Punkin Bates held his snakes to his chest and then threw them down and walked on them in his stocking feet. His wife had been serpent bit and died. His brother too. Others followed Punkin’s lead. First the men, then the women.
The snakes couldn’t hear the music, which was getting louder and louder, but they could surely feel the vibrations. Everyone wanted to handle DX’s two-headed snake. DX took it out of the box and handed it to Punkin, who wrapped it around his neck. “PRAISE THE LORD,” he shouted, staring into the eyes of the snake, first one head then the other.
Jackson could feel the anointing becoming more intense.
Earl handed him a small copperhead, and again Jackson shook his head. The two men stood and looked at each other, but it wasn’t a staring contest. It was more like two lovers. Or two musicians about to play a duet. Earl understood.
Earl put his copperhead around his neck and got the two-headed timber rattler from Punkin and carried it to Jackson. Jackson had no idea how much it would weigh. It was about three feet long and he put his fingers around it as he’d done on the porch at DX’s. The snake lifted its head. Jackson looked into its eyes. He held it in both hands. It weighed about four pounds. Earl was standing in front of him. The musicians were playing “The Old Rugged Cross” again.
The snake felt clean and smooth, like a woman’s silk nightgown. But he was aware of the keeled edges of the scales as the snake moved through his hands. He tried to throw it over his shoulders, the way Punkin had done, but the snake resisted. At first. Then it allowed Jackson to wrap it around his neck. Jackson looked into the eyes again. The pits, the infrared sensors, were right in front of his face.
Jackson seemed to be looking down on the scene, just as he had felt himself looking down on the small band gathered in the hotel room when he’d been sick. He could see the top of his head, the snake draped around his shoulders, its two heads next to each other. Dancing. Singing. Speaking in tongues. But he couldn’t hear anything. It was like watching television with the sound turned off, or as if he were a snake and didn’t have any ears.
Mawmaw Tucker made her way to the pulpit, using her walker. She made her way to the front of the church. The band played “The Blind Man Stood in the Road and Cried.” Jackson thought there were more words, but they just sang the same verse over and over.
The blind man stood in the road and cried;
The blind man stood in the road and cried;
Cryin’ o-o-o-oh Lord, don’t turn your back on me;
The blind man stood in the road and cried.
Mawmaw Tucker started to sway back and forth, holding on to her walker. “Cryin’ o-o-o-oh Lord, don’t turn your back on me.” The band played louder and louder, and the singers laid harmonies on top of harmonies. Mawmaw Tucker danced without her walker, graceful as some large animals can be graceful. She was the locus of power, Jackson realized. Not Punkin Bates. Not Earl. None of the others. She carried with her the sense not of the mystery, but of the mystery behind the mystery, whatever was beyond explanation. She’d been dead and her sisters had prayed her back to life, and then she had prayed others back to life, called them back.
She danced back to the pulpit, put her walker to one side, and picked up a fruit jar filled with a colorless liquid. The music stopped completely. Jackson didn’t realize it was strychnine until she said in a loud voice, “I mixed it up myself. And I mixed it strong. You can see the feathers.”
“Feathers,” he knew, were undiluted crystals of strychnine.
“Praise Jesus,” she shouted. She held the jar out toward the congregation and then brought it to her lips. “Praise the Lord,” she shouted.
She drank it down, and Jackson was brought back to anthropological mode. He could understand the emotional kick you’d get from handling the snakes. He could understand it in every fiber of his being. He was experiencing it from within. But why would anyone drink strychnine? It didn’t make any sense. “If they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.” Mark 16:18. There had to be more to it than that. One more thing to investigate if his NHI proposal was accepted.
