by Ron Levitsky
“But . . .”
Hobbes pushed his wife behind him, then faced the minister. “There’s been a lot more carrying on, hasn’t there, McCrae?”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout.”
“The hell you don’t, you son of a bitch!” He struck McCrae in the face, drawing blood from the other man’s lip.
“Ben, no!” his wife cried, and pushed herself between the two men. “I won’t let you hurt the Reverend, even if you are my husband.”
“Claire, honey, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
McCrae stood ramrod straight. “Mr. Hobbes, I done you no harm. I follow John—‘he that keepeth his commandments . . .’”
“Don’t you dare quote the Book,” Hobbes said. “It’s sacrilege coming from your mouth. I know the Bible, too, the way it’s taught in a good Baptist church. ‘For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds be reproved.’ You and this church, you and your seed, I know the evil you’re doing to my wife, the horrible, twisted evil. It’s . . . I’d like to kill you.”
“Stop it!” his wife cried. “I can’t stand it, Ben! It’s making me . . .”
She swayed, then sank to the floor as Ben caught her.
“Claire, I didn’t mean . . . It’ll be all right.”
Laying a hand on Hobbes’s shoulder, Whitcomb said, “Best get her home. Leave the Reverend to me.”
Hobbes lifted Claire in his arms. “It’s not over. Not by a mile. When I get through with him, the hogs won’t even want what’s left.”
Turning, he carried his wife from the church.
Whitcomb said to his deputies, “Pete, stay with the injured man. If he changes his mind about medical attention, you see that he gets it right quick. Call me in an hour. Jim, stick around here and make sure everyone else leaves peaceable.” To McCrae, “When we get to the station, you can call your attorney.”
“What’d I be doin’ with a lawyer?”
“You’ll be finding out right quick. Let’s go.”
*
After they’d left, the people turned their attention to old Tucker, who went back to Lem. The young man was trembling, and his chest heaved. The wound had swelled and darkened around the two bite marks.
Bathsheba said, “Tucker, do like Daddy said. Take him to our house. Have the brothers ’n’ sisters pray over him.”
The old man nodded. “Where’ll you be, child?”
“Huntin’ up a lawyer, I guess.” She looked around, caught Jesse’s eye, and added, “I’ll likely drive into Nashville with Cousin Popper. Maybe he knows somebody can help us.”
“Don’t worry, child, the Lord’ll provide.”
Jesse blurted, “I’m an attorney.”
She stepped close. Her skin, glistening with perspiration, smelled slightly of musk. “Would you help us?”
“I . . . I haven’t practiced law for ten years, but I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you.” Her smile was all the retainer he’d need.
Suddenly he felt a cramp in his right hand and, looking down, saw his tape recorder. The machine was still on and had recorded everything. Thinking about what had occurred during the service, Jesse realized what his words to Bathsheba really meant. The commitment to defend her father—jail house visits, back room dealings with the state, and maybe even confrontation in court. Criminal law—he smelled it like a rotting carcass. He wouldn’t go through all that—what would his mother and his friends say? But he wouldn’t abandon Bathsheba. He had to see her again. There had to be some way.
The look in the people’s eyes as they huddled around him was sullen defiance in the face of scorn and contempt. Jesse had seen that same look somewhere before long ago. Then he remembered.
“We’re going to need help.”
“Will it cost much money?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t worry about the money.”
Her eyes drew him in.
“I wouldn’t worry about anything. I know a man who’ll help us. This is the kind of case God made just for him.”
Chapter Two
sunday afternoon
“Looking out your window,” the pilot said over the intercom, “you’ll see the Cumberland Mountains, which Daniel Boone and others crossed to settle eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. Descendants of these frontiersmen still live in this beautiful region of Appalachia.”
Putting aside the in-flight magazine, Nate Rosen looked through the wisps of clouds to the rolling mountains, dappled green and brown in the afternoon light. In their beauty and immutable strength he always saw God’s hand, perhaps as Moses had while receiving the Commandments? Did people living in these mountains feel that same power?
He took the New Testament from his briefcase. Opening the book, he felt like an adulterer. There was pleasure in reading words written two thousand years ago about the people and places of his ancestry. Even more, however, was a sense of guilt, because the words didn’t belong to his people.
He had marked two entries and opened to the first—Mark 16:17–18: “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
Rereading the passage several times, Rosen shook his head. Who were these people?
“I’d like to see more of that.”
The man sitting beside him had spoken. He was middle-aged, dressed in a gray striped business suit, and his face was all smile. The kind of smile that could sell encyclopedias to illiterates.
“Excuse me?” Rosen said.
The man nodded at the Bible in Rosen’s hands. “People not ashamed of reading the Good Book in public. You a minister?”
Rosen shook his head, biting the inside of his lip to keep from smiling.
“Even better. A good Christian reading the Bible to himself on Sunday, because he can’t be in church. By the way, name’s Warren Glenwood.” They shook hands. “You live in Nashville?”
“No. I’m going there on business. Actually, to a small town nearby—Earlyville.”
