Snake House

The Snake House is an octagonal brick building on Turpmtine Plantation whose handsome Colonial-style design encloses a collection of live venomous snakes. It is both an ornamental structure and a working display of danger: its glass terrariums make the snakes visible, but do not make them harmless. When Charlie Croker brings in a rattlesnake he has captured barehanded, the building becomes the setting for a precise, unnerving test of nerve—and for the announcement of a consequential business decision.

Architecture and Display

From outside, the Snake House is small, nearly circular, and carefully finished. Its ancient red brick was painstakingly gathered by Ronald Vine; white wooden trim and a heavy slate roof complete the Colonial appearance Charlie associates with buildings he saw in Virginia, including at Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg. At the roof’s peak, a bronze rattlesnake coils in place of a conventional weather vane. The sculpture announces the building’s subject before a visitor enters, giving the structure a decorative emblem that is also a warning.

The interior turns that emblem into an environment. At first glance, its walls appear to be covered in lurid striped wallpaper. The stripes are actually flattened rattlesnake skins, stretched vertically and placed edge to edge until they form a broad field of rough, scaly diamonds. White wainscoting runs around the room; a wide counter tops it, with a glass terrarium set into the center of each of seven wall sections. The eighth section contains the doorway. The arrangement is orderly and almost ceremonial, but its contents are living animals gathered from the fields and swamps of Turpmtine Plantation: rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouths, and coral snakes, all poisonous and deadly.

A Room People Fear

The building’s elegance does not persuade everyone to enter. Employees, both Black and white, avoid the Snake House, following the instinct to keep away from snakes and kill them when they appear. Some believe snakes to be agents of the Devil. Those who accompany Charlie therefore enter more quietly than they would a Methodist church. The contrast between the building’s careful finish and the visitors’ apprehension is part of its effect: the Snake House makes dangerous creatures an object of deliberate display, while the people inside remain acutely aware of the danger.

Charlie carries his sack to a terrarium containing six large rattlesnakes, each nearly as large as the one he has brought. The snakes coil and slide over one another. Sonny, Durwood, Kermit, Johnny, and Bonnie—Melvin Bonnetbox’s nickname—keep their distance. The Wiz is more cautious still, staying near the door. The room’s arrangement gives Charlie a task with little margin for error: the new snake must be transferred into an enclosure already occupied by six others, while the watching group hangs back.

The Transfer and the Strike

Without asking for help or looking at anyone, Charlie shifts the sack to his right hand, lifts one end of the terrarium’s wire-mesh grille, and rests the sack’s mouth on the glass rim. He raises its bottom to roughly a 60-degree angle. As the rattlesnake begins to emerge, its head and fangs come within six inches of Charlie’s bare left hand and wrist, which hold up the lid. Then the rest of its six- or seven-foot body slides out and drops among the other snakes.

Charlie lowers the lid gingerly and withdraws the sack. He pauses to watch the newcomer, the largest of the seven, move in agitation through the coils. By this point the others, including The Wiz, have edged closer to the terrarium. Charlie takes his car keys from his pocket and conceals them in his fist. After a few beats, he throws them against the glass. The newcomer strikes first; within a fraction of a second, the other six snakes hit the same spot, fangs bared. Everyone but Charlie jumps back. Even Durwood and Sonny recoil, and The Wiz nearly reaches the door.

The keys turn the display into a sudden demonstration. Behind glass, the snakes can be watched as specimens; against the glass, their coordinated strike makes the threat immediate. Charlie alone stays composed and tells the group, "Boys, that's one damn fine snake." His calm remark follows the collective flinch without denying what they have just seen. The Snake House’s barrier contains the snakes, but the impact on the glass exposes the violence that its orderly display had kept at a remove.

The Decision Outside

As the group disperses outside, its members talk excitedly among themselves. The Wiz stands apart, hands in his pockets. Charlie walks over, puts an arm around his shoulders, and tells him he has made up his mind: they will lay off 15 percent of the food division. The announcement links the Snake House scene to a decision about the company’s workforce, rather than leaving Charlie’s performance as an isolated feat of nerve.

The Wiz nods without looking at his boss, his eyes wide behind his titanium frames. Charlie, whose body and right leg had been troubling him, is no longer conscious of a limp. He feels almost whole again. The scene gives the Snake House a role beyond housing snakes: its contained danger provides the setting for Charlie to act decisively in front of others, and the transition from the tense interior to the conversation outside carries that renewed certainty into a concrete corporate choice.