Snakewoman of Little Egypt

by Robert Hellenga

  And of course I got my GED certificate—fourteen required courses and six electives including two biology courses. Most of the teachers were from the community college, but some of them were retired high school teachers. And they always said they got more respect on the Hill than they did in their regular classrooms.

  Life on the Hill could have been worse, a lot worse. I needed a time-out from my old life so I could figure out how to start a new one without Earl or God telling me what to do. I could experiment, shed my inhibitions. Maybe pick up some new ones that might work better. In my old life, I knew what I was doing when I went with another man. I was crossing a line, committing a sin, letting the devil into my body. And I knew what I had to do. I had to repent and get right with God, and then everything would be the way it was before. But I was through repenting. I was going to do what I wanted to do, and I had some options. Look at me. Thirty-five years old and full of piss and vinegar. I thought that was how the saying went. Not bad looking. My breasts aren’t big enough to have a mysterious shadow in between them, but at least they haven’t started to sag. My butt is nice and tight. From behind you might guess seventeen or eighteen. But my face gives me away—it’s got some miles on it—and a scar on my neck where I got serpent bit when I was sixteen. That was the only time I ever got bit except when Earl put my arm in the snake box.

  I got my official notification two weeks before release. On release day I took care of the paperwork down in R&R—Reception and Release. They had to make sure I was who I said I was: Willa Fern Cochrane. They had to return my property. There wasn’t a lot, but I was glad to get the purse back that Warren bought for me in St. Louis while I was waiting for the trial to begin. I got a copy of the original arrest report. I’d done my time and was out on supervised release, but I had my dorm assignment at Thomas Ford: Mary Baker Hall, where I’d be living with eight hundred girls.

  Warren loved Professor Jackson Carter Jones, and he loved Thomas Ford University, and he loved me too, though we didn’t get to know each other till I was about fourteen and he was in his forties. Like a lot of men in the church, he backed up on the Lord and got out of Naqada. But unlike most of them, he didn’t come back. Not till my daddy got killed in the mine, and then when I married Earl, and then when I was in trouble for shooting Earl. He took care of expenses and made sure I got everything I needed. And after I was convicted, he got me transferred from Little Muddy, down in Hardin County, to the Hill, and he never missed a visiting day till he got too sick to come anymore. He kept putting money in my account so I could buy cookies and cigarettes, which I could use for cash, till they declared the Hill a “smoke-free campus.” I was going to stay at Warren’s place, out in the country, till school started. He’d left me some money and his old pickup.

  Professor Jones signed me out in R&R. He was a friend of Uncle Warren and I knew quite a bit about him. He was an anthropologist; he wrote a book about the pygmies in Africa—Warren brought me a copy; it was pretty good, pretty funny, pretty amazing, really. Then later he’d been sick with Lyme disease. And he’d been with my uncle when he died. He’d written me a letter saying he’d be there to pick me up and I could stay in Warren’s place till school started, because I had to give the prison office an address of where I was going when I got out.

  My uncle told me that Professor Jones—Jackson—would look after me and offered to speak to him on my behalf. He told me straight out that if Jackson proposed to me, I ought to marry him, and if he didn’t propose to me, I ought to propose to him. Right! I didn’t want anyone to look after me. I had no intention of getting married again. At least not for a good while. Besides, I was still married to Earl.

  August fourteenth. “I’m Jackson,” he said, as we walked out into the parking lot. It was a bright sunny day. I looked around. It wasn’t Professor Jones I was worried about; it was Earl. I didn’t see his truck. Of course, after six years he might have had a new one, but the warden told me he’d kept his promise and “forgotten” to send Earl my release notification, and I guessed he had. Earl had been writing, but I wouldn’t accept his letters, even though I knew it was a struggle for him to put pen to paper. He kept wanting to visit, but he couldn’t unless I signed a permission form, and I wouldn’t sign the form.

  We shook hands, sized each other up.

  “I’m Sunny,” I said.

  “I thought you were Willa Fern.”

  “I used to be Willa Fern. Now I’m Sunny.”

