“At least I am welcome in these bars—run by white folks though they are,” said Simple, “but I do not know no place in the country where I am welcome. If you’re driving, every little roadhouse you stop at, they look at you like you was a varmint and say, ‘We don’t serve colored.’ I tell you I do not want no parts of the country in this country.”

“You do not go to the country to drink,” I said.

“What am I gonna do, hibernate?”

“You could lie in a hammock and read a book, then go in the house and eat chicken.”

“I do not know anybody in the country around here, and you know these summer resort places up North don’t admit colored. Besides, the last time I was laying out in a hammock reading the funnies in the country down in Virginia, it were in the cool of evening and, man, a snake as long as you are tall come whipping through the grass, grabbed a frog right in front of my eyes, and started to choking it down.”

“What did you do?”

“Mighty near fell out of that hammock!” said Simple. “If that snake had not been so near, I would’ve fell out. As it were, I stepped down quick on the other side and went to find myself a stone.”

“Did you kill it?”

“My nerves were bad and my aim was off. I hit the frog instead of the snake. I knocked that frog right out of his mouth.”

“What did the snake do?”

“Runned and hid his self in the grass. I was scared to go outdoors all the rest of the time I was in the country.”

“You are that scared of a snake?” I said.

“As scared of a snake as a Russian was of a Nazi. I would go to as much trouble to kill one as Stalin did to kill Hitler. Besides, that poor little frog were not bothering that snake. Frogs eat mosquitoes and mosquitoes eat me. So I am for letting that frog live and not be et. But a snake would chaw on my leg as quick as he would a frog, so I am for letting a snake die. Anything that bites me must die—snakes, bedbugs, bees, mosquitoes, or bears. I don’t even much like for a woman to bite me, though I would not go so far as to kill her. But of all the things that bites, two is worst—a mad dog and a snake. But I would take the dog. I never could understand how in the Bible Eve got near enough to a snake to take an apple.”

“Snakes did not bite in those days,” I said. “That was the Age of Innocence.”