“I'm not sure,” I said. “The way she talked, it sounded like some sort of reward or privilege, but yet, I can't help being very suspicious.”
“Oh, well. No homework. I'll take whatever little gifts I get here. That's for sure.”
We returned to work and, as Dr. Foreman hadordered, said nothing about Natani and the lessons. All day I waited to see if Teal was being released. I listened when the buddies talked to each other, too, to see if they would mention her and anything that had been done to her, but it was as if she had never been here. Not a word about her was spoken.
Once again, she wasn't at dinner, and once again, neither Gia nor Mindy seemed to care or be interested. What did interest and surprise them was our not returning to the barn to do our schoolwork.
“How come you're excused from that?” Mindy asked irritably.
“We have some other chore to attend to,” I said.
“Ah,” Mindy said, nodding. “You're finally being punished, aren't you?”
“We'll let you know,” I said.
Gia made her eyes small, studied me for a moment, then walked off silently.
Robin and I headed for Natani's hogan. When we got there, he had us sit on the floor. The rocks were gone but he had animal skins in a small pile. Both of us eyed them timidly as we sat, especially the snakeskin.
“What are we here to learn?” Robin asked him.
“The desert.”
He said he wanted to begin first with the desert's poisonous creatures. He reached into his pile and plucked out the snakeskin, which was so long and real the two of us gasped and sat back when he held it up.
“Sidewinder,” he announced as if he were introducing us to one of his pets, and moved his body to show us how it moved and from what it got its name. “In the sand, it makes this shape.” With a stick he drew parallel J-shaped marks. “Tells you it's been here. If the mark is very fresh, you take another path.”
“I would take another path if it was months old,” Robin muttered.
“Snakes come out at night. Sleep in burrows or under brush. They don't try to hurt you if you leave them be,” he said. “That's a good lesson about most things in nature.”
“I would have no trouble leaving it be,” I said. Robin nodded in vivid agreement.
“Sometimes, foolish person blindly invades its safe place and it will strike.” He held up his healing pouch. “Inside is rattlesnake weed.” He dipped his hand in to take it out and show it to us. “If someone is bitten, cut the wound immediately, suck out poison, and squeeze juice of the plant into cut. Chew plant and swallow juice. Make you vomit.”
“Ugh,” Robin said. “Do you have to tell it all in such detail?”
“Person who has been bitten is very sick, sweating. Bind the wound with plant after it is boiled. It will save the person's life maybe or keep him from being very, very sick.”
“Why is he telling us all this now?” Robin muttered, squinting. “We should have learned it all the first day we arrived at this hellhole.”
He put the pouch down and reached into the pile of skins to show us a lizard with brightly colored, beadlike scales on its back.
“Gila monster,” he said, holding it up. “Poisonous bite.” He shook his head. “Let it be and it let you be.”
“It will have no problems from me ever,” I said, inching back when he brought it closer.
He then showed us four other lizards, the chuck-walla, the desert night lizard, the thorny devil, and the armadillo lizard, just so we would know them and notbe afraid of them. He held up another skin he called a blind snake and told us it was harmless.
“It doesn't look harmless to me,” Robin muttered. “A snake's a snake.”
Natani stared at her a moment. “Once the night lizard asked the rattlesnake why he ran from men and got so angry if they came too close. The rattlesnake replied, 'A man's a man.' ”
“Very funny,” Robin said. I smiled and she looked like she saw the point, too.
“Scorpions you know,” Natani continued, but showed us dried scorpions anyway so we could tell the difference between the poisonous and nonpoisonous, and then he held out a dead poisonous black widow. One creature I didn't anticipate was a centipede he said had venomous pincers and could give a painful bite.
“Always shake out clothes and blankets good when in the desert,” he warned. “You can have a bad surprise putting on shirt with one of these inside.”
One final creature was the velvet ant. Natani said the wingless females could inflict a painful sting and he called them “cow killers.”
I could see Robin was getting paler and paler. “All of these creatures are around us, some right under our noses?”
Natani nodded and she looked like she might heave any moment or maybe faint. She was swallowing hard and shaking her head. “If I knew all that was here, I would have chosen a maximum security prison.”
Why had Dr. Foreman decided to have Natani do this now? I wondered. Was this our punishment? To be confronted by all these frightening creatures and insects so we would dream about them at night or tiptoe about this place? Was it meant to keep us confined and discourageus from wandering about the ranch? If so, it was working. Robin looked like she would roll herself up into a ball and stay that way, and my stomach was so tight and twisted inside, I thought I would donate my dinner soon to the ants and spiders and snakes.
Natani pushed all the skins and creatures aside and sat across from us.
“Traveling in the desert is harder during the day, but the poisonous creatures I show you come out only at night. Animals in desert know to burrow and sleep during day.”
“Sounds like a peachy keen life,” Robin said
