Tree Snake

Last summer Jacob grew two heads taller than me, then three heads by spring. Soon, he could easily reach the top of the fence and hook a leg over. Mom hadn’t measured either of us since our trip to the big river two summers ago. I missed the feel of her white hands as she stood me by the wall, fitting her heaviest cookbook over my head. But Jacob told me things were better now, since without Dad we could run around wherever we wanted. On weekends Jacob even grabbed his gear and hiked into the hills. Once he went really far and found a broken windmill with half a dead cat in it. Another time it stormed and he woke up riding his sleeping bag down a mountain like a sled. I know because he told me about it.

Jacob went on adventures to study nature all the time and his huge Encyclopedia weighed five pounds. Once he used it to determine the sex of a gopher snake he had pulled from the drain pipe. Another time Jacob memorized the scientific name of every lizard, newt and snake in the fields beyond our property. In the afternoons, he studied on the ground, the book open in the grass while I stood a good few feet back, out of rock and stick throwing range. In the long grass he propped himself up on one elbow, reading, his pale face calm as lake water, his blue eyes cutting into the pages.

Once, Jacob made me carry the book two miles downstream where he had discovered a new kind of frog. Afterwards, my arms felt like bubble gum, but he said we weren’t done yet and made me run out into the grass and flip cow paddies for prairie oysters, which he said were the earth’s only known land crustaceans. I hunted forever and didn’t find one. I worried he would pound me, but instead when I told him he smiled.

Mom worried about me more than Jacob, probably because I was younger. At night I would knock on her door and tell her I was home and that so was Jacob, even if he wasn’t. She would come out and give me a kiss goodnight, her long hair pouring around me. I wanted a hug too but the goodnight kiss was almost as good.

Jacob called me a baby for wanting a hug from Mom. “Things are better now,” he would say, and he must be right since he said we could do whatever we wanted.

Still, even if things were better I got sad about Dad sometimes. Like the time we netted the deep end of the stream for rainbow trout. Sad about Dad rhymed and as I set the nets I rhymed it to Jacob. He sloshed over and shoved a handful of awful muddy cattails into my mouth until I knew better. Still, no matter how often I messed up, Jacob almost always let me tag along. At dusk I followed him up the crabapple tree out onto the corkscrew branch to try and catch Raina changing her clothes. Jacob said he saw half her butt once. The only thing I ever saw Raina do was change a sock.

It was a typical hot summer afternoon. I switched eyes, stopping to rub the raised strips on my eyebrow and cheek. Only the fan of Raina’s yellow hair showed through the rough slats. She always played outside in the summer, since it was the only time she didn’t have school.

“Piglet, if you want to play with Raina you have to get on top of the fence.” Jacob’s long legs appeared next to me, the knees of his jeans torn like spiderwebs.

“I don’t want to play with her. I’m only spying.” I leaned back from the slats. I had been too afraid to ask her to play by myself, since her parents might see.

“Yes, you do. Just admit it. You have a crush on her. Come on, use the brick.”

I stepped on the brick and heaved myself up the fence, jagged wood biting at my fingers. Jacob came up next and we perched on the edge like two birds and watched Raina sit in the grass with her tea set and dolls. Her parents didn’t like us so we never went into her yard. Instead, she would see us and climb over.

The great thing about Raina was that she played whatever we played. She knew how to stick a foot into the dark knot of the crabapple tree and swing herself up to the corkscrew branch. Raina even mastered Jacob’s game of Inch-Out, where we dared each other onto the thin, bendy parts. Whenever we horsed around in the mud, Jacob called me Piglet, but I was dirty pretty much all the time from playing outside. In the summer my face grew tan as molasses but Jacob’s stayed the same, his burns flaking off over pink skin.

“Piglet, bring me two handfuls of lichen.” Jacob pointed towards the woods. He had his black boots on. He always did.

“What for?”

“For my crown. I’m king of the fields, the forest, and the house.”

“Can I be king of the stream?”

“No, that’s Dad’s, Piglet.”

“A stream isn’t the same thing as the big river.”

“It’s still moving water, dumb pig. Be quiet before I roast you on a metal spit.”

I was quiet.

“Can I be queen of everything?” Raina stood up and spread her dress like a wing, lifting her chin in profile. She stood on her tip toes.

“This isn’t ballet Raina, shut up.”

“I’m prima.”

“What’s prima?”

“Like Barbie.”

