by Hank Early
It came from somewhere deep inside me, from a deep well I didn’t even know I had. None of it was planned. It was completely spontaneous. If I’d tried to plan it, I wouldn’t have said it. The things I said to my father were unthinkable, unforgivable. Yet I said them.
“Turn around,” I said.
He didn’t move, probably thinking he was still in control of the situation. A man can spend his whole life in control of every situation and fool himself into thinking that’s just the natural order of things, but sometimes the order gets upset. Sometimes a man has to learn the world is not what he thinks it is.
“I saw you,” I said. “Crying for Aida. Turn around.”
He stiffened at this but did not turn around.
“Why didn’t God heal her? Why didn’t he save her?”
“It’s time for you to go.” A few of the congregation turned back to look at me. Daddy pointed at them, and they looked away. “Go now. The demon in you is worse than I thought.”
“There’s no demon inside me,” I said. “It’s just me. It’s Earl. I’m a person. I screw up, but so does everybody else. Why did God let that happen to Aida?”
More people turned around. Daddy didn’t stop them, but he continued to face the creek as he spoke to me. “God willed it. It was for the best. There’s a lesson there for those who will see it.”
“You’re lying. You didn’t believe that. Not then. Not when I saw you burying her. You were broken. God didn’t speak to you.”
Daddy swung around, and I saw his face was twisted with a cold wrath. “You lie.”
“No,” I said, pleased I’d won my first battle with Daddy—he’d turned around. “You lie to all these people.”
Everyone was looking at me now. I had their attention. Whatever I said now mattered. “My father is a con man,” I said. “His religion is a sham. He loved his daughter more than anything else in the world. God didn’t take her from him. She just died. And he was just a man, unprepared to deal with the grief. He doesn’t talk to God. If there’s a God at all, he wouldn’t waste his words on a man like my father.”
There was a cold silence. It seemed to echo across the mountainside. No one spoke. Daddy’s face was turned down. I walked past him and through the line of congregants, who all stepped away from me as I approached, as if they might risk their own damnation by getting too close to mine.
* * *
That was how I came to spend the next three years with Granny. She accepted me without any questions. She fed me, she clothed me, she loved me.
And it was the memory of Granny that comforted me as I lay in the snake pit. The thought of her gave me the strength to know I was ready to die.
Why shouldn’t I be? I’d seen what this world had to offer—its cruelty, its twisted power plays, its brutal dismissal of human life. But I’d also seen the way a person can touch another person, can reach past the baser instincts of our kind and, through selfless acts of love, show another a small, refracted glimpse of the divine.
47
I must have died a thousand deaths inside that pit. The first one happened when the penlight went out. Dozens more occurred as I lay on the cold ground, my head and arms pulled tight under my shirt. I lay very still as first one snake and later two more slinked into my personal space. One of them brushed past my pants and curled itself over my boot. Even when the next two moved across my hips and traced a path up my back, I didn’t move.
And soon, without light, without movement, with only the subtle creeping sensation of serpents roaming over me, I felt as if I had died.
I felt as if the demon had won.
That was when I did something I hadn’t done in more than thirty years.
I prayed.
It wasn’t a prayer to my father’s God. It was a prayer to Granny’s. To the God of goodness, the God of second chances, and the God who might not care. I understood that even as I prayed. But it still felt good. Somehow, it still gave me a little moment of peace.
I lost track of how many snakes moved over me. The only thing worth keeping track of was how many had bitten me. The answer was still one. Thirty-three years before. Nothing since.
My mind turned to the mysteries at hand, reeling through the myriad of clues and layers of deceit I’d uncovered so far.
McCauley was dead. Could there be any doubt after what I had seen in this pit? But what about the map he had made? What had it said?
Something about the well and Daddy trying to reach me. He mentioned Old Woman Laney too.
What could she possibly have to do with all this?
I thought hard, trying to connect her with all of this. Rufus said she’d started coming after I left. He also said she’d been the first person to start taping the sermons.
That was when I remembered something else, another clue McCauley had left, maybe without even meaning to: Mary had said there was a tattoo on his hand. A date. January 28. I felt sure if I opened up a calendar, I’d see that it was a Sunday.
Miss Laney had all the sermons. There must have been something in the one from January 28 my father wanted me to hear. But why hadn’t McCauley just told me that in the letter then?
I might never know, but I believed I had a good guess. McCauley was in over his head. It was clear from both of his letters and the scribbling at the fishing shack that he was confused by the whole thing. Hell, why shouldn’t he be? I felt the same way.
If it wasn’t so sad, it would have been funny. I’d finally realized he wanted me to hear that sermon, and there was nothing I could do about it now. I’d never get out of this hole.
Yet my mind continued to work, even while the rest of me shut down. I was hungry and thirsty, but I hardly noticed anymore. Instead, I moved inside my own mind, leaving everything else behind.