  We walked across the parking lot to a bright yellow car, a foreign car. Jackson seemed like a nice man. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. So was I. Was this a sign?

  There was a woman in the car, in the driver’s seat. When the woman saw us, she opened the front door and jumped out. Where did she come from?

  “Hi,” she said, sticking out her hand. “My name is Claire.”

  She was about my age. Maybe a little older.

  “Hi,” I said. “My name is Sunny.”

  She looked at Jackson, then back at me. “I thought your name was Willa Fern.”

  “It used to be Willa Fern,” Jackson said, “but now it’s Sunny.”

  “Is that a nickname you got in …” Claire nodded toward the prison.

  I shook my head. I didn’t know how much this woman knew about me. I figured that Jackson knew quite a bit, that Warren would have told him more than he should have.

  “How long have you been ‘Sunny’?” she asked.

  “About two minutes,” I said.

  “Wow,” Jackson said. “How’d that happen?”

  “I just decided,” she said, “that from now on I’m going to be happy. I don’t care what happens. It’s such a beautiful day.” I looked around. I’d surprised myself. But I was happy. And I was thinking that everyone should spend five or six years in prison. Sort of a transition period. Getting to know your own strengths (and weaknesses). Getting a chance to start over. Like going on a long journey. And because getting out is so wonderful too. I wanted to dance.

  I didn’t mean to be hostile to Claire. I could see that Claire meant me well. It was crazy to think of Claire as a rival. Warren hadn’t said anything about Jackson being married, or having a girlfriend. And what was that to me anyway?

  Claire started the car—it was her car. Jackson asked if I wanted to stop for a beer.

  “Don’t be silly,” Claire said. “She doesn’t want a beer at eleven o’clock in the morning.” She looked at me in her rear-view mirror.

  “I’d love a beer,” I said. “The stuff they brew in the Hill is pretty rough tasting. But could we go to the cemetery first? It’s right across the road. You can see it from the warden’s office.”

  Jackson and Claire fussed at each other like an old married couple. I was surprised to find out that they weren’t married at all. Well, Claire was married, but to somebody else. They fussed about stopping for a beer, fussed about the cemetery, fussed about where I was going to stay. And this was before we got out of the prison parking lot.

  The cemetery was old and looked like it hadn’t been in business for a while. I’d been denied a furlough to go to Uncle Warren’s funeral, but the warden had let me watch it from his office—the part at the cemetery. I’d seen Jackson then, in a suit, saying something to a group of about twenty people. I’d always wondered what he said. There’d be plenty of time to ask him later. Warren’s grave was on the south side of cemetery, about halfway back. A row of pine trees blocked the view of the Deemer Rubber plant. From the warden’s office I’d watched them lowering the coffin into the grave. It was almost worse than my daddy’s funeral. There was no stone. Yet. And there was an empty plot next to Warren’s.

  “That’s yours,” Jackson said.

  “Mine?”

  “Warren had two plots. He left everything to you, including the plot.”

  “What do I want with a cemetery plot?”

  “You might need it someday, unless you plan to live forever.”

  “Jackson, stop
it. She’s just out of …” Claire could never get herself to say “prison.” “She’s got her whole life ahead of her.”

  “So does everybody.”

  We made the circuit of the cemetery and then back onto the highway. We stopped at an old-fashioned bar that still had a Schlitz globe hanging from the ceiling. Like the one in Naqada where Earl and I went the night before I shot him.

  “You’re paying for the atmosphere,” Jackson said.

  The bartender, standing at the short leg of the bar, called him “Professor.” “Long time no see.”

  “Three Sam Adamses.”

  We sat in a booth, Claire and Jackson on one side, me on the other.

  “What ever happened to Schlitz?” I asked.

  “Jackson has Lyme disease,” Claire said. “From a deer tick.”

  “Warren told me,” I said. “About the Lyme disease.”

  I thought I was competing with Claire for Jackson. And that was true, in a way. But there was another kind of competition: Claire and Jackson were competing for me. For my attention! Pretty funny.

