Once upon a time, a little girl and a young woman went to a riverbank to pick cherries. It was a bright summer afternoon, and the ripened fruit hung like rubies, begging to be tasted. Walking through the tall grass, the woman reminded the child to beware of snakes. "On hot days such as this," she said, "rattlers come down from the rocky canyon walls to drink from the river." The child shivered at these words, and clutched the hand of her guardian.

Within a stone's throw from the tree, the child gasped, "Look! There's a snake!" The young woman stopped and peered into the leafy shadows. There, only a few feet away, was a coiled viper.
"Shhh," she whispered to the child and calmly backed her away. Then the woman headed for the garden, where she grabbed a shovel. "Why can we not leave the snake alone?" cried the girl. "He has not hurt us. He is one of God's creatures, too."

"Yes," said the woman. "But we cannot live in peace with a rattlesnake between us and the river. If he were to bite you, you would surely die."

When the woman returned to the cherry tree, a priest refreshing himself beside the river asked, "Woman, what business are you about with that shovel?"

"Father," she replied, "I have come to kill a snake lurking beneath this tree."

"Daughter," he said, "it is too dangerous for you to attempt this deed alone, for the snake can strike the full length of your shovel. I shall help you."

With that the priest picked up two large stones and walked to where the woman stood. He threw one at the snake, which only startled him, and then threw the other, which knocked him unconscious. The woman saw her chance and struck the fatal blow upon the serpent's head. The priest then dug a hole, and buried the deadly animal beneath the earth.

The woman sighed with relief as the last bit of soil was pressed upon the grave, and then realized she had lost her appetite for cherries.This story actually happened. I tinkered with the dialogues a little, stylizing them so the tale would sound older and wiser. But the plot unfolded almost exactly the way I have described, and the girl in the tale is my own daughter. The young woman is a co-worker of ours, and the priest is Father Joseph Fessio, S.J., publisher of Ignatius Press.

Why do I begin with this story? Because it illustrates how stories,both old and new, both ordinary and fantastic, have their beginnings in real human experience. A spinner of fairy tales can take the elements found in my story and embellish them, by making the snake talk, for example, or
turning the woman into a princess. A novelist like Willa Cather can place an ordinary snake and an ordinary woman in an ordinary setting, as she did in My Antonia. Or she can transfer the snake's reptilian characteristics onto a man, as she did in Death Comes for the Archbishop. In each story,
the snake inspires the same dread, because in each case the snake represents that cunning and poisoning evil at work in the world.

One of the marks of a good story is that it is true, not merely because it is based upon factual fragments taken from real life, but even more importantly because it is a lens through which we can see more of reality than what usually meets the eye. A serpent and a fruit tree. A woman and a child. A priest draining the strength of an enemy, and a woman vanquishing him. These images I saw with my own eyes. Yet it was not until I placed them within a story that I glimpsed the meaning of them and by extension the meaning of myself.