“I’m not following you.”

“Had a bunch of strange deaths real recent like.”

Jack felt a crawly sensation in his gut. “Like what? Hit and runs?”

“Nup. Nothin’ like that. I mean strange. Like Mrs. Borger bein’ attacked by about a dozen pelicans last year—right before Christmas, it was. Pecked her to death. I hear tell one of them bit into her neck and there was blood shootin’ everwhere. Been in Florida all my life and I ain’t never heard of no one bein’ attacked by no pelicans. Then back in March there was Mr. Leo, all bitten up by a bunch of spiders. Brown recluses, they say.” He shuddered. “If I was ever on Fear Factor, that’s what would set me to runnin’. Anyways, Doc Harris said he’s never heard of someone gettin’ bit more’n once, but there you go. Poor old guy died in the hospital.”

“Jeez.”

“Then just last June, Mr. Neusner trips and falls into a whole nest of coral snakes. He was DOA like the others. Come to think of it, your daddy was the only accident that made it to the hospital alive. I guess that’s a good sign.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“Funny thing about Mr. Neusner and the coral snakes. We got a sayin’ down here: ‘red touch yellow—kill a fellow.’”

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, there’s coral snakes, which got red, yellow, and black stripes, and they’s poisonous as all get out. And then there’s the scarlet snake and the scarlet king snake which got similar stripes but they’re harmless. The way you tell ‘em apart is by the order of their stripes.”

“You mean people hang around long enough to check out the stripe order?”

“Sure. If it’s got a red stripe next to a yellow stripe, it’s a coral snake. If it don’t, then you’re okay. You may get bit, but you won’t get poisoned.” He pronounced it “pie-zund.”

Jack said, “I’m a city boy. I see any snake, striped or plaid, I’m gone.”

He much preferred dealing with human snakes than the legless kind.

“But the thing is,” Carl added, “I seen one of them snakes, the one Mr. Neusner stomped on before he keeled over. Don’t know bout the other ones that bit him, but this one didn’t have no red touchin’ yellow. It shouldn’t have been poisonous, but it was.” He shook his head. “Kinda scary when somethin’ you always depended on turns out not to be true anymore.”

Tell me about it, Jack thought. He’d seen the pins kicked from under more than one Cherished Truth lately.

“You said there was a nest of them? Right here at Gateways? How? The place looks so…manicured.”