by Ron Levitsky
Ten minutes later he stood in front of Here’s How. Its facade had been designed as an old-style saloon, the bar’s name written across the top of a plate glass window in letters formed as branding irons. The letters were chipped and faded, and the glass itself was taped in two of the corners where it had cracked. On the other side of the window along a low counter lay a collection of Western paraphernalia—boots, lariats, and two ten-gallon hats—all covered by a thick layer of dust. In the center of the window, a large beer sign flickered neon like an anemic lightning bug. Above the saloon was a second floor with four dusty windows.
Stepping inside, Rosen let his eyes adjust to the dimness. In his travels he’d seen hundreds of bars; Here’s How could’ve been any of them. A half-dozen tables, a dart board, a pinball game with an Out of Order sign, and a silent jukebox glowing softly in the far corner. The only other customer sat near the cash register and chatted with the bartender. Both were old men with curved backs and large eyes, as if their bodies had adapted to this environment of whispers and darkness. Rosen sat a few stools down. Sighing, the bartender trudged toward him.
“What’ll it be?”
“A beer—whatever’s on tap.”
After the old man drew the beer, Rosen raised his glass. “Here’s how.”
The bartender grimaced and started walking back to his friend.
“Wait a second. I’m looking for someone who works here.”
The old man leaned wearily against the countertop. “I’m the only guy working here. My wife helps out at night.”
“Somebody else. A musician named Hec Perry. Is he living upstairs?”
“Just who are you?”
“I’m an attorney. Mr. Perry isn’t in any trouble. I simply want to ask him some questions, but I need to see him immediately.”
The bartender rubbed his face, then looked at his friend, who nodded.
“All right,” the old man said, “but I ain’t got nothing to do with him. You’re wrong about him working for me.”
“I thought he paid his rent by playing for the customers.”
“That was a long time ago, before the place started going downhill. My wife’s idea—she’s got a soft heart. Goes along with her soft head. Said it would give the place some class, because Hec plays such beautiful music. Well, I got to admit he does that, don’t he, Lou?”
Again his friend nodded. “Prettiest music you’d ever want to hear.”
“Funny thing is that Hec don’t work much. He don’t seem to do anything, yet the rent’s paid every month. Go figure that one.”
Rosen said, “So he does live here.”
“He’s probably upstairs right now. Leastways, I ain’t seen him leave all day. Take the stairs. Hec’s room is last door on the left.”
“Thanks.” Finishing his beer, Rosen paid for the drink and stepped down from the stool.
The old man added, “You sure Hec ain’t in any trouble? Not that I care. It’s my wife. It’d upset her if anything . . . you know.”
“I only need a little information. Thanks again for your help.”
The narrow stairway led to a corridor as dim as the barroom; the only light filtered through a dust-covered window. As Rosen approached the end of the corridor, he heard music. It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t know what kind of instrument Hec Perry played. He’d assumed it was guitar, but the music was smoother and more melodious, closer to a harp. When he knocked on the door, there was no reply—only the sweet music. Rosen turned the knob.
At the far end of the room, Hec Perry sat beside the window strumming a dulcimer on his lap. He was thin, almost ethereal, with long blond hair tied in a ponytail and delicate features that might have been a girl’s. He was naked except for a pair of torn blue jeans. Eyes half closed, looking up toward the ceiling Perry continued to pass his hands over the strings and play such bittersweet music. Watching the musician, Rosen thought of the shepherd David at his lyre singing his psalms. He felt a deep longing—for what, he wasn’t quite sure. His childhood, his ex-wife, for the lives he hadn’t chosen to live?
“Mr. Perry?” The musician seemed not to hear. “Mr. Perry, I’d like a few words with you. It’s about Claire Hobbes . . . Claire Daniels.”
Perry looked in his direction; it took a moment for his eyes to focus. He continued to play, motioning for Rosen to sit on the bed next to him. The room reeked of tobacco and the more pungent odor of marijuana. A bed, night table, and chest of drawers—none of which matched, one suit in the closet and a laundry basket overflowing with dirty clothes. The night table contained a half-empty whiskey bottle with a half-filled glass, an open pack of Camels, and an ashtray with a pyramid of cigarette butts.
Rosen sat beside Perry and cleared his throat with a heavy cough. “You play beautifully.”
The musician smiled vacantly. “‘A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw. It was an Abyssinian maid, and on her dulcimer she played.’”
“I don’t . . .”
“Coleridge. Welcome to my Xanadu. Would the weary visitor like some refreshment?”
“No, thanks.”
“You don’t mind if I indulge.” He stopped playing, took a short drink, then lit a cigarette. Faded needle marks dotted his arm.
“I understand you used to date Claire.” Perry’s eyes squinted as he took a long drag on his cigarette. When he didn’t reply, Rosen continued, “I’m Claire’s attorney. You know about the trouble she’s in—the murder charge.”
“You want me to be a character witness for her?” He laughed sharply. “I’m afraid I’m what you lawyers call an impeachable witness.”
“Why, because you dated her?”
