The Other Brother (12 page)

Chapter 20

hen Gabriel awoke at six o'clock the next morning, Dana had already left.

Dana was an early riser and often needed to be at the hospital by five A.M. But when she slept over, she never left without first waking him and kissing him good-bye.

Last night felt like a bad dream. Dana's abrupt departure proved that it was not. She was still upset. They needed to patch this up, and quickly. They'd never been at odds like this.

Happy couples didn't argue, Gabriel believed. He'd never seen Mom and Pops involved in an argument. If they ever had a disagreement-and he wasn't sure they had until last night-they handled it behind closed doors, away from him and his sister. He'd never seen them work through conflict together, never heard them discuss and resolve their issues.

He wondered if that was a good thing. Children learned so much from observing their parents. On those rare occasions when he found himself mired in relationship troubles, he felt out of his depth, like a poor swimmer tossed into a deep sea.

He would call Dana soon and handle these problems before things worsened.

He climbed out of bed and padded to the bathroom. A long, warm shower would help him relax.

He noted with satisfaction that there was nothing unusual in the mirror. Only his fatigued face.

He slipped on a shower cap to keep his head bandage from getting soaked and stepped into the shower stall.

He was soaping his body under a spray of warm water, humming the notes to a Miles Davis solo, when he glanced through the glass stall doors and saw something on the bathroom floor.

Water blurred the glass, preventing him from getting a clear view. But it looked like a snake.

"Oh, shit," he said.

Then he thought, It can't be a snake. What would a snake be doing in my house?

He turned off the water. He rubbed clear a spot on the glass.

It was a dark snake, its scales bedecked with light bands; a little more than two feet long, it had a thick, muscular body and a pale yellow belly.

Gabriel knew the breed, and even as his mind told him what it was, he wanted to deny it: the snake was a cottonmouth water moccasin. A member of the pit viper family. One of the deadliest snakes in the world.

Barely four feet away from the shower stall, the serpent slithered across the marble floor. It quested along the edge of the vanity, rose, slipped out its forked tongue to taste the air, and then whispered into the shadowy crevice underneath the sinks, behind the small trash can. Gabriel saw only the faint sparkle of its scales.

He stood stock-still, disbelieving what he'd seen. The water left on his skin felt like shavings of ice.

How the hell had a water moccasin gotten into his house?

There was a large lake in the subdivision about a half block away from his home. He'd seen lizards scampering across the lawn from time to time, and once a turtle had crept across his driveway. He'd heard rumors of water moccasins lurking in the waters. But he'd never, ever seen one. And now there was one in his bathroom.

Had Dana left a door open when she'd left? How had this happened?

It wasn't enough that his dad had confessed to fathering a son outside the marriage and that his family had been turned upside down; it wasn't enough that he was plagued by visions in mirrors and tingling palms and doors that opened for no apparent reason; to add the icing to the cake, he had a lethal snake in his house, in his bathroom, when he was butt naked in the shower.

Gabriel could have dealt with almost any other kind of threat. Spiders, rats, wasps-anything. But not a snake, and certainly not a lethal one.

He vividly recalled the time a water moccasin had bitten him in north Georgia. His right calf began to throb, as though remembering the horrifying pain inflicted by those fangs. He'd been rushed to the hospital and had been lucky (yet again) to survive.

He didn't want to get out of the shower. But he couldn't stay in there, naked and defenseless.

He came up with a plan.

He had to contain the snake. If he could get out of the bathroom without disturbing the reptile, he could close the door, trapping the snake within until a pest-control expert arrived to remove it.

It wasn't a brilliant strategy, but it would have to do.

With a trembling hand, he slowly pushed open the door.

He didn't dare to take his attention away from the crevice beneath the sink. The snake was motionless. But he felt it watching him.

Water dripping off his body, he stepped outside the stall and steadied his feet on the floor. He drew in a couple of breaths. He was on the verge of hyperventilating.

To get to the door, he had to pass the sinks. He would rather have walked across a bed of burning coals than to move anywhere closer to that snake, but there was no way around it.

There was a towel hamper beside the shower. It was as high as his waist. He decided to use the hamper as a shield. He gripped the edges of it and lifted it off the floor.

