by Lee Smith
Then came the time when Daddy was hurt bad. There were a lot of unbelievers present, a lot of people we didn’t know, and the very air in the church house felt wrong. I don’t know how to describe it. It felt to me like it does before a thunderstorm, I could smell it the way you can smell lightning. I was watching Daddy real close to see if he could feel it too, but it seemed that he could not. He was preaching and playing his guitar to lead the singing just as usual, when some of the people in the back started to yell out and heckle him.
“Hey, preacher man!” they yelled. “Where’s them snakes?” And such as that.
Daddy tried to ignore them, but people in the congregation kept turning around to look, and the Spirit was slow to move among them. My heart sank when one of the men in the back hollered, “Hey, preacher! Let’s get to it! We’ve brung a big un for you!” For I knew that they would torment the serpent before they brought him in, and sometimes put red pepper on him so he’d be ready to bite. This had happened before, and Daddy had amazed all, but tonight it didn’t feel good.
“Get to it, preacher!” they yelled.
Then finally the Lord moved on the congregation, and Rufus Graybeal, always the first, brought out two rattlesnakes, and Carlton Duty took off his shoes to tread on one of them, and Doyle Stacy put his face down in his serpent box, something he had taken to doing which bothered me a lot. People were crying out and singing and dancing as usual, having forgotten about the strangers.
Suddenly a heavyset man ran up from the back, past me and Lily, and flung a huge cottonmouth onto the floor in the midst of everybody. The Spirit fled. People began screaming and trying to get away.
Daddy had to come forward then and try to grab the serpent up, and I saw it bury its fangs deep in the fleshy part of his right hand, between his thumb and index finger, and then rear back and strike his leg before he could even try again to pick it up. Carlton Duty had to help Daddy get it off his leg.
Then Daddy held the cottonmouth—the biggest one I had ever seen—up above his head with both hands, and cried out, “Glory to God!” in a strong deep voice before putting him into a sack. Daddy went on preaching to those that remained, but he had been hurt, I could tell. His speech grew slower and more halting, and he stumbled as he walked. Finally he sat down on a chair and slumped sideways.
The service was over.
Rufus and Carlton rushed to catch Daddy before he fell on the floor, and they supported him out the door and into Carlton’s truck and brought him home. It would be the next day before we would learn that in all the confusion, Doyle had also suffered a serpent bite on the cheek.
By the time we got home, Mama was crying at Daddy’s side and his whole arm was swelled up like a ham. His hand was black. The skin on his leg was black too, with red streaks fanning out around the serpent bite. Mama had cut his pants leg off above the knee. “Pray, children, pray!” Mama told us, so we fell to our knees and prayed and prayed, but as the night wore on, Daddy seemed to get worse instead of better. He lost consciousness and vomited blood. We understood that Daddy had been hurt because he was not anointed when he worked the signs, and we knew that he would die if it was God’s will to take him on home.
Along with others from the Jesus Name Church, we prayed all night long, and it was noon of the next day before it grew clear that Daddy would live. In fact Daddy astonished everybody by going back to church that very night and handling the same serpent, the giant cottonmouth, which was now gentle as a little kitten in his arms. Doyle Stacy was not so lucky. The whole left side of his face was paralyzed, so that one eyelid drooped shut and he drooled out of the left side of his mouth. It also affected his vocal cords. He sounded real funny when he talked, and now it would be hard for him to become a preacher as he’d hoped. But you had to admire Doyle’s attitude. He said that God had been testing his faith, and he thanked God that he was equal to the test.
Around this time, Rufus Graybeal was going more and more out of control. This happens sometimes. He gathered up serpents from the mountains until he had a roomful of them at his house, it was said. His wife left him one day while he was gone to meeting. She took both his little girls. They went down to Florida on a Greyhound bus, to where her people lived. Then Rufus got fired from his job at the highway department. After this, he was over at the Jesus Name Church all the time, night and day. He practically lived there.
