Mamba Point (16 page)

Eileen was with him. She looked at me, then looked away.

“I’m walking Eileen home,” said Law. “Why’d you storm off?”

“Just, um …” I trailed off, glancing back toward the field. I didn’t know if there was still a mugger lurking in the darkness, or a snake for that matter. “I wanted air. It’s so hot up there.”

“You sure you’re all right?” he asked. “You’re acting weird. Even for you.”

His tone bugged me. He wasn’t the one who was getting dunked in the pool or having snakes follow him around or getting really sick or getting spotlighted in his underwear in front of the girl he almost liked once or getting grabbed by muggers. Africa was going fine for him, and all he did was change his name and grow out his hair. It’s easy not to act weird when nothing weird happens back.

“Leave me alone.” I walked around him and ignored him when he yelled back at me that he was only kidding. I didn’t warn him, either. Whatever was in the darkness, he’d have to face it all by himself. Of course, with his luck nothing would happen anyway.

When I got upstairs, Dad was about to go out and find me.

“There you are.” He went inside, his keys jangling in his hand.

“I just went outside for a moment.”

“Well, don’t,” he said. “It’s not that safe at night.”

“I didn’t even leave the courtyard,” I lied. “I wanted some air.”

“I don’t know when it became permissible for you kids to come and go at all hours of the night,” he mused. “It’s going to stop, though. Both of you.” He yawned and headed back to bed.

I went to bed, too, but lay awake, and left my air conditioner off so I could hear when Law came back. I glanced at the clock when I heard the faint squeak of the door and soft footsteps in the hallway. It was nearly four a.m.

“Hey,” Law said, poking his nose in my door. “Are you awake?”

“No.” I faked a snore.

“Hey, I didn’t know you liked Eileen. How was I supposed to know?”

“I don’t like her.”

“She said you called her a couple of times.”

“I called her
once
.”

“She thinks you’re a nice kid, just a little young.”

“Sure she does.”

“Plus, she was dating Bennett until a couple of days ago.”

“Did she dump him to go out with you?”

“Look, I don’t even know if we’re dating.” I could barely see him in the darkness, just a shadow against shadows. “I don’t have that much experience with this kind of thing,” he admitted.

I was quiet for a long time, turning things over in my head. The truth was, I hardly thought about Eileen anymore.
Still, she was the last person I wanted to be embarrassed in front of, and Law was the last person I wanted her to be dating right now.

“I’ll get over it,” I said.

“I know you will.” Law drifted back to his room, leaving me to lie awake a bit longer, thinking about everything. For a moment before I spiraled off into sleep, I had a flash of the snake again, finding a furrow to sleep in, its eyes open wide. It could see a million stars even while it slept.

I slept until noon and only woke up then because Dad came in and flipped on the light.

“It’s nearly noon,” he announced. “Are you going to loll about in bed all day?”

“Maybe I have sleeping sickness,” I suggested. Wasn’t that something people in Africa got?

“I think you have lazy-kid-itis,” he said, leaving the light on and the door open.

I lay there and thought about Gambeh’s dad, who was fired for sleeping on the job. Maybe
he
had sleeping sickness? Or malaria? That would explain a lot. It reminded me to call Matt and see if he’d talked to his dad yet. He said he would try this morning, but I would understand if it took him a few days to work up the courage.

I remembered with a jolt that I’d promised to show Matt the snake. Well, I’d really only promised to show him something cool, but I didn’t think Matt was going to be satisfied with me showing him my
Millennium Falcon
or my baseball
signed by Ken Griffey. I couldn’t show him the snake, either, though. That was so stupid and dangerous. What was I thinking? The snake could kill him.

Which reminded me of another urgent matter. I jumped out of bed, got dressed, and ran down the steps to talk to the guard. I was hoping for the reggae guy, but it was the serious guy, the one who got the job after Gambeh’s dad was fired.

