by Hank Early
Others hadn’t been so lucky. Daddy had always had a thing about letting go. Maybe it was why I still felt his hold on me even now. He must have never heard the song that said the best way to love was to let someone go. Daddy had always held on for all he was worth, and the worst part was how he’d done it with a clear conscience, because in the end, all he cared about was what happened in the next life. It was infuriating.
I stood to go back inside the church. Rufus and Goose could get soaked if they wanted, but I preferred to stay dry. I moved through the darkening gathering space and into the sanctuary, where I stumbled around until I found Rufus’s sole gas lantern and struck a match.
Just before I lit the wick, I heard the movement on the other side of the sanctuary. It was coming from the front, near the place where Daddy had installed the snake pit.
When I was twelve, Daddy had made Lester and me help dig up the floorboards and put in a wire cage large enough to hold two or three rattlers or a half dozen cottonmouths. It was right by his lectern, where Daddy could pick one up at any time during the service. And even when he let them alone, you could always hear them moving—slithering over one another—in the quiet moments.
And that was what it sounded like now. The raspy slickness of cottonmouths twining together, rubbing the lengths of their strange bodies one against the other. I stayed very still, waiting, sure it was just my imagination. In the three years I’d lived with Granny, I often saw and heard things that weren’t there. Granny called it the second sight and said it was both a blessing and a curse from the venom that had become lodged inside my veins. I didn’t see any blessing in it and was more than pleased when the strange sights and sounds had seemed to dissipate and eventually stop completely when I moved to North Carolina.
Could this be another one? After all these years?
I lit the fuse, and the lantern brightened the sanctuary, casting its light toward the front. It fell on the lectern first, and it looked the same as it had earlier—still covered with blankets and quilts. I moved the lantern to the right slowly—toward the slithering sound—and saw the door to the snake pit was open, balanced upright. I felt my stomach fill with a heavy fear. I stumbled forward, afraid of what I’d find in the pit but unable to keep myself from looking anyway.
As I approached, I held the lantern at arm’s length. I knelt, trying to catch a glimpse of what was inside.
Lightning flashed, and the stained glass window above me filled with light. The church blazed alive—on fire again. I dropped the lantern, and the light spilled over, finally illuminating the pit.
Inside, a mass of snakes tumbled over each other, writhing and hissing, their eyes set aglow in the lantern’s light, and they were just as vacant as they had been thirty years earlier.
When I heard my name, it sounded like a whisper at first. Or maybe the storm was pushing wind through the savaged roof, making a desolate music that spoke to me. Either way, I turned around.
There was someone standing in the rear of the church.
“Hey, boy,” the voice said.
I stepped back, edging into the front pew that Daddy had once kicked.
“Rufus?” I said, but it was just something to say, something to delay me facing the truth of who I knew it was. It was the only man I’d ever known who could defy death, who could haunt a man like an avenging angel and also dog his every step like a hound from the pit of hell.
“Daddy?”
“It ain’t too late,” he said.
“For what?”
“To find the Lord.”
“You’re dead,” I said.
He shook his head and stepped closer. I could see him clearly now in a flash of lightning. He looked much as I remembered him from my childhood—stoic, handsome, unflappable.
“Ascended,” he corrected.
“I don’t believe that.”
“That’s always been your problem, boy. You don’t believe nothing.”
“What do you want?” A part of me understood that this could not be real, that it had to be another vision, a hallucination born of the snake’s venom that had entered my flesh and was now pumped like blood through my veins. Another part of me understood that if he was really here, if he had ascended after his death, it meant everything he’d preached had been true, every proclamation, every backward prejudice, was not only true but sanctified.
I shook my head and stepped forward, determined to dispel the vision.
He laughed. “I want what I’ve always wanted, Earl. I want you to join the fold. It ain’t too late,” he said again. “Even the prodigal son returned eventually after seeing the world and learning there was nothing but emptiness.”
I stepped forward again but staggered a little as the weight of his words sunk in. Nothing but emptiness. I thought of Maggie. I thought of Lester. Hadn’t I screwed it all up? Maybe, just maybe, there was some comfort in the old ways?
That was when the lightning struck the church. I felt the air around me change, filling up with power and weight and a strange kind of heat the instant before the explosion.
When it came, I fell to the ground, heard Goose barking outside, Rufus’s voice shouting my name. None of it mattered, though. I turned over to see if Daddy was still there. I half-expected him to be standing over me, ready to put another boot in my mouth, but he wasn’t. He was nowhere.
That wasn’t quite true. In fact, it was the opposite. I saw that now. Daddy was everywhere. It was almost as if, in death, he’d achieved the ultimate power; he’d become a god.
21
Rufus helped me to my feet.
“You okay?” he said. “Me and Goose heard it. Sounded like the roof came off this place. Anything on fire?”
I looked around. The snake pit was still open. Goose was heading that way, his body tense, his nose flexing as he inhaled some scent. Daddy was gone, but what about the snakes?
