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Now I was the one nearly swooning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We sat around the cracklingfire, the large snake roasting on a spit Marge had constructed. My stomach grumbled. I didn’t want to admit it out loud, but the smells were actually appealing, especially since we hadn’t eaten all day.
“Are you really going to eat that?” Doris asked from her seat on a log beside me.
“You betcha,” Marge answered. “We ate plenty of snakes in ‘Nam. They’re good. Kinda taste like pork.”
“But you said it was venomous!” Doris kept on. “Won’t you get poisoned?”
“Nah. This is a pit viper. You can tell by the head, though I’m not sure which variation lives down here in Mexico. But they’re all edible once you cook ‘em. It’s just getting bit that you gotta worry about.” She flipped the spit. “And this guy is deader than a doornail. He ain’t biting nobody now.”
“I still can’t believe you killed a snake with a stick.” Alice shook her head.
“You mean saved your life with a stick?” Marge arched an eyebrow and smirked. “That bad boy would have made a snack out of our little cougar here if you’d moved so much as an inch and startled it. Those fangs would have sunk right into your boney flesh, and then there’s nothing we could have done to save you. Some of these venomous snakes make your skin slough right off.”
I swallowed with a gulp. “And will there be more coming we need to worry about?”
“I’ll stay up tonight while you ladies sleep. I’ll make sure no one gets a prickly little visitor.”
“We can’t ask you to stay up while we sleep. We should work in shifts,” I answered.
“If there’s one thing you learn in the Army, it’s how to go days without sleep and still function well. I’ll be fine.”
“I agree with Sylvie. I think we should do shifts. I doubt I’ll be able to sleep tonight anyway. I’m traumatized.” Alice shuddered.
“I’ve got something that will help you all sleep.” Marge grinned and reached into the dry bag, pulling out a small, brown case. “I found this when I was searching for a phone.”
She opened the case, pulled out a white joint, and grinned wide.
“What is that?” Doris asked.
“Oh, hell yeah! Way to go, Julio!” Alice nodded enthusiastically. “That’s the next best thing to the vodka no one packed. Light that baby up!”
“Oh, my God.” I chuckled, remembering my youth and sitting in clouds of smoke, hysterically laughing with my best friends. “I haven’t done that since college.”
