A Feast of Snakes

by Harry Crews

  Willard said: “This sumbitch in the back seat just thrown up on his self.”

  But Joe Lon didn’t hear. He was on a long straight and he had the Porsche up to a hundred and twenty, which was apparently all it would do because he was stamping the accelerator and pumping the steering wheel with both hands. He glanced over at Willard and shouted: “Ain’t had a chance to drive nothing like this since Berenice went off to the U of Gee and given her Vette to Hard Candy!”

  Joe Lon drew his lips back in what could have been great happiness, but it was not. Even in the middle of this frantic ride, with his best buddy sitting beside him screaming for him to Screw it on! he felt the weight of a great despair settling in him as solid as bone. It had started in the middle of the workout on the prone press bench and he was not even aware of it until it was on him like a fever. He had gotten up from the bench and, waiting for Duffy and Willard, found himself looking across the road at the old man who had come back and squatted by the end of his Airstream trailer. The twisting tufts of hair stood out like something driven into his skull and across his knees was an open book that he was reading, his finger tracing and tracing the page as he read.

  It was a long time before Victor shifted the book and Joe Lon saw it was the Bible. Victor used to take a room on the second floor of their house back in the days when Big Joe used to let rooms to tourists and hunters for the Roundup. Victor never talked of anything but God and snakes and his voice and the look in his eyes always made Joe Lon’s heart jump. His daddy, who had been to meetings at Victor’s church, had told Joe Lon how it was.

  “He strings diamondbacks in his hair like a lady strings ribbons. I seen’m kiss a snake and a snake kiss him. He’s been bit in the mouth. He’s been bit everwhere. It ain’t no more’n a kiss from his ma. He follers where God leads him.”

  It was Joe Lon’s turn on the bench and he went under the weight in a sinking despair, thinking: What am I doing here on my back? What is this I’m doing? I’m a grown man with two babies and a wife and I’m out here fucking around with weights. What the hell ails me?

  When Joe Lon got off the bench the next time, Elizabeth Lilly Well—called Mother Well by the hunters, who gave her buttons from the tails of rattlers—was sitting on a stone beside Victor. She had brought her three-thousand-dollar mosaic called Deer Plus Snake with her. It gleamed in the sun and Victor traced its outline with one bony finger. It came to Joe Lon that she pinned rattles to a canvas relentlessly and with great joy and Victor followed God the same way. What did he, Joe Lon, do? What did he have? He had once had football to fill up his mind and his body and his days and so he had never thought about it. Then one day football was gone and it took everything with it. He kept thinking something else would surely take its place but nothing ever did. He stumbled from one thing to the next thing. From wife to babies to making a place for crazy campers bent on catching snakes. But nothing gave him anything back. So here he was lying under a dead weight doing what he’d done five years ago, when he was a boy. If it had meant anything then, he had forgotten what; and merciful God, it meant nothing now. His life had become a not very interesting movie that he seemed condemned to see over and over again.

  “I feel like the end of the world,” Joe Lon screamed above the noise of the whining engine.

  “We git up here,” Willard screamed back at him, “we’ll press a little beer to you face, you’ll feel better.”

  But he would not feel any better and he knew it.

  Poncy, sitting with the little green puddle in his lap, tried to say something authoritative to them about abusing his car, after all he was old enough to be their father and there was no reason for him to take all this and not let them know what they were in for if they wrecked his Porsche or hurt him. But they either did not hear him yelling up at them from the back seat or they simply did not care.

  They roared into a clay parking lot and stopped. Joe Lon and Willard got out and closed their doors without ever looking at him. He sat where he was and watched them walk away. His bowels felt loose. He’d been having a lot of trouble with his bowels since he retired, and the ride had not helped. When he was sure he had everything under control, he got out. In the red clay parking lot he shifted quickly from foot to foot, testing the weight of his bowels. Everything seemed to be all right.

  The Blue Pines was a wooden building with a tin roof. Various signs were stuck on the walls advertising Budweiser, the King of Beers, and Redman chewing tobacco, and Coca-Cola, pool table, and sandwiches. The hills sloped away in thin, second-growth pine trees. When Poncy opened the door it was so dark he had to stand a moment before he saw Willard and Joe Lon sitting at a round splintered wooden table and another man bringing a pitcher of beer with two glasses.

