State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [112]
“It’s a fucking anaconda!” Alan said. “He caught an anaconda with his hands!” Alan Saturn seemed to be at the perfect intersection of the thrilling achievement of the Lakashi, the terror of Marina and his wife, and the rage of the snake, whose eyes had focused into two pinpoints of murderous desire.
Easter coughed.
Maybe Marina understood before he did but of course that would be impossible to say. In a moment everything was clear to her and she stepped through the wall of her own revulsion and fear and took the tail end of the snake that was pressed into Easter’s hip. Its flesh was at once clammy and dry, cool despite the terrible heat of the day. She had once dissected a snake in a college biology class, a small black garter snake long dead and stinking of formaldehyde. She had cut it down the center and pinned it open on a wax-bottom pan. To the best of her memory that was the only snake she had ever touched. She touched the second one as she worked to pull it from the boy. When she had pried a little of it loose she moved her hands up the body, hand over hand like she was working her way up a rope, except the end of the rope then began to wrap around her wrist. It was a muscle like nothing she had ever encountered. It did not fight against her. It did not notice her. She pulled. Easter coughed again. Benoit could now see the problem as well: his friend was wrapped inside the snake and the snake had figured out a way to loosen the hand that held its neck. Benoit slid his hand up to cover Easter’s hand just as Easter’s hand fell away. Easter tried to work his own small hands between himself and the snake and when he exhaled to get just his fingertips in between them the snake felt the movement of his breath and squeezed. Easter’s eyes shot first to Marina and there she saw the very soul of him in his fear and she pulled and Alan’s hands were by her hands and they were pulling together, all of them, Benoit from the throat while Nancy Saturn cried for a knife, a knife, and then “Jaca!”
But Benoit could not hear her now. He was frozen to the snake that was in the business of killing his friend who may have been eleven or twelve but was very small for his age.
“Tell me there is a fucking knife on this boat!” Nancy said. Easter’s lips were turning blue. From either the lack of oxygen or the weight of the snake he went down on his knees. It occurred to Marina that his spine could snap. They all went down to their knees. Marina knew there was a machete strapped to the steering column of the boat, the knife that Easter had used to trim away the branches when he tied the boat to a tree. In an instant she was up. The knife was nearly as long as her arm, as heavy as a tennis racket, and she put the blade just above Benoit’s fist and with a single pass sliced off the head. It would have been the greatest moment of her life had cutting off the head killed the snake but the beheading changed nothing. On the deck the busy head continued to snap its murderous teeth, moving in a slow circle as the jaw opened and closed, while its body went about the business of strangling a boy.
“Jesus,” she said. She could see the tendons standing out on Benoit’s neck, she could see his crooked bottom teeth, his open jaw jutting forward in the exertion, the blood of the headless snake running down his arm. While Benoit continued to pull the top of the snake, the Saturns continued to pull the bottom, and in the middle Easter continued his death. Marina began to saw into the rolls of headless snake, her hand at Easter’s head and the point of the machete at Easter’s toes. Her objective was to cut through both coils simultaneously as she doubted there would be time to do this twice. At no point did Easter make a sound. He would not use another teaspoon of breath. He stayed stock still inside this jacket and kept his eyes on Marina. First there was a large vertebral column that required Marina to lean in as she sawed, as much as she would have leaned in to saw apart a human wrist with a long knife at a bad angle. She had worried about pressing