Mamba Point Read online

  I didn’t try to sort out the voices after that. I shook the snake as I went down the hall. It tried to wrestle free, whipping at me with its tail, coiling around my leg and constricting. It opened its mouth and hissed again, spraying me with venom. Part of me knew the snake was just a dumb animal and probably didn’t know what it had done or why I was being mean to it, but I also didn’t care. I wanted to punish it. I felt cruel.

  I went through my parents’ bedroom to the balcony. Some of the partygoers were out there smoking.

  “Hey, man, what is that?”

  “Holy cow, is that a snake?”

  “Is it real? You’d better get rid of that thing before someone gets bit.”

  I pulled the snake off me and heaved it with both hands over the railing and down to the rocks below. The snake flopped around as it dropped, trying to find something to grab on to and failing. I felt a twinge, like before—I could see through the snake’s eyes for a second, but all I saw was darkness.

  Eileen called the embassy and told them what happened. They said they’d send someone.

  Jonas and I helped Law downstairs. He was conscious but having trouble walking or forming words.

  “I say, oh, that boy is drunk,” a Liberian woman said. She was hanging out with the guard.

  “No he isn’t,” I told her. “He was bit by a mamba.”

  She looked away, rolling her eyes. Maybe she didn’t believe me.

  A marine came by in an embassy car, screeching to a halt. “I’m taking somebody to the clinic?”

  “This guy,” I told him. We helped Law into the backseat. I got in next to him and Eileen slid in on the other side, squishing Law between us. Jonas rode shotgun. A group of kids crowded around.

  “Somebody watch our apartment!” I yelled as we peeled out. I hadn’t locked the door.

  The marine went up UN Drive and through the main gates, then along the winding road to the clinic. A half-dozen kids were already there by the time the car pulled up—they’d taken the shortcut through the back gate by the pool.

  The clinic was locked. The guard had called the doctor, but he wasn’t there yet. We waited another ten endless minutes, some of the kids whispering to each other: somebody knew where the doctor was, and somebody else asked if we should stretch Law out and lift his feet or his head, or something.

  “We’re supposed to cut him and suck out the venom,” somebody else suggested.

  “Nobody’s going to cut him,” Eileen said. She tried to get Law’s attention but couldn’t get him to focus. “You’ll be okay,” she told him.

  The doctor came at last. He opened the door a crack but stopped everyone from crowding in. “Just one or two of you,” he barked.

  Everyone backed up.

  “I’m his brother,” I explained.

  “Are you family?” he asked Eileen as she tried to follow us in.

  “Law would want her here,” I told him. He let her in.

  We helped Law stretch out on the doctor’s table. I grabbed his feet and pulled them over so he looked more comfortable. Eileen took a tissue and wiped the drool off his face.

  “How long ago was he bitten?” the doctor asked.

  “Maybe half an hour?” Eileen guessed.

  “Where?”

  “You can see the b …” She couldn’t get the word “bites” out but gestured at Law’s face and neck.

  “Nowhere else?”

  She shook her head.

  “That is the worst place to get bitten, but at least he’s getting treatment immediately.” Immediately? I thought. Immediately after you finally got here, that is.

  The doctor started cleaning the first bite wound, explaining to Eileen how to do it so she could take over.

  “We have antivenin for all the venomous snakes of West Africa here,” the doctor said. “But I have to make sure I use the right one. Do you know what kind of snake it—”

  “It was a black mamba,” I said, cutting him off.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Because, you know, they’re not actually black.”

  “It was a black mamba,” I said again. “I saw its mouth.”

  “Okay.” He disappeared for several minutes. Eileen kept wiping Law’s bite wounds long after they were cleaned.

  “The wrong antivenin can actually hurt, besides not helping,” the doctor explained when he came back with a handful of tiny bottles, each filled with translucent liquid. I thought he’d give Law a shot, but he fixed up an IV drip in his arm and loaded the antivenin into the bag. He gave a few instructions to Eileen but didn’t ask me to help.

