“I caught this one on the oth­er side of Hid­den Hills,” Bo said, bang­ing his fist on a plas­tic stor­age tub in the back of his pick­up truck. Inside, a rat­tlesnake big enough to swal­low my arm struck the tub’s translu­cent wall, spray­ing ven­om all over it.

I jumped back.

“Don’t wor­ry,” Bo said. “I taped down the lid.” I eyed the tub war­i­ly while Bo picked up a plas­tic shoe­box. “Here, look at this.” 

Cov­ered with goose­bumps, I watched three shoe­strings with dia­mond-shaped heads and con­i­cal tails crawl around inside.

“Baby rat­tlers,” he said. “They’re dead­ly. They don’t know how to con­trol their ven­om glands. They dump the whole load when they bite.”

A few days after we moved into Hid­den Hills, a rat­tlesnake crawled up our dri­ve­way to say hi. When I told the man next door about our unwel­come vis­i­tor, he laughed rue­ful­ly. “They’re all over the neigh­bor­hood,” he said. He told me to call Bo Slyapich, a rat­tlesnake wran­gler extra­or­di­naire, who cap­tures and relo­cates rattlesnakes.

I hired him to assess our property’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. “You’ve pur­chased a Four Sea­sons resort for rat­tlesnakes,” he said after inspect­ing our lot. “Ample ground­cov­er for hid­ing out. Patch­es of hard­scape for sun­bathing. Plen­ty of mice, rats, and gophers for snacks, and your swim­ming pool makes a nice water­ing hole. When the fire con­trol peo­ple mow the brush on the vacant lot behind your land, scores of rat­tlers will speed-roll into Ken’s Din­er and take up res­i­dence for the summer.”

Over­reg­u­lat­ed Cal­i­for­nia requires real estate sell­ers to dis­close prox­im­i­ty to elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields, fun­gus, mold, nuclear radi­a­tion, radon, methane, and reg­is­tered sex offend­ers, but inex­plic­a­bly state law­mak­ers don’t con­sid­er teem­ing nests of poi­so­nous vipers haz­ardous enough to make the list, so I didn’t dis­cov­er the rat­tlesnake prob­lem until after I bought the place.

“I can’t have rat­tlesnakes crawl­ing all over my yard,” I told Bo. “I’ve got grand­kids. My dog, Zoey. What can I do?”

“Clear away the ground cov­er. Hire a pest con­trol ser­vice to clean out the food sup­ply. Install a rat­tlesnake fence.”

I hired a bush­whack­er to remove the brush. Hydrex killed off the rodents. Four guys from St. Patrick’s Fenc­ing spent three days installing a three-feet-high fine-meshed fence buried one foot in the ground. They assured me a rat­tlesnake couldn’t climb over it, slith­er through it, or bur­row under it.

I felt safe until Bo came to take a look. “Good work,” he said. “That’ll keep most of them out.”

“Most of them?”

“No prop­er­ty is com­plete­ly snake-proof. Teach your grand­chil­dren to be watch­ful, and they’ll be fine. Zoey’s your prob­lem. Dogs treat rat­tlesnakes like chew toys. The vet can give her shots, but a bite to the face is still usu­al­ly fatal. Your best bet is to train her to stay away from rattlesnakes.”

“How do I do that?”

Bo hand­ed me a busi­ness card. “Rat­tlesnake Avoid­ance Train­ing,” it said. “Humane, safe, and effective.”

Think­ing we were going hik­ing, Zoey dog-grinned at me as we drove to her train­ing class over a wind­ing road in Mal­ibu Canyon. We parked under Cal­i­for­nia live oaks and walked over to a pic­nic table. As we reg­is­tered, a fright­ened black Lab passed by us, strain­ing with all his might to get to his car, his own­er strug­gling to hang on to his leash.

A woman in kha­ki work clothes pet­ted Zoey and sweet-talked her before clip­ping on a shock col­lar. I’m against train­ing ani­mals with pain, but when I enrolled, the train­er explained that the col­lar deliv­ered a low-lev­el shock that would cause no last­ing dam­age. “Remem­ber,” she said, “it’s a mat­ter of life and death.” 

The course was the size of a base­ball infield. There were rat­tlers coiled at first base, sec­ond, and third. The snake han­dler had attached a hard plas­tic bub­ble over each snake’s head so it could strike, but not bite.

The train­er led Zoey to first base. Tail wag­ging, she ran right up to a furi­ous­ly rat­tling snake for a sniff. As it struck at her face, the train­er hit the shock but­ton. Zoey yelped, jumped in the air, regained her foot­ing, and des­per­ate­ly scram­bled backward. 

