Snakes

Snakes connect a childhood encounter to Cap Hollister’s growing adult disorientation. In his memory, a snake crossed his foot after his older brother Leon was bitten in a hayfield; years later, snakes seem to lurk in golf clubs, a car, an office drawer, and the darkness of a stable. The feared animals are not shown to be present in those later places. Instead, their imagined return turns ordinary objects and settings into sources of alarm, while a remembered summer scene gives that fear a specific history.

Childhood Memory

Cap’s fear is rooted in an incident from his early childhood in Nebraska. He was three, and Leon, his nine-year-old brother, had been bitten while they were in hay. The bite was not dangerous: a doctor later explained that the snake had apparently exhausted its venom elsewhere. But the fact that Leon was not seriously harmed did not erase the terror of the scene for the young Cap. He remembered his brother crying out for their father and the snake crossing his own foot as it moved back toward the high grass.

The memory brings together details that later recur in Cap’s adult fears: hay, grass, golf-course rough, and the snake itself. The stable is frightening to him not simply because it is dark, but because its loose hay recalls the setting of the childhood incident. In his recollection, the smell of hay and grass and the sounds of the outdoors belong to the same scene as his brother’s distress. The past returns through these associations rather than as a detached account of an old event.

That return also alters how Cap interprets the present. Golf-course rough is no longer merely the place where an errant ball lands; it becomes the sort of cover in which a snake might hide. The association is striking because golf is otherwise familiar to Cap. As his thoughts link clubs, rough, and snakes, a recreation he knows well becomes part of the vocabulary of his fear.

Snakes and Golf

In the episodes preceding the stable confrontation, snakes recur alongside Cap’s thoughts of golf. During a conversation with Andy McGee, Cap fondly mentions Puck’s tendency to slice a golf ball. Andy is preoccupied with the escape plan and with whether Cap may have been involved in Vicky McGee’s death. The conversation continues, but the golf reference establishes a connection that will become increasingly difficult for Cap to control.

Later, a golf club seems to move in Cap’s mind, and the sound he associates with a swinging club shifts into something he associates with a snake. He recognizes these thoughts as strange and tries to push them away, attributing his disturbance to the funeral. Soon afterward, while at home in Longmont Hills, he brings his old golf bag into the living room. He has retrieved it from the basement, where it had been stored among sports equipment accumulated during the twelve years he had lived there with Georgia, much of that time interrupted by assignments elsewhere. He intends to examine the irons and putters, but one iron seems to move as if it were a snake. Cap drops the bag and retreats from it.

The scene does not establish that a snake is in the bag. Cap’s fear instead makes the golf equipment seem capable of concealing one. Even after brandy steadies his hands, he sees another apparent movement and has to reassure himself that the bag contains clubs. His attention returns to slicing and the rough, where he imagines snakes might be waiting. Golf and snakes have become mutually reinforcing images: thinking of one draws him toward the other.

Fear Enters Everyday Places

The imagined danger extends beyond the golf bag. During the night, Cap becomes convinced that his car is infested with snakes. Before going to the Shop, he searches the vehicle, including its trunk, engine area, and glove compartment. He uses a broom handle to open the glove compartment, keeping his distance in case something might emerge. When a Virginia map falls out, he nearly screams. The ordinary contents of the car cannot settle the fear; even the map’s unexpected movement becomes part of an alarming search.

On the way, Cap stops near the Greenway Golf Course and watches golfers playing through the eighth and ninth holes. Whenever a player slices into the rough, he struggles to keep from warning them about snakes. A truck’s air horn finally breaks his concentration, and he drives on. The episode carries the fear into public space: Cap is not only scanning for imagined danger but nearly making that danger a warning to other people.

At the Shop, his attention fixes on a partly open drawer in his secretary’s desk. The drawer is open in accordance with regulations and contains a gun, but Cap sees it instead as the kind of dark hiding place snakes might favor. He tells his secretary that the drawer ought to be shut because snakes like dark places, then identifies the imagined occupants as snakes when she asks what he means. The moment reveals the gap between the ordinary explanation for the drawer and the threat occupying Cap’s thoughts.

The fear also accompanies his dealings with Andy. When Andy asks him to carry a suitcase, Cap’s attention turns to whether the bags have been checked for snakes. Later, at the stable, he hesitates to enter because it is dark and he expects snakes to hide and bite. Andy tells him there are none and uses a light push to get him moving. Cap enters, though he does not appear convinced. Across these incidents, the imagined animals repeatedly interrupt practical tasks: handling luggage, going to work, and entering a building.

The Stable and the Returning Past

The stable concentrates the associations that have been accumulating. Cap has heard little of the conversation among Charlie, Andy, and John Rainbird; he is mentally occupied with golf implements and snakes. The loose hay recalls the childhood setting where Leon was bitten, and the memory unfolds again: Leon’s distress, the smell of the grass, and the snake passing across Cap’s foot on its way back into the high grass. The adult Cap experiences the stable through the pressure of that remembered scene, not as a neutral place where a conversation is taking place.

As the thoughts accelerate, golf terms and snake names mingle. The narrative describes a ricochet bounding back and forth in Cap’s mind, while his gaze moves vacantly around the shadowed stable. His attention eventually settles on a partially fused green plastic hose hanging in coils near a burst waterpipe. The hose is a real object in the room; the snake associations are part of Cap’s disturbed perception. Their convergence makes it difficult for him to separate what the setting contains from what his fear supplies.

Narrative Significance

Snakes function as a recurring image of fear returning through displacement. They first belong to an actual childhood encounter, but in Cap’s adult scenes they appear as suspicions attached to golf clubs, car compartments, drawers, suitcases, and darkness. This repetition gives the fear a recognizable pattern while showing its widening reach: the more places Cap examines, the more places seem capable of hiding the danger.

The golf motif sharpens that pattern. Cap’s knowledge of the game supplies the language through which the remembered snake keeps intruding: slicing leads to rough, and rough leads back to concealed danger. In the stable, hay reconnects the present setting directly to the childhood memory, while the coiled hose provides a final point of focus amid the mental ricochet. The animals themselves do not need to reappear for the fear to shape Cap’s actions. Their imagined presence is enough to disturb his judgment and place a private childhood terror alongside the unfolding confrontation involving the McGees and Rainbird.