The O. Henry Prize Stories 2014

by Laura Furman

  Shakily challenging the apparent, the almost certain, this flimsy exercise in supposition was tenuous and vague. But Cecilia knew it would not go away and reached out for its whisper of consoling doubt.

  Colleen Morrissey

  Good Faith

  WE CAME ACROSS THEIR broken-down auto while we were on our way from Sikeston, Missouri, to Dexter—a glossy red Stanley Steam with a white cloud streaming from its front. In 1919, I was twenty years old, born just before the century turned, and this June traveling across the Midwest would be the first time I saw a twenty-dollar bill, and the second time I got bit by a rattler.

  My sister, Jessica, and I leaned out the window of our family’s wagon, trying to see why we had stopped. Papa got down off the front to talk to the two men who were standing by the auto. Their faces were half-hidden by caps, but next to erect, squinting Papa, their bodies seemed loose and relaxed. The one nearest, talking to Papa, was smiling.

  “They look rich,” Jessica said to me.

  I looked over my shoulder, down the line of wagons behind us, and they also had multitudes of heads protruding from them—all except the reptile wagon, which had no windows. I pulled my head back inside and swung open the door.

  “Where are you going?” Jessica said, at the same time as Mother, who had been fanning herself in the shadows, lounging deeply on the green love seat. “Rachel!” she said. “Don’t be foolish. Let Papa take care of this.”

  I stopped at the threshold, the dusty summer air dry on my face. Daniel, who was sleeping with his head on Mother’s lap, moaned at the breeze. “Close it,” Mother said. “You’re disturbing Daniel.”

  I closed the door and rejoined Jessica. A few men of the Church were standing around the auto with Papa and Mr. Forrester, the master handler. They were talking to one of the well-dressed men, who gestured and smiled with an easiness that seemed to verge on impertinence. Papa walked past our window without a word, then returned with a tank of water. He hauled it over to the auto, and the other well-dressed man, unsmiling, helped him lift it to the crown of the auto’s grille. Papa’s legs splayed under the load, and so did the man’s. His trousers pressed tightly against his legs. This man would give me my first and only twenty-dollar bill, and his name was Samuel Pattinson, but all I knew of him in that hot afternoon was the cut of his trousers and the square of a wallet in his back pocket. I could not yet see his face.

  The smiling, unoccupied man who was not Samuel Pattinson broke from the Church men and began sauntering down the line of wagons. As he neared, Jessica pulled her head inside and tugged on my elbow, but I stayed where I was, watching him. He purposely scuffed his burnished leather shoes against the dirt as he came, and finally lifted his head so I could see him. His face was pointed and handsome, his hair a deep brown beneath his cap. He gave an openmouthed smile and tugged at the brim of his hat when he saw me.

  “Miss,” he said. He seemed to be chewing on something, tobacco or gum. I watched his eyes moving over the side of the wagon, reading what was painted there. “ ‘Free Church of the Savior,’ yep, I’ve heard of you. Who’re you free from?” He had a Yankee accent, like everyone in those parts—dry and clipped and nasal. I was brought up in Mississippi, in our own meek, secluded town along the Pearl River, going to the piney church house for school and town gatherings and everything, only leaving to sleep or to go on our summer tours.

  “False religion,” I replied, “which calls itself Christian.” Jessica pinched the skin near my elbow, but I wrenched my arm away from her.

  “Who you talking to?” Mother asked from within the wagon.

  “You one of the folks that charms snakes?” the man asked.

  “I said who you talking to?” Mother said, upsetting Daniel as she stood up and charged over to the window. Jessica dodged away as Mother leaned out and saw the well-dressed man. “Who are you?” she asked imperiously.

  He touched his cap again. “Christopher Brown, ma’am. Your man up there is helping my friend cool down his engine. My friend Samuel Pattinson.” He said his friend’s name as if it should mean something to us. He waited for us to react, but when we did not, he said, “I wanted to know if your girl here can charm snakes.”