The train­er pulled Zoey to the snake on sec­ond base. She approached it war­i­ly, but still got too close and took a sec­ond shock.

Some Cal­i­for­nia Dia­mond­backs don’t rat­tle before they strike. “Dar­win­ism at work,” the train­er said. Zoey had to learn to avoid the silent rat­tlers by their scent. A snake that didn’t rat­tle lay on third base. When Zoey got close enough to pick up its odor, she retreated. 

The ulti­mate test was the last step in the process. The train­er had set up two par­al­lel chain-link fences five feet apart to cre­ate a grass cor­ri­dor about twen­ty feet long. The snake han­dler, a guy with greasy black hair, scars all over his arms, and a droop­ing left eye (what­ev­er they paid him it wasn’t enough), dropped the biggest rat­tler I’d ever seen in the cen­ter of the cor­ri­dor. They put Zoey at one end and told me to stand at the oth­er. “Call your dog,” the train­er said.

“Come, Zoey!”

Vis­i­bly dis­tressed, Zoey looked at me long­ing­ly, but wouldn’t budge no mat­ter how enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly I called her.

“Smart dog,” the train­er said. “You’re good to go.”

When P.D. came along four years lat­er, he was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. He has such high tol­er­ance for pain the train­er had to adjust the volt­age meter to the max­i­mum before he got the mes­sage, but after two trips through the infield and three heavy jolts, he was as rat­tlesnake averse as Zoey.

His prob­lem was the grass cor­ri­dor. When I called him, he dashed toward me and tried to jump over the rat­tler. It struck at his bel­ly and the train­er zapped him. The shock knocked him side­ways. He fell, strug­gled to his feet, and ran into my arms.

They set him up again. He ran for me and took anoth­er jolt. 

On his third try, he hes­i­tat­ed, look­ing back and forth from me to the snake, then sprint­ed across the grass, and suf­fered the blow again. This time when he reached me, he bur­rowed his head in my chest, pant­i­ng hard and whining.

I want­ed to quit, but the train­er insist­ed. They pulled him back to the head of the cor­ri­dor. He stood at the line, trem­bling all over, still whin­ing, look­ing at me, wait­ing for my com­mand. I knew what he would do if I called him. 

Fight­ing back tears, I walked around the fenc­ing, took off the shock col­lar, and hugged him. “That’s enough,” I said. “I can’t do it to him again.”

Back at the pic­nic table, the train­er told me she thought P.D. had learned to avoid rat­tlesnakes even though he failed the last test. “It’s rare,” she said, “but I’ve seen it before, a smart dog so faith­ful to his own­er he’ll run to the snake when called no mat­ter how much it hurts him.”

Zoey and I have a spe­cial rela­tion­ship. She loves me above all liv­ing crea­tures, but the only way they could have dragged her across that big snake to join me would have been to hitch her leash to a Mack truck.

P.D. is devot­ed to my wife. Before that day, I liked him, but our bond wasn’t overpowering.

On the dri­ve home, he lay on the front seat beside me, exhaust­ed. I stroked his neck where the shock col­lar had deliv­ered the juice. It was still warm. His yel­low-brown eyes looked up at me, trust­ing, loy­al, coura­geous. I won­dered then, and I won­der now, how I could be so lucky. 

Post Script: After eight years in Hid­den Hills nei­ther dog has been bit­ten, and only one rat­tlesnake has ever made it through the fence. Iron­i­cal­ly, my grand­daugh­ter found him in our back yard the day after I fin­ished writ­ing this post. The snake fence guys return on Mon­day, and Zoey and P.D. are enrolled in refresh­er cours­es in July. 

Fifty years ago, I was sit­ting on the back stoop of our house on Park Road in Crozet when the sound of shat­ter­ing glass pierced the still­ness of a sum­mer night. I looked across the side yard at my neighbor’s home. His storm door’s bro­ken pane glint­ed in the moon­light. A vol­ley of angry shouts came from inside.

Maynard’s drunk again, I thought.

I stared at the house uneasi­ly. May­nard was a binge drinker, sober for long stretch­es, then blind drunk for days on end. Late­ly, his binges had become vio­lent. He drove his fist through his bed­room wall a few months ago. Bust­ed up a cof­fee table dur­ing the last one. Now the storm door. I wor­ried that his whiskey-rage might esca­late to attacks on his wife, Birdie, or their two lit­tle boys. 

There was more shout­ing, much loud­er than the first round.

Curs­ing under my breath, I stepped down off the stoop and walked over to their car­port. The house was qui­et by the time I reached the storm door and looked inside.

