Mamba Point (17 page)

“No, I, um … I actually wanted to see the snakes.” I would ease my way into asking if anybody had been treated for snakebite over the weekend.

“Well, we don’t exactly do snake tours.”

“I know, but I figured …” I didn’t know where to go with that. “The lady at the thing told me to come back here and …”

“The lady at the thing?”

“Rose?”

“Oh, Rose sent you.” He nodded and led me into a cramped office.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Linus.”

“Where’s your double helix?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Just a dumb joke. I’m Rog.”

A computer was humming, with green numbers scrolling by on the black screen. He saw me looking at it.

“Chemical analysis,” he explained.

“For the antidotes?”

“Antivenins,” he said. “That’s what it’s called when it fights venom. We should probably call it antivenom, but I guess they decided to make it hard.”

“Why do you make it here?”

He looked confused. “Because it’s where the snakes are,” he said. “It’s where people are bitten by snakes. There are a dozen deadly snakes in West Africa, mostly elapids—that’s cobras and mambas.”

“Cassava snakes, too?”

“Well, those are vipers, but Africa has plenty of those, too. Some people call them cassava snakes, other people call them carpet vipers or puff adders.”

“We had those in Ohio,” I said, remembering the scoutmaster pointing out a puff adder on a hike. “Those ones aren’t poisonous, though.”

“Completely different snakes with the same name,” he explained. “They call the American snake an adder as a joke because it acts fierce, but it’s not dangerous. Like calling a kitten a little tiger.”

“Can I see one?” I remembered Charlie’s description—a snake made of jewels. I wanted to see it for myself. “I mean, one of the real ones?”

“If I take you back there, you keep your hands in your pockets, all right? No touching anything. These things are
not
house pets.”

“I know.”

He led me to another room, and I felt a blast of cold air.

“We always have the AC running,” he explained. “If the air is cold, the snakes are sluggish and less dangerous.”

“What about when the power goes out?”

“We don’t trust the local power,” he said. “We have a generator.”

There was a long row of cages, each one about three feet high with a tight-mesh door. He gestured at one. “There’s your viper. Don’t get too close.”

I could barely see it through the mesh, but it didn’t look that jeweled to me. It was colorful, but short and stout and kind of piggish-looking—nothing like the sleek, graceful mamba. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, I guessed.

“Did you ever see a green mamba?” Rog asked me. “That’s my favorite.”

“A green one? No.”

“You’ve got to see this. It’s gorgeous.” He gestured at another cage. Inside was a snake like mine, but a bright emerald green. It was spectacular.

“I’ve seen a black one,” I told him.

“You’re lucky. Those are hard to find. Not that you’d want to meet one.” He gestured at the cage next to the green mamba, and I saw a gloomy-looking, gray-colored
mamba coiled up on the floor. I took a step toward it, reaching out to comfort it without even thinking about what I was doing. The mamba lifted its head and looked at me. It looked sad.

“Hey, keep back!” Rog ordered, reaching out to stop me. “Those things are lightning fast, you know. It’s the hardest to milk.”

I stopped. The mamba looked at me a bit longer, then slumped back into a lazy coil.

“They must not like living like this,” I said.

“I don’t like keeping them like this,” he admitted. “It saves lives, though.”

“Did you save any lives lately?” I hoped my question sounded casual.

“Not for a few weeks. Most clinics around here have one or two vials to keep a bite victim alive until they get to the hospital, then we ship them some more. I haven’t heard anything for a while, at least not in Monrovia.”

“Why don’t all the clinics have gallons of the stuff?”

“It’s expensive to make, and doesn’t keep forever.”

That made sense.

“So, how do you become a snake guy?” I wondered.

“Why, is that a line of work you’re interested in?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I didn’t even know there were snake guys until now.”

“Well, I got interested in them back home, in Australia, when I was a kid. I always liked the buggers. So when I went to college, I studied reptiles.”

I wondered if this guy had a
kaseng
, too, or if he was just weird about snakes.

“Do you have any as pets?” I asked him. It seemed like the best way to edge into asking about mysterious connections.

“Well, my wife—that’s Rose, who you met—she’d never let me keep one in the house, so I have to be happy with this lot.” He waved his hand at the cages.

“Wait. You’re from Australia and your name is Roger
and
you have a college degree in snakes? Is it a PhD?”

