A Snake in the Tarp

     “Ha, ha, ha!  Just like in As I Lay Dying.”

     We were stopped on Evans Street in the midst of the University of Denver Campus.  It was a little after noon. The street was narrow, no parking on either side, the traffic lanes running right next to the sidewalk.  Front line pedestrians stood literally within a foot of the trailer we were pulling.  We all were waiting for the traffic light to change.

     The day began before 6 a.m.  It was pick-up-kitchen-cabinets day.  The new cabinets were in Denver.  We were in Kansas.  It was cloudy and threatened rain.  We had borrowed a ¾ ton pickup and a 20 foot trailer.  I grabbed the three or four tarps from the garage and threw them into the back of the pickup.  We were going to need the tarps.

      One of the tarps smelled funny.  I suspected a dead rodent so I partially unfolded and shook out the tarp.  In the early morning darkness, I couldn’t see if anything fell out or not.  I refolded and tossed the tarp with its fellows in the back of the pickup. 

     Five hours later we were parked in front of the cabinet shop somewhere near South Santa Fe.  The forklift operator had loaded three or four cabinets onto the trailer when the rain drops began to fall.

     I grabbed the tarps and began covering cabinets.  I flipped the big tarp out on the driveway as you would spread a clean sheet on a bed.  I jerked the edge of the tarp above my head, then immediately back down below my waist as I stepped back and pulled.   The last fold of the tarp spread across the cement, and out tumbled the remnants of a snake about 24 to 30 inches long. 

     Skeleton and some skin were about all that was left of the poor creature.  The rest of him stuck in a two foot smear on the tarp.

    The Goodwife, the salesman, I, we all stepped back from the carcass.  I was torn.  Clean up the mess I had made on the cabinet shop’s driveway to hide my embarrassment?  The thousands of dollars of cabinets getting wet on the trailer won out.  I clambered over the trailer pulling the odiferous tarp, stained side up, over the new cabinets.  No one helped me.

     The salesman finally brought out a dust pan, one with a handle so you don’t have to stoop to collect the trash, and a short broom.  He scooped up the snake remnants.  He was going to take them to a trash can inside the shop.  I suggested that the shop crew wouldn’t care for the perfumery.  He should dump it into the neighbor’s dumpster a few yards away.  He compromised by dumping it into the shop’s outside dumpster. 

       Almost immediately the story inflated.  The cabinet guys said it was a rattlesnake.  I tried to belay that.  If it were a rattlesnake, the rattles would still be on the tail.They would not have decomposed, I told them.  It wasn’t a rattlesnake.  But it was a snake.

        Having found a place on the trailer for all the cabinets and the trim pieces, we started on our return journey.  The tarps I had brought barely covered the cabinets.  We pulled into a Home Depot nearby.  I parked the truck on the northern outskirts of the parking lot so I wouldn’t have to back up.  The Goodwife ran into the store to buy tarps and straps while I adjusted the load and the tarps and made ready to add the new covers to the load. 

     “Oh my gosh!” she said as she wheeled up the new tarps and straps in the shopping cart.  “I could smell that thing when I stepped out the door!”  The door was several yards downwind from where I had parked.

     “It will wear off in the wind and rain when we get going,” I said.

     “It better not make my new cabinets smell,” she warned.

     “It won’t,” I tried to assure her.

     Part of the deal of borrowing the pickup-trailer combo was that we would pick up and haul a roll of carpet back to Kansas.  The carpet had been delivered to our daughter’s house.  To get there we went east on Evans. 

     It was noon hour.  There were lots of pedestrians out.  There was traffic.  When we stopped for the red light, we barely cleared the intersection behind us.  The crosswalk was partially blocked by the trailer.  The wind blew from the north.  The pedestrians were a captive audience as they waited to cross the street. 

    I checked the right mirror.  I couldn’t see anybody throwing up or people covering their noses.  They had to be wondering what kind of cargo was born by the trailer.  I was unable to help them.  I couldn’t move until the light changed and the traffic cleared.  Nothing to do but laugh.       

             

      In As I Lay Dying Addie, the “I” in the title, extracts a promise that her family will bury her in town in a proper cemetery rather than in the Mississippi boondocks where she spent her life.  Encountering many a mishap, the husband, four sons and one daughter take over a week to make the trip to town with the decomposing body in the homemade coffin.  A hovering handful of buzzards chart their course from above.  Fellow travelers and bystanders press handkerchiefs to their noses and back away when they encounter the wagon bearing the coffin and the family members.

      It was a long day.  Having loaded the carpet, we were ready to head for Kansas.  It took several back and forths to get the trailer and pickup turned around in the residential dead end street.  We negotiated stops for food and fuel.  It rained.  We made a few stops to check our precious load and adjust tarps.  Some of the cabinets got a little wet caused by the splash from the trailer wheels.  I couldn’t protect the cabinets from that.

       However much it rained or splashed, the dead-snake smell never went away.

     We moved all the cabinets from the trailer into the garage that night after we got home.  We uncrated and checked for damage, dried off those that got wet.  It was a long day.

    I took advantage of the three-day rain.  I spread the odiferous tarp out on a grassy slope.  I mixed up an ammonia solution and scraped, mopped and brushed the tarp.  It was clean, but it still stunk.  I tried a bleach solution.  I supplemented the rainy weather with garden hose and nozzle.  It all helped.

      Several days draped over the clothes line in the sun helped.  But nothing completely removed the odor.  Recently, I spread that tarp over tomato plants to protect them from frost.  Sure enough, as I unfolded the tarp, that snake’s essence wafted up my nostrils to remind me of its torturous death in my arid summer garage.