  “Can I do anything?” I asked.

  “Call your parents.” He pointed at a phone.

  Of course.

  Mom and Dad had left a number on the fridge, but I hadn’t thought to grab it on the way out. I had to call the embassy operator and ask him to find the number for the Firestone plantation hotel. He was able to connect me directly. There was a low, faraway ring for a long time.

  I was afraid nobody would answer. I didn’t even know how to call again if nobody did.

  Someone finally answered, and I yelled my parents’ names a few times before she understood. She had to go get them—they didn’t have phones in the rooms.

  At last my mother’s voice, barely audible, came over the line. “Hello?”

  “Law’s been bit by a snake,” I croaked. “He’s in bad shape.” She couldn’t hear, and I had to repeat it. I had to shout it. “Larry is hurt!”

  “Larry is hurt,” I heard her repeat to someone—probably Dad. I heard them talking back and forth, then Darryl was on the phone.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I explained as best I could—there was a snake; it bit Law. It was definitely a mamba. He was at the embassy clinic getting antivenin.

  “Have them meet us at JFK,” the doctor said quietly. JFK was the Liberian hospital. I didn’t know why it was named for an American president.

  “We’re going to JFK,” I shouted into the phone, just before the connection broke off.

  Eileen stood by Law, running her hands in his hair. I remembered when he first grew it out, tossing his locks as he practiced his new name.

  “What happened to the snake?” Eileen asked me absently.

  “Oh, I killed it,” I told her. “The stupid thing is dead.”

  “Good.”

  Hospitals in the States usually smell like antiseptic, but the Liberian hospital smelled like sickness. Matt said once that JFK meant “just for killing.” I hoped it was better than its reputation. The embassy doctor seemed to trust it, but maybe it was our only option.

  There were other people in the waiting room: women in labor, children wincing and holding limbs. There was a man with a tumor on his head; he was touching it gingerly with his fingers, like he might push it back into place. We rushed right past all of them. We didn’t have to wait.

  Law didn’t have his own room, but he did have curtains around him for privacy. The doctors there put him on another IV drip, with more vials of the antidote. I thought briefly of the snakes in cages at the WHO. I didn’t feel sorry for them anymore.

  The embassy doctor was having a low, serious conversation with the hospital doctor, who did not look Liberian. It turned out he was Lebanese.

  “What?” Eileen asked them. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re trying to find a respirator,” the Lebanese doctor said evenly. “He’s having an allergic reaction to the antivenin. His lungs are quitting.”

  Eileen lost it then, collapsing to the floor. I sat down next to her and touched her elbow. She took my hand in a death grip, bawling and blowing snot into her sleeves.

  Mom and Dad and Darryl met us at the hospital, sometime between midnight and dawn. We spoke in hushed voices, watching Law lie there as the hours passed by. The doctor said he was in a coma.

  What was a coma, exactly? I knew it was like being asleep, only sometimes you were asleep for years and yea
rs. The person would wake up like he’d had a refreshing afternoon nap when he’d actually been asleep for twenty years. “How’s President Kennedy?” he’d ask, or “I hope I didn’t miss that Beatles concert.” Would that happen to Law? Would I grow up and go to college and get married and have kids while he lay around in bed? Would he stay in Africa, or would they ship his comatose body to America?

  Darryl finally took me and Eileen home while Mom and Dad stayed at the hospital with Law.

  Matt was waiting for us on the landing.

  “I heard,” he said.

  I nodded, and thought I might cry then, but didn’t. I was too tired, nearly delirious.

  “Do you want to stay here?” Darryl asked.

  “I just want to go home,” I told him.

  “Okay—go get some sleep,” Darryl said as he went in. “You can’t do anything else.”

  He didn’t mean anything by it, but I felt like he knew this was all my fault. You’ve done enough, he seemed to say.

  The door was unlocked. I found Bennett crashed out on the couch. Marty was on the floor with the chair cushion for a pillow.

