A Feast of Snakes (16 page)

She knew without looking that this was what he had looked for her for and what he had brought her in the sheriff’s car for and that there was nothing else she could do but look. She turned her head and saw a snake standing in his lap. Right in his lap a snake rose straight as a plumb line, no striking coil in its body but arrow straight on its tail, and at the top of its body the mouth was stretched and she could see the needle fangs like tiny swords. It was the snake she had been waiting for, that she had been preparing for since that morning in Beeder’s room.

“How about that?” he said. “What do you think?”

She did not answer but in a movement she had been practicing in her mind all day she bent to her ankle where the straight razor was wedged inside her shoe and in a single fluid movement she struck his lap and came away with the snake in her hand, its softening head with the needle fangs still showing just above her thumb and forefinger.

She raised it aloft and was amazed that it did not struggle but hung limp from her hand utterly dead and beaten. She raised her eyes to Buddy Matlow’s and found him staring over the wheel of the Plymouth, his face leached of all color, his lips struggling to speak and pointing to his lap where now a fountain of blood shot into the air and ran over his legs and dripped down into the floorboard of the car.

“You … you … cut it off.” He finally managed to say.

She said: “I always known I could. I always known I would.”

She opened the door and got out. Buddy Matlow struggled behind the wheel. He looked at her and made a noise, not a word, just a noise. There was still no pain, but he had gone instantly light-headed with terror and loss of blood. He knew he was dying. He knew he ought to be doing something, but he did not know what it was. Lottie Mae bent and looked at him through the window.

“Wait,” said Buddy Matlow. “Wait.”

“Be through now,” she said and walked away from the car. She did not walk slow, but she did not walk fast either. She had done what she had waited all day to do. She remembered where she was going, that her mother had sent her to Big Joe’s, that she was supposed to help Miss Beeder.

She had to walk past the school and the open field where they did the football. There were more people there and more noise and more open fires than she had ever dreamed there could be in one place at one time in the whole world. In the middle of all the people was a snake, three stories tall standing against the darkening sky, coiled to strike. She kept to the edge of the crowd in the gathering dusk and was not afraid.

At Big Joe’s, she went directly to Beeder’s room and Beeder asked immediately: “Did they burn the snake yet?”

“What it was. You gone have to talk it up?”

Beeder watched Lottie Mae’s slow purple mouth move in the flickering light. But Lottie Mae was already turning to watch the television. Her eyes and teeth were now brilliant in her face. She licked her lips and squinted and did not answer. Tanks roared across the land. Airplanes dropped bombs. Geysers of sand and stone and bits of metal flew from the earth. A turbaned woman knelt beside a man and rocked and wept. She finally turned her face up toward the black sky where airplanes still dropped bombs. She screamed and looked as though she had no lips, as though the lips had been cut away from her dry broken teeth.

Lottie Mae recognized the man who talked when the guns and the planes and the bombs stopped. It was the NBC Nightly News. It was Lottie Mae’s favorite program. Much better than the detective stories where you had to put up with a lot of talking and fooling around before you got to the good parts. NBC Nightly News went straight to the robbing and killing, the crying and the blood, burning buildings and mashed cars. Them NBC Nightly News sumbitches was mean. Soon kill you as look at you. Killed somebody ever night. Sometimes drowned whole towns in the ocean. Or made babies grow together at the shoulder.

A man had come on now trying to sell Ford automobiles: “The closer you look, the better we look!”

Beeder and Lottie Mae’s eyes left the screen at the same time and their gaze joined across the soiled bed.

“I didn’t hear you,” shouted Beeder. “They burn the snake or not?” Then when Lottie Mae still did not answer: “Anybody hurt?”

“Not I’m a mind of.”

“Didn’t fall on anybody, nobody burned, no bones broke?”

“I ain’t seen it.”

They were shouting at each other. It was the only way they could be heard over the NBC Nightly News.

“Can we turn hit down?”

“What?”

“Turn hit
down,
the TeeVee!”

“What?” shouted Beeder.

Lottie Mae went over and turned the television all the way down. Beeder sat up in bed. “What did you do that for?”

“I wanted to tell you. I cut hit off.”

“You ain’t got no call to turn my TeeVee down. Now turn it back up.”

