Snake Girl VS the KKK

by Peter Joseph Swanson

  Michael took a frightened step back. “Even everybody at church knows… knows that I’m… I’m… special?”

  “No. Not special, just a perv, and yeah they all know. Even the old ladies say they’ve given up praying for you.”

  “What?”

  “Even the old ladies say that the Holy Spirit has given up on you by now, so you’re going to hell… so why pray anymore.”

  “Why would anybody pray for me, anyway?”

  “They say you can’t offend the Holy Spirit for so long, and if you do then it’s too late for you, offend Him and you’re doomed, and you’re going to hell no matter what.”

  Michael defiantly put his hands on his hips. “Oh. They just know that, do they?”

  “Sure. Once at a potluck somebody dropped the pork and beans all over the floor and to make a joke of it somebody said it was what you’d look like in hell.”

  “They said that?”

  His brother nodded. “Everybody laughed. I was very embarrassed. Everybody always knew you was a pansy, but still.”

  “People just know what I’m going to look like in hell, huh?”

  “Of course. It’s church.”

  Michael pursed his lips together in anger. “They just decided.”

  “It’s in the Bible. Not that you’d look like pork and beans on the floor… but the hell part. I don’t know what a person looks like in hell but it can’t be too good. What does a person really look like when they’re burning for all eternity? Hmmm.”

  Michael swatted at a fly. “The Bible says a lot of different things and people just make what they want of it.”

  “You’re right. That’s why we gotta go to church to learn it. The people that are all going to heaven are the people I’ll listen to when it comes to telling me what the Bible means.”

  Michael glowered. “Sooooo… when I go to the funeral they’ll all just look at me like I’m as good as pork and beans on the floor! I mean… going to hell!”

  “If some start laughing it’s because they remember them pork and beans…yep.”

  “I never! I’ve never been thought of as pork and beans on the floor, before. Nevah! Nevah! I have been thought of as many things on the floor. But that! Nevah!”

  “Well that’s just what’s in their head now.”

  “That… and hell.”

  “You’re going to hell for sure. Unless there’s some miracle and you get down on your knees before the pastor and say you’re sorry for being such a sinner and maybe that’ll be some kind of proof that you really mean it… you have you swallow your pride. You’ve always had too much pride. You always put yourself first before the feelings of Mom and Dad. And to be a pervert on top of it. That’s really something.”

  Michael scratched his ear. “Are you sure you’re not exaggerating?”

  “You either go to heaven or you go to hell and you have a lifetime to decide what you want. Jesus is trying to give you forgiveness, now it’s just up to you to have the brains to accept it.”

  Michael asked, “And what did Mom and Dad say about all that, about me?”

  “They once said that in moral places people like you were stoned to death.” He gave his toothpick a tense little twirl and then sat on the bike. He started it back up with a few strong kicks and drove it up the hill toward the gate that would take him to the back of the garage. The collie was watching from the top of the hill. The animal ran behind the bike to follow it.

  Michael walked off, feeling his ears burn, not knowing quite where he was going to walk off too but he certainly couldn’t hope to continue a conversation like that with his brother up at the house.

  He walked farther away from the house to the next field. A rabbit bolted out from under a fallen tree fort and was gone. Some of the straight branches were still propped up against it from where they made the roof. He couldn’t believe a storm or rot hadn’t knocked them all down by now. He went over to his old fort and peeked inside. Enough of the branches were gone to bring in sunshine. The room was all tall weeds.

  He walked further on. A swarm of gnats descended on his head. He swatted at them but they wouldn’t go away. He had to run a ways to lose them. He leapt over another creek. He leapt farther than he needed to. Most of the water was dried up but he still wanted to avoid any mud. He noticed the breeze was humid enough to carry the sweetness of the flowering weeds. He picked at some of them and then smelled his fingertips. He saw a butterfly. He wondered how long it had been since he’d seen one of those. The sun warmed his face as he followed the butterfly west. He stopped at a bend in the creek where there was a drop off into mud.