“In herpetology. Why?”

“You’re Roger Farrell, PhD!”

“Guilty as charged.” He held up his hands like I should put on the cuffs. “Um, what am I guilty of?”

“I read your book.”

“I’ve always wanted to meet someone who actually read that book,” he said.

“Well, I only read parts,” I admitted.

“Well, that still puts you in very exclusive company, with my mum and my PhD advisor. I’m not sure either of them read the whole thing, either, actually.” He was a lot different than I imagined. For one thing, he really did know a lot about snakes, and he really did come face to face with them, all the time. He was also cool. “All right, one more question, then I’ve got to shove you out of here so I can do some work.”

I had a million questions but went with the first that came to mind.

“How do you know if a snake is a boy or a girl?”

“It’s not easy, even for professional snake guys like me,” he said as he led me to the door. “You have to probe their cloaca, and that’s not any easier to do than it sounds. Do you want to know my trick?” He made sure the door was locked and headed for the main building.

“What?”

“I turn on a rugby game and see if the snake watches it with me.”

It was easy to find my way home after Rog pointed me toward UN Drive. It wasn’t that far, so I decided to walk. Charlie was putting things away and closing up shop for the night when I passed him.

“Did you find the W-H-O?” he asked.

“Yeah. Did you know they used live snakes for that?” I told him how they made it—milking the snakes and giving the venom to goats and somehow extracting the antivenin from the goat’s blood.

“It’s not much different in the bush,” he said. “Some
zoes
—wise men—they burn snake heads. They cut themselves good.” He pretended to cut his own arm, using one hand as a make-believe knife. “They rub in the ashes of those snake heads, so the ash gets into their blood. It makes them safe from snakebites for many years.”

“Does it work?”

“Yes. It’s just prevention, though. It’s not a cure. The
zoes
have no cure for snakebite.” He shouldered his sack.
“Hear me now, those men can’t help you once you are bit, no matter what they say.”

“Hey, do you have a wife and kids?” I asked him.

“No, I live all alone.”

“You could come have dinner with my family.” Mom said I could have a friend over, after all. She didn’t say it had to be Matt, or even a kid.

“Mom, I brought a new friend over,” I announced when I came in. “His name is Charlie.”

“Fine. You boys wash your—oh!” Mom stepped out of the kitchen and saw Charlie towering over her.

“‘Charlie’ is actually my job. I am Sekou,” he said, offering a hand. He shook her hand the American way, no snap at the end. “Mr. Linus was kind to invite me.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “My name is Joan.”

“I’d like to give you a present.” He opened his sack and looked through some of the masks and statues, probably deciding that the masks were too freaky-looking and the statues were too, well, anatomically correct. He found a simple mask with a pointed chin and a friendly but goofy smile that made it look almost like a cartoon character. There was long, woolly hair coming down either side.

“This is for your husband,” he said. “It is a Dan mask for settling arguments between husbands and wives.” He put it to his own face and talked in a funny, high voice. “It makes the man see things from the woman’s eyes, oh? Then there is no more fighting.”

She took it, laughing. “How do I get him to wear it?”

“That is why the Dan husbands still argue with the Dan wives,” he admitted.

“Oh, I like you, Sekou.” Mom held the mask, wondering what to do with it, but Sekou was way ahead of her. He produced a wooden stand and handed it to her.

“There’s a story about a woman who tied it to her husband’s face in his sleep …,” he started, but Mom stopped him.

“Please save it for dinner? I have to get back to the kitchen.”

Charlie nodded and excused himself to go wash up.

I followed Mom into the kitchen. “Oh, Mom, what’s for dinner?”

“Puke and bees,” she said. Whenever we had pork and beans, Law and I used to stare each other down, asking, “Are you enjoying that puke and bees?” and saying, “Mmm, I sure am loving my puke and bees.” It drove Mom crazy, but eventually it became part of our family vocabulary. This time it wasn’t really pork and beans, at least not like you get from a can. It was a really good meal Mom made with shredded pork and pinto beans on rice.

“Sekou doesn’t eat puke,” I said. “I mean, he doesn’t eat pork. He’s a Muslim.”

“Oh.” She rummaged through the cabinet and found an extra can of pinto beans. “I’ll make some with extra bees, no puke.”

Law and Eileen showed up after everyone else was sitting down and waiting.

