Blood Kin (14 page)

The saints did as he said. Then he made a couple of the women slide over a few inches one way or the other. Finally he smiled and ran up to the box, unlatched and flipped open a little door set in the top, smiled at Sadie, and reached inside the box without looking.

She gasped when he pulled out a big copperhead and slapped the little door back shut. She heard a little squeal from someone, and a whole lot of nervous laughter, and a whole lot of
Praise Bes
and
Hallelujahs
.

Sadie knew her snakes. She had to, living in the hollow. When she was little her ma or her daddy would kill one and bring it up on the porch for her to look at so she’d know the different kinds, and be able to tell the poisonous ones from the safe ones. This copperhead was a good four foot long, about as long as they ever got in those hills, with those dark brown hourglasses all up and down. She only knew they were called hourglasses because her granddaddy had one — it had been in his family a long time and sat up on the mantel.

The preacher handled that snake like it was no more than a cut off piece of rope, waving it around and teasing it, moving his own head side to side like he was the snake and the copperhead was the one in danger of getting bit. Sadie thought the snake looked a bit confused, but she was probably just thinking silly.

The preacher started stamping his feet and hollering, waving the snake overhead like it was some kind of skinny flag. “I can feel its power!” he shouted. “Oh Lord, it’s a powerful thing! Lord I beseech you to bless me by taking this old snake’s will and giving it to me so I can be powerful too!”

People in the congregation started getting up and edging closer to where the preacher was with his box full of snakes. “Praise the Lord! Thank God for Jesus! Hallelujah to Glory!” they shouted, both separately and at the same time, their words folding one upon the other until they made a kind of music, a kind of thunder that shook the very blood in Sadie’s veins.

The preacher brought the snake down in front of him and started speaking right at it, like he was preaching to the snake every bit as much as he was preaching to the congregation. “In Acts the Lord God told us we will receive
power
when the Holy Spirit has come upon us!”

Then the preacher handed off the snake to one of them old twins and that man started dancing and whooping with it and waving it around. Then the preacher opened up the box again and took a bunch of snakes at once and handed them to the other saints and they started acting much the same. Sadie gritted her teeth against the noise and she felt herself rocking, praying the preacher would
Please Lord Jesus
stop and let her go home.

But he looked like he had no plans for slowing down. He looked at the congregation and he raised his arms shouting, “Come up now and have victory over these serpents!”

And the congregation did exactly like he said. A few held back but they were like peaceful trees in the middle of a wind storm, the rest of them waving around and uprooting and dancing around.

The preacher was pouring sweat. He was still wearing his heavy black wool coat, now drenched shoulder to shoulder with his sweat. He took one of the snakes and slowly wiped his brow off with it. Then he tossed that snake up and someone reached out and caught it and the preacher slipped out of his coat and threw it in a corner where it lay like a buzzard all broken up after falling out of the sky.

The excited crowd was passing around copperheads and diamondback rattlers with them awful black heads and the last bits of them mostly black, and those V-shaped marks all in between. And some of them rattlers were kind of yellowish and some of them blacker than the rest.

Sadie stayed back as far as she could, moving when she had to. Once some fellow tried to kiss her and she pushed him away.

“Member Isaiah forty, ‘He gives
power
to the faint, and to him who has
no
might
he
increases
strength. They shall mount up with wings like
eagles
; they shall run and not be
weary
; they shall walk and
not faint!
” With each word it seemed he stamped his feet ever louder. The crowd, too, screamed harder with every word and passed holy kisses mouth to mouth.

The preacher twisted a snake around his neck and held the head in front of him so he could kiss it. He pulled up a copperhead that was just then coming out of its skin and he rubbed some of that skin off and held it up for all to see. “This is life everlasting!” he declared.

He brought out a couple of ugly, dull brown snakes that looked all ghostly white inside their mouths. She’d never seen a snake like that before. Then she overheard someone say cottonmouth, and another said no, it was a water moccasin. They had to be close to five feet long. Somebody else said they didn’t have them around here, they lived over on the coast, and wasn’t it a miracle that he had one here to handle?

Sadie’d always been told that if you looked into the center of a snake’s eyes the black part was all round and friendly in the safe ones but in the poisonous ones it was narrow and up and down and wicked looking. What kind of fool waited around to take a good long look at a serpent’s eyes when there were dangerous ones around?

She didn’t see the preacher for a few minutes and she was wondering what happened to him when she saw him coming out of the crowd prancing around like one of those ballerinas wearing a crown made out of snakes he’d piled on his head. He started spinning himself in circles and those snake heads all came out on the end of curved bodies like he had long hair flying.

One of the snakes writhed and snapped, and she was sure the preacher got bit but he just kept moving and shouting like nothing had happened. If anything it just made him crazier. He got two snakes and thrust them through his hair then right into his chest like he was daring them to bite. When they didn’t bite he tossed them into the air and then caught them again.

After a few more minutes the preacher was carrying three and four snakes at a time, kissing their heads and tongues, sliding them down his body, wrapping them around his arms, laying one across his forehead so that he was wearing it like a living bandana.

The front of the church was a mass of bodies moving up and down swaying, singing, shouting, trembling hands passing snakes back and forth like they were sharing food or cigarettes. Sadie couldn’t follow it all, and she wondered what would happen if she got up and walked out the door. Would anybody even notice?