“Know it well. My cousin Hank’s a realtor there. Live in Nashville myself. I’ve been to Washington on business.”
Rosen glanced at the mountains. “Beautiful country. It’s my first visit to Tennessee.”
“You’ll find middle Tennessee’s not quite so hilly but right pretty, just the same. Your first visit? Well, then, here.”
He handed Rosen a business card—“Warren Glenwood, President, House of Grits”—and a two-for-one coupon good at any of his restaurants.
“We got five places in the greater Nashville area. You ain’t gonna eat no better grits anywhere in the country.”
“Thank you,” Rosen said.
“Yeah, I was in Washington to see my representative. He’s gonna push for a National Grits Day. Shoot, they got official days for just about everything. Might as well honor corn. U.S. grows more of it than any other country.”
Rosen turned to the New Testament in his hands.
“I can see you want to get back to your reading. Far be it from me to get between you and the Lord.”
“That’s all right. Are people pretty religious in this part of the country?”
Glenwood scratched his head. “That’s a question, ain’t it. Like anywhere else, you got your Bible people and them that’s not. But I guess there’s more that is. I never miss Sunday church if I can help it.”
“Two days ago a man was bitten by a rattlesnake in a church in Earlyville.”
“You heard about that, did you? Yeah, my wife mentioned it on the phone yesterday.”
“Do things like that happen often?”
He laughed. “Where’re you from?”
“Originally, I’m from Chicago.”
“Everybody hide when Al Capone’s boys come riding down Main Street with their tommy guns blazing? See what I mean? Folks got a p
icture of a place even when it ain’t true. Don’t judge us by a few crazy people who go around worshiping snakes. Why, if I was to bring a rattler into church, the pastor’d jump outta his skin. But you go on with your studying.”
Turning pages to the second marker, Acts 28:3, 5, Rosen read, “And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. . . . And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm.”
From what Rosen had heard, the young man bitten by the snake was seriously ill, maybe dying. It was one thing to believe in miracles, another trying to live them every day. His father tried to live God’s miracles, tried to make his sons live them, but Rosen had refused. For him the price had been too high. And now, this small-town church. Again he asked himself, what kind of people were they?
Feeling the plane begin its descent, he put the Bible away and fastened his seat belt.
Glenwood said, “Welcome to the Athens of the South. Sure hope you enjoy your stay.”
Walking from the plane into the terminal, Rosen wondered if he’d recognize his old classmate. He needn’t have worried. As if the years hadn’t passed, Jesse stood and, taking the cigarette from his mouth, nodded hello. He was still thin, thinner than Rosen, and his hair had receded a little. But he was the same impeccable dresser, wearing a camel hair jacket and matching cravat.
They approached each other a little awkwardly and shook hands.
“Nate, it’s good to see you. Thanks for coming.”
“Hello, Chavrusa.”
Jesse smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that word. I still like the sound of it. You look wonderful.”
“You haven’t changed either. Always GQ. I still imagine you meeting Cary Grant. First thing you’d do would be to straighten his tie and brush the lint from his shoulders.”
Jesse looked him up and down, taking in the old corduroy jacket and faded jeans. “And as Fred used to say, you still look like one of those chihuahuas in a teacup saying, ‘Please give me a home.’”
As they walked toward the baggage claim, Rosen asked, “You ever hear from Fred?”
“Not for about five years, since he sent me a new business card announcing his partnership in some New York firm. He also wrote that you had joined the Committee to Defend the Constitution. I wasn’t surprised. I always knew you’d get involved in fighting for civil liberties. It’s nice to know that Hamlet was wrong—that a conscience doesn’t make cowards of us all.”
They reached the conveyor just as Rosen’s luggage emerged from the chute.
Five minutes later they were on the highway in Jesse’s Porsche.
“Very nice.” Rosen stretched his long legs while smelling leather and tobacco, like the inside of a private club. “You seem to be doing well. Your father still own the town bank?”
“Daddy died a few years ago. I never wanted to be involved in business and went to law school only to please my mother. My sister’s husband took over the bank presidency. I thought it was minimal compensation for their moving into the family home and enduring Mama. I’m afraid I’ve become a constant disappointment to her.”
“You never married?”
“No. There was one young lady I kept company with here in high school and college.”
“You used to talk about her—Jennifer Ann.”
“That’s right. It never did work out. Guess I dragged my heels too long. She ended up marrying the captain of the football team. He used to tease me mercilessly because my idea of sports was a spirited chess game. Well, she bore him six children who are constantly secreting liquids from one orifice or another. Jennifer Ann’s now as round as her husband’s bowling ball and spends her time saving raccoons from hunters. Not surprisingly, her husband spends his days in a tavern.”
“Sad story.”
“Yes. It almost makes me believe there’s a divine plan after all. Now tell me, how have you been?”
“I’m fine. As you said, I’ve been working for the CDC for about five years. It’s a small organization but growing. I like to think we’re doing good work.”
“How’s Bess?”
“We were divorced four years ago.”