Keeping his gaze on the dark space and the resting reptile, Gabriel began to creep across the bathroom, holding the hamper between him and the reptile's lair, trying to be as silent and smooth as possible.

The snake sprang out of the crevice like a jack-in-thebox. Hissing angrily, it came at him.

Gabriel screamed. He heaved the towel hamper in the direction of the charging snake, thinking vaguely that it could knock the snake away and maybe buy him a second or two to escape, but as the hamper crashed against the floor, the reptile fluidly vaulted over it as though it had coiled springs in its body. The snake surged toward him in a dark flash. Too far away from the door to make it out safely, Gabriel whirled and ran back to the shower stall. He half leaped, half stumbled into it, banging his knees and elbows painfully.

He grabbed the handle and slammed the door just as the snake drew back to strike.

The water moccasin pressed against the glass. Its narrow yellow eyes found Gabriel and glared at him with pure hatred.

Gabriel's blood froze and his lips parted in a garbled scream.

The snake's mouth snapped open, revealing two wicked fangs dripping with venom.

Gabriel mashed himself against the wall, as far away from the door as possible.

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," he said. He shivered so violently the entire stall shook around him.

The snake stared at him a moment, as though warning him, and then it moved away. It undulated across the floor to the doorway.

"No," Gabriel said. "Stay out of there!"

The snake crossed the threshold and disappeared in the bedroom, blending into the shadows.

Now the reptile could wind up anywhere in the house. His half-baked plan to trap the snake in the bathroom had been worthless.

He waited about a minute. The water moccasin did not return.

Warily, he opened the shower-stall door again and got out. He picked up a towel off the nearby rack and wrapped it around his waist.

Then he moved to give himself a line of sight into the bedroom.

The bedroom was quiet, and full of shadows, too, thanks to the blinds he kept shuttered on the windows to keep sunlight from leaking inside. He wished he'd opened those blinds as soon as he'd gotten out of bed. The reptile could be hidden anywhere out there.

He wasn't going to try to find the snake. His only wish was to get out of the house alive. Someone else could hunt down and trap the damn thing.

Gabriel moved closer to the doorway. The snake did not spring out of the shadows. Wherever it had taken refuge, it was well hidden.

He grabbed the bathroom door and swung it shut.

Before he went anywhere, he needed to dress. He hurried to the walk-in closet off the end of the bathroom and quickly threw on jeans, a T-shirt, and athletic shoes.

He wished he kept a telephone in the bathroom. He would have called someone and never taken the risk of leaving until the snake was captured.

He found a baseball bat in the corner of the closet. It was a Louisville Slugger, a relic from his days in Little League. Dust coated the wood. He wiped off the bat with a towel and hefted it in both hands.

"I've got something for you now," he said.

His confidence ebbed when he remembered how the agile snake had evaded the towel hamper. If he swung at the water moccasin and missed ...

Don't think about that, Gabe.

Clutching the bat, he returned to the bathroom door and slowly pushed it open.

He didn't see the snake. But he was sure it was still concealed somewhere.

To escape the bedroom, he had to pass by the foot of the bed. He worried that the snake was hidden in the darkness under the bed and that it might strike him as he ran by.

Or it could be waiting for him in the hallway, outside the bedroom.

Or it could be in the kitchen.

Or it could be ...

He shook his head. Thinking of the numerous, dire possibilities had temporarily paralyzed him.

Do something, he thought to himself firmly. Stop thinking and move.

A phone stood on the nightstand along the path to the doorway. He could pluck the phone off the cradle as he got out of there, too.

Okay, so do it, Gabe.

Cold sweat crept down his spine. He redoubled his grip on the bat.

Then he lowered his head and sprinted across the bedroom. He refused to pause, refused to look around him or behind him, because if he did that, he was convinced he'd see the reptile, poised to deliver a fatal bite, and that would be the end of him.

As he ran, he snatched the phone off the nightstand.

He made it safely to the door. The snake had not appeared.

He slammed the door behind him. In case the water moccasin was inside, it would be imprisoned in there.

The hallway was empty. But there were rooms branching off the hall, and they were cloaked in shadows and could be hiding the reptile.

He had no plans to explore any of the rooms. He just had to get to the front door.

Brandishing the bat, he hurried down the hall to the front of the house.

