Snake Holes

by

Rebecca Lee

I remember the day I found the snake holes. It was the first time Melissa Ann Briggs wore her new dress. The one with the real gold buttons on the front that her papa bought for her at the J.C. Penney’s store downtown. She thought she looked cute too because she was flipping the ends of her bright blond hair and prancing around like a brand-new puppy. 

All the girls were admiring it too, telling her how beautiful she looked and wanting to see her shiny red shoes. 

I looked at the torn sleeve of my blue dress and thought, ‘Heck, momma could make dresses ten times prettier than that old rag any day of the week.’

At recess time we all lined up to go outside our teacher, Ms. Johnson said,  “Melissa honey, why don’t you lead the line outside? You all mind Melissa now when you’re marching down the hall.” I could never figure out why Mellissa was always the line leader. The way she walked too with her nose all up in the air. I was surprised the flies didn’t buzz clean up into it.

         Now we don’t have much of a playground to speak of. The good swings were hard to come by. You know the ones that aren’t lopsided or squeak so loud your teeth hurt? I was just heading towards the best swing out there when Melissa pushed me out of the way. I fell on the ground with a plop! “Hey!” I yelled at her.

“I was here first!” She yelled back and sat her skinny self on the swing.

  Boy, I sure did want to rip those gold buttons right off of her. But I knew Ms. Johnson was out there watching us play.

 I wandered over to the chain-link fence by myself. I was mumbling all kinds of names at Melissa.  I had learned some good ones too from watching my grandpa play checkers with Old Man Fletcher next door.

           Then I saw something strange in the dirt. There were five snake holes sitting there plain as day! I knew they were snake holes too because grandpa showed one to me once when we were out walking in the field across from the grocery store.

“Now girl,” I remember him telling me, “Don’t go near them holes. I did once, and a rattler bit me clean through my boot leather. I had to walk ten miles to get help.” I believed him too because my grandpa never lied! Not much anyway.

I looked at those holes and caught my breath so fast I nearly passed out. Boy, oh boy, what would the other kids do when they saw these?

           Then I thought, ‘Why should I share these with anyone?’ The only one I wanted to show them to was Melissa. That was so she might get bitten and then I wouldn’t have to fool with her anymore.

Just then, I saw Matthew Jacobs playing nearby. Now, this boy was always carrying something in his pockets. Ms. Johnson was always taking stuff away from him. 

“Hey, Matthew, come here for a second!” I hollered.

He looked at me with a “What do you want?’ Kind of look. Then he shrugged and came over, “Yeah, what do you want?”

I knew he wanted to get back to playing, so I made it fast. “Got any string?”

“Yeah, I got some string. What’s it to you?”

“Can I use it? I promise not to use up too much.”

“Heck, this is my kite string. I'm sure not going to give it to any dumb girl.” And he turned to walk away.

I grabbed his sleeve. I must have been really desperate because no way I would have touched that dirty old boy any other time. “Wait a minute!” Let me show you something,” I said and pulled him over to the gate.

I showed him the holes plain as day. All he said was, “Yeah, so what?”

“Boy, don’t you know snake holes when you see them???”

His eyes nearly bugged clean out of his head when he saw I was telling the truth. “Holy Moses!” he said in a real hushed voice. “Are you going to tell Ms. Johnson?"

“Heck no! She’ll make us leave them alone. I got to fence them off so nobody stomps on them. You know, my grandpa almost died of a snake bite.”

“Golly,” he looked at me like he saw past my brown, stringy hair and blue dress with the tear on the sleeve. Like he saw someone real important. “Here, Sarah, you can have the string,” and he shoved it into my hands. “You can have all of it if you need it.”

“Well, I just may need all of it.” I told him plainly, and studied the string a bit, “Do you want to help me?”

He caught his breath, “Wow! Can I?”

“Sure. You go round up some branches or Popsicle sticks, anything you can find. We’ll need bunches of them to make a proper fence.” So he ran off. I figured he had a right to help since it was his string after all. 

He was back quick as a wink with a handful of all kinds of stuff including a couple of bottle tops I didn’t ask him to bring. He grabbed those and tucked them down into his pockets. I figured Ms. Johnson would get them later anyway.

We took our time and posted the sticks side by side. Then we tied the kite string from one to the other until we had the holes completely fenced off. We almost finished when we noticed there were a bunch of the kids standing around us watching us with their buggy eyes.

All of the sudden Ms. Johnson walked up and pushed her way to the center of them. I knew Matthew Jacobs, and I looked a sight because we were up to our eyeballs in dirt.