  The man said: “You boys welcome here, but I don’t want no goddam trouble.” He set the pitcher on the table.

  Neither Joe Lon nor Willard looked at the man. They poured beer into the glasses and drank. The man stood beside the table. Finally, Willard—still without looking up—said: “Pay’m, would you, Conty?”

  “Poncy,” said Poncy, paying the bartender, “it’s Poncy.”

  The man stood beside the table with the money in his hand and said: “How’s you daddy’s Tuffy?”

  “Tuffy’s good. Great shape,” said Joe Lon.

  “He’s old, though,” said the man.

  “You put anything down, better be on Tuff,” Joe Lon said.

  “Knowing when to git off a dog is smart as when to git on.”

  “Suit youself.”

  There was only one other man in the Blue Pines, a farmer in overalls and felt hat, drinking whiskey out of a water glass and never looking up. Willard and Joe Lon managed to get through two pitchers of beer before the Winnebago pulled in. Duffy Deeter drank straight from the pitcher to catch up and then proceeded to take Joe Lon and Willard to the pool table in back and humiliate them. During one run he went through two consecutive racks, which did not improve Willard’s humor.

  Susan Gender put two quarters in the juke for six plays. She stood prancing on her toes in front of the jukebox for a moment and then cut her sly gaze at Poncy, where he stood trying to act as though he wasn’t watching her pumping hips and the fine vibrating flesh of her belly.

  She smiled. “I guess you it,” she said, and came dancing toward him.

  “No, wait!” he said, as she pulled him toward the floor. “I slept in the car last night, my back …”

  “All the more reason to shake youself loose,” she said.

  She held his hand and whipped her hard lean body through the Dog and the Frug and the Pony and the Swim. As Hard Candy crossed the dance floor for more beer, she pinched Poncy’s old flabby ass. He tried to turn around but Susan Gender held his hands tight.

  “Please,” said Poncy, but a little jolt of pleasure had moved on his spine.

  “I’m gone give you a goose ever time I catch you not shaking it,” yelled Hard Candy Sweet.

  Poncy saw the farmer slowly lift his eyes under the brim of the felt hat and look at them steadily, with no expression at all on his face. His eyes looked like nailheads over his wind-burned cheeks. Poncy started moving his hips and shoulders and hands. He had no idea if what he was doing was right. There did not seem to be a right or wrong way, since Susan Gender wasn’t doing anything the same way twice.

  Joe Lon and Willard came wandering over from the pool table to the dance floor. Behind them Duffy Deeter still leaned on the green velvet table under the swinging overhead light.

  “Come on back over here,” he called.

  “What did he win off you?” Hard Candy asked.

  “Couple dollars,” said Joe Lon.

  “You could train a goddam monkey to shoot pool,” Willard said.

  They stood at the edge of the dance floor watching Poncy jump awkwardly about, hobbling after the spinning, stroking Susan Gender.

  “Susan’s teaching Poncy to dance,” Hard Candy said. “Ain’t he just the ugliest fucking thing
you ever seen?”

  “Well, shit,” said Joe Lon, “if Enreeker wants to dance, we’ll hep’m. Git us another pitcher, Hard Candy.”

  Joe Lon walked out onto the floor. Willard turned a chair around, sat down, and put his arms on the back of it. Hard Candy went to the bar for a pitcher and stood looking at Willard while it was drawn from the tap. Joe Lon stopped alongside Poncy and Susan. Poncy was concentrating on his broken little dance when Joe Lon picked him off his feet. He caught Poncy’s belt on each hip and lifted him as if he’d been a child. Poncy’s feet kept moving while Joe Lon turned him through the air and set him down in front of Willard’s chair.

  “We don’t allow nothing half-ass around here, Enreeker,” said Joe Lon bitterly. “You gone dance, goddammit, you got to dance.”

  Hard Candy came back with the beer. Duffy Deeter had strolled out onto the rough wooden floor in front of the jukebox and pumped in some more quarters. Susan Gender had sweated through her blouse and the farmer’s nailhead eyes watched her little hard-nosed titties plunge against the fabric as she jacked around to the music while James Brown screamed: “I don’t know karate but I know kaRAZOR.”

