by Ed Gorman
Twelve
We ended up eating in the backyard that night with Mrs. Goldman. She’d been grilling herself a burger and so we threw our own burgers on the fire and joined her at the small picnic table.
“We tried out that new dance boat last night,” Mrs. Goldman said, in between shooing away flies and slapping mosquitoes.
“How was it?” Kylie said.
“A lot of fun.”
A couple of retired men had spent a year building a large, completely enclosed dance boat that was decorated like a restaurant and dance club inside. Booths lined two of the walls and there were three decks where you could stand for romantic moonlit glimpses of the night.
“How about we give it a try?” Kylie said.
“Fine,” I said.
She mst’ve seen how Mrs. Goldman was watching us.
“My husband and I are separated for the time being,” Kylie said.
“It’s really not any of my business.”
Kylie laughed. “I don’t care about my reputation. It’s McCain’s I’m worried about. I don’t want to spoil his virginal image.”
Mrs. Goldman smiled. “His life
seems to have slowed down the last few months here.”
“He’s just resting up. He’ll come roaring back.”
“I really like it when people talk about you like you’re not here,” I said.
Kylie and I were sitting next to each other on one side of the table. Mrs. Goldman’s summer garden imbued the dusk with exotic odors you don’t usually associate with states where corn and pigs are economic staples. I was having my usual reaction to that purgatory between day and night, that melancholy that was not quite despair but came pretty close.
Kylie slid her arm around me. “I wouldn’t have made it these last few days without Sam here.”
“Ditto for her. I’ve been kinda down myself.”
“Well, you never know where things like this will lead,”
Mrs. Goldman said.
Dogs barked; children laughed; a group of three very young teen couples walked down the alley, boys nervously teasing the girls they liked, not knowing what else to do, that wonderful awkward terrifying time of first love; and night, irrevocable and vast, fell upon the prairie. I wanted, for a brief firefly moment there, to be one of those teenage boys, starting all over again, wanting in some ways, what with my failed foolish pursuit of the beautiful Pamela Forrest, to start all over again, an eternal late summer of county fairs and swimming-pool dates and Saturday night movie dates.
But even at the young age of twenty-four things had become irretrievably complicated.
Pamela, whom I shouldn’t have loved; Mary, whom I should have; and poor sad Kylie and her strutting jerk of a husband. I really wanted to sleep with Kylie but she was married. And so I was afraid I would, against my principles; and afraid I wouldn’t, against that pure clean lust I felt for her. She was so damned good and kind and smart and sexy in her kid-sister way.
We all went inside and had some iced tea in Mrs. Goldman’s apartment—Kylie whispering that she didn’t want me to leave her alone just yet—and then around nine-thirty, the fireflies thicker in the perfume-scented night, a white kitten on the garden fence looking as if she were posing before the half moon … we went upstairs.
“So,” Kylie said, half an hour later, “what happens if I stay here tonight?”
“I’m of two minds about that.”
“I’m of three or four minds about that.”
“Well, then, it looks like we have a dilemma here, doesn’t it?”
“A conundrum.”
“Where’s Chad tonight?”
“Whereabouts unknown.”
“And you—”
his—don’t feel like going through another Strindberg play with him. Strindberg being his favorite writer. So when we get into one of our arguments, he always starts doing Strindberg. And I’ve had enough Strindberg for a while.”
“You can’t ever have too much
Strindberg.”
“You like him?”
“Eh,” I said, shrugging. “In a pinch, I suppose.”
“So I’ll take the couch.”
“You’re too long for the couch.”
“I’m the same size you are.”
“You’re always telling me,” I said, “that you’re taller than I am.”
“Haven’t you figured out by now that I’m an incorrigible liar?”
“I’ll take the couch. It’ll make me feel nobler.”
“I’d really feel awkward doing that to you.”
“You’d deprive me of feeling noble?”
“It’s still pretty early. Could we watch a little Tv?”
“But of course.”
We started out watching “Highway Patrol.”
Broderick Crawford never takes off his trench coat. They could have deep-sea sequences like on “Sea Hunt” with Lloyd Bridges and Brod would still be wearing his trench coat, his Aqua-Lung strapped on outside of it. Oh, and he’d be wearing his fedora, too.
I say “started out watching” because, after about one act of ole Brod barking “Ten-four, ten-four”
into his two-way, we gave up and started making out.
I guess we resolved our dilemma and our conundrum.
At least sort of.
It was ninth-grade sex.
We French-kissed but when my hand drooped (of its own volition) toward her chest area (or chestal area as Judge Ronald D. K. M.
Sullivan would say), it was gently moved back up by her hand.
By the time “Highway Patrol” was wrapping up we lay lengthwise on the couch. Pressed very tightly together. She was a great kisser. Maybe the best kisser I’d ever been with. She was such a great kisser that kissing her was almost enough. But my hand kept drooping and her hand kept gently brushing it away. We did a little tenth-grade dry-humping but she wouldn’t let my hand linger on her bottom. I had one of those erections that make you crazy. One of those erections that takes you over so completely you are nothing more than a penis.
