“I’ll bet with you,” said Hard Candy. She opened the little clutch purse she was carrying and bills folded out of the top of it.
“I don’t take money from my friends,” said Joe Lon.
“If you gone bet with him on the snake,” said Willard, “you might as well go ahead and give him the goddam money anyway. You sure as hell ain’t gone beat him.”
“I lose sometimes,” said Joe Lon, smiling.
“Git the goddam snake,” said Willard. “Shit, I’ll bet with you.”
“You ain’t bettin with me,” said Joe Lon.
“I’ll make you bet with me,” said Willard.
They were both off their stools now, kind of leaning toward each other across the counter. They were both smiling, but there was an obvious tension in the attitude of their bodies.
“You ever come to make me do something,” said Joe Lon, “you bring you lunch. You’ll be staying awhile.”
“Maybe I can think of something you’ll want to bet on,” said Willard.
“Maybe,” said Joe Lon.
He went into the small room at the back of the counter and they followed him. There was a dim light burning. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust. Bottles of various sizes lined the shelves of both sides of the room. One middle shelf toward the back had no bottles on it. It held, instead, five wire cages that were about two feet square and about that high. Four of the cages held a rattlesnake. The fifth cage had several white rats in it. Joe Lon slapped the side of one of the cages with his hand. The snake made no move or sound. Nor did any of the other snakes.
“I’ve had these so long I probably could handle’m,” said Joe Lon.
“Why don’t you,” said Willard Miller, showing his even, perfect teeth.
“Would if I wanted to,” said Joe Lon.
“Hell, let’s make that the bet then,” said Willard. “The loser has to kiss the snake.”
Joe Lon looked at him for a long moment. “You couldn’t beat me at that either.”
Willard Miller said: “I can beat you at anything.” He was still smiling but something about the way he said it had no smile in it at all.
“You better back you ass out of here before you git it overloaded,” said Joe Lon.
“If we don’t never bet on nothing, how you know I cain’t beat you?” said Willard.
“I know,” said Joe Lon.
Hard Candy said: “I’ll git the rat.”
She went to the cage, opened the top, and reached in. When her hand came out she had a white rat by its long smooth pink tail. It hung head down without moving, its little legs splayed and rigid in the air. They followed Joe Lon out of the room to the counter, where he set the caged snake down.
“Ain’t he a beautiful sumbitch?” said Joe Lon.
“Ain’t nothing as pretty as a goddam snake,” Willard said.
“I’m pretty as a snake,” said Hard Candy.
They both looked at her. She was playing with the rat on the counter, holding its tail and letting it scratch for all it was worth. With her free hand she thumped the rat good-naturedly on top of its head.
“You almost are,” said Willard, taking a pull at Joe Lon’s whiskey bottle, “but you ain’t quite.”
Joe Lon took the bottle. “He’s right, you ain’t quite pretty as a snake.”
“What would you two shitheads know about it anyway?” she said.
Joe Lon took a stopwatch from under the counter. It was the watch his coach had given him when he broke the state record for the two-twenty.
“Just for the fun what would you say?” asked Joe Lon.
“He’ll hit the rat in a hundred and four seconds. He’ll have it swallered in three and a half minutes.”
“That’s three and a half minutes after he hits it?”
“Right,” said Willard.
Joe Lon bent down until his nose was only a half inch from the wire cage. The snake was in a corner, tightly knotted, with only its head and tail free. Its waving tongue constantly stroked in and out of its mouth. Its lidless eyes looked directly back at Joe Lon. The head was wide, wider than the body, and flat with a kind of sheen to it that suggested dampness. The tail was rigid now but still not rattling.
“This sucker’ll hit right away, maybe twenty seconds. Yeah, I say twenty seconds. That rat’ll be gone, tail and all, in two and a half minutes. That’s total time. So I’m saying two minutes ten seconds after the hit.” He had been staring into the cage while he talked. Now he straightened and backed off. “Drop that little fucker in.”
“I’m playing,” said Hard Candy.
“You already got the rat messed up and confused from thumpin him on the head,” said Willard. “Stop thumpin him and do like Joe Lon says.”
She held the rat up in the palm of her hand. She stroked its head with her thumb, gently. She pursed her lips and whispered to the rat: “Nobody’s gone hurt you, little rat. We just gone let the snake kill you a little.”
There was a spring-hinged door at the top of the cage that opened only one way. She set the rat on top of the door. It opened inward and the rat dropped through. The door immediately swung shut again. Joe Lon started the stopwatch. The rat landed on its feet, turned, and sniffed its pink tail. It looked at the snake in the corner, sat up on its hind legs, and started licking its front paws. The thick body of the snake moved and a high striking curve appeared below its wide blunt head.
None of them saw the strike; rather, they saw the body of the rat lurch as though struck by some invisible force. It sat for a split second without moving and then leaped straight into the air and landed on its back. The rattlesnake had retreated to the corner, its body again knotted and seemingly coiled about itself with only the dry flat head clear.
Almost immediately the snake came twisting out of the spot where it had withdrawn and very slowly approached the still rat. It touched the rat’s back, ran its blunt head along the hairy stomach and legs, seemed to be taking the rat’s measure. Finally, the snake opened its mouth, unhinged its lower jaw and, slow and gentle as a lover, seemed to suck the rat’s head in over the trembling, darting tongue. Just as the head disappeared, the door of the store slammed open and a voice bellowed: “I caught you fuckers being cruel to little animals agin!”
They all turned together to see Buddy Matlow, wearing a cowboy hat and a wooden leg, standing in the doorway. When they looked back at the cage, there was nothing showing of the rat but the tail, long, pink, and hairless, sticking out of the snake’s mouth like an impossible tongue.
“You degenerate sumbitches,” Buddy Matlow said, watching the thin hairless tail disappear into the snake. “Never could understand how anybody could stand doing things like that to little animals.”
“Ain’t done nothing yet,” said Joe Lon. “Snake et supper. We just watched.”
“I ain’t gone report you,” said Buddy Matlow. “I just fed that snake of mine over at the jail not more’n an hour ago. You can git me a tallboy and a glass a that shine.”
Joe Lon said: “How many times I got to tell you I don’t sell nothing by the glass.”
“I didn’t think to pay for it,” said Buddy.
“Makes a lot of noise for a goddam cripple, don’t he,” said Willard Miller. “I didn’t have no more sense than to step on a stick with slopehead shit all over it, damned if I wouldn’t say please when I asked for something.” Willard’s thin mouth was smiling almost shyly over the rim of his beer can, but his dark eyes were flat and hard and without light.
“You been running over too many grunions and reading about it in the Wire Grass Farmer,” Buddy said. He looked down and casually examined his stump. “One of these days I’m gone have to stick this piece a oak up you ass and examine you liver.”
Sitting between them, Hard Candy took another pull at the whiskey bottle. She was flushed from the speed they’d eaten and a little lacquer of sweat beaded her upper lip. She was enjoying it all a lot and only wished it was real, wished they would suddenly lunge off the stools and lock up on the bare wooden floor one on one, wished she could smell a little blood. But she knew it wouldn’t come to anything. They might as well have been talking about the weather.