“Goose!” I said sharply. The dog stopped and fixed me with a look that seemed to suggest he knew his name. “Here,” I said and patted the floor. He whined, looking back at the snake pit, and trotted on over.
“What the hell is happening?” Rufus said.
“I’m not sure.” I pulled myself to my feet and picked up the lantern. The rain was pounding the roof now, and throughout the sanctuary, puddles were forming from all the leaks. I stepped over one and shone the light into the pit.
I recoiled at what I saw.
“What?” Rufus asked, somehow sensing the tension.
I looked again, this time holding my gaze on the pit long enough to really see. It was a toy. Not real.
Somehow I’d seen a mass of real snakes, writhing in the pit. In reality, there was only one, and it wasn’t even alive.
Still, it proved something.
“Somebody’s been in the church,” I said.
“Who you reckon done it?” Rufus said.
My first thought was Daddy, but I left his name unspoken. Instead, I shrugged. Then, realizing Rufus couldn’t hear a shrug, I added, “No idea.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them boys next door,” Rufus said. “It wouldn’t be the first time I caught them bastards in here.”
I rubbed my beard, studying the toy snake in the open pit, thinking hard about why someone would want to sneak around this place.
“What’s the story with that Thrash kid?” I said.
“Ronnie? He’s just a little piece of shit that has found some smaller pieces of shit to follow him down the damned toilet. Trouble. Drugs. Booze. Guns. You know the type.”
“Yeah,” I said. What I didn’t say was that the drugs, booze, and guns types scared me a hell of a lot less than the church types these days. “He mentioned that he was a big fan of mine. Not too much of a stretch to say he knows all about my history with the cottonmouth, right?”
“No doubt.”
“I’m going to pay your neighbors a visit,” I said. “See if I can’t figure out who’s responsible.” I walked around the pit to the open door and dropped it
shut. I bent over and clicked the latch in place.
“Want me to come along?” Rufus said.
“Nah. Stay with Goose. I think I managed to spook him.”
“Either that or the storm,” Rufus said.
I nodded. “Smart dog.”
“Yes, sir,” Rufus said, grinning. “I believe he is.”
* * *
I took a slug of Rufus’s whiskey before heading over and made sure my 9mm was loaded and stuck it in the back of my blue jeans for easy access. I pulled on one of Rufus’s old jackets and set off into the early evening. My watch had 8:30, and in midsummer, Georgia was ordinarily still somewhat light out. But a heavy dusk had fallen because of the storm, and I pulled out the penlight I’d kept on my keychain for years.
Rufus followed me to the door and asked me if I was sure about this. I told him I was. I didn’t tell him I had a plan that made me feel fairly confident about what would happen.
It would require some patience, but I’d sat for hours in my truck watching houses and bars and every other manner of building in North Carolina. I could do the same here.
I crossed the creek and edged around to the rear of the old shack. The two pickups were parked out front, and I could hear voices inside along with some slow country music.
I found a tree not too far from the creek that allowed me a good view of the outhouse and lay down on my stomach, trying to make myself invisible. I cut the penlight off and let my eyes adjust.
While I waited, my mind jumped all over the place—from Granny to Mary to Rufus—before settling, as it always did, on my father.
I tried to recall the news article Lester had sent me a few months back. It had come in an envelope without a return address, and the article—a poorly written one from the Coulee County Reporter—had detailed the circumstances surrounding the discovery of my father’s body near the top of Pointer Mountain. What had he been doing back here? The church was gone now; he’d moved over to Ring like so many others. Why would he have come back? What had he been doing when he had the heart attack? The article claimed his body had lain in the sun—open to the elements, including the crows that destroyed his face—for nearly nine days.
I shook my head, remembering Lester’s note, so formal, so distant.
Read article. Funeral Wednesday.
—Lester
That was it. Thirty years without speaking, and that was all my older brother could muster upon our father’s death.
Not that I didn’t understand. I thought of Maggie and remembered the way she’d looked that first night, wearing that see-through dress, when I saw her near Aida’s grave . . .
It hit me then. Daddy had been visiting Aida’s grave. That had to be it. There was a kind of poetic justice for him to die there, I thought. It was the only time he’d ever seemed mortal to me.
The back door to the shack swung open. Music drifted out into the night, followed by a loud belch. A big man stepped out and hurried across the yard, unbuckling his belt as he went. He disappeared inside the outhouse, and I let out my breath. It wasn’t Ronnie.
More waiting. I shifted my position a little so I could keep an eye on both the outhouse and the sky, which was clearing. I saw starlight through the trees, smelled the wet soil clinging to my clothes, and I went back to that night again.
22
There was something in the back of my mind when I kissed Maggie. I felt like she was something I was owed. I felt like it was a moment that would make up for all the others.
And I felt like it was a middle finger to the church, to my father, to these mountains. So I ignored the part of me that said it was wrong, that I should resist. I did more than ignore it. I shut it off and threw myself into the moment the way an alcoholic gives himself to an evening of drunkenness after that first taste.
