Lovesick (26 page)

“Shep was an anointed instrument of the Almighty,” said Claude. She noticed there was not a trace of irony or sarcasm in his voice. “He wasn't always a holy man. Him and me—we was raised up here on this mountain. His daddy and my daddy was brothers. Shep and me were close enough to the same age that we just naturally took to running with each other—like dogs from the same litter. Folks even used to think we was brothers.”

“There is a resemblance.”

“We even got saved at the same time. Only I guess mine didn't take. Shep believed, but I could see the cracks in the plaster. Ain't no prayer meeting on Sunday morning I found that could compare to the hell I could raise on Saturday night.”

“Shep showed me a way out. And then I saw the snake. Or rather it saw me.”

“Where was this?”

“In Greensboro.”

“Where Shep got killed?”

“Yes.”

He clenched his mouth closed tightly and sighed. “But why?”

“I don't know. That's what I came here to find out.”

He took a long moment, as if considering her case. “I can find your snake,” he said. “People up here love to use 'em at the tabernacle for church. Makes 'em feel powerful, righteous. They dance around with 'em down in the service, and when they are done, they say they have been purified.”

“Yes,” said Sandra.

“After Hiram died I sort of inherited the franchise. You should know, though, I don't work for free and I don't do nobody favors.”

“I can pay you.”

“I figured that—otherwise you'd be heading down the mountain by now with my boot up your dainty Lucy Belle ass.”

“How much will it cost?”

“What are you willing to pay?”

“Anything.”

“Everything you have?”

She nodded her head. She knew there was no other way.

“Okay, then. I'll go and fetch you what you want. The rain is letting up and there's a place where they will come to catch the afternoon sun.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

He was suddenly deferential. “No, ma'am, not now. You stay here and get yourself ready. Do what you need. Pray, read Scripture. It would probably be best if you take off your face, though?”

“My face?”

He drew a circle around his own face with his finger. “You know, your makeup. A snake is sensitive to that sort of thing.”

“I'd like to take a bath.”

“I don't think there's time for that. Besides, probably best not to anyhow. Use a sweet-smelling soap and it's just gonna get him riled up. And I don't reckon you would enjoy the facilities too much.” He handed her a roll of paper towels. “You can wipe yourself down at the sink if you want. And take off your jewelry too. I don't care what you do with it. I don't want it. Don't want nothing I have to barter—cash in hand is the way to go I say. But be plain and solemn when I come back to get you. This is serious bidness.”

“I understand.”

Claude shut the door behind him and she waited to hear if he had locked her in, but there was no click. She was free to go. She knew that it did not matter to him if she stayed or left.

Getting up from her seat, her legs felt wobbly. She was afraid they might not support her as she walked unsteadily to the sink. Leaning over the stained basin, she made a cup with her hands and ran the water from the tap, splashing her face with the coolness. She moistened a paper towel and wiped her face, then her neck. She undid her blouse and took it off. She unhooked her bra and removed it, and wiped herself clean under her arms and across the tops of her shoulder. She did not care if Claude came in now and saw her standing half dressed in the trailer, did not care if he was watching her from outside through the window. What did she have to lose now? She had come this far. There was no turning back. When she was finished, she put her blouse on, but not her bra. It was the deep purple one, the one she had worn the second night of the crusade in Greensboro—the night she called Violet. She put the bra into her purse, rearranging the contents so it was tucked in underneath the money and the gun. She removed her pearl stud earrings and wedding band and the gold cross she wore around her neck, and dropped them in as well—as if they were no more than loose change.

