Salvation on Sand Mountain

by Dennis Covington

  Then another voice rose up to meet his, entered into fellowship with it, and fell away, each voice on a separate strand of meaning but weaving with the others into a kind of song, rising and falling, gathering and dispersing, and high above it all like a descant ran the voice of Glenn Summerford’s mother, Aunt Annie Mance. She was praying for her son, in prison for ninety-nine years for a crime she said he couldn’t have committed, and her voice joined in a duet with another woman’s plea for her own lost children, living in the city, in sin, and just beneath the women were Uncle Ully’s raspy, grasshopper voice and Sister Bobbie Sue’s bluesy one. And underneath all the human voices was the incessant rattle of the serpent in the wooden box.

  No one called for the prayer to end. The voices simply fell into a shared rhythm that gradually tapered off, subsiding in volume and in pitch. The sounds of the rattlesnake remained constant while the voices disassembled themselves, but finally even the snake went silent, and the prayer concluded with amens that fell on top of one another like the half-sighed endings of a round.

  I stepped outside after my first service at The Church of Jesus with Signs Following and wondered where the time had gone. It was nearly ten o‘clock. That crescent of moon had disappeared behind Sand Mountain. The stars, bright as ice, had popped out.

  Some of the men were gathered in the parking lot. They were talking about how it used to be before Glenn’s arrest, when the church was filled with families from all over Jackson County. “They’ll be back,” said Cecil, the guitar player, and he patted me on the arm. “You come back, too.”

  I grew up in a Methodist church, but ours must have been an odd kind of Methodism. We were a small congregation in East Lake, an urban residential neighborhood of Birmingham, and occasionally we’d get a preacher from what we thought of as the sticks, from a place like East Gadsden, a small mill town at the foot of the Appalachians, or Arab, pronounced A-rab, on the top of Brindley Mountain.

  These preachers sometimes seemed a little out of place in our quiet, sober neighborhood, where the families of grocers and plumbers and office workers tried to secure a hold on middle-class respectability. The preachers would attempt to liven up the services by shouting till they were hoarse. Sometimes they resorted to bolder tactics. In the middle of a sermon, for instance, Brother Jack Dillard, my favorite, would suddenly be so overcome by the Spirit, he would run down to the piano and start banging away on it. He could not, in fact, play the piano, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  Brother Dillard believed in obeying the Spirit, and he encouraged those grocers and tradesmen to do the same, although I don’t recall ever seeing any of them follow his example. Of course, all of us teenagers got saved in that church during Brother Dillard’s tenure, some of us multiple times. The record was held by a girl named Frances Fuller, who never passed up an opportunity to rush to the altar. She occasionally had a seizure halfway there, and someone would have to run to the kitchen to find a spoon to put in her mouth. The choir would continue to sing “All to Jesus I Surrender,” and I remember my father’s grip would tighten on the back of the pew in front of him until they got Frances up on her feet and back in her seat again.

  What we really worried about, though, was Brother Dillard’s heart. Years later, it would kill him. We worried because he always worked himself into such a sweat when he preached that he would have to take out his handkerchief and mop his forehead, cheeks, and neck. This was such a familiar habit that it didn’t distract us one bit from his sermon, not even the Sunday when, instead of pulling his handkerchief out, he retrieved his pocket comb by mistake and began combing his hair while he shouted, “When we were yet sinners, He died for us!”

  Those days were filled with desperate innocence and with a spiritual light that I would later miss. We were a naive little church, always prey to a good sob story — the missionary we sponsored in what was then Southern Rhodesia, for instance. Years later we discovered he actually owned a fairly sizable rubber plantation, on which local villagers worked for next to nothing. The young men lived in barracks on the plantation, and the owner would have informal Bible study with them sometimes at night. For this, he was called a missionary, and we would send him a good portion of our foreign missions budget every month.

  And then there was Dr. Doctorin. Dr. Doctorin came to us in 1958, at a time when the newspapers were filled with stories about Lebanon’s civil war, and with photographs of U.S. Marines wading ashore in Beirut. There was a lot of concern both for our soldiers and for the poor Lebanese. We considered ourselves fortunate when Dr. Doctorin showed up at our church one Sunday night to conduct an impromptu revival. The timing could not have been better. Dr. Doctorin said that he had just come from Beirut. We took up a huge love offering for him. I remember that he wept when we brought him the overflowing collection plates.

  It was the last time we ever saw Dr. Doctorin, and it was not until many years later that I began to wonder if he really had been a doctor, and if his name could really have been Dr. Doctorin, and if he were really from Beirut.

  We weren’t always right in our assessment of people and their intentions, but we had a simple, childlike faith, something Jesus said he approved of. And if my experience in that church did nothing else for me, it accustomed me to strange outpourings of the Spirit and gave me a tender regard for con artists and voices in the wilderness, no matter how odd or suspicious their message might be. I believe it also put me in touch with a rough-cut and reckless side of myself that I otherwise might never have recognized, locked way back somewhere in cell memory, a cultural legacy I would have otherwise known nothing about. You see, growing up in East Lake, where people were trying so hard to escape their humble pasts, I had come of age not knowing much about my family history. As far as we were concerned, the Covingtons went back only two generations, to our grandparents. My grandfather on my mother’s side had been a railroad detective and had died of syphilis. My father’s father had also ridden the trains, as a postal clerk. Later, I would discover that Covingtons had not always lived in Birmingham, but that at some point we, too, had come down from the mountains, and that those wild-eyed, perspiring preachers of my childhood were kin to me in a way I could never have expected or fully appreciated. In retrospect, I believe that my religious education had pointed me all along toward some ultimate rendezvous with people who took up serpents.