  Michael looked down and saw a silver plastic bottle floating in the stream. He followed the bottle until he was where the stream was at the same level as the grass and he could easily reach down and pluck the bottle out of the water. He saw that it was an empty bottle of Booby Mama Booty Lube. He wondered what his favorite lube from Saint Louis was doing floating around down here in redneck heaven. He decided to walk upstream to find out. He wondered if any other gay things would float his way. “Oh please God let gay things float my way!”

  Chapter eleven

  Carefully stepping onto rocks in the middle of the creek, he bent down very low to pass under a wire fence. He left his farm to enter the next farm over. “Here be dragons.” It went into woods that he hadn’t gone into since he was a kid. He imagined he was Guinevere wearing a gorgeously elaborate gown with long sleeves that draped to the ground, and a tasteful but evident hairpiece like Vanessa Redgrave wore in Camelot.

  The creek had eroded into a ditch about nine feet deep. He decided to cross it when he saw a suitable fallen tree. On the other side of the bridge, a man stepped out from behind a veil of branches. “You!”

  Michael responded, “You!”

  “You!”

  “Girlfriiiend!”

  “Miss Michael!”

  “Lancelot, you adulterous slut!”

  “Huh?”

  Michael grinned. “Oh, I was just pretending I was lost in a medieval wood. Here be dragons!”

  “What are you doing in any woods?”

  “And you! What the hell are you doing here?” Michael looked about in dismay. “Burp! What the dang heck are you doing out in the middle of dumb-fuck nowhere?”

  Burt, still wearing bleach-blond hair cut off at his shoulders, and three candy-colored watches on his wrist, asked, “How did a thing like you get to a place like this?”

  Michael looked about some more. “I’m someplace? Well sure… and it was the yellow brick road that brought me. A rather wet one. A stream, actually. But you know how I like long wet things. How did you get here? You look… so… well… oddly odd as usual. Fuck you.”

  “You look… well… fucked out. Were you fucked silly in those jeans by a gorilla? What happened to your jeans?”

  Michael looked down at himself. “Fucked out? Out? Usually I’m accused of looking fucked up.”

  Burt repeated. “You look fucked out.”

  Michael scowled. “Why are you looking at me like that? Up or in or out, at least I look fucked. Thank you. So why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what.”

  Michael glanced up. “Like a squirrel is peeing on my head.”

  “I just can’t believe I’m looking at you right now. You! Are you okay?”

  “Sure, Burp. Why wouldn’t I be just fine? I just saw flowers and butterflies.”

  Burt said, “You look like you’ve been run over by a couple of cars. Your pants.”

  “Aren’t I cool? Or do you think I overdid it a bit?”

  “You mean that’s fashion now? That’s on purpose? Fashion rags?”

  Michael pulled the front of his shirt to the side to show his nipple and then pretended he was going down a New York high fashion catwalk for a few steps.

  Burt asked, “What are you doing here? Are you lost? Or you running from something?”

  Michael looked around at the woods. “Why wouldn’t I b
e somewhere? I might have just escaped Ape City. Planet of the apes back that way, for sure.”

  “I just… I thought you were a big city queen right now. What are you doing here?”

  Michael held up the lube bottle he was carrying. “Um. Ah. Looking for slippery things?”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “It was floating down the creek. That-a-way.” He pointed.

  “What were you doing out in the middle of nowhere at a creek?”

  Michael looked around at all the tree branches over their heads. “Yes. I’m nowhere. Nowhere like in a science fiction movie. And you’re there too! And gay lube in a silver bottle… floating all the way from someplace else! So it’s a… clue! A clue of someplace better! Jules Verne totally updated!”

  Burt admitted, “It was bought in St Louis.”

  Michael looked puzzled. “It floated here from there?”

  “No. I’m sure it came from my place. It’s just upstream, here. Come. I’ll show you my new house. I live here now.”

  Michael grew even more puzzled. “Huh? What? Here?”