“Come on, let’s go. Raina, get the newts. Piglet, you better get the good lichen this time.”

We all scattered into the woods. I ran and watched my shoes flicker through tall grass. My shoes were old and full of holes, and as I ran hot dust puffed over my toes and heels. After Jacob’s shoes fell apart, he found that pair of black boots two fields over. He said they came off the feet of a dead man, and that he had to fight off a heard of coyotes who were gnawing the bones. And that’s all he wore now. Sometimes he’d tromp completely naked through the reeds, wearing just the boots, scooping up frogs and whatever else moved in the muck.

I kept running, hopping across the stream and accidently dunking a shoe. I got sad for a second, since I hated running in wet shoes, but then remembered the cattails in my mouth and Jacob saying that life was better now and that I better not stop thinking so.

On the other side of the stream, I scrambled up the loose dirt and almost slammed my face into an old stump that looked right. I pulled handfuls of gray, crunchy lichen from its sides and then jumped on top. From there I could see pretty far downstream and spotted Raina kneeling on some rocks, her dress pulled up around her waist, exposing her bare legs as she fished for newts elbow deep in the dark water. Me and Raina never played alone, and I wondered if Jacob would push more cattails into my mouth if we did. I stood up a little taller on the stump. Above the treeline, I could see Mom’s bedroom window was half open. Sometimes she sat by that window, and I would stand far away and watch for a long time, but she was not there today. Mom always found a way to make lunch while I was gone, usually some sandwiches with the crusts cut off left on our warm griddle. Once Jacob used the sandwiches to bait a raccoon trap and we ate a bag of cheesy fish crackers instead. Afterwards, crumbs lay scattered all over the floor and Jacob told me not to clean it up.

“Let her do it,” he said.

Jacob smirked when I gave him my lichen, crumpled it into a white ball, and chucked it into a bush.

“I told you, the good kind,” he said, but didn’t do anything to me.

Soon Raina ran up with a handful of newts, breathing hard, her arms covered in brown slime, her blond hair filled with oak leaves.

“Piglet, how come she does it right and you don’t?”

“It was all I could find.”

“You’ve been demoted to second assistant. Raina, you take notes.”

Second assistant meant it was my job to set up the lab, which was made from two white buckets and a ruler. Raina, who was now chief, kept the log and jotted down everything we caught. By lunchtime we had logged six newts, a fence lizard, and a baby garter snake. In the middle of everything I caught a black cricket in my cupped hands but Jacob said crickets didn’t count. I quickly let the cricket go before Jacob could crush the cricket too and chuck it into a bush. After everything was done, Jacob told me to get lost, so I ran inside, hoping to get a glimpse of Mom. She wasn’t there, but the sandwiches were. This time, the crusts weren’t cut off. I imagined she wanted to cut them off but left the kitchen when she saw me coming.

After lunch I squatted by the brick we had used to climb the fence, studying a dark circle that had formed around my blob of strawberry jam. The circle vibrated with hundreds of hair-thin legs, heads small as pins. From the other side of the fence came a thump, then a scrambling, ticking sound, like a cat up a tree. Above me, a fleck of yellow, then a face popped over.

“Hey!” Raina jumped again and this time heaved herself all the way up. “Hey Piglet!” I didn’t mind when she called me Piglet.

“What?”

“Let’s climb the tree together. Want to?”

“Okay.”

Raina beat me to the knot hole, stepping past my face and hands. I accidently saw up her dress for a second, pink limbs that went up into a dark slice. I looked away and kept climbing.

“You can see my room from here.” Raina arched her back, shading her eyes. I hoisted myself the rest of the way up.

“Is that your room?” I pointed, pretending to notice for the first time. Lace curtains fluttered inside the open window. Beyond it, a flat, pink blanket lay perfectly tucked into a four posted bed. Did Raina do that herself? Jacob said Mom wanted us to grow up and take care of ourselves, but I got sad when Mom stopped changing my sheets.

Raina reached up and yanked off a handful of leaves. “How come you call it a crabapple tree if it never grows any apples?”

“Jacob says there aren’t any other trees like it around so it can’t for some reason. He says it has to do with pollen bees. Or birdbees. I forget.”

Raina shrugged and held up a leaf, turning it over and over, following the lead of an ant. “Well I don’t care. Jacob told me that we have tiny hairs all over our bodies that we can’t see. Look at my arm,” she held it out, long and white. “You can kind of see them, they’re really tiny.” I leaned towards her arm, the wisps light as dust seemed to hover above her skin.