I thought of Maggie again. Where had they taken her? Some place that made her suicidal, that changed her irrevocably. Just like Allison. And now Baylee. Granny had said Allison spoke of the well and the lightning on top of the mountain. Something else hit me then: the marks on Baylee and Allison. I remembered reading an online article once about something commonly called “lightning treeing.” These were symmetrical marks left on the skin after a lightning strike. I’d long since forgotten the science of it, but I felt sure it was what I’d seen on Baylee now. I’d be willing to bet Allison had had the same marks.
So someone was taking them up to the top of a mountain, the mountain with the well, and . . . what? Shocking them? Calling lighting out of the sky to strike them? It sounded insane.
But it also sounded familiar. Where had I heard such a thing before? It wasn’t lightning exactly . . . no . . . it was fire.
The newspaper article written by one of the members of the Holy Flame. Thrash was quoted in it saying something about “fire from heaven.”
Lightning. According to the article, my father had called upon God to save him from the drug dealers at the well, and God had sent lightning.
It was too much to believe. My father was a fraud, so complete he’d even swindled himself. I would not allow myself to believe anything else.
But that wasn’t really consistent, was it? After all, I’d seen firsthand how my own dreams had come true, how a “new” side of me had been unleashed after the snakebite.
What if it were all true? What if my father could call the lightning, and what if he could defeat the grave?
Before I could give that chilling thought any more consideration, I heard what sounded like a dog barking far away.
I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding. A snake slithered over my neck and back onto the ground. I waited for the sound to come again.
When I heard the next bark, it was closer than before. I let myself hope. Just a little. Could it be . . . ?
The next bark answered the question. It was Goose. Goddamnit, it was Goose.
A few minutes later, I heard a voice. “I can’t see, dog. Just hold your horses, okay?”
“Rufus?” I said, but it was barely
a whisper. I’d have to do a lot better than that.
I rolled over, still keeping as much of me as I could covered in the fabric of my shirt. Another snake dropped away from my legs. A third disentangled itself from my boot.
I stood up and cupped both hands over my mouth.
I shouted Rufus’s name as loud as I could.
Goose barked a reply, and Rufus said, “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”
48
It wasn’t easy, but eventually Rufus helped me get out of the pit. After he got the door open and my eyes adjusted to the harsh morning light, I was able to see the snakes. They seemed to be blinded by the sudden light, and I encouraged Rufus to move quickly.
“I need something to stand on,” I said. “Or a rope.”
“Got an idea,” he said.
He stepped away from the square opening above me. Goose leaned over and barked at me. I laughed. “I knew I saved you for a reason.”
He barked again, as if to say we were even.
A few seconds later, I saw something drop through the opening. It was a piecemeal rope consisting of Rufus’s shirt, blue jeans, socks, and his belt.
I had no idea if it would hold me or if Rufus would even be strong enough to haul me up, but I grabbed the end of it anyway, determined not to let go.
“Give me a sec,” Rufus said. “Let me get a good grip.”
I waited until he called out that it was time.
Fist over fist, I strained to pull myself up. I’d gone no farther than a foot or two off the ground when I began to hear the fabric ripping.
“Come on,” Rufus said. “You better hurry.”
I reached out as far as I could with my right hand, grabbing the blue jeans. The T-shirt ripped away, but I held onto the jeans with one hand, and somehow Rufus held on too.
Goose barked at us both, and with his encouragement, I worked my way back up to the surface.
Alive.
Demons and all.
* * *
I lay there for a long time, trying to breathe, trying to answer Rufus’s questions. When I finally caught both my breath and Rufus up on what had happened to me, he patted around for me on the ground.
“Here,” I said and reached for his hand. He helped me to my feet.
“How’d you find me?”
He laughed. “That damned dog found you. Soon as they let me go from the jail—you can thank your girl Mary for that one—he found me and wouldn’t let me rest until I took him on a walk. He kept sniffing the whole way. I had to stop and rest six times before he got to you.”
I looked around. “Where are we, exactly?”
“About a half mile from home, but to get here, you got to traipse through all kinds of weeds and rocky terrain. It’s pretty well hidden.”
“Can you get us back?” I said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I don’t have any idea where we are.”
He shrugged and picked up Goose’s leash. He held his other finger up to the wind and then pointed to his right. “That way.”
I followed him.
* * *
“What’re you going to do?” he said when we reached Ghost Creek. “I ain’t sure coming back to the church is the wisest plan.”
“Right.” I looked around, trying to think now that I had my bearings. I remembered the connections I’d made while in the pit. “I need to pay a visit to Miss Laney. Remember her?”
“Lady that tapes the sermons? Of course I do.”
“Think she’ll see me?”
He thought it over. “Not sure, but it’s worth a shot. You’re going to need some food and water.”
“Yeah.”
“And you ain’t got no truck anymore. They confiscated it.”
I sighed, trying to think.
“You could call that deputy gal.”
“No. I want to keep her out of this. It’s not safe for her.”
“You mean because of the fellow you found in the pit?”
“Yeah. He must have crossed the line. These people don’t play.”
“They never have,” Rufus said. “So you got any bright ideas?”