  “Hey.” Marty opened one eye. “We didn’t want to leave until someone got back.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is Law okay?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Oh.” He got up, stretched, and woke up Bennett by holding one bare foot under his nose.

  Bennett snorted, opened his eyes, and jerked awake. “Oh,” he said. “Uh, what do you think?”

  “What do I think of what?”

  “This.” He waved his hands around the room. The apartment was as tidy as it ever was when Artie was done with it. My parents would never know there’d been a party.

  “You cleaned up. Thanks.”

  “We, um, didn’t want you guys to get into trouble.”

  “Thanks.”

  It was strange to think that Law would be in trouble, whenever he woke up, but I understood. They just wanted to do something.

  CHAPTER 20

  Back in Dayton I knew a kid who died. His name was Kevin. He was a couple of years older than me, but I knew him from the neighborhood. He wanted to be a professional baseball player and was always looking for kids to help him practice, meaning he’d pitch you the ball and you’d catch it and lob it back. I played catch with him once or twice but got bored.

  Kevin had a younger sister named Veronica who kids called Ronnie. She was a year younger than me, so I didn’t really know her. I used to see her flying around the streets on her bike, though. She liked to work up speed and then stand up on the pedals and soar. She had long, really blond hair that would fly out behind her.

  During Christmas vacation one year there was a good snow—a couple of inches. We usually didn’t get that much in Dayton. Kevin and his sister made a cardboard box into a toboggan and went sliding down a big hill. It was in a quiet neighborhood, and they should have been fine, but on one trip down, Kevin slid out in front of a truck that skidded and jumped the curb. It was a fluke accident.

  Everyone went to his funeral. I bet Kevin never knew he had so many friends. When the preacher asked if anyone wanted to say anything, we all looked at each other and shook our heads. Ronnie went up and read a poem from a thick book. She read it in such a low voice nobody could hear her, and all I heard was something about the dead being free. She blinked a couple of times but didn’t cry.

  She never flew around on her bike after that. She still rode her bike to get places but pedaled mechanically, looking straight ahead, never smiling or standing on the pedals. It was like everything had drained out of her.

  Now I wondered, What if Kevin’s death was Ronnie’s fault somehow? What if he saw the truck coming and wanted to wait, but she pushed him? Or maybe she dared him to scoot down with his eyes closed, and if he hadn’t, he could have seen the truck and jumped out of the way? Or maybe the whole tobogganing thing was her idea?

  I knew these were all crazy thoughts, but that’s what was bouncing around in my brain. Because if Law died, it would be my fault. I knew that sometimes kids who have a death in their family blame themselves, but this was different. It really would be my fault. Everyone would hate me. I would have to disappear, wander out of Monrovia and into the jungle and live with the monkeys like Tarzan. I noticed Moogoo looking at me with his unflinching eyes. We wouldn’t want you, either, he seemed to be saying. I shoved him back in the drawer. I was upset enough without being looked at by a judgmental monkey.

  Dad came home around noon and slept for a few hours. When he got up, he stuck a frozen pizza in the microwave and went to shower. “I’m going back to the hospital,” he said when he was out of the shower and dressed. His shirt collar was folded into the shirt on one side, and he was toweling shaving cream off of his face, but he hadn’t actually shaved.

  “Can I come, too?” I asked.

  He was silent for a while. “Will it exacerbate your condition?”

  “Maybe, but I want to see him.”

  “Let me talk to your mother. You can always see him tomorrow. Go stay with Matt and Darryl tonight. Darryl said you’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.”

  “What about Mom? Is she coming home? She probably needs sleep and a shower, too.”

  “I couldn’t get her to leave.” He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Pack a bag and go stay with Darryl and Matt. We’ll keep you posted.”

  “He’s going to live, right? The doctors don’t think he’ll die?”

  “He’s getting really good care,” Dad said. “He’ll be home soon.” He gave me a quick hug, mashing my nose into his shoulder.

  “Check your collar,” I whispered.

  He fixed his shirt as he left, leaving the door open behind him and his pizza still in the microwave oven.

