The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [224]
A band of town kids tagged after them, some of Jacinto's gang, and yelled to one another by the fiery gate light of Casa Descuitada. In a box Jacinto carried two snakes. "Where have you been, Thea?" "We caught these pit vipers--fine ones." "Who? All these kids weren't with you, were they?" "Oh no. We picked them up on the way back when Jacinto told them what we had." "Thea, you're marvelous to go out and catch them. It's great! But why didn't you wait for me? They're dangerous, aren't they, these things?" "I didn't know when you were coming back. A charcoal burner showed up and told me he had seen vipers, so I went right out after them." She put them in one of the cases we had made ready for the iguanas, and that was the start of her collection. In time the porch became a snake gallery, so that the cook wanted to quit, fearing for her kid. The moment was right to mention the eagle, when Thea was freshened by her success. She listened and was reasonably ready to be swayed, agreeing that Caligula should have another try. I never thought I'd be pleading for him with her. Jacinto went to Talavera's for tile horses next morning. At the gate of the villa I got the traps ready, the cages and the pole, and when Jacinto returned we were there with Caligula, who, as usual, loqked great, dangerous. I frowned at Thea's occasional skeptical glance toward him. We set out. Now and then I talked to him and stroked him with a feather. I said, "Old man, this time you'd better do your stuff." We came to the same place, the iguanas' haunt, and I took a higher position than the last time, to give Caligula a better view of that stony slope. We stood then. His grip was very sharp; I tried to transfer some of his weight to the thigh, not hold him continually on my raised arm. Bizcocho twitched off the ferocious flies of this place who pinned themselves sparkling on his gray ribs. Thea rode below, and I saw her through a floor of ferns. I caught glimpses also of Jacinto climbing on the turrety white rocks and began to hear some of the giants scuttle and crash when they leaped and fled, and see the voluptuary flowers tremble heavily. Suddenly I got the idea of what it was to hunt, not with a weapon but with a creature, a living creature you had known how to teach because you'd inferred that all intelligences from the weakest blink to the first-magnitude stars were essentially the same. I touched him and stroked him. As if to check up on me Bizcocho turned his head. And just then Thea whipped the bandanna from her hair, the prearranged signal. I found the cord of the hood and gave the galloping fall on the saddle, feeling called upon not to spare myself. Bizcocho started off very fast. I must have picked too abrupt a downcourse, for the old horse went faster than he ever had. I gripped with my thighs and I pulled the hood and swivel. I was shouting, "Go to it!" when I too suddenly began to go, over the head of thu horse as he struck with his hoofs for balance on the sliding stone. He was falling and so was I. I felt the push of Caligula's spring as he left my arm, and then I saw the color of my own blood on the slope of stones. I struck and slid. I heard Bizcocho's crazy neigh and Jacinto's cry. "Roll, go on rolling!" shouted Thea. "Augie, darling, roll! He's kicking! He's hurt!" But one of Bizcocho's hoofs caught me square in the head, and I was out.
CHAPTER XVII
It takes some of us a long time to find out what the price is of being in nature, and what the facts are about your tenure. How long it takes depends on how swiftly the social sugars dissolve. But when at last they do dissolve there's a different taste in your mouth, bringing different news which registers with dark astonishment and fills your eyes. And this different news is that from vast existence in some way you rise up and at any moment you may go back. Any moment; the very next, maybe. Well, that poor Bizcocho, he cracked my skull, but he had broken a leg and Thea shot him. Unconscious, I didn't hear the explosion. She and Jacinto dragged me up on her horse. The boy mounted with