7.++Idle+Hands

**Idle Hands** Gabriel Spera  We're shoveling the sheetrock, bricks, and planks the builders couldn't use into a pocked and rusted pickup, settling in the clay outside the condos springing up around what will be cul-de-sacs, when all at once we see this snake come trickling through the gutter, licking slackly over tire treads sunk from lumbering machines, and one of our small crew, career odd-jobber, Keith, jumps up, runs over, plants his steel-toed shoes, and hoists his shovel, set to hack its head clean off- but not yet, not before he watches it recoil from where his shadow falls, almost not smiling his first smile all day, and from somebody else's mouth it seems I hear my voice say, "Wait, it's just a garter snake, it's harmless, just forget it, let it go."

And so he turns to me, his face the face of someone stopped from beating something he clearly feels he owns, he turns and says, "S'that so? Well now, if you're so sure go pick it up. Go 'head, right now."

I can't begin to guess how many snakes I held when I was younger, treadmilling my hands beneath their waterfalling bodies, but a lot. Time was, I'd prowl through sagging barns looking for them, and knew the bleached ﬁat stones where they'd be scrawled out, knew exactly where to grab to keep that trap of fishhook teeth from clamping on my thumb, yet now I can't be sure of anything, except how bad Keith wants it dead, and not because he thinks it's poisonous. Snakes I know, but hate like Keith's is hard to figure. So I keep my peace until he jabs, "Time's up," and watch him work his shovel like a butter churn, catching, scritching, shredding the luckless thing in bows and ribbons into dirt.