He took money out of the bank and ordered off for some exotic serpents from a place in Florida—coral snakes, bamboo vipers, a python. They came in a special wooden box on a cargo plane. Rufus had to drive to the Asheville airport to get them. Afterward, he was real proud of those serpents, and drove around showing them to people. He had them in coolers in the back of his truck. I know that Daddy was very worried about Rufus, and talked to him many times about the sin of self-exaltation, and told him he was setting himself up to get bit if he could not rid himself of it.
So nobody was surprised when it happened, nor when he died, though we were all real sorry. Carlton Duty, speaking at the funeral, said that maybe Rufus had gotten too puffed up in the Lord. Then Daddy said that while this seemed to be the case, we were not to second-guess God, and reminded us of Jesus’ words, “He that loses his life for my sake and the Gospel shall find it.” Daddy said that while the ways of God are mysterious and passeth understanding, he had no doubt that Rufus Graybeal was in the heavenly kingdom of the Lord right now, having found that perfect peace which he was so far from having on this earth.
Serpents were handled at Rufus’s funeral, of course, where everybody outdid themselves preaching.
They ran a picture of Daddy on page one of the Waynesville Times, plus a picture of Rufus in his open coffin with quarters on his eyes and a rattlesnake coiled up on his stomach. After the funeral, his brothers snatched him up and carried him to West Virginia to be buried and then came back and started talking against Daddy and the Jesus Name Church. An editorial against the church appeared in the Asheville paper, mentioning Daddy in particular. I hated that. For I had a real hard time at school anyway, without us making the paper.
* * *
IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, I had gotten used to them all teasing me and leaving garter snakes in the top of my desk, and to not ever being elected to anything and not making good grades because I had to miss school so much, taking care of Troy Lee or praying over those who were sick or had gotten bit. I fought a lot too, just like a boy, though Mama said not to. Mama said to ignore them for they know not what they do, but I just couldn’t. I’d get mad as fire, and when somebody did something like stick out their foot to trip me as I went by, I’d turn around and kick them as hard as I could. I didn’t even care if the teachers spanked me for it, which they did.
But this one year was going to be different. This year I had the chance to start all over, and I meant to do it right. I had been assigned to a new school closer to town because of redistricting, and I had already made one true friend there named Marie Royal, a regular girl from a regular family.
I thought Marie was the most beautiful girl. She had long jet-black hair, like Rose Red in my fairy-tale book, and skin as white as snow, and delicate features. When she giggled, which was often, deep dimples appeared in her cheeks. She had long willowy legs, like a deer,
I felt awkward and country around Marie. In fact I stumbled over a stool when we met, the second day of seventh grade. Our teacher was showing us how to use the school library. I was real excited, since I had never gone to a school that had a library. I had noticed Marie because she was so pretty and because she looked different from all the rest of us, but of course I hadn’t said anything to her, and didn’t plan to. For I had determined not to talk to anybody, so nobody would find out about me and tease me.
I planned to be a girl of mystery in the seventh grade.
Billie Jean was a year behind me in the new school because she had flunked twice, and I had already sworn her to secrecy. This was
not hard, as she was too shy to talk to anybody anyway. Lily went to a different school because of where she lived, and Evelyn had dropped out of school altogether in order to sing with Daddy when he went out street preaching and evangelizing, which was all the time now. So the coast was clear. I was off to a great new start.
I had even gotten Mama to cut me some bangs, which I wore long, right to my eyebrows. I kept my eyes down and didn’t say anything to anybody, thinking, Girl of mystery, girl of mystery. I am a girl of mystery.
But I got so excited in the library that I forgot myself and made a beeline for the little display of horse books on a table. I didn’t even see the stool until I had knocked it into Marie.
“Ooh!” she said, hopping on one foot and clutching the other.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, eyes down. Actually I didn’t care. I couldn’t wait to check out as many of those Walter Farley Black Stallion books as I could get at one time. I reached past Marie to grab.
“That one’s real good,” she said with authority. “That’s where he goes down in these secret caves at the ocean. I’m going to get this one.” She took My Friend Flicka off the table.
I could feel her looking at me, though I tried to hide under my bangs.