We were on the ground in seconds, and she was murmuring something in my ear about wanting me since she’d heard about the way I stood up to my father.
“My daddy thought he was warning me away from you,” she said. “But he was really just warming me up.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t if I’d wanted to. Her mouth opened over mine again, and her tongue slipped between my lips, grazing my teeth, finding my tongue, and there was so much sweetness there, I felt dizzy with it.
She seemed to almost shimmy out of her dress in one smooth motion. I never did see another woman who could get out of her clothes like that.
Mine came off too. Soon, the soil of the mountain and our naked flesh became one. We built momentum, and I held on with everything I had, drawing the moment of escape out as long as possible.
And that was the only way to describe it. For a brief moment, we both escaped the soul-crushing, insular environment my father had worked so hard to instill in us.
But when it ended, I was still on the mountain, still my father’s son, and my brother’s girlfriend was on top of me. She stood up and slipped back into her dress. I couldn’t meet her eyes, so I looked at the cemetery instead. Aida. Poor, poor Aida.
“What about Lester?” I said.
“What about him?” she said. “He doesn’t own me. Besides, he never has to know. We can just meet here. Every night.”
“I . . .” I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to tell her that this was a one-time mistake, but I couldn’t. She was too beautiful. The first time had been too fast. One more, I told myself, because the damage was already done, right? What difference would it make to Lester if we did it once or twice? It was the same logic that would dog me with alcohol in the years to come. One drink, just a taste. Hell, I’ve already had the one, why not two, and having two, why not drink the house dry? I could always go buy more the next day.
“It’s beautiful here, don’t you think?”
I nodded.
“Then it’s decided. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
She started to leave but stopped before disappearing into the trees. “I ain’t heartless,” she said.
I nodded at her.
“I just need things. Lester didn’t understand that.”
Then she really did disappear into the trees. I was left alone, contemplating how I’d navigate the world without Daddy’s strict rules to guide me. Had I already crashed and burned?
I didn’t know. I just kept thinking about the moment before the release. I’d been somewhere else, somewhere far, far away from the Holy Flame.
I’d escaped, and maybe Maggie had too, if only for an instant.
* * *
We carried on long enough for my guilt to slide away. It was replaced by a warm pleasure as I got to know Maggie better and understand that, like me, she’d been scarred and damaged by her father too. Almost everything she did was in reaction to that.
“He tried to break me,” she said once after we finished a frantic session. There was thunder in the air, and lightning blinked far away to the west, out over parts of the state where neither of us had ever been. “He couldn’t do it,” she said.
I kissed her, but she pushed me away. “I worry that Lester will find out,” she said.
“Why?”
“He looks at me funny sometimes. It’s like he knows something is going on.”
“He couldn’t know,” I said. “We never even act like we know each other except when we’re here.”
“What about after we got off the bus the other day? You shouldn’t have done that.”
“What? You mean in the bushes? You liked that.”
She smiled. “Of course I liked it, but it was too risky. I don’t want him to be hurt.”
It was what she always said, but I wasn’t sure if I believed it. In reality, she often encouraged illicit behavior between the two of us when we were in public. Once, she’d sat next to me on the bus—something we’d said was off limits—and given me a hand job while Lester sat oblivious near the front.
When I’d groaned out loud at the end, she’d smiled and quickly slid across the aisle to the other seat, leaving me with the happy mess to clean up b
y myself.
But the most troubling aspect of our relationship came when I brought up the prospect of her getting pregnant. Like a lot of kids in the mountains—especially those raised in strict religious environments—I didn’t really have what you’d call a good sex education. Hell, I didn’t have any education at all, unless you counted the magazines Lester and I had found in the woods when we were kids. From those we figured out just enough to be dangerous. By the time I was with Maggie, I knew where babies came from, and I thought we were engaging in risky behavior, but I also deferred to Maggie on this topic. After all, she was the girl. She knew about those things.
Essentially, we were playing Russian roulette with a nearly loaded gun. It was only a matter of time.
When I looked back on it later, I realized it was what she wanted all along. Maybe there was a part of me that did too.
23
I lay near the base of the tree listening to the creek for nearly another hour before Ronnie came out. He lit a cigarette and looked at his watch.
He stood for a moment before unzipping his pants and pissing on the ground. That was no good. I’d hoped to catch him in the outhouse, where we’d be out of earshot from the other men inside the shack.
I was still deciding how to proceed when I saw the headlights coming through the trees. I stayed low and watched as Ronnie walked around the side of the house to meet the vehicle.
The headlights went dark, and the driver got out and walked over to greet Ronnie. I couldn’t see the driver or hear what was being said, so I made a dash for the outhouse and knelt at the corner, trying not to breathe too hard.
I still couldn’t hear, but I was close enough to see if I had some light. I thought about reaching for my penlight, but it would give me away. Instead, I waited, straining to hear the conversation, keeping my eyes on the man Ronnie was speaking with.