“You think he’s scared of the dark?” Mickey-Gene said beside her. “I mean someone like him?”
“I reckon we’re all scared of the dark, given the right situation. He’s a lot scared of something — I can feel it every time I’m around him. Maybe that’s part of why he is the way he is — he’s taking sides with it. I dont know. I dont really want to understand him — I just want to stop him.”
“You think he knows we’re coming?”
“He knows somebody’s coming. You dont do something like what he done and not expect folks to come after you for it. It’s kind of like an invite. Dont know that he’d expect it to be us though — we might be the last two he’d be expecting. But that’s probably why all the lights are on — he dont want to be snuck up on.”
“You think he’ll be shooting his way out? Like that Dillinger fellow?” Mickey-Gene’s eyes looked large in the reflected light.
“I dont think guns are his style, least I’ve never seen him with one.”
“You think because he’s a preacher he’ll be throwing words at us?”
“Words will raise you up or bring you down. Depends on what you do after they’ve been said.” She started toward the house, the rifle slung from its leather strap across her shoulder. “Careful you dont blow a hole through yourself with that pistol.”
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Shakespeare. Macbeth. The next lines go, ‘Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time…’”
“Mickey-Gene, that’s kind of pretty, but maybe a little too gloomy for me right now.”
They were almost to the porch when the gray women came streaming from hidden spaces around the house, blown about like damp sheets in the wind. Their mouths were all open, arms raised and pointing away from the house. Sadie couldn’t see their eyes — that part of their faces was shadowed and blurred as if erased.
“Mickey-Gene? Can you see any of this?”
“I cant see the house too well. I think I’ve got something in my eyes.”
“What are you feeling?”
“Like I dont ever want to go into that house.”
One after another the gray ladies rushed up to her, their mouths open, showing her things she didn’t want to see. “It’s the gray women, warning us away.”
“I guess they’ve seen a lot of women walk into this house,” he said.
“And hardly any of them leave I bet.” Sadie made herself move past the ghosts, apologizing quietly as she pushed them from her concerns. They smelled bad. Of old sweaty clothes and closed-up rooms, mold damage and rot, disuse and despair.
A lantern had been set in the middle of the front room, for them to use, she figured, so she used it. She carried it into the next room, and the one after that, moving it around so that she could see into every corner.
“What are you looking for?” Mickey-Gene was so close behind her they might trip each other up, maybe even one shoot the other.
“Snakes. I dont want to step on one.” He didn’t reply, but he moved closer. “Mickey-Gene Gibson, dont you dare bump into me while I’m carrying this rifle. I’ve never used one before.”
“I’ve never used a pistol before, either.”
“Then we’re a pretty fearsome pair for sure. Preacher’s going to give up without a struggle.” Something about the house was nagging her. “He’s cleaned up,” she said.
“Looks pretty dusty to me.”
“It’s a showcase compared to when Granny Grace and I were here. There was grit everywhere from the crumbling walls, and he’d chopped up all his furniture — it was in stacks in these rooms.”
“Chopped it up? Winter’s not for a couple of months.”
“I dont think he did it for fuel. I think it had something to do with something he’d read in the Bible. Forsaking the world’s goods, that kind of thing. The man’s crazy for them Bible verses. But look at these rooms—he’s got some wallpaper hanging down in places, but it’s all tidy and swept. It’s like he’s getting ready to move out.”
She was nervous about guiding Mickey-Gene into the next room. That was the one that’d had all the women’s clothing hanging up in it. And the underwear nailed to the wall. No telling how he’d react to it. But it was mostly bare like the others, except there was a homemade cross about two feet high leaning in the corner, and the room was well swept.
Before they had a chance to go into the next room the preacher’s voice came out of it, clear and loud as if he were standing right there preaching to them. “You can come on in if you think you’re right with the Lord.”
Mickey-Gene stared at her. She shrugged. She had no idea if she was right with the Lord or not, although she suspected not. She went over to the corner and picked up the big cross. It was heavy and required both hands, and the rifle strap kept coming off her shoulder and she had to nudge it back. Mickey-Gene opened the door for her and she led the way in.
The preacher sat in a high-backed chair in the middle of the room. With a little hurt in her throat, Sadie thought of Grandpa’s chair like that; she’d always thought it looked like some kind of throne. The Simpsons had had it on that wagon to take away.
Despite the hot night he was dressed in his long black coat, white shirt and tie, gray pants, and that huge black hat like some kind of weird pet pressed down on his head. He even had a little red flower in his lapel, but it was wilted, twisted, unable to tolerate the heat.
His Bible was spread open in his lap, a rattler curled up on the open pages. The preacher was perfectly still, watching them with a smile like a knife blade run through flesh, his eyes two cold wet pieces of coal.
The snake, however, was not still. Its huge head — much too large, she thought, for a rattler — floated up and floated down at the same time its body uncoiled and rose, passing side to side from one of the preacher’s shoulders to the other. It looked as if it knew it was the most dangerous thing in the room and was ready to prove that at any sign of doubt.