The kitchen/family room was a small rec­tan­gu­lar box, the sink and appli­ances to the right of the door, a sit­ting area and tele­vi­sion to the left, the kitchen table across the room. May­nard and Birdie sat side by side at the table, fac­ing me, their backs against the far wall. They were in their thir­ties. He was aver­age height, built like a tree stump with a round bald head and thick red eye­brows that came togeth­er over his nose. Birdie was as stocky as May­nard with a per­ox­ide blonde bee-hive and a dou­ble chin.

“You guys all right?” I said.

“Come on in and see for your­self,” Birdie said.

I opened the storm door care­ful­ly so as not to get cut and stepped inside.

May­nard was shirt­less. His arm rest­ed on the table in a pool of blood, a deep wound on the meaty inside of his fore­arm run­ning from his wrist to his elbow, a half-emp­ty bot­tle of Jim Beam beside it. In Maynard’s oth­er hand he held a shot­gun, its butt propped on his thigh, the bar­rel point­ed toward the ceiling.

The two lit­tle boys, eight and ten, stub­by lit­tle repli­cas of their par­ents, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the tele­vi­sion, star­ing wide-eyed at Maynard.

Smirk­ing, Birdie took a deep drag on a Marl­boro and casu­al­ly blew smoke across the room. “Rammed his fist through the storm door,” she said. “Damned near cut his arm off so’s he could show me what a big man he is.”

“Shut the hell up,” May­nard said. He lift­ed the shot­gun off his thigh with one hand and placed the mouth of the bar­rel under Birdie’s chin. 

Her blue eyes widened. “What you doin, May­nard?” she said softly. 

“Fix­in to blow your head off.” May­nard shoved the bar­rel upward hard, bang­ing the back of Birdie’s head against the wall, and cocked the ham­mer with his thumb.

Birdie winced. “Go ahead,” she said, through clenched teeth. “Pull the trig­ger you hate me so much.” A tear slid down her cheek.

The boys whimpered.

I swal­lowed hard and took a step toward them. “May­nard. Put the gun down.”

May­nard didn’t look at me. Hold­ing the shot­gun tight under Birdie’s chin, he glared at her, his hand steady, the mus­cles in his face tight as wire.

Scared breath­less that a sud­den move­ment might set him off, I crossed the room slow­ly and stopped on my side of the table. “Don’t do it, May­nard. Please. Think about the boys.”

His angry eyes fixed on Birdie, he didn’t even glance at me.

No one moved, the only sound the boys’ qui­et mewl­ing. Five sec­onds passed. Ten.

A crooked smile crept across Maynard’s face. He low­ered the shot­gun, propped it against the wall, and took a swig of Jim Beam.

I let out a long breath.

Birdie’s hand trem­bled as she brought her cig­a­rette to her mouth. Blink­ing back tears, she French inhaled a cloud of smoke through her nose and blew it out again. “You a piece a work,” she said under her breath. 

It took me a full minute to build up the courage to go around the table and get the shot­gun. May­nard made no move to stop me, thank God.

Stand­ing by the sink, I broke open the sin­gle-shot twelve gauge with numb hands and clum­si­ly with­drew a shell from its cham­ber. Num­ber 5 shot, designed for small game, squir­rels and rab­bits, but pow­er­ful enough at point blank range to blow Birdie’s face off. She’d have been brain-dead before her body hit the floor.

I put the shell in my pock­et and called the res­cue squad on the kitchen wall phone. Light-head­ed and nau­seous, I hung the phone on its hook and sat down at the table to pull myself togeth­er before I called the police.

The three of us said noth­ing. Birdie smoked down her Marl­boro and lit anoth­er. May­nard fin­ished off the whiskey. The edges of the oval-shaped pool of blood under his fore­arm crept out­ward across the pine-wood table-top. The boys turned on the tele­vi­sion and stared blankly at an episode of Pet­ti­coat Junc­tion, its canned back­ground laugh­ter jan­gling my frayed nerves.

When my hands stopped shak­ing, I stood and picked up the phone.

“Don’t call the law,” Birdie said.

I looked at her.

“It’s a fam­i­ly mat­ter,” she said. “It’s between me and May­nard. It’s no one else’s business.” 

I dis­agreed. In a deter­mined con­fi­dent voice, she argued with me for the next five min­utes while May­nard stared at the emp­ty bot­tle and said nothing.

“It don’t involve you,” she said. “Stay out of it. Leave it be.”

The ambu­lance pulled up in the driveway.

“Don’t tell the res­cue squad boys,” Birdie said. “Don’t tell the sheriff’s men. Don’t tell nobody.”

