A man had come on now trying to sell Ford automobiles: “The closer you look, the better we look!”
Beeder and Lottie Mae’s eyes left the screen at the same time and their gaze joined across the soiled bed.
“I didn’t hear you,” shouted Beeder. “They burn the snake or not?” Then when Lottie Mae still did not answer: “Anybody hurt?”
“Not I’m a mind of.”
“Didn’t fall on anybody, nobody burned, no bones broke?”
“I ain’t seen it.”
They were shouting at each other. It was the only way they could be heard over the NBC Nightly News.
“Can we turn hit down?”
“What?”
“Turn hit down, the TeeVee!”
“What?” shouted Beeder.
Lottie Mae went over and turned the television all the way down. Beeder sat up in bed. “What did you do that for?”
“I wanted to tell you. I cut hit off.”
“You ain’t got no call to turn my TeeVee down. Now turn it back up.”
“I cut hit off at the ground. Shrunk hit up till hit wont no biggern you little finger.”
Beeder was beside herself. “This room’s mine! What I say goes.”
“Tetched it one time with this and hit come off in my hand just like a natural thing.”
Lottie Mae was holding a straight razor up in front of her. The blade was honed thin and bright and terrible. Beeder stopped shouting. She got quietly off the bed and adjusted the sound so she could hear it but not so loud they had to shout. She stood beside Beeder and they both watched the thin shiny steel razor for a long time.
“Tell me,” said Beeder glancing apprehensively at the far wall.
“See,” said Lottie Mae with enormous satisfaction. “Hit were this snake.”
“Yes,” said Beeder.
“Hit fetched me all the living while. Went to sleep with me, snake did. Woke up with me. Eat my food. Come in the front door with me, went out the back. Wore my skin like clothes.”
“Wore your skin like clothes,” Beeder said.
“Close as breathing,” said Lottie Mae. “Looked into my eyes. Breathed into my nose. Put his taste on my tongue — all up in my mouth — and made me swaller him. Felt him grow in my hair, move in my stomach. When I went on my knees to pray, snake had the ear of the lord.”
“You was scared?” Beeder asked.
“Scared to death,” said Lottie Mae.
“You cry?”
“All the time.”
“And was you afraid to go out?”
“Wouldn’t go out less I had to.”
“And was you afraid to come in?”
“Wouldn’t come in neither less I had to.”
“It had you covered all around,” said Beeder.
“All around. In the air and on my plate. Everthing that moved say snake. Snake! It was you say what I might do. It’s why I come back to tell you. You was right. Just hit that snake with a razor. Tetch hit. One time. Gone forever. Outta my air. Outta my plate. Don’t tetch my skin like clothes.”
“All because of the razor.”
“That snake shrunk up and died like magic.”
“Listen,” said Beeder. “Hear it?”
“I tol you less turn it down.”
“Not the TeeVee. That!”
Lottie Mae folded her razor and put it in her shoe. “Cain’t hear nothin but the TeeVee.”
“Here then,” said Beeder. She reached over and turned the sound all the way off, and rising out of the silence it left — coming from behind the far wall — was a ragged thumping like the beating of an enormous erratic heart.
“Hear it now?”
Lottie Mae cocked her head and regarded the wall. “I do hear.”
“He s got another one tied in there.”
“I don’t misdoubt it,” Lottie Mae said. “Be one tied everwhere you look these days.”
“He’ll tie another one on it before he’s through,” said Beeder.
They stood for a long time watching the place beyond the wall where the thing was thumping.
Finally Lottie Mae said: “Before he’s through, he gone tie everone on it.”
***
“Well,” said Shep Martin, “I thought law.”
Dr. Sweet drew on his pipe and slowly wagged his huge white head. His skin and eyes and hair and even the suit he was wearing was the color of damp chalk. He looked as though he had not been in the sun for a year, which was true, since he actively cultivated a bleached look. He thought it made him look scholarly.
“I myself,” said Dr. Sweet, “once seriously thought of the law.” He enjoyed these young men his daughters brought home, all of them on the edge of beginning to live their lives, all of them so full of hope and the higher virtues. “But, alas, it was to be medicine that I finally chose. I’ve not regretted it either.”
They were sitting in Dr. Sweet’s living room in front of a large fire, roaring in a fieldstone fireplace. Mrs. Sweet was upstairs asleep and the doctor had let his black maid go for the evening.
“It must be very rewarding,” said Shep.
“A doctor is able to do much very decent work out here in the …” He chuckled deeply in his good gray throat. “… in the provinces, so to speak.”
“You ought to think of writing, Doctor Sweet,” said Shep. “You certainly can …” Here he gave his own radio announcer’s chuckle. “Certainly can turn a phrase.”
The doctor waved his hand. “When I retire I plan to devote my life to belles lettres.” He smiled. “But for now, I have to keep this county as healthy and wholesome as modern medicine will allow.”
“There must be great satisfaction in that,” said Shep.
“No more than you’ll find in the practice of law, young man. Law is an admirable calling.”
“I haven’t actually decided,” said Shep. “But you see, sir. I’m on the debate team and doing extremely …”
The doorbell, a three-chimed gong, floated through the house. The doctor raised his eyes to the ceiling and wagged his head. “Probably not a patient,” he said, “but it would not surprise me if it was. Nobody thinks a doctor sleeps or needs time for reflection.” He sighed and got to his feet.
“Perhaps a crisis,” said Shep.
The doctor, walking toward the door, said: “You soon find in medicine that to a patient everything is a crisis. Everything from a rash to a …”
He did not finish but opened the door and found Buddy Matlow, pale, his mouth like a razor-cut in his face, looking down upon him. “Well, Sheriff,” said the doctor, looking past Buddy toward the night sky because he had not heard the rain start and certainly it had not looked like rain and yet here was the sheriff standing in his raincoat, a yellow rubber slicker that fell well below his knees so that you could see only the point of one cowboy boot and about two and a half inches of a peg leg. It did not seem to be raining. “Come in. Come in.”
Buddy Matlow’s thin mouth stretched as though he would speak but he did not. It was almost a kind of yawn and then the lips came weakly back together. The doctor thought maybe Buddy was coming down with a cold. Colds seemed to do these big fellows worse than it did ordinary folk. Buddy had been leaning, holding to the door jamb with one of his wide square hands. Now he turned loose and leaned in toward the living room. His eyes wandered slowly from Dr. Sweet to the fireplace to the boy whom he had not met.
Shep stood up and came toward him with his hand out. Buddy Matlow came over the door sill, his wooden leg thumping on the floor. It was the thumping of the wooden leg that made Shep look down and see that the peg leg was leaving a wide round puddle of blood every time it stopped. Shep stood amazed with his hand out. When he raised his eyes he saw that the sheriff was holding what looked like a toy snake tenderly between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. With his other hand, the sheriff was fumbling with the snaps on the yellow raincoat.