by John Van Becay

Aunt Jean sashayed into our lives for a few days once or twice a year.  She was Mom’s younger sister by 8 years.  Mom raised 4 kids, and took care of our little place on the river outside of Durango, Colorado.  Gretta and I, her last two, were beginning our education.  Ann and Jerry, some 12 years older, were ready to spread their wings. Jean blew in on a whirlwind of sleeveless floral dresses, sunglasses, cigarettes and perfume.  She lived in New York City and was a registered nurse.  She flew places.  She had gone to England on an ocean liner a few years previously for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, of all things.  Everyone loved her visits, well, almost everyone.  We loved her presents, her airs, her joie de vivre (though I think we called it get up and go.)   In our family Jean was as elegant as it got and the last word in fashion and society.

Aunt Jean had arrived earlier that afternoon.  She sat at the kitchen table regaling us with the time she saw Tony Bennett.  Que Sera Sera was playing on the radio.  Mom peeled potatoes at the kitchen sink.  Ann was at the table slicing cabbage for cole slaw.  Most of her was listening to Aunt Jean.  Ann and Jean were only 10 years apart and had a special bond.  Jerry was outside splitting fire wood.  He had his shirt off.  He stood so Aunt Jean could see him through the picture window in the kitchen.  Gretta and I tore round the old house with manic energy playing some game that awarded time outs.  Time outs consisted of snuggling against Aunt Jean’s voluminous dress or climbing in her lap.  We were high on having company.  When it was my turn I inhaled Aunt Jean like life itself.  She smelled fantastic.  She smelled fancy and far away.

“John,” Mom said, “Did you pick up that hose like I asked?”

“No.”

“Do you think you better do it before Daddy gets home?”

I reluctantly dragged myself off Jean’s lap and onto the kitchen porch.  I suspected Mom had manufactured this excuse to break up our game.  It was hardly fair.  I stopped to watch Jerry split wood.  Dad had chain sawed standing dead spruce into 16 inch blocks 2 feet across and brought them home by the pickup load.  They were perfectly aged, not so dry they had lost much of their heat, but dry enough for easy splitting.  Jerry was tall, strong, well muscled, a boy/man, but mostly man.  He buried the axe into the middle of a block and leveraged it onto the chopping block.  He wiggled the axe free, raised it over head and struck a stunning blow 3 inches from the edge of the block.  A chunk of firewood splintered off and flew through the air.  Another blow another chunk flew off.  Sweat glistened on his chest and back.  He shifted a step so the next chunk would fly in my direction.  I moved back.  Around him grew a pile of split wood.  It would be my job to stack them neatly when he had finished.  It was easy to get a splinter. Once in awhile after a particularly violent blow Jerry would glance at the house.  He caught me watching him.

“Better go do what Mom said,” said Jerry.

Dad irrigated our place out of the Animas with a large pump hooked to an automobile engine.  It used fire hose to carry the water.  I loved to help irrigate.  What kid doesn’t like water?  But it often fell to me to move the fire hose–yards and yards of wet heavy canvas hose, with brass fittings big as a can of beans. This was done with the pump off.  I could not budge the thick hose full of pressurized water.  With the pump off the hose was half empty, water sloshing here and there.  It was a struggle for me to pull it to the next station but I could do it.  Using legs and back and arms, leaning into it with my weight, I pulled it to one side of the road.  Boots, our large mongrel dog, gave a heavy sigh and flopped nearby for company.  He didn’t much care for flying chunks of firewood either.

Before long I was back in the house, I had loosely piled the hose so it was out of the road.  Gretta squealed at something Aunt Jean said.  Not much had changed.  Ann was still on the cabbage,  Mom was snapping beans.  Gretta was getting all of Aunt Jean.  I tried climbing in her lap.  “Oooooh, you’re wet,” she said, pushing me away. “Adeline,” said Jean, “I think your hair would look good in a page boy.  Let’s go to town tomorrow and have it cut.”

Mom shook her head.  She had just opened the oven to check the roast.  A wave of heat rolled into the already hot kitchen. “I better not.  We‘ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.”

“I’ll pay for it,” said Jean.  Mom blew a wisp of hair from her eyes and threw the pot holders next to the sink.  One of them went in the water left from washing the vegetables.  Mom was sweating.  She squinted her eyes a little.