“Aren’t you in Miss Black’s room too?” she asked, and I said I was, and then she said, “What’s your name?”
“Gracie Shepherd.” I held my breath, but it was clear from the way she nodded that she had never heard of us.
“I’m Marie Royal,” she said. “I can draw horses. I can draw a horse that looks just like this.” She pointed at the stallion on the cover of The Island Stallion, which I stood there holding.
“Can’t,” I said immediately.
“Can,” Marie said. “Look, I’ll show you.” She pulled one of the little wooden chairs up to a table and motioned for me to sit down on it next to her, and I did. Then she opened up a pink plastic three-ring note-book I would have given anything to own, and took several colored pencils out of a clear plastic pouch that fitted right onto the rings. I watched while she bit her tongue, concentrating, and drew the best horse’s head I had ever seen. I couldn’t believe it. “My mother’s an artist,” Marie said without looking up. “She’s giving me lessons.” Then she went on to draw the horse’s body, which was not as good as the head, and four legs that were too short. “Here,” she said, ripping out a sheet of paper for me and giving me a purple pencil. “You try it.” My purple horse’s head looked like a dog’s head, which made me admire Marie’s even more.
“Girls!” Miss Black, our teacher, bore down on us from her great skinny height. “Marie! Florida Grace! What are you doing? I’ve been looking everywhere for you all!” She grabbed our horses and crumpled them up. “That’ll be ten minutes out of lunch for you young ladies.” Miss Black talked through her nose.
“She sounds like a horse,” I whispered to Marie as Miss Black jerked us along the hall to our room, and Marie giggled, and then we were friends.
When Miss Black kept us in at lunch, we drew four horses apiece and named them. Marie’s were Jumping Jack, Hot Potato, Queen of England, and Blackie. Mine were Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Judas. “Wow! Neat names,” Marie said. She had never heard them before because her family didn’t go to church, not ever, as I would learn.
“Can you come home with me one afternoon?” she asked later that day, and though I wanted to go so bad, I had to say no.
“I don’t know how I’d get back to my house,” I said, “if I was to miss the bus. We live way out of town on Scrabble Creek.”
“Oh, Mama will drive you home,” Marie said instantly, to my amazement. I couldn’t imagine a mother who even knew how to drive, but Marie’s mother turned out to have a car of her very own, and she was perfectly willing to drive it anyplace Marie wanted her to. Marie got to call the shots around her house. For she had been adopted, like a princess in a story. She was an only child, which seemed to make her extra generous, instead of spoiled. For lunch her mother always packed two sandwiches for her, as well as potato chips in a waxed paper bag and an apple and a Peppermint Pattie or maybe a cupcake or some cookies. I was embarrassed about my own lunch, which was nothing but a piece of cornbread usually, and sometimes a mason jar of buttermilk to break the cornbread up in, or maybe a biscuit. Some days I didn’t have any lunch at all, and then I always said I was on a diet, but Marie would put half of her lunch on my desk anyway, and not say a word when I ate it up. Sometimes she had pickle loaf sandwiches, which I had never heard of, and sometimes she had peanut butter and marshmallow whip sandwiches, which were wonderful. It took a long time of begging Mama, though, before she’d ever let me go home with Marie. I knew better than to ask Daddy about it, of course. I was sure he would say no, and that would be the end of it. At first Mama said no too, but I kept at her about it.
“Why not?” I asked one day in late September. “Her mama will bring me home by dinner. She’s got a red station wagon, I’ve seen it. She’s our room mother. She’s real nice. I’ll do all the wash,” I said. “I’ll do anything. I’ll be real good.”
“Oh, Gracie honey—” Mama sighed while I was going on and on about it. She stroked my hair and played with my new bangs. “You are good, honey. It’s just that—oh, it’s better if . . .” Mama stared out over my head, beyond me, at the blue fall sky and the yellow leaves tumbling across our yard in the wind. She set her jaw. “Don’t ask me no more.” Her voice sounded funny, and when I looked at her, she turned her face away.