  “Sunny,” Claire said, leaning forward. “My husband and I have a lovely guest room with its own bathroom. You’ll have complete privacy. We’d love to have you stay with us until school starts.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jackson said. “She’s going to stay in Warren’s place.”

  “Have you cleaned it up since Warren died?”

  “Not exactly. I put all the books on the shelves. I got some new shelves, the folding kind.”

  “ ‘Not exactly,’ ” Claire repeated. “That’s just what I mean.”

  Claire was very good-looking, but a little heavy. Just starting to let herself go, starting to get crow’s feet around her eyes and creases running down from her nose to her mouth.

  The bartender brought three bottles and three glasses, the old-fashioned kind with a narrow base that opened up like a flower. We poured our beers. Lots of head for me. Not much for Claire. In between for Jackson. We raised our glasses and clinked them.

  “I like to think of myself as a man of the people,” Jackson said, “but these new beers are a hell of a lot better than the old ones.”

  “What ever did happen to Schlitz?” Claire asked.

  “I think they made a mistake,” Jackson said, “by aiming at a blue-collar market.”

  “Grab for all the gusto you can get.”

  “That was pretty good,” I said. “I always liked that.”

  “But not good enough,” Jackson said. “And they changed the formula too. Some of the bottles would have a lot of crap in the bottom after about six months in the warehouse.”

  “Uncle Warren really loved Thomas Ford,” I said. It was the life he wanted me to have. A university life. And he’d made it possible for me. He’d paid my room and board for the first year.

  “No one was a bigger booster,” Jackson said.

  I was trying to guess everyone’s feelings. There was some uncomfortable space between us. “This beer tastes mighty good,” I said.

  “Why did I think you weren’t a drinker?” Jackson said.

  “It’s been a long time. We had home-brew in the slammer,” I said, “but I never could get used to it.” I made a face.

  “I meant because of your background. Your uncle. Back in Naqada. I thought the Church of the Burning Bush would frown upon drinking and smoking.”

  “Oh, it frowns, but then people get backed up on the Lord. Like Earl. They get backed up on the Lord, go on a tear. Happens all the time.”

  “So, are you backed up on the Lord?”

  “I’d say it’s the other way around. I’d say the Lord’s backed up on me. We’re through, the Lord and me.” I pretended to wash my hands.

  “Your uncle liked a drink now and then.”

  “More than now and then,” Claire said.

  “He got out of Naqada as soon as he could. Signed up with Uncle Sam.”

  “He thought the world of you, you know,” Jackson said. And then: “I’m starting to sound like my father.” He laughed.

  “How much’d he tell you?”

  “Quite a bit.”

  “That’s what I figured. Well, he told me quite a bit about you too, so I guess we’re even.” I raised my eyebrows into question marks. “He said you’d look after me.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “You know what I learned in prison?”

  “What?”

  “I learned that I don’t need a man to look after me.” It felt good to say the words out loud. But I stopped myself before I went into a rant. Was I being hostile? Firing a warning shot? I wasn’t going to be a flatterer; I was going to be a challenger, but I didn’t want to go too far. I stopped to adjust my attitude, like a man adjusting a tie that’s too tight. But I couldn’t get it quite right.

  “How do you feel about going to school with eighteen-year-olds?” Claire asked. “A lot of your classes will be full of freshmen.”

  “How do I feel about it? Nothing to it, because that’s the way I feel myself. About eighteen. Maybe seventeen. Or even sixteen. Like I’m just starting my life all over.”

  We drove down a long drive that needed a load of gravel. There was a school on the north side of the drive, a field of soy beans on the south. The field was flat as a pancake. Then we drove into the woods and all of a sudden it was like home, like you were up on a knob looking down into a hollow with a stream at the bottom. The house was set halfway down in the hollow. You had to walk down a ramp to get to it, like the ramp at the marina in Naqada. A dog, a medium-size lab, ran up the ramp to greet us, and Jackson introduced us. “Sunny, this is Maya. Maya, this is Sunny. She doesn’t do any tricks. Maya, I mean.”