She was girl-flesh and girl-body and girl-mouth; girl-sigh, girl-gasp,
girl-moan.
She was moaning, I was moaning.
She was insinuating (a Kenny Thibodeau dirty-book word) herself against me as hard and fast as I was insinuating myself against her.
I suppose in the murky past I’d wanted the beautiful Pamela Forrest this badly but it was really murky. Nobody had ever seemed as fresh and vital and fetching as Kylie did right now.
And then she was up and grabbing her purse and rushing out the door.
“I’ve got to get out of here!” she said. “I don’t want to do anything I’d regret.
Good-night, McCain! I’m sorry!”
At seven-thirty the following morning I sat in my ragtop on a shelf of shale above the cup of grassy land where the hill folk lived. My field binoculars were trained on the Muldaur trailer behind the church. At 7ccdg, Viola came out with a magazine and a roll of toilet paper in her hand and headed for the outhouse to the east.
How’d you like to face the outhouse every morning?
Summer would be bad enough—but Iowa winter when it was twenty-five below zero?
She didn’t go back to the trailer till 8ccbd.
Daughter Ella carrying, presumably, the same roll of t.p. but a different magazine, emerged from the trailer at 8ccdh and went to the outhouse. She stayed only till 9ccjc.
At 9ccbf I got the opportunity I’d
been waiting for. Viola got in the rusty truck and drove away, leaving Ella behind. I drove down to the trailer and walked up to the door.
The place smelled of decades-old grime.
The yard was spiked with broken glass, empty bottles, rusty cans. A Tv turned low hummed in the front wall.
I knocked.
As I waited for a response, I turned to look at the land behind the church. I wondered how thoroughly Cliffie and his minions had searched the area of weeds and buffalo grass and the four rusty garbage
cans.
I turned back to the trailer when I heard the door open but by then it was too late. The angry man had his shotgun pointed at me.
Bib overalls, T-shirt beneath, massive head, shoulders, forearms.
“C’mon,” he said.
He was the keeper of the gate. The man who’d let Kylie and me into the church that first night. The man arguing with his wife a little later on, striking her.
“What’s your name, anyway?”
“You think I’m afraid to tell you? It’s Bill Oates.”
“What’s with the shotgun, Mr. Oates?”
“I want to take you somewhere.”
“I came here to see Ella.”
“Ella don’t want to see you.”
“It’d probably be better if I heard that from her myself.”
“We suffered a loss. You don’t seem to understand that. You shouldn’t be botherin’ people at a time like this. If you was pure, you wouldn’t be.”
“How do you know I’m not pure?”
“You work for that Judge, for one thing. And I’m told you’re going around with that Jew woman.”
“And that makes me impure?”
He smiled and for the first time I saw the stubby blackened teeth. “I guess we’re going to find out, ain’t we?”
You’re probably ahead of me on this one. Not even when he marched me over to the church at gunpoint did I realize what he had in mind.
Slow learner, I guess.
The church interior was shadowy. The chairs were arranged in orderly fashion. The altar was dark.
On a hot day like this all the ancient service-station odors rose up. You could almost hear the bell on the drive clanging to life and a motorist saying, “Fill ‘er up, would ya? And I guess you’d better check the oil.”
And then I heard them. And then I had my first understanding—dread, actually—of why he’d brought me here. And the real implication of his “pure” remark.
He nudged me down the aisle with the barrel of his gun.
I began to make out the dimensions of the snake cage. I tried to guess from their sudden hissing and rattling—the approach of intruders—how many of them there were.
“What the hell you going to do?”
“Just keep walkin’.”
I stopped. In an instant I
weighed the threat—getting shot in the back versus having to do something with rattlesnakes. So I stopped.
He stabbed the barrel of the shotgun nearly all the way through me.
“I said to keep walkin’.”
“I’m not going near those damned snakes.”
“Watch your language. This is the house of the Lord.”
“And I suppose the Lord wants you to put those snakes on me?”
“You’re not pure.”
I flung myself forward, hitting the floor and rolling to the right. I was slower than I’d hoped and he was much, much faster. He put a bullet about three inches from my head. It ripped up some concrete and ricocheted off the far shadowy wall.
You could smell the gunfire; the rattle of it echoed in the small place.
“Get up.”
He came over and kicked my ankle so hard it felt broken.
“You bastard.”
He kicked me again in the same place. Even harder.
“The next time you use a word like that, I’ll put a bullet in your brain.”
The bullet or the snake? They each frightened me but in different ways. At least a bullet didn’t have those glassy eyes and those fangs and that forked tongue and that-But I got to my feet. I didn’t want to die on the floor there. Got to my feet and tried to stand tall but it was difficult and not just because I’m short. It was difficult because my right ankle hurt so much where he’d kicked me.
He grabbed me by the shoulder and flung me on the altar.
There had to be at least three of them, maybe four.
They made even more noise than the bullet had. Angry, filthy noise.