  Even without the snakes, my first trip to a snake-handling church had been exhilarating and unsettling. I drove back to Birmingham that night in a heightened and confused state, as though the pupils of my spiritual eyes had been dilated. The sensation was uncomfortable but not entirely unpleasant. Whatever this was about, I wanted to experience more. And of course I had to see what they did with the snakes.

  It was the very next night, on my second trip to The Church of Jesus with Signs Following, that the snakes came out. Brother Carl Porter had driven from his home church in Kingston, Georgia, to deliver the message. A retired truck driver whose CB handle had been “Sneaky Snake,” Brother Carl looked more like a barber, or someone’s favorite uncle. He was an unassuming man in his late forties, with a nose that was a bit flattened on the end. His eyes were close together, and his hair was thin. Nothing in his demeanor hinted at his peculiar power behind the pulpit. Seeing him on the street, you would never have suspected that the Spirit of God regularly moved upon him, or that he handled rattlesnakes.

  But to the congregation of The Church of Jesus with Signs Following, Brother Carl was a special man indeed. Ever since Glenn Summerford’s arrest, he had been driving over when he could to fill in for Glenn. It was clearly an uncomfortable position for him to be in, now that Glenn had been convicted, but Brother Carl must have seen his duties as a kind of mission.

  On this night, Brother Carl was accompanied by his wife, Carolyn, and some other members of their church in Kingston, including Aunt Daisy Parker, a severe-looking old woman with an unpredictable temperament. The singing and praying had gone on for about an hour when Aunt Da
isy suddenly leapt to her feet and began to prophesy.

  “There’s gonna come a day,” she said, “when the bellies of the earth will open up, and some’ll be set free and some’ll be devoured!”

  Then she started marching. Daisy’s white hair was tied in a bun at the back of her head. She was skinny and hunched a bit at the shoulders, and she swung her arms in the air as she marched. “And oh Lord, on that day, there’s gonna be some that’ll be taken out of that prison and put back in the heart of God where they belong!”

  The rest of the congregation amened. “Oh, the earth is gonna shake!” she said. “It’ll tear the chains from the wall that are holding him. And the sky will turn as red as blood. They’ll be smoke and confusion everywheres when God sends his dark messenger to roll over the rooftops and loose the prisoner from his sleep!”

  I was sitting in the middle of the congregation and watching Aunt Daisy with increasing alarm. I hoped she wouldn’t get the urge to march in my direction. In any other context, I would have pegged her as an obvious lunatic. But then I realized that the rest of the congregation seemed not only to indulge her but to understand her. She was prophesying Glenn Summerford’s miraculous escape from prison, and at about that time, the revelation seemed to sweep over the congregation all at once. Glenn’s mother burst into tears.

  “And there’s nothing the world can do to prevent it!” Daisy said. “The world will have no power against it!” She was standing at the front of the church now, and she pointed her finger into the center of the congregation at some unnamed and unseen adversary. “They’ll have no power against it!”

  With that, she swooned and collapsed onto the front pew. Amen! That’s when Brother Carl stood up to preach. He had one hand in his pocket, and he smiled down at Aunt Daisy as she roused herself to a sitting position on the pew. I would later find out that Brother Carl was like a son to her, and that he took her prophecies dead seriously. At the time, though, I thought he was trying to distance himself from her outburst.

  “It’s hot in here, ain’t it?” he said. Everybody laughed. They knew he wasn’t talking about the temperature, but I thought that he was. I also thought that Carl Porter was a man for whom preaching could not have been a natural or comfortable talent. He had made his way to the pulpit tentatively, like a badger who has just ventured out of his burrow and isn’t entirely easy with what he sees. He wore a rumpled white dress shirt, open at the collar, and polyester slacks. His glasses had slipped to the end of his nose. In the future I’d see a more flamboyant side, but on this night, he was dressed unobtrusively and started out his sermon as though the Lord didn’t have anything particular for him to say. Then he opened up his Bible.

  “Let’s look over here in the second chapter of Acts,” he said. “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of therm. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

  He closed his Bible, looked at it a second, picked it up, looked at it some more, and said, “The Holy Ghost wouldn’t come until they was all of one accord.” Then he turned to us. “That’s what the Word says, and honey, the Word says what it means and it means what it says.”

  There was a chorus of amens from the congregation, and Cecil, the guitar player, ran his finger up the frets with a scree.

  “They was gathered together of one accord,” Brother Carl continued, “and you know, this book wasn’t just written for the apostles. This wasn’t just something that happened to the apostles. When the Holy Ghost came down with tongues of fire and they started speaking in the unknown tongue, God didn’t intend for just the apostles to do that.”

