A divorced man's death in Pleasantville

Things are fine until they're not. For gods sake don't disrupt. Routines set like cheap glue. The pieces fit. They fit until they don't. Deviations disrupt. Divorces disrupt. The cracks creep in. Cracks conspire. Pleasantville might crumble. Don't disrupt.

Apparently the neighbors bore my divorce well. They're not speaking to me either. Neither are they waving. The waving has altogether stopped, as though deliberate and planned in secret. For gods sake don't wave.

Before, as neighbors, we were the masters of the waving. We loved waving, from our cars, yards, porches, from the ends of dog leashes, and living room windows. But especially from our cars. Easy waves those waves were.  

One diligent hand on the wheel, the other hand shot up, eager, to meet a neighbor's offering like a high five between teammates, but with 50 feet of buffer between palms. Throw in head nods for extra credit; smiles for even more.

Happily we waved, glad to see each other we waved, after long days of herding cattle, teaching, healing, litigating, law enforcing, selling car parts, and/or mothering.  We well-wished the ones who left, and welcomed their return back home again with enthusiasm. On it went with the waves. Like clockwork, the waves. In waves, the waves. 

Until the waves stopped. No more waves. Just awkward offerings to empty spaces. Something died and sent the waves into hiding. Hands remain planted in front pockets like bodies buried among gravestones. Their hands don't rise to meet my hands anymore. They mourn now. No more waves.

A death, you see. The demise of a marriage, you see. My own. And other deaths, the deaths of their relationships to her — a fellow neighbor — who left in a moving truck on a cold afternoon in December.

A death in Pleasantville, so it goes.

Snakes and shovels

Our house is in the Echo Hills area of Lewiston. It’s snake country. I notched another kill on the shovel tonight after I dispatched the slithering serpent there to the left.

It's been a while between kills, though. We'd gotten used to not seeing them around, so it's still a shock when one starts buzzing at you. The kids play outside all the time, and our dog Fletcher is outside a lot too.

A few summers back I notched no fewer than 13 kills on my shovel, and buried 13 rattlesnake heads in the back yard with the very same shovel. My neighbors killed some snakes too. Debbie killed two (her stories of snake warfare were like epic tales of battle told around a campfire). Nigel killed six or seven (he liked to go door to door and display the pissed off snakes still wiggling, secured in clamps; he kept the tails). And Jason bagged a couple (he preferred a pellet gun with an attached high powered scope to dispatch his fanged quarry from a distance). Notches were my trophies, displayed right there on my trusty shovel, like a World War II fighter ace displays kills on a plane’s fuselage. We agreed that a den had obviously been disrupted that spring when a new home was built above us on the hillside, accounting for higher than average snake numbers.

My kids received a quick education in snake recognition: 1) buzzing, coiled, head like a balled up fist, pissed off: rattlesnake; 2) slender, yellowish, skinny head, normal tail: bull snake. Either way, get dad. Bull snakes control rodent populations and occasionally hunt rattlesnakes; we spared them and offered complimentary relocation.

One evening the sun was setting. Long shadows extended like blankets across the road as my kids and I spent some time together in the front yard. We liked to play catch, soccer, tag, or whatever. I noticed three robins in the road and went back to playing.

A couple minutes passed and the robins were still in the road chirping, but more like barking dogs than musically like they often do. That’s when I saw the snake. The birds had formed a triangle around it like a zone defense, keeping their distance but nonetheless shadowing it all the way across the street, driving the deaf reptile like cowboys drive a stray steer. I hadn’t noticed the deadly snake before. The asphalt and diminished light served to conceal it from sight. The robins were arranged on the road in such a way as to draw my eye into the middle of their formation, to the venomous snake slithering across the road.

So I grabbed my shovel and applied the business end to the serpent’s head, clobbering it a few times and then methodically slicing its head off with the dull edge of the spade. Not a quick and clean cut like King Louis the XVI’s and Marie Antoinette’s guillotine, however sufficient enough for the purposes at hand. The buzzing tip at the other end lost most of its prior intensity, but managed to give a few more half conscious and dazed reports, refusing to die, and then it was over. It’s important to separate the head from a poisonous snake and bury it; dogs rifle through trash cans and still risk getting punctured by the venomous fangs, and possibly die.

Maybe it’s standard robin procedure when dealing with snakes––a tactic––but it felt like they were doing me a favor. The birds didn’t stick around to watch. Like classic heroes of yesteryear, they were long gone before they could be thanked personally. Of the 13 kills that summer, the birds and their odd behavior make that encounter stand out a little more than others. It was bad too. The snakes were in the driveway, on the road, in the plants, along the fence line, and in the grass. Thankfully, however, one snake at a time.

The venomous buzzworms are out there, you remind yourself—and especially your kids—but our senses dull when we don't see them that often. Today we got a reminder, and I'm thankful for the coiled up package it came in.