A. Keith Kelly

A. Keith Kelly grew up on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and spent time living in Vermont, Michigan and Illinois.  He now resides just outside of Atlanta, where he serves as an associate professor of English in the University System of Georgia. An avid creative writer in his younger years, and a scholarship winner to The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1994, Kelly is only now returning to writing poetry, short story and literary nonfiction.

Living with Rattlesnakes

When I was seventeen I caught rattlesnakes and sold them for money in the little town of Hardin, Montana. That may sound odd to some, but it is an odd town.  There might be a dozen different ways to begin describing Hardin.  The fact that it sits in the fertile Big Horn River valley in the elbow of a series of steep grey bluffs might be one.  That it is also at the confluence of the Little Bighorn, and that a mere twelve miles to the south, surrounded by wave on wave of sage brush hills, is the site of General Custer’s demise, might be another.  Those lands, more than twice the size of Rhode Island, and once home to men like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse now make up the Crow Indian Reservation.  Hardin perches on the very border of the Reservation.  It is certainly big sky country.  But these features are merely geographic, and can be seen in any number of bargain shelf coffee table books.  What really makes Hardin odd are its people, and perhaps its rattlesnakes.

      In southern Montana, rattlesnakes are fairly easy to catch, if you know how to go about it, and where to look for them, especially in early fall when the days are still warm and the temperatures drop rapidly at dusk.  Once the sun sets the heat evaporates from the sage brush and the dry earth of the prairie, but the asphalt retains warmth for a few hours.  This heat in turn attracts rattlesnakes.  Now, snakes are not so unaware as to lie out on busy highways—not that there are many of those around Hardin—but a seldom used paved road provides the perfect heated mattress in the twilight of an autumn day.  In the days before Interstate 90 cut its path all the way across the country from Boston to Seattle, the road that connected the small town of Hardin with the big city—as Billings is known though it barely boasts 100,000 people—was a two-lane highway, known simply as Old Hardin Road.  Since its path lies parallel to the Interstate, and since there is absolutely nothing between Hardin and Billings other than sagebrush, mule deer and antelope, this road is hardly ever driven.  In fact, anyone driving it is likely to be doing so because they are returning drunk from the city and avoiding the Highway Patrol, or are actively getting drunk on the shoulder of the road itself, or because they want to see how fast a 1978 Chevy pick-up with a rebuilt 350 engine will go, or they are poaching—or they are catching rattlesnakes. 

      At night, it was a simple matter to drive slowly with the high beams on, peering ahead for the sight of a snake curled along the outer edge of the road.  It was important to drive the right speed—fast enough to discover the snake with the lights before it became wary of the vibrations in the asphalt, but slow enough so that one could stop before the lights sent it slithering into the brush.  It is really a matter of looking into the edge of the darkness and spotting the snakes before they flee.  Once the snake is spotted and the truck is stopped, it is often best to kill the engine, eliminating any possibility of further vibrations.  Usually I would do this, but if it was a night with lots of snakes on the road (and by a lot I mean more than two seen in the first fifteen odd miles) I would leave the engine running out of laziness.  Now, I never figured out if the best course of action was to run up to the snake quickly, risking alarming it with the impact of my footfalls, or to approach it slowly, giving it time to decide to leave for other reasons.  I met with success and failure both ways, and never came to any solid theory.  But fast or slow, one needs to get within six feet or so before the snake wises up and leaves the warmth of its asphalt mattress.  A wise person does not chase a rattlesnake into the brush at night—or during the day for that matter.  To capture the snake one need only use a length of slender rope passed double through a six-foot length of electrical conduit or PVC pipe, leaving a loop dangling from one end.  The challenge is getting the loop over the snake’s head, in the half-light of headlights, before it decides to slither swiftly away.  Sometimes the snake will strike at the pipe and rope approaching it, and it would be great if in doing so its head actually passed through the loop, but I never had that happen.  Once the loop has been slipped over its head a simple pull on the other ends of the rope results in a captured snake, to be deposited swiftly into a container—in my case a 50-quart Coleman cooler with a securely latchable lid.  It pays to be careful when transporting rattlesnakes around in one’s Ford Bronco or when keeping them in one’s living room.