  And here he grimaced, as though he had stepped on something sharp. He ducked to one side of the pulpit and came up bobbing. “Jesus sent the Holy Ghost for us,” he said and slapped the pulpit with the flat of his hand. “You know, some people are still sitting around waiting for the Holy Ghost to come. It already came, at Pentecost! And it’s been coming ever since! I can feel it all over me right now,” he said. “Whoo!” And he did a little hopping dance on one foot while Cecil plucked the guitar strings in accompaniment. “Whoo! It just goes from my feet all the way to my head. I just love it when it gets in my hair,” he said.

  He came out fully from behind the pulpit, the Bible outstretched in one hand. “Honey, that Holy Ghost is here right now for me and you. But let me tell you, we better be of one accord if we want the Holy Ghost to move on us, because the Holy Ghost ain’t gonna move on a bunch of people that aren’t of one accord.” Amen. Thank God. “This God we worship, he’s a living God.” Amen. “God ain’t no whitebearded old man up in the sky somewhere. He’s a spirit.” Amen. Thank God. “He’s a spirit. He ain’t got no body.” “The only body he’s got is us.” Amen. Thank God. “And when we’re horned again, we’re borned into the body of God!”

  Most of the congregation were standing by now, clapping and stomping their feet. Brother Carl took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Then he took off his glasses and began cleaning them with it. “Whew!” he said when the ruckus had died down. “I’m glad I’m His, aren’t you?” Amen. Thank God. “And I’m glad He’s mine, aren’t you? I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t have no other God. No, sir. I want the real thing. And let me tell you, this thing is real.” He folded up his glasses and put them back in his breast pocket. “I don’t guess you heard me. I said, this thing is real!”

  Those that weren’t already standing sprang to their feet, hands stretched up, amening and praising God.

  Brother Carl opened his Bible again, but he didn’t need to refer to it this time. “It was after they crucified Him,” he said, “and the women came to the grave. They didn’t find Him there, did they? He was plumb gone out of there. But a man dressed in white said He’d risen and would appear to them later, and He did. And you know what He said, don’t you?”

  Amen. They all knew what He had said.

  “He said, And these signs shall follow them that believe; 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 on the sick, and they shall recover!”

  A sawmill worker named Willie Southard was walking up and down the aisle, clapping his hands like a metronome and praising the name of Jesus.

  “After that,” Brother Carl said, “Jesus went up to heaven, where he sat on the right hand of God. And you know what it says about them believers, don’t you? It says, They went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen!”

  He laid his Bible on the pulpit in triumph. He took a hard look at the wooden serpent box that rested on the bench that served as an altar. It was a flat, finely joined box stained the color of coffee. The top was hinged, half screen and half wood, and the corners were reinforced with decorative studs. Brother Carl leaned over and tapped at the screen. The dry rattling that arose from the box seemed to satisfy him. I figured that’s when he would take up a serpent, but he didn’t. He hopped around a little more while Cecil improvised on guitar. Then Brother Carl did a stutter step and seemed to stumble, catching himself at the last minute. He shuddered. He shook. He praised and shouted and prayed. Cecil finally launched into a full-blown song that the congregation started singing, and then another.

  We were singing “Prayer Bells from Heaven” when Brother Carl finally opened the hinged door of the wooden box and lifted out a canebrake rattlesnake. It was fat and desultory, a yellowish gray. After holding it up to the light, he passed it to Willie Southard and took out a copperhead that had almost finished shedding its skin.

  The copperhead was bronze and gold in the overhead light. Broth
er Carl held it up, regarding it with something like suspicion and regret. The snake tested the air with its tongue. Brother Carl put his thumb in front of the snake’s head, letting the snake touch it with its tongue. Then he put his face up to the snake’s face. They seemed to watch each other for a moment, until the snake drew back and began searching the air again with its tongue. Brother Carl let the snake fall to his side and then lifted it up again. This time he held the snake high above his head, part draped over his forearm, the rest stretched across the tips of his fingers. It was as though he were holding aloft a fine gold chain, some elegant piece of filigree. When the snake slowly moved in and out of Brother Carl’s fingers, bits of shed skin fell to the floor. The snake appeared to be in the process of reinventing itself, forging a new self out of the old.

  After a few minutes, Brother Carl put the snakes back into the box. The service went on for another half hour. He and Uncle Ully anointed Glenn Summerford’s mother with oil, and she testified that it felt like electricity running up and down her arms. Sister Bobbie Sue led us in another round of songs. Aunt Daisy spoke in tongues. But it was the image of that newly shed copperhead that I couldn’t shake as I stepped into the dark night outside the church. Why had I been drawn to it? What did it mean? The air was frigid. It had been a late, cold spring, and by morning the branches of the flowering peach would be encased in ice.

  I heard Brother Carl behind me before I turned and saw him silhouetted in the yellow light from the open door of the church. He stepped out into the parking lot. “I hear you’re a writer,” he said and shook my hand.

  I nodded and apologized for taking notes during the service.

  “What are you writing about?” he asked.

  I told him I’d covered Glenn Summerford’s trial and that I was writing a book about snake handling.