  “I had to sleep in the car last night,” Poncy was trying to say. “My back hurts like a … like a …” But he couldn’t get it out because Joe Lon had him by the seat of the pants and Willard had him by the belt buckle and they were punching his hips back and forth between them.

  “Basic move,” shouted Joe Lon right into Poncy’s face. “It’s you stroke. You cain’t stroke, you cain’t dance.”

  “Oh, God, God,” said Poncy, his eyes round, his lips gray. They were hurting him. But if either of them knew it they didn’t show it. Their own faces were flushed, their lips peeled back in what was alternately snarl and laughter.

  “Watch her,” cried Willard, still seated, still holding Poncy by his double knits, punching him in the ass counterpoint to the punch Joe Lon gave him in his old melon belly. Poncy was beginning to hunch and stroke as best he could to avoid being hurt but he couldn’t do it very well because there was a stick of pure fire standing in his lower back. He was terrified that he would either cry or shit on himself. The punches in the belly had made him flatulent but thank God, thank God the music was loud enough to cover him. “Watch her,” Willard was screaming in his ear.

  “Wave you goddam hands, Enreeker,” said Joe Lon.

  Poncy waved his hands.

  “Watch’r feet,” said Joe Lon.

  Poncy could only roll his eyes at them and wave his hands and arms.

  Duffy had been leaning against the slot, where he was feeding quarters into the jukebox. His eyes and Willard’s happened to meet briefly and when they did Duffy came bucking across the floor to Hard Candy. His hands moved in one direction, his feet in another, his body in still another, all of it synchronized with the music and all of it at blinding speed. His head stayed rock still, his eyes fixed on Hard Candy. She’d stopped pouring beer and set the pitcher down. Her eyes were shiny, her lips swollen. Her body started to pulse, then pump, and they moved out onto the dance floor, separate, no longer even looking at each other, but absolutely together.

  “Jesus,” said Willard to Joe Lon, “ain’t it nothing that little sucker cain’t do?”

  They held Poncy tight between them, and since they had stopped making him hunch and flap his arms he thought they were through with him. He took a deep breath and just to keep things nice and easy and conversational so they wouldn’t think of punching him again, Poncy said: “He’s quite something, isn’t he?” He’d made it as formal as he could because he didn’t ever want them to think he was mocking the way they talked again, but Joe Lon turned on him anyway, jerking as if he had been burned. His nostrils flared. His head seemed to tremble, and his staring blue eyes were intense enough to look crossed.

  “Quite something?” Joe Lon demanded. “Willard, is he gone stand around saying shit like quite something or not?”

  Willard popped out of his chair, raising Poncy about six inches off the floor by the belt when he did. Poncy got one quick glimpse and closed his eyes. Willard looked completely nuts. Willard and Joe Lon, shouting quite something, quite quite something, dragged Poncy toward the center of the dance floor. Once they had him out in front of the jukebox, each of them took one of his hands and started going round and round him as if he was a maypole and each of his arms were streamers. They held tight and skipped in a little dance step to the music. Hard Candy stopped dancing and took hold of Poncy too. Hard Candy had him by the tail of his Banlon shirt and Susan Gender, unable to find anything better to hold on to, caught Poncy by a roll of fat on his hip. They were laughing and singing and Poncy was screaming but the music was so loud it sounded like they were all having just the best time. Poncy was very dizzy and very sick to his stomach and a thin stream of shit had slipped down his leg. He tried to fall down but Joe Lon and Willard wouldn’t let him. The farmer in the overalls slowly turned his back on them and sat staring down into his glass of whiskey.

  Poncy was too weak to scream by the time the record finally ended. He was soaked with sweat and his nostrils were full of the thick smell of himself. They leaned inward on him, hanging to his arms and clothing, their hot beery breaths churning his stomach.

  “Let’s go to your place and eat snake,” Willard finally yelled at Joe Lon.

  “He got snake?” said Duffy Deeter.

  “He ain’t got but about twenty,” said Willard.