“No, because I’m still dependent on her. Since her marriage, she sends me a couple hundred each month to keep me going.”
“Why?”
His face twisted into a smile. “Because she’s an angel.”
“You two must’ve been close.”
“Yeah, she gave me everything . . . well, almost.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Look, I’m not really in the mood for conversation.”
Rosen filled the other man’s glass. “Just a few more questions. How did you and Claire meet?”
He shook his head.
“At the restaurant where she worked?”
Perry hesitated, then went for the drink. “Yeah, I saw her there a couple times, but we started going out later. I was with a group called Black River Hollow. She came around with her minister, his daughter, and their cousin Popper Johnston. Popper was my group’s manager—talked about having us record some Christian music for this Reverend McCrae. You know, Jesus rock and roll. Can you believe it, Jesus and Popper? The man was more into—” He stopped suddenly and looked away. “Well, nothing never did happen with the music, but Claire and I started going together. We had six good months. I cleaned myself up—no drugs, cut down on the drinking. My music was never better.”
“What happened?”
He shook his head. As Perry reached for the glass, Rosen grabbed his arm. “What happened?”
The musician was trembling, but Rosen wouldn’t let go. Finally Perry stared into his eyes. “‘A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw. It was an Abyssinian maid. . . .’”
Rosen shook Perry’s arm.
“Ask the Abyssinian maid,” Perry said, and his eyes began to grow glassy.
Rosen shook him harder.
“Leave the boy alone,” someone said from the doorway.
It was the big man, the one Rosen had followed from Earlyville. He stood just inside the room, arms folded, and slowly shook his head. He had the scarred face of a prizefighter, flattened bridge of a broken nose and cauliflower ears.
As Rosen stood, he thought again of David; was this how the young shepherd had felt facing Goliath? The man looked like a bully, and bullies were like dogs. You couldn’t show them any fear.
Rosen crossed his arms. “I’m glad you came by. Saves me the trouble of looking for you.”
“Hec and I are having a private—”
“You can walk out or crawl out—makes no difference to me, but you’re leaving now. Just keep your hands where I can see them.” He opened his suit coat to show his shoulder holster, then walked toward Rosen.
“Take it easy. I’m not armed.”
The big man stood in front of him. “I never take any chances. That’s why I’ve stayed alive for so long.”
“Who are you?”
He handed Rosen his card. It read: “Albert Aadams, Private Investigator” with a phone number and Nashville address.
Rosen said, “A double a for Adams?”
“Yeah, had my name changed. Puts me first in the phone book, ahead of Acme Detectives. Pretty smart, huh?”
“Brilliant.”
“Thanks,” Aadams said, lifting Rosen like a chair and carrying him to the hallway. “Now go on home, and you won’t get hurt.”
“I still need to ask Perry a few questions.”
“Why?”
“That’s privileged information between me and my client.”
“You mean Claire Hobbes? You’d better get your facts straight, buddy. Claire Hobbes is my client.”
“What?” Rosen asked. “What do you have to do with her?”
“That, Mr. Lawyer, is privileged information,” Aadams replied with a grin, before closing the door in Rosen’s face.
Chapter Twelve
thursday afternoon
“In ancient Mesopotamia, for example, the serpent was especially favored by the god Ningishzida, who guarded the door of heaven. And what did the pharaohs wear upon their foreheads to symbolize their authority? The asp. The snake whose bite on the milky breast of Cleopatra proved so deadly.”
Jesse paused to survey his students. Leaning over their desks, they eagerly took his words as golden threads to be sewn into their notebooks. He smiled. That was as it should be in his world, bound by four cinder-block walls and a blackboard. For a forty-five-minute tick of the universe, the marks his chalk made were as significant as those carved into the tablets of Moses. And as Moses was never challenged, neither was he.
Walking down the center aisle, he continued his lecture. “Even on our own continent, the snake has been revered for its mystical powers. In Aztec lore the great god Quetzalcoatl was depicted as a feathered serpent and his high priest was known as Prince of Serpents. As part of their rain dance, the Hopi Indians put live rattlesnakes between their teeth.”
“Sort of like what’s going on here,” one of his students said. Kenny, the short, earnest-looking boy in the back row.
“What do you mean?”
“The snake-handling group here in town. Isn’t that what your lecture’s leading up to?”
“This is a class in folk religion.”
“Yes, sir, but what I mean is . . . you seem to be portraying snake handling—”
“The people who practice it prefer the word serpent.”
“Whatever . . . you seem to make it natural. But to me, it’s nothing but—”
The boy stopped suddenly and looked past Jesse, as did the other students around him. Jesse turned to see Bathsheba edging into the classroom. She wore a long green dress with sleeves and a high collar, its color faded from too many washings. Smiling shyly, she sat in the corner and folded her hands on the desk top.
Jesse felt her stare like the heat of an open fire. He said, a little too loudly, “Kenny, what’s your point?”
The boy’s eyes were focused on Bathsheba.
“Kenny!”
“It’s just . . . the snake is evil. We all know what the Bible tells us about the snake tempting Eve. That’s what caused man’s fall, the start of all our troubles.”
