I found sleep or it found me. And in my sleep I dreamed, or perhaps I didn’t sleep at all and merely entertained anxious thoughts. My dreams or ruminations were disturbing, and I wondered during them whether my imaginings then would have been more disquieting, alterative, as thoughts or dreams. I dreamed or imagined Rachel Charles riding the man in the desert. She was naked, though she hadn’t been when I saw her, and there was light now that allowed me to clearly see her breast, the muscles of her flat stomach. In the dream, or whatever it was, I found her attractive, and I had an erection that I found embarrassing because I should not have had one. I was embarrassed in my bag to merely find the young woman attractive, and also because I thought my condition, if you will, might be visible from outside my sleeping bag. In my dream, or my thinking, I decided it didn’t matter what I was experiencing. Finally, it was sleep.

I awoke to another kind of excitement, hushed screams, if such a thing is possible. I pulled on my boots and walked toward the commotion. “What is it?” I asked.

“A snake,” a man said.

Sure enough there was a good-sized rattlesnake coiled on the pink sleeping bag just inside the large dome tent of a young woman I knew to be a song girl with the marching band. The snake lay still between her raised and trembling knees. I was not so alarmed by the snake but by the thought that she might try to squirm out of her bag. Of course, the snake was not on top of me. The woman was beside herself, though appropriately frozen. What was alarming now was the sight of one of the muscly and overly confident athletes reaching for the head of the creature. Before I could tell him to back away, he had grabbed the snake’s head just as he had imagined it was done on nature television. Unfortunately, he pressed his thumb onto the top of the animal’s head, and the snake slowly coiled around his arm. The look on the kid’s face was almost comical and yet it was not. I had had some experience with rattlesnakes but was hardly an expert, but even I could see he was in trouble.

“First of all, don’t let go of its head,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Calvin.”

“What do you think we should do, Calvin?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Professor.”

“Okay, Calvin. What sport do you play?”

“Baseball.”

“Good. Then you’ve got strong hands. Keep a firm grip for me. Mind if I tell you that was a stupid thing to do, grabbing this thing?”

“I realize that now.”

I grabbed the snake’s tail, the skin dry and rough against my fingers, and gently unwound it from his arm. I could tell it was still cold, cold enough not to rattle, and that was a good thing. “Hilary, would you grab a tent bag or something?” I could feel the snake coming around, aided by the heat in the air and our hands. Hilary returned with a sack. The snake was waking now, writhing.