First Draft- James

Sidewinder

He liked to tell people it was his passionate interest because obsession sounded creepy. His passionate interested dominated his thoughts for longer than he could remember. They say you can’t recall anything before the second year of life, yet he had no doubt that at the moment of his conception, as a lonely blastocyst lodged in the depths of his mother’s uterus, his world revolved around herps (reptiles and amphibians). As a toddler, the sun rose and set with sublime dreams of turtles. Glorious turtles whose company he could escape to whenever the world felt too big. He contested his inhumanely early bedtime by lying in bed and forcing his eyes open as long as he could stand. He never made it longer than ten minutes before a red-eared slider would probe its snakelike head out of his underwear drawer, prompting a cascading wave of its tiny green-shelled comrades to surge onto his floor soon to be followed by prehistoric matta-mattas, alligator snappers, leatherbacks, soft-shells, diamond back terrapins... He had surely dozed off.

Soon these scaly apparitions began to encompass the forms of salamanders, newts, frogs, toads, lizards, skinks, crocodilians and, more than the rest, snakes. He found David Attenborough’s narration on “Nature” more mesmerizing than Elmo and even the almighty Power Rangers, a psychological feat for a six year old. But do not be disillusioned into thinking he was smart for his age or had a keen interest in the act of learning because he wasn’t and didn’t. By all accounts he was distinctly and acutely average in all respects save for his passionate interest.

Children are copy machines. Had it not been for our brain prolonging its neonatal stage, acting as a sponge for any form of stimulus well into what most species would consider adult life, our hairy ancestors never would have survived next to the various carnivores that had already staked claim to the African plains. Aware of this ingrained trait, his mother assumed her son was simply copying what he saw on the discovery channel. However, when it did not pass like every other childhood fad as he grew older, she became slightly disturbed by the growing seriousness of his obsession.

She loved her son and regretted putting him in their situation but could not get over her phobia. When Henry was an infant, she realized his father would never be able to fully support the two of them and that he was not the role model she had once envisioned he would be. He had a steady job but worked only enough to get by and had no plans to be more successful in the future. Moving from Arizona to southern California allowed them to be closer to her parents who could take Henry whenever she needed to work overtime. Although she knew it would be a struggle to raise him alone and felt guilty for denying him a father figure, she did not realize that because Henry had never had a father, he did not know what to miss. He was perfectly content with his lifestyle because it was all he had known.

Most parents would be happy to buy their 8 year old a copy of Revision of the Kingsnakes Genus Lampropeltis, ecstatic that he or she would want to read at all, yet in the Zeff household this was just the first step in Henry’s process of attempting to acquire a pet snake. Every time he got his hands on a reptile book, he would read every word cover to cover absorbing every detail. He would then recite them to his mother in a vain attempt to prove he had all the knowledge and responsibility necessary to care for a snake. Over and over he would torment her “but mom all it needs is clean substrate, a twenty gallon terrarium, a water dish and a mouse once a week, you’re lucky I’m not asking for something from the crotalus genus.” Unimpressed when he would try to discuss why the grey-banded kingsnake’s evolutionary path made it an ideal pet, she would always counter with the infallible “they’re gross and I don’t want one in my house” argument. She was glad he wanted to learn, but wished he had chosen a more useful subject.

Up until his freshman year of high school, Henry and his mother lived in two rooms they leased from a kind Korean woman named Malsun. Malsun, now in her sixties, had grown up in the house with her parents and brother but when her parents died and her brother found work in another part of the city, she stayed in the house adopting stray cats. The house was built in 1911 and from the inside it was apparent. The exterior however, was not so obviously ancient. It was run down and overgrown, but next to the low income apartment buildings that also looked as if they had weathered a century, it did not stand out to the common observer. After climbing up the concrete steps riddled with stress fractures to the porch, one is greeted by a small community of flies frantically chasing each other in the oasis of still air created by the low hanging balcony. The front door was far from inviting because of a knob that required a skilled touch to open, gently turning the key one way then the other and applying just the right amount of pressure at the perfect angle, or brute force to slam down the rusty lever meant for a thumb generations ago. Inside, the not so fragrant aroma of dust and cat urine assaulted the nose. The eyes strained to decipher the pattern of leaves and tangerines on wallpaper so faded by the sun it looked more like an ugly shade of greenish brown paint. Despite its poor aesthetics, the house was designed to accommodate more than Malsun and her three cats, allowing Henry and his mother to live comfortably for cheap.

After school Henry would spend his afternoons in the backyard chasing stray cats and turning over rocks. Under each rock he would discover a new ecosystem, centipedes and spiders hunting louses and various tiny beetles, slugs and earthworms lazily grazing the dirt. After dark he would try to entice Malsun’s cats by dangling a piece of string in front of them though they only responded by arrogantly turning away, tail straight in the air as if flashing their tiny pinpoint anus as an insult for bothering them. One cat had some sort of cancer and was given a warm bath by Malsun every night, another was too old to move from its pillow next to the window, and the other he was told had two extra toes on its front paws yet it was so secretive, Henry began to think it didn’t exist. The cats were boring and he had seen every species of insect his small backyard had to offer. He still longed for reptiles.

The summer after third grade finally gave him the feeling of being a whole person because it marked the first time he convinced his mother to buy him a kingsnake. Finding the glass terrarium in his room when he awoke on his birthday was the happiest moment of his life. The snake inside was more beautiful than he had imagined and the gray and orange bands that wrapped around the length of its body were more vivid and bright than any of the photographs in his book collection. When he slid the wire mesh screen toward his body and placed it next to the terrarium, a warm rush filled his body and his stomach bubbled in the most satisfying way. His hand shaking from excitement, he slowly reached inside the cage and as gently as he could allowed the tiny gray worm of a snake to slide through his fingers. As he removed his arm from the cage the snake’s soft coils became tighter as it sensed that it was being lifted. It was so perfect and gorgeous. He pulled it in close to his face to get a better look and was overwhelmed as if he would burst into tears any second. His chest strained and he began to shake more violently. The sensation in his chest moved into his throat and without meaning to, Henry let out a high- pitched scream that quickly turned into a series of victorious shrieks. Alerted by the unusual monkey sounds coming from the next room, his mother walked to his doorway expecting a gracious thank you for giving in at last, but she did not expect that her son was already holding the disgusting gift she had just given him. Henry jumped to embrace his mother, kingsnake in hand, causing her to withdraw from the room and screech at the miniscule menace of a reptile shouting “Your welcome! Your welcome!” as Henry continued his advance.