“The Bible’s a big book, and there are other significant passages you need to recognize. Because it sheds its skin, the snake has been a symbol of immortality—and not just the staff of Aesculapius. In chapter three of John, when Moses lifted his standard engraved with a serpent, this was the foreshadowing of Jesus’ being lifted upon the cross, so that we might have eternal life. Does anyone know the words of Jesus in Matthew ten, verse sixteen?”
Just then the bell rang, but no one stirred.
Bathsheba said, “‘I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.’”
“That’s right,” Jesse repeated, their eyes locking, “be wise as serpents.”
Whispering to one another, the students glanced at Bathsheba, who remained seated while they filed out the door.
When the two of them were alone, she said, “You teach real good.”
“What’re you . . . why did you come here?”
“I ain’t never been to no college before. When I finished work over at the Burger King, I said to myself, I drive by that college most every day but never s’much as take a look-see. That was before I knowed you. Had t’ask three people, till one told me where t’go. I hope it was all right. Me comin’ here, I mean.”
Before he could answer, she added, “You sure was somethin’, standin’ up there like a preacher man. You got yourself a golden tongue, all right.”
Jesse glanced at the open doorway to be certain that no one was eavesdropping. “I’m glad you came.” As she stood, he added, “Have you ever thought of going to college? This is a state school, and you’re a resident of Earlyville. I’m sure arrangements could be made to . . .”
He lapsed into silence as she walked past him to the front of the room. She moved laterally a few inches from the blackboard, gazing as if it were the deep green expanse of the Cumberlands. She picked up a piece of chalk and rolled it slowly between her palms.
He asked, “About school?”
Placing the chalk in her left hand, Bathsheba began sketching in long broad strokes. Jesse moved behind her to watch the drawing take shape. As it became more definitive, he grew to hear his own heartbeat.
“Whaddya think?” she asked, stepping back to admire her work.
It was his caricature, a thin man in a suit, kicking up his heels and waving both arms. But it was what lay between those lips that made the breath catch in his throat. A large writhing rattlesnake.
Bathsheba said, “Just like you was talkin’ ’bout to your students. Them Injuns dancin’ for the Lord t’pour down His blessed rain.”
He was trembling.
“That’s what you saw at our service. Me ’n’ the others prancin’ with them serpents wrapped ’round us like the Lord’s lovin, arms. ’Cause that’s what they were. When you’re under the power, ain’t no evil. No matter what it looks like”—she chalked a circle around his caricature—“ain’t no evil.”
Jesse stared into his own face for a long time, and it grinned back as if about to tell a dirty joke. Was that what had frightened him at Friday’s service? Had he been afraid to let himself go the way Claire Hobbes had babbled in tongues or Bathsheba caressed the rattlesnake? He shook his head, almost laughing. That wasn’t it, not it at all. He’d lost control lying with her in the field. That’s why the face on the blackboard—his own idiot face—leered back at him.
He felt her fingers cool against his cheek.
“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Just my way a’ jokin’.”
“It’s all right.” His gaze remained fixed on the board.
Gently she turned his face toward hers. “Can you get away for a spell?”
“Uh, yes. I don’t have a class until this evening. Would you like to go for some coffee? We could go into town or maybe you’d like to see the student center. If you’ve never seen the campus, I’d be happy to show you around the—”
“I was thinkin’ we might go back to the field. It’s right nice this time a’ day. Cool breeze ’n’ all.” She took his hands.
The room was hot, stifling. Bathsheba’s hands felt cool, yet he was still
sweating.
“I’d like a cool breeze, but I’m afraid I lent my car to Nate Rosen.”
“That’s all right. I got my daddy’s car. Just an old clunker, but it works.”
Lowering the car’s windows, he let the wind slap his face until his cheeks tingled. He tried not to look at her, at her tan ankles, or to think about the implications of their ride. She was his girl, that’s all, and they were going for a drive in the country.
She said, “I like your tie, and that pretty red silk handkerchief stickin’ outta your pocket.”
“Thank you. What we talked about back in class—I meant it. I could help you get into college.”
“Imagine, me in college.”
“Of course, you might have to take some prerequisites. There are special tutoring programs for disadvantaged students.”
“I’m afraid you’re dreamin’. My daddy’d never allow it. College is what he calls a den a’ iniquity, like a bar or a whorehouse. You seen the way them girls dress in their shorts, with all that makeup on. He’d never allow it. ’Sides, he don’t think women need any kind a’ learnin’ ’cept what’s preached to them from the Good Book.”
“Is that what you believe?”
She shrugged. “Don’t much matter what I believe.”
“You’re wrong. There’s so much more of the world than the four walls of your church. I really could help.”
“Don’t want you troublin’ yourself. You already done so much for us folk.”
“It’s been no trouble. Besides, you’ve helped me with my research. Today’s lecture, for example, was leading up to Pentecostal serpent handling. I plan to interview members of your church about the other signs—speaking in tongues, casting out demons, drinking poison, and healing the sick. Other customs as well. Foot washing, for example.”
“We do that, too.”
