Leslie sat back and opened the first book. "What color, would you say?"
"OK," I said. "He's a green sand color, dusty pale olive. Black jelly-bean ovals down his back, darker olive inside the jelly-beans, almost white just outside them. He's got a wide flat triangle head, short nose."
Pages turned. "My, there are some tough customers in here!" she said. "How big is she?"
I smiled. Either one of us turned sexist, these days, the other corrected, subtly or not, as required. She was being subtle.
"She isn't a little snake," I said. "If she were all stretched out . . . four feet, maybe?"
"Would you say oval markings tend to narrow into inconspicuous crossbands near tail?"
"Sort of. No. Black and white bands around the tail. Narrow black, wide white."
The snake uncoiled, moved to the sage at the side of the road. I touched the accelerator to race the engine and immediately she sprang back into her coil, eyes blazing, tail blurred. I warned you and I was not kidding! You want a dead truck you're going to get one! Stand back, stand clear or so help me ...
"Scales keeled, in twenty-five rows?" asked Leslie. "Ah!
Black and white rings encircle tail! Try this: Light stripe behind eye extends backward above angle of mouth."
See this light stripe behind eye? the snake said. What more do I have to tell you? Just leave your hands where I can see 'em and back away slow. . . .
"Right you are!" I said. "That's her! What is she?"
"Mojave Rattlesnake," she read. "Crotalus scutellatus. See her picture?"
The snake in the photograph was not smiling.
She opened the Naturalist's Guide, turned pages. "Dr. Lowe states that the Mojave has a 'unique' venom with neuro-toxic elements for which no specific antivenin has been developed and that the bite of the Mojave is potentially much more serious than that of a Western Diamondback, a species with which it is sometimes confused."
Silence. There being no Western Diamondbacks near, this snake was not confused.
We looked at each other, Leslie and me. "Maybe we'd better stay in the truck," she said.
"I have not been feeling too strong an urge to get out, if that's what you're worried about."
Yeah, hissed the Mojave, proud and fierce. You don't want to do nothin' fast. . . .
Leslie peeked again. "What's she doing?"
"She's telling me I don't want to do nothin' fast."
After a time the snake uncoiled, watching our eyes, ready for any tricks from us. There were none.
If it bit me, I thought, would I die? Of course not. I could pull psychic shields down, turn venom to water or root-beer, not give power to a world's belief-system that snakes kill. I could do it, I thought. But there's no need to test myself right now.
We watched the snake, admiring it.
Yes, I sighed to myself, I had felt the stupid boring predictable response: kill it. What if it breaks into the trailer and starts biting everybody; better take a shovel now and smash it fiat before that can happen it's the most deadly snake in the desert get the gun and blast it before it kills Leslie!
Oh, Richard, what a disappointment that there's part of you thinks so ugly, so cruel. Kill. When will you advance to a level that is not somehow afraid?
I accuse me wrong! The kill-thought was a stray scared ignorant insane suggestion. I'm not responsible for the suggestion, only for my action, my final choice. My final choice is to value this snake. She's an expression of life just as true and just as false as this one that sees itself a two-legged tool-using truck-driving semiviolent learning creature. In that moment, I would have turned a shovel against anyone dared attack our brave Mojave Rattlesnake.
"Let's play her some music on the radio." Leslie touched the switch, found a classical-music station hi the midst of something Rachmaninevsque and turned the volume as far as the knob would go. "SNAKES AREN'T SUPPOSED TO HEAR TOO WELL," she explained.
After a moment the rattler mellowed and relaxed; a single loop of the coiled wall remained. In a few minutes she licked one last time toward us. Well done. You passed your test. Congratulations. Your music is too loud.
"There she goes, wook! See?"