  Burt nodded. “Yeah. Sure, I live here. That’s why you found me like this just standing out here. Why else would I be here? Of course we will never figure out how you are the way you are.”

  Michael shook his head. “You? How.”

  “This farm split up when it sold and I bought the woods part of it.”

  Michael indignantly gasped. “You have two places now? You bourgeois bastard!”

  “No. Just this one. My wife and I split up. She fell in love with a lesbian and wanted the house to herself. Bisexual marriages can be a bit much at times.”

  “You’re divorced. Good. Then we can have sex. We can get off right now. And it’s kosher again since I never play with married men.”

  “We aren’t divorced. But it’s as good as over.” He showed Michael his arm. “She took all my old Swatches. These are new ones. She was ruthless.”

  Michael pushed him away. “If you’re still married then no sex with you. Ew!”

  “I got a trailer here. Come on up and I’ll make you some herbal tea or something.”

  “Sure. And what kind of witchcraft have you been up to out here. I bet there’s all sorts of herbs and mushrooms and dead twigs and tiny dead things lying around.”

  Burt explained, “Well actually… I started a gay druid sex club, here.”

  “What? No way! You mean more gay lube where this came from? Cool! I want to get jumped by a gay druid sex club! I feel so spiritual already just thinking about it!”

  “Michael, shut up. You have to be a gay druid. And a member.”

  “When can I join?”

  “We’re all meeting tonight. But, Michael, you can’t just jump in with your gay lube like it’s some low rent bath house… if you know what I mean. You have to pass the gauntlet. Our gauntlet. It’s a private club.”

  Michael slapped the air in front of Burt’s face. “Fuck the gauntlet. The only thing needed to be in a sex club is to be rich enough to buy a box of rubbers.”

  “You need more than that.”

  “Okay, and you need more than that. Hey, where are all these gay druids? I can work a robe!”

  Burt crossed his arms. “Are you a druid?”

  Michael put his hands on his hips in defiance. “Burt! You shut up. You know I’m not a church lady type.”

  “No. You’re not. You are who you are.”

  “The last time I was in a church I had to pretend to myself that I was Diana Ross to keep from freaking out. Little Michael felt too stupid, otherwise. I don’t think super stars ever get a chance to feel stupid.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Please let me be a gay druid! Please please please! I’ll do anything! I do card tricks! I’ll do face painting. I’ll paint anywhere! I’ll swing from a tree. You can tie me to a tree. I can be a real fun addition to any sex party. The next time everybody comes by just put me to the test. I can pass any test. I’m smart. I can think on my feet. I’m receptive. I’m so receptive! Tie me to that tree! And I have good timing. You say you meet tonight? Well here I am. It was fate. I think I’m here out of some divine predestination. I can just feel it. I’m so receptive.” Michael put his hands out as if they were radio dishes. “When’s the next druid hose-down? I mean… hoedown.”

  “Some guys are camping out here for a few weeks. The rest drive in from town. We meet for ritual.”

  “Ritual? Like we did at the Cabaret?”

  Burt’s face went sad. “I miss that bar. It’s a shame the roof got to where it rotted so bad like that.”

  “Yeah, right where I’d painted the star of Aphrodite. That probably went first, with my luck. Oh the memories. Ah, those were the days. It seemed like that bar would be there like that forever. I imagined myself going out on stage at 93 and playing Mae West. I didn’t think it would ever end. It ended.”

  They walked to a clearing. “Oh my god! A trailer. If there’s black candles in there, I’ll scream! Have you become one of those scary witches?”

  Burt frowned. “No. And why?”

  “Just kidding. I once wrote a story about a black candle. I’m trying to figure out how to turn it into a whole novel so I can get rich and famous. Never mind.”

  Burt looked around at all the trees. “Maybe you can tell the story later. You fancy yourself a bard?”

  “You know what a fabulous performer I am.”

  “How’s Tony? Is he in town?”

  “He’s still back in Saint Louis. He has a boyfriend his own age, now.”

  Burt raised his eyebrows. “Oh? Somebody twenty years younger than you?”