“You have them too. And someday they’ll change color.”

“No, they won’t.”

“Yes, they will. Jacob showed me. They’re all over his legs. He read in his big book that if you don’t have those hairs, you aren’t really growing up. You’re just getting taller for no reason. I looked at the pictures too. Have you seen them?”

“A few times.”

This was mostly true. Three summers ago Dad gave him the Encyclopedia for his birthday. Every page had a big, beautiful picture of either a newt, toad, lizard or snake, with descriptions in writing too small for me to read. She must have been talking about the chapter on mammals, which was in the back. Jacob told me that if I ever opened his big book, or even looked at it, he’d pound my face. I believed him but took a peek once when he wasn’t around, barely lifting the cover and letting it fall back down again.

I shifted on the branch. “Hey, where’s Jacob? Should we find him?”

“Who cares? I’m here with you. Come on scaredy, I want to show you a game I made up.”

From the corkscrew branch I scanned the pasture for Jacob, the hump of his shoulders, or his head propped up on an elbow, reading. No Jacob. Raina moved back away from me and at first I thought she was playing Inch-Out. But then she spread her legs out, stiff and straight, and grabbed the branch beneath her and began twisting her pelvis. She threw her head back and groaned, bouncing up and down.

“Okay, now it’s your turn.”

I didn’t move.

“Go on.”

I straddled the branch, wishing the ground was close enough to jump. Raina reached out with both hands pushed down on my shoulders a little. My insides felt different, and I wondered who was watching us. Then I felt myself scrambling, bark and twigs scraping my arms and neck, hopping on one leg as my shoe stuck in the knot hole and popped off. I tore for the house.

For the rest of the day, I kept worrying that he had seen us. I wandered up towards the stream and cut back through a field where he liked to catch garter snakes but couldn’t find him. Why had Raina played with just me? My brother knew more things than I did and made up the best games. I kept re-imagining our game in the tree. I walked back by the fence and peeked through, but Raina wasn’t there. Maybe she went with my brother on an adventure. Maybe they even brought sleeping bags.

That night I lay in bed, thinking of the crabapple tree, how I could crawl out onto the far branch all by myself and spy into her window. I swung out of the sheets and crept across the wood floor and downstairs, past the stewed chicken left for us on the stove. Outside, the air felt heavy and warm. I found a spot on the rail and planted my elbows. Raina’s light was out, so there was no point in climbing the tree. Beyond the garden, our long property faded into the dark. On Thursdays, all those summers before, I would wait for Mom and Dad to come walking up through the dark to the porch. Usually Dad had just taken Mom out to the fancy restaurant in town. It had lacey tablecloths, fat candles, and the old man who sat by each table and strummed his guitar. She would come home with Dad singing like the old man as she danced up the back steps and onto the porch.

Now, on our porch, I felt sad for awhile and I stayed out there listening to the crickets. In the far corner of the field, I could see the dark outline of the crabapple tree as it twisted way up into the sky, blotting out so many stars.

In the morning I ran to the stream with the hand spade. Jacob said he wanted some worms to feed his lizards. Just in case he had seen me with Raina I wanted to surprise him so he wouldn’t be as mad. The cool dirt felt good around my fingers. All those summers back, before our swim in the big river, Mom used to spend long afternoons outside, tucking flowers into the ground, or using just a finger to stick a line of seeds into the soft earth. Soon, fifteen worms lay by the edge of the stream in a squirming heap. Then the light around me darkened. I looked up. A lank silhouette filled most of the sky, its arms stretching towards me like branches. Something long swam through Jacob’s fingers.

“You want to know where I’ve been? Me and Raina were out hunting all night. Look at what we caught by the crabapple tree.” My brother let the snake slide from one hand into the other, like a necklace.

“You see how I’ve got his head?” His fist tightened. The sleek body snapped across the back of his hand. “Now it can’t bite me. This is a tree snake, the most poisonous snake in the world. I looked it up. It has bright red eyes and a black, rattlesnake head.”

I leaned back, squinting, trying to get a better angle. Jacob smiled, wrapping his other hand around the snake’s neck. He held up the body above me, a writhing S against the sky. “If I dropped this on your face it would bite you, and you would die in fifteen seconds.” I glanced back at the tall, crooked crabapple tree, wondering where he’d found it: in the mossy knot holes, or the dark, wet crags between roots.