A second snake unfurled out of the back of the preacher’s hat, curling into ever-tightening circles over the brim and crown. Sadie heard a rocking, shaking noise, looked down and saw that the preacher had his feet up on a long wooden platform. Two snakes appeared over the edge and she realized it was the box the saints had carried into the church with his snakes in it. The snakes flowed over his dark boots, slithered up his pants, and curled around each leg.
“Uncle, how can we stop this?” She could tell he didn’t like her calling him Uncle, but it was too late to take it back. “Terrible things are happening.” With difficulty she shrugged the rifle back on her shoulder and raised the heavy cross over her head with both hands and looked up at it. “That cant be what you wanted for your kin, the people, this town!”
“You aint no little girl no more, darlin! You had your bloody time, so I aint gonna talk to you like no little girl. Course there are turrible things happening in this town — I’m the one doing those turrible things! But sometimes you got to use the power you got to change things. Sometimes you got to make that iron fist. Do you think the Lord Jehovah didn’t know he was doing a turrible thing when he killed the first born Gyptians? And in Deuteronomy didn’t he order the killing of all the men, women, and children of sixty cities? Blood of the lamb, Sister, blood of the lamb!”
“But you cant just murder folks!”
“Sacrifice, Sister, that’s what it be! The Lord requires his sacrifice so’s he knows you will honor him above all the others! I’m the oldest one of my generation of the family and I have to lead them out of this wage bondage, this coal bondage, this race bondage we been subject to since the first Gibsons came off that mountain! We got our future writ right in this here Bible!” He suddenly raised his Bible high in the air. The snake tumbled off, hissing and striking at empty air. “And it’s a powerful one — you’ll see!”
“But the Grans…”
“Open your eyes, Sister!
Do you see the Grans round here? The Grans dont stay — they always leave when the blood starts flowing! But me, I say born in blood! That’s the way it’s always been and always will be!”
“But you made Jesse kill Lilly!
“My brother had to learn. The fool had to sober up. He needed a strong lesson! And that woman of his, well, if she’d been strong enough she would’ve protected herself!”
“And those young women! We know you’ve been gathering them up, satisfying your lust with them, and murdering them after!”
When the preacher stood up the remaining snakes flew off his body like living lightning. He shook his fist at Sadie. “I’m just a man, Sister, with a man’s lust and thoughts of revenge. Some things just cant be helped! I could no more deny my natural power over women than a polecat can deny its stink! But when this is all over, I’ll be a better man for all the sinning I done!”
“What about the Simpson family? And Granny Grace? They were innocents and you butchered them!”
“Enough! Aint no innocents in this world — aint you learnt that yet? Maybe in the next. And maybe that can be arranged.” She struck him with the cross then, opening up a large gash in his forehead. The blood rapidly painted his face a muddy red. He stumbled back and sat down in his throne. “Kill me then,” he said. “Kill me now! Put me in that there box and bury me out in the field!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
IT WAS AT this point in his grandmother’s story that Michael became terrified.
He felt it at first as a pressure in his head. His eyesight narrowed and his vision was affected. He could barely raise his eyes, was compelled to watch his feet as he carefully stepped over the withered vines of kudzu. He looked at where the crate had been ruptured, the force that must have been required to splinter oak and shatter iron, the trampling on the vegetation around it as either a thrashing or a celebration had taken place, the long, twisted skeletons of the once vibrant snakes stomped into the pulpy ground.
Off to his left he could see where whatever force had been contained by the crate had torn through the vines and pushed through the tightly-packed woods. On the other side of those woods was his grandmother’s house. And all around him the smoke gathered and descended, and beyond the trees on the other side of the road the flames climbing higher than the trees. And still he could see untouched kudzu around the margins of his vision, and he could hear the distant shouts of the people trying to contend with it all, and almost as frightened as he.
It was one thing to see calamitous changes in the world — plants or fires or a disappearing town — because these were the inevitable ravages of nature and there was no understanding the ways of nature.
And it was one thing to listen to an old lady’s ravings, and even to believe them, to see them acted out right in front of you as if you were watching a television show.
It was one thing to go crazy and hallucinate these wonders yourself.
But to truly believe it, to face it in your own time and in the flesh? Impossible. It would be like having a face to face meeting with Frankenstein or Hannibal Lecter. Such meetings did not take place in the real world. He should never have stayed. He should have gone off and found some plain, explainable, less interesting place to live.
Once they got back in the truck he could feel his grandmother’s eyes on him but he could not look at her. He drove slowly and carefully. Fallen vine and burnt vegetation lay everywhere, threatening to stop or overturn the vehicle. Along some portions of the road the flames were quite close and posed a real threat to the truck. All his familiar landmarks were gone. He knew the relative length of this stretch before the turnoff for the farm, but he’d become completely disoriented — nothing looked as it should. For all he knew the turnoff had been obscured by fire, vegetation, or both. She kept looking at him and he kept looking away.
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” his grandfather muttered.
“Hush, Mickey-Gene,” Grandma said, patting his grandfather’s leg. “It’s not a good time.”
“You know it seems like the preacher wasn’t that much of a threat to you that night,” Michael said. “After he killed all those people. Slaughtered them. He knew you were coming. Obviously he was just waiting for you. From what you’ve said, it looks like he gave himself up pretty easily. Did he even put up a fight? Did you even raise your gun?”
