XI. Fake Snakes and Elephant Dung, Part Two

We all crawled, one after another, through the tight, pitch-black tunnel that connected the chambers of the meditation cave. The air was thick and musty; the only sounds were our breathing and the steady drip-drip-drip from who-knows-where. I held a small flashlight between my teeth, illuminating only a few feet in front of me. The rest of the group was behind me in complete darkness, feeling their way along, occasionally piling into each other.

After several feet, the tunnel opened up a bit; we could stand almost upright and walk, although it was still completely dark. The group crowded in tight; they were disconcerted and claustrophobic. Once more, I had them right where I wanted them. They didn’t know what they were approaching, but I did: a large rock on which a monk had carved a rather realistic-looking snake. I abruptly flashed my light onto the carving.

“Snake!” I shrieked.

Beth, fresh-faced and fresh out of college, absolutely freaked out. She was out of control, to the point of hyperventilating. It was more of a reaction than I expected. I tried calming her down, “Hey, look, it’s just a carving. See? It’s not real. I was just playing.”

“You’ve got a lot of god-damned nerve!” she hit my arm hard, “That wasn’t nice! I’m really afraid of snakes!”

“You do realize we’re going into the jungle tomorrow, don’t you. There are real snakes in there. Are you going to be okay with that?”

“I’ll be fine!” she pushed past me and stormed off ahead in the dark, then stopped, realizing she couldn’t go any further. I could almost hear her cross her arms in defiance.

I wasn’t making it up. There were snakes in the jungle, lots of them: pythons, cobras, green pit vipers and others, all potentially very dangerous. The truth was we rarely ran into them. They tended to stay away from the trails, at least when people were on them. Of course, there was always a possibility. I didn’t think she fully realized this. I tried to broaching the subject the next morning before we set out, but she wouldn’t speak to me. Maybe she had something to prove.

After a few hours of hiking in pretty thick terrain, we arrived at a clearing. There were a couple of fallen trees, probably pushed over by elephants some time ago. Each traveler staked out a seat as I passed out their lunches: cold fried rice and bananas. Beth sat at the far end. She took the Styrofoam container without saying a word or looking at me. I let her be and chatted with the others as we ate. Suddenly, we heard a scream from Beth’s end. We turned to see her as she leaped off her log, “Snake! I sat on a snake!”

A green pit viper, highly poisonous, quickly slithered off the log and into the bushes. She was damned lucky it didn’t bite her. When she sat on it, she probably scared it as much as it scared her.

The one traveler to encounter a snake on the trail, and it had to be her. What if she had been bitten? Could I have gotten her to a doctor in time? I didn't even carry a penknife to cut the bite and suck out the venom. Hell, I wasn't even sure if that was the right thing to do. All my experience again had boiled down to which television shows I watched.

Once Beth calmed down and could even laugh a little about it, we collected our trash and continued on the trail. We ended up, as we so often did, at a waterfall, always a perfect place to relax and wash the grime of the trail off. Beth spent her time there off alone on a rock. After a while she approached me. I began to apologize for the trick, and for not watching out for her, but she cut me off, “No, you were right. I probably shouldn’t have come here.”

“Look, that was just a freak occurrence, a one in a million thing. We never see snakes. You just got… lucky.”

She smiled, “Thanks, but I should have listened. You’re the one with the experience. I mean, I’ve only been out of the States for two weeks. I don’t know anything about jungle.”

I didn’t have the heart, no, strike that, the balls to tell her that I left the States only about a month earlier and didn't know what the fuck I was doing.