Shortlist Saturdays: Pushing Out The Snakes by Harrison Kim

In the night, two blue orbs hovered above Boe’s bed. The snakes were watching. What did they want? In the morning, Boe crouched outside in the gravel pit with Kathy and stuck out his tongue. Kathy said that’s how snakes smelled the air. They slithered among the summer-hot rocks and each other, together in forked flickering at the base of the pit. Kathy pulled them up by their tails, “they can’t wear clothes,” she laughed, mouth open as the flat heads curved round.

Boe watched their eyes shining like blue sapphires. A few days before, he saw one grinning as it swallowed a mouse. Its jaw yawned wide as the creature it ate.

“Mom and Dad fight,” he said, thinking of the night before and how it was endless like that dark hole gulping, and when he got up to pee, he looked in to see his mom and dad.  They lay in their bed all tangled together breathing in and out and it stank like sour cream, and later in his dreams he smelled milk again, and he gazed down into a giant snake mouth and saw himself coming out, into the world, headfirst and my what a large head!

                                                                  ***

Kathy let her snake go. It wriggled off into a hole.

“Bye Bye,” Kathy said. She wore a too-large jean jacket and written on the jacket in red thread was “Little Monster.” She was always pretending. Boe liked that, though his Mom and Dad said he shouldn’t play so much with girls.

“Snakes know where to hide,” Kathy continued.

“Where do you hide?” Boe asked.

He closed his eyes.

He liked to hide in his head and make up dreams. Last night in his bed, he gazed through the darkness at two sapphire orbs. Floating jewels, like precious stones he saw in books. The sapphires followed his thoughts as Mom and Dad argued with each other in the kitchen.

Boe opened his eyes.

Kathy picked up a stone and tossed it in the air and it plummeted, smacking on another rock. The snakes slithered back into the shadows and Kathy said “I don’t hide. They do.”

Boe stuck out his tongue again, moved it around to his missing front tooth gap. Near his feet, a black and grey serpent head popped out of another hole. Boe glanced past it, at a great yellow machine motionless at the end of the road.

“My dad said that bulldozer’s coming tomorrow to dig everything up.”

“I know,” said Kathy. “The bulldozer wants to push out the snakes. Nothing stays the same, my mom says.”

They walked towards the yellow bulk, shining under the noon sun. Summer trees rustled above their heads. The sound reminded Boe of his mother frying eggs, how they popped and spat. He looked up at the machine. Yesterday, men unloaded it off a truck, then started it up and it popped and spat too then roared like the world ended.

The two children touched the steel sides. Boe liked the look of the tracks, huge snake scales; he ran his hand along the edge then pulled himself up. Kathy climbed beside him, she crawled along the track and pulled at a yellow cap sticking out. “We can take this off,” she said. “My mom’s got one on her car.”

Boe twisted at the cap, too, and it came free. They both stared into the hole which went down in a dark spiral. A scent wafted out.

“Smells like dead seaweed,” said Kathy.  “Rotting on the beach.”

“That hole must be where the night goes,” Boe offered.

“No, that’s where God puts the seaweed,” Kathy said         

Boe climbed down from the machine and crouched, picked up a scoop of dirt. “Here you are,” he said, reaching up. “Some seaweed.”

Kathy took the dirt and put it in the gas hole. Boe handed up more scoops.

“We’re filling it up,” he said.

“Mom says you should never forget to put back the cap,” said Kathy, as she screwed it back on.

                                                            ***

Boe’s Dad wore a baseball cap. He was so tall that his cap almost touched the ceiling.  On the cap was imprinted “Don’t Tread on Me,” and the image of a snake.

“Somebody saw you and Kathy playing around the bulldozer,” Dad said. “Stay away from there. It’s dangerous.”

“Why are you always playing with Kathy?” asked Boe’s Mom. “She’s very strange. Jaimie Lines is a nice little kid. Why don’t you play with him?”

“Kathy’s good at pretending,” said Boe. “And Jaimie’s scared of snakes.”

“So am I,” said his mother. “Stay out of that rock pit.”

Boe lay in bed that night and waited for the blue orbs. He stared at the dark ceiling and wondered if that’s where things ended, at the place you couldn’t see beyond. After a long time he rose, shuffled past his mom and dad’s room. They lay still, breathing in their bed. Boe opened the door to the outside. He stared down the road at the bulldozer shadow looming under the slowly lighting sky, the crescent moon directly above, then stepped to the pit where the snake nest lay, hidden in under all the stones.  Lilacs bordered the pit. The whole world smelled like flowers. Down the hill, light grew by the open water, the islands across the bay outlined in the dawn. Boe stood watching the light grow for quite a time.

“What are you doing here?” said his dad, standing in the road, huge as a monster in his housecoat.

“I’m waiting for the snakes to come out,” Boe said.

“Well, they’re going to have a surprise today,” his dad said. “Today they clear the lot for construction.”

“What’s construction?” Boe asked.

“Building up,” said his dad. “Now get back into the house like a normal kid. Don’t go out until your mom’s awake.”

Boe returned to bed, dreamed of snakes slithering across his room, then disappearing down holes in the floor, their eyes narrow like the line of sky in the early morning. He opened his eyes to a roar and a coughing sound, then a little girl’s voice.