“Maybe another time.”

“Ok,” said Aunt Jean gaily.  “I really think it would look good on you.”

“How ‘bout you sweetie?”  Aunt Jean said to Gretta.  “Do you want a page boy?”  Gretta jumped up and down and squealed again.  Ann laughed.  So did Jean.

“Is the coleslaw done?” asked Mom.

Boots gave a couple half hearted woofs.  I knew what that meant–someone’s car he knew.  It was half past five.  I was half out the door when Jean squealed, it being her turn.  “It’s Frank.”  She jumped up and with Ann and Gretta piled onto the porch behind me.

Dad’s pickup rolled to a stop.  If we were nearby we always ran to greet Dad though usually he was tired and impatient.  He often had gifts.  Jerry stopped splitting wood.  He struck a pose, arms propped on the axe, piles of split wood around him, nonchalantly Bunyonesque.

Dad was the woods’ foreman for the lumber mill.  It was his job to punch roads into virgin forest and supervise logging the trees and getting them off the mountain to the sawmill.  Sometimes his gifts were more for the place.  Mom would appreciate them.  He would have in the back of the pickup a perfectly formed blue spruce, 6 inches high, its complete rootball wrapped in a wet gunny sack.  Dad would heel it in near our driveway, in line with all the other evergreens he had brought, and start the long process of nurturing it.  Or he would have 6 or 8 pieces of fine flagstone with which to extend a patio or make a walk.  Sometimes he had his coat filled with mushrooms he had picked, black humus still clinging to them.  Mom would fry them that night for supper.  His thermos was often filled with water from a stream high in the mountains, sweet and cold.  In summer he would bring his hardhat full of snow, something we hadn’t seen in months, or sometimes he had a handful of wild berries, miniature things.  We would each get one or two, barely a taste.  If nothing else, Dad would have half a sandwich left over from the lunch Mom packed at 6 a.m. every morning.

Dad had a big grin for Jean.  She threw her arm around his neck and kissed him before he was half out of the truck.  “What did you bring me, Handsome?”  Jean asked.

“I did bring you something.”  Dad grabbed a shovel and, standing as far away as he could, flipped open the lid of the steel tool box in the bed of the pickup.   I had seen this before, and instinctively backed away.  Gretta was too young to remember.  Jerry was far enough away, and he had an axe.  Ann, for some reason, stood with Jean next to the pickup bed unconcerned.   I don’t know what Ann was thinking.  Perhaps she was caught in the moment.  Jean, of course, would have no way of knowing.  Dad flipped the lid up with the shovel.  “Aaaiieee!”  Ann and Jean screamed, grabbed each other and jumped a foot.  A half second later, Gretta screamed and jumped too because they had.  Up went the lid and out came a bull snake, a big one, boiling mad and spoiling for a fight.  His head was big as a man’s fist.  He had spent the last several hours in the hot metal tool box jouncing around on a jumble of tools, chain and cable.  He was in no mood for niceties.

Dad was laughing.  It was a fine joke. “It took 2 of us to put him in there.”

“Not very funny, Frank.” said Jean, from about 20 feet away.  The snake peered over the pickup bed, his tongue darting, testing, then slithered over the edge.  He looked like fluid pouring out of a vessel.  His head was on the ground before his tail had completely left the truck.  He was big around as my thigh.  This was a big bull snake.  He headed for shade and cover against an overgrown fence.  In moments he had slipped from sight.  I started after him.  Often times on a sunny morning they were docile and easy to approach.

“Leave him alone, John” Dad said.  “Let him calm down.”

“What would possess you…?” started Jean.

“They eat rattlesnakes,” said Dad.  Whether this bit of country lore was true or not I did not know but it was often quoted as a reason to not harm bull snakes.  They did eat rodents.  And probably anything else rodent sized unfortunate enough to cross their path, which would include small rattlesnakes.

Dad had brought bull snakes before from the woods.  He turned them loose around the place.  Once they found cover they didn’t move a lot.  For a week or more Gretta and I could find a bull snake Dad had brought if we looked next to the fences or in a pile of brush.  We could see 6 or 8 inches of beautiful brown and yellow in the open, the sun on it, nothing else, just 6 inches of beautiful brown and yellow.  Then the brown and yellow would move.

