The Sunday News
A GREEN snake not big enough to jolt Mr Dube — with all that rural background — slithered from the mulberry tree into the nearby fibre shrubbery. This was spring. Being a school holiday the boys — John and Tendai — were around. Today they were just coming from harrowing that lumpy side of the field, that side adjacent to the weir. In spite of the fatigue, on sighting the snake the boys sprang up in apparent fulfillment of our ancestor Adam’s anger after what a snake did to us in the Garden.
John went straight for his catapults while Tendai who was older jumped for the chain whip. Yes, this was spring and snakes were to be a common sight and that is why the Dubes had come up with this invention of a chain whip. It is a whip with a stick (the handle) about three metres long and it is tied to a piece of bicycle chain.
Well, we must mention that John and his catapult was a lethal pair and many birds which he sent down to earth are testimony to this. But for killing snakes — that extra task created for us by Adam and Eve in their moment of madness — that chain whip was a classy invention.
“No, leave all those weapons — how do you intend using them when the snake has sneaked into such thick shrubs, and you can’t even see it?” Mr Dube was telling his boys while throwing his hands about, the way he always talked.
“So what shall we do, todii?”
“Senze njani?” Tendai was smiling obviously enjoying the way they were echoing their music idol, Tuku, the tall man from Guruve. Already Tendai had whipped the shrubbery twice, thrice in pursuit of the snake. A sweat had broken free from his forehead. Snakes, to be honest, always heightened his heartbeat.
“Look for a box of matches in the kitchen,” that was the father to John. “You”, he patted Tendai “. . . just monitor that the snake does not leave the shrubbery”. He paused and now Tendai, wide-eyed, stood like Cristiano Ronaldo about to pump one more free kick into the nets. “Don’t do anything, OK?” the father emphasised before dashing at the corner of an isiphala where he kept some odds and ends and fished out a worn out tyre.
“Set the tyre on fire and throw it in there”. Mr Dube directed as soon as John was back with the box of matches. Tendai stood at a distance, eyes roving more in dread than alertness.
It was a struggle to light up that tyre until somebody suggested drops of paraffin. Yet even the burning tyre struggled to burn up that shrubbery. When it finally managed that shrubbery was not finished — you know how stubborn green fibres can be.
Under the strain of the fire the fibre hissed and hissed and we hushed up each other several times thinking the hissing was of the snake. For about thirty minutes no snake emerged.
“It is finished.” Mr Dube turned to go. Barefoot as he was you would mistake him for Moses from the burning bush. He spoke matter- of- factly as stubborn sons of this world do.
Of course their father’s re-assurance went a long way to calm the boys’ nerves but the proverbial curiosity of the cat in most youths led them on: they could not leave without seeing the dead snake. Using long forked sticks like little Satans in Hades they goaded the remnants of the shrubbery and finally the snake was out.
Drunk with heat and smoke, the snake had apparently lost its energy and sleekness. But still there was soon a cloud of dust as Tendai, in his unsettled nerves, missed the snake and hit the ground and gave the atmosphere a brownish hue.
“How can you miss this tired thing?” that was John, taking aim with one eye closed as the snake slothed out of the cloud. He hit it straight on the head and it wriggled goodbye to life.
But Tendai was not finished. By the time John returned from the big muhacha tree where he had been urinating the poor snake had been whipped to a pulp. And Tendai was sweating.
“But . . .?” John shook his head with a little smile.
“Now, it is finished,” replied Tendai, lifting up the dead reptile with a forked stick.