For a moment the car slowed. Jesse said, “I still remember your wedding—how much in love you two were. I was more than a little jealous. I am sorry.”
Rosen shifted against the door. “That’s all right. You’ll appreciate the irony. You went to law school to please your mother. One of the reasons I married Bess was because she was the kind of girl my father would’ve warned me against, had we been speaking. Funny how he was right after all.”
“Any kids?”
He smiled. “A daughter, Sarah. She’s fourteen. She’s living in Chicago with her mother.” The smile faded as the thought of missing her throbbed dully like an old wound. “Let’s talk about why you called me.”
Jesse stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray, and immediately lit another. “As I told you on the phone, it’s a case involving a Pentecostal church of serpent-handlers. A member of the congregation was bitten, and the minister’s been charged with breaking a law against using poisonous snakes in church. I was at his hearing yesterday. Reverend McCrae’s out on five hundred dollars’ bond.”
“So the judge let him walk for fifty. That’s not much.”
“If the man who was bitten dies, the police chief intimated a murder charge. This could be an important freedom of religion case. I assume your organization thinks so.”
“Sure, it could be a perfect test case. How did you get involved in this?”
Jesse reddened slightly. “A friend of mine is a member of the church. I wanted to help . . . this person out, that’s all.”
“A woman, or you would’ve said ‘him.’”
“You’re right, as always. See why I called you? We’ll be in Earlyville in another twenty minutes.”
It was a sunny day in late September, just cool enough for a jacket and tie. While Jesse concentrated on the highway, six fast lanes divided by a concrete median, Rosen’s eyes grew heavy from the smooth ride and repetitive scenery. On either side of the road the earth had been sliced clean, exposing layers of weathered limestone, above which tall trees huddled together like hobos over an open fire. The trees’ thick foliage obscured the view, but every quarter mile one or more billboards appeared in their midst: mcdonald’s, country music inn, taco bell, country comedy museum, house of grits, holiday inn—a roll call of roadside America. Interspersed with these commercial advertisements were smaller, hand-lettered signs announcing: church of christ of melba’s corner, holiness church in jesus’ name only, first baptist church of cricket hollow, and a dozen others.
Rosen shook his head. “There’re as many churches in Tennessee as Wisconsin has taverns.”
Turning onto the Earlyville exit, Jesse said, “Lots of people take their religion personally. You’ve got churches splitting off churches all the time, like some theological chain reaction. Memberships of three or four people. Daddy the minister, momma and kids the congregation.”
“That small?”
“It doesn’t make religion less important to them. As Thoreau said, there’s power even in a majority of one.”
“I didn’t mean . . .” Rosen felt his own face grow warm and almost whispered, “I know.” Wanting to change the subject, he nodded out the window. “Who’s that?”
The road had narrowed to two lanes and wound through an open field with low rolling hills in the horizon. Two figures walked slowly across the field, an old man with severe features and a pretty young woman. They walked beside each other without ever quite touching.
“The Hobbeses,” Jesse said, “going on their daily constitutional.”
“Father and daughter?”
“Husband and wife.”
“He looks like an Old Testament patriarch walking with his handmaiden.”
“It may’ve started like that; Claire worked in Ben’s furniture factory. Since th
ey’ve been married—about a year—he’ll do anything for her. Well, almost anything. She was at the serpent-handling service Friday night when he came for her, along with the police. He was very angry with Reverend McCrae, even threatened him. He doesn’t want Claire involved with the serpent handling and other goings-on at the church.”
Rosen stared at the couple. “Is Hobbes’s wife your ‘friend,’ the one who interested you in this case?”
“No, I don’t really know either of them too well. That’s his furniture factory over there, the largest employer in town.”
They passed a spur that led directly to a huge wooden building, its paint peeling, so that it looked as much brown as white, with piles of lumber stacked in an adjacent work yard big as a ballpark. A large semi with the company name was slowly wheezing to a halt in the yard, while a half-dozen forklifts glided toward it.
“Some place,” Rosen said.
“Ben and his brother Simon own it. It’s been in their family for over a hundred years and makes some of the best furniture in the country. They say Jack Kennedy’s favorite rocking chair was a Hobbes. A lot of people depend on the factory for their livelihood.” He gave a sidelong glance. “There’ve been rumors about problems among the Hobbeses.”
“Because of the marriage?”
“There’s always some of that. Pretty young thing marrying a rich old man . . . you can imagine the stories. More importantly, there’s been talk of selling the factory or even closing it down. A shutdown could ruin this town.”
Passing a field ripe with corn, they reached an intersection indicating Earlyville two miles ahead. Instead, Jesse turned left, drove about a mile, then turned into an entrance proclaiming central tennessee college, home of the hounds. The road meandered past several buildings of brick and glass shaped like sticks of butter, with an occasional cluster of trees to break the monotony of closely clipped grass.
They continued to the end of the campus, where Jesse parked in front of an old frame building with a pair of rockers on the porch. A sign nailed onto the porch balustrade read popular culture center/dr. jesse compton, director. Through an open window Rosen heard a scratchy recording of guitar playing and someone singing.
