Mamba Point Read online

“It was!”

  “Then I’ll tell her about when you went fishing at Beaver Creek and that guy put a worm in your ham-salad sandwich and you ate half of the worm before you noticed.”

  “I ate half the sandwich, but I didn’t eat any of the worm.”

  “That’s not how I heard it.”

  “If you tell her all that stuff, I’ll tell her …,” he trailed off, even though he had all kinds of stuff against me.

  I went down to the car wash to talk to Charlie.

  “How is your friend?” he asked when I got to his station. It took me a moment to realize he was asking about the snake.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. I crouched down and pretended to be interested in the statues while I told him about the other night—the man grabbing me in the dark, and the snake jetting over my shoulder to strike. “I haven’t seen it since then. I hope that guy didn’t k—hurt it.”

  “You would know if it was dead,” he said. “It’s like a part of you now.”

  “If it was part of me, I’d be able to find it.”

  “It will find you,” he assured me. “You hear me now, that snake is a wild animal, not a pet, oh? It will come and go. It is yours, though, and it will return.”

  “It might be hiding,” I reasoned. “I think the snake might have killed that guy. Maybe people are trying to hunt it down.”

  “These men over there,” Charlie said, waving his hand at the car wash. “They’re like the TV news in America. They haven’t said anything about it, and if they don’t know about it, it didn’t happen.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you disappointed the snake did not bite that man?” He squinted at me.

  “I don’t know.” I thought about the hand grabbing my mouth, the punch to the small of my back, and felt a surge of anger. “Maybe a little?”

  “If that man did get bit and did not get help, he’s dead,” Charlie said.

  “I know.” I knew what he was saying, but I had a hard time feeling sorry for the mugger. “Maybe he got bit and did get help?” I wanted him to at least suffer a bit. “Maybe it hurt really bad, and he learned his lesson about grabbing people in the dark.”

  “Maybe so,” he said, but from the look on his face, he didn’t believe it. “You can ask at the W-H-O building if anyone has been treated.” He said each letter instead of calling it the WHO, like Mom did. “They know when someone gets the antidote.”

  “Really?”

  “They make it there, oh.”

  It made sense. If the WHO had vaccines for various diseases, why not antidotes for snakebite? I imagined a lab with beakers bubbling full of mysterious chemicals.

  “My mom works there,” I told him.

  “It’s easy for you, then. She knows who to talk to.”

  “I’m not sure where it is, though.”

  “You go to them,” he said, pointing at the line of taxis waiting for the car wash. “Any one of them will know the way.”

  Mom and Dad never said I could jump in a taxi and cruise around town, but they never said I couldn’t. I waved down the next taxi as soon as it left the wash and asked the driver if he knew where the WHO was. He didn’t.

  “It’s part of the United Nations?” I told him.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. I got in the backseat and waited. The driver didn’t move. “Twenty-five cents, oh,” he said at last.

  I passed him a quarter, trying to explain that in the States we paid after the trip, but I don’t think he cared. He took the quarter and turned down the street, immediately pulling over to pick up two more passengers. They also climbed in back. I had to slide over to the window. Taxis in the States also didn’t pick up extra people. The taxi rumbled on for another half mile or so, then pulled over.

  “There’s the UN,” the driver said.

  “Oh!” I could have walked if I’d known how close it was. I clambered out of the car.

  The UN building was huge and busy. I spent a few minutes wandering down hallways and explaining myself to guards before I found the WHO office. I gave my name to a Liberian woman at the counter. Her name was Rose.

  “My mom just started here? She works in advertising.”

  “Oh, yes! Mrs. Tuttle. She’s our new marketing director.” She picked up the phone and got ready to call. Marketing director—that sounded way better than advertising. Either way, I think she made pamphlets.

  “I also wanted to talk to whoever makes the antidote for snakebites,” I explained. “Do you know where they do that?”

