I could afford better, but what’s the damn point? There’s no spouse to be disappointed by this failing trailer. There are no kids or grandkids to care about the overturned milk crate I use as a step to my front door. There are no friends who will be stopping by and thus leave me embarrassed by my lawn chair furnishings or the piles of this life shaping hills as tall as the direction allows. It’s a waste of time to live better when you’ve got no one to care for and no one to care for you.
I’ve been here in Southern Arizona five years now. For all the trees we had in Breathed, here there are saguaros. For all the grass, there is sand. For all the hills, there are rocky peaks, and for all the hollers, there are canyons. There is no river or pond or deer drinking hole to be found. There is an aboveground pool. The last person who swam in it came down with some sort of parasite. I thought at first they said he came down with paradise, so I took a swim myself, diving down beneath the empty beer cans floating on the surface but finding nothing but a dead snake in the bottom.
Did you know that the hottest desert in all of the United States is right here in Arizona? The Sonoran Desert. I call it The Son That Ran. I suppose it’s that running son that has made me settle here. It’s a different heat from Ohio, though. Dry. Less humid. But as long as it makes me sweat, I don’t much give a good goddamn how the flames ripen.
There has never been great wealth in trailer parks, but King Cactus, with its royal moniker, seems particularly spent. It certainly is a far cry from the house I grew up in.
Kettle Lane ended with my house, a big square thing of brick in a tepid brown. At each side, a Victorian learned conservatory full of wicker and vines. It was a house that sat proud, seemingly thrilled by its own existence and the ivy creeping up its sides.
Dad was kneeling in the freshly cut yard with our dog Granny. They were both looking at the small snake Dad held in his hands.
I hollered to Dad, but he didn’t hear me. I was about to call him again, but the boy grabbed my arm and urged me to wait.
“Let’s see what he does with the snake.”
“Why?” I shrugged out of his hot grip.
“You can tell a lot about a man by what he does with a snake.”
Dad allowed the small snake to slip turns through his fingers until Granny barked. The snake hissed toward the sound as Dad stood. He walked to the back of the house, keeping the snake rather close to his chest before releasing it into the dense woods bordering our backyard.
“Well?” I turned to the boy. “It wasn’t nothin’ but a harmless snake anyways. Looked to be a garter.”
“A snake that could harm you, you don’t have much choice to kill. You wouldn’t be able to leave a cobra in your sock drawer. But a snake that is no threat will greatly define the man who decides to kill it anyways.”
“Weren’t you a snake once? If you are the devil, that is.”
“I’ve been called a snake, yes. But haven’t you ever been called something without having actually been it?”
I shrugged my shoulders and hollered to Dad until he turned from the woods.
Suddenly the boy started laughing. I looked down to see Granny licking his toes and told him her name.
“Why do you call her Granny?” He went to his knees and started scratching the sides of her neck.
“Any other name but Granny would be too young for her. She was born old and gray. Besides, don’t she look like somebody’s granny?”
She stood no taller than our shins. A shaggy mutt with a rickety bark that sounded like a horse and buggy. She had the habit of squinting her eyes like everything was too far away even when it was right in front of her. She always seemed to be searching for her glasses, but like any granny, she couldn’t quite remember where she’d put them last. She’d look up at you, seeming to ask, Do you remember where I put them?
Her fur, more like hair, was longest at the back of her head, where it rolled and swirled and looked like she had it tied in a bun. It was hard not to see her in a schoolmarm dress, a brooch glistening at her collar, a crocheted shawl over her shoulders.
She barked and nuzzled up into his neck until he fell back with her tongue lapping his cheeks, her tail wagging over him and his laughter. At that moment, he was just a boy. That laugh was so innocent, you felt like the worst it had ever done was to love a falling leaf.
I look back and think of all the ways he wasn’t the devil in that moment. The devil would break a dog’s neck, not cradle it in his own. The devil would have a mouth comparable to a crate of knives, not a mouth with teeth that held the curves of marshmallows. I think of all the devils I’ve seen in my long life. I know now how brief the innocent, how permanent the wicked.
I looked toward Dad, still walking from the woods, on the way occasionally stopping to look up at the sky as if it were asking something of him and he was listening.