From the kitchenette, Sandra could see straight into Claude's room. She walked backed toward the space. The curtains were open and she could see outside that the storm was over. Sunlight now poured through the trees, steam rising off the damp earth. The room was cramped, barely larger than a closet. Claude's bed was little more than a box built underneath the window. She could see the distinct outline of his body on the dirty, unwashed sheets. The walls were covered in pin-ups, naked women who sat grinning, their legs opened wide to the camera. A small TV was mounted in the corner and on the shelf underneath it she noticed Claude's collection of videos—obscene titles like
Cuntalicous
and
Backdoor Bangers.
But those were just the store-bought ones. There was also a row of black plastic video containers with homemade labels written in a childish scrawl—
Robin, Nov. 2. Kim, April 13. Tina and Annette, June 19.
She tried not to imagine what sinister things Claude had recorded on those tapes for his pleasure, but wondered if soon there would be a new box with her name on it.

She heard the door to the trailer open. She turned, buttoning her blouse. Claude stood at the entrance to the trailer, his hand wrapped around a burlap sack. The sack hung heavy by his side, pulsating with a slow, steady rhythm.

“It's time,” he said. Then again, “It's time.”

 

Claude led her along a path through the woods to a series of low rocks formed into natural steps that opened onto a single, large, smooth slab of granite. As they stepped out onto the rock from underneath the canopy of trees, blue sky materialized before her, around her. They were on top of the mountain. In the distance, far away she could see the dark green hills and valleys as the landscape fell away from her to the horizon. Her spirits were lifted by the majesty, the beauty.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my strength,
she said in a whisper. But when she looked down, she stopped short. What she had at first thought were branches littering the surface of the stone she realized now were, in fact, snakes. Dozens, hundreds of them roiling in the heat of the sun on the warm rock after the storm.

“I can't,” she said.

“Can't what?” asked Claude.

“I can't do this. The snakes. They will devour me.”

“It just a bunch of black snakes, maybe a garter snake or two. They won't bite.”

“I can't.”

“Stand here, then,” he said impatiently, “and hold this. I'll be right back.” He handed her the burlap sack and disappeared down the path.

Sandra remembered as a girl holding a sack of kittens for her granddaddy. They had walked down from the house through the pasture to the creek and he had given it to her to hold as he went off into the woods to pee he had said. She remembered how she could feel the kittens inside, hear their soft mews as they squirmed and wriggled in the bottom of the bag. When Granddaddy had returned from the woods, he carried with him a medium-sized stone that he placed into the sack and then knotted. In a flash he pitched the sack into the creek where it immediately sank. Sandra remembered the horror she felt, how she had run wailing back to her grandmother. Her granddaddy had said it was never too early to learn about how things are. She did not want to know what those things were.

Now she felt that was what her whole life had become—looking into the bottom of the darkness to see what lived there, slithering, struggling to become free.

When Claude returned, he held a length of rough rope in his hand. She stepped back from the path as he strode past. When he got onto the rock, he unfurled the rope, took out a long, sharp hunting knife, and cut a long piece of it off. He then lay the rope down so that it made a circle. When he was finished, he waved at her with a single motion, meaning for her to join him. Seeing her hesitate, he said, “A snake won't crawl acrost a rope. Stand in this circle and you'll be safe. Stay where you are and the least thing that will happen is you'll get poison oak all over you.”

She had no choice but to believe him. Sandra held the sack far in front of her as she followed him onto the rock, joining him inside the magic circle. In her mind's eye she could see as the other snakes stopped what they were doing and gathered around to observe the ceremony. She handed the sack to Claude and waited to see what came next.

“Do you have any verses you want to say?” he asked.

“No,” said Sandra.

“When you hold him, talk to him or sing to him. He'll like that. You can hold him up high or down low—you can even dance around with him if you want as long as you hold both the head and the tail. That's important, 'cause if you let either end get away, he'll try to turn on you. The tail is as bad as the head. He'll wrap it around you and squeeze till you forget what's what trying to shake him off. Then he'll bite you for sure. When you're done, you can just tell me and I will take him. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, where's my money?”

Sandra opened her purse. She removed the roll of bills and handed them over to Claude. He stuffed them into his pocket without so much as a glance. She looked down at the gun.

“You won't need that,” he said. “I don't reckon you're a good enough shot to hit a snake on the run. And I know you wouldn't try to shoot me.” He pointed the knife toward her. “Or if you did, I'd have you gutted like a speckled trout before either of us hit the ground. We clear on that?”

