ow.

The girl lay flat on her belly on the grass staring into the water. She was next to a pool fed by a mountain stream. Behind her was a meadow and behind that was the house where she was staying the summer with her great aunt.
      In the water, tiny minnows circled and darted nervously avoiding the center of the pool where a few waterlogged leaves had become trapped in the vortex created by the current. Partially visible beneath the leaves, though motionless, was a thick brown snake. The girl was watching it.
      She could feel the dampness from the grass cooling her stomach through her shirt. Her neck itched, and there were gnats biting her bare legs. The snake did not move. Its form undulated very slightly as the light refracted through the water with the rhythm of the mild current. Discouraged, she dipped one hand into the water. Her fingers below the water expanded and contracted, gently, with the same rhythm as the snake. Where the palm of her hand broke the water's surface, there was a glittering sharp rim that precisely divided what was appeared dry and fixed, and what was liquid and undefined.
      In the distance, she heard her great aunt calling her to come in for lunch. The girl glanced over her shoulder at the house, and started to get to her feet. She looked back at the snake, and, on impulse grabbed a stick and stepped into the water. By now, she was convinced that the snake was not alive. The bank near the edge was steep and slippery, covered with black mud. She slid downward into deeper water that was almost up to her chest. Though she was only ten years old, she was a good swimmer and wasn’t afraid.
      The soft black mud stirred up by her feet completely clouded the water. When it had cleared, a few minutes later, all of the little fish were milling wildly at the far side of the stream, and the snake was gone.
      Back at the house, her great aunt laughed when the girl told her what had happened.
      “I’ve spent many hours watching that one. He’s a Northern water snake. They’re supposed to be quite aggressive if you bother them, but I’ve never had any problems with him (or her). Northern water snakes are nonpoisonous.”
      “Auntie, I thought he was dead. He never moved at all. How can he stay still so long? He knew I was watching him. I’m sure he did.”
      “I don’t know. I think he’s having a good time with all those fish stuck in that little pool. What’s the weather supposed to be for the rest of this week? Have you heard a forecast? It hasn’t rained in weeks. We really need a good downpour.”
      “The guy on the radio this morning said it was going to be hazy, hot and humid for the rest of this week. No rain. Sorry. Why are we having macaroni and cheese again? Macaroni and cheese, tuna fish, grilled cheese, hotdogs, macaroni and cheese, tuna fish, grilled cheese … can’t we have something different?”
      “Nope. I’m not a cook. If you’d like to cook something for yourself, let me know what you need and I’ll buy it for you. Otherwise, you’re stuck. You’ll have newfound appreciation for your Mom’s cooking when you go home.”
      “No kidding. Oh well. I don’t mind macaroni and cheese all that much.”
      “Did you get any good pictures this morning? You’re almost finished with the one you’ve been working on.”
      “Yeah, I think might have gotten something good. I’ll see after lunch when I download them. Should I start on this year’s creative writing project, soon?”
      “Yup. This week. First, we’ll have to figure out the background. Then you can start writing your story.”
      “How can I know the background before I’ve started the story?”
      “Well, you need to decide what the people are like that are in the story before you can think about what they would do when things happen to them. Otherwise, they’ll act one way at the beginning, and another way at the end and nobody will believe that they could be real people. Last year, you got to write whatever you wanted because you were just getting started. This year, I want you to try to do something more complicated.”
      “Should we write a story about us? ‘Jeanie visits great aunt Lily in the country’?”
      “That would have to be ‘Jeanie visits her old great aunt Lily in the country so her old mother can have some time to catch her breath.’ It’s not easy raising a daughter by yourself when you’re almost fifty. Especially when you’ve lost a husband that you loved as much as your mother loved your father. Caring for him through his cancer was a terrible ordeal.”

[Please note: only the first few pages of this story have photo headers (they’re just digital snaps).]

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Copyright © 2002 by Jay Arraich. All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright © 2002 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com