by Taylor Brown
Five laps to go.
They slid all over the track, hurtling headlong toward the corners, throttles pinned, wrecking themselves through the turns. Other racers scattered before them, loose-tailed like animal prey, and they pushed past the slower ones, bumping and knocking without qualm. Cooley kept diving in on Rory in the corners, trying to use the Hudson’s big nose like a ram, but he couldn’t carry enough speed to upset the Ford.
Three laps.
They blasted past the grandstands, the bright and terraced faces, and Rory steered into the first turn, the hood pointed toward the infield, the tail kicked out. He looked in the mirror and saw the Hudson blow the turn, coming down on him like a missile. Cooley drove the big car straight into Maybelline’s left rear wheel, never slowing. Rory’s world went sudden sideways, the car wrenched out of his control, spinning, and he spun fully around in time to see the Hudson streak up the bank, unable to stop, and launch straight through the board fence, over the edge and into the trees.
The Ford came to rest tail-first at the bottom of the track. Rory jumped out and started up the bank. The cars kept barreling past, oblivious or indifferent to the wreck, a flood of churning metal that didn’t stop. He kept climbing the bank, hobbled as if by ball-and-chain, holding one palm upstream. The cars parted before him, a split river of them glaring under the lights. They missed him by inches, blaring horns who had them, and he didn’t stop.
Rory reached the top of the track and froze. He stood in the blasted section of board fence, looking down into the trees, and pulled the bandanna from his face. He could feel them at his back, all those spectators with cold-filled lungs, waiting for some sign of what he saw.
Slowly he took the pistol from his leg and raised the barrel. He fired three times, evenly, into the night sky.
* * *
Rory followed the splinters and boards that littered the slope, making for the wreck steaming in the trees. One of the rear wheels had been wrenched off the ground. It spun on and on, the axle gears whining in their housing. The nose was smashed against a tree, crumpled and hissing, and Cooley lay spilled across the hood, the windshield gaped about his waist, his arms outflung in final embrace of the machine that carried him here. He no longer looked like himself. He looked like some new creature entirely, something bad-birthed and bloody, with its joints in the wrong places.
The pistol dangled loosely from Rory’s hand. He dropped it. The helmet, too. He found himself on his knees before the wreckage, his head pressed against the fender. One of Cooley’s hands hung above him, palm out, fingers splayed, their tips bright with blood. It began to twitch and flutter, whelmed as if with holy power.
When the rescue workers arrived, they found Rory curled in the grass beside the car, a smear of blood gleaming on his forehead.
VII. HUNTER’S MOON
The leaves fell from the trees. The understory thinned, rattling brittle-boned under a cold breath of wind. The river became a river of stone they could not swim. They made fires on the riverbank, wrestling naked before the throbbing spear-point of flame, but they were uneasy. Exposed. Sounds became sharp in the falling season, unmuffled in the raw air, and you could see shadows moving far through the trees. They felt like prey, watched from afar. They had lost the army of green shields that kept them hidden, protected.
They found the cabin not far from the hollowed sycamore, hidden up a narrow path. The windows were mostly broken, the floor scattered with dead leaves that crackled like fire underfoot. There was a corn-husk mattress on the floor, a sawhorse table against a wall, a stone fireplace blacked with age. A few hand tools scattered about, ambitionless.
They made the place their own. They swept the floors and aired out the mattress. They brought quilts from home. The chimney smoked. The windows were gold-lit, like beacons in the valley dark. They whispered of the future. Connor would go to college, and Bonni would come. They would be married. They would need nothing, having each other. The museum curator had told Connor that, if he found a living Carolina parakeet, he would save him a job.
A night in October. The moon was full, skull-bright in the black sky. Bonni had snuck from the high turret of her room in the bawdyhouse, had taken the old paths into the valley to meet her lover. She’d made a fire in the hearth, laid out rolls on the sawhorse table, a chunk of butter. She held her hands to the flames, so she could run them warm under her lover’s shirt, chasing the cold from his flesh. She was waiting when she heard heavy boots on the porch.
CHAPTER 27
Rory walked into the service at its peak. He did not look left or right. Did not smile. He walked straight down the aisle, a determinate figure among the shining faces, the arms that twirled and flamed. He was wearing church clothes, his hair slicked clean. A healing pink slash at his thumb. Earlier, at dusk, Eustace had brought the weekly load. The old man had seen the double-bore shotgun lying across the backseat of the Ford, the barrels sawn slightly short for close work. He nodded once to Rory, who spat in the grass.
He walked now to the front of the congregation. Pastor Adderholt was there. He was in a fury tonight. Sweat poured from his face, sprung as if from a leak in the crown of his head, and his raven hair was wild and unkempt. One foot beat the floor faster than the other, as if he were skipping in place, and he wore a banded canebrake rattler around his neck with the swagger of a new god. The tail rattled just beside his ear, and he seemed to be listening closely, translating, his eyes mashed closed in concentration.
“Praise Jesus!” he said. “For that we shall live in his living blood! For that we shall drink of his Spirit and be saved from the wretchhood of these fleshy rags!”