“Raina says she doesn’t want to play with you anymore because you’re too little. I’ve been growing like a reptile, that’s why I peel and you don’t. Maybe soon I’ll shed my skin and be twice as tall as you. You’re not going to grow up for a really long time. Now run away, run before I throw this snake into your face.”

I ran away and ran into the house. Inside, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, wiping away the small rocks still stuck into my cheek. The whole side of my face hurt from where I had tripped. Standing on my tip toes, I strained my neck to make my reflection taller. I hadn’t grown much after I turned ten. Was it possible to speed up birthdays? I went downstairs and studied on the living room wall where Mom used to measure us. In side-by-side columns, a sliver of space divided each line, marking our changing height. I knew which one was Jacob’s because the spaces began to widen as he grew, his marks separated by a straw of space, then a finger, then two.

After he threatened to throw a snake at me, I didn’t see Jacob for a whole week. I checked once under the porch but the sleeping bag was still there, rolled tight as a snail. Was he just sleeping in the grass? At night I knocked on Mom’s door and she came out and gave me my kiss. I told her about Jacob being gone and she put her hand on the back of my neck and bowed her head and didn’t say anything. I thought of asking her for a hug.

Later that night, in the bathroom, I stood in front of the mirror, studying the bare skin between my legs, my knobby, thin limbs. Dad’s legs were matted and dark with hair the day he walked with us across the white rocks towards the shore of the big river. He jumped in the water and then stepped out, laughing, waving us in, his dark leg hair clumped now in upside down V’s. Then he stepped back in and swam to the center of the water, stopping again to wave. Mom yanked the pins out of her hair, swam out and then back and out and then back again. I had never seen her move so quickly. After an hour the police made her stop and so she sat down in the white rocks, her wet hair threading like black willow branches across her face and arms.

A few more days passed. No Jacob. No Raina. One night I sat in our field because I couldn’t sleep. Again and again, the tree snake’s black head slid into my imagination, the red eyes brightening as its arrow mouth bore into my white skin. My knees clamped together as something moved in the dark but it turned out only to be a thick beetle. Why couldn’t I just grow up overnight, my muscles thickening, waking up one morning with a body as strong and thick as the crabapple tree?

Inside, my back to the measuring wall, the cookbook wobbled as I balanced it above my head, doing my best to mark the spot with a pencil. I turned around. The new gap didn’t look right. Maybe I had used the wrong book. I tried measuring myself again with a different book, but it was the same. I faced the wall for a while, just watching. The new space between the old and new line was nearly as wide as my arm.

In the morning, I tripped over something in the field when I was running and fell flat on my face and stomach, foxtails sticking themselves all over my clothes. Behind me, Jacob’s big book lay in the grass. Was he back? Maybe he had returned and gone off for a moment to chase a poisonous frog or find a cluster of those prairie oysters for his lunch. I stood up tall and still as a rabbit. The fields stretched out long and empty, the brown grass waving and forth. The barbed wire fence that ran through our property had the holes twisted open with sticks so we could duck through. After a few minutes, I finally kneeled and opened the book.

The pages felt glossy and smooth, the animal photos bright with strange colors. I thumbed through to the glossary, then flipped back through the pages until I found the one I was looking for. The tree snake looked nothing like he had described, it had yellow eyes and thin, apple green body. Boiga Irregularis, it read, Native to Australia.

Well at least I knew that Australia was really far away, probably too far to walk, even for Jacob. I jogged off, steering past a cow paddy, which is where Jacob made me once dig for prairie oysters. How many other things had he made up? Part of me wanted to get some scissors, cut out that page, and nail it to the crabapple tree where he would find it. But that was just a great way to get pounded, probably to death. Jacob would always be bigger than me and he knew it and I knew it. I wandered up to Raina’s fence and stood up on the brick but thought better about it. Maybe Mom had left us breakfast. I ran back towards the house.

The sun had risen hot the next day, and by noon my bare feet almost burned running up the dirt path. Over the last few days the holes in my shoes had gotten even bigger. I found it was easier just to go without them. At the stream I waded deep into the cold water, hunting for trout and cupping polliwogs. I counted six minnows nibbling at my toenail when he stepped out from behind a clump of cattails. Jacob stood very still, watching me, his naked body planted into black boots. His elbows were thick like solid bone, and coarse, dark hair around his penis.

He stooped, bringing something up from the bottom, then sloshed towards me, his long fingers playing with a smooth, round rock.