I waited another week or so, until Daddy went on a crusade to Tennessee, taking Evelyn with him. Then I cleaned up our room and washed all the floors in the whole house and asked Mama again. She was just coming in the door with Ruth Duty. Mama always seemed stronger, somehow, when she was with Ruth Duty, as if Ruth’s good spirits and pluck had rubbed off on her too. She had this effect on everybody.
“Why, look here!” Ruth exclaimed. “I wish you’d just look at what all this child has got done! Aren’t you something, Florida Grace. I know you’re real proud of your girls,” Ruth said to Mama, who nodded and beamed, taking off her hat, and so I popped up and asked her again if I couldn’t go home one day after school with Marie.
Mama looked at Ruth.
“Honey, I’d let her, if it was me,” Ruth said. “I’ll swear I can’t see no harm in it.”
So I got to be picked up after school by Marie’s mother in the red Chevrolet station wagon and driven in toward Waynesville to Marie’s house. She lived in a white brick ranch house with grass in the yard and a picture window that bowed out from the living room and had about a million little panes of glass in it. Inside, the entire house looked like a magazine, with everything matching.
Marie’s mother gave us olive and cream cheese sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off, set out on plates at the kitchen table, and Coca-Colas. At home we were not allowed to have Coca-Colas. I thought I had never tasted anything in all the world as good as those sandwiches, and I loved how the Coca-Cola fizzed on my tongue. I tried to drink it real slow, so this would go on for a long time.
Marie’s mother, whose first name was Irene, sat at the kitchen table with us and smoked Salem cigarettes, which she held at an angle that I admired. I admired the way she blew the smoke out too, in a thin stream toward the ceiling, pursing her mouth. Mrs. Royal had a pixie haircut, which was popular then. Her made-up eyes pointed out at the end, like a cat’s eyes. She wore pale pink lipstick and tight black pants, and her hands were stained with paint because she was an artist. I did not think much of her paintings, which were mostly just blocks of color with black lines running every which way between them. I thought Marie’s horses were a lot better, and said so when Mrs. Royal asked me what I thought of her work. She threw back her head and laughed. She told me, in her strange hard Northern voice, that she found me “very refreshing.” I was surprised to learn that Marie’s dad was at home too, reading
a book. Mr. Royal was called Dr. Royal, but he wasn’t a real doctor, he just worked over at the college in Cullowhee. It must not be much of a job, I thought, for him to be home in the afternoon. He asked me a lot of questions and listened hard, nodding seriously, to my answers. I wasn’t used to being asked questions, or listened to. I knew I had to be real careful about what I said, and though I told them all about my brothers and sisters, I just said that my daddy traveled, which was true, Dr. Royal nodded in a way that made me feel grown-up, and sucked on his pipe. I felt like I got drunk on smoke in that house every time I went over there, and I resolved to start smoking myself, the first chance I got, and hold my cigarette at an angle like Mrs. Royal.
Marie had a big dollhouse and a closet full of dolls, a shelf of books, a pink-and-white indoors bathroom with a lacy cover on the toilet seat and—best of all—a television set! This was the first television I had ever seen, and I will never forget the chill which came over me that day as we sat down before it and watched Kate Smith sing “When the Moon Comes over the Mountain” in grainy black-and-white. I started crying, I was so surprised! And then I got tickled, and Marie got tickled too.
That afternoon passed so fast I couldn’t believe it when Mrs. Royal said it was time to go. Marie and I sat in the backseat and giggled while her mother smoked Salems and played the radio. Sometimes she sang along.
I had to pay attention and give directions for the last part of the drive. “Are you sure this is the road?” Mrs. Royal kept asking when we left the pavement and took the gravel road up to Scrabble Creek. “Yes ma’am, I’m sure, yes ma’am, this is right,” I kept saying, and then I was home and she stopped the car and we all stared up the hill at my house, which looked so poor to me suddenly, like a picture in a book about olden times.
“Oh neat, look at the creek!” Marie said, and Mrs. Royal said, “Is that your mother on the porch?” and then Marie was saying, “Mama, can we go in for a minute? Can we, can we?”