The water moccasin lay coiled on the hardwood floor, no less than a foot away from the door and freedom. It rose, hissing.

"Shit," he said.

He raced to the garage. He threw open the door, stumbled inside, punched the button to raise the large sectional doors. He dashed across the garage and ran outside so quickly that his head brushed against the bottom of the still-opening doors.

He turned around and backpedaled all the way to the mouth of the driveway. He was panting, his lungs aching.

He expected-he hoped-to see the snake slither out of the garage and away from the house. It didn't.

He dialed the first number that came to mind: his parents' house. Pops answered on the third ring.

"Hello," Pops said. He was breathing hard, too, but Gabriel knew that his father ran on the treadmill in the morning before heading to the office.

"Pops, I need your help," Gabriel said. And as he told his father what had happened, he didn't consider the terrible and dishonest acts his father had committed. He was a boy again, seeking his father's assistance and calm assurance that everything would be okay, and it hit Gabriel that Dana was right: she did need her husband to be his own man. And he wasn't yet such a person.

Chapter 21

he representative from Metro Wildlife Control arrived at Gabriel's house shortly after eight o'clock that morning. Pops had called the company on Gabriel's behalf and requested emergency service. Pops himself promised to come soon.

Gabriel was still angry with his father, but grateful for his help.

Gabriel met the wildlife control expert in front of the garage. He was a tall, husky white man with unruly brown hair barely contained underneath a Florida Gators cap. He wore a T-shirt with a poster image from that Russell Crowe flick, Gladiator. The colors were so faded that Gabriel guessed the guy had washed and worn the shirt a hundred times. Was this man really an expert on removing snakes?

The guy introduced himself as Fisher.

"Saw a cottonmouth in your house, huh, dude? Bet that scared the shit out of you, didn't it?" Fisher said. He went to the bed of his Chevy pickup. The truck bore huge mud splashes, as though he'd been ripping through the Florida Everglades.

"Of course it scared me," Gabriel said. "But I can't figure out how it got in there"

After he'd talked to Pops, Gabriel had called Dana to tell her what had happened and to ask whether she'd seen a door or a window open when she'd left that morning. But she hadn't answered his call. He'd left her a brief message, asking her to call him back ASAP.

"Snakes usually slip inside your house if your home makes a good habitat for 'em," Fisher said.

"I can't believe my house would be a good habitat for snakes. I've never had this problem before"

"Anyway, they're sneaky little creatures," Fisher said sagely. "Might've gotten in when you opened a door or a window, or found a little hole somewhere" He shrugged. "I'll check for that stuff while I'm here, so you'll be cool, buddy."

Fisher lifted a couple of items out of the truck: a long steel rod with a pair of large metal tongs at the end, and a voluminous white sack made of a tough material.

"Snake tongs; snake bag," Fisher said with the formality of a Catholic priest conducting Communion.

Carrying the sack in one hand and balancing the rod on his shoulder, Fisher approached the front door.

Gabriel hung back. "Be careful, man. It was sitting right in front of that door when I last saw him."

"No problem, dude. Is the door open?"

Gabriel stepped forward, unlocked the door, and then quickly moved away.

"Go ahead," Gabriel said.

"You'd prefer to wait out here, huh?" Fisher said. "I was hoping you'd come in with me and hold him down with your hands while I slip the bag over him."

Gabriel gave the guy a you must be out your damn mind look.

Fisher laughed. "Just kidding with you. Sit tight. I'll whistle if I need you"

"Sure"

Gabriel had removed a lawn chair from the garage and parked it in the cool shade of a maple tree in his front yard. He'd driven to the local QuikTrip gas station and picked up the day's Wall Street Journal and two bottles of water, too.

He wasn't going inside his house until Fisher captured the snake, and while he waited, he might as well be comfortable.

As he sat in the shade reading the newspaper, his cell phone chirped. It was Dana.

"Hey," she said with minimal enthusiasm. "I got your message. What's up?"

"Well, good morning to you, too," he said. "I didn't see you before you left."

"I didn't want to wake you," she said curtly.

He hated the tension between them. They were better than this.

"Listen, Dana, about last night-"

"I can't talk about that right now. It's busy here."

Shot down. Fine then. He would be all business, too.