Bull snakes usually slid away if we got too close.  They were only hostile if threatened.  Something as large as a human is not food so they aren’t interested.  Bull snakes are non-poisonous, but powerful constrictors, and can deliver a nasty bite if pushed far enough.  Gretta and I agreed on little.  One of the few things we saw eye to eye on were bull snakes.  Bull snakes were the best things Dad brought home from the woods.

Jean was in a huff.  She turned her back on the scene.  Jerry slumped on his axe, his face dark.  Dad had stolen a lot of thunder just then.  Jean moved to reclaim the spot light.  She grabbed Jerry by his sweaty arm, “C’mon, lover, I’ll bet you know how to treat a girl.”  To my knowledge, Jerry had never had a girlfriend.  Arm and arm they strode into the house.  Slivers of wood clung to Jerry’s chest and back, his arms and in his hair.  He seemed 6 inches taller.  “Bring my shirt,” he said to me.

The rest of us followed.  Dad gave a quiet whistle, his voice too low for Jerry to hear.  “Look at all that firewood,” he said.

In the kitchen Mom was in high gear.  Supper was 6 o’clock.  It was never late.  “Jerry, go clean up.”  He disengaged from Aunt Jean and took his shirt, flicking it on my head.  “Gretta, go pick up your things like I asked.  John, set the table.”

“Why do I have to set…?”

“I’ll do it,” said Ann.  Ann was normally level headed and did the 2^nd most amount of work around the place.  Jean, though, made her a little starry-eyed.

“You finish the cole slaw,” said Mom.

Ann was the family peacemaker.  “I can do both,” she said.  “Here, John, I’ll hand you the plates and cups and you can set them on the table.”

That left Dad and Jean with nothing to do.  With Jerry gone, Jean forgot she was mad at my dad.  She grabbed his hands and waltzed him around the kitchen in great exaggerated moves.  Dad, still in his hardhat, kept poking his elbow awkwardly in the air, trying to follow her.  Around they went, Dad clumping in his boots, bumping the rest of us, Jean smooth as a swan.  After a few laps, Mom snapped off the radio.  “Supper’s ready,” she announced.

Supper was pretty good, roast beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, green beans, Mom’s canned tomatoes, her canned pickles and peach cobbler with farm cream.

When we finished, Mom made tea.  Ann began clearing the dishes.  The phone rang.  Jean jumped up, but Mom was standing there.  She listened a moment and handed it to Jean.  We couldn’t hear the words but Jean’s voice was bubbly.  She hung up.

“That was Goldie,” said Mom.

“The doll,” said Jean.  ‘We’re going to have a drink at the Strater.  Just leave those.  I’ll help you in the morning.”

Mom stood over the kitchen sink filling with hot soapy water.  Mom never left a dish unwashed in her life.  “He’s married, Jean,”

“Not happily,” Jean said, “Not happily.  You know Adeline, it wouldn’t hurt you to have a drink once in awhile.”  She started for the stairs.  “No time for tea.”  Mom rested her head on the cupboard above the sink, and submerged the first pile of dishes.

“How did he know she was here?” Dad said from the kitchen table.

Jean came down in a slinky red dress with matching high heels and purse, her hair piled high on her head.  She wore jewelry and makeup.  She smelled even better, if that was possible.  Dad handed her the keys.  She raised her eyebrows at him then turned her big eyes on me. “John, you look like a big brave boy, why don’t you walk me out to the car.”  It was dark on the porch, the night even darker.  Jean flipped the porch light switch 3 times.  “Take the flashlight,” Dad said helpfully.

“Where is the flashlight?” said Mom.

Outside Aunt Jean balanced on my shoulder.  Our farm driveway was rough.  Things lay in the yard.  Heels could be treacherous.  And, Boots had a reputation for biting people he didn’t know, occasionally, for a change, biting people he did know.  He was fine with family, usually, company in the house, though, made him nervous. I delivered Jean to the car and watched her clumsily back it around and head up the driveway, headlights burrowing into the night.  We lived a mile outside of town.  It was country dark.  Often at night we could see the Milky Way.  Durango’s carnival lighting theme was still in the future.  I clutched a handful of Boots and picked my way carefully back to the house.

