Free Phantom Banjo by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page B

banged through the screen door. It
should have taken him no more than two steps to be at the Jeep but
the damn fool thing refused to stand still. It swayed in the heat
and quivered away from him each time he lifted his foot to step
forward. He squinted his eyes, trying to zero in on it but it
wouldn't focus—he was either drunker than he thought he was or he
must have gotten more shook up by the accident than he had
supposed. He took a deep breath and stepped forward with all the
deliberation of a Zen master.
    And jumped three feet back through the open
screen door, slamming it behind him as from the corner of his eye
he caught the flash of diamond-patterned scales slashing down and
forward into the light pouring through the door.
    Had it not been for years of conditioning,
the sixth sense of someone raised from boyhood in snake country, he
might have remained in the path of that long body slicing the air
where his chest should have been. By the time the snake landed with
a heavy plop to coil onto the seat of the Jeep, however, Willie had
the screen door between them almost without thinking about it. No
sober man could have done it better.
    "Sorry to bother you, buddy," he said as he
backed into the room, his eyes never leaving the Jeep, "but I gotta
get my pistol. Big ol' rattler tryin' to drive the Jeep out
there."
    He meant to make one of those cool
understatements of danger that men in that country liked to make,
but Mark wasn't much of an audience. He lay still and paler than
ever—his habitual tan was barely noticeable now.
    There was no reason for Willie to worry about
him really, except perhaps that he had made his living from his
ears and his instincts for years and something in the way Mark lay
suddenly looked wrong. He touched the shoulder hunched toward the
back of the sofa and Mark fell over on his back, his mouth open,
eyes half-slit.
    "Mosby? Shit, boy, this is no time to get
puny on me. Come on, snap out of it," he said, but he knew that
wasn't going to work. He tried to remember what he knew about first
aid but it extended mostly to snake bites. He could help best by
getting the boy to a hospital. But when he lifted the receiver this
time, thinking to dial direct into Brownsville, the receiver
crackled back at him, giving him an ear full of static. Dialing
didn't improve the situation. He tried the house again and this
time, instead of the busy signal, he continued to get static.
    He picked up his pistol and walked to the
screen door. The snake's dark shape lay coiled on the seat like a
cowpie, its head waving a little, as if looking for him. Willie
pulled back the hammer.
    "Oh, sure, that's the way," the snake hissed.
"Kill me too, like you did that poor slob. That's all you're good
for."
    "You're as dumb as you are ugly," Willie
said. "Mark's just a little busted up."
    "Oh, yessss? Go check."
    Slowly Willie backed into the room and shook
Mark. "Hey, buddy. Buddy, you okay?"
    Mark's body fell off the couch and Willie saw
that his eyes were open around the bottoms, showing only the
whites. "Oh, shit," Willie said.
    "Killer, killer, killer," the snake taunted.
"Drunken murderer. Don't you know whiskey is poison on top of a
head wound? He would have lived until you took him to the hospital
if you hadn't poisoned him with that so-called snake-bite medicine.
Killer, killer, killer."
    "Well lookee who's talking," Willie yelled
back. "I mean, talk about the pot calling the kettle black, goddamn
rattlesnake calling me a killer. Jesus Christ, snake, I didn't kill
anybody and your kind ain't good for nothin' but. Mark'll be okay.
I just got to get him help. That's what I'm trying to do right now,
except you're in the way waitin' to bite me."
    "Oh, sure, blame it on me if you want to. But
you're rid of your rival now, aren't you, MacKai?"
    "You mean Mark? He's my friend—or was. And I
didn't kill him. He just—he just—uh—died."
    "You might as well have put that bullet in
his head, smart ass. Why didn't you drive