Snakeskin and Screwdrivers

Though there would be snakeskin by the end, in truth it all began with a screwdriver. Telling you that is jumping ahead by rather an essential amount of time. Perhaps it is called for to start at the beginning. What you really must know is that there was, in the not so distant past, a house perched amongst houses on a hill of hills. It was all edged up in the feet of Mount Diablo. So happy were those innocent shelters on the feet of the devil, his fiery wrath bringing them the clear of blue skies and rolling golden grass across the rise of the ridge. There were many families that lived in the midst of that expanse of glistening wealth, but our house in particular was inhabited by a small one, parents and a single child. This family was a young one yet, the child, a girl, only just nosing her ingenuous way into a sixth year. So big though she seemed already to her parents, clinging to the small thing she had been such a short time before. She was so eager to do and be, to wonder and hope. So it was, that on a warm afternoon in October the father and his little girl took it upon themselves to fix the shelf that had long wobbled on its own in the study.
Father and daughter were together in that room of the house when inspiration for this project came upon them. Make believe was then their purpose, and the two of them danced about the room, she in front and he following, when the girl leant her hand against the errant shelf. It gave readily beneath her small weight, causing her pause in her prancing gait. She was enchanted by the mysterious wobble of this thing of wood and metal. It had always seemed to her that things of such materials were invincible in and of themselves, unable to support a moment of weakness such as she had just felt. Magical it seemed to her, and she beheld her hand for a moment with awe. She prodded the desk to her left with the lightest of touches, expecting it too to shimmer and shake. It stood resolute, causing her no small disappointment, and she turned her head back to the offending shelf. She regarded it now with all the petulance of child that age, disquiet etched into her small features, for she felt now that there was something unutterably wrong about the entire episode. Such things should not happen; the earth did not open and close on itself, the sky did not turn from black to blue. Shelves did not shudder in their brackets like things alive. Though she would not have known to express it thus, the child felt that the fabric of space and time had for a moment faltered, allowing this transgression of universal law. The wrongness of the entire quagmire engulfed her, filled up her petite frame, until it came out in words. Into the air it spilled in a somewhat less articulate form, reaching the ears of her father. He took a step closer to examine the shelf that seemed to have displeased his joy so thoroughly. The malady was soon ascertained to be several loose screws along the sides. The remedy too was found; father and daughter would go to the garage to fetch a screwdriver, fixing this err in the proper conduct of shelves.
The screwdriver was something easily enough found, as demand for it was high in that house; there was always something else that needed fixing. Looking at this event alone, simply as one of many, the dissatisfactory shelf was not so extraordinary. This day however was different, and the adventure was all in the finding of a plain screwdriver. Said tool made house of the lustrous, red utility box that rested on a dresser that wanted painting. This dresser, in turn, lay in front of the edifices of cardboard and tape, closer to the heat of devil. All of this was encompassed by the dark, closing walls of the garage itself.
It is in the garage that this story truly begins and ends. The garage too had always been an unsolved mystery in the mind of the little girl. No matter the time passed, that place always lay untouched, stagnant; accumulating tiny particles of nothing, dust. Boxes rose in the back like the deserted skyscrapers of a once-great city. This was a scene worthy for the entry to hell, and this is the place that brought ill will in to that sunlit day. Upon entering the garage, the father lightly tapped the button to raise the garage door. It rose monumentally slowly, prolonging a poorly made decision that would soon be regretted. In came the sun, filtering from under the eaves, illuminating the boxes, the dust, the pure neglect. Something in it drew the young rattlesnake that had that day ventured far too far from its home in the sultry, swaying grass. It oscillated, moving as if the pendulum of the clock that stood in the hall had nudged parts of its squirming body in. Ticking its way to the concrete directly below the eave, it curled about itself to sit quietly, observing the scene. Neither daughter nor father knew this then though, being human and therefore exceptionally unobservant. Together they tripped to the dresser, the red box, the screwdriver. The daughter stepped lightly and quickly, coming out further into the sun, further from her father and safety, and further towards the curious snake.
An exposed ankle was all that it could really see. Skin stretched smooth and taut, the color of dough that has been cooked to golden perfection. Small toes bulged sweetly and roundly from an equally small foot. No calluses yet marred the velvety softness of her sole and the indent seemed somewhat flat, as if still learning to curve away from the fleshy earth. In all, it seemed an innocent foot, one that meant no harm, did not really mean to crush living things into the earth with a step. It did, but there was no intent behind this devastation. The young snake saw all this easily, recognizing something of its own youth and ingénue in this female, human counterpart. The snake respected such things, thought they should last. This girl was of no real concern in his miniature mind, the place itself being the only draw on his attention.
The father however, had no way of knowing the internal structure of this snake’s mind. When at last his own thoughts were drawn by this darting, brown form, he was as if paralyzed. He whispered urgently to his endangered daughter, imparting some of the alarm that troubled him. Don’t move. He cast about; what could defend against such a wily, unpredictable thing as a young rattlesnake? He hit upon it soon enough, or you might say the sledgehammer did, for this was precisely the tool he found with which to implement his only plan.
That sledgehammer was by far the oldest thing in the house, brought from Canada with the father’s parents and given to their son as one of the essential items necessary to a proper home. As it arced up into the air, it seemed surrounded by an air of antediluvian sagacity. To the small child, this seemed the most formidable of weapons, something that might at one point have been wielded by the great god Hephaestus or even Zeus himself. In short, it was perfect, a weapon worthy of defending her. It carved a quarter of a sun from the air before coming down with a low thud on the head of the rattlesnake. It was in no way a clean blow, but it was certainly well aimed enough to leave a pattern of red across the slippery cement floor. The snake’s skin and blood mingled with dust and despair in that house of hell alone. Something innocent had been killed that day in defense of one equally harmless. A life for a life, but it was in no way fair.