  The house was beautiful, but it wasn’t Warren’s house. It was Jackson’s. Warren had lived in an apartment over the garage. The dog, Maya, climbed up the stairs behind us. The apartment consisted of one large L-shaped room. A tiny bathroom was hidden by an accordion door. There was a sort of kitchen at one end. I opened one of the drawers in the kitchen and a bunch of baby mice jumped out, jumped right into the air, like popcorn. Claire screamed. The dog went crazy, slapping at the mice with her front paws. Jackson killed most of them with a broom and swept them up into a box. A couple of them disappeared.

  “Sorry about that. I’ve got traps, but I forgot to set them.”

  “You can’t stay here,” Claire said, holding her hand over her heart. She repeated her offer of her guest room, and I was tempted. The mice had given me a start, though I didn’t scream like Claire. I pretended that they hadn’t bothered me. Like it happened all the time.

  “She’ll be all right,” Jackson said. “She’s not afraid of snakes, she won’t be afraid of mice. She can always buzz me on the intercom if something happens.”

  “Like a mouse attack?” Claire said. “You couldn’t pay me to stay here.” She shuddered.

  There was no telephone, but Jackson showed me how to work the little intercom he’d hooked up so he and Warren could talk to each other. It was on a computer table next to Warren’s blue and silver Mac. Like the ones we used on the Hill, but newer. You just plugged in the intercom and it went through the electric lines. Jackson pulled out his wallet and handed me four hundred-dollar bills and five twenties. Cash from Warren. I’d never seen so much money in my life. My head started to spin.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “But I need to be alone for a while. I’ve got a lot to think about. I’ll be fine,” I repeated, and I was.

  “You’ve got to go to the Farmers and Mechanics Bank in the morning,” Jackson said. “That’s where Warren set up your account.”

  We packed ourselves down the stairs together. It was noon, but I wasn’t hungry. Jackson walked down the ramp to the house, and Claire drove off in her fancy yellow car. The dog appeared from behind the garage, curious. I knelt down and when she came up to me I sniffed her neck, and she sniffed my neck. We were interested in each other. I got into Warren’s old truck and drove. It wa
s a full-size GMC half-ton pickup with over a hundred thousand miles on it. It needed new struts and the suspension was shot, but it felt good to drive around with five hundred dollars in my purse. Five hundred twenty, to be exact, because I had twenty dollars from the State of Illinois. I drove around town, just to get myself oriented, and then I headed out into the countryside. I didn’t have a map, but I didn’t figure I’d need one. I figured if I went west far enough I’d hit the Mississippi. And I did. The road ran straight through a little town and right into the river. Good thing there was a stop sign. The town was Oquawka and I stopped at a little park to see the grave of Norma Jean, a circus elephant that got struck by lightning. There was a photo of Norma Jean on her monument showing her chained to a tree. Lightning had struck the tree she was chained to and killed her, and they’d buried her on the spot.

  At a little grocery store I bought a package of thick-sliced bacon and a dozen eggs. I asked for a six-pack of Sam Adams but had to settle for Miller.

  It was dark when I got back to the apartment, which felt lovely and snug and safe, in spite of the mice. It wasn’t any too clean, but it was only for a few days. Warren had three cast-iron frying pans: small, medium, and large. I chose the large and cooked six slices of bacon and three eggs. There was a toaster, too, but I’d forgotten to buy bread.

  The apartment was small by some standards, but huge compared to my cell. And full of books and magazines. It was exciting. A single unit in the kitchen had a tiny refrigerator, a tiny two-burner stove, and a tiny sink. A tiny hot-water heater was tucked into a closet under the roof in the tiny bathroom. The main room was full of books. Books in German, French, Spanish, Russian, Greek, and Latin. Science books too. Biology. I pulled a large biology textbook off the shelf and leafed through it: cell structure, cell membranes, enzymes, photosynthesis and respiration, cell division—nothing I couldn’t handle. I put it on the desk next to the computer. Then I tacked up my GED certificate on the wall over the computer.