Yes, brother.
“For that, in his power, he shall maketh a bed for us in this world and the other, so that we shall have respite in the blackest storm.”
Amen, brother.
“For that we shall breathe of his breath, for that we shall bleed of his blood, for that we shall see of his eyes, and know a vision that is not of this world, but beyond it.”
Hallelujah.
“For that we shall know his name is God, and have a name to call in our wilderness. Our wildness. A living light that doth shine on, never doused!”
Amen.
When the preacher opened his eyes, Rory was standing before him. On a folding card table in the corner stood a line of lard cans and wooden boxes, brought here weekly by the congregants, should the Spirit move them so. Rory was holding the can that said ORNIAS. It purred like a motor in his hands. Something atomic, no need for pistons or gears. Pure energy, encapsulate.
There was a momentary lull in the ocean of sighs and shrieks, and Rory saw a flicker of something in the pastor’s living eye: fear. But just as quick it was gone, and the man was grinning wildly, like a fiend, both eyes expectant, welcoming this new evil into the room. This new test. The spirit surged around them, and Christ was doubly exalted in shouted tongues.
Rory pulled off the lid.
The serpent lay coiled and writhing like a giant possessed rope. Rory slid his hand beneath it and let the can fall away; it rang on the floor like a shot. The snake hung draped upon his upturned palms. It was swelled like a man’s arm, that well girthed, and black diamonds jeweled its olive back, an elaborate mosaic of scales that looked like art and wasn’t. When it rattled, the entire body hummed, the blood quickened and racing within the scaled hide. Here was death, alive and sentient in the room, presented before all those who bore witness with tear-streaked faces. They were fainting now, collapsing into one another’s arms, struck down as if by the living weapon he held before them. Rory lifted the serpent yet higher, high above his head, and he was still as a tree, and as strong, and death moved slowly through his branchlike hands, calm.
Below him, the reverend’s eyes had gone to happy slits, and his smile was encompassing, his face all rounded and bright, like a small sun. He no longer clapped. He was quiet, breathing slowly through his nose, deeply, like a monk in trance. His hands were clasped in front of his
chest, against his sternum, as if holding something of great value. Christine was there, too, at the edges of Rory’s vision, standing in the front row. Her eyes were not like the others’. They were red and fearful—here—and her mouth was open, ragged with breath. But Rory didn’t look at her. At any of them. His eyes were a long way off.
* * *
Christine tried to stop him after the service. She waylaid him at the door, looking up hard-eyed from that dark fountain of hair. A hexagonal hatbox sat on the chair beside her, tied up with a satin black bow. She had one hand on it, as if holding down the lid.
“Rory Docherty,” she said. “That was dumb as hell.”
Rory looked straight ahead. He knew he could not look at her, or his resolve would weaken. The words seemed so hard to find, to prize from his lungs.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For what I said the other night.”
She paused, her fingers tapping the top of the hatbox. Deciding.
“You didn’t have to pick up a damn rattlesnake to prove it.”
He swallowed. It felt like something had hold of his throat.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said.
“How was it?”
He wanted to tell her but couldn’t. He was lock-jawed, dumb.
Christine watched him, her face softening. Her hand touched his arm.
“Rory,” she said. “Are you okay?”
He pushed past her for the door; her fingers sang across his belly like a knife. Then he was into the darkness, his breath ghosting from his mouth. He did not look back. Couldn’t. He walked between the worshipers’ cars, dusty rattletraps the mills afforded. People stood in small knots, their eyes tracking him, bright with pride. This new star in their ken. This serpent handler. He rounded his shoulders, as if to protect himself from their looks. As if the steely glints of their eyes could burn through his flesh, finding the black hollows of his heart.
There was Maybelline, sitting high-tailed in the grass, still wearing her race tires. Rory came around the trunk and stopped. Before him stood Christine’s little brother, Clyde, the one he’d seen floating in the window of her house. The boy was standing beside his driver’s door, his face white and round as the moon. In his hands, a handmade serpent box, gable-roofed with twin lids. It was not like the others that Rory had seen. This box was twice the size, metal-screened and brass-latched, scrolled with signs and verses unreadable in the dark.
The boy lifted the box toward Rory.
“Ornias,” he said.
Rory looked at him.
“I didn’t know you talked.”
“Only to them that’s righteous.”
“You ought not be talking to me, then.”
Rory started past him. The boy sidestepped, blocking him, and held the box higher. Rory thought of Christine at the door, waylaying him with her hatbox.
“Him that handles him keep him. This is the keeper’s box.”
Rory looked down at the box. Someone had painted a white serpent along the spine between the lids. Inside lay the living serpent, dark-scaled, coiled like some evil twin of the one on top.
The boy’s shoulders had begun to tremble from the weight. Still Rory didn’t take the box. He could not have complications.
Not tonight.
