It’s so dark here. Security lights form constellations, lining the neighbors’ driveways up and down the road. Cars pass and their high beams cause the deer and dogs in the pasture to have eerie, glowing blue-green eyes. Looking up at the sky on a cloudless night, you can see every single star that ever existed, and then some. The moon is huge and round and sometimes has dark blots on it, but sometimes it’s perfectly smooth and shiny.
The bats love the security light. They flutter and flap and seek out their prey - the bugs. The bugs are drawn to the security light in the drive way, and at night we watch the bats swoop and swerve as they make chase. A life-or-death game of "Tag, you're it."
Crickets and katydids and bullfrogs and whip-poor-wills perform a flawless evening symphony. On some dark nights, we camp out in the camper on The Hill. Nana’s family graveyard is here. I don’t mind the graves during the day, but at night it is spooky and scary and I’m afraid our family ghosts are going to decide to take one of us back under the soil with them.
As we get ready for bed in the camper, Papaw pulls out the cassette player. It’s small and portable and shaped like a Troll, the collectible ones with neon hair and jewels for bellybuttons. We have a set of bedtime stories on tape, but always listen to the same one. It’s about Frances and she’s not ready for bed. She keeps putting off sleep by asking her parents for a glass of milk or other favors. Eventually, she has to stay in bed but then cracks start to grow in the ceiling and the shadows grow on the floor and she gets really scared too, hugging her teddy bear. We must have played this same story a thousand times. We don’t have speakers, but we all listen carefully. “Shh. Be quiet,” we scold each other. Our heads so close together, our breath mingling. We lay silent and still, listening to the headphones with the volume cranked to the max.
One night, Troy and maybe Papaw bring home their trophies after gigging frogs. They have the most enormous toads on a string. Really, it’s twine with a metal piece in the shape of needle on one end and a big knot on the other end. You shove the frogs on one by one, stabbing them through the belly. They are still alive. Somehow, they end up dead and someone starts cleaning and battering and frying up the legs. Frog legs. We eat them.
They also have a snake. It’s long and thick and shiny in the moonlight. Someone tells us to stand back, and we press against the slats on the porch, forming a sort of stage. The head of the snake is sliced off. I don't get to see. But it dies. And yet it doesn’t. Its body continues jerk and thrash and its poisony snake blood slings everywhere, forming tiny blood rivers on the boards of the porch.
All the while, the bats are circling overhead, sticking close to the security light, chasing bugs, paying us no mind. But we aren’t the ones with no minds. That would be the snake.
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