Sunshine and Shadows Read Free Page A

something—" she said.
    At that moment a beautiful child with sawed-off black hair and flashing dark eyes erupted through the door.
    "Jay, come quick!" she said. "Jean-Claude poked a stick down a gopher hole and we hear rattles in there!"
    Jay dropped the chairs. "I told Jean-Claude—" he said.
    "You know how he is," the girl said.
    "Sorry, Lisa, it's an emergency," Jay said on his way out the door.
    Lisa was right behind him, racing down the steps and toward the canal bank where a group of seven or eight kids were watching in rapt fascination while a small barefoot boy repeatedly jabbed a broomstick down a large hole in the ground.
    Jay immediately grabbed the boy and swung him away from the hole. The boy appeared to be no more than six years old, and when Jay set him down on the ground beside Lisa, he started squalling.
    "Hold on to him, will you?" Jay said to Lisa. "Keep him out of the way." Lisa immediately knelt in the sand and wrapped her arms around the child, who continued to cry.
    Jay ushered the rest of the children away from the hole and peered into it.
    "We heard the rattles," said the boy, whom Lisa recognized as Pedro. "It's gotta be a rattlesnake. Shut up, Jean-Claude, we can't hear with you crying."
    This hole in the ground, which was about the size of a stovepipe, had been dug by a gopher tortoise. In the winter months snakes often holed up in gopher holes to escape the cold. Gophers didn't seem to mind sharing their quarters, but snakes could get nasty when disturbed by humans, especially pint-size humans who jumped around excitedly and nudged them with sticks.
    Now that Jean-Claude had stopped his wailing, they could hear the ominous sound of whirring rattles deep down in the hole.
    "Let me kill it, Jay! Sister Maria wants us to kill all rattlesnakes! She said so!" Pedro grabbed Jean-Claude's stick.
    "Sister Maria most definitely didn't say that it's okay for you to kill rattlesnakes," Jay said firmly. "I'll take care of the snake as soon as you kids clear out."
    "We don't want to—"
    "Aw, Jay, come on. I've never seen a real live rattlesnake."
    "Let us stay, oh, please—"
    Lisa had to speak loudly to be heard over the din of protest. "Let's go raid the kitchen. I've got ice cream in the freezer.
    Jay shot her a grateful look. "Everybody go with Lisa, and I'll come over later."
    "With the dead snake?" Pedro asked hopefully.
    "How are you going to kill it?" one of the girls wanted to know.
    "Never mind that, Serafina," Jay said, keeping an eye on the hole.
    Lisa herded the children into a small group and urged them toward the dining hall. "There's vanilla, chocolate, and lime sherbet. Who likes chocolate?"
    "I do!" said the girl named Serafina.
    "I don't!"
    "Well, I do!"
    Lisa looked back toward the canal. Jay was bending over and studying the inside of the gopher hole.
    In the dining hall, she sat the kids at the table that she and Jay had set up earlier, handed out cups of ice cream and sherbet, and led a lively discussion on the subject of snake safety, on which she was something of an authority by virtue of living in a house on several acres adjoining the Loxahatchee River in nearby Jupiter.
    "When you step over a log, never never step directly over it. Put your foot on top of the log, look down to make sure no snake is nestled up to the other side, and then put your other foot down on the far side," she told the children.
    "I always do that," said the girl named Connie. "My daddy taught me about it."
    "Huh, your dad couldn't have told you. He ain't been around for a couple of years," Pedro said.
    "Before he and Mama left, you dummy," said Connie. She glared at him.
    The first of the children had barely finished their ice cream when Jay came in through the kitchen.
    "It was a rattlesnake, all right, and a long one, too," he said, stopping at their table. "I'd say it was a good four-footer."
    "A snake with four feet," Pedro snickered.
    "Four feet long, stupid," said one of the other boys as he dug his