That was not as scary as the big snake. The river had been pooling after a sudden rise, and she had to run the skiff up into a patch of pigweed at the levee near Paul’s house. When she stepped out of the boat, her foot caught in a root under the cover, and she went over, spreading her arms to break her fall, her hands smashing into the mud. An instant later she felt movement under her right palm. A mass of coils wrapped like a current around her upper arm, and without thought, she closed her hand on the snake’s head, knowing its shape to be a moccasin’s, knowing that if she let it go, it would strike. She pulled up into a crouch, thrashing her boot to free it, amazed as she lifted foot after foot of the snake from the weeds under her. The dull black skin told her it was a cottonmouth, and she screamed in her biggest voice for help. The head turned in her palm, and she gripped it tighter, standing up, yelling again, holding her arm out from her body, turning her face away. The snake coiled tighter on her arm, trying to push its head free, and she yelled again, her voice sailing along the green batture like a whistle note. She looked down the levee toward town, saw no one, and she yelled again in a loud, fractured voice. Colette stepped over a log and out of the mud, her left hand now over her right, increasing the pressure on the spade head. The mass of arrowy scales piled onto her arm, six feet of cold, live meat, and she was afraid she might pass out, losing control of the poisonous skull rotating in her palm. “Help,” she screamed again, the snake now jerking at its head, its coils gyrating fiercely, its tail spanking her face and forcing her head back, eyes looking at clouds. “Help!”

“Hey, ya,” a voice yelped from up on the levee.

She looked and saw a little man shuffle down toward her. He was dressed in jeans and wore no shirt. It was Gilbert Gravois, one of the trashy Gravoises from the edge of town. “Help,” she pleaded.

“Hol’ on there, beb. What you doin’ to that snake?”

“I’ve got his head and can’t let go,” she cried, trying to keep the flickering tail from her face.

“Mais, that thing’s a mile long.” He ran his hand back through his oily hair to clear his eyes. “I ain’t brought my knife.”

“In the skiff,” she grunted. “On the front bench.”