The rest of the kids had disappeared.  Dad stood in the other room, sideways to the kitchen.  Mom was putting leftovers in the refrigerator, staring intently inside it. “I asked you to change that light bulb,” Mom said.

“Do we even have any light bulbs?” said Dad.

“Of course we have light bulbs.  Somebody’s going to break their neck.”

“Jesus, Adeline, We were having a good time.  I’ll do it tomorrow.”  Dad headed for the bedroom.

“Go to bed,” Mom said to me.

“Mommm, it’s early.”

“Go on and brush your teeth.”  Her voice was softer.  “You can read a little before you go to sleep.”  Maybe I’d read.  I had a lot to think about.

I didn’t read that night.  I lay in bed for hours turning over everything that had happened that day.  The 2 winners were bull snakes and married boyfriends.  They chased each other through my head.  Finally I must have slept because I was awakened by the same shrieks that woke everyone else.

“Help!  Help!  It’s got me!  Please somebody help…Frank!!  Help me!”

Within moments we were at the kitchen door.  Dad got there first because he slept down stairs.   Plus he had longer legs.  He was clad in jockey shorts and a tank top tee shirt.  He tried the porch switch, swore, and flicked on the kitchen light.  Beyond the porch we could see something thrashing on the ground.  We tumbled outside.  It was dark dark.  Boots was warily circling whatever it was, making a racket.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  At least Jean wasn’t shrieking that the dog had got her.  In the faint light from the kitchen door we could make out Aunt Jean on the ground, sinuous coils around her leg.  She was clubbing the beast with her purse.  “Help me, Frank.  Get it off me!”

Dad grabbed the axe from the wood pile and said the most uncharacteristic thing I ever heard him say.  “I’ll save you, Jean.”  To this day I wonder if I heard him right.  He raised the axe and brought it down hard on the serpentine coils.  He raised it again and struck again perilously close to Jean’s leg.  Jean was still shrieking but now it might have been for fear of losing a limb.  Again and again Dad struck the evil creature.  Jean turned and twisted trying to get away, her leg buried in the deadly coils.  The muscular animal twisted and turned with her.  It made squishy sounds when the axe went in.  But it would not let go.  A fine spray of gore, wet and drippy, hit my face and arms every time the axe struck.

Jerry arrived on the scene.  He had a rifle.  He would save the day.  Jerry was a big gun nut even back then.  He bounced from foot to foot, maneuvering for a shot.   “Hold still,” he kept saying, “Hold still.”

“Oh, God,” said Jean, “Don’t shoot me…”

Ann had Gretta on one side and me on the other.  Gretta was crying.  I was speechless.  Ann held tight to both of us.  “Kill it, Frank, kill it,” Jean wailed, “Get it off me.  Please just get this thing off me.  Oh, it’s got me.”  The long thick Curse of Eden, dripping fluid on her leg, had, indeed, got Aunt Jean.  Dad kept whacking away in his underwear.  Boots was barking quickly but not loudly and with a rising inflection.  He was jumping around stiff legged.  I suddenly realized it was not a danger bark.  It was a join-the-party bark.  At that moment a yellow circle of light illuminated the death struggle before us.  Mom was standing there with the flashlight.

Ann tried to cover both Gretta and my eyes from the ghastly scene.  I twisted away.  So, being the next best thing, Ann clamped one hand over Gretta’s eyes and the other over her mouth.  I could hear Gretta’s muffled sobs.  “Lemme go!  Lemme go!  I wanna see!”

Jean was on her back, her red dress hiked up to what could have been her neck.  In the circle of light we could see her splayed legs, naked save her tattered nylons.  Her girdle snaps flopped from side to side clamped to useless strips of fabric.  Above the ruined nylons were a few inches of white thigh, then shiny, slick girdle, reinforced in places I didn’t know needed reinforcing, higher, white belly and, higher still, maybe even some white bra.  One red high heel was gone.  Jean’s hair was all over the place, her face a mess.  Jean’s wails faded.  Wrapped around her leg, its writhing death throes slowly subsiding, was the mortally wounded fire hose.  We could see the many gashes Dad had dealt it.  A little water gurgled into the earth.  Clearly it was dead.