I thought about Ronnie. He might be willing to give us a ride again, but there would be a price to pay if he did. He wasn’t the kind of person to do things out of kindness.
“I guess we’ll have to walk,” I said.
“Naw, I know somebody. Let’s just see if that phone still works.”
* * *
I found the burner phone Mary had given Rufus sitting on Daddy’s old lectern. I turned it on and saw it only had 5 percent left. I handed it to Rufus. “Do your thing.”
He made a call to a girl he said he knew. When he finished, he handed the phone back. “She’ll be here in a half hour.”
I looked at the phone and saw there was now just 1 percent left.
“Didn’t she give you a charger?”
He shrugged. “No. She told me she’d bring it next time.”
I dialed Mary’s number quickly. It went to voice mail. I waited for the beep and said, “I’m okay. Getting closer to the end of this maze. Don’t try to help. Save yourself. Don’t make waves. There’s one thing I need you to do though.” I told her about the two kids in the shack out by the kudzu field. “Get them out of the county,” I said. I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure how far to go, what to tell her exactly. I decided against mentioning the deputy or McCauley. If I knew Mary, she’d take it straight to the top. And if I knew Shaw, she’d be the next one in the snake pit.
“And just don’t try to find me, okay? I’ll find you when it’s all over. I promise.”
I tried to disconnect the call, only to see that the screen was already black. I wasn’t sure how much of my message recorded before it died. Hopefully enough.
49
The girl drove a vintage red Pontiac convertible. She was probably in her midtwenties and wore her hair in a throwback bob. Her sleeveless shirt revealed dozens of intermingling tattoos on each arm. Her skin was pale and clear, and she was just about the prettiest thing—short of Mary Hawkins—I’d laid eyes on in a good while.
“What the hell,” I muttered when she stopped the car and hopped out, revealing form-fitting pink yoga pants and a navel ring peeking out from just beneath her knotted shirt.
“She look as good as she smells and sounds?” Rufus asked.
“Better,” I said.
Rufus grinned. I wanted to ask him how in the hell an old blind man pulled something like this off, but she was right there, and it might have been rude. Besides, I thought I already knew—Rufus was the walking embodiment of the North Georgia gothic. He was a mystery, an enigma, and just a tad bit dangerous without being mean about it.
As if to prove my point, the girl ran up and gave him a huge hug. She kissed his lips and then his neck while he just grinned at her ministrations.
“This is my friend, Earl,” he said. “Earl, this is Marsha. She’s a grad assistant down at UGA. She’s been coming up on Friday nights to hear me bullshit for the last few months.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said. Her voice was deeper, more mature than I expected based on her youthful, almost bubblegum appearance. “Rufus said y’all needed a ride?”
“Yeah. If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. I’m off today. Plus, anything to get me to the mountains. I love this place. Did you grow up here?”
I nodded, trying to keep my face neutral.
“We better go,” Rufus said. “We ain’t got time to waste.”
I whistled for Goose, and he came running out of the trees, wagging his tail. Marsha knelt to pet him, and he licked her lips and face, her grinning through it all.
Rufus and Goose sat up front, and I lay down in the back seat.
* * *
She stopped at a McDonald’s by the highway and went in while Rufus and I waited in the car. She came back with two hamburgers for each of us and one for Goose. I ate greedily as she drove us to Miss Laney’s place
over on Ring Mountain.
The sky was growing dark. I hadn’t seen a weather report in days, but it was clear a big storm was coming.
I wondered if we’d see lightning.
* * *
When we arrived at Miss Laney’s house, Rufus told Marsha to wait outside with Goose.
“You see any cops, just go ahead and go, okay? There ain’t nothing you can do by staying.”
She gave him a worried look and then glanced at me. “What are you two caught up in?”
“The past,” I said.
She looked at me blankly as I climbed out of the car and started toward the house to knock on Miss Laney’s door.
50
Miss Laney did not speak when she saw me. She just stood there, glaring at me.
“You probably don’t know who I am,” I said.
“I know exactly who you are. I’ve been expecting you for some time.”
“You have?”
“You’re here for the sermon, right? Your father said to only give it to you.”
She seemed in poor health, her face pockmarked with age spots and scarring. Her hair was a brittle shade of gray.
“He said that?”
“He never did give up on you. Those of us closest to him always knew that.” She looked at Rufus. “Why is he here?”
“He’s helping me figure all this out.”
“He’s a bad influence.”
“Well, I reckon I can take that as a compliment, Miss Laney,” Rufus said.
She craned her neck to see past him. Marsha smiled and waved at her from the front seat of the Pontiac.
“They need to leave,” she said. “I won’t let you hear it until they’re gone.”
“They’re my ride, Miss Laney. Can they just wait outside?”
“No. You aren’t ready until you put away these worldly friends. Don’t forget, I wasn’t there the day you rejected God and your father, but I know the story. He’s a more forgiving soul than me, I know that. If you had been my child, I’d never want to see you again.”