  “Lots of boys want to see the snakes,” she said. She grimaced and shook her head. “I can’t even stand to look at them, but boys love snakes. Some men do, too,” she added with a laugh.

  “What? You actually have snakes here?”

  “How do you think they make the antidote?” she asked. She dropped her voice to a whisper, like she was telling me a big secret. “They milk the snakes for their venom, they take the venom, they give a tiny amount to a goat.” She leaned in, touching my arm. Her nails were long, painted red. “The goat, he learns to fight the venom. He makes the antivenin.” She snapped her fingers, no easy trick with her long fingernails. “They bleed the goat, take out the antivenin, and there’s your antidote.”

  “Wow.”

  She leaned over the counter, pointing down the corridor. “Down there, through the door, to the next building. They keep the snakes there.”

  “Thanks!” I started to head down the hall.

  “Boy!” she said sharply.

  “Huh?”

  She smiled. “Don’t you want to say hi to your mama?”

  * * *

  I did say hi, but didn’t stay long. Mom was in a pile of about 18,000 pamphlets and booklets. She stepped out of the mess to give me a hug. There was a poster on the wall behind her. It showed an African kid smiling and said GET YOUR CHILD VACCINATED FOR DIPHTHERIA. At the bottom, in italics, it pointed out that DIPHTHERIA KILLS. Simple but effective, I thought. Provided the person could read and knew what diphtheria was.

  “Look at you,” she said with a grin. “Getting around Monrovia all by yourself.”

  “It’s not that hard, Mom.”

  “Well, we were worried about you,” she said. “It’s scary, moving to a new country.”

  She saw the look on my face and knew I was dreading her talking about old ’fraidy-cat Linus and his exacerbated condition.

  “I was scared,” she admitted. “It was scary for all of us, at first. But it’s like it was just what you needed to come out of your shell.” She beamed, and that made me blush.

  “Stop being proud of me, Mom. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Never,” she said.

  “Fine.” It did feel good, knowing she saw the difference. I really was the new Linus. What would she say if she knew this was just a pit stop before I went to a building full of snakes?

  “Oh, in case Law forgot to tell you, we’re having a family dinner tonight to meet his friend.”

  “He didn’t forget.”

  “You can bring a friend, too, if you want,” she said. “Matt, or somebody.”

  “I’ll bring somebody,” I said.

  I found the exit Rose told me about, and the small building beyond. I knocked and waited a long time. I was about to give up when the door creaked open and a hippie-looking guy with long blond hair and a gray smock peered out.

  “Hello?”

  “My mom works here. In the building back there.” I gestured with my thumb.

  “Well, she’s not here.” He sounded British, or something. “There’s nobody but me and the snakes.”

  “No, I, um … I actually wanted to see the snakes.” I would ease my way into asking if anybody had been treated for snakebite over the weekend.

  “Well, we don’t exactly do snake tours.”

  “I know, but I figured …” I didn’t know where to go with that. “The lady at the thing told me to come back here and …”

  “The lady at the thing?”

  “Rose?”


  “Oh, Rose sent you.” He nodded and led me into a cramped office.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Linus.”

  “Where’s your double helix?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Just a dumb joke. I’m Rog.”

  A computer was humming, with green numbers scrolling by on the black screen. He saw me looking at it.

  “Chemical analysis,” he explained.

  “For the antidotes?”

  “Antivenins,” he said. “That’s what it’s called when it fights venom. We should probably call it antivenom, but I guess they decided to make it hard.”

  “Why do you make it here?”

  He looked confused. “Because it’s where the snakes are,” he said. “It’s where people are bitten by snakes. There are a dozen deadly snakes in West Africa, mostly elapids—that’s cobras and mambas.”

  “Cassava snakes, too?”

  “Well, those are vipers, but Africa has plenty of those, too. Some people call them cassava snakes, other people call them carpet vipers or puff adders.”

  “We had those in Ohio,” I said, remembering the scoutmaster pointing out a puff adder on a hike. “Those ones aren’t poisonous, though.”