“Have you heard anything about the snake?” I asked. “Did anyone get bit?”

“Nobody’s seen it for two days,” he said. “Maybe it’s gone for good.”

“I thought maybe somebody got bit last night.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I just …” I didn’t want to explain. “I heard a rumor.”

“I haven’t heard any rumors.”

“Well, I have,” I murmured. I didn’t like him interrogating me back like that.

I went out to the field to look for the snake, but all I found was my Mork bag, lying crumpled in the dust like a dead animal.

When I went to scrounge up breakfast on Monday morning, Law was already in the kitchen, opening a Coke for his own breakfast. I wondered if I should tell him about how there might be mouse poop in it and decided not to. It served him right, somehow.

“Are you going to see Eileen today?” I meant to just ask casually, but it sounded resentful and I knew it. He let it slide, though.

“Yeah. So are you,” he said. “She’s coming to dinner.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, Mom told me to invite her over.”

“Huh? That’s nice of her.”

“I think it’s her way of punishing both me and Eileen.”

“All three of us,” I said. I was the one who’d have to watch Law and Eileen making kissy faces at each other. “Hey, maybe I’ll tell her the story about how you peed in your sleeping bag on that camping trip.”

“I told you like a million times that it was just water. My canteen spilled.”

“Sure it was.”

“It was!”

“Then I’ll tell her about when you went fishing at Beaver Creek and that guy put a worm in your ham-salad sandwich and you ate half of the worm before you noticed.”

“I ate half the
sandwich
, but I didn’t eat any of the worm.”

“That’s not how I heard it.”

“If you tell her all that stuff, I’ll tell her …,” he trailed off, even though he had all kinds of stuff against me.

I went down to the car wash to talk to Charlie.

“How is your friend?” he asked when I got to his station. It took me a moment to realize he was asking about the snake.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I crouched down and pretended to be interested in the statues while I told him about the other night—the man grabbing me in the dark, and the snake jetting over my shoulder to strike. “I haven’t seen it since then. I hope that guy didn’t k—hurt it.”

“You would know if it was dead,” he said. “It’s like a part of you now.”

“If it was part of me, I’d be able to find it.”

“It will find you,” he assured me. “You hear me now, that snake is a wild animal, not a pet, oh? It will come and go. It is yours, though, and it will return.”

“It might be hiding,” I reasoned. “I think the snake might have killed that guy. Maybe people are trying to hunt it down.”

“These men over there,” Charlie said, waving his hand
at the car wash. “They’re like the TV news in America. They haven’t said anything about it, and if they don’t know about it, it didn’t happen.”

“Oh.”

“Are you disappointed the snake did not bite that man?” He squinted at me.

“I don’t know.” I thought about the hand grabbing my mouth, the punch to the small of my back, and felt a surge of anger. “Maybe a little?”

“If that man did get bit and did not get help, he’s dead,” Charlie said.

“I know.” I knew what he was saying, but I had a hard time feeling sorry for the mugger. “Maybe he got bit and did get help?” I wanted him to at least suffer a bit. “Maybe it hurt really bad, and he learned his lesson about grabbing people in the dark.”

“Maybe so,” he said, but from the look on his face, he didn’t believe it. “You can ask at the W-H-O building if anyone has been treated.” He said each letter instead of calling it the WHO, like Mom did. “They know when someone gets the antidote.”

“Really?”

“They make it there, oh.”

It made sense. If the WHO had vaccines for various diseases, why not antidotes for snakebite? I imagined a lab with beakers bubbling full of mysterious chemicals.

“My mom works there,” I told him.

“It’s easy for you, then. She knows who to talk to.”

“I’m not sure where it is, though.”

“You go to them,” he said, pointing at the line of taxis waiting for the car wash. “Any one of them will know the way.”

Mom and Dad never said I could jump in a taxi and cruise around town, but they never said I couldn’t. I waved down the next taxi as soon as it left the wash and asked the driver if he knew where the WHO was. He didn’t.

