A Single Shot

From the sleeping bag he picks up a T-shirt—a man’s size 42—wraps it twice around one end of the ironwood, and ties it securely. Then, suddenly thinking the girl ought to have some company in that dark hole, he reaches down for the stuffed lion and, in lifting it, pulls back the sleeping bag to reveal inside a cone-shaped flashlight, a carton of 9-millimeter shells, and a Luger pistol. “This ain’t here for shooting rattlesnakes,” thinks John, picking the pistol up and hefting it in his hand. He ruefully wonders if here is what the girl might have been running for when he shot her, but thinking of the stuffed toy and her half-written letter, he can’t fathom it. Then he thinks, “Whoever this Waylon character is, I don’t want to be here when he gets back.” He drops the gun on the pillow, where it lands with a metallic thud.

John looks at the pillow, bulky and misshapen, thinking he’s had enough surprises for one day and he ought to just leave, but like a man falling downstairs who can’t stop his own descent, he reaches down and with his knuckles lightly taps it. The pillow is hard. John pushes it. It barely moves. He grabs the closed end of the pillowcase and vigorously pulls it until he’s holding in his hands just the case and gazing down at a dented, dirt-stained, large metal container. Feeling like a tumbleweed caught in a tornado whose eye is his own tragic act, John bends down next to the container. Fumbling with trembling hands to open the rusted latch, he hears a voice in his head say every life has a defining moment; here comes your second. He opens the case, looks inside, and sees piles and piles of haphazardly stacked bills in various denominations.

In John’s head a flat, practical voice says he ought to drag the girl away from the quarry, maybe to Quentin’s swamp, where even hunters don’t venture, weigh her down with stones, then drop her in a deep bog. He can’t do it, though. He can’t even bring himself to dig a hole and put her in it. The thought of covering her with dirt reinforces in his mind a hundredfold his awful act. Burial has a ring of finality to it he can’t yet bear.

This time carrying in one hand the flashlight and in the other the pick poised in front of him like a spear, he duck-walks into the cave, the sleeping bag draped over his shoulders, listening for telltale rattles, knowing that where one snake lives, so may others. Past the entrance, he is able to three-quarters stand, the jagged granite ceiling acting as a painful reminder not to lift his head too high. The silence starts an ominous hum in his ears. Nervously he thinks of the precariousness of his position, imagining himself an egg beneath an elephant’s ass.

Crouched near the center of the cave, he moves the light in a slow circle around the oblong interior of dark red and slate-gray rock, two sides of which ooze a moldy dampness. The back wall is dry; in the floor in front of it, John sees a rectangular hole surrounded by freshly dug dirt, gravel, and a long, flat rock. One side of the rock is earth-stained, as if it has recently been removed from the hole, which looks to be slightly bigger than the metal box full of money in the lean-to. A nervous twitch starts in the muscles of John’s injured shoulder. He tries to fathom the man who had crawled into a snake-filled cave with a pick, shovel, and Luger to unearth a box of money, and how the money had come to be there in the first place. A rattle sounds to his right.

He flashes the light that way and sees, three feet from him, two eyes like hot coals inches from the ground, and behind them, above a coiled, thick body, a tail rapidly vibrating its cacophonous clatter. He could back out of the cave. The rattler wouldn’t bother him. But he thinks of the girl, trapped there with it, and his pent-up emotions from the previous hours coalesce in blind rage.

Keeping the snake lit, he moves the pick in a silent arc through the dark air in front of him, stopping it a foot above, and a few inches behind, the diamond-shaped skull, before swiftly bringing it down lengthwise. He slams one foot on the pick, pinning the reptile to the floor, then lifts and forces down hard the heel of the other on the snake’s head and grinds until he hears a dull pop. The rattler lies still. After a minute, John picks it up by its tail. He holds it that way while shining the light around the rest of the interior, searching for more snakes and not finding any. He exits the cave, holds the rattler out like a trophy toward the dead girl, hollers, “That there’s the last of ’em,” and tosses its body next to the first one.