by Joss Cordero
He shook his writhing offerings at them—a terrifying tangle of copperheads and timber rattlers. Smoker, seated front row center, flinched when the preacher turned toward him with the undulating reptiles.
“God’s Son has come,” shouted the man who’d talked in tongues.
“He walks with us,” yelled the sobbing woman, her face bright with beatitude as she danced forward, holding out her arms to the music and the inner music of her faith.
Inspiration swept through the congregation, men and women moving to the pounding of the bass. The men closest to the stage held their hands out to the preacher so he could pass snakes to them. As more boxes were opened and snakes handed round, Smoker was tempted to hold out his own arms. Dottie’s voice inside him said, Are you out of your mind?
Until now all the snake handlers had been men, but now an attractive woman wound a rattler round her forehead like Cleopatra’s headband. A celestial smile on her face, she moved with the snake as if they were a pair of lovers, the creature slithering sinuously down her shoulder and arm.
Smoker couldn’t take his eyes off the graceful woman. When it came to heightened consciousness, he thought, snake-handling had it all over naked yogis meditating in caves or American Indians hanging from hooks in their chests or any chemical high he could think of. Then he felt the preacher staring at him.
Meeting his gaze Smoker was snapped back to reality. He remembered why he was there, and knew that though he’d been welcomed into the congregation, he wasn’t going to get the information he wanted unless he dropped his spectator’s role and accepted whatever his hosts offered.
He looked around for a small snake, while Dottie’s voice inside him said it was a crazy, completely reckless thing to do. As he dithered, Courtney Borkowski rose up before him screaming, You didn’t protect me, motherfucker. The least you can do is get justice for me.
Reaching his hand toward what he hoped was a small snake in a friendly mood, he saw to his alarm that he was being given a four-foot rattler.
Four feet of venomous serpent blithely coiling around his forearm and brushing his cheek with its snout gave him a rush that he hoped wasn’t terminal. He felt the creature’s strength and its control as it whipped its elastic vertebrae back and forth, effortlessly propelling itself up the back of his head and across his neck.
For an intense act of faith you couldn’t beat being covered in poisonous snake, and an unexpected thrill surged through his body, the thrill of playing with death and of death playing with him. With a shock of wonder he realized—I’m anointed.
He felt the same wonder in everyone around him. The preacher shouted, “Show the Lord your faith,” and Smoker knew his own faith was total. He would capture Zachariah Whitman.
The rattlesnake moved down his other arm, its rattles scraping his neck. It raised its head and looked around as if it wanted to continue past him.
The man who’d given him the snake extended a hand, saying, “I have it, brother.”
With a certain amount of reluctance tinged with an equal amount of relief, Smoker let the enormous serpent travel on.
Shuffling arthritically to the music, an old lady moved toward the stage, climbed the stair, and approached the table. Near the empty snake boxes stood a jar. She unscrewed the lid and tilted the liquid into her open mouth. Since Smoker felt fairly sure this was a teetotaling crowd, he concluded he was seeing what Ingersoll had told him about; the old lady was drinking strychnine.
A convulsion ran through her frame and she gripped the edge of the table to steady herself, or to keep herself from levitating. The shudder passed, and through a throat that was probably on fire she croaked, “Christ . . . is . . . my . . . king.”
A teenage girl in a frenzy collapsed on the floor, and two older ladies helped her back to her feet as if it were routine. Not a snake bite, Smoker realized, just an overdose of rapture.
Shirt soaked and hair plastered with sweat, the preacher signaled the winding down of the service by placing a snake back in its box. He held out boxes for others to do the same. But even when the snakes were shut up in their boxes, the euphoria remained. Hugs were exchanged, and kids raced around until their mothers quieted them down. The preacher threaded his way through the crowd and put his arms around Smoker. “However you came upon us, brother, you’ve shown your faith. Let your sins be washed away.”
“It’s going to take a lot of washing.”
The preacher pointed to the cast-iron stove radiating in the corner. “Fifteen years ago, I was as black as that stovepipe with sin. But the Spirit hauled it on out of me.” His pointing finger moved toward the chain hanging from the rafters. “Had to do it with chains, it was so heavy. But here I am, still standing, and at your service.”
“That was an impressive demonstration of the Spirit you gave.”
“No more than yours, brother. A man has to trust his feelings when it comes to serpents, and today you trusted.”
“Have you ever been bitten?”
“Lord, yes. Bitten, died, and resurrected by the Lord.”
“Amen to that,” said a hoarse voice behind them.
Smoker turned and saw the elderly woman who’d taken a swig of strychnine. Was that what made her eyes shine? He could feel the faith boiling out of her.
“A big man like you,” she said, “could take a deal of poison.”
“Maybe next time I’ll try.”
“It’s a harsh drink, but you’re welcome to it.”
She led him toward a table holding a bowl of punch that he assumed she hadn’t laced with strychnine. He received a couple of shy smiles from those already at the table; he’d taken up a serpent and was no longer a stranger. He felt himself smiling back with a huge, stupid grin and realized that the euphoria of snake-handling still hadn’t dissipated in him or them. They were all high. Once again he contemplated a move to Tennessee, churchgoing every Sunday. If the snakes didn’t kill him, Dottie would.