  They’d turned Poncy loose and left him where he stood in the middle of the dance floor, panting and sweating. It was almost as if they had forgotten he was there now that they had quit playing with him.

  “I’ll get us a little beer to ride on,” said Duffy.

  They were already heading for the door when Willard stopped and went back to where Poncy was. He took him by the shoulder and led him toward the door.

  Joe Lon said: “Damn if I don’t believe Enreeker’s shit on his sef.”

  “What?” said Hard Candy, crowding in to where he was. “Where bouts?”

  Poncy was walking stiff-legged with his thighs pressed together. They got through the front door and out into the weak afternoon sunlight.

  Willard slapped Poncy on the back and said: “Hell, don’t feel bad. I shit on myself before.”

  “Me too,” Joe Lon said, “lots of times.”

  Poncy turned his head uncertainly. “You have?”

  “Sure, we …” said Willard. They had stopped in the parking lot. Willard Miller’s voice had trailed off and he held the unfinished sentence like a measure. Then he said: “Sure, we all shit on ourselves, but we weren’t but three months old.”

  Laughing and shouting they raced for the Winnebago and left Poncy standing in the parking lot gripping his thighs together in front of his little Porsche.

  Susan Gender drove the Winnebago and Hard Candy sat on the seat beside her. Duffy and Willard and Joe Lon lay on the floor behind the seats. Willard and Duffy were singing. Joe Lon lay very still on his back and looked at the ceiling and thought about Poncy back there in the parking lot of the Blue Pines. He felt like he felt when he screamed at Elfie or hit her. He hadn’t meant to hurt the old man, but he knew he had. He eased his hands down onto his flat hard stomach. Something in him was tearing loose. He felt it going more and more out of control. Duffy Deeter howled a song in his ear about a whore from Peoria. He wished to God he could escape. But he didn’t know where he could go or what he wanted to escape from.

  When they got to his purple double-wide, Joe Lon skinned snakes in a frenzy. He picked up the snakes by the tails as he dipped them out of the metal drums and swung them around and around his head and then popped them like a cowwhip, which caused their heads to explode. Then he nailed them up on a board in the pen and skinned them out with a pair of wire pliers. Elfie was standing in the door of the trailer behind them with a baby on her hip. Full of beer and fascinated with what Joe Lon was doing, none of them saw her. But Joe Lon could feel—or thought he co
uld— the weight of her gaze on his back while he popped and skinned the snakes. He finally turned and looked at her, pulling his lips back from his teeth in a smile that only shamed him.

  He called across the yard to her. “Thought we’d cook up some snake and stuff, darlin, have ourselves a feast.”

  Her face brightened in the door and she said: “Course we can, Joe Lon, honey.”

  Elfie brought him a pan and Joe Lon cut the snakes into half-inch steaks. Duffy turned to Elfie and said: “My name’s Duffy Deeter and this is something fine. Want to tell me how you cook up snakes?”

  Elfie smiled, trying not to show her teeth. “It’s lots a ways. Way I do mostly is I soak’m in vinegar about ten minutes, drain’m off good, and sprinkle me a little Looseanner redhot on’m, roll’m in flour, and fry’m is the way I mostly do.”

  “God,” said Susan Gender.

  Duffy Deeter slapped Joe Lon on the ass and said, “Where’d you get this little lady, boy? Damn if you haven’t got you some little lady here.”

  Elfie blushed, and Joe Lon didn’t answer. They followed him into the trailer. Joe Lon put on a stack of Merle Haggard and Elfie took the snake into the kitchen, where she wouldn’t let the other two girls come, saying: “It ain’t but room for one in a trailer kitchen. I’ll cook it up in two shakes.” Joe Lon got some beer out of the icebox and they all sat in the little living room looking out onto the campground. The babies lay in their playpen where their mother had put them, screaming and refusing to suck their sugar-tits. Joe Lon pulled at his beer and then said something to Hard Candy he’d been thinking on and off most of the afternoon.

  “Why don’t you call you house and tell that sister of yorn to come eat snake with us?” He was unable to make himself say the boy’s name. “Tell’r to bring him that plays debate too if she feels like it. We got enough snake here for everbody.”