  “Completely different snakes with the same name,” he explained. “They call the American snake an adder as a joke because it acts fierce, but it’s not dangerous. Like calling a kitten a little tiger.”

  “Can I see one?” I remembered Charlie’s description—a snake made of jewels. I wanted to see it for myself. “I mean, one of the real ones?”

  “If I take you back there, you keep your hands in your pockets, all right? No touching anything. These things are not house pets.”

  “I know.”

  He led me to another room, and I felt a blast of cold air.

  “We always have the AC running,” he explained. “If the air is cold, the snakes are sluggish and less dangerous.”

  “What about when the power goes out?”

  “We don’t trust the local power,” he said. “We have a generator.”

  There was a long row of cages, each one about three feet high with a tight-mesh door. He gestured at one. “There’s your viper. Don’t get too close.”

  I could barely see it through the mesh, but it didn’t look that jeweled to me. It was colorful, but short and stout and kind of piggish-looking—nothing like the sleek, graceful mamba. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, I guessed.

  “Did you ever see a green mamba?” Rog asked me. “That’s my favorite.”

  “A green one? No.”

  “You’ve got to see this. It’s gorgeous.” He gestured at another cage. Inside was a snake like mine, but a bright emerald green. It was spectacular.

  “I’ve seen a black one,” I told him.

  “You’re lucky. Those are hard to find. Not that you’d want to meet one.” He gestured at the cage next to the green mamba, and I saw a gloomy-looking, gray-colored mamba coiled up on the floor. I took a step toward it, reaching out to comfort it without even thinking about what I was doing. The mamba lifted its head and looked at me. It looked sad.

  “Hey, keep back!” Rog ordered, reaching out to stop me. “Those things are lightning fast, you know. It’s the hardest to milk.”

  I stopped. The mamba looked at me a bit longer, then slumped back into a lazy coil.

  “They must not like living like this,” I said.

  “I don’t like keeping them like this,” he admitted. “It saves lives, though.”

  “Did you save any lives lately?” I hoped my question sounded casual.

  “Not for a few weeks. Most clinics around here have one or two vials to keep a bite victim alive until they get to the hospital, then we ship them some more. I haven’t heard anything for a while, at least not in Monrovia.”

  “Why don’t all the clinics have gallons of the stuff?”

  “It’s expensive to make, and doesn’t keep forever.”

  That made sense.

  “So, how do you become a snake guy?” I wondered.

  “Why, is that a line of work you’re interested in?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I didn’t even know there were snake guys until now.”

  “Well, I got interested in them back home, in Australia, when I was a kid. I always liked the buggers. So when I went to college, I studied reptiles.”

  I wondered if this guy had a kaseng, too, or if he was just weird about snakes.

  “Do you have any as pets?” I asked him. It seemed like the best way to edge into asking about mysterious connections.

  “Well, my wife—that’s Rose, who you met—she’d never let me keep one in the house, so I have to be happy with this lot.” He waved his hand at the cages.

  “Wait. You’re from Australia and your name is Roger and you have a college degree in snakes? Is it a PhD?”

  “In herpetology. Why?”

  “You’re Roger Farrell, PhD!”

  “Guilty as charged.” He held up his hands like I should put on the cuffs. “Um, what am I guilty of?”

  “I read your book.”

  “I’ve always wanted to meet someone who actually read that book,” he said.

  “Well, I only read parts,” I admitted.

  “Well, that still puts you in very exclusive company, with my mum and my PhD advisor. I’m not sure either of them read the whole thing, either, actually.” He was a lot different than I imagined. For one thing, he really did know a lot about snakes, and he really did come face to face with them, all the time. He was also cool. “All right, one more question, then I’ve got to shove you out of here so I can do some work.”

  I had a million questions but went with the first that came to mind.

  “How do you know if a snake is a boy or a girl?”

  “It’s not easy, even for professional snake guys like me,” he said as he led me to the door. “You have to probe their cloaca, and that’s not any easier to do than it sounds. Do you want to know my trick?” He made sure the door was locked and headed for the main building.