Accepting a paper cup of punch and a chocolate chip cookie, he was reminded of sharing drinks with the Palm Beach Irregulars, though when it came to irregularity, he had to admit the Holiness Fire House of Prayer far outstripped the Holmes society. And the cookie was outstanding.
“Take another one.” The attractive woman who’d danced with a snake around her forehead held out the plate to him. She had blond hair fading to gray, worn in a braid down her back. Her flowered cotton dress, though shapeless, couldn’t hide her big possums, as he’d heard them called on the truckers’ channel on his way up to Tennessee. Big possums, small waist, and nice legs from what he could see of her calves and ankles. Close up, her face was asymmetrical; in one cheek was a dent like a healed-over bullet hole. She offered the cookies with such a proprietary air he figured she was the baker.
“You aren’t from around here,” she stated. “You come from Memphis or Nashville or some other big town.”
He looked down at her hand and saw no wedding ring. She pulled her braid forward so it lay over one of her possums, and asked him, “Did you expect to take up a snake today?”
“I didn’t know what to expect,” he answered, trying not to stare at her possums.
“I don’t do it often myself, but this morning I felt called.” Her tone implied he had something to do with her feeling.
From nearby he heard the rustling of snakes in their boxes, and the shuffling of the elderly lady retrieving her jar of strychnine from the stage. There goes a human being walking around with a lethal dose of poison in her. He quietly asked, “Does she drink strychnine every week?”
“She’s been doing it for years. Spirit protects her.”
“How about you?”
“What about me?” she asked with a flirtatious smile.
“Well, what’s your name?”
“Danielle.”
“I’m Tim.”
They gazed at each other.
He asked, “Have you been handling snakes for years?”
“I’ve handled some big ones.” Her look suggested he was one of the big ones she wouldn’t mind handling.
He had that floating sensation he knew well, of the sexual current between two strangers. But he also suspected one wrong move would cause rural paranoia to descend between the crowd and him like the metal shutters on the windows of a West Palm pawnshop. The bass player walked over, stared at him, and stalked away.
“Dewayne,” said Danielle, as if that explained the musician’s moodiness.
The preacher was circling back in their direction, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. “Whatever brought you here don’t signify,” he said to Smoker. “I’ve seen it happen before. A man comes for what he thinks is his own business, but once he’s here, God gives him a taste of glory.”
“For which I’m grateful. But I still have to do the business I came for.”
“And it has to do with your friend?”
“Actually, he’s not a friend,” said Smoker. “He was raised in a church like yours, but he went wrong.”
“And you’re taking it upon yourself to bring him back to God.”
“He’s killing women.”
Silence fell on the congregation.
Even the snakes seemed to fall still in their boxes.
“Can you help me find him?” Smoker asked. “The first murder he committed was thirty miles from here.”
He reached into his pocket, took out the photo of Zachariah Whitman, and handed it to the preacher, who studied it and indicated his okay by passing it on to Danielle.
She said, “That’s the child Emmy Meeks took to rear.”
She passed it along to the strychnine-drinking lady, who said, “He was the youngest of Emmy’s niece’s kids.”
She passed the picture to the next woman at the table, and then, as the keepers of local genealogy, they all chimed in.
“His ma didn’t want him around ’cause she thought he was foolish.”
“He weren’t foolish.”
“Just different.”
“And Emmy made him differenter.”
“Keep on testifying,” said the preacher. “Root it on out. We aren’t here to shield Satan.”
“Emmy never had a child of her own and she was too old to learn on that boy.”
“She did her best, but it weren’t natural.”
Smoker asked, “Where can I find her?”
“In the cemetery,” said Danielle.
“Can you tell me anything about her?”
“She was the last of the washers.”
The strychnine-drinker explained to Smoker, “Before the undertakers took all that over.”
“She washed the dead?”
“And laid them out.”
“She made that boy help her when she got too frail.”
“He learned good too. After Emmy died, he laid her out something beautiful. Then he left. We never saw him again.”
That seemed to be the end of the testifying.
“Azariah Whitlock,” added the preacher, and the others nodded their agreement. That was the name of the boy old Emmy reared. And that, thought Smoker, is close enough to Zachariah Whitman. Like so many felons who changed their names, Zach hadn’t strayed far from the original.
Silence again claimed the congregation.
“Thank you.”
“Let the Holy Spirit guide you,” said the preacher.
Smoker sensed them gravely watching as he left the lonely church.
He stood outside beneath the mountains in the cold, pale sun. After the high emotion of the service it surprised him to see how few vehicles there were parked in the field. Slowly he moved toward his car.
Footsteps behind him made him turn. Danielle was walking toward him. He felt the current between them, and thought, How am I going to get out of this one?
“You going back to Memphis?”
“Florida,” he said.
“How is it down there?”
“Warm.”
“I don’t like when it gets too warm.” She brought her braid around again and laid it down over her possums.
Holding his gaze she said, “Emmy never should’ve made that boy wash women.”
