[Fiction] White Eye

By Krista Ruffo

Wendell tells the interviewer at the South Florida Water Management District’s office that he knows snakes very well. He’s very familiar with PEP, the Python Elimination Program. He studied herpetology in school and grew up with them in his home; they were his siblings. His mother kept some as pets. Some of them small. Some of them not so small. Some species were legal to keep. Some weren’t. He didn’t tell the interviewer that last part.

Wendell is hired immediately.

He asks his new boss, Pauline, about a Burmese Python with one white eye. Has she seen it? Pauline knows nothing. Of course. She wouldn’t know anything about any python anyhow. She wasn’t a PEP agent. She sat in an air-conditioned office all day. 

Wendell knows that he isn’t like his coworkers. He quickly gains a reputation as one of the best PEP agents the Everglades has ever seen, but he doesn’t let this go to his head. He searches, finds, and captures snakes of all sizes faster than anyone else, even seasoned employees. When he locates a snake, his movements are ginger, viciously quiet. Light feet from behind, grab them by the jaw. Angry movements equal angry snake. Before loading the heavy cylinder of muscle into his truck, he’ll squint at its head. If it doesn’t have a white left eye, he dumps it into a large plastic bin. 

For three years, Wendell captures pythons, looks ever so closely at their heads, knowing he’s searching for something he may not even find. Sometimes he admires their beauty, their smooth leopard-spotted skin. Sometimes he thinks about how they never asked to be here, but have a negative impact on the ecosystem anyway. How he, as a PEP agent, is helping with this problem. But it all seems trivial. He just wants the python with the white eye. That’s all.

One day, Wendell is sent to a trailer park on the outskirts of town. Suffocating summer afternoon. Things are different this time. Normally he trudges through surprisingly clear-watered swamps and steps over short cypress knees and peers into clusters of saw palmettos, capturing any pythons he can find and putting them inside plastic tote boxes. Lovely places devoid of development and people. But this time, Paula told him it's an emergency.

Wendell exits his truck. A mother and young daughter are trapped inside their trailer, trying to get to their car, but a large snake—a python, they called and said they were sure of it, Paula told him—is coiled beneath it. The pair stare at Wendell, the mother holding the daughter from behind, both faces chalky with fear. The snake rests under the shade of the car like a lazy farm cat. Wendell notices a dog bowl just beside the front door of the trailer, but sees no dog. A dirty film coats the inside of the bowl. Scraps for stray cats, maybe. That’s two meals for certain other visitors.

Wendell creeps forward, crouches, and observes the snake. Its tongue flicks once, twice. Wendell does what he always does. Stays quiet, observes the skin pattern, judges length and body language. Yes, it’s a Burmese python. Thick like a tree, close to thirteen feet, coiled beneath the car’s shadow like a dragon in a lair. Calm, unafraid. Knowing, even. And he sees three years’ worth of searching right above that flicking tongue. More years than that, really. The hunt was on long before Paula hired him.

He walks back to his truck and pulls a shotgun out of the backseat. The mother and daughter scream and dive away from the window. Wendell drops to his belly. The python slithers forward, but Wendell is ready. He squeezes the trigger once, twice.

In his peripheral he sees that the mother and daughter do not reappear in the window, likely cowering at the resounding shots, thinking they got strapped with the most psychotic PEP agent in their area. Wendell doesn’t care. He squats and pulls the dense beast’s head out from between the treadless wheels.

He runs his hand over the snout, fingers warm with the thin pulse of blood from the pinhole wounds in the snake’s skull. The second shot was unnecessary. Then he brushes his fingers over the rubbery flesh just shy of its left eye, the off-white orb like a crystal ball refusing to show the future. Or reveal the past. The defunct eye, of course, stabbed years ago by his mother in a futile attempt at protection when she couldn’t afford to feed her whole hungry menagerie.

How proud she would be of Wendell now.

Krista Ruffo is a graduate of the University of Central Florida and holds a BA in English and a Certificate in Editing and Publishing. She’s been published by Appelley, Gabby & Min, Coastlines, and elsewhere. She loves writing CNF, fiction, and poetry. Alongside writing, she likes to read, hike, practice photography, create art, and attempt to take care of plants. She works as a Content Coordinator for a local family magazine and lives in Orlando, Florida, with her four cats.