The EMTs ban­daged Maynard’s wound, marched him out to their van, and drove him to the hospital.

Many of the posts on this blog recount expe­ri­ences I’m proud of. This is not one of them. I didn’t tell the EMTs what May­nard had done. I didn’t call the police. I didn’t tell any­one except my wife, Cindy. 

Most peo­ple liked May­nard when he was sober. We told our­selves for­give­ness and friend­ship were the best med­i­cine for his alco­holism, but I knew bet­ter. He need­ed to be hit between the eyes with a two-by-four, “tough love” they call it today, but I didn’t have the strength of char­ac­ter to do it. No one around him did. So he kept right on drinking.

The man put a gun to his wife’s head, and I did noth­ing. Some­how I ratio­nal­ized my behav­ior back then, but as I sit here writ­ing this, I can’t under­stand it and I’m ashamed.

Cindy and I didn’t mix with May­nard and Birdie after that. Friends back home told me they split up about ten years after we moved away to Char­lottesville. If they’re still liv­ing today, they’re in their eight­ies and their sons are push­ing six­ty. The boys were nice kids. I hope they turned out okay, but it would be a mir­a­cle if they did. 

In Chap­ter 18 of The Judas Mur­ders, Deputy Toby Vess opens a bro­ken storm door to find Grover Sipe at his kitchen table press­ing a shot­gun under his wife’s chin while their two lit­tle boys cow­er in the cor­ner. Toby dis­arms Grover. Grover’s wife begs him to let Grover off. Toby arrests him, locks him up in the coun­ty jail, and calls Social Ser­vices to see after Grover’s wife and lit­tle boys.

It was a sat­is­fy­ing scene to spin out. I wish I’d writ­ten it that way fifty years ago.

Post Script: For obvi­ous rea­sons, I changed the names of my neigh­bors in this post and in The Judas Mur­ders.  

In these trou­bled times, mem­o­ry reels of my mother’s father keep rolling through my mind. He lived through the 1918 influen­za pan­dem­ic in Keo­kee, Vir­ginia, a coal-min­ing town where kids call their grand­fa­ther Papaw.

When I was lit­tle, Papaw and Nan­ny lived near our house on route 60 just west of York­town. One of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries is danc­ing with him in their liv­ing room to songs like But­tons and Bows and Swing­ing on a Star played on a crank-up Vic­tro­la. He picked me up and waltzed me around the room with soft laugh­ter that came from deep in his chest.

When I turned surly and lazy in my teen years, he tried to lift me out of my funk with heart­felt talks, but I wouldn’t lis­ten to him. I wouldn’t lis­ten to anyone.

After we moved away to White Hall and I out­grew my sour atti­tude, Papaw and Nan­ny came to vis­it us. I worked on the Maupin farm that sum­mer. On a hot as hell day we baled hay in a field beside the par­son­age. When I came home at quit­ting time, Papaw met me at the door. “I saw you out there, boy,” he said, smil­ing. “For a long time I thought you wouldn’t amount to any­thing, but it looks like I was wrong.” That moment meant a lot to me then. It still does.

When he retired from his job as a car­pen­ter for the Navy’s Cheatham Annex, he and Nan­ny moved to St. Cloud, Flori­da. On UVA’s spring break, I rolled down to Day­tona Beach for the annu­al col­lege stu­dent wild times. Mid­week, I took a break from the crazi­ness and drove over to St. Cloud.

That night after sup­per Papaw sat in a rock­ing chair on the porch, smok­ing his pipe, and we talked eas­i­ly for a while. Then he fell silent. I felt some­thing heavy com­ing, so I kept quiet.

He cleared his throat. “Your mom­ma told me how good you’re doing in school,” he said. “She says it’s because you’re smart, but I sus­pect it’s got more to do with hard work.” He paused. Crick­ets sang in the bermu­da grass. A car coast­ed down the street. He looked over at me. “You try real hard now, but that hasn’t always been your nature.”

I looked away, uncom­fort­able about the times I’d dis­ap­point­ed him.

“I want you to promise me you won’t slide back,” he said. “Promise me you’ll always try hard.”

I kept my head down, not sure I would keep such a promise. He wait­ed me out. “I’ll try,” I final­ly said in a small voice.

He stared at me for a few moments, then resumed smok­ing and rock­ing. “I’m proud of you, boy,” he said gently.

I didn’t know it then, but some­time before we had that talk the doc­tors found can­cer in his knee. They want­ed to ampu­tate his leg. He wouldn’t agree to it. Over the next two years the can­cer metastasized.

