Against the Wind

by J. F. Freedman

  I hear it before I see it.

  The sound at first is like a buzz, sharp, as I get closer it gets louder, more differentiated, a sound made up of lots of different sounds coming together. Voices together, not yet understandable, like a loud wailing.

  The road curves sharply and I’m in a large clearing, bare hard ground. Cars are parked all over, mostly older clunkers like the ones I’ve been passing on my way here, but some newer ones as well, lots of pickup trucks, too, some of the newer cars fancy ones, Oldsmobiles and Buicks. I notice that while most of the license plates are from West Virginia there are also some from Virginia and Kentucky, North Carolina, and even some from farther away, Tennessee, Maryland, New Jersey, Georgia.

  The church is a large, wooden one-story building. Not a traditional-looking church with steeple and stained-glass windows, more like a big wooden tent. As I get out and walk towards it the sound becomes louder. It isn’t amplified, but it’s loud as hell. Hundreds of voices at a high pitch. It’s obviously prayer, but I can’t make out a word of it; it isn’t English or any other language I’m familiar with.

  I am not religious, and my family wasn’t either; given our socioeconomic background we were odd in that respect. Except for compulsory service in the army I doubt that I’ve been inside a church of any denomination two dozen times in my entire life. But I’ve seen enough on television, Jimmy Swaggart and Ernest Ainsley and the rest, to know what’s coming.

  So much for being cool. I open the church door, and every preconceived notion I have is blasted out the window.

  Talk about religious ecstasy! This brand of fundamentalism will never be on television, unless it’s in a Frederick Wiseman documentary. There are a couple hundred people crammed in here, and they’re all speaking in tongues. They are enraptured, in another world, gyrating and dancing in a frenzied symphony, heads rolling, eyes closed, calling and shrieking.

  I’m standing in the back of this barn-like place, with an altar way up at the front (partially obscured by all the bodies moving around, there’s people up there but I can’t make them out). The sound is so intense it feels like waves of energy coming at me, a tidal wave of prayer.

  I’m glad Jenkins hadn’t prepared me for this: being taken by surprise is part of the excitement of the experience.

  I take a moment to adjust to my initial jolt, start looking around. This is a country place; these are country people. White, Anglo-Saxon country people. Bereft of color, their skin almost transparent, veins popping in foreheads, lank mouse-colored hair plastered about faces from the sweat of prayer, washed-out pale blue eyes. Many, both men and women, are thin, not the thinness of fashion but of poor and inadequate diet, their bones jutting out at odd angles, big-knuckled hands, twisted fingers, receding chins, drooping noses. Those that aren’t thin are pasty-fat, the blubber of heart attacks and cancer. They all look old, in parts like these you’re old at forty.

  My age.

  There are few young people in attendance. Middle-aged or old. The kids have better, more modern things to do.

  “Do you believe in Jesus!” suddenly booms a voice.

  The voice comes from the altar, rising above all the others, a rich bass-baritone, loud and full and commanding.

  The praying dies down almost immediately as the congregation turns its collective attention to the front, where the altar is located.

  “Do you believe in Jesus!” the voice calls out again, his rich voice resonating throughout the old wooden building.

  “Amen!” replies the congregation.

  “Do you believe in Jesus!” he asks a third time. A purely rhetorical question, the essential call and response of the preacher.

  “Amen!” the answer back, “well!”, “yes!”, “Lord!”, similar answers, loud and throaty.

  I’m taken by all of it; the rhythm, the fervor, the ceremoniousness. It brings back memories of my forays into the Native American Church. They, too, have taken me down some pretty strange paths, but not like this. That is about spirit; this is gut-level worship, ecstasy and subservience in one.

  I move around to get a look at the man behind the voice, up at the altar, hidden from my sight until now.

  Again, I’m blown away.

  To begin with, Hardiman is black. Not coffee-with-cream African-American black, but jet-black, coal-black, blacker than a starless night. Absolute black. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an African this black, let alone an American. And he is American, his voice is southern American to the core; not sloppy or slurry, just deep and resonating.

