Salvation on Sand Mountain

by Dennis Covington

  When I told Carl Porter that I might have run across some handlers in my family tree, he seemed amused, but not surprised. “Who knows but that God sent you up here to write about Glenn’s trial so you could find out that very thing?” he said.

  Brother Carl had come from a family of Alabama sharecroppers. He knew even less about his ancestors than I knew about mine. Unlike me, though, Carl seemed to have an intuitive grasp of the sort of people they were, and he had accepted it as the natural order of things. I was a city boy still trying to make sense of the notes in my father’s green binder. My journey with the snake handlers had become not so much a linear progression through time as a falling through levels of platitude toward some hard understanding of who I was. I did not know where or when I would arrive at my destination. All I knew for certain was that snakes would be waiting for me there.

  7

  SNAKES

  A few months after the New Year’s Eve watch service, I was in Atlanta on a magazine assignment, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to drive up to Kingston and visit with Brother Carl. He’d recently bricked the outside of his house across the highway from The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he seemed happy to see me.

  By now, I believe Brother Carl thought of himself as a spiritual mentor to me. In some ways, he was. He had taught me about snake handling from the inside out. He’d also encouraged me to read the entire New Testament straight through, something I’d never done before. The previous summer, I had even considered asking him to baptize me in the Tennessee River, but I finally decided to be baptized in my home church in Birmingham instead. Getting baptized by a snake-handling preacher is one thing; explaining it to family and friends is another.

  When we sat down at his kitchen table for coffee, he got his Bible out and began steering me through some of his favorite passages of scripture. He had on a blue dress shirt and striped tie. On the kitchen counter lay his western-style hat with the quail feathers stuck in the band. Carl loved to feast on the Word. That’s what he called it, feasting, as though the Bible were a banquet set for him.

  “The Bible says you’re gonna suffer for your faith,” he said in his soft Georgia accent, which differed only in degree from my own. “Look what happened to Stephen. I’d rather die of snakebite than get stoned to death. And what about Peter? Didn’t they crucify him upside down on a cross? I’d rather die of snakebite.”

  He glanced over the top of his glasses to gauge my reaction. It sounded like a toss-up to me.

  Carl reminded me that he’d been bitten plenty of times by poisonous snakes. The bites had hurt bad, and he didn’t want to get bit again. But he said he intended to keep on doing the will of the Lord. He’d served four months in jail back in the mid-1970s for disturbing public worship and for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon — snakes. All he’d done was take a few rattlesnakes into another man’s church. “We were invited,” he said. A few years later, the lure of the world proved too much for him. He left preaching for seven years. Carl spent much of those years on the road, driving big rigs to the West Coast and doing drugs and chasing women. His cousin, Gene Sherbert, kept the church going in his absence, while Carolyn waited for him to return to his senses and start taking up serpents again.

  Now that he’d been back in the fold for almost seventeen years, Carl wasn’t about to back up on the Lord. “I’ve been high on dope, whiskey,” he said. “It’s like nothing compared to the Spirit.” He’d even handled cobras and coral snakes, he said. In my estimation, that was taking the idea of repentance too far.

  At a quarter to seven, Carl said we’d better get on over to the church. When he got up from the table, he looked distracted and grave, like any other Southern preacher with a sermon on his mind. He thoughtfully put on his coat and picked up his Bible and looked around the place to see if he’d forgotten anything. The kitchen adjoined a large and comfortable living room with paneled walls, bookshelves filled with photos of his children and grandchildren, and a big TV and VCR. Nothing at all out of the ordinary.

  Then Carl opened the door to the laundry room. Inside were three serpent boxes and two aquariums, containing a total of ten rattlesnakes, eight copperheads, and a cottonmouth moccasin. Carl opened the lid of a bright blue box with five timber rattlers in it. Three of them stuck their heads out. “Get on back in there,” he said as he tapped each of them gently on the nose with his finger.