But the boy would not be moved. He was quaking visibly now, and Rory looked into his eyes. They flared like blown coals, so certain that Rory relented, holding out his hands. Now the burden was his, and the boy opened the driver’s door, standing aside like a chauffeur. Rory slid the box gently to the passenger side of the bench seat. The big viper didn’t rattle, just curled itself tighter into one corner of the box. A starlet done for the night, ready to retreat from the crowds. Rory slid beneath the wheel and pulled the door closed, and the boy set his hands and chin on the sill. Rory looked at him, the box. He sucked his teeth and patted the hub of the steering wheel.
“You were the little gremlin, huh?”
“The what?”
“The one sabotaged my car those times.”
The boy straightened, frowning and proud. An answer itself.
“Your daddy put you up to it?”
The boy only shrugged.
“You just tell him I’m sorry,” said Rory.
The boy’s mouth opened.
“Sorry for what?”
Rory cranked the big motor and pulled the gearshift into first. The boy stood back from the car.
“You just tell him,” said Rory.
He let out the clutch and rumbled out of the lot, reaching for the shotgun behind the seat.
* * *
“The fuck you mean you ain’t in the mood?”
“I mean just what I said, Eustace. I’m tiger-striped in scabs and my bones never felt so heavy.”
Eustace stood looking at her, amazed, his shirt half-unbuttoned over the silver fur of his chest. She was still sitting at the dinner table, sipping her coffee.
“Your bones?”
“I fed you, didn’t I? That ain’t enough?”
He placed his big paws on the top rail of a kitchen chair, and she could hear the ash spindles crackling beneath him as he leaned toward her.
“It ain’t my fault you went running through the woods like a damn old crazy woman.”
Granny cut her eyes at him.
“Ain’t it? Years now, people been saying you reigned over this mountain. Nothing happens on it less you will it to. Any stranger steps foot here, they got to answer to you. How come I got sons of bitches screaming on my roof, burning down my chicken coop?”
“I was a little busy that evening, saving your boy ratted me out to them federals.”
“Saving your own ass, more like it. He near froze to death, the way you left him in that creek. Ain’t been the same since. Somebody’s put a snake in his head, one with jaws enough to swallow him up. Before long he’ll be all hollowed out.”
“Ain’t no fault of mine.”
“That boy’s been to hell and back.”
“He ain’t the only one.”
“He didn’t let it turn him like you.”
Eustace smiled. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“The hell does that mean?”
“Means you might not know as much as you think you do.”
Granny sat back in her chair, cocking her head.
“One thing I do know. If there’s no more of him, there’s no more of me.”
“There’s other women hereabouts.”
“Not like me, there isn’t.”
By his eyes she knew she was right.
He sniffed. “This Muldoon trouble, your boy brought it on his own self.”
“Maybe, Eustace. Or maybe you just ain’t what you used to be. Maybe you been slipping, letting these Muldoon sons of bitches walk all over you.”
He leaned closer toward her. The chair protested beneath him, an ashwood skeleton quivering to break, and she could smell him. That wild, beasting blood.
“You don’t know what it took to raise this mountain against the world. A hundred years of fallen timbers and huts, people chased out by Indians and panthers and hunger, and now it’s a place where even the ghosts fear to tread. A place where badges ain’t but nickel-bought stars, and fear rolls same as whiskey. Cabins up and down this mountain sprung as if of my own seed. My own blood. A world its own, where you can sit on your little porch the day long and damn the lower world to hell. So maybe you ought to rethink what you’re in the mood for tonight.”
Granny finished the last of her coffee and canted the mug toward the light, to see what new signs she might read in the grounds. It was the same symbol as before, a serpent coiled in bitter silt. She sniffed, cutting her eyes at Eustace.
“You know what?”
“What?”
“Sometimes I don’t even know who you are no more.”
A smile slunk across the big man’s face. He began to unbutton his fly.
“Let me reacquaint you, then.”
* * *
The white
Oldsmobile was parked at the top of the road, the exhaust pipes smoking in the grass. Rory rolled down his window, snugging the shotgun against his right leg. The barrels were cold, loaded with double-aught buck. His breath was short, steady as an engine. He spoke to Ornias, the words wisping from his mouth.
“There has to be a reckoning,” he said. “Evil has to be put out of the world, lest it come after whatever you love.”
The smoke lay coiled and silent, as if listening.
“It don’t matter if I want to do it,” he said. “It has to be done.”
They were nearing the Olds. Rory thumbed back the first hammer, the second, and squinted. Only one shadow inside the car. He wheeled the Ford off the road, bouncing slightly over the rough ground, and pulled up broadside to the other car, as if to say hello.
He began to raise the shotgun.
The driver smiled out of the gloom of the car’s interior.
“Hidy,” he said.
A deputy.
Rory froze, the shotgun wedged awkwardly beneath the steering wheel.
“Hey.” He swallowed.
“Can I help you?”
Rory cleared his throat. “Sheriff around?”
The man’s lower lip was pouched with chaw. He leaned further out the window and spat. There was a dark streak down the side of the door where his aim had been untrue.
“Sick,” he said.
“What?”
“Sheriff’s sick. Come down with a cold, he said. Scratchy throat. Went home early.”
“And he let you take out the Olds?”
“Drove him home in it. Thought I might take the long way back to the station.”
“Oh.”
The man’s face darkened.