“When I saw you following me I was going to use this to smash your skull. But I have a better idea. I found another tree snake yesterday on top of the crabapple tree that was eating a bird. It was the biggest tree snake I had ever seen, and its eyes were as big as marbles. One night, maybe tonight, maybe next week, I’ll put it in your pillow so it will bite your face. That way, the poison will travel directly into your brain and you’ll die even faster. Just imagine waking up and see those huge, glowing red eyes and knowing you’ll be dead in fifteen seconds.”

The sun had almost set by the time I finished checking my bed that night, shaking out the pillows, sticking a pencil into every crevice, watching for a pair of red eyes to stare back. What if I had turned to the wrong page? Maybe there was more than one kind of tree snake. After I was done, I still couldn’t sleep. I went back downstairs. The screen door whined as I pushed through, out onto the porch. A band of blue light hovered above the hills. Around me, the sound of crickets rose and fell like the land was breathing. Behind me, the house stood tall and hollow and dark. Only Mom’s light on the third floor shown out into the dusk. I turned back around and something shifted in the crabapple tree. I leaned over the rail, squinting until I could make out Raina’s white shirt, her bare legs dangling in the air. It must have been Jacob who was with her, his stooped figure blended into the dark, facing her. She began to move, up and down, her body swaying in a circle, her hands planted against the branch beneath.

Just a band of sky hovered over the trees when they finally climbed down. I hid in the garden as Jacob two-stepped it to the porch. I jogged out to the tree and swung myself up. The old corkscrew branch wound thick and grey before me. Every foot or so, a thin, graceful limb sprouted from the tough bark. I grabbed each one like a walking stick and stepped out towards the end, onto the bendy parts. From there I could easily see into Raina’s room, a large rectangle of yellow light. She lay in bed, reading. Then everything shook. I wobbled, tightening my grips. Pale and quiet, Jacob sat on the other end of my branch, leaning against the trunk, his black boots crossed in front of him.

“Do you want to fall?” Jacob’s body blocked the only way down, and I couldn’t get around him. I glanced at the ground, too far away to jump, and full of sharp rocks and broken brick.

“What are you doing up here?” he asked, “What were you looking at?”

“I was just climbing.”

“I’m going to tell Raina that you were watching her. And then she’s going to see how stupid you are when you’re on the ground crying with a broken neck. Are you sure you don’t want to fall?” He lifted his feet and smashed down with his heels onto the branch, shaking it again.

“Jacob, leave me alone.” I held out a hand, “Stop it.”

“Okay, I’ll leave you alone. On one condition.”

“What?” I felt ready to do anything: turn over a hundred cow paddies, bring him every newt in the stream. My throat pounded with heartbeats.

“Say you like it better now.”

I straightened, my hands loosening.

“I have my big book and soon I’ll have Raina. We get to do whatever we want. It’s better now.”

We fell quiet, watching each other. Jacob’s face seemed to twist in the half light and then darken, as though he were a part of the tree. My brother took a long breath and leaned forward, using his hands this time. The leaves rustled and all around me things fell and hit the ground way below.

“Say you like it better now,” he whispered. “Please. Just say it.”

The branch beneath me bounced up and down as he grabbed with both hands, “Say it,” his voice rose, “Say it say it!”

I felt a foot slip and my hand grabbed into cold air as my back met a cluster of thin, spiky branches behind me. I righted myself, breathing hard.

Jacob stood, as though ready to climb down. I stared past him, unsure at what I was seeing.

“What?” Jacob demanded.

The shadow moved again, uncurling as it slipped onto his shoulder.

I pointed, “It’s a tree snake!”

The diamond head rose up, touching his cheek. Jacob squinted and lurched backwards, his heel stepping into space.

Inside, the lights were on all over the house. Mom moved quickly, tearing through both closets for her purse. She said they would be back later — hopefully just a sprained ankle and a few cuts. Jacob sat in the back of the car, a black slick coating his cheek and shoulder. Mom gave me a long hug, soft, her warm arms wrapping me all the way up. She stayed that way for a long time, her hair falling all around me, her whole body shaking.

After they drove off I crossed our field. Above me the tall branches and leaves criss-crossed a fast fading sky. It was hard to see now but I hunted around anyway, kicking at wet leaves and toeing over a few large rocks. I pushed again at a root with my foot, wondering, certain I had seen it, even as he fell, the long, dark shape that twisted down the trunk, an eye that sparked red before slipping into the knot of the tree.