Snakewoman of Little Egypt

by Robert Hellenga

  “It’s the Lyme disease,” Jackson said. “Stress makes it act up.”

  “You got to get this settled in your mind, one way or the other. Maybe put a fleece out on the Lord. Like Gideon. So you’ll know what to do. Maybe stand up and confront this man, and maybe whup Fern’s tail. Or walk away from it, like I done.”

  “Gideon?”

  “It was Gideon that saved Israel from the Midianites. He was down to three hundred men, and so he put a fleece out on the Lord. A fleece, you know. Wool. From a sheep. He put the fleece out on the ground and said that if the dew came only on the fleece and the ground around it was dry, then he’d know that God was going to save Israel by his hand. And that’s what happened. The fleece was wet and the ground was dry. Then he done it the other way too, so the fleece was dry and the ground was wet. That was a sign from God. Like when I drove up to Colesville the first time to see Sunny at the prison. My truck needed a new head gasket. Where was I going to get the money? I put a fleece out on the Lord. I said, ‘Lord, if you want me to make this trip, give me the money I need to fix that head gasket.’ And the next day DX and a couple men from the church got a portable hoist and come over and they pulled the gasket right out in the front yard. That was the Lord showing me that I was meant to make the trip.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  Earl laughed. “If we get us a big blue cat,” he said, “maybe that’ll be the sign you’re looking for.”

  “Winter’s the best time for big blue cats,” DX said.

  “June is good too,” Earl said. Earl explained everything. The Smithland Pool was formed by water backed up from the lock and dam on the Illinois side of the river, across from Smithland, Kentucky, all the way up to Uniontown, Kentucky, at the confluence of the Wabash and the Ohio. There used to be a lock and dam at Naqada, but it was no longer necessary. The Smithland Pool holds one hundred fifty kinds of fish. You’ve got to go upstream past Old Shawneetown to catch sauger, but they were going for blue cats today. “Guy over in Indiana caught one a hundred and four pounds last year. Your blue cats are mean and tough, real fighters, like me. Biggest one I ever caught was eighty-two pounds. Now I want to get me one over a hundred. We’re looking for deep water on an outside turn.”

  The current seemed pretty fast to Jackson. He put his hand over the side of the boat and trailed his fingers through the water.

  “They like the bends, but there’s hundreds of them on the river and you got to find the right one. Your blue cats love the current. They sit right in it all day long. I suppose it’s like takin’ a shower for them.”

  Earl’s depth finder showed they were in forty feet of water.

  “We’re looking for holes,” he said. “Sixty, eighty feet deep.”

  Earl found a suitable spot and put down the anchor. They used small shad with their tails cut off for bait, and fresh dead skipjacks vacuum sealed from Earl’s shop. Earl rigged up four big bait casting rods on the outriggers, gave one to Jackson, and kept one himself. One of the rods dipped down almost at once and Earl reeled in what looked like a big fish to Jackson. A ten-pound blue cat, which Earl threw back.

  After half an hour they pulled in the anchor, reeled in the baits, and tried another spot, in ninety feet of water. They weren’t trolling —just drifting. There was nothing to do but wait, like waiting for an idea to come to you. It’s out of your hands. This is my fleece. A sign. Something getting through to him from the other side. The world speaking to him. The Mbuti were the least superstitious people in the world. Nonetheless, they spoke to the Forest, and the Forest spoke to them. He thought of his old relationship with Claire. She’d ask him what she should do, A or B, and if he said A, she might choose A, but then again, she might choose B. But she’d know.

  The pole on one of the outriggers slammed down. Earl nodded at DX. “Hand the pole to Jackson. This here’s the fish he’s been waiting for.” He turned to Jackson. “This here’s your fish.” DX lifted the pole out of the outrigger and handed it to Jackson. The fish put up a tremendous fight. Jackson had always thought catfish were sluggish, like suckers, but the fish pulled the boat downstream. Jackson forgot the swelling in his joints, in his shoulders, felt his own strength filling him as he reeled in the fish, letting out some line every now and then, Earl coaching him. “Reel him in. Give him some line. Don’t pull too hard. Keep the tip of your rod up.” Jackson was excited, and so was Earl. He forgot all about Lyme disease and arthritis. But the drag was set too tight. When he tried to adjust it, he released it unintentionally and the line shot out and went slack, but he managed to get it back on at about fifty pounds. They allowed the fish to drag the boat downriver until it tired and they got right on top of it and waited for it to surface.