Sandra nodded. She closed her purse and put it down at the edge of the circle.

He put the sack down on the ground in front of her.

“Now, you step back a little, 'cause when he comes out, he is gonna be a little pissed off. Just stand real still and let me grab him. . . .” He untied a loop of twine from the top of the sack and turned it upside down. A copperhead, no more than three, maybe four feet long and about the same circumference as Sandra's wrist spilled out. Sandra covered her face, but even with her eyes closed she could still see glimpses through her fingers in the same way a child watches a horror movie. The snake glided over the surface of the rock toward the edge of the circle, hooking the ground with its belly and then contracting its muscles like a rolling spring in an effort to escape; but before it could, Claude's boot came down on it just behind its head. The snake arched up, but Claude caught the tail with his left hand, stretching it out like a fisherman measuring his catch. “I could have gotcha a timber rattler if I had known you was coming. They's a little harder to find. Will this one do you?”

Sandra felt as if she might vomit. But she would not give herself over to that. She had come too far. She would do this. She would hold the snake, she would look into its eyes and then she would kill it. And be free. When she brought her hands down from her face, Claude was standing directly in front of her, facing her with the snake held toward her in his outstretched arms. Sandra reached to take the snake from him.

She put her left hand just behind the snake's triangular-shaped head, which was crowned by a rusty-colored patch on the top like molten metal. Bands of dark brown shaped into an hourglass pattern ran down its bronzed back to a greenish yellow tip that was the tail. She thought suddenly of Jasmine and her murky eye. She grasped the snake's tail with her right hand and as Claude released the whole weight of it to her, she could feel its muscles ripple the length of its stout body.

The snake felt dry, smoother than she had imagined—not slimy in the least. The underbelly was a light creamy color, and she could also distinguish a dark streak running from each eye to the angle of the jaw. Using her hand, she squeezed the snake's neck so that it opened its mouth. She could see the two fangs, folded back against the top. The snake was quiet, letting her study it. It did not appear threatening to her like when Shep had held it. Or when it had come to her in the dream. Now it seemed docile, even frightened of her as it waited for her to finish. She watched as the lens closed over the elliptical eyes. She held the snake to her face so she might possess its mystical gaze.

“I know who you are.”

Sandra's meditation was broken.

Claude repeated, “I know who you are, Miss Lucy Lucy Lou. I known it all along. Ever since you got here. Your name is Sandra Maxwell. And you are the woman who kilt Shep.”

Sandra turned her head slightly. The snake followed in mirror image. “I tolt you I was watching the TV when you come here. They had a special report on the news about you. They showed your picture.”

“It was an accident,” said Sandra. She could feel the snake become restless in her grip.

“I reckon the po-lice have a different idea on that. They're calling it murder plain and simple,” said Claude.

“I am an instrument of God,” she told him. She doubted that the snake could kill Claude, but it would immobilize him while she escaped. “This is my destiny. I have sacrificed everything to be here. I will not be denied.” She released her left hand from the snake's head so that she could throw it at him. As she did, she could see the deep pits on the sides of the head tense, feel the snake puff up, become rigid, as it inhaled the moist air. Its fangs swung downward in position for biting and as she released the snake, Sandra closed her eyes and shouted,
“Hallelujah!”
With a single swift motion it struck.

There was no pain, only a slight prickle of discomfort. Sandra instinctively brought her hand to her heart. When she opened her eyes, the snake hung from her breast like a talisman. She cupped its head tenderly with her other hand and pressed the snake close, as if suckling it. When it had released its venom into her, she let the snake drop to the ground and watched as it recoiled, prepared to strike again if necessary. As she gazed in amazement, the snake's head magically detached from its body—then she realized that Claude had thrown the knife, severing the serpent in two. Sandra turned to thank Claude, but as she did, the ground rushed up to meet her and she fell hard, hitting her head against the surface of the rock. It felt as if she were laying her head on a pillow.