Under Every Rock

Being invited to fish with my grandfather was an honor. He fished for large mouthed bass in his special hole, Lake Bailey, Texas. He would wear rubber armpit waders and float in a canvas covered inner tube. He could get into swamps and tight places. He used rubber worms with weedless hooks. He told me I could come along, if I’d stay close to my grandmother and out of danger. It seemed like my screwed-up reputation had preceded me. I watched my grandfather move quickly through some cattails. There was a hill of round stones about the size of grapefruits. I thought it might be cool to start an avalanche. Under every rock was a timber rattler, a diamondback, or a sidewinder. I heard my grandmother honking the car horn in danger. I never saw her move so fast, grabbing me by the collar. My grandfather just looked at the hill, there must’ve been a thousand snakes. He reached under the front seat of the car and pulled out his business gun. He shot three times so fast, it sounded like one blast. Grandpa snapped a treble hook on his fishing pole, casting three times into the sunning poisonous snakes, he retrieved the snake bodies, minus their recently decapitated heads. Grandpa said when we got home, he’d teach me how to tan a snake skin and how to cook them. Then he cleaned his pistol and stared at me with snake eyes, while grandma drove.