  Moreover, he’s huge, immense. I can’t tell from back here exactly how tall he is, but he’s got to be at least six-nine or more, maybe seven feet, and he weighs at least three hundred pounds. His hair, also black, sticks straight up from his head a la Don King’s, except there’s a lot more of it.

  He’s dressed simply, white shirt and dark pants. He holds a Bible in his left hand, brandishing it aloft, the well-worn book almost disappearing in his large hand, a hand festooned with gemstone rings on three of the four fingers.

  “Amen,” he says in response to their ‘amens,’ “amen,” softer now, one more “amen.” He doesn’t have to shout; it’s quiet now.

  The congregation starts to sit down. I find a seat in the back. A few turn and look at me; it’s obvious I don’t belong. I smile at them; they regard me as a curiosity for a moment, then disregard me.

  I get a better look at the assemblage. The first thing that strikes me is the number of cripples that are here. Several people in wheelchairs have been placed in the aisles, while others, supported by crutches, are scattered about, positioned so they have easy access to the altar.

  I know what’s coming; this I’ve seen on television. I’ve never believed any of it. Now I’ll get a chance to see the real McCoy in action.

  Hardiman opens the Bible and looks out at the congregation. There is a shuffling of feet, a clearing of throats. These people, most of them, are regulars. They’re settling in for the good stuff. The lame shall walk again, eyesight shall be restored to the blind, various and sundry afflictions incurable by modern medicine will be cast out in the name of the Lord.

  But I’m wrong. I’m off by such staggering proportions that whatever cool I had left is gone, and all that remains is wonder and astonishment.

  Two boxes are carried up to the altar. Big, solid wooden boxes, the size of orange crates, with airholes randomly punched in them. I can feel the electricity in the congregation—something’s about to happen, and it’s not going to be preaching and testifying.

  I’m disconcerted by the boxes for a moment, trying to figure out what’s inside them, and then it hits me: one of the two box-handlers is as out-of-place here as I am. He’s young, certainly not yet thirty, he’s dressed in relatively hip clothing, his hair is cut modern. As he places his box upon the altar he looks up at Hardiman with a look of awe, of worship, of complete submission.

  It’s my man, Scott Ray.

  He melts into the choir that stands to one side, at the back of the large altar. I keep my eyes on him. He sure doesn’t look like a killer, he looks like a choirboy, only from a more contemporary congregation.

  I turn my attention back to Hardiman as he opens one of the boxes and plunges his hand in. There is a moment of hushed electricity as the congregation leans forward. Then his hand emerges, holding a rattlesnake.

  It’s a big one, thick around the middle as a baseball bat, with a six-inch-long set of rattles. Hardiman holds it up, not behind the head where it can’t strike at him, but in the middle of its body, the snake twisting and writhing, its triangular head with the poison knobs above the eyelids darting this way and that, the forked tongue sliding in and out of its mouth almost too fast to see.

  If this snake bites him in a vein on the face or neck, he’s gone in sixty seconds.

  People are opening their Bibles. I steal a look over the nearest shoulder, following a dirt-encrusted finger as it traces in the old King James Bible the Gospel of Mark, c
hapter 16, verses 17 and 18: “In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands upon the sick, and they shall recover.”

  Take up serpents. Talk about literal belief. I’m rooted, on my feet, watching Hardiman holding this snake a couple inches from his face, his eyes and the snake’s eyes boring in at each other.

  “Do you believe in Jesus!” he cries.

  “Amen!” they answer back in a roar.

  He flips open the top to the second box, reaches in with his other hand, comes out holding a water moccasin. A smaller viper, but just as deadly. Again, not behind the head, where he can stop it from striking, but in the middle of its scaly body.

  He holds the two snakes up in front of him, level with his massive head, thrusting them out at the congregation, the two vipers undulating in his hands, looking at him, at each other. Somewhere I remember reading that different species of poisonous snakes hate each other. If they get into a fight he’s right in the middle.