  “What?”

  “I turn on a rugby game and see if the snake watches it with me.”

  It was easy to find my way home after Rog pointed me toward UN Drive. It wasn’t that far, so I decided to walk. Charlie was putting things away and closing up shop for the night when I passed him.

  “Did you find the W-H-O?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Did you know they used live snakes for that?” I told him how they made it—milking the snakes and giving the venom to goats and somehow extracting the antivenin from the goat’s blood.

  “It’s not much different in the bush,” he said. “Some zoes—wise men—they burn snake heads. They cut themselves good.” He pretended to cut his own arm, using one hand as a make-believe knife. “They rub in the ashes of those snake heads, so the ash gets into their blood. It makes them safe from snakebites for many years.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Yes. It’s just prevention, though. It’s not a cure. The zoes have no cure for snakebite.” He shouldered his sack. “Hear me now, those men can’t help you once you are bit, no matter what they say.”

  “Hey, do you have a wife and kids?” I asked him.

  “No, I live all alone.”

  “You could come have dinner with my family.” Mom said I could have a friend over, after all. She didn’t say it had to be Matt, or even a kid.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Mom, I brought a new friend over,” I announced when I came in. “His name is Charlie.”

  “Fine. You boys wash your—oh!” Mom stepped out of the kitchen and saw Charlie towering over her.

  “‘Charlie’ is actually my job. I am Sekou,” he said, offering a hand. He shook her hand the American way, no snap at the end. “Mr. Linus was kind to invite me.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “My name is Joan.”

  “I’d like to give you a present.” He opened his sack
and looked through some of the masks and statues, probably deciding that the masks were too freaky-looking and the statues were too, well, anatomically correct. He found a simple mask with a pointed chin and a friendly but goofy smile that made it look almost like a cartoon character. There was long, woolly hair coming down either side.

  “This is for your husband,” he said. “It is a Dan mask for settling arguments between husbands and wives.” He put it to his own face and talked in a funny, high voice. “It makes the man see things from the woman’s eyes, oh? Then there is no more fighting.”

  She took it, laughing. “How do I get him to wear it?”

  “That is why the Dan husbands still argue with the Dan wives,” he admitted.

  “Oh, I like you, Sekou.” Mom held the mask, wondering what to do with it, but Sekou was way ahead of her. He produced a wooden stand and handed it to her.

  “There’s a story about a woman who tied it to her husband’s face in his sleep …,” he started, but Mom stopped him.

  “Please save it for dinner? I have to get back to the kitchen.”

  Charlie nodded and excused himself to go wash up.

  I followed Mom into the kitchen. “Oh, Mom, what’s for dinner?”

  “Puke and bees,” she said. Whenever we had pork and beans, Law and I used to stare each other down, asking, “Are you enjoying that puke and bees?” and saying, “Mmm, I sure am loving my puke and bees.” It drove Mom crazy, but eventually it became part of our family vocabulary. This time it wasn’t really pork and beans, at least not like you get from a can. It was a really good meal Mom made with shredded pork and pinto beans on rice.

  “Sekou doesn’t eat puke,” I said. “I mean, he doesn’t eat pork. He’s a Muslim.”

  “Oh.” She rummaged through the cabinet and found an extra can of pinto beans. “I’ll make some with extra bees, no puke.”

  Law and Eileen showed up after everyone else was sitting down and waiting.

  “Fashionably late, huh?” Dad asked. Law shrugged in response.

  “Sorry,” Eileen said in a small voice. She sat down and took a small scoop of rice, topping it with even less of the pork stuff. She took the tiniest of bites, chewing each one to oblivion.

  Sekou made it easy for her. He told us about the woman who tied the mask to her husband’s face, and how he tricked her back by pretending the mask could not be removed. Playing the woman, he nagged her and harassed her until the wife begged a zoe to change him back to a man.