  “Many of us, by the grace of the Lord, handle serpents and do not fear the bite,” Mother said.

  “Yeah,” he laughed, “but does she?” He nodded in my direction.

  “Our worship is not entertainment, Mr. Brown,” Mother said, and I slid back into the shadows of the wagon, knowing already how the conversation would proceed. I went to sit on the love seat, where Daniel was rubbing his eyes and pouting. I let him lay his blond head on my lap, and I watched Mother’s dress shimmy with the vehemence of her words as she said out the window, “If you desire the cleansing touch of the Lord, and approach our worship with a pure and contrite heart, then you may see us handle serpents in Dexter, like everybody else.” She angrily shut the window.

  “Oh, Mother, it’s hot in here,” Jessica complained, but Mother ignored her. She roughly moved Daniel’s legs so that she could sit down on the love seat, then put his legs in her lap, stroking them like she would a dog. Soon, we were moving again. The love seat was too low for me to see anything out the window but the sky.

  When we arrived in Dexter at five that evening, I found out that Mr. Pattinson and Mr. Brown had followed us. The two of them were talking to some of the Church men again, Mr. Brown smiling away. I got a good look, for the first time, at Mr. Pattinson. He was bigger than Mr. Brown, both in height and weight, with a solid middle that had just a little fat to it, but he looked strong and youthful. Beneath his cap, he had freckles and wiry eyeglasses, which were strange in combination. He could’ve been a man in his forties or just a big teenager. As I helped Daniel down the back steps of our wagon, Papa came walking up. He didn’t look at Mother, but he made a dissatisfied, suspicious noise to her, staring in the direction of the two strangers.

  The other handlers were unloading the reptile wagon, bringing out box after box of snakes, their containers decorated with beads and glass and renderings of the Lord Jesus. I knew I should help, but I stayed near our wagon and watched the strangers. Papa said a few words to them, then waited while Mr. Pattinson said something in return. Then Papa pulled his straw hat deeply over his forehead and walked away. Mr. Brown was still smiling. He clapped Mr. Pattinson’s back, and I heard him say to the other Church men, “We’ll see you all at the show!”

  “Our worship is not a show, Mr. Brown,” said Mr. Malcolm.

  I turned away and went to the reptile wagon. The handlers were carefully moving the boxes to the bed of our black Ford truck, the only auto the Church had in its possession. I could hear the snakes hissing as Mr. Forrester, who was standing in the wagon, gently passed the boxes down into waiting hands. When the wagon was nearly empty, Mr. Forrester passed me a crimson box, one I’d painted myself, carefully covering up the COCA-COLA and then spelling out my favorite passage in black: TO THIS END WAS I BORN, AND FOR THIS CAUSE CAME I INTO THE WORLD, THAT I SHOULD BEAR WITNESS UNTO THE TRUTH. EVERYONE THAT IS OF THE TRUTH HEARETH MY VOICE. Inside, sliding around, was a six-foot-long diamondback rattler, my rattler.

  “They sluggish ’cause they so hot,” Mr. Forrester said. “Best set up the tent and get them cool right quick.”

  There was already a crowd. Our services had become quite popular during our summer travels, and we didn’t have to go into the towns and shout out in the squares to attract people—they already knew we were coming. Mother looked more and more heartened at each new crowd, saying things like, “Well, maybe the Lord’s voice is still heard after all,” but I knew what they really wanted to see. No one had been bitten so far in this tour—none of the faiths of the handlers so far had been anything but exceptional, no one had yet wavered—but I knew the looks in the eyes of all the strangers who watched us twine the snakes around our bodies. They did not come to see our faith. They came to see if tonight would be the night when one of us got bit.

&nbs
p; This audience watched us with anticipation, some of the younger children in a tight cluster about ten feet from the truck that held the snakes. Once every few minutes, the bundle nudged a single child toward the truck, but each lost his nerve immediately and pushed back into the group. People were admiring the Stanley Steam, running their hands over the smooth red hood and talking to Mr. Pattinson as if they knew something about cars. Mr. Pattinson and Mr. Brown, meanwhile, leaned against it, their feet up on the running board. Mr. Brown had a cigarette that put firelight on his cheeks, and Mr. Pattinson leaned over so that he could light his own, balanced in his lips, on Mr. Brown’s match.