  The only thing that keeps me halfway okay in all this is that I know he’s done this before.

  Somewhere near the front a woman starts keening, a high, thin, banshee voice, and it hits me where I’ve seen these people before—these people are Richard Bartless’s mother, all of them, relatives if not in the blood and flesh, then in the spirit, which is even stronger. It’s her voice I’m hearing, a cry of anguish from the trial. I’m alone with all these kin of the mother of that dead man, all alone except for their minister and his acolyte, Scott Ray.

  The keening is at first a sound. An animal cry. Then it changes, going into what I heard when I first came inside, a praying in tongues.

  ‘They shall speak with new tongues.’

  Others join her, a few, women at first, then more, men and women, until everyone is speaking in tongues again, everyone except Hardiman, who is dancing around the altar like his shoes are on fire, dancing like a dervish, dancing up a storm, but he’s in control, he’s holding firmly to the snakes in his hands, whipping them like bullwhips. It’s the scariest and most electrifying thing I’ve ever seen.

  The only others who aren’t caught up in the rapture of tongues are Scott Ray and me. He’s silent, his eyes fastened, as are mine, on Hardiman.

  And then Scott Ray turns and looks right at me. It’s a long way between us, from the front of the church to the back, but his look is unmistakable. He frowns for a split second, then smiles broadly, as if my being here is confirmation for him of something that has to be.

  Then he turns away, his eyes back on his mentor.

  For a moment the spell is broken for me; I remember why I’m here. There’s a coldness to it, a sadness. This is all so extraordinary and compelling that the incursion of the secular seems petty, wrong.

  I turn back to the altar. Two women, younger and more attractive than most of the others, have joined Hardiman in his dance. The snakes in his hands are undulating as if to some unheard song, their tongues fast slithering in and out of their mouths, and the women have taken up their undulations, slipping their own tongues in and out, dancing not only with Hardiman now but with the snakes, dancing to their rhythm. One of them, on Hardiman’s right, sticks her head up to the rattler’s, right next to it, inches apart, and starts darting her tongue at the snake, even as he’s darting his tongue at her, and the snake rises in Hardiman’s hand to his full length, and even with all the din going from the speaking in tongues the sound of the rattles can be heard, and he strikes, and hits Hardiman dead-center in the chest, right at his heart.

  Somehow, I don’t know how (I can see from here that there’s nothing under Hardiman’s cotton shirt but flesh), the fangs don’t penetrate, but are blunted by Hardiman’s massive body, and the venom dribbles out from the fangs onto his shirt and down it to his belt.

  “Amen!” the congregation voices, coming out of their ecstasy.

  “Amen!” Hardiman answers them, slowing down his dance.

  “Amen!”

  He hands the now-harmless serpent to the woman who kissed it. She holds it tight with both hands, struggling with its weight, and puts it back in its box, shutting the lid tight on it.

  Then he turns to the water moccasin. The congregation becomes quiet again.

  “Hello, devil,” he says to it.

  “Satan!” cries the assemblage.

  He holds the viper up to his face, inches away.

  “Satan! Your brother tried to bite me! He tried to poison me! But I repelled him! God repelled him! And now he is without poison. And I mock him!”

  “Amen!”

  “And I mock you. Satan in snakeskin. Are you also foolish like him?” he cries. He’s smiling, like he and the snake have some inside joke going on just between the two of them.

  The snake is two inches away from Hardiman’s face, which is not as strong, as tough, as his chest. But the snake doesn’t know that. The snake knows only that it’s in the hand of someone, something, much more powerful than it.

  It doesn’t strike.

  Snakes’ brains aren’t very sophisticated, but I’d swear on a Bible that this snake chickened out.

  Hardiman stares it down, then he puts it away. It was cold when I came in here, but I’m sweating now, and it isn’t from the church’s old-fashioned coal-burning heating system.

  The choir breaks into song, an old hymn I vaguely remember. No matter what else happens tonight with Hardiman and Scott Ray, what I’ve just seen has been awesome.