“You kids get back to bed.  Now.  Go on,” Mom said.  We did, all 4 of us, quickly.

“So,” Dad said, as we scurried inside, “So…” he tried again.  He cleared his throat and found his voice but not exactly its purpose.  “So,” he offered into the night, “So, you found the flashlight.”

photo courtesy Life magazine

Our aunt, Jean, slept in the next morning.  When she came downstairs she had on jeans, tennis shoes, a long sleeved shirt and a scarf over her hair.  She had a bandage on her hand and another on her ankle.  She wore no makeup, not even lipstick.  She looked pale as yogurt, and about as plain.  She smelled…a little sour.  “I think I’ll go over to the ranch for a few days, see Mom and Dad,” Jean said.

“Ok.” said Mom.

“Could you take me?”

“I’d love to,” said Mom.

“What about the doctor’s appointment?”

“Today’s Saturday,” said Mom with a little wave.

“But you said…”  Jean’s voice trailed off.  “Frank works on Saturday?”

“Frank didn’t go to work.”

“But he’s gone.”  Jean thought a second.  “Where’s the big kids?

“Oh, they had to go someplace, too,” Mom said, light as air.

Mom was at the stove, her back to Jean.  They had yet to look at each other.  Barely loud enough to hear, Jean said, “Thank you, Adeline.”

Mom gave a slight nod.  “How about some breakfast?  Coffee?”

“Can I have some tea?  With hot milk?”

“I can make eggs in a jiff.”

“I don’t want any eggs.  I want milk toast.”

I sat at our scarred table near our half wood-half electric stove in our high ceilinged kitchen in our shambling old house.  Through the picture window spread our dandelion lawn, beyond stretched that side of our hard won farm–nothing but work–and beyond that the distant mountains.  An unfamiliar feeling came over me.  I felt grateful and fortunate and something I couldn’t identify.  Us kids, our folks, their folks, we seemed blessed, but we had to earn it.  It wasn’t given.  Or it was, but you could lose it.  We were connected to each other and to our lives, for better or for worse, and one of those connections was sweat.  What if you didn’t like this life?  Could you change it?  What if you made the wrong choice?  Could you go back?  This was uncharted territory, a lot of work and a little scary.  I felt more grown up than I had yesterday.  I wasn’t sure I liked it.

Gretta was tired and whiny this morning.  She was restless, moving from room to room.

“Gretta,” said Mom, “Take these peelings out to the compost.  Give you something to do.”

“No,” Gretta said, “I don’t wanna oo.”  She fled to the other room.

Mom sighed.  “John, I need you to start stacking up that firewood outside.  It’s all over the place.”

“But Gretta doesn’t…,” I stopped.  That sentence was over.  It was my job.  It needed to be done.  “Ok.”  I started for the door.

“Get some gloves, Puddin’ head.  Use mine, they’re on the porch.”

“Ok.”

“And take these peelings.”

Gretta’s fussing brought her back to Jean.  She tried climbing in her lap.  Jean turned away.  “Aunt Jean doesn’t feel very good this morning, ok?” Jean said.  “Maybe another time.”

Gretta’s eyes got big.  They started to glisten.  She ran to Mom and clung to her dress.  Mom stopped stirring the pinto beans for Saturday lunch.  She laid the spoon on the stove.  She reached down, and with infinite tenderness, cupped Gretta’s head against her leg.

At the edge of our scraggly lawn grew untended lilacs in wild profusion, their thick branches scraping the ground.  At their base, not quite hidden, were a few inches of beautiful brown and yellow soaking up the late morning sun.

The family never talked much about that night.  Mom would not use humor as a weapon.  I think Ann and Jerry were too embarrassed.  Dad always liked a good joke, but that one he put away.  Long afterward, if the subject ever came up, Dad’s response was always the same.  “Son-of-a-bitch,” he would shake his head slowly, “that was my second best hose.”

copyright 2018    john van becay

The night the bullsnake got Aunt Jean was originally published in The Gulch, Issue 5, Oct-Nov, 2018       https://www.gulchmag.com/subscribe/issue-6-1