It caught the corner of my eye as I toed the edge of the dock for a dusk dive after a sunset run. A fat brown and tan banded snake lay coiled beneath a deck chair, black eyes intent on my every move and a large bulge in it's lower belly.
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The Friday evening run had begun from my cabin on Spring Lake after a long week of teaching and patients. From the gravel drive, I cut across a web-laced trail through the red and yellow woods of my first fall in northeast Missouri. Emerging onto a winding Adair County blacktop with pyramid-backed spiders scurrying off my chest, I headed down to the Chariton River valley and turned north along a dirt road with the growing orb suffusing the big sky in orange. Having finished the shopping and cleaning for a Halloween party the next afternoon, I was basking in the steady rhythm and glow of a ninety degree midwestern sunset. The last rays disappeared into the tallgrass prairie as I cut through a muddy track to the backside of the lake and then around to the dock below my cabin, dropping shorts and tee before stepping to the edge.
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A tongue flickered in and out as I posed for the dive, contemplating what to do about a pregnant water snake with a mean bite on the dock where children would be fishing and swimming the next day. I could try to keep the half dozen 10-year-olds away from the water. Many years before as one of those 10-year-olds, I had seen my mother hack one with her hoe, my father smash one in two with his greasy work shoe. The Department of Natural Resources would recommend removal by bullet, the fledgling internet a burlap sack without a clue how to get it inside. None of these were options in that moment.
Instead, I slowly turned back toward the lake, bent knees and hips, stared into a spot five feet out, raised arms, and dove into the darkening depths. Emerging ten yards out, I turned back and she was gone.
"Kiss the snake"
my sister whispered
in the middle of a writhing dream.
"Yes" I implied with closing eyes
as ripples moved from vapor to viper
and forked tongue flicked willing lips.
- October 1991
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