  It had been almost a year since I’d covered Glenn Summerford’s trial, and I’d gotten to know the handlers well enough by then not to be too surprised when Carl tapped those rattlesnakes on the head. It was kind of a sweet gesture, I thought. I helped him load the snakes into the trunk of his car.

  Outside, it was a clear, cold night.

  “On New Year’s Eve, you looked like you wanted to handle one,” he said.

  I didn’t answer. That particular feeling had passed. But I was open to mystery in a way I had never been in mainstream churches. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that I would one day get the urge again to take up a serpent.

  Carl smiled at me and slammed the trunk lid shut. “It’s like nothing that’s ever happened to you,” he said. “You’ll know then why we do it.”

  What I didn’t tell Carl that night was that I had handled snakes all my life, but not, of course, in church. When I was a boy, I’d catch common water snakes in Village Creek, an open sewer that ran through the heart of Birmingham. These snakes weren’t poisonous, but they had nasty temperaments. And they were exceptionally ugly. Their banded markings disappeared with age. The older ones had dull, olive skin with keeled scales, and when they were excited, they emitted a bad-smelling fluid from scent glands at the base of their tails. Only their numbers recommended them. Village Creek teemed with these water snakes, and they were not that difficult to catch. I’d set out minnow traps in deep water under the Eightieth Street bridge. When I’d caught enough minnows to use as bait, I’d reset the traps in shallow water farther downstream, under the twisted willows or Tupelo black gum that grew along the banks. When the creek flooded during summer thunderstorms, these bushes would catch the city’s refuse — soggy wads of newsprint and toilet paper, rubbers, used Kotex, wigs and nylon hose, children’s stuffed animals, shoes, men’s plastic raincoats, and, occasionally, a woman’s brassiere.

  The best time to set the traps for common water snakes was a few days after the rains had ended. By then, the water would have cleared. Sometimes I’d catch two or three snakes in a single trap. These were generally medium-sized snakes, ones that could fit through the opening in the inverted coneshaped end of the trap. The biggest water snakes, the four or five footers, basked in the hot sun on higher ground. My friend Beaver Morrison and I would hunt them with sticks and a shovel in the cauliflower field that fronted the creek. The field was owned by Italians. They lived in turquoise houses at the end of the alley, and pretty much kept to themselves. Most of the time, we’d forget the Italians even lived there, until it rained and the whole neighborhood smelled of cauliflower.

  When approached in the open, these big water snakes would head for old rodent burrows deep in the weeds, and most of the time they would make it there before we could catch them. Sometimes, though, Beaver or I would get hold of a big, nasty water snake before it could completely disappear down the hole. I remember the thick, dry bodies, the uncanny strength. One of us would hold on to the snake. The other guy would use the shovel to dig out the burrow, and the freed snake, a blur of ocher and olive, would turn, charge out of the collapsing dirt like a bull. I’ve been bitten by common water snakes. It’s nothing, a humiliation more than a pain. But I know how snakes work, the physics of the bite. It’s not something to take lightly, even among nonpoisonous snakes. You can never predict what a snake will do.

  At certain times of the year in Birmingham, we could find baby water snakes under the rocks on the sandbar beneath the Eightieth Street bridge. They were bright and exquisitely detailed, with coppery, saddle-shaped bands and yellow jawl
ines, but they were also very quick. You couldn’t stop to wonder whether they were baby copperheads or not. You had to grab fast, without really looking, or they’d be gone. If you caught one, though, you were just as well to let it go. Baby water snakes didn’t do well in captivity. An adult, at least, though ugly, might occasionally eat a frog.