“It’s part of the United Nations?” I told him.

“Oh, yes,” he said. I got in the backseat and waited. The driver didn’t move. “Twenty-five cents, oh,” he said at last.

I passed him a quarter, trying to explain that in the States we paid after the trip, but I don’t think he cared. He took the quarter and turned down the street, immediately pulling over to pick up two more passengers. They also climbed in back. I had to slide over to the window. Taxis in the States also didn’t pick up extra people. The taxi rumbled on for another half mile or so, then pulled over.

“There’s the UN,” the driver said.

“Oh!” I could have walked if I’d known how close it was. I clambered out of the car.

The UN building was huge and busy. I spent a few minutes wandering down hallways and explaining myself to guards before I found the WHO office. I gave my name to a Liberian woman at the counter. Her name was Rose.

“My mom just started here? She works in advertising.”

“Oh, yes! Mrs. Tuttle. She’s our new marketing director.”
She picked up the phone and got ready to call. Marketing director—that sounded way better than advertising. Either way, I think she made pamphlets.

“I also wanted to talk to whoever makes the antidote for snakebites,” I explained. “Do you know where they do that?”

“Lots of boys want to see the snakes,” she said. She grimaced and shook her head. “I can’t even stand to look at them, but boys love snakes. Some men do, too,” she added with a laugh.

“What? You actually have snakes
here
?”

“How do you think they make the antidote?” she asked. She dropped her voice to a whisper, like she was telling me a big secret. “They milk the snakes for their venom, they take the venom, they give a tiny amount to a goat.” She leaned in, touching my arm. Her nails were long, painted red. “The goat, he learns to fight the venom. He makes the antivenin.” She snapped her fingers, no easy trick with her long fingernails. “They bleed the goat, take out the antivenin, and there’s your antidote.”

“Wow.”

She leaned over the counter, pointing down the corridor. “Down there, through the door, to the next building. They keep the snakes there.”

“Thanks!” I started to head down the hall.

“Boy!” she said sharply.

“Huh?”

She smiled. “Don’t you want to say hi to your mama?”

*   *   *

I did say hi, but didn’t stay long. Mom was in a pile of about 18,000 pamphlets and booklets. She stepped out of the mess to give me a hug. There was a poster on the wall behind her. It showed an African kid smiling and said
GET YOUR CHILD VACCINATED FOR
DIPHTHERIA
.
At the bottom, in italics, it pointed out that
DIPHTHERIA KILLS
.
Simple but effective, I thought. Provided the person could read and knew what diphtheria was.

“Look at you,” she said with a grin. “Getting around Monrovia all by yourself.”

“It’s not that hard, Mom.”

“Well, we were worried about you,” she said. “It’s scary, moving to a new country.”

She saw the look on my face and knew I was dreading her talking about old ’fraidy-cat Linus and his exacerbated condition.

“I
was scared,” she admitted. “It was scary for all of us, at first. But it’s like it was just what you needed to come out of your shell.” She beamed, and that made me blush.

“Stop being proud of me, Mom. It’s embarrassing.”

“Never,” she said.

“Fine.” It did feel good, knowing she saw the difference. I really was the new Linus. What would she say if she knew this was just a pit stop before I went to a building full of snakes?

“Oh, in case Law forgot to tell you, we’re having a family dinner tonight to meet his friend.”

“He didn’t forget.”

“You can bring a friend, too, if you want,” she said. “Matt, or somebody.”

“I’ll bring somebody,” I said.

I found the exit Rose told me about, and the small building beyond. I knocked and waited a long time. I was about to give up when the door creaked open and a hippie-looking guy with long blond hair and a gray smock peered out.

“Hello?”

“My mom works here. In the building back there.” I gestured with my thumb.

“Well, she’s not here.” He sounded British, or something. “There’s nobody but me and the snakes.”