      Now, I didn’t catch the snakes just for fun, and I didn’t even catch them for myself.  I had nothing against rattlesnakes either; or at least no more than any typical person has against venomous snakes.  In fact, I was rather fond of them in a way—I respected them—though I must confess that fondness and respect never really did them much good.  I suppose I could also point out that lying on an asphalt road is not “natural” behavior for a wild animal and is detrimental to anything’s health and well-being. I caught them mostly for Milt Stevens, who did in fact live with rattlesnakes just for fun. Granted, I was good enough at catching them that I also sold some to an old Crow woman who made belts, hatbands, buckles and the like out of their skins; but primarily I hunted them for Milt.  Milt was certainly one of the aforementioned odd people, and in fact might be rightly called the most interesting human in Hardin during the years I lived there.  In the first case, I am not sure that Milt was entirely human—it is quite possible that in him scientists might find a good dose of the genetic remnants of Neanderthal man.  He was a large fellow, even in 7th grade when I first met him, and became a good bit larger by the time he graduated high school—though part of that might be explained by the fact he was almost 20 years-old at the time.  But it was not his size, which was significant but not excessive, that marked him as potentially other-than-human.  In good part it was his prodigious strength and sheer volume of body hair.  The latter covered every inch of Milt with the thickness and character of the very sagebrush that covers much of the Montana plains.  He was one of the hairiest individuals in the community, at least as far as I was aware; the hairiest may well have been his sister, Francine, who was even larger than Milt and the only person of whom Milt was afraid.  She had once thrown him through a wall, granted it was drywall, but still it had made an impact on Milt. 

      Milt’s strength was something well-known soon after I became acquainted with him.  In spite of his rather simian appearance—he had exceptionally long arms in addition to the body hair—Milt was in no way a mean or even aggressive person.  In fact, he was quite a friendly guy and not prone to violence of any sort, unless a proclivity to blow up inanimate objects with homemade firecrackers that bordered on dynamite-power is considered violence.  But toward people Milt was seldom violent, and then only when provoked, which was not often; in fact it was hardly ever after a particular event in junior high.  The class bully was a kid named Cary, and he was an angry kid, so he took out his anger on other kids.  One day, while waiting for the bus, he was picking on Milt—it was not unusual for him to do so—and a bunch of us were standing about.  Cary must have been in an exceptionally mean mood that day because he was actually hitting Milt, mostly in the arms as was Cary’s wont.  Like many boys of that age and time we were doing little to stop Cary’s bullying—happy no doubt that he was not hitting us—but a few of us urged Milt to fight back, something Milt had never done.  Well, no doubt in response to our encouragement of Milt, Cary became angrier and issued his own challenge, daring the taller, dark-haired boy to fight back.  He punctuated the taunt with a blow to the face of poor Milt—this was a line that was rarely ever crossed and it conjured immediate silence among the crowd.  Out of that void I recall someone crying out, “Hit him back, Milt!”  With one sudden movement Milt launched a fist.  It was not so much a punch as it was a primal, close-fisted sledgehammer blow that landed squarely on the top of Cary’s head.  It looked strangely awkward, but its results were definitive.  Cary’s neck scrunched like an accordion from the impact, and he went straight to his knees as though someone had whacked him across the calves with a two-by-four.  It was clear that for a few seconds nothing was going on behind his eyes.  No one picked on Milt after that, aside from the occasional verbal taunting.

      Milt’s feats of strength were not limited to adolescent violence, and in truth the displays of might that came in his later high school years (when he was approaching twenty) were more impressive, if less impactful on his life—or Cary’s head.  I once saw him lift an iron wood-burning stove into the back of a pick-up truck, without assistance.  I can attest to the magnitude of this accomplishment because for the twenty minutes prior to Milt’s act, my brother and I, along with a friend who a year later was to set the Montana National Guard record for pull-ups by doing sixty-three, had struggled unsuccessfully to hoist the beast into the same truck.  I think Milt may have grunted, but no other sign of strain was apparent.  I distinctly recall that he said not a word about our comparative puniness.  Perhaps because none were needed, or perhaps because he was a rather nice fellow.