  There were plenty of frogs, and turtles, too, at East Lake, a short walk down the alley from my house. Unlike the names of residential neighborhoods these days, ours referred to a real thing, a lake three blocks long and one block wide. There had been an amusement park there in my father’s day, with a roller coaster, a tunnel of love, and pedal-driven boats. All that was left by the time my childhood rolled around were man-made jetties and a rock balustrade. I’d go to the lake just about every day after school to hunt for turtles, but I was also on the lookout for snakes. Village Creek paralleled the lake, with more water snakes, but of a different kind. We called them queen snakes, and I thought for many years that we had invented the name, until I found it in a snake book and knew from the photos that they were ours. Unlike the common water snakes, the queen snakes had no visible pattern on their backs at all. They were a smooth and even brown, a light caramel. But underneath, along the edges of their bellies, ran two sets of paired stripes, one gold, one green, like ribbons, iridescent in the sun. The queen snakes were agile climbers. They could not be caught in minnow traps or on the ground with sticks and shovels. They always sunned in the leafy branches of the willows and Tupelo bushes along the banks. A snake noose attached to a broom handle was the only way to catch them. And even then, they were hard to snare. The rawhide noose had to be slipped over their heads without touching, and deftly pulled tight. The approach was the key. Slow and incremental, without vibrating a single leaf. Queen snakes could drop into the water in the intake of a breath. Hunting them, I learned to be patient. I also learned to accept the inevitability of occasional defeat.

  On Saturdays, for variety, Beaver and I would hike to the city dump by the airport, the best place to find long, elegant green snakes and the tiny brown snakes called Dekay’s snakes, after the guy who first classified them. Dekay’s snakes could also be found in the flower beds of East Lake yards. When neighbors told stories about ground rattlers in the begonias, these were the snakes they most often were talking about. And then there were always ring-necked snakes and worm snakes, but these were so small and secretive, they most often went unnoticed by gardeners my parents’ age. The best snakes, the absolutely best snakes of all, came from Ruffner Mountain, a foothill of the Appalachians that overlooked East Lake. It was just out of walking distance from my house. We only tried walking it once. Other times, my father drove and dropped us off. We said we were hiking to the fire tower at the top of the mountain. But I always had my eyes peeled for snakes.

  The first snake I caught on Ruffner Mountain was a corn snake I saw wrapped around the trunk of a pine tree. Docile and graceful, it had scarlet blotches and an intricately patterned head, as surprising as though it were a piece of Arabian carpet found dangling in the Alabama woods. The corn snake ate mice, but I couldn’t bear to keep it long, even though my father had made me a first-rate snake cage with the power tools he’d bought after someone told him he needed a hobby. I let that corn snake go one day in the Italians’ cauliflower field and always hoped that I would see it again. I never did.

  My friend Bert Butts gave me my second Ruffner Mountain snake. It was a speckled king, big and black, freshly shed, with tiny yellow splotches from head to tail, as though a paintbrush had been shaken lightly over it. King snakes are famous for their placid dispositions. Like marine mammals, they seem to wear a perpetual smile, and they happen to eat rattlesnakes. I named this king snake Kuebert Wood, after a track star at a local high school. He would sunbathe on my stomach. I swore I’d never let him go. But then I caught a gigantic gray rat snake, five and a half feet, a record, I thought. I gave the rat snake the cage my father had built and relegated Kuebert Wood to a number-ten washtub with a screen on top, held down by rocks. During the night, Kuebert escaped. Well, I prefer to think he wandered off. I have hated the memory of that rat snake ever since.

  A final gift came from a friend named Galen Bailey, who lived closer to the mountain than I did. This snake was very delicate and rare, a scarlet snake, with alternate rings of red, black, and yellow. Except for the broken rings and the order of the colors, it looked exactly like a coral snake: quite perfect, but it wouldn’t eat. I kept it longer than I should have, because of its beauty. I hope it survived after I released it in the cauliflower field. With snakes, you never know.

  The poisonous snakes came later, when I was an adult. I have caught only three, and I did not keep any of them overnight. The first was a pygmy rattlesnake I found sunning on a grave in a cemetery in southwestern Louisiana, where I was stationed while in the army in the early 1970s. The pygmy rattlesnake is a small, stout snake, rarely over two feet in length. It is ill-tempered and can deliver a painful bite. Its venom is as powerful as that of larger rattlesnakes, but since less venom is injected at a time, the bites of pygmy rattlers are rarely life-threatening.