But then the preacher was standing right in front of her with those two old twin saints and he was saying, “Come on up! Come on up! Folks, we got us a
shy
one here!” And before she could say anything the twins had hold of her on either side and they were helping her up like she was some kind of cripple and leading her into that crowd of snakes and saints and unfortunates like her who didn’t want to be there but didn’t know how to get out of it.

The preacher had a big thick rattler in both hands and he was passing that snake back and forth in front of her eyes like it was the grandest prize that ever was and he was teasing her knowing she couldn’t wait to get her hands on it. The snake arched its back and swayed back and forth, rotated its head, and stared at her. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Each of the twins had one of her arms and they were pulling them toward the snake, turning them so that her palms faced upwards ready to receive His bounty.

They laid the snake into her hands and it was like holding a length of pure muscle. It bent and it stretched and it made curls through the air and she so wanted to drop it but couldn’t. Sadie’s body shook so badly she was forced to close her eyes to keep from throwing up. She jerked as if something was being yanked out of her and even with her eyes closed she could see the shape of the snake like a smooth and heavy bolt of lightning glowing in the darkness.

She opened her eyes again or at least she thought she was opening her eyes but she didn’t see the church, instead she saw the endless folds of mountains like a mass of giant snakes that had been cornered and piled into this part of the world. She screamed and opened her eyes again and there was the preacher hisself rising like a snake off the floor until he towered over her. Something appeared to rise out of the preacher’s body, smoke or fire or just anger and bitterness and all the hatred she could imagine stored in one place. He howled like a wolf in pain. Sadie disappeared inside herself and everything went white and she was just this tiny speck of no-account nothing trying to hide herself in that endless sea of white.

When she opened her eyes again she was lying back in the pew, an old woman on each side of her rubbing her hands and wiping her cheeks and telling her what a wonderful thing, what an inspiration it was to see her touched so by Jesus Christ Amen!

She sat up a little and looked around and people appeared to be standing still and not making a sound. They’d all given up their snakes and they were just standing around watching the preacher as he pulled the biggest, longest rattler she’d ever seen out of that box. That snake kept coming and coming and with each new stretch the church lost just a little more air, just a little more sound, so that by the time it came to the rattlers at the end Sadie couldn’t breathe no more and she’d gone completely deaf. The snake was as long as a tall man was tall and fat enough it could have swallowed most of the other snakes if it had a mind to. She kept thinking of how in the book of Exodus Pharaoh’s astrologers threw down their staffs and those staffs became serpents, but then Aaron threw his down and that became the snake what swallowed them other snakes. So maybe the preacher was like Aaron with that big old snake of his, a snake that could eat half that congregation if it ever had a mind to!

The preacher was a strong man, but he had a time picking up the weight of that snake so that he could handle it. He had half of it down his back and another bit riding his shoulders, and some of it sitting on one arm as he tried to move the head end around with his other hand. “I dont care how big you be!” he shouted at it, “I dont care how ornery or full of the devil! I’m going to beat you serpent and that’s a fact praise Jesus Hallelujah oh Lord Lord Lord!” The preacher twisted his head around then and stared at Sadie. “Come up here, Child! Bring your God-given power up here so we can whup this snake together!”

The old women tried to push Sadie out of her seat, murmuring encouragement and pleading that her uncle needed her help and not to let him down but she pushed their hands away, terrified, trying to climb back over the pew into the row behind and the people there were pushing against her telling her the Lord was calling and she knew what she needed to do.

The preacher managed to stand perfectly straight with that huge snake all up on him and he was waving his hand to Sadie, “come on, come on now” like she was just some shy lamb scared of being shorn.

Suddenly the rattler came back around and bit down on the preacher’s hand. The blood spurted out and sprayed on the floor but the preacher didn’t make a sound. The snake’s body slipped off the preacher and hung there as the snake appeared to be using everything it had to attack that powerful and vengeful hand. The congregation sighed as one big creature as the preacher angrily held his arm up, the big rattler hanging from where he’d bitten him through the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. It dangled past the preacher’s knees, and the tail snapped back and forth and slapped the floor around the preacher’s feet. The preacher tilted his head back and howled like he was trying to swallow a tornado. He grabbed the snake about halfway down and jerked it out of his hand. He flung the body clear across the church where it hit the wall and lay there motionless on the floor. The fangs were still in his hand piercing the webbing and he held them up for all to see.

Nobody, not even all the saints and all the angels could hold Sadie back as she ran from the church and into the woods.

Chapter Seven

H
ER DADDY’S HOUND
Bucket was poking her in the side with his damp nose. He did that when he was hungry, or when he wanted to go out, or when he had nothing else to do. Her daddy pretty much hated the dog, who he’d named “Bucket o’ guts,” but for some reason he still wanted to keep the animal around, maybe just so he’d have the pleasure of cussing at him. Sadie kept swatting at the hound, trying to say “Go away!” but she heard nothing like that pass her lips. Then she tried to say his name but her mouth just wouldn’t behave. Her mouth said “Buh” and “Buh” and that was about as far as it would go. Then she remembered that Daddy shot Bucket dead three year ago when that stupid dog raided the hen house.

Her eyes were stuck tight but she managed to get them open. A dark face hung over her, a big mouth with not many teeth. “Child, you done hurt yourself. Dont move while I rub some Jimson Weed onto these here cuts. You know not to
eat
the Jimson Weed dont ya? Poison. But it takes the fire out these cuts purdy good I reckon.”

“Granny Grace?” Sadie tried to raise herself up but a dark brown arm pushed her back down. “What happened to me?”