  “Ten, bitch. Maybe nine. Seven and a half. It’s good he has lots of fun with boys his own age… so that when he gets my age he has memories.” He laughed naughtily.

  Alex grabbed Michael’s wrist. “Come up to my little castle. I got some cornbread batter made. We could have something with our tea. You hungry?”

  Michael grabbed his belly. “Starving. I just had a can of soup. Cornbread always goes with soup.”

  “It’s a shame the bar is closed. You could have seen so many more of your old friends around here. Didn’t you know it was closed? But what are you doing way out here?”

  “Yeah. I knew. But oh well.”

  Michael followed Burt into the trailer, paused and said of it, “Oh! It does have a certain je ne sais quoi!”

  Burt smirked. “Yeah right.”

  “Where’s the fridge? I need a beer. Beer! Now! Beer! Now!”

  Burt laughed. “No beer. Sorry.”

  Michael pouted. The place was almost empty. “What a dump!”

  “Are you still the world’s greatest lush?”

  “I’ve cut back. I now only drink enough for three instead of six.”

  Burt slapped his arm. “Way to go.”

  Michal looked around, frowning. “I can see you haven’t done any money spells around here.”

  “Nope.”

  Michael grimaced. “There’s nothing in here at all!”

  “I have a few boxes of clothes in the car. I have a pan. I have a fork. I’m taking a while to get myself settled in, I guess. I’ll let the guys help me move some of my stuff in here tomorrow.”

  The place had a flimsy card table and four lawn chairs that didn’t match. Michael sat. “For sure! Maybe you can set this thing on fire and get some insurance money.”

  “That’s illegal.”

  Michael asked, “Is it insured?”

  “Yes, but it’s illegal.”

  Michael reached over to push at a plywood wall. It gave. “It is? I thought that’s how you property owners made money. I think this has rotted away a bit. Oh no. Look. It’s rotted.” He looked up, worried.

  “Stop pushing on that. You’re going to break it.”

  Michael stood. “Break the whole trailer?”

  “Stop that.” Burt pushed Michael’s hands away from the ceiling. “So what fun things have you been up to in the bi
g city?”

  Michael flipped at his hair. “Oh the usual. Just lots of spinning my wheels to nowhere. I’m trying to be famous but nobody cares. Everybody always only thinks about themselves. I wish I’d gone to law school ten years ago. Then I’d be rich right now. I’d love to be able to stand there like a rich somebody in a big court room and flip my hair around like Cher as I talk a jury into anything.”

  Burt chuckled. “You can go to law school now.”

  “I didn’t finish high school.”

  “Finish it now. You can do what you want. It’s a free country.”

  Michael moaned and threw himself against the wall in angst. “But I want it to have already happened so I can already be rich right now!”

  Burt said, “You know what they say. It’s an old African proverb: The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today.”

  “I know. I was the one who told that to you. I had the book of African proverbs, remember? But I left it behind with the other books. Everything I owned was spattered in pig shit by Nazis and so I just left it all.” He pointed to his head. “But I still have those books in here.”

  There was a knock on the door. A man walked into the trailer. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know you had a dude over.”

  “You!” Michael gaped.

  The man looked at Michael oddly. “Is that you?”

  Michael repeated, “You! It’s you! You!”

  Burt put his finger in his ear. “Yeah. It’s James! Not so loud. I see you know him too. Good god!”

  James’ eyes flashed with recognition. “Hey, yeah. It’s you. That guy! You look a little different.”

  Michael nodded. “We’re a little taller.”

  “Your hair. It’s so long! Gosh!”

  Burt chimed in, “Like an old hippie.”

  James said, with a smirk, “Like a girl.”

  Michael said, “James! You look a little different too. It’s only been since forever. It’s been since Baptist summer camp. Camp Shoshoni!” Michael started to sing, “Camp Shoshini, land of bed so stony, let me ride my pony, to the macaroni!” He spoke again, “That was the summer just before we started high school so it was… forever ago!”