      In spite of his strength, however, Milt did not compete in athletics until his senior year in high school.  It was not for lack of recruitment efforts on the part of the coaches.  To be sure, the idea of Milt on the football team, playing as a lineman on both sides of the ball made the coach slaver like a Labrador retriever on an August afternoon.  But it was not to be.  Milt’s folks were small farmers who also raised a handful of chickens, hogs and the occasional cow.  His father was very jealous of his son’s activities, and the wasteful application of Milt’s time and strength upon such nonsense as sports was not permitted.   I never actually met Milt’s father.  In fact, very few people I know ever did.  I think he was a recluse, or perhaps akin to someone from an episode of the X-Files.  But Milt did wrestle during the winter of his senior year; I guess the season fell far enough outside the harvest (it being a winter sport) that he escaped the fields.  Or perhaps Milt stood up for himself again.  Whatever the reason that freed him to wrestle, he had never been trained in the sport—aside from whatever skills he picked up while surviving his domiciliation with his sister.  Milt lost his first three matches and then went on to win the District title—no small achievement in a state that values wrestling so highly.  His tactics were, unsurprisingly, primitive.  Like the Viking berserkers of the Dark Ages, Milt fought like a bear, simply gripping people in his massive arms and crushing them or pinning them as they struggled like maddened trout to free themselves from his clutches.  Apparently, he broke his own forearm in the semi-final match of the State tournament and won the final bout in spite of it.  

      But Milt was not simply a physical oddity who possessed copious body hair and impressive strength.  He was also a unique personality and a singular intellect.  That is not to say that Milt was destined to win a Rhodes scholarship—after all he didn’t graduate from high school until he was nearly old enough to drink alcohol legally.  But he did have certain skills and talents.  He could completely disassemble the engine of a pick-up truck (back before they were entirely computerized) and put it all back together again in perfect working order—something he did one year to his own truck.  Unfortunately for Milt, he took it apart over the weekend and it took the next five days to get it reassembled and running again.

      Milt liked rattlesnakes and kept them as pets, in his bedroom.  He housed them in a 500 gallon terrarium that he built out of plexi-glass on an aluminum frame.  It was quite impressive, a perfect microcosm of the prairie environment, complete with sage brush, sandstone, actual growing grass, rocks, dirt, and even a tumbleweed thrown in the corner for good measure.  Underneath a large flagstone he had installed the heating element from an old water heater to provide his snakes with warmth during the colder months.  It took up nearly half his bedroom.  At any given time there would be four to five rattlesnakes in the terrarium, ranging from little things not much bigger than a bootlace, to five-foot snakes as big around as a man’s wrist.  While the former would make a polite little humming sound when alarmed, the latter could produce a buzz loud enough to scare anyone out of his skin the moment it was heard.  There is nothing else like the sound of a rattler.  

      In fact, one day following an evening when I had enjoyed a successful hunt for snakes, and had two sizable rattlers in my latched cooler, a friend, Danny Bear Stands, stopped by to visit me.  He and I worked together as fishing guides, which was how I earned a real living—catching rattlesnakes was more of a hobby.  Spotting the cooler in the small living room Danny sat down upon it like it was a bench.  This jolt caused one of the snakes inside to buzz for a brief second.  When he asked what I had in the cooler I told him simply, “rattlesnakes.”  He laughed and we talked for a good five minutes before the heel of his boot struck the cooler again, again setting off the snakes inside.  Once more Danny asked what I had in the cooler.  “I told you already, rattlesnakes,” was my rather glib response.  With a dismissive snort Danny reached down between his knees, unclasped the latch and standing he lifted the lid of the cooler.  The snakes went off like an alarm.  Seeing a man go from that position—bent over looking between his own knees into a cooler—into a broad jump that carried him all the way across the room was quite impressive.  I believe if Danny had jumped that well on the track team he would have won a few more trophies.

      But unlike Danny, Milt loved rattlesnakes.  I think he genuinely cared for the creatures and treated them with gentleness and respect.  He fed them well with mice he caught in his barns and around the haystacks, where there were literally hundreds.  He named them, knew their temperaments and enjoyed their company.  He told me that some snakes he had had for a couple years—the ones that became docile and friendly, snakes that he would touch and even handle.  Others were less inclined toward domesticity and these Milt released back into the wild after they had proven their irascible natures.   I truly think Milt had a way with rattlesnakes.

That is not to say, however, that Milt did not have incidents involving his snakes.  Rattlers, like many venomous snakes, have several different types of bites and they can control their venom output.  Often a snake, in defense, will strike as a warning, and inject very little venom into the victim—for most animals this is a sufficient deterrent.  A snake prefers to keep its venom for purposes of taking prey, or when truly threatened.  According to Milt he had received several of these “love taps” as he called them, and they did little more than hurt for a day or two and make him a bit queasy.  But on one occasion one of Milt’s snakes must have loved him a little too much, because it injected a hefty dose of venom into his wrist. 

