The Winter Snake

FICTION The Winter Snake R. M. Kinder The woodpile had been in the alley behind the Good Food Cafe for at least two years, since the owner had cut down the three trees that might shield a rapist or murderer although no one had, to anyone's knowledge, been raped in Buxton or actually murdered. There was some speculation that a woman whose body had been found in the marsh east of town, her face in a shallow pool, had not stumbled out of her house in a druginduced delirium, but had been carried there by her husband. That was only speculation, though, and cutting down the trees behind the cafe wouldn't have made that outcome different anyway. This particular day was a brown, cloudy one, when the near-winter sky wouldn't rain and wouldn't clear, but hovered and occasionally blustered a cold wind and a few spirals of leaves. Down the alley came Mary Weaver. She worked for the prosecuting attorney of Green County, and had given up a job in the factory to earn only one-third as much for typing a few forms a day. She hadn't yet been able to explain why to anyone's satisfaction. She was a skinny young woman, fine boned and tall, with tear-drop eyes and long curly hair she wouldn't let curl. She brushed it hard straight, wet it down, and fashioned a long roll that she pinned up the center-back ofher head. Her young husband, a man who liked pool and the guys, was overseas, and Mary spent most of her time being faithful to him. This wasn't easy, since a state trooper came into the prosecuting attorney's office and made the same remark a number of ways, about Mary letting her hair down. Just as Mary was passing the woodpile, trying to keep her black high heels from sinking into the mud, it came to her that a snake could have slithered under there. She could visualize the snake, a thick one, jet black and fat, sluggish, crawling under the chopped limbs almost before her eyes. That gave her the shivers so that she hurried past and believed she saw the narrow tip of the snake's tail wriggle the last inch away. She Rose Marie Kinder is director ofcreative writing at Central Missouri State University , and editor of Pleiades, a literary journal. Her work has appeared in various publications. 57 clicked onto the sidewalk, around the corner, through the glass-paned door, and into Buxton lunch-hour at the only real cafe. She sat at the last table ever taken, the one by the door, where the chill would sweep in with each person coming and going, and picked up the red plastic menu. When the waitress stopped, Mary intended to say she wanted the special, chicken and dumplings, but instead she said "I just saw a snake crawl under the woodpile out back." "No." "Yes I did." Mary was going to add that it was only a black snake, but the waitress was already calling "Jim, hey Jim, Mary says she saw a snake in the alley, crawled under the woodpile. She turned back to Mary. "You sure? Maybe you saw a stick." "I know a snake from a stick," Mary said. The owner, Jim, was already taking off his apron, and two people, both men, had called from their red-checkered table, "You're not scared of snakes, are you, Mary?" from one, and "You'd better tell your boss. Must be against the law for a snake to be out in November." Mary had forgotten about that, that snakes weren't out in the winter. But then, a woodpile would keep a snake warm, or might. She didn't know. "Harold wouldn't tease me," she said to the man who wouldn't take his cap off in the cafe, "and he wouldn't keep his hat on in a restaurant, either." Now Jim had his coat on and wanted Mary to show him "where it went." She didn't want to do that, but she had no choice. Half the people in the room were...