I stumbled on the altar platform and sprawled facedown before the small raised box on top of which the snake cage sat.
“Stand up.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“You said you were pure? I’ll give you the chance to prove it.”
“I’m not going to handle those snakes.”
“I’m sick of talk, you. Now stand up.”
The pain in my ankle was fading much faster than I had thought possible. But I didn’t want him to kick me again. This time he’d probably break bone.
“I’m not afraid of the snakes because I’m true to my Lord.”
“Is that why you slapped your wife the night Muldaur died? Because the Lord wanted you to?”
“He’s ordained that sometimes man needs to instruct woman in the ways of righteousness.”
“And that includes slapping them around?”
“I don’t take any pleasure in it, if that’s what you mean. I do it because the Lord has ordained it. I’d be committing a sin if I didn’t do it.”
All the time the hissing continued.
“Sometimes one man must instruct another man in the ways of righteousness, too.”
“That’s what you’re doing with me?”
“You need to know if you’re impure. I’m actually doin’ you a favor.”
“Gosh, thanks so much.”
He prodded me with his toe just above the ankle.
I really didn’t want to get kicked again. I pushed myself to my feet. Sometimes, you kid yourself and think you’re tough. But then something like this happens.
I’d banged my head on the floor just now and had a headache. My ankle was sore. I was pasty with sweat. And all I could hear were the snakes.
I was being pushed toward them. They may not actually have been louder, they may not actually have been angrier. But they sure sounded that way. I stumbled toward them.
He clubbed me on the side of the head hard with his rifle barrel.
I dropped to my knees before I realized where I’d be: kneeling next to the snake cage.
“Open it up.”
He had to shout to be heard above the hiss and rattle.
I just looked at him. Terrible things were going on in my throat, my chest, my bowels.
“You open that up and grab one of ‘em. If it don’t bite you then you are judged worthy by Divine Wisdom.”
I couldn’t talk. Literally. I tried. But my throat was raw and dry with fear. Only a few inches and a mesh of metal kept the rattlers at bay.
I wondered if he’d really shoot me. He seemed crazed but was he that crazed? And—a wild thought that should have occurred to me much earlier-what had he been doing in the Muldaur trailer so early in the morning? He’d arrived before I had. What was his exact relationship to Viola Muldaur? Was he pure? Could he pass the snake test?
Then he did it. Leaned in, unlatched the simple lock that held the lid down on the cage.
“I’m makin’ it easy for you.”
And for the second time, he fired his weapon.
One year at camp I’d slept in the grass and during the night a bat kept flying inches over my face. I always remembered the heat of its passage. The bullet was like that now. The heat of its passage.
I did a kind of dance on my knees, jerking sideways, frontways, slamming into the snake cage. And then doing, in simple animal reaction, the unthinkable.
I reached my arm out and grabbed the far side of the cage to keep it from falling off the low table it was resting on. And then I jerked back, astonished at my stupidity as the snakes flew out at me, at least two snakes arcing their heads into the top of the cage, trying to get at me.
“Open it!” Oates shouted.
And then swung the rifle barrel into the side of my head again. My entire consciousness was sliding into pain. It was getting difficult for me to think.
I nudged up against the cage.
He swung the rifle around yet another time.
This time I consciously stopped myself f
rom bumping against the cage.
And this time I realized how I could get out of this situation, rifle or no rifle.
It was not without risk. There would be a few seconds there when the snakes would be close to me, able to bite me and hold on if they wanted to.
But I didn’t have much choice. The snakes or the religious crackpot—y decide.
“Open it,” he said. His voice was raw now.
He’d glimpsed the future. One of the snakes striking me, filling me with poison. He spoke in the raspy tone of true passion.
So I opened it.
But I kept hold of the handle to the lid. And instead of shoving my hand inside, I used
the handle to swing the entire cage around and fling it at him.
He screamed like a young boy.
He fired two shots.
And he dropped his gun when one of the flying rattlers slapped him across the face.
The gun discharged when it hit the floor.
I was already halfway down the aisle, my sore ankle be damned, heading for my ragtop.
Thirteen
I went home and took a very cold shower. I stood in there fifteen minutes trying to get snake off me. Part of it was psychological, of course. You couldn’t scrub away a sense of snake. It stayed with you for a long, long time.
I’d just finished getting into some clean summer-weight clothes—white short-sleeved shirt, blue-on-blue striped necktie, blue slacks, black socks, black loafers—when the phone rang.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“He called and said that he still loved you.”
“Yeah, sort of, anyway.”
“So you’re going to see him.”
“Tonight. That’s why I called. I told him I was with you last night and I think he got jealous. He started insisting that we get together tonight.”
“You know something?”
“What?”
“I’d do the same thing you would. I’d go.”
“Really?”
“Are you kidding? Look at all the times I went running back to Pamela.”
“Yeah, I guess you were kind of a glutton for punishment.”
“Well, as one glutton to another, why not give it a try?” I said.
“You think it might actually lead somewhere?”
“Probably not,” I said. “But it’s nice to have a little hope again, isn’t it?”