“I cut hit off at the ground. Shrunk hit up till hit wont no biggern you little finger.”

Beeder was beside herself. “This room’s mine! What I say goes.”

“Tetched it one time with this and hit come off in my hand just like a natural thing.”

Lottie Mae was holding a straight razor up in front of her. The blade was honed thin and bright and terrible. Beeder stopped shouting. She got quietly off the bed and adjusted the sound so she could hear it but not so loud they had to shout. She stood beside Beeder and they both watched the thin shiny steel razor for a long time.

“Tell me,” said Beeder glancing apprehensively at the far wall.

“See,” said Lottie Mae with enormous satisfaction. “Hit were this snake.”

“Yes,” said Beeder.

“Hit fetched me all the living while. Went to sleep with me, snake did. Woke up with me. Eat my food. Come in the front door with me, went out the back. Wore my skin like clothes.”

“Wore your skin like clothes,” Beeder said.

“Close as breathing,” said Lottie Mae. “Looked into my eyes. Breathed into my nose. Put his taste on my tongue—all up in my mouth—and made me swaller him. Felt him grow in my hair, move in my stomach. When I went on my knees to pray, snake had the ear of the lord.”

“You was scared?” Beeder asked.

“Scared to death,” said Lottie Mae.

“You cry?”

“All the time.”

“And was you afraid to go out?”

“Wouldn’t
go out
less I had to.”

“And was you afraid to come in?”

“Wouldn’t come
in neither
less I had to.”

“It had you covered all around,” said Beeder.

“All around. In the air and on my plate. Everthing that moved say snake. Snake! It was you say what I might do. It’s why I come back to tell you. You was right. Just hit that snake with a razor. Tetch hit. One time. Gone forever. Outta my air. Outta my plate. Don’t tetch my skin like clothes.”

“All because of the razor.”

“That snake shrunk up and died like magic.”

“Listen,” said Beeder. “Hear it?”

“I
tol
you less turn it down.”

“Not the TeeVee.
That!”

Lottie Mae folded her razor and put it in her shoe. “Cain’t hear nothin but the TeeVee.”

“Here then,” said Beeder. She reached over and turned the sound all the way off, and rising out of the silence it left—coming from behind the far wall—was a ragged thumping like the beating of an enormous erratic heart.

“Hear it now?”

Lottie Mae cocked her head and regarded the wall. “I do hear.”

“He s got another one tied in there.”

“I don’t misdoubt it,” Lottie Mae said. “Be one tied everwhere you look these days.”

“He’ll tie another one on it before he’s through,” said Beeder.

They stood for a long time watching the place beyond the wall where the thing was thumping.

Finally Lottie Mae said:
“Before he’s through, he gone tie everone on it.”

***

“Well,” said Shep Martin, “I thought law.”

Dr. Sweet drew on his pipe and slowly wagged his huge white head. His skin and eyes and hair and even the suit he was wearing was the color of damp chalk. He looked as though he had not been in the sun for a year, which was true, since he actively cultivated a bleached look. He thought it made him look scholarly.

“I myself,” said Dr. Sweet, “once seriously thought of the law.” He enjoyed these young men his daughters brought home, all of them on the edge of beginning to live their lives, all of them so full of hope and the higher virtues. “But, alas, it was to be medicine that I finally chose. I’ve not regretted it either.”

They were sitting in Dr. Sweet’s living room in front of a large fire, roaring in a fieldstone fireplace. Mrs. Sweet was upstairs asleep and the doctor had let his black maid go for the evening.

“It must be very rewarding,” said Shep.

“A doctor is able to do much very decent work out here in the …” He chuckled deeply in his good gray throat. “… in the provinces, so to speak.”

“You ought to think of writing, Doctor Sweet,” said Shep. “You certainly can …” Here he gave his own radio announcer’s chuckle. “Certainly can
turn a phrase.”

The doctor waved his hand. “When I retire I plan to devote my life to
belles lettres.”
He smiled. “But for now, I have to keep this county as healthy and wholesome as modern medicine will allow.”

“There must be great satisfaction in that,” said Shep.

“No more than you’ll find in the practice of law, young man. Law is an admirable calling.”

