Going Solo

‘Yes, darling. But the snake-man is going to get it out.’

‘He’ll bite Jack,’ the girl said.

‘Oh, my God!’ Mrs Fuller cried, jumping to her feet. ‘I forgot about Jack!’ She began calling out, ‘Jack! Come here, Jack! Jack! … Jack! … Jack!’

The children jumped up as well and all of them started calling to the dog. But no dog came out of the open front door.

‘He’s bitten Jack!’ the small girl cried out. ‘He must have bitten him!’ She began to cry and so did her brother who was a year or so younger than she was. Mrs Fuller looked grim.

‘Jack’s probably hiding upstairs,’ she said. ‘You know how clever he is.’

Mrs Fuller and I seated ourselves again on the grass, but the children remained standing. In between their tears they went on calling to the dog.

‘Would you like me to take you down to the Maddens’ house?’ their mother asked.

‘No!’ they cried. ‘No, no, no! We want Jack!’

‘Here’s Daddy!’ Mrs Fuller cried, pointing at the tiny black car coming up the road in a swirl of dust. I noticed a long wooden pole sticking out through one of the car windows.

The children ran to meet the car. ‘Jack’s inside the house and he’s been bitten by the snake!’ they wailed. ‘We know he’s been bitten! He doesn’t come when we call him!’

Mr Fuller and the snake-man got out of the car. The snake-man was small and very old, probably over seventy. He wore leather boots made of thick cowhide and he had long gauntlet-type gloves on his hands made of the same stuff. The gloves reached above his elbows. In his right hand he carried an extraordinary implement, an eight-foot-long wooden pole with a forked end. The two prongs of the fork were made, so it seemed, of black rubber, about an inch thick and quite flexible, and it was clear that if the fork was pressed against the ground the two prongs would bend outwards, allowing the neck of the fork to go down as close to the ground as necessary. In his left hand he carried an ordinary brown sack.

Donald Macfarlane, the snake-man, may have been old and small but he was an impressive-looking character. His eyes were pale blue, deep-set in a face round and dark and wrinkled as a walnut. Above the blue eyes, the eyebrows were thick and startlingly white but the hair on his head was almost black. In spite of the thick leather boots, he moved like a leopard, with soft slow cat-like strides, and he came straight up to me and said, ‘Who are you?’

‘He’s with Shell,’ Fuller said. ‘He hasn’t been here long.’

‘You want to watch?’ the snake-man said to me.

‘Watch?’ I said, wavering. ‘Watch? How do you mean watch? I mean where from? Not in the house?’

‘You can stand out on the veranda and look through the window,’ the snake-man said.

‘Come on,’ Fuller said. ‘We’ll both watch.’

‘Now don’t do anything silly,’ Mrs Fuller said.

The two children stood there forlorn and miserable, with tears all over their cheeks.

The snake-man and Fuller and I walked over the grass towards the house, and as we approached the veranda steps the snake-man whispered, ‘Tread softly on the wooden boards or he’ll pick up the vibration. Wait until I’ve gone in, then walk up quietly and stand by the window.’

The snake-man went up the steps first and he made absolutely no sound at all with his feet. He moved soft and cat-like on to the veranda and straight through the front door and then he quickly but very quietly closed the door behind him.

I felt better with the door closed. What I mean is I felt better for myself. I certainly didn’t feel better for the snake-man. I figured he was committing suicide. I followed Fuller on to the veranda and we both crept over to the window. The window was open, but it had a fine mesh mosquito-netting all over it. That made me feel better still. We peered through the netting.

The living-room was simple and ordinary, coconut matting on the floor, a red sofa, a coffee-table and a couple of armchairs. The dog was sprawled on the matting under the coffee-table, a large Airedale with curly brown and black hair. He was stone dead.

The snake-man was standing absolutely still just inside the door of the living-room. The brown sack was now slung over his left shoulder and he was grasping the long pole with both hands, holding it out in front of him, parallel to the ground. I couldn’t see the snake. I didn’t think the snake-man had seen it yet either.

A minute went by … two minutes … three … four … five. Nobody moved. There was death in that room. The air was heavy with death and the snake-man stood as motionless as a pillar of stone, with the long rod held out in front of him.

And still he waited. Another minute … and another … and another.

And now I saw the snake-man beginning to bend his knees. Very slowly he bent his knees until he was almost squatting on the floor, and from that position he tried to peer under the sofa and the armchairs.

And still it didn’t look as though he was seeing anything.

Slowly he straightened his legs again, and then his head began to swivel around the room. Over to the right, in the far corner, a staircase led up to the floor above. The snake-man looked at the stairs, and I knew very well what was going through his head. Quite abruptly, he took one step forward and stopped.