“Fashionably late, huh?” Dad asked. Law shrugged in response.

“Sorry,” Eileen said in a small voice. She sat down and took a small scoop of rice, topping it with even less of the pork stuff. She took the tiniest of bites, chewing each one to oblivion.

Sekou made it easy for her. He told us about the woman who tied the mask to her husband’s face, and how he tricked her back by pretending the mask could not be removed. Playing the woman, he nagged her and harassed her until the wife begged a
zoe
to change him back to a man.

This
zoe
saw through the husband’s joke and stuck the mask on his face for real. The couple grew old together, nagging each other constantly. Mom thought the story was sexist, but Sekou said it was about settling problems honestly instead of resorting to lies and trickery.

He went on and told us how Spider and Snake had a race to win the heart of a beautiful girl. Snake was winning, but when he took a nap, Spider came and took his arms and legs.

“That’s why Spider has eight legs and Snake has none,” Sekou said.

“So Spider got the girl,” I wondered.

“Snake still won the race,” he said with a grin, “but they were both so ugly in their new form, neither got the girl.”

Snake got a raw deal, I thought.

Law and Eileen were hanging out on the steps after dinner, cooing at each other and gazing into each other’s eyes, or whatever they did together.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” said Law. I hadn’t realized I was staring.

“I don’t have a camera, but if you wait I can go get my notebook and draw you,” I suggested.

He snorted and pushed his hair back. “I was just bustin’ your chops.”

“You have interesting friends,” said Eileen. She grabbed Law’s arm and tucked herself under it. “How did you get to know a charlie?”

“I just talked to him, I guess. About art and stuff.”

“Thanks for bringing him,” said Law.

“Yeah,” Eileen agreed. “He did all the talking, so I didn’t have to.”

“He was cool, too,” I said. “I liked his stories.”

“I never got those ones about Spider,” Eileen said. “Is he supposed to be a person, or an arachnid? That was never clear to me.”

“He’s both,” I said. “I didn’t get them at first, either, but now I don’t mind.”

“Whatever,” she said.

“Well, catch you guys later.” I bounded on down the stairs to talk to Matt. I remembered how at first Eileen reminded me of Jane, my friend back in Dayton. Not anymore. Eileen was older and probably smarter, skipping grades and everything, but Jane would have understood about Spider.

“My dad says no way,” Matt told me as soon as he let me in. “He can’t get Gambeh’s dad a job.”

“Was he mad at you for asking?”

“Nah, he thought it was nice that we were trying to help someone, but he remembers their dad, the guard who slept here all the time. He doesn’t want to refer someone who doesn’t do good work.”

“Maybe he’ll do better if he has a second chance.”

“Maybe, but Dad doesn’t want to get in trouble with his buddies.”

“Yeah, I guess I see his point.” I did, too, but what would I tell Gambeh? I was hoping to be a hero and tell him I’d gotten his dad a job with the Liberian government.

“It’s not totally a lost cause, though,” Matt said. “Sometimes my dad just needs to get talked into something.” I didn’t think Darryl was the kind of guy who got talked into things, but I didn’t argue.

“Thanks for asking, anyway.” I guessed that meant I had to show Matt the snake, or come up with something else equally interesting. “The cool thing I talked about … it’s in sea freight,” I told him. That bought me a little time, at least.

“No hurry,” Matt said. “So, do you want to play the game for a while?”

“I don’t know.” I wasn’t quite ready to plunge back into Pellucidar.

He looked crushed. “What if Bob came back?”

“You’ll bring him back? I thought that was cheating.”

“I think parrots are like cats. They have nine lives.”

So we played, Bob leading Zartan to the encampment of
the bad guys, where the pirate battled them one at a time until they were all dead. He limped into the next module, barely alive but rich beyond his wildest dreams, and with his faithful feathered friend on his shoulder.

I wanted to search for the snake some more on Tuesday morning, but our sea freight came and we all stayed home to unpack. I didn’t even know we had so much stuff until the guys wheeled in dolly after dolly of boxes crammed full of dishes and clothes and books and knickknacks. I unpacked three boxes. It took forever because I stopped and looked at everything: games, books, my skates, the
Millennium Falcon
. My own stuff seemed unfamiliar and old. I wasn’t even that upset when I unwrapped the
Falcon
and saw one of its wings had snapped off.