  The fish was still fighting when Earl hooked it with the gaff. It was the biggest fish Jackson had ever seen, except for the sturgeon his grandfather’s friend Swede had caught in Lake Michigan. Earl put the fish on the scales. It weighed almost fifty pounds. He jiggled the scale until it did read fifty pounds. The fish had pulled them almost five hundred yards upstream.

  What did it mean? Jackson wondered. They’d never specified what a fifty-pound fish would signify.

  They were back at Earl’s bait shop, in the marina. “A lot of fishermen,” Earl said, “release big catfish—anything over twenty pounds. Too much trouble to clean. But I like the big ones. You can cut yourself a lot of nice steaks.”

  Earl put on a yellow rain slicker to clean the fish. With his fillet knife he put the blade through the bottom lip of the fish, then put a rope through the hole, tied a loop, and hoisted the fish up over a tree, as if he were dressing out a deer.

  Outside was a sort of scaffolding for stringing up big fish and a wooden table for cleaning. The floor was covered with scales and bits of fish.

  Once Earl had the fish hoisted up, the gills lay about eye level. He cut the tail off and let it bleed for five minutes. He was proud of his sharp knife. “Just runnin’ the shadow across your finger’ll make it bleed.”

  He cut the skin below the gills and used a fish skinner—a device that looked sort of like a fancy cheese slicer—to take off most of the skin. He cut the belly open and pulled out the guts.

  He filleted the fish as he went along, and put the fillets in a picnic cooler with ice water.

  “Some people put salt in the water,” he said, “but that just makes ’em tough.”

  He gave some of the fillets to DX. “Tell Sally to cook these up,” he said. “We’ll be over about five o’clock.”

  18

  Brush Arbor

  He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.—Mark 16:16–18

  The brush arbor meeting, which was going to be held in a woodlot belonging to an Amish farmer on the Kentucky side of the river, was a kind of homecoming that would draw people from Kentucky, Alabama, West Virginia, and East Tennessee. Preachers from holiness churches around Appalachia would preach, but the main attraction would be the traveling evangelist Punkin Bates.

  Jackson armed himself with a couple of harps he always carried in the glove compartment of his truck. Earl put a chainsaw in the back of the truck and they left Naqada early on Sunday morning to help set up the arbor. They crossed the river on a ferry at Cave In Rock, an old pirate hangout. The pirates used to put out a sign at the mouth of the cave saying WOMEN AND WHISKEY, and when unsuspecting riverboat men stopped to enjoy themselves, the pirates would rob them. And kill them.

  At the brush arbor site, four trees, forming a square, had been cut off about twelve feet above the ground. Men with chainsaws were clearing everything inside the square. When the square was cleared, the men improvised a roof, nailing poles across the top and spreading brush out on to
p of the poles.

  More people started arriving about noon, spreading out food on plank-and-sawhorse tables. Earl was busy with the other preachers. Dogs and children chased each other. Snakeboxes, many of them beautifully carved, were placed near a makeshift pulpit in the arbor. Many had signs on them: JESUS SAVES or DON’T BLAME JESUS IF YOU GO TO HELL. Jackson felt a little uncomfortable and was glad when a caravan from the Church of the Burning Bush arrived: about thirty familiar faces, including DX and Sally and Mawmaw Tucker. Some of the men greeted him with a holy kiss.

  Jackson was tired but in good spirits. He had regained some of his anthropological detachment, but he wasn’t sure what had happened to him in his room at the hotel. He couldn’t put a name on it, and he couldn’t make sense of the gathering unfolding in front of him: clan, tribe, or chiefdom? None of the categories made sense. There was no central authority, no clear hierarchy, no one in charge, no headman.

  He helped gather wood for a big bonfire and he helped the musicians set up next to the pulpit, using car batteries to power the electric guitars and amps as well as some additional electric lights strung above the pulpit.