“I haven’t actually decided,” said Shep. “But you see, sir. I’m on the debate team and doing extremely …”

The doorbell, a three-chimed gong, floated through the house. The doctor raised his eyes to the ceiling and wagged his head. “Probably not a patient,” he said, “but it would not surprise me if it was. Nobody thinks a doctor sleeps or needs time for reflection.” He sighed and got to his feet. 

“Perhaps a crisis,” said Shep.

The doctor, walking toward the door, said: “You soon find in medicine that to a patient everything is a crisis. Everything from a rash to a …”

He did not finish but opened the door and found Buddy Matlow, pale, his mouth like a razor-cut in his face, looking down upon him. “Well, Sheriff,” said the doctor, looking past Buddy toward the night sky because he had not heard the rain start and certainly it had not looked like rain and yet here was the sheriff standing in his raincoat, a yellow rubber slicker that fell well below his knees so that you could see only the point of one cowboy boot and about two and a half inches of a peg leg. It did not seem to be raining. “Come in. Come in.”

Buddy Matlow’s thin mouth stretched as though he would speak but he did not. It was almost a kind of yawn and then the lips came weakly back together. The doctor thought maybe Buddy was coming down with a cold. Colds seemed to do these big fellows worse than it did ordinary folk. Buddy had been leaning, holding to the door jamb with one of his wide square hands. Now he turned loose and leaned in toward the living room. His eyes wandered slowly from Dr. Sweet to the fireplace to the boy whom he had not met.

Shep stood up and came toward him with his hand out. Buddy Matlow came over the door sill, his wooden leg thumping on the floor. It was the thumping of the wooden leg that made Shep look down and see that the peg leg was leaving a wide round puddle of blood every time it stopped. Shep stood amazed with his hand out. When he raised his eyes he saw that the sheriff was holding what looked like a toy snake tenderly between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. With his other hand, the sheriff was fumbling with the snaps on the yellow raincoat.

“Wait!” cried Shep. “Wait a minute!” He knew the man was about to show him what was under the coat and he knew he did not want to see it.

They saw the blood before the coat was all the way open. Buddy was slick with blood. The doctor did not move. From Buddy’s shoulders to his knees he was smooth and slick with creamy gouts of blood. And it was obvious that it was coming from between his legs. Doctor Sweet was numb. His mind had simply quit. The worst he had ever seen was a man whose tongue had been deliberately split in two by a knife, and another man who had been scalped. But they had both been dead when he saw them. And they had both been black. But this. He knew from the blood, from the
nature
of the bleeding, what had happened and so he could not make himself move from where he stood as Buddy slowly reached out and put the toy snake in Shep’s outstretched hand. Shep accepted the snake because he was unable to do anything else. It was bloody on the end and tiny and as he watched unbelieving the whole inside of the snake slipped out into his palm and it was a dick.

In a little voice that was cracked and whining, Shep said: “Somebody’s cut his dick off.” He turned to the doctor for his statement to be denied but the doctor was already sliding to the floor in a faint.

***

They could not get her father on the phone, and of course it was not her father they wanted, but Shep. Berenice, red-faced, her cheeks brittle with exhaustion, had insisted that she would not go if Shep could not be raised on the phone and brought to her side to go with her. They were all standing in Joe Lon’s living room waiting to go see the thirty-foot snake burned and find out who was going to be crowned Miss Rattlesnake of the 1975 Roundup.

Duffy Deeter said: “Gender here’s got more goddam trophies’n I have.” He waved vaguely at her. “Beauty,” he said. Since he had gotten good and drunk, Duffy had called Susan by her last name.

“I was in one or two contests back in Alabama,” said Susan.

“Shit, we had Miss Rattlesnake in the family two years back to back,” said Hard Candy.

“I won my senior year,” said Berenice. Now that the talk had turned to contests, she didn’t seem quite as tired as before.

“I took it my sophomore,” Hard Candy said.

“I… I…” They all turned to see Elfie in the door coming from the hallway. “I best git them babies ready for the sitter.” She had forgotten not to smile—and it wasn’t a smile anyway, a deep painful-looking grin rather—but she remembered as soon as they turned to her that she was showing her bad teeth and so she clamped shut her lips as deliberately as she might close a door. Joe Lon saw it all, saw how hurt and intimidated she was, and could have killed her, or killed them for making him want to kill her.