He was thinking about the proposal as he lifted the two-headed snake off his neck and shoulders. He felt a sharp sting in his finger, like a paper cut. He could see a drop of blood. He touched it with the first finger of his right hand. It took him a few second to realize that he’d been bitten. He wasn’t frightened. Not at first. Earl and DX had seen it too and were at his side asking if he wanted medical attention. According to Sunny this was the accepted protocol. Jackson said “No,” which was also part of the accepted protocol. He felt indestructible. Nothing could harm him. Certainly not a paper cut. But two minutes later he was in agony. Four minutes later his legs were starting to go numb. He collapsed on the floor. His finger was bleeding and starting to turn black and swell. Ten minutes later the whole finger was black. His arm was turning black and blowing up like a balloon. His face was swelling up. He was vomiting and shitting. Sally came up to him, looked into his face and screamed. He passed out for a minute and then came back. Four men carried him to Earl’s truck. His finger was blistering. He couldn’t stand to have anyone touch his arm. Earl cut off the sleeve because of the swelling. His arm had turned dark red. The skin was rupturing. He was weak, giddy, collapsed, confused, frightened. He was hemorrhaging from the mouth and the nose. He was pissing blood.
The ferry at Cave In Rock wasn’t running this late and they had to drive north to the bridge at Old Shawneetown and then south to Naqada. Three men crowded into the cab. Jackson thought they were taking him to the hospital, but when he woke up Earl and DX were getting him out of the cab in front of Earl’s trailer. He’d said he didn’t want medical attention, but that was before the bite really took hold. Now he was unable to talk. Or scream. He was thinking about the man in Hell.
When he wakes, he’s sitting with the men outside the elima house. His daughter is in the house with Sibaku and the women. The door is guarded by young women holding whips made out of brambles. Any young man who tries to force his way into the house will have to deal with these young women, and will not get through unscathed. Though he may get through. If he does, he will flirt with the young women waiting who are being initiated. The initiation itself is secret.
The men have built a fire and are singing. Jackson has only one harmonica left. Some have broken reeds; others he has given away. The Mbuti love the chugging train sounds, and the faraway whistle, though they have never seen or heard a train.
His daughter and two others are being initiated, and like most Mbuti initiations there are rules that have to be followed, but if they aren’t followed exactly, it doesn’t really matter. The Mbuti love ceremonies, but they don’t worry about sticking to the proper procedures, don’t worry about initiating Jackson with a cohort of young men half his age, don’t worry that sometimes the molimo the young men bring back from its secret hiding place in the depths of the Forest is an old plastic drain pipe instead of a beautifully carved wooden trumpet, don’t worry if the women sing the molimo songs that are supposedly known only to the men.
Suddenly three young women erupt out of the hut, the initiates, and take off running, pursued by the young women who have been guarding the hut. They disappear into the Forest. They are pursued in turn by the young men. Jackson can’t follow them.
19
ASIH
We flew American Airlines from Chicago to Mexico City and AeroMexico from Mexico City to Manuel Márquez de León International Airport in La Paz. It was my first flight, and I tried to conceal my excitement, my inexperience, as we boarded the plane and crammed our coats and carry-ons into the overhead luggage bins. I’d made the mistake of telling everyone that I’d thought Baja California was in California, and I didn’t think Laura was ever going to let me forget it. “Off to California,” she said, ushering me into the window seat so she could sit between Cramer and me. She was beautifully turned out, as always, in a dazzling lime-green dress and matching scarf, big sunglasses pushed
up on her head. Cramer took the aisle because of his long legs. I didn’t mind. I’d been to the airport in Paducah before. With Earl. Just to look around and watch a plane come in every now and then. But this was the real thing. I wanted to see what was going on.
I could see that no one else was paying attention to the flight attendant’s carefully choreographed routine about safety instructions. I wasn’t paying much attention either, and I closed my eyes as the plane took off and didn’t open them again till I was sure we were in the air. Things were growing smaller. I recognized Chicago from pictures and from my shopping trip with Claire—the Sears Tower, the Hancock building, the lake, which was on our right as we circled around, and which soon disappeared as we headed west and then south. Pretty soon Chicago itself disappeared.