“He might have,” she said. “His falling back like that, all helpless like in his chair, that might have been a trick. He might have been trying to catch us off guard. But then that’s when they all came into the house.”
“KILL ME NOW!” the preacher said again. “Put me in that box and carry me out to the field! That’s what you want to do, aint it? Go ahead and do it!”
Sadie raised the rifle. “Just you shut up! Shut up now! We got to think about this!”
There was a pounding on the front door. Then the thunder came in, a roar and a knocking around that swept through the house, bringing the angry voices with it. Mickey-Gene, standing in front of the door to this room, looked at Sadie. The snakes were in a frenzy. She ran over to pull Mickey-Gene out of the way.
The first one through the door was Sadie’s mother, her hair sticking out, face a wild mask. She carried a double-barreled shotgun, firing one barrel immediately into a cluster of snakes that had gathered on the floor nearby. The preacher moaned.
“Tell me one reason I shouldn’t let you have it with the other barrel, take your head clean off!” she shouted.
The preacher just grinned. In a county where folks couldn’t always afford good dental care the preacher still had all his teeth.
Daddy came around Momma carrying a pitchfork. He drove it through the preacher’s hand into his open Bible. Sadie noticed that the hand was the one with the dark poison spot. The preacher didn’t make a sound.
George Mackey pushed through the people jamming the door, towering over everybody. He carried a short, thick piece of wood. He nodded once at Sadie, then swung the stick and hit the preacher full in the face with it. The preacher’s head jerked, blood and a few teeth spilling to the floor. Mackey stooped and picked up the teeth before leaving.
Several folks crowded in then, so many there was considerable pushing and shoving, with Mickey-Gene stepping in between Sadie and the more aggressive members of the crowd. She wanted to tell them to wait, there was something wrong about how the preacher was being and they needed to just stop awhile and figure it out. But there were too many of them, and they wouldn’t have listened to a girl her age anyway. Several had been drinking besides her daddy. As places were sorted out Will Shaney ended up at the front with several other members of the preacher’s congregation, including two tall men Sadie recognized as part of the preacher’s troop of saints, their faces calm, their eyes moving back and forth over the crowd. Mr. Shaney carried a heavy-looking hammer in one hand, a cluster of long nails in the other. Sadie’s mouth went suddenly dry. “Mickey-Gene,” she whispered. “This is getting out of hand.”
“We trusted you,” Mr. Shaney said, “we all did. You were our preacher. You read that there Bible to us. And after what you done, well, I dont know how, but you killed my boy didn’t you, or you were part of it?”
Someone in the back yelled, “Go on! Shoot him!”
“Shooting’s too good for him,” one of the two saints said. He laid his hand on Mr. Shaney’s shoulder. “I know how you feel, sir, but Christ was crucified. It would be a sacrilege to use them nails on the preacher, givin that polecat the same treatment as our lord Jesus!”
The other saint walked over and kicked the box under the preacher’s feet. The snakes inside jerked and hissed, making the box buck. “Be a shame to separate the preacher from his pets!” he said.
There were shouts of agreement and several people grabbed the preacher. He didn’t struggle. The two saints pulled some poles out of the corner with hooks on the ends and stood by the crate.
“Well, aren’t you gonna say somethin?” someone shouted. “You’r
e a preacher, so preach!”
There was a moment of silence. The preacher looked at them all and smiled, but only with his lips. His eyes remained cold and dark. “Well, you folks should at least know your Ecclesiastes,” he said. “Remember there’s an appointed time for everything! There is a time for every event under heaven! And I know when my time has come! And some day so will you!” Then he looked directly at Sadie and Mickey-Gene. “At least I see you two are together.”
They pried off the lid of the crate then, the saints holding down at least a dozen snakes as the people threw him in with them. Sadie saw that the snakes were biting him already, and although his body jumped a little with each bite he didn’t make a sound. “He’s tryin to get out!” one of the saints cried, but Sadie didn’t think it was true. That saint took out a fresh-looking wooden stake, and grabbing Shaney’s hammer from him, drove that stake right between the preacher’s shoulders. Even the eager ones in the crowd shouted and drew back from that terrible act.
Then the saints crashed the lid over the preacher’s flailing body, and they helped Will Shaney nail it down, spacing the nails only a few inches apart all around the rim. They argued over who got to carry the crate out to the field, and eventually they decided they would all take turns, and a bunch of people lifted it and carried it through the door, Mickey-Gene trailing behind.
The ones that stayed back looted the few belongings left in the house. Sadie saw several older women walk out carrying crosses, including the one she’d hit the preacher with. They went through the house like banshees, yelling and screaming and taking everything.
Daddy was the first to come back, sweaty and out of breath and stinking of hooch. He put his pitchfork down and leaned against the wall, grinning sloppily at her. “You shoulda been there, darlin. We made him a little bitty grave house just like he was a decent person, put the crate in there and threw a little bit a dirt on it. But he was my brother, so he oughter had some kind of grave. You know there was still thumpin on the inside of that crate, the preacher or them snakes or both, hard to say.”
Blood Kin Page 23