The hoop’s high, but Heaven’s higher, my old basketball coach would say, meaning, I think, that it’s harder to rest in peace than it is to keep living. Or something. I don’t know. I’m not religious; pretty sure it’s just rocks up there, and I heard that guy practices medicine now, so—
Here I am, living, when I find a python in my garden at night. Albino scales zag, its tongue slashes air. Nothing between me and it but sliding glass.
Neighbour must have left his window open, the piece of shit. I would go round there, tell him his pet snake escaped, but what if I catch him clouded in vape, in that Nirvana tee he always wears, masturbating into a pizza box?
I uncap a bottle and watch the snake from the lawn chair I dragged inside after the storm warning. For a while, I’m mesmerised by those two dark pink eyes on a flat skull. Zig. Zag.
I call Peony. “Well, well, well,” I rush to say when she picks up.
“It’s 4 a.m., Stu.”
“Guess what’s in our garden.”
Peony sighs hard. “Is this about us?”
“What? No. I’m staring at a fucking python right now.”
“Stu. How long has it been since you slept?”
—Cool beer, warm throat—
“Listen, I’ll come by Monday before school pick-up, check everything’s ok. But, Stu, that doesn’t mean anything. We aren’t getting back together.”
“Peony, I’m talking about a massive snake. In. Our. Garden. Pay attention.”
“Seriously, Stu, I think it might be time to see a doc—”
I hang up on Peony.
The python sails through the weeds with its head reared, staring at me. It’s hungry, I can tell. So’s my dog, judging by the whimpering. Poor guy hates snakes. I stand to get dog food and a sandwich, step on the smashed carafe I meant to sweep up earlier, and out rolls the train of obscenities. My foot oozes platelets over the shards, which might be beautiful if it didn’t hurt like hell. Besides, the python knows I’m injured now. That’s not good.
I should clean the wound, but why waste good alcohol? Like when Peony poured my supply down the plughole, raving about last chances, and drove off in my Jeep that morning. I’d only just filled the tank. She took my kid too so who’s left to set an example for?
Yourself, Buddy.
I put my beer down. “You’re right, Coach. Thanks.”
Funny thing: I grab a towel for my foot, but I see no blood and the pain has subsided already.
“Ssssucker!”I hiss to the snake.
It retreats, clouds doubling in the dark above that flat, thoughtless head.
I must’ve left the TV on in the front room because every so often a game show ding ding dings.
I bow to cheery applause.
Mind on the Lord. Eyes on the court.
The dog stays curled in his basket, jowls gloomy, when I offer him a treat. He’s thinking he can’t trust me these days, like everyone. Suit yourself. There’s nothing in the fridge, a tub of pistachio ice cream in the freezer. I check the dates with the calendar I stole from the showroom before I got cut loose. June is a blue Ferrari and Sunday is Father’s Day. I’d call but that means visiting, that means, “How about that storm, Son?”, hearing how Dad couldn’t sleep through the yowling, that means going to see my mother and picturing her unhappy face levitating over her grave like a funeral balloon.
Nah. Things are bad enough here with the idiot neighbour and the light on the boiler that won’t blink.
“We’re alright aren’t we, Boy?” I call to the dog, wiping the green frost from my fingers and opening the cupboard for a bowl, snapping it closed when I see bones. Stacked and stacked. Some small ones, some long, some frilly. Gleaming human bones. The fucking python! DING DING DING.
What now, Coach? Doc? Deities?—
“Coach?”
The snake cackles when I step on the carafe again. All else is still. No storm, just a weak wind like an old guy whistling. I stand tall and stare the serpent down, until I see him: the neighbour hiding in a bush, LED on his vape firing, Nirvana tee, thick glasses catching the light like black holes I could jump into, but that’s what the neighbour guy wants.
He jolts forward and I swoop behind the breakfast bar. I’m not ready to give up these bones. No way.
Yet, my heart rattles, knuckles whiten as I crouch, and that hoop just gets higher and higher these days. I peer out. A bird thrashes in a tree and there are no glasses, no neighbours. Just dark pink sclera and the distant phiwww of Coach’s whistle.
Then, Heaven gets angry.
The angels arrive spitting at the windows, sliding through the grass on snake-ribs. I pull my seat front and centre, sit with the ice cream cool in my hands and observe. The dog lopes to rest his head on my lap and I feel the whine in his throat as the storm gathers force. It tugs the peonies, then yanks, squealing and howling like a sick animal, snapping branches on invisible knees. I let myself smile, ignore the blood-soaked towel at my feet. A painless seep. The wind loosens the roof tiles, kicks the neighbour’s fence, before sucking the python into the air, whipping it around and firing it into the dark. And memories fall like tatters:
Peony in the kitchen plating muffins on our wedding china. Tabitha in the garden jump-scaring birds with little hands cupped. Inside, Lego across the tiles like a home smashed apart—Defence! Defence!—I’ve gota pint in my fist; my first one since rehab. Peony’s smile drops. Tabitha disappears, swallowed by a black hole or God’s mouth, or whatever—“Your mother left this world frowning, Son”—All that’s left, coiled in the grass like something deadly: a jump rope, hissing.
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