So she hadn’t followed him outside because she found him irresistible. Something more serious was on her mind.
“My baby sister, Myrt, was only twenty-three when the Lord took her . . .”
She fumbled in her bag, opened her wallet, and showed him a worn snapshot of a pretty blonde. “I did wrong to let that boy touch her body when she was dead and helpless.”
She lifted her eyes to Smoker’s for an answer that didn’t come.
“That’s what gave him the taste, isn’t it?” she asked.
“We can never know these things.”
“That sounds like fancy city talk to me.”
An image forced itself into Smoker’s mind, of a young adolescent boy alone in a room with a pretty blonde lying naked on the bed. His job is to purify her for heaven. And in that hour they spend together, he’s bewitched.
Azariah Whitlock, Also Known as Zachariah Whitman . . .
Zach stared at the screen of his laptop in dismay. There he was on the first page of the Palm Beach Post, exposed to the world as who he really was. But how had they discovered his real name?
His two names, old and new, and a description of him were underneath the familiar photo. Beside it was a sketch of him in a black hat and beard.
He put his hand to his face, running his fingers over the stubble he’d settled on as a compromise, neither bearded nor clean-shaven. So far, Aunt Emmy had kept him safe, but now he had the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped between his past and future as if they were two packs of wild dogs closing in on him.
In his trailer at his latest no-questions-asked trailer park, he’d been careful not to sit outside, or do his neighbors favors, or even say hello to anyone, though it went against the manners Aunt Emmy taught him.
Peering in the mirror above the kitchen sink he didn’t think he looked like either picture in the paper, especially when he put on his baseball cap and chain sunglasses.
Even so, it was time to go. Good-bye to the trailer park. Good-bye to Florida altogether. Good-bye to his angel.
He looked at his city map and located the Greyhound bus station. He would head for Louisiana. He’d always wanted to see New Orleans ever since reading about the death cults there. It would be easy to disappear in a big city like that, until he was called upon again. He imagined the next woman, going about her business in New Orleans. She’d never heard of him, this unknown woman, but her smile was a beacon guiding him. This was the way it had always been, a string of angels beckoning to him.
He slipped the laptop into his knapsack, packed his saddlebags, fastened them and his sleeping bag onto his bike, and left the trailer park. The moment he was out and rolling along in the darkness, he felt better. The wild dogs were still barking, but he was ahead of them. If things got bad, he could cross the border at an unprotected point and escape into Mexico. From working in the fields with migrant pickers, he knew enough Mexican to get along. Maybe his next love was beckoning to him from Mexico.
Lately he’d been losing track of hours and the days of the week. He wasn’t sure if it was Saturday or Sunday, just that there were hours to go before dawn. Pedaling toward the Greyhound station, he glanced at the few trucks and cars passing him, and thought, as he often did, about the normals. He could never be one of them, but he didn’t want to be. They were slaves to lives of triviality, while he was free. This very moment proved his freedom. He could survive anywhere. Nobody could pin him down. Not even time could pin him down. He had been touched by glory.
And suddenly he realized who the Judas was who’d betray
ed him to the normals.
He decided to delay his departure for a few more hours.
Operators were flooded with calls from concerned citizens who said they’d spotted Azariah Whitlock aka Zachariah Whitman. Every crank in the county phoned in leads, from the usual hopefuls who wanted a reward to a gaga old broad named Mrs. Zuckerman who claimed the killer used to do her shopping for her.
The two who knew Zach best—Red at his trailer park and Fiorello at his funeral home—didn’t call, having nothing profitable to report.
Red was sleeping in his bed while the hunted man was pedaling through the darkness. As for Fiorello, he was beginning to look back on Zach with nostalgia, as a paragon of punctuality, reliability, and diligence, if you overlooked the small matter of decorating corpses. Subsequent night watchmen had been moronic, sloppy, and irresponsible. The last one hadn’t even phoned, just hadn’t shown up, which explained why Fiorello was reluctantly filling in himself, dozing on a couch in the smaller of the two viewing rooms in Fiorello’s Funeral Home. It was a sign of the times that a night watchman was even necessary. Only eight blocks over, a funeral home had been broken into and an Aegean copper casket stolen, either for the burial of a beloved criminal or to strip down for scrap metal. The cremation urns would undoubtedly show up in pawnshops throughout the state.
So Fiorello was spending the night on the premises. Maybe he wouldn’t have been sleeping so peacefully if he knew that Zach had made a copy of the key he’d used while working there. Zach always copied keys, as part of his impeccability.
Zach ascertained that the only vehicle parked outside the funeral home, other than the hearse and limo, was Mr. Fiorello’s Lexus. He wouldn’t have to wait for the boss to show up.
He wedged his bike behind the hearse to keep it out of sight, and stealthily unlocked the main door, which opened into the elegant entrance hall. The night-lights shed a bluish glow on matching couches and wing chairs. Potted palms and unlit standing lamps loomed like lords of the underworld in the semidarkness. The familiar hushed and holy atmosphere brought his lost happiness rushing back. This was the paradise from which Mr. Fiorello had expelled him.