  While the choir’s still singing, one of the snake-dancing women comes back to the altar with a large towel and a mason jar half-filled with a murky thick liquid, which has the look and consistency that I remember from my childhood as moonshine.

  Hardiman wipes his perspiring face with the towel. He picks up the jar.

  My curiosity gets the better of me. I lean forward to an old man sitting in the row in front of me.

  “What’s in the jar?” I ask.

  “Cyanide,” he answers, like he’s saying ‘lemonade.’

  “What’s it for?” I ask again.

  “To drink.” He turns around to look at me.

  To drink? What the fuck. Guy drinks poison and plays with poisonous snakes? I mean okay, he’s charismatic as hell, maybe the most charismatic man I’ve ever laid eyes on personally, but I’ve got four men on Death Row whose fate could be hanging on him and some street kid he’s recently converted. What if he actually drinks this shit and it kills him?

  “He drinks cyanide?” I parrot dumbly.

  “When God tells him,” comes the answer.

  When God tells him.

  Up at the altar, Hardiman grabs the jar of cyanide, holds it aloft.

  ‘And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.’

  I’ve seen people, holy men in India, walk across a bed of white-hot coals that should have burned their feet up to the ankles, and stroll away without even a hotfoot. And yes, in my forays into the Native American church, I’ve seen (actually not with my own eyes, but heard from extremely reliable sources) miracles as farfetched as drinking poison from a mason jar.

  Hardiman regards the poison in his hands. He brings the jar to his face, sticks his head in, takes a deep breath.

  “Lawdy!” he exclaims. “That cyanide do burn the sinuses.”

  His followers laugh.

  “Amen,” they cry. “Say it!”

  He takes a long, almost regretful look at it; then he places it on the side of the altar.

  “Later for that,” he says. “Maybe later.”

  He steps to the center of the altar, looks down at the congregation.

  “Do any of you know Jesus?” he asks softly.

  “Amen,” calls back his flock. “Yes, well, Lord.”

  “But do you know Jesus?” he asks again. “Does He live with you, in your heart?”

  “Yes!”

  “Amen!”

  “Do you know Jesus, in yo
ur heart?” he asks yet again.

  “YES!”

  “AMEN!”

  “You know Him!”

  “Yes!”

  “In your heart!”

  “Yes!”

  “You know Jesus!”

  “Yes!”

  “Completely!”

  “Yes!”

  “Without reservation!”

  “Yes!”

  “In your heart!”

  “Yes!”

  “Completely!”

  “Yes!”

  Near me, a woman faints. Her neighbors lay her on her chair, turn back to Hardiman without missing a beat.

  “What a friend I have in Jesus,” Hardiman starts to sing, a rich basso-profundo worthy of Paul Robeson. The congregation joins in, singing lustily.

  I don’t know many of the words, but I, too, join in. It feels like the right thing to do; not from obligation, but from belonging. I’m beginning to understand why a man who would kill another man (so Scott Ray claims), stab him forty-seven times and cut off his cock, would readily, willingly confess. The Reverend Hardiman is a powerful force.

  We sing several more hymns. One thing I’ve realized is that there are no other blacks in here besides Hardiman, and that this fact seems not to matter at all. He is their shepherd—that’s all that counts.

  The testifying begins. Those that have been saved, and those that haven’t but will be, here and now, come forward. They talk fervently of their conversion to Jesus, how Jesus took them out of the pit of darkness and loneliness and sin and put them on the path of righteousness. It’s moving stuff, but I’ve seen it before, it isn’t as novel and unique as dancing around with two poisonous vipers. I’m not going to be saved, not tonight anyway, despite what I’ve seen, so I’m antsy. I want to sit down with Scott Ray and find out if there’s anything to him beyond this.

  These services are obviously long and drawn-out. I look at my watch; it’s already ten-thirty and the end is nowhere in sight. As quietly and unobtrusively as I can, I leave my seat and go outside.