Poison Rattles

I was three when I dreamed of compassion; I was four when I learned the cold hard truth of life; I was five when I knew that compassion and humanity are not happy bedfellows; I was five when I was kicked out of kindergarten for fighting.

The Rogue River was close to the place we were living in late spring of 1985. I saw dead salmon in that river. Huge teeth and a long tapered jaw, its teeth were black and yellow with age and rot. The salmon must have been spawning; it was bigger than me.

There was a mama duck. I found her nest in the cattails; I didn’t touch the eggs, she was my friend. I was fascinated with her concentration as she sat on the next but after all of the eggs but one hatched, I was so sad that I didn’t like watching her living ducklings because the one egg in the nest just sat there lonely abandoned dead.

I saw a lot of death that year. The worst was when the creepy Jesus Lovers killed the rattlesnake in the drive way. I was four, almost five, and we lived a studio above a garage in Grants Pass, OR. It was the first time we lived on a street, had a sidewalk, or neighbors. Our neighbors were also our landlords; they hosted revival style meetings in the garage on Sunday mornings. They would bang-bang on drums and sing to heaven about sin and salvation. I was pretty sure that everyone was their neighbor's landlord, right on down the block to the very end to the last house next to the park and those people were in charge of the park, that way everyone had someone to watch over them and keep them safe. Some boys lived next door, they had a grape arbor and taught me to swear with the biggest four letter word. I learned that if you say fuck your mother will swoop in with a bar of soap and teach you that words are so powerful that you have to eat lye to absolve their hold over you.

One day the landlords drove up with some of their friends. I stood up in the window watching them as they pulled a styrofoam cooler out of the back of their Lincoln. Tipping the cooler gently onto the baking driveway, the all stood in a circle as a snake twisted hissed coilded in the sudden light. In a flash, one of them had a jack knife. Running for the stairs, wailing nooooooo I burst through the door and into the daylight. The majestic snake in its final death twitch blood pooling. I ran at them and tears and mad and fists and why why why did you kill it? They told me, so that it wouldn’t get me first. But, they had trapped it and brought it home and slaughtered it right there for an eight ring rattle. That was their prize, and I’ll bet that they shook that rattle early sunday mornings as they worshiped Jesus and all his creation.