I slid out of bed onto the cracked linoleum, cold and prickly with dirt. I tiptoed one foot to the other, rubbing at my eyes; still trying to get that syrupy stuff out.
“Orbie! Ah, Orbie! Eggs is gettin’ cold!”
“Okay Granny!” I quick put on my clothes, went over to the dresser, got my dump truck, put the cross in the back end and climbed down the ladder hole — backwards like Granny — the truck tucked under my arm. When I got to the bottom, I wrapped both arms around the truck from underneath, rounded a corner in Granny and Granpaw’s bedroom and went into the kitchen.
Granpaw sat at the end of a big brown table, wheezing as he sopped up his eggs with a biscuit. His head was covered with short silvery hairs. A shiny red knot went up with his ear and then down as he chewed. He slurped coffee from a thick white mug he held by the rim between his big finger and thumb.
Under a hawk brow he spied me, standing in the doorway. His words crawled out over the table. “You ever seeed a black snake, boy?” A crooked grin fixed itself up one corner of his mouth. Then his eyes and face suddenly blew out like a bullfrog’s throat and there he was, choking on coffee. He slammed his mug down, sloshing coffee over the rim, spat something in his hand and wiped it on the leg of his coveralls. “Sit you down, boy!” he said. “Get you some of these eggs.”
In back of him by the door hung a one-day-at-a-time wall calendar. A black number ‘7’ took up most of the page — with the month and the year printed above, and the day, Friday, printed below. I put my truck with the cross on the floor and sat down. On my plate were two fried eggs with bacon and a biscuit broke in two, covered over with thick white gravy.
“Go on, eat,” Granpaw said. “Put some meat on them bones.”
I picked up my fork. I wasn’t hungry but I cut out a piece of egg white and put it in my mouth. On the other side of the room under a window with a fan was a woodstove for cooking. A quiet fire played peek-a-boo behind the air holes on the door.
Granny came and stood in the doorway next to Granpaw. “Them eggs ain’t cold now are they?”
“No, Granny.”
She walked around Granpaw and stood next to the stove. She had a thick white mug like his in one hand and a spoon in the other. “Orbie hon, look up here to me. You got the dry eye, don’t ye?”
I didn’t know if I had it or not.
“No,” I said.
“Yes you do.” Granny dug out a spoonful of coffee and biscuit from her mug. I’d seen her do that other times I was down here. Coffee and biscuit from a mug was one of her most favorite things. She called it ‘soak’. “You know what the dry eye is?”
“No,” I said.
“You get the dry eye from crying and sleeping too hard,” she said. “Makes a person’s eyes swell out. Like yours is now. I bet they was stuck together when you woke up.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Well,” Granny said, “they’ll be fine after while.”
I was glad there wasn’t nothing the matter with my eyes. I cut out another piece of egg white and put it in my mouth. I let it stay there.
Granpaw’s words crawled out over the table. “You ever seeed a black snake, boy?”
The piece of egg white slid over my tongue.
Granny stood with the spoonful of soak. “Stop that now, Strode. Poor thang cried hisself to sleep last night.”
Granpaw put a mean eye on Granny, then turned it back on me. “I killed me one t’other day. You know they’s two kind of black snake?”
The egg white slid down my throat. “No, Granpaw.”
“Well, they is!” he almost shouted. His voice then shrank to just above a whisper. “One’s regular and t’other’n’s a racer. One I killed come at me with its head all raised. And I killed it! Killed it deader’n four o’clock! Now. What do you think of that?” Seemed like all the holes on Granpaw’s face had opened at the same time — the mouth hole, the eye holes, the nose holes — even the little blue-purply holes on his chin, the ones Granny said he got from the fever.
Out the screen door I could see the barn. I could see sunshine beating down all over the yard. “I don’t know Granpaw.
I don’t know what to think.”
“I killed it with a grubbing hoe. Chopped its head plum off, back of that barn.” Granpaw jerked his head back toward the screen. “Ain’t that somethin’?”
I looked down at my plate. Three long strips of bacon lay on the side, all bubbled out and swimming in grease. I picked at one with my fork. “I don’t know, Granpaw. Did it bite you?”
Granny snorted. “It ought to’ve child! Might’ve learned him a thang or two!” She held the spoon over the cup just below her mouth — full of that brown spongy stuff — laughing so hard now some drops of coffee fell down the front of her dress.
“Fooling with them black snakes! You know better’n that!”
“Hesh up woman! Me and Orbie’s talking here.” Lizard skin came down over one of Granpaw’s eyes, went back up again. A wink. He was making us out to be like partners.
I didn’t want to be no partner. I looked at my plate.
Granny slurped up the soak from her spoon, one eye on Granpaw. “You ain’t supposed to kill’em no how. They eat rats.” A brown drop found a wrinkle under her lip and slid in.
“Black snakes is good for rats but this’n — it was one of them racers I think — it come at me so quick!” Granpaw jerked back from the table, raising both hands; big gray calluses all up and down his fingers. Again his voice crawled out over the table. “With its head all raised, and a slick black tongue, spittin’ and slaverin’ out its mouth. That one was ugly. Slicker’n dog shit too! Why, wasn’t nothin’ I could do but grab up a grubbing hoe!” He popped the tabletop with both hands. “Chopped its head plum off, that’s what I done! Wasn’t no time to think.”
He reached up around his neck and pulled a leather drawstring over his head. Attached was a small leather pouch. “Looky here boy.” He tossed the pouch with the string over the table, landing it a little ways from my plate. “There’s its head, in there! Open it!”
I sat back in my chair, frozen, thinking of that snake’s head in there, its tongue slicking out at me, dead.
“Go on, boy. What you scared of?”
“Get that nasty thang out of here!” Granny snatched up the pouch and flung it back Granpaw’s way. It hit him in the chest and thumped down on the table. “Scare that child so bad he won’t never want to go outside!”
Granpaw doubled over; laughing so hard I thought he might be near to choking. Then he just stopped everything and cocked his brow. “I’ll skin it back for ye, if you want me to. You can put its skull on a strang fer a necklace. What do you think of that?”
“I don’t want no damned snake head Granpaw!” My fork got away from me then, clanking loudly against my plate. A strip of bacon flipped over and landed on the table, a greasy dead piece of meat.
Granpaw hee-hawed and slapped his legs. “What’s the matter boy? It’d be like one of them charms, by grabs!” His gray eye fixed me where I sat. “Where’d you learn to cuss like that anyhow?”
Granny flapped at him. “Get out Strode! Go on! Go do them chores like you was aiming to! Orbie don’t need you making fun of him, poor thing. All the way down here from Detroit. He don’t need that kind of foolishness! Besides we going to pick blackberries this morning and I got to get this table cleared.” She pointed toward the door. “Get out now!”
Granpaw, still laughing, got up from the table. He took one limping step and looked around at the kitchen. “Where’s my hat, Mattie?”
With her spoon, Granny pointed toward the door. “Out there where you left it, I reckon. Get on now!”