"Did you see an open door or window before you left?" he asked.

"No. Why?"

"There was a snake in the house. A water moccasin."

"What?" Her standoffish tone fell away. "Are you serious?"

"I saw it in the bathroom when I was showering. It was on the floor."

"Oh, my God. Are you okay?"

"I got the hell out of there without being bitten. A wildlife control guy is in the house now to catch it. Needless to say, I'm waiting outside."

"Jesus," she said. "I didn't see anything before I left, Gabe. If I'd seen that thing, I would have screamed my head off."

"You think I didn't? You remember how I was bitten when I was a teenager?"

"I remember you telling me about that. I'm so glad you're okay."

"I'm taking care of it," he said. He didn't dare confess that he'd called his father for help. That was the last thing he needed to let her know.

"I need to go, Gabe, but call me and let me know how it goes, okay?"

"Will do" He hung up.

Gabriel stared at the phone. At least he and Dana were talking, though they hadn't dealt with the real problem yet. Perhaps they could talk about it tonight face-to-face after their emotions had settled some more.

However, he wasn't sure what he would tell her. You're right, I'm not my own man yet. I need Pops to help me live my life. She wasn't going to let him off the hook about that; he sensed that it was so important to her that it could very well determine the fate of their relationship.

As if he didn't already have enough to be worried about.

About fifteen minutes later-there had been no word from Fisher Pops pulled into the driveway. He was dressed for work in a charcoal suit, and his hair was freshly trimmed. He looked nothing like the beaten-down man who'd confessed his sins to his family last night.

"They catch the snake yet?" Pops asked.

"He's still in there looking for it."

"Helluva way to start off the morning."

"You're telling me. You know how I feel about snakes"

Fisher exited the house through the garage. Gabriel noted that the snake bag fluttered loosely, as though empty.

"Are you the guy who called us?" Fisher asked Pops.

Pops nodded. "I am indeed."

Fisher looked from Pops to Gabriel. "There's no snake in there, dude" His eyes were downcast, as though he'd been robbed of an exciting adventure. "The premises are all clear. I don't even see how a snake would've gotten in there. There're no entryways unless you left a door wide open. But you say you didn't."

"I'm positive," Gabriel said. "The snake has to be in there. I told you it was by the front door!"

"Home's clean," Fisher said. "I looked everywhere. I'm telling you, dude, there's no snake in there"

Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. He was beginning to get a headache. None of this was making any sense.

Fisher removed a long cardboard box from his truck.

"I'll set a trap," Fisher said. "I'll leave this box in there; there's glue in it. If he comes back, the trap'll catch him. Just give me a ring and I'll come pick it up ""

"Fine," Gabriel said.

Fisher disappeared in the house again. Pops took a call on his cell phone; a business issue, from the sounds of it.

Gabriel walked to the front door just as Fisher was coming out.

"You're all set, buddy," Fisher said.

Nodding absently, Gabriel pushed open the door, looked down the hallway. He didn't see the water moccasin. But it might have hidden somewhere, eluding Fisher's probing eye.

The thought of going inside and taking a closer look didn't appeal to him at all.

When he returned to the driveway, Pops was writing a check to pay Fisher for the visit.

"Pops, I've got it," Gabriel said.

Pops waved him off. Fisher gave him a receipt, loaded the tools of his trade in the truck, and drove away.

"What next?" Pops asked. "You want me to call someone else, get a second opinion here?"

"I guess it must've slipped out before he got here," Gabriel said. "If he says it's gone, I'll take his word for it. But I'm going to keep my eyes peeled."

What he didn't tell Pops was that he was going to do more than keep his eyes peeled. He was going to search the house from top to bottom. He had to do it for his own peace of mind.

"You want to stay with us for a couple days?" Pops asked.

It wasn't an entirely unattractive offer, but Gabriel would have a tough time regaining Dana's goodwill if he accepted it.

"I'll manage here," he said.

"Our door is always open," Pops said. "You know your mother and I love having you around"

"How is Mom?"

Pops smiled tightly. "We're working it out, son. Speaking of which, I'd like you to come to the house again tonight. Seven o'clock."

"Why?" Gabriel asked, but he thought he knew the answer.

"I'm going to introduce Isaiah to the rest of the family"