A Feast of Snakes Read Online Free PDF Page B

another beer,” she said in a small sullen voice.
    “We already done that,” he said. “I don’t feel like doing what we already done before.”
    He reached out and picked her up and put her under his massive arm. Her full cheerleader’s legs dangled behind and she arched her back to look up at him. Her face was slack and without expression. He knew she was only mildly interested in what he might do. He was given to picking her up at odd moments and doing something with her.
    He walked around on the other side of the plywood and wire pen. There was a little gate there with two metal hinges and a hook latch. He opened the gate. He held her under his left arm and with his right pointed down into the dirt pit.
    “Look at them snakes,” he said.
    They stared down into hard-packed moon-colored dirt.
    “It’s enough poison in there to kill everthing in Mystic,” she said.
    “To kill everthing in the world,” he said.
    “Good,” she said. “Rattlesnake fangs hanging from all the throats of the world.”
    “From titties,” he said. “Them fanged mouths sucking them titties.”
    “Chewing dicks,” she said.
    “Being dicks,” he said and stepped down into the pit. “Snakes and dicks. Sweet slick dicks and snakes.”
    “Put me down in the snakes,” she said.
    He laid her down on the dirt floor of the pit on her back. She writhed gently looking up at him. His moon-struck hair splayed from his head.
    “Oh God, your snakes are cold.” She touched her belly. “They’re here. They’re filling me here.” She touched her breasts. “And here.” Her eyes were closed now. Her mouth a little way open. “A cold bath of snakes,” she said. “I’m freezing full of snakes. All in my blood. Crawling through my heart.” She opened her eyes and he still stood above her, beautiful and powerful with the moonlight splintering against his back, casting his face in solid shadow. “Lie down here, Joe Lon. Lie down in these snakes.”
    He drew back. “No.” She was a crazy bitch, had always been, and she sometimes scared him. She was always doing crazy shit and saying crazy shit, and sometimes it scared him. Sometimes out in the black dark when she started in on it, he felt something go soft and queasy in his stomach.
    “You scared,” she said. “You scared of these snakes?”
    Joe Lon said: “I ain’t scared of a goddam thing. Don’t matter if it walks or crawls or flies in the air.”
    “Then lie down. I’m cold. I’ll die in these freezing snakes.” He should have kicked her or stepped on her but he didn’t. He slowly sank to his knees and then lowered himself over her. They lay very still for a while. Then he moved and lay beside her on his back.
    “Feel’m?” she said. “Feel them snakes?”
    He made a sound, a kind of neutral grunt.
    “We’re buried to our goddam eyes in the thick good bodies of snakes,” she said. “And you’ll die too. You might as well go on, Joe Lon, go on and be afraid.”
    She was touching him now, with both hands, tentatively, squeezing and pressing, her fingers extended with the tips together, moving over his body like the twin heads of blind snakes, or so it seemed to him, lying there in a cold sweat.
    Her hands stopped and she crawled up over him, deliberately making her body twist and writhe in the supple windings of a snake. She started again touching him. She was moving all over now, her legs, her body, her hands. Then everything quieted, everything seeming to stop at once.
    “I found him,” she whispered. “The Boss Snake of all the snakes.”
    Joe Lon lay on his back, his eyes tightly closed, the skin on his wide face drawn and white. “You goddam right,” he whispered.
    “Look,” she said. “Oh look at him. That sumbitch strike you, you know you struck.”
    He opened his eyes and raised his head and looked down himself to the place where she had unzipped his Levis and his cock stood curved in front of her face. She hissed and he felt her hot breath. Her