      But Milt, being who he was, did not hold it against the snake.  In fact, he did not even seek medical attention for days, not until his arm had swollen up so much that the cuff of his t-shirt was cutting into the flesh of his upper arm and he was becoming delirious.  He missed over a week of school, hospitalized with blood poisoning.  When he returned we were all amazed by the hideous discoloration of his arm, the astounding lack of judgment in not going to the hospital after being bitten, and—as one of our more hygienic classmates pointed out—the fact that Milt had worn the same t-shirt long enough for the cuff to cut into his flesh.  

     In spite of his amazing strength and prodigious pelt, his hammering of Cary the bully, and his at times one-sided love affair with rattlesnakes, what Milt was best known for was the time he shot himself.  It was not so much the fact that Milt had shot himself that was amazing, it was that he did so on purpose, because he wanted to know what it felt like.  

      Milt may have been many things, but a liar was not one of them. Nor was he even prone to exaggeration.  It was not in line with his character, and as much of his life was lived in the extreme, he had no real call to do so.  I do not know what impulse caused Milt to be seized with the desire to experience the business end of a gun, and he never offered any other than simple curiosity.  As his method of experiment clearly demonstrates it was not from a desire for his own death; in fact living through the experience was vital to the successful completion of the task.  

      He began by donning the World War II flak jacket that had belonged to his grandfather.  Such a garment is made from canvas, and has sown into it, thin plates of steel or manganese.  The resulting armored vest was designed to stop the shrapnel and debris hurtled through the air by German anti-aircraft guns.  It was never meant to stop the full penetrative power of a bullet.  This fact Milt knew quite well, as he was quite versed in matters military; he actually read books on it.  So, in order to further protect himself from the bullet, which would surely pass through the metal plate, Milt placed underneath the flak jacket two Billings phonebooks.  Billings is the largest city in the state of Montana and at the time of Milt’s experiment the population numbered around 70,000.  Each phonebook, which contained both white and yellow pages, was about an inch and a half thick.  Having secured the two books underneath the chest of the flak jacket, Milt loaded his .357 magnum revolver and prepared to complete the test.  For those not familiar with the power of particular handgun calibers, suffice it to say that the .357 magnum is a very serious and devastating weapon.  Gun people often laud it for its incredible impact and penetration, and give it such lethal accolades as “a one shot stopper.”  Apparently Milt did not merely want to know what it felt like to be shot, he wanted to know what it felt like to be shot in an unmistakably deadly fashion.  Milt handed the loaded revolver to his mother and asked her to shoot him directly in the spot marked in bright red tape upon the flak jacket.  She agreed.  

      It was at this point upon hearing the story that we paused, and asked Milt for clarification.  “You mean your mother shot you?!”  We all knew that Milt was not a normal human, and I suppose if we had stopped to consider the field of genetics we might have deduced that his parents ought likewise to have drifted from the normal path of homo sapien behavior.  However, upon the hearing of it we were left as flabbergasted as any normal person might be, even if it did go a long way in explaining from whence Milt inherited his lack of judgment.  But we were released from the psychological trauma of having to accept that Milt had been shot by his own mother when he told us that although she had agreed to perform the deed he had prevented her.  “Her hands shook so damn much,” he explained, “that I thought for sure she’d miss the phonebooks and kill me.”  So he told us that he took the gun from her, turned it upon himself and fired, at point blank range, a .357 magnum bullet into the center of his chest.  It easily pierced the metal plate of the flak jacket, passed entirely through the first Billings phonebook, and came to a rest in the “T” section of the yellow pages in the second phonebook.  Thus the bullet never reached Milt.  The impact of it did, however, and in doing so broke five of his ribs, split his sternum and stopped his heart.  For several moments Milt was clinically dead I suppose, until his mother was able to revive him with CPR.  

      When Milt showed us his chest it was more than two weeks after the shooting.  It was, without a doubt, the most magnificent bruise to ever have adorned the human body.  And it looked like it hurt. The center was an indigo color that, moving outward, faded from lake blue tones to a green the color of jade, which then faded to the hue of winter wheat and a rather moldy yellow.  It covered his entire chest, from neck to navel and armpit to armpit.  And perhaps because of the many bandages that had covered his upper torso, Milt’s entire chest had been completely shaved.  It was the most unbelievably awful sight imaginable.  I recall someone asked him if it hurt.  A dumb question. Of course it did. He almost killed himself.  

      “It felt,” Milt answered with a slight grimace, “like the time I got kicked by a horse, only worse.”  None of us knew that Milt had ever been kicked by a horse.  It did, however, make a certain amount of sense.