  In the afternoon small groups read their Bibles together, and occasionally someone would shout, “God don’t never change.” Jackson wondered about this preoccupation—probably a desire for stability, something permanent behind the unstable facade of sense experience. Like Platonic forms. Many of these people had lived through astonishing changes. Computers, the closing of the mines, the Internet, the impeachment of a sitting president, the breakup of the Soviet Union. Mawmaw Tucker, probably the oldest, had been born in the twenties.

  Some of the men had stashed their snakes in bushel baskets or cardboard boxes while they cleaned their snakeboxes. Musicians riffed through hymns. The guitarist, Sunny’s cousin Phil Stone, was from the group that played in the Church of the Burning Bush in Naqada. Jackson enjoyed playing with him and was looking forward to the music.

  The service, like most holiness services, started a little bit at a time. The musicians tuned up and did a last-minute sound check. People wandered around the arbor, which was not big enough to hold the crowd. Children darted in and out. A few people danced. Some of the women raised their hands above their heads and slapped and shouted “Hallelujah” and “God don’t never change.”

  The musicians played a hymn that Jackson didn’t recognize, but nobody sang. They were waiting. Phil motioned to Jackson and they played “Jesus, Won’t You Come By Here.” Jackson stepped up to the microphone and sang. He’d taught Phil to skip a beat at the end of the first four lines and add an extra beat after the chorus, just the way Lightning Hopkins plays it in Sounder.

  Now it is a needin’ time, right

  Now, it is a needin’ time,

  Now it is a needin’

  time

  Jesus won’t you come by here, oh

  Jesus won’t you come by here.

  Jesus won’t you come by

  here.

  Soon other voices joined in, improvising verses, bending the melody the way the Mbuti did when they sang to wake up the Forest, their voices as high and clear as birdsong, as deep and resonant as a canyon. No one was bothered by the missing beat at the end of the verse or the extra beat at the end of the chorus. They took several breaks and Jackson filled in the holes left by the guitar. He held his A harp between his thumb and first finger and a D harp between the first and middle fingers, and when Phil modulated from E to A and the other musicians followed, he switched harps and played an obbligato way up above the melody, just as high as the harp could reach, holding onto the final A while Phil drew out the ending with some fancy finger work until Jackson’s breath was gone and he started to get dizzy. They looked at each other and started to laugh. How could this simple song be so moving?

  Earl stepped up to the microphone and began to preach. He was nervous and kept saying “heh.” “God is not moving,” he shouted. “Heh. We got to open our hearts and invite the Holy Spirit. Heh. Satan’s in control tonight. Heh. We got to take aholt. Heh. We got to start praising Jesus. Heh.”

  Some women started to dance, rocking back and forth.

  “We’re fixin’ to welcome the Power, heh.”

  “The power.” Some men shouted back.

  “We’re gonna make Satan shed some big ole tears. Heh.”

  Earl paced back and forth and little by little the Spirit started to move, to cover the congregation.

  The musicians played “The Old Rugged Cross,” and people started to sing. The music was so loud you could hardly hear them.

  Several other preachers took turns winding up the congregation, which responded with little outbursts that blended in with the words streaming from the pulpit. Jackson looked and listened, trying to distinguish between ecstatic vocalizations and states of dissociation, between self-authenticating spirit possession and hysterical frenzy.

  When Punkin Bates came up to take his turn at the pulpit, the congregation suddenly became quiet. The sermon he preached was dark. Damnation. Hellfire. He scolded the congregation.

  “You know what happens if you don’t take Jesus into your hearts. You know. You know.”

  “Bring it on,” someone shouted.

  Punkin did a little dance. He mopped his face and paused to comb his hair.

  “You know where this whole country’s going. You know. You know. Are we going along for the ride?”

  “NO.”

  “Or are we holding onto the cross?”

  “The cross.”

  He told the parable of the wedding, returning repeatedly to Jesus’ hard words: “Bind him and throw him into Gehenna. Gehenna. You know Gehenna. It’s like a bone pile behind a mine. Bind him and throw him into Gehenna. Into Hell. Everlasting fire. That’s Jesus himself talking, folks. Are you listening? Bind him and throw him into Gehenna.