  I didn’t go to Matt’s right away. I lay on the couch for a while, staring at the ceiling, feeling doomed. If Law was going to be okay, then what about me? What would happen when people realized I’d been keeping a mamba in my room?

  I felt a twinge of guilt over worrying about myself but couldn’t help it.

  How much did anyone really know? If anything, they thought I was terrified of snakes. I was the last one who’d bring a snake home. I just had to get rid of the evidence. I’d dump the laundry-hamper terrarium and … what else? I’d have to burn my notebook. It was filled with snake drawings. That was all I had to do. Sekou was the only one who even knew I had a snake, and he wouldn’t tell anyone. I’d burn the drawings, and forget all about this kaseng business. I felt a rush of relief: Law would recover, and eventually everything would go back to normal. I might be the same old snakeless ’fraidy-cat Linus, but right now that didn’t seem so bad.

  I went back to my room and found the notebook right where I’d left it. Even the guys who sacked my room hadn’t found it, it looked like. I hoped not. Little freak is obsessed with snakes, I imagined Jonas saying, flipping through the pages. He wouldn’t have put it back, though. I was safe.

  We had matches in the dining room to light the candles we used when the power was out. But a notebook on fire would make a lot of smoke, and might set off the fire alarm. I’d have to torch it on the back balcony, where nobody could see me. I grabbed the notebook and ran to get the matches.

  Matt was thumping on the front door and shouting, “Linus? It’s me!”

  I sighed and went to get the door.

  “My dad says you’re supposed to come spend the night. He says you shouldn’t be all alone.”

  I was kind of lonely, now that he mentioned it. I also didn’t want to seem suspicious, and a kid with nothing to hide would go hang out with his friend.

  “Just let me pack.” I ran back to my room and stuffed the notebook in my Mork bag, throwing clothes on top before zipping it up and hurrying back. Matt was standing in the foyer, craning his head to look at the living room—the scene of the crime.

  “We can hang out here first, if you want,” he said. “If you want to … I don�
��t know. Talk about it?”

  “We can go,” I said. “It’s cool.” I pulled the door shut and made sure it was locked, then realized I didn’t have my key. I wasn’t even wearing shoes.

  Darryl made spaghetti, and we watched a tape of TV shows from America—more episodes of Fantasy Island than anyone should watch in a row, but it was something to do. I had a hard time following the stories. I was thinking about Law, and when he would wake up, and how I would get rid of the notebook without getting caught. Maybe I could take it outside, tear out the sheets, and throw them in the ocean?

  “I might go for a walk,” I said after the latest round of victims got their fantasies granted.

  “It’s pretty late,” Darryl said, glancing at the window. It was dark out. “Maybe you should just get some sleep?”

  It felt like an order more than a suggestion.

  I took the extra bed in Matt’s bedroom, hiding the notebook under the pillow when Matt was off brushing his teeth. I would just have to wait until everyone else was asleep. I pretended to be snoozing when Matt came back and turned out the lights.

  “Linus?” Matt whispered. “Are you asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was thinking about those kids,” he said. “Gambie and Tokeh?”

  “Gambeh and Tokie.”

  “I haven’t forgotten about them,” he said.

  I lay awake as late as I could, but Darryl wouldn’t go to bed. I could hear him moving around in the living room. I finally drifted off but woke up a few hours later. By Matt’s clock it was after five a.m. The apartment was completely quiet. I got up, took the notebook out from under the pillow, and went to Matt’s other room. I quietly closed the door and wondered what to do next. It wasn’t like I could set a fire in Matt’s apartment. Maybe I could tear out each page and rip it up, then hide the shreds until later? Matt had a lot of board games he almost never played.

  I flipped through the notebook, looking at the pictures. I didn’t need to destroy the pictures I’d copied from comic books, of course. Just the snake pictures. Maybe not even all of those. Would a single drawing of a snake make anyone think I was harboring one? No, they would just think it was something else from the Tarzan comic. Maybe I could even save two or three.