San José de Magdalena
Baja California
1860
Along a wide arroyo lined with palms, upon a shelf of land nearly overcome with mesquite and the barbarous cholla, between the peaks of Cerro Soledad and Cerro La Viña, lay the abandoned chapel of San José de Magdalena, the workplace of Arthur Burt the herpetologist. The little edifice of stone, topped with dried palms and now empty of all religious artifact, was practically hidden behind barrels, jars, cork-lined boxes, bags of mosquito netting, copper kettles and leather panniers, powder tanks filled with specimens waiting for mules to transport them to the coast for shipment to the British Museum.
At first Burt had been uneasy, setting up a laboratory in a chapel. But one wouldn’t recognize it as a church now. Kegs of alcohol, infused with tartar emetic, lined the walls. Baskets of serpentine heads and bodies ringed the room. The altar was slimed and bloody, though he’d tried to wipe it clean. And all the niches were taken up with live snakes in sacks. Burt could hardly imagine what the rector at St. George’s might say. But there was no rector here, or priest. Only the vast untapped desert between two seas, the dark looming hills, and the stone chapel.
Chief among Arthur Burt’s concerns was John Xántus de Vesey, collecting specimens at the Cape of San Lucas. Xántus the Hungarian, possessor of a baroncy, bookseller and druggist and former hospital steward, once-prisoner of war, man of the law, speaker of seven languages, tidal surveyor. Xántus with his heaps of discoveries, Xántus under the auspices of the Smithsonian, Xántus with piles of gear. Xántus amassing everything undiscovered and unnamed. Indefatigable, illimitable, the draft horse of the scientific world. Xántus like a great anteater, licking up everything around.
But Arthur Burt was, after a fashion, a man of battle. His display cases at the British Museum were arenas of warfare—the hooded cobra unfurling before the mongoose, the fer-de-lance poised above the frog in the reeds, the foot of a peccary caught in the coils of the boa. Groups of horrified ladies passed before the cases, clutching handkerchiefs to their mouths. They especially hated the serpents with triangular heads—the rattlers, the vipers, even some of the boas. Burt did not know why the triangular head made such a difference, but it did. The ladies recoiled from Burt, too—the cowlicks standing upon his head like small red flowers, his hands raw and peeling from arsenic, a bit of dried blood on his collar. They assessed him and moved on. Progeny were out of the question.
But history might yet allow him a namesake. The world would know a Dipsas burtiana or an Uta burterius or even, he dared hope, a Burtosaurus arthurii. And then he would return home, not a man to be thrown in the shade, but a man remembered.
One afternoon some boys from the ranches discovered Arthur Burt sitting in the shade of the chapel. He found himself suddenly surrounded.
—What are you doing with that snake, Father? a boy asked. He had a flap of skin covering one eye.
Burt blushed. Oh, I’m not a priest, he said.
—Why is your face so red?
—Do you live in the chapel?
—Are you truly a priest?
—Go on home now, Burt said.
The boys pressed in. One of them scrubbed the skin on Burt’s arm; he was terribly freckled. The one-eyed boy reached to stroke the snake and some other boys stroked it too. The timorous little head stretched like a plumb line for the dark folds of Burt’s waistcoat. He took a jar of alcohol and pulled some of the liquid into a syringe. The snake twisted around his sleeve and he unwound it. He dropped the snake into the jar and affixed the lid.
—We don’t want it to spoil, Burt said. It must travel all the way to London.
The snake writhed and shuddered and butted the glass, and the smaller boys pushed to the front to see. The snake went still and its head floated near the top. Burt unscrewed the lid. He turned the snake over and injected alcohol into the belly.
—Where is your woman? the one-eyed boy asked.
—Is she a snake? another boy said, and he flicked his tongue.
Everyone laughed, and one of the boys hissed and looked around to see if it would catch on. Several others picked it up.
Burt studied the small, avid boys. He thought of Xántus at the Cape. Xántus in the path of frequent whaling ships which carried away stacks of crates and boxes and barrels of specimens. Xántus sweeping up mice and gophers and hares and hummingbirds. Prying up starfish and pressing plants. Pinning insects and skinning fish. Xántus with jars of radiata floating in their liquors. Boxed-up heads of tamias and skunks and pumas. Xántus and his hired men. Even the dog of Xántus, who dug up crabs by the hundreds and dropped them into a bucket.
From that day onward, Burt enlisted the boys to help him collect. He showed them the tin jars for preserving, parchment for labeling, knives for eviscerating and skinning, needles for re-sewing, nooses for lizards, the double-barreled gun and fine shot for small game. Soon there were little boys everywhere with homemade snake sticks. He awarded two raisins per specimen, and he gave extra raisins for the first individual of its kind that a boy found, no matter how tatty the sample, for there is a rule natural scientists follow that one never discards the first of a new specimen until a better one is found.