While Laura was talking to Cramer about the paper on rat snakes she was going to deliver at the conference, I went through the stuff in the seat pocket in front of me: an American Airlines brochure that showed our route to Mexico City—we should cross the Mississippi north of St. Louis—and a catalog advertising more things than you could imagine. All kinds of electronic gadgets, money clips, exercise machines, a storage system that fit under the bed, a cigar humidifier, ice buckets, martini shakers, a globe that opened up to reveal a minibar inside, a magnetic wine accelerator (“10 seconds ages drink 10 years, 3 minutes ages drink 20 years”) for only $39.99, flasks bearing the logos of professional football teams, automatic plant waterers (would Jackson remember to water the plants?). Titanium knives, a germ-eliminating knife block for $89.95, a laser comb to promote hair growth for $495, various hair-removal devices, a uHarmony massage chair for almost four thousand dollars, another massage chair that squeezed your calves and feet. And then, at the end, “Successories.” Inspirational wall plaques for executive offices—pictures of flowers, trees, storms, waves, birds: “Caught in mid-flight, its wings blurred in motion, a majestic bald eagle propels its mighty form through the air. The motivational quote affirms that those who achieve greatness do so by taking risks.”
When I closed my eyes again I could hear a lot of voices—my mother’s, Earl’s, Warren’s, Jackson’s. They were all saying the same thing: “What do you think you’re doing?” And I had to remind myself.
What I thought I was doing was asserting my independence. The truth is, I hadn’t really wanted to go to Paris. In fact, I was sick of Paris before I even got there. I was tired of trying to speak French at dinner every single night, even if it was only for fifteen minutes, and my second-semester French teacher, Monsieur Boucher, couldn’t have been more different from Madame Arnot. No more fun and games. According to Monsieur Boucher, the primary French emotions were angst, nausée, and ennui! And we were reading parts of a novel by Albert Camus, pronounced “Camoo,” that demonstrated them all. L’Étranger. The stranger, Meursault, wasn’t the sort of Frenchman I’d been imagining. Or was the Arab the “stranger”?
And then there were the books on France that Jackson had given me for Christmas: French or Foe?, Almost French, Unleash Your Inner Gaul, all of which gave me the strong impression that the French weren’t very nice—that the customer is always wrong; that if you go to a fancy restaurant the waiters will try to intimidate you; that people will make fun of you if you try to speak French. And I didn’t want to meet Jackson’s old girlfriend, who’d arranged an apartment for us, and had invited us to their country place in something called the Dordogne. She was probably the woman described in the books: short skirts, tailored jackets, a padded push-up bra, casual chic, creamy skin. I didn’t think my French outfit would be a match for Suzanne. And what I really wanted before dinner on Friday night, after a long week, was a Sam Adams, not a kir, not even a kir royale. But the real reason I didn’t go to Paris was that I was afraid Jackson was going to propose to me in Paris, maybe in the Café Anglais, and I thought that if that happened in Paris, I’d be trapped, like the poor groundhog we carted over to Oquawaka on the day we stopped at the Starlight Motel, or like the snakes we’d captured back in March.
Laura complained about the food, but I thought it was pretty amazing that they managed to serve a hot meal and give you some choices—chicken or vegetable lasagna—at thirty thousand feet up in the air. But I didn’t say so. Laura complained about the lines at the lavatory. But I thought this was amazing too. Taking a dump at thirty thousand feet in the air.
“Are you nervous?” I asked Laura when Cramer got up to go to the john.
“About what?”
“About giving your paper?”
Laura shook her head. “What could go wrong? It’s not like you have to memorize it. You just read it and look up once in a while.”
“In front of a lot of people.”
“The more people the better. It’s when there are only a handful of people … Besides, what can they do to you?”
“Ask embarrassing questions.”
“How about you?” she asked.
“What should I be nervous about?”
“All the students are going to have to sing mariachi songs at the dinner on the last night.”
“What’s a mariachi song?”
Laura explained—violins, trumpets, three kinds of guitars, fancy costumes—but I couldn’t form a clear picture of what the students would be expected to do. I decided to worry about the mariachi singing later.
