room to sit down, but Eileen paced, pausing to smile at a framed photo of our family from two years ago, all of us in matching Christmas sweaters.

“How come you came to the party?” I asked her.

“He said we were still friends.” She sniffed. “I told Bennett the same thing when I broke up with him. Around here it’s true. You have to stay friends because we all hang out together.” She moved on to the sideboard, touching the mask Sekou gave us.

“Yeah,” I said, like I understood completely, even though I’d never dated anyone.

She found the sketch of Law. “Did you do this?”

“Yeah.”

“You have a nice way of drawing people,” she said.

“It’s supposed to be a present for him.”

“So, did you ever find out where the snake came from?” she asked. She looked right at me, and I wondered if she knew, somehow, and wanted me to say.

“It was my snake,” I told her.

“Like a pet?”

“More like a pal.” I told her about finding the snake in the field and bringing it home, even keeping it in my laundry hamper.

“You’re a weird guy, Linus.”

“I know.”

“I still think you’re nice, though. Like when you play with those kids, or getting to know that charlie. A lot of American kids here don’t make friends with Liberians. They don’t learn much about the culture.”

“Do you?”

“No,” she admitted.

Artie finally came back down the hall, going straight to the laundry room with some of Law’s clothes.

“How is Law?” Eileen asked.

“He’s sleeping now,” Artie said. “He’s very tired.”

“I guess I’d better go,” she said.

“He probably wouldn’t care if you just said hi,” I told her.

“I don’t want to wake him up,” she said. “Tell him I came
by. Or maybe … don’t tell him, okay?” She left without saying goodbye.

Even after he woke up, Law stayed in his room. I could hear hard rock faintly echoing through the door. I knocked but didn’t get an answer. He probably couldn’t hear over the music, so I pushed the door open.

He was sitting up, reading a guitar magazine. He looked at me but didn’t turn down the music. It was loud enough to hear the lyrics over the headphones: “Run to the hills, run for your lives.”

I handed him the drawing of himself. He looked at it and nodded, then finally reached for the volume knob.

“You’ve gotten good,” he said, taking off the headphones. “This is really cool. Thanks.”

“You broke up with Eileen.”

“Yeah. She’s all yours, buddy.”

“I doubt it.” I wondered if I should tell him about how she washed his snakebites and stayed up all night, how hard she cried for him. “She really likes you, you know.”

“She’s a nice girl, but I wasn’t feeling it,” he said.

“Are you doing better?”

“I guess so. Comas are crazy, though.” He told me about the bus ride, getting lost in the jungle, the darkness.

“It sounds like a scary dream.”

“The doctor said you don’t even dream in comas,” he said. “Shows how much he knows.” He put his headphones back on.