Slowly, Burt’s vessels began to fill—tins and jars and baskets, his shirts and field helmet, and even the teakettle, where now resided a variant of sidewinder. Skins of rattlesnakes and coachwhips and gopher snakes and patch-noses and rat snakes hung from the eaves like strings of chiles. When the eaves were full, Burt hung the snakeskins from poles to dry. At night he stored the specimens up high, where coyotes couldn’t reach.
One afternoon Burt returned from collecting to find the wooden box overturned and the raisins gone. A single fruit lay on the ground, trodden. That day only the one-eyed boy came, but he carried something, one cupped hand atop the other like two small bivalves. Burt grew excited.
—What have you there? he said.
The boy opened his hands to reveal a common Sceloporus. It was broken, two legs and the tail missing. The boy looked at Burt’s face and pressed the lizard back into his pocket. He asked if Burt knew where his father’s ranch was. He pointed and said his mother told Burt to come. There was to be a dance. Burt coughed, though he didn’t need to.
—Go on, he said.
In the evening Burt made very poor illustrations of the specimens, heavy handed and smudged. He added a portrait of himself, with frizzled hair and uneven eyes, drawn in a continuous line, as though he were afraid to lift the nib from the paper.
—I never cut much of a splash in London, he said to himself. This was a daring use of slang and he leaned against the chapel wall in a cocksure pose and tried the phrase again with a pipe between his teeth, though the pipe was empty, for tobacco made him ill.
He went to the door and looked out. He imagined the people now gathering at the ranch of the one-eyed boy and he tried again the dapper stance. Fandango, he said.
The air was chilly and a fog had descended. His mind wandered the stacks at the British Museum: John Blackwall with his Leiobunum blackwalli, Sir John Richardson and his Hemidactylus richardsonii. John Edward Gray and Delma grayii. John Xántus. He saw himself at his dissecting table in the low sooty room at the rear of the museum, dimly lit by the dying fire, enveloped in the smoke and mal humors that made him as dark and close as the city that had borne him.
He saddled his mule and rode out, following the arroyo toward the ranch. The mesquite clicked in the night wind and he heard the cry of bats as they dipped and rose. The full moon had turned the arroyo into a road of white. He could feel heat coming up; the earth was cooling itself. A dove trilled.
—Who cooks for you? Burt called back.
When he came to the ranch house, the windows were lit. Mules and horses filled the yard. He heard laughter, a shout and a reply. Women’s voices. He secured the mule in a stand of palo verde and stood at a distance. Music poured from the bright square of the window. Violins and singers. Forms swirled past the door and he saw the one-eyed boy dancing by. He thought of going up, but kept to the trees, wiping his brow and berating himself.
All at once he saw a dark slip of something disappear into the brush. He took the snake stick from his pack and followed the slow movement, the rustle of dried leaves. He plunged the stick down and a heavy mass of coils jerked and thrashed. Into the moonlight he lifted a great dark snake, banded with white rings and long as a man. The snake struggled and the tail looked for purchase. It had a slight bulge in the middle, a rodent perhaps, or a lizard.
He looked toward the house. Through the open door he could see the dancers. Women hovered at the edges of the room. Little girls leaned into their mothers’ skirts and looked coquettishly around, and when men addressed them with compliments they hid their faces.
He stood watching, sweating in the shadow of the moon. The snake twisted free and he nearly dropped it and the snake struck his sleeve and struck again. He grasped the neck and with the other hand fished a needle from his kit and pushed it suddenly into the brain. The snake lurched and Burt let go. All motor control was lost and the snake angled impotently toward the brush. He’d done a poor job; the struggle took a very long time. The body twisted, showing its underbelly, and righted itself. At last the snake puttered a few times and lay quiet.
The thrum of a guitar drifted down to him, jolly voices calling and answering. He turned the snake over. The scales were perfectly fitted, like honeycomb. With a knife he cut into the white folds of near-bloodless flesh. He wiped his forehead, leaving a line of mucus, and opened the entrails. Inside lay two mice and a translucent silver gecko of a kind he had never seen. Head and torso mottled with a brown motif, like lichen upon a rock. A double row of paravertebral spots. Hands like snowflakes. Wide unlidded eyes. He held the gecko gently between thumb and forefinger. Its throat puffed in and out.
—Phyllodactylus burtii, he said with wonder.
He looked up. The lady of the household was persuaded to the center of the room. She lifted her skirt to reveal the movements of her feet, and her heavy braid swung in time. Men applauded. One placed his hat upon her head. Another man added a hat, and another. The woman danced on. Burt wished he could add his hat too. He stood holding the gecko. It pulsed weakly, paddling its hands against his.
The one-eyed boy came outside and leaned against the house. He saw Burt and straightened up. He beckoned. Burt looked on through the door. The dance continued, the woman at the center, and at last the weight of the hats became too great, toppling to the floor, and a happy cry went up.