I looked out the window for a while. It was one o’clock. We’d crossed the Mississippi a long time ago and were probably over Arkansas or Texas. The flight to Mexico City was four and a half hours. Then a three-hour layover in Mexico City, and then a one-and-a-half-hour flight to La Paz.
A movie started to play on several big screens suspended from the cabin roof. People were putting on headphones. I closed my eyes and played my own movie in my head, just letting things happen. It was the same old stuff. Jackson’s pygmy girlfriend. Hardly three feet tall. Hard to imagine. Him on top. Her on top. I couldn’t get much out of him about her. Or his French girlfriend. All dressed up, leaning out the window and chatting with people without her pants on. And Cramer. I liked Cramer because he was so hard-edged. “Intentionality is the enemy,” Claire used to say, and it might have been Cramer’s motto too. He was determined to root intentionality out of our understanding of science. You don’t need intentionality to explain the human eye, or to explain why Andromeda and the Milky Way are going to collide, followed by the heat death of the universe, or even to explain the human mind, which hasn’t been designed like some kind of computer program. It’s a biological entity that’s been cobbled together by evolution over millions of years.
But what kind of intentionality was taking us to La Paz? I was thinking about the scene that would unfold in the hotel in La Paz. In my imagination I was wearing my French outfit that had started all the trouble. I’d had it cleaned and you could hardly see the wine stains. I thought it would give Cramer a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. I was excited, but I was melancholy too. I knew, from Madame Arnot, about post coitum triste, but this was pre-coitum triste—a kind of philosophical melancholy at the way things were working themselves out. I was sad for Laura, could almost feel her disappointment when she discovered that she wouldn’t be sharing her bed with Cramer. But Laura was young. Not eighteen, but not thirty-five either. Late twenties, I thought. She was working on her Ph.D. She’d be fine. She’d survive. And I was sad for Jackson—going to Paris by himself. But he’d have a good time. He’d drink kir every night before dinner and eat at the bistro on boulevard Saint-Germain. Not the famous bistro where Hemingway used to eat, a different one. That’s why he liked it. Suzanne had told him it was still there. I could imagine them sitting together … I was sad for myself too, and I had to remind myself that there was no divine plan here, not for me; no hand of Fate. Just my own choices. I’d made my bed and now I was going to lie in it. I dozed off, and when I woke up we were over Mexico City, which was surrounded by mountains.
The airport was crowded. Everyone was smoking. Baked goods were on sale every
where: pies, cakes. It was better than a church bake sale. We stopped at the AeroMexico office to locate our boarding gate. Laura spoke Spanish. I’d been studying French, but I’d never realized before what it would be like to be someplace where you didn’t speak the language. I hung onto my beautiful, expensive briefcase for dear life, as if I expected someone to grab it out of my hand. It held my ticket, my new passport, and a copy of L’Étranger. There were no lines at the gate, just a scrimmage to get on the plane. Cramer and I followed Laura, who was easy to keep track of in her lime-green dress. I was now about five years old, and Cramer, who didn’t speak Spanish either, was not much older.
Laura negotiated us through the airport in La Paz and got us into a taxi that took us to Hotel Araiza, the site for the herps meetings. We registered, got our nametags and a schedule of meetings, or sessions (as they were called). We had rooms on separate floors. I sat in my room and tried to relax. It was my first time in a hotel too, except the time with Warren in St. Louis.
There was a reception in the lobby of our hotel. There was lots of good food spread out on long tables—typical Mexican food, or what I thought of as typical, and lots more. Lots of seafood. And it was okay to drink beer as an apero. I had a Negra Modelo and then a glass of wine.
We put two tables together and ate outside with a dozen herpetologists. Everyone wanted to go on a whale-sighting trip, but it turned out to be the wrong time of year. The whales had gone north in March. You’d think a bunch of biologists would have known that. But they were herpetologists, not ichthyologists, or mammologists, and some people did go looking for whale sharks. The ichthyologists were meeting in a different hotel. We drank margaritas and pitchers of beer and ate platters of seafood. By ten o’clock I was stuffed and tired. Laura was sticking close to Cramer.
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