Page 42 (1/2)

Sasha used a ree door, and I said, "You okay?"

"No"

"Good"

I knew that she was physically unhurt and that her answer referred to her e To she could do, perhaps saving one orthe priest fro of those three shots had sickened her; now she was living under a grave weight of h to know that no guilt should attend what she’d done But she also knew that even moral acts can have dimensions that scar the mind and wound the heart If she had answered my question with a smile and assurances that she was fine, she would not have been the Sasha Goodall that I love, and I would have had reason to suspect that she was becoht Bay in silence, each of us occupied with his or her own thoughts

A couple miles froh the windshield He surprisedinto , and I ht be thinking

How radically different his thinking h level of intelligence He experiences this world from a perspective nearly as unlike ours as our perspective would be unlike that of a being raised on another planet He faces each day without carrying on his back the weight of huedy, noble intentions, foolishness, greed, envy, and hubris; it e and civilized He is closer to nature than we are; therefore, he has fewer illusions about it, knows that life is hard by design, that nature is beautiful but cold And although Roosevelt says other cats of Mungojerrie’s breed escaped froojerrie isn’t as singular a specimen as Orson seems to be, and while cats by nature are s are, this small creature an to pet hiojerrie broke eye contact and curled up on ht, and I could feel his heartbeat both againsthand

I am not an animal communicator, but I think I knohy he led us into the Stanwyk house We were not there to bear witness to the dead We were there solely to do what needed to be done for Father Tom Eliot

Since time immemorial, people have suspected that some animals have at least one sense in addition to our own An awareness of things we do not see A prescience

Couple that special perception with intelligence, and suppose that with greater intelligence co the Stanwyk house, Mungojerrie ony, and the eht have felt co man

Or maybe I’m full of crap

The possibility exists that I aojerrie

Cats know things

23

Haddenbeck Road is a lonely stretch of two-lane blacktop that for a fewthe southern peri a score of ranches in the least populated portion of the county Summer heat, winter rains, and California’s most violent weather--earthquakes--have left the paverass and, for a short while here in early spring, an ehway fro fields that embrace it

When we had traveled sohts, Sasha suddenly braked to a halt and said, "Look at this"

I sat up in full view, as did Roosevelt and Bobby, and surveyed the night around us in confusion as Sasha rammed the Expedition into reverse and backed up about twenty feet

"Almost ran over them," she said

On the paveh snakes to fill the cages of every reptile house in every zoo in the country

Leaning forward into the front seat, Bobby whistled softly and said, "Must be an open door to Hell around here so the ice pack off his swollen eye, squinting for a better look

"Hard to tell," Sasha said "But I think so"

Mungojerrie stood with hind paws on ht knee, forepaws on the dashboard, head craned forward He rowl, and all loathing

Even from a distance of only twenty-five feet, it was impossible to make an accurate count of the nuhway, and I had no intention of wading in auess, there were as few as seventy or eighty, as many as a hundred

In my experience, rattlesnakes are lone hunters and do not, as a roups You’ll see theh to stumble into one of their nests--and few if any nests would contain this many individuals

The behavior of these serpents was even stranger than the fact that they were gathering here in the open They twined over and under and around one another, in a slowly seething sinuous ht or ten heads rose at any one ti two, three, four feet into the air, with jaws cracked, fangs bared, tongues flickering, then shrank back into the scaly swar heads rose fro another

It was as if the Medusa, of classic Grecian , while her elaborate coiffure of serpents grooh that?" I asked

"Rather not," Sasha said

"Close the vents, crank this buggy up to warp speed," Bobby said, "and take us for a ride on the rattlesnake road"

Roosevelt said, "My mama always says, ‘Patience pays’"

"The snakes aren’t here because we are," I said "They don’t care about us They aren’t blocking us We just happened to co time They’ll move on, probably sooner than later"

Bobby patted my shoulder "Roosevelt’s mom is a lot more succinct than you are, dude"