He had only a few months left when my broth­er and I drove down to St. Cloud. Papaw didn’t know we were com­ing. He was sit­ting in the liv­ing room talk­ing to my uncle when we walked in. He grabbed my arm, pulled me down to him, and pressed his cheek against mine. “I thought I’d nev­er see you again,” he choked out. It was the only time I ever saw him cry.

He took his last breath in bed at home with Mom by his side. Nan­ny had lost her will to live and had been hos­pi­tal­ized short­ly before his death. She died a month later.

Research­ing my mother’s fam­i­ly tree decades after they passed away, I came across doc­u­men­ta­tion of a mar­riage in Keo­kee in 1917 between a man with Papaw’s name and Una Mae Col­lier. Nanny’s name was Martha Alice Huff, so I thought there had to be some mis­take, but the records called out Papaw’s cor­rect birth date and occu­pa­tion as a coal min­er. I dug deep­er and found a birth reg­istry that said this cou­ple had a son, Ralph, in 1918. The details about the father fit Papaw.

These records sur­prised me, but it was the death cer­tifi­cates that took my breath away. The infant son died ear­ly in 1918. Una Mae per­ished in Octo­ber of that year dur­ing the sec­ond wave of the influen­za pan­dem­ic. She was 18 years old. Papaw lost a sis­ter two weeks lat­er. The fol­low­ing year his moth­er fell prey to the third wave of the virus.

Papaw’s father sur­vived the pan­dem­ic and strug­gled on for a decade, but he couldn’t live with the grief. The coroner’s report list­ed his cause of death as a self-inflict­ed gun­shot wound to the head.

Anoth­er death cer­tifi­cate revealed one last heart-break­ing blow. After Papaw found Nan­ny and some­how sum­moned the strength to rebuild his life, their third child, Jack, died of spinal meningitis.

None of this made sense to me. I couldn’t rec­on­cile these dev­as­tat­ing tragedies with Papaw’s steady opti­mism. The man I had known and loved was con­tent, serene, happy.

Mom was in her eight­ies when I asked her about the records I had found. “Is any of this true?”

“It’s all true. Dad­dy nev­er spoke of it, but peo­ple in Keo­kee told me about those days. They said Una Mae was his child­hood sweet­heart. She and Dad­dy had only been mar­ried a lit­tle over a year when she and the baby died.” She shook her head sad­ly. “Dad­dy was real close to his mom­ma, too.”

I asked about Papaw’s father. “I was a lit­tle girl when he killed him­self. I remem­ber Dad­dy cry­ing about it and say­ing over and over again, ‘He final­ly went and did it.’”

“How did Papaw live with so much loss?”

“I don’t know, but he kept going some­how.” She gazed past me into the dis­tance. “Dad­dy was real strong.”

I wait­ed a respect­ful time and then said, “Tell me about Jack.”

Mom said her broth­er came down with a rag­ing fever. The doc­tor told them there was lit­tle hope of sur­vival and quar­an­tined the fam­i­ly in the house. Papaw nev­er left Jack’s bed­side, wip­ing him down with ice and squeez­ing cold water from a cloth into his mouth, but the fever wouldn’t break. He died at dawn, a few days after his eleventh birthday.

“You remind me of Jack some­times,” Mom said in an off-hand­ed way. “You resem­ble him some, and he was good in school, like you.”

That casu­al com­ment sank in slowly.

When our first grand­child was born, her par­ents asked me what I want­ed her to call me. We live in Cal­i­for­nia, about as far away geo­graph­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly from Appalachia as you can get. Some­times peo­ple look at me fun­ny when one of my grand­kids calls me Papaw, but it always gives me a warm feel­ing inside.

Dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, I’m some­times fear­ful about the future and anx­ious for my fam­i­ly. I can only speak to my chil­dren and grand­kids from a dis­tance or tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, and the CDC says hug­ging them might kill me. My clos­est social con­tacts are Drs. Fau­ci and Birx. The high point of the day is walk­ing the dogs while decked out in haz­mat mask and gloves. Ruth­less­ly shel­ter­ing in place, I’m simul­ta­ne­ous­ly scared and bored.

That’s how I feel in my weak moments, but most of the time I’m okay. I have an advan­tage. When my spir­it fal­ters, I call to mind the promise I made, and I try hard to meet the stan­dard set a cen­tu­ry ago by the Papaw who came before me. Despite all his suf­fer­ing, he was a good old guy with an easy smile, unfail­ing­ly kind and patient. I nev­er saw him angry; I nev­er heard him raise his voice; and I only saw him cry once. When he was alive, I took his good humor for grant­ed. Today, I’m inspired by it.