Lucky Snake

My grandmother willed half of her thirty-acre farm estate to the young handyman who frequently visited her house to fiddle with the old wiring and oil the creaky doors, a leather toolbelt slung low on his hips. The document she’d printed from Wills.com stated that this was because he reminded her of my (long deceased) grandfather. She left the other half to the big old black snake that lived under a rotting oak stump out back, also, the official document revealed, because it reminded her of my grandfather. This may have been a compliment, though whether to the snake or to my grandfather I wasn’t sure. 

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Judgement Day

My parents and my mother’s sister and her husband and my three cousins and their spouses all challenged this will in court. On the appointed day, the handyman approached the bench dressed as always in a greasy T-shirt, dirty jeans (holes in both knees, and, distractingly, in the left butt cheek), and a crooked smile (dimple in the left not-butt cheek). He did leave his leather toolbelt at home, though he casually toted a scuffed plastic cat carrier in his right hand. In it, the snake. When the family lost the case, my parents’ lips disappeared into their teeth and they hissed with disdain.

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Tree of Paradise

I asked the handyman to sell me the quarter acre where a large oak tree cradled the treehouse I had loved in childhood. He silently deeded me the land without payment, and during the warm months I slept deeply in the treehouse while my parents and my mother’s sister and her husband and my three cousins and their spouses tossed with venomous anger. You may assume here that the handyman slept with me; it wasn’t like that. (Though later it was, we two hidden high in the lushness of the leaves, causing showers of acorns that sprouted in the grass.)  And the snake: She found a mate (I never met him) and produced an impressive clutch of eggs. Her descendants slept well and lived fruitfully on their land for generations.

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Ashley W. Cundiff is a musician and writer of essays and fiction. She has placed work in numerous journals, most recently Swing and Raleigh Review, and she is a reader and collaborator with Wild Roof Journal. Ashley lives in rural Virginia with her family and can be found on Substack at ashleywcundiff.substack.com.