  By sundown, we lit the torches and invited everyone inside the big tent. There was a lot of excited talking as they fanned themselves and glanced eagerly around, but that all stopped when Papa mounted the platform. I sat to one side with the other women, listening to Papa, and looked over the crowd. Mr. Pattinson and Mr. Brown were in the front row. Mr. Brown was smiling with insolent constancy, but Mr. Pattinson was listening intently to Papa. His face did not have the rapt, frightened look that most people wore when they heard Papa’s truth. Rather, he looked as though he were a foreigner with a broken understanding of our language and customs, and he wanted to have things explained.

  When Papa finished, there was applause, thunderous from the other Church members and scattered from the crowd. “Let me tell you now, people,” Papa said, “that the great Lord does not leave his would-be servants without assurance, without great assurance, without signs.” This was the cue for the handler of the night, and tonight it was me. I stood up and moved to the center of the stage, and Papa moved to the side. Mr. Forrester picked up the crimson box sitting at his feet, the box that the crowd had been eyeing all night, and approached me. “This is my daughter Rachel,” Papa said, putting his hand on my shoulder hard and squeezing. “She has put her faith”—he drew a breath—“in the Lord. And because she has such rock-hard faith, she fears no evil, no pain.”

  Mr. Forrester lifted the top of the box at its hinge and presented it to me like a piece of jewelry. The crowd leaned forward. Directly in front of me were Mr. Brown and Mr. Pattinson. Mr. Brown had the salivating look I was familiar with, but Mr. Pattinson was watching me with an expression like worry. He leaned forward and half raised his hand as if to stop me. For some reason, his expression and gesture filled me with fear, and I looked away from him and into the box. There was my rattler, coiled, making a bull’s-eye pattern in black and white with his diamond-speckled hide. I could not pick up the snake in fear—it showed a lack of faith in the Lord, and lack of faith got you bitten. I heard people creaking in their seats as they waited for me. I prayed hard. Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, descend on me. Finally, I felt the last bit of the strange fear wash away and reached into the box. Ignoring the gasp of the crowd, I lifted my rattler and draped him over my neck, wrapping his tail around my waist. Careful of his head, I wound his front end around my right arm and then held up my hands.

  I had been handling snakes for five years, and sometimes it was just an expression of faith where the rattler stayed the rattler and I stayed me, but sometimes the Holy Spirit would come upon me. I never knew when. It would swoop down and take me without warning. That night, as my rattler filled my palm with his snout, his tongue darting between my fingers, I began to smile as I felt the Holy Spirit coming. Some of the handlers would flail and loll, even as their snakes coiled around them, but I didn’t like that. I kept completely still as the Holy Spirit settled upon me like snow, filling my eyes with whiteness, making everyone and everything around me disappear, bringing down sweet silence. My snake had become a rope of fire that it didn’t hurt me to touch, and then the fire melted into me so that I was empty-handed and unafraid. Then I began to melt away too. The Holy Spirit was blotting me out, taking me in. But then it withdrew, and I began returning to the platform in the tent, piece by piece. I once again felt the weight of my rattler on my shoulders, became aware of his sour smell. I found that I was on my knees in front of the crowd.

  “By their fruits ye shall know them!” Papa shouted as the crowd erupted into applause. Mr. Forrester bent over the edge of the stage to give the collection plate to the woman at the end of the first row. My rattler slowly tightened himself around my waist and arm. I got to my feet and looked down at Mr. Pattinson. He was applauding, his colliding hands making his shoulders shake as he frowned.

