Читать книгу The Book of Colors - Raymond Barfield - Страница 7

If I’d been paying more attention I might have noticed that God sent a sign. But it wasn’t me that noticed the thing. Actually it was Layla who noticed, but she didn’t notice the snake. She noticed Ambrosia who noticed the snake.

We were waiting for the train to pass. Wind from the train passing by eases the heat. It passes so close you can understand the end of the world. Rose always sat like nothing changed. As I said, you can get used to anything. But me—I always feel the train shake my bones.

That was why after watching Ambrosia rock right through the train passing day after day, even I didn’t take long to notice that she wasn’t rocking while the train passed. We all leaned in to see what she was staring at under the train, and as I said, Layla was the first to see.

“It’s a goddamned rattlesnake,” she screamed, though the poor thing was all curled up on the track and its rattle was going like crazy and the sound of the train drowned it out like a chorus of angels might drown any leftover grumblings in the Kingdom.

Then that little thing shot out between the wheels of that train and God witnessed us jump when it sprang but the steel wheel caught it on the tail and it rolled about ten feet then lay there like it was dead trying to figure out what happened.

A thing wants to live. That much is sure. So once the train passed we all settled back to see what the snake would do. We didn’t talk. Ambrosia was back to rocking the second that snake sprang out. It was like she was only interested in the coiled-up snake but once it straightened out it didn’t exist anymore.

But just when she lost interest I got interested because the question was is the snake dead and who’s walking over to find out.

Nobody had to go kick the snake, though, because before we could even start talking like grown-ups about what just happened the snake started to slither. But it didn’t slither off into the woods. It slithered toward the chicken-wire fence and then tried to poke its head through one hole then another like it was deciding. Then it found a torn place in the fence and came on through and I know we all felt our hearts going weak but we wanted to see where it would go after all that.

Well, it went up under Layla’s porch before anyone could say anything, and the thing was done. Now we had a snake living with us and not just one that might or might not be dangerous but one we had seen the rattle knocked off of. And

one ready to risk dying if that’s what it took to live.

“That snake ain’t gonna be warning nobody now,” Rose said.

I hadn’t thought about that, everything happened so fast.

And then like she knew we all got suddenly nervous she said in a comforting tone, “I bet if Jesus sees that snake he’ll stomp him inside out.” I haven’t mentioned that the donkey’s name is Jesus.

In time I learned from Rose that a quiet snake is like a dark mystery inside your body. Some mysteries are okay like the sounds your stomach makes even when you aren’t hungry or why you have periods. That’s just the mystery of having insides instead of being angels, she’d say. But other things are bothersome such as lumps and the way you can sometimes feel like something is wrong even if you don’t have a lump. Then you start thinking about dying even if you are young, and it’s worse if you are young because if you live a long time you end up having a lot of worry to look forward to. I agreed. But then the strange thing is that after all the worrying over false alarms, in some ways it’s better to know you are soon to die and from what than to think about how it might be, she’d say. She didn’t learn that until the day she decided she would die soon. When she said that’s how it feels I hadn’t even been thinking about the snake. But I saw what she meant.

Think about it enough and every step off the porch and every comfortable crawling into bed turns into a new chance to be scared, like every walk down the tracks past strangers, or when you go to the pharmacy to buy Band-Aids and see old people with swollen legs and feet with their shoes loose and untied, waiting on medicines and you know they are fighting something even if they grin at you when you walk by. It ain’t death. It’s the idea of death.