  This particular snake looked plenty dangerous to me, though. I was hung over. My first wife, Susan, and I had taken a Sunday drive to visit old cemeteries. It was spring. Tarantulas were crossing the road in droves. When I saw the pygmy rattlesnake on the grave, it seemed to be a sing. I had to conquer my fear of it. My heart beat faster. My palms ached. I found a stick, pinned the snake behind the head, and picked it up. Susan was horrified when I told her what it was. She’d hunted nonpoisonous snakes with me, but this was a little much.

  The problem, I discovered, was not in catching the snake, but in releasing it. How do you let a rattlesnake go without risking a bite? I wound up taking the steps in nearly reverse order: putting it on the ground, pinning it with the stick, and only then releasing my grip. It worked. I had accomplished something. The marriage lasted another four years.

  The second poisonous snake was a copperhead I found stretched out on a road on Red Mountain in Birmingham, the last snake of the summer. I was married to Vicki by then and teaching at the university. Again, I was hung over. I brought the snake home, stretched between my hands, and told Vicki to find an empty ice chest to put it in. She, too, was horrified. Then we drove into the country to let it go. I wrote a short story about the way it looked coming out of the ice chest and disappearing into the dark woods.

  Then I sobered up. We had our girls and built a house in the woods on the side of Sand Mountain. The last poisonous snake I caught was a canebrake rattlesnake that was crossing the pavement at the bottom of our driveway. I brought it up to the house so the girls could get a good look and know what kind of snake to avoid. Then I said I was going to let it go in the woods. I killed it instead. I do not believe it is necessary for a man to allow a poisonous snake to cross his property while his children are young. It is the only snake I have ever killed like that. It still bothers me some.

  There are two families of poisonous snakes in the United States, both of them native to our part of the South. The first, Elapidae, which include cobras, mambas, and other deadly Old World snakes, are represented in the New World by eastern and western coral snakes. Coral snakes are shy, beautiful, and extremely dangerous. Their venom is a neurotoxin that attacks the central nervous system, particularly autonomic functions such as breathing and heartbeat. Fortunately, coral snakes are reclusive by nature. They seldom bite, and when they do, their small mouths and fixed fangs make it difficult for them to successfully latch on to humans.

  The second family of poisonous snakes, the Crotalidae, contain the pit vipers — rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouths. The pits for which these snakes are named are infrared-heat-sensing organs that lie between the nostrils and eyes. With them, the snakes hunt their warm-blooded prey by seeking out body heat. The pit vipers are efficient killers, with large, flexible mouths; long, retractable fangs; and venom that attacks and destroys cel
ls and tissue. Victims die of internal hemorrhaging, cardiovascular shock, or kidney and respiratory failure.

  The least dangerous of the pit vipers to man is the copperhead, although its bite can, and does, kill children. The most dangerous is the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, which can grow to a length of eight feet and has a combative temperament and a large reservoir of venom. Somewhere in between lies the timber rattler, often called the canebrake rattlesnake in our part of the country. Herpetologists disagree about whether the canebrake is a color variation or a distinct subspecies. The timber rattler is the snake seen most often in serpent-handling churches, because it is the poisonous snake most readily available on the rocky hillsides and grassy valleys of the Appalachians. It shares its range with the copperhead, but appears to be more sociable, often found in large numbers in dens or burrows. The timber is somewhat smaller and less aggressive than the diamondback, but it is still a dangerous snake, unpredictable and with venom that can easily kill an adult.

  The timber rattler is also, to me, the loveliest of the rattlesnakes, varying in color from pink to straw to nearly uniform black, with sharp, dark chevrons on its back. Its neck is narrow and girlish, its head as finely defined as an arrow. Oftentimes the body of the snake is velvety in appearance. In such cases, the handlers will call the snake a “satinback.” Encountered in the wild, a large timber rattler, Crotalus horridus, is an impressive and frightening sight. When cornered, it rattles energetically and coils to strike. But its first impulse is to flee, and perhaps that, too, is a source of its beauty: a dangerous animal, exquisitely made, turning away from a fight.