  When the worship was over, after we had taken down the tent and put away the snakes safe and sound in their wagon, I gathered with Mother, Jessica, and Daniel to go to sleep. Our wagon was very small, and Jessica and I shared a bunk built along the top of the wall. Mother unrolled a mat and slept on the floor while Daniel slept on the love seat. We were surprised on this night by Papa knocking on the door. He usually slept out in the open. It made him feel closer to God. But it soon became clear that he hadn’t come to sleep.

  “The two strangers, Pattinson and Brown, will follow us when we leave tomorrow.” He looked right at Mother, spoke to no one but her, and stayed in the open doorway.

  “Why?” Mother asked.

  “They are curious about our ways. I won’t turn away men who want to love the Lord.” He turned his head and spat on the ground behind him. “Answer their questions.” He looked at Jessica and me. “But guard yourselves against them.”

  “You think they will be respectful?” Jessica whispered to me once we were in our bunk.

  “One might,” I murmured back.

  They did follow us, from town to town, in that red shellacked car. They ate with us, and they helped us put up the tent and take it down again. If we were near a town, they spent their nights in the local hotel or inn, and if we were on the road, they slept in the Stanley Steam. A few people—like the uppity Mrs. Malcolm—were angry with Papa for a while, complaining about the cost of feeding two full-grown men three times a day, and after a few hours of silence, Papa finally told them that the men were paying for their keep and anybody who questioned his judgment again could just stay at the next town we came to.

  I don’t know how everyone got over the initial distrust so fast. After a day or two, they all liked Mr. Pattinson, though his excessive questions sometimes annoyed them. They generally disregarded Brown. Right away, I knew that Mr. Brown’s sole purpose in coming along was to mock us, and on the second night, I whispered to Jessica in our bunk, “How can Papa let something like money make him keep unbelievers around to make fun of us?” She shushed me and breathed, “Mama’s not asleep yet.”

  I couldn’t make up my mind about Mr. Pattinson. Mr. Brown kept smiling, as if he thought it was a grand joke, but Mr. Pattinson was intensely interested in us. I watched him during the first supper he ate. He was seated down the table from me, leaning over a chicken bone, asking Mr. Forrester question after question. I was just waiting for them to lose their interest and head back home, wherever they came from. The days passed by, though, and they stayed.

  Out of the forty-some members of the Church, only about ten were between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. Besides Jessica and me, there were four other girls. Even the sillier ones knew better than to go out of their way to talk to Brown and Pattinson, but they talked about them behind their mothers’ backs. The strange men had a multitude of clothes—the girls counted four separate outfits—jackets, waistcoats with watch chains hanging out of the pockets, and these queer short trousers that buttoned below the knee, which they wore with tall, light socks. Once, Mr. Brown, cigarette in hand, came over to us as we were washing clothes in the half-dozen wooden washtubs we carried with us, and he asked us if we had a light. But Mr. Pattinson appeared right quick and took him away by the elbow, asking us to excuse them. The other girls softly exclaimed about his nerve while grinning at each other, but then I said, “Just think of how many poor folks could eat if he sold his suit,” and they stopped.

  I didn’t avoid Mr. Pattinson and Mr. Brown, but I didn’t go out of my way to see them, either. After a week, they both
knew my name and had spoken to me a few times. Once, as I was alone in the wagon, braiding my hair before breakfast, Mr. Pattinson knocked on the door, looking for Papa.

  “My father is hardly ever in here,” I told him. I stood in the doorway looking down at him.

  “I see,” he said. “If you see him, will you tell him I’m looking for him?”

  “I will.”

  He smiled at me. The sunlight hit his eyeglasses, turning the lenses white. His smile created two bowing lines on either cheek, perpendicular to his mouth. “Thank you. Rachel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Rachel.”

  I closed the door.

  It was not until we approached the Ozarks that I had an extended conversation with Mr. Pattinson. We had stopped at high noon for dinner, and I was sitting on a fallen tree just out of sight of the road but not out of hearing. My rattler’s crimson box was open on my knee, and I was watching him swallow a squirrel.

  “Is it almost your turn again?” Mr. Pattinson asked, coming from the direction of the road. “To perform?”