Kathy stood at the open window, holding a pail and a plastic shovel. “They’re trying to start the bulldozer,” she said. “We can fill this bucket with more seaweed.”

“My Dad doesn’t want me to go out,” he said. “He says wait for my mom.”

“You can climb through the window,” Kathy said.

Boe nodded and stuck his legs out the opening, then slid down to join Kathy. The two children walked to the rock pit.  Some men stood grouped around the bulldozer. The engine coughed and a gout of smoke blew out.  All the snakes headed for their holes, but Kathy reached down and picked up the last snake by its tail.

“My Mom says they could turn around when you hold them like that, and jump down your mouth,” Boe said.

“I’m keeping my mouth closed,” Kathy said. “Don’t tell any secrets, Boe.”

“I won’t say anything,” Boe said.

Kathy let the snake go. The bulldozer coughed and spluttered.

Kathy and Boe crouched deep down the rock pit, filling Kathy’s pail with tiny stones. Boe’s mother called from the edge of the pit.

“There’s where you are! Come out right now!”

“She sounds mad,” said Kathy. “Maybe you should stay here.”

His mother waved her arms, “Get out of there.”

Boe walked up to the edge of the pit and his mother grabbed him.

“You could fall in a hole,” she said.

“What about Kathy?” Boe asked.

“Go home, Kathy,” Boe’s mother yelled.

Kathy stayed at the edge of the pit. Boe’s Mom pushed him forward to the house, “Go to your room,” she shouted. “Your father will deal with you.”

                                                                             ***

Boe sat in his room with the window shut. He rolled his head back and forth against the wall. He kept his head rolling for a long time. If he had no arms and legs, he could still roll his head. That was one thing nobody could stop. He opened his mouth very wide. He wondered what might happen if a snake came out.

His Dad came in the room. A man was with him, a man his parents called “The Landlord.” The Landlord stood in a white T-shirt with his arms folded, like bulging slugs pressed together. Blue marks stretched across the arms.

“What were you and Kathy doing down by the bulldozer yesterday?” Dad asked. “Mr. Maurice saw you up on the tracks.”

“Looking for seaweed,” said Boe.

“There’s no goddamn seaweed there,” said Mr. Maurice.

“Hold on,” said Dad. “Let my son speak.”

“It was seaweed,” Boe repeated.

“If I find out those kids damaged my machine you’ll be out of here tomorrow,” said Mr. Maurice.

“You better tell the truth, Boe,” said Dad.

Glowing blue eyes shone behind Mr. Maurice’s head. The sapphire jewels. Boe couldn’t be sure if they were from a snake, or his own eyes staring back at him from a long dark tunnel. The Landlord’s eyes flecked yellow, and his throat worked up and down like he swallowed a mouse.

“That is the truth,” Boe told him. “We didn’t do anything.”

He pushed his tongue into his missing tooth gap and held it there. As long as he held his tongue, he knew, his dad would believe him. He gazed at Mr. Maurice as the distant eyes shone from behind the Landlord’s head. His dad seemed a thin outline; anyone could see through him. If Dad turned to one side, there might only be an edge. Dad’s fingers pressed down on the edge of the bed. Boe forced his tongue hard into his tooth gap, like Dad’s hands on the blankets.

“You better not be lying,” said Dad.

His breath smelled a bit like the bulldozer hole. Boe tried to look down Dad’s mouth but saw no seaweed.

“What did Kathy say?” asked Boe.

“Kathy’s not coming around here anymore,” Dad told him. “We talked to her mother.”

“Your kid knows something,” Mr. Maurice said. “I don’t like that smirk on his face.”

“You stay in your room,” Dad said to Boe. “I have to get back to work. If I find you had anything to do with this, you’ll get a thrashing you’ll never forget.”

Now Boe knew what the snakes felt like. This is what they were trying to tell him. “You won’t like being picked up by your tail, either.”

“There’s another machine coming to start the construction,” said the Landlord. “I’m gonna direct them in.”

The two men walked out without looking back.

After Dad and Mr. Maurice left, Boe took his tongue out of the tooth gap. The eyes from the ceiling vanished.  Boe lay back on his bed and rocked his head from side to side. A bulldozer started up. This time, it gained its full roar. Scraping and squealing sounds filled the air, then a crashing. The cacophony went on and on. Boe stuck his head out the window. Flashes of yellow metal flickered by the lilac bushes.  He pulled his head back in and closed the window tight.

He wondered about the snakes, pictured them before the bulldozer noise, lying under the summer sun, bodies shining among the rocks and around each other, lazy under the blue sky and the afternoon heat.

“I hope they’re hiding,” he said.

He remembered what Kathy told him.

“Nothing stays the same, my mom says.”

When everything became quiet, he’d crawl out the window again, sneak over to the rock pit, and see if the snakes were alright.

Boe placed his tongue back in his tooth gap. Whatever he saw next door, he’d keep it inside, hold it in place, secret behind his own shining sapphire eyes, and when he decided to release his voice, say he knew nothing.

Harrison Kim's short story Pushing Out The Snakes placed second in our 3rd Anniversary Short Story Contest. Harrison Kim lives and writes in Victoria, Canada.  Recent stories have been published in Bull Literary Magazine, Literally Stories, Bewildering Stories, and others. His blogspot, including publication credits and music videos, can be found here: https://harrisonkim1.blogspot.com/