Prologue
Jimbo
glanced over his shoulder and spoke to his babies, jostling in the back
of the shorty school bus. “Hang on, sweethearts. We’re in
the home stretch, now.” No more than half a mile down the road,
his chin bumped his chest and he bobbed awake. He white-knuckled the
wheel, and shook his head, fast. “Coffee. What I need is coffee.
And more beer.” Jimbo fired up a cigarette, nearly missed the pull-off
to Big Earl’s Truckers’ Rest. Shifting a sluggish foot to
the brake, he angled from the road onto gravel--a bit too abruptly,
thanks to five hours of bleary-eyed, pre-dawn driving and three quarts
of drown-the-highway-blues beer sloshing under his loosened belt. He
overcorrected, hit the pedal hard, and felt the bus slip into a four-wheel
skid. “Oh, mama!”
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In
a cloud of dust and skittering pea-gravel, the bus came to rest four
feet from plate glass, eight from a hands-on-hips waitress, with three
breakfast specials soaking her once-white Easy Spirit sneakers. Jimbo
touched his safari hat with a friendly grin and shook the dregs of his
third quart onto the seat to douse the dislodged tip of his smoke, fast
burning a mean black hole in the vinyl. He eased away, drove to the
blind side of the building and wiped his forehead with the back of an
arm. “Whew-ee, boy,” he said to his reflection in the rearview
mirror. “That was close.”
The grin disappeared as Jimbo remembered his cargo. “Shee-it!
My babies.” He parted the heavy drapes behind the driver’s
seat, flew into the back to the sound of ten thousand strips of bacon
crackling on a hell-hot griddle. “Calm down! Calm down, sweethearts.”
Waving the air. “No harm done.”
A hundred built-in wooden cages with metal mesh doors lined the
walls of the seatless bus. Inside the cages, none too happy, writhed
Jungle Jimbo Bybee’s babies: four hundred and thirty-six fresh-caught
timber rattlesnakes, Crotalus horridus. “Ssshhh,” said
Jimbo. Not that his deaf charges heard him, not that he heard himself
over the rattling, hissing, and, worse, thumping of scaly noses striking
metal screen doors. “Settle down, babies,” Jimbo pleaded.
And, gradually, they did. He moved slowly along the tiers of cages,
counting noses, more accurately inspecting them, hopeful to see no damaged
merchandise. Crimson marred a mere dozen battered reptilian prows. “Could
be worse.”
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Jimbo owned Jungle Jimbo Bybee’s Serpentarium in Cave City, Kentucky, a hundred and fifty miles to the west. He had left Cave City ten days ago on a buying route that took him through the lowlands of Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Now, he was headed north, through eastern Kentucky, Daniel Boone country. It had been a good circuit, promised to pay the major share of the behemoth four-by-four Jimbo had dreamt of all winter. The next trip, he’d mix in some economical copperheads (no cottonmouths or diamondback rattlers--too feisty even for the Lord’s work), but Jimbo knew when he rolled into those snake-starved cities on his first visit with only high-ticket, off-the-ark-perfect, colorful, southern timber rattlers, he’d move every one.
Had he been transporting snakes for himself or reptile collectors, he would have carried them in tied-off gunny sacks, but Jimbo learned years ago that seeing all the merchandise at once, in a confined space, induced an electric, nigh-on sexual mania in the snake preachers. Thus the blacked-out windows, the cedar cages, the Heaven’s Gold shag carpet, the boom box with the hymns, the royal blue paint, the Gothic script on the sides--“They shall take up serpents, and it shall not hurt them”--and the twin bumper stickers: Mark 16:18, and John 3:3.
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He recalled the warning from the cashier: “Keep that foot light on the pedal through McAfee County, friend. That’s one tough county--has a hard-assed sheriff who loves his radar, keeps close company with the judge.” Jimbo checked the speedometer--uh-oh--let off the gas, and scanned the road for cops.
“Whoa, Nellie!” Coming his way at sixty-five miles an hour: not a cop, but the unmistakable sinuous silhouette of a heavy-bodied serpent crossing the highway. A rattler, for sure. No chance of stopping in time or swerving, so Jimbo kept his eyes on the slowly undulating form and worked the wheel to center the snake safely between the bus’s front tires. Yes! He watched it fly by below, unscathed. He tapped the brakes, already picturing the trot back, lifting the sassy timber with his snake hook, and adding an easy sixty bucks to the pot.
What Jimbo saw when he looked up, however, was--“YEOW!”-- a hairpin curve, fence--Kee-rack!--then open air. The bus soared thirty feet, slowed as it swished through treetops, and--Whack!--stopped in the flick of an eye, wedged between two mammoth oaks. Jimbo, however, kept going, through the windshield and another forty feet before smacking into the gnarly trunk of an Indian cigar tree.
The late Jungle Jimbo Bybee’s custom cedarwood cages ripped from the bus’s crimped walls with the impact. Within minutes, well before the smoking engine ignited dripping fuel and sent a snick of crackling orange fire along the underbelly of the chassis toward the fractured fuel tank, four hundred and thirty-six buzzing, shaken-up timber rattlesnakes crawled to the floor, dropped through the sprung doors to the ground, and headed for the hills, or the town, or the surrounding homes and farms of McAfee County, Kentucky, with freedom on their minds.
Chapter 1
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“Damned cop.” Mumbling. “Said he was taking me to see Edgar. Instead, he’s got me caged in here like some animal.”
A scared rodent thumped and bumped in his chest as the old cop fear took hold. He squinted through the glass. Where the hell did the man go? There--ten paces away, talking with a little guy in western boots and a black cowboy hat wide as his shoulders. The sheriff, I’ll bet. Edgar’s hurt, and these Kentucky good old boys are in no hurry at all.
With the air conditioning off, the windows closed, and the morning sun baking the big Crown Victoria, the temperature rose fast. Digger wrinkled his nose at the traces of booze, sweat, and the deputy’s fried chicken. Eight in the morning and the man was chowing down on it.
He waggled the mesh again and cursed, a touch of panic in his voice. “Edgar. Where are you Edgar?” He tugged at his once-reddish, now going-to-gray beard, scanned the interior, and saw, nearly hidden under the front seat, three inches from his white-socked, sandaled toes: a neatly-wrapped joint, thick and long as his little finger. Digger had a flashback of postgrad days, of Berkeley and redwoods, a droning sitar, ardent young women with ironed hair to their waists, peace rallies and ban-the-bomb placards. The good old days. With no thought and a furtive swoop, he snagged the joint and dropped it in his shirt pocket.
He sat bolt upright as the trunk lid opened, and then slammed. A swollen belly materialized at the window, curly black hairs matted to sweaty white skin bulging past a sprung button. Digger’s hand flopped over his pocket as he caught sight of the king-sized deputy, his face screwed up, Gotcha written all over it. The panic returned. Busted.
But no, the deputy was merely hacking up farm dust. He spit to the side, opened the front door and fished a chicken leg from a red and white paper bucket on the seat. “Sorry about the wait,” he said, and, finally, let Digger out. He nodded to several of his cohorts. “In the black hat, near the shack. That’s Coony McCoy, McAfee County Sheriff.”
Digger climbed out with an uneasy glance at the cars, ominous with their blazing roof hardware and stars on the doors. He saw cops in khaki, wearing tan cowboy hats with guns at their hips. All popped out of the same mold. All trouble.
continued . . .