  “Some folks say that Jesus is real nice. But let me tell you, folks. Jesus ain’t nice. That ain’t the word for Jesus. ‘Bind him and throw him into Gehenna.’ And you know why? Because the man wasn’t ready. He wasn’t prepared. He was like the foolish virgins that didn’t fill their lamps with oil. Are we like those foolish virgins? No man knows the hour. Christ could come tonight. Before I finish preaching. No man knows the hour. Are we ready?

  “Sometimes you can see the spirit in the church, like a blue cloud. Do you hear me? I don’t see nothing tonight. Just a bunch of sinners. ‘Bind him and throw him into Gehenna.’

  “You may have heard about that doctor over in Louisville. He was a specialist in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease. One of the top men, top specialists. And he was an atheist. He didn’t believe in God at all. Thought the world just sort of fell together like a bunch of junk in your backyard getting knocked around in a storm and turning into a new Cadillac. He was a good doctor, and he saved a man’s life that was dead. And when the man come back, he was screaming; he was terrified. Then something would go wrong and he’d go back again, and the doctor would revive him again. His face had an expression of sheer horror. He was sweating and trembling. And do you know why? I’ll tell you why. Because he’d been in Hell. He’d seen it with his own eyes. And that doctor knew he was telling the truth just from the look of horror on that man’s face. The man begged him not to let him go back down there. And that doctor said that anyone who had seen and heard this man would know that Hell is real. That doctor became a Christian.

  “The Bible warns of a place called Hell. It warns us a hundred sixty-two times. And seventy of those warnings were uttered by Lord Jesus Christ.”

  People started to weep, and it seemed to Jackson that Punkin was spiraling down into Hell himself. Punkin threw himself down on the floor. He got up on his knees and raised his hands up in the air and cried out.

  Then someone shouted, “Tell ’em about the good news.”

  This happened twice. It was like Mahalia Jackson telling Martin Luther King to tell the people at the Lincoln Memorial about his dream. She had to tell him twice.r />
  Punkin began to modulate. “Did you think I forgot the good news? Well, if you did, then you don’t know me very well. If you did, you ain’t heard me preach before.” He jumped up and down and ran to the back of the arbor.

  “I’m beginning to feel the Spirit cover me,” he shouted. “How about you? God don’t never change. You know it. I know it. Let’s shout it. GOD DON’T NEVER CHANGE.”

  The spirit was moving on the people, and the people were speaking in tongues and dancing. Jackson soon lost whatever was left of his anthropological detachment, his professional inclination to distinguish between different types of ecstatic utterances. He’d been reluctant to dance with the Mbuti. But he’d gotten over it, and everyone had laughed at him, but it hadn’t mattered. He’d become a good dancer. An okay dancer. He caught Earl’s eye as he started to dance. He wasn’t sure at what moment he knew he was going to handle, but he could feel his hands starting to draw up, starting to tingle, as if he were about to pat Sunny’s bottom. His whole body started to tingle. Growing warm. He could feel the rotation of the earth and the heavens. Colors looked different. He could feel the spirit covering him. Looking at things from the inside, looking along the beam.

  He watched with mounting excitement as Punkin Bates opened a snakebox and grabbed a handful of copperheads in one hand and a rattler in the other. Jackson had been told to expect this signature move. Punkin hugged the copperheads to his chest and held the rattlesnake up in front of his face and looked into its eyes. “It’s like looking straight into Hell,” he shouted. “You can see what that man saw before the doctor brought him back.”

  The snakes moved but didn’t try to coil. Punkin flung them around his neck and over his shoulders and picked up a rattlesnake from a different box, an eastern diamondback. Then he picked up another handful of copperheads.

  Earl went to one of the boxes and took out a medium-size timber rattler, made his way through the dancers, and offered it to Jackson. Jackson shook his head. He wanted to handle DX’s two-headed snake. He laughed. He imagined handing a snake to Sir James Frazer, or Radcliffe-Brown, or to Margaret Mead or Bronislaw Malinowski, or Clifford Geertz or Lévi-Strauss, or even Claude. Imagined them turning away in fear.