The Stills

by Jess Montgomery

  “Doesn’t work like that. Klara runs the household. I run the parts of George’s business he tells me to.”

  “Oh, I see. You’re both just hired help, then.”

  “No! I’m a trusted advisor.”

  Merely an enforcer. A goon, Fiona thinks. But she says, “That’s true. I’ve heard Klara give George advice, too, though.”

  “About what? She’s nothing more than a maid—and only that out of pity.”

  Interesting. Fiona’s never noticed George feeling pity for anyone. “Why would he feel sorry for her? Just because she was friends with his mother—”

  “She lost her husband on the boat over, and after they were in Chicago for a few years, her son—” Abe turns red.

  Now that’s really interesting. The notion of Abe turning red—from shame or even anger—is even more unlikely than George showing pity.

  And Klara with a husband and son … just as Fiona had moments ago dropped the candy on the floor, Klara had spilled her bag on the ride over from Cincinnati. That old-time photo that had fallen out … could it have been of Klara in years past, with them?

  “Well, it doesn’t matter!” Abe snaps.

  “It must to George,” Fiona says softly. “After all, you’ve known him for years, but Klara goes back all the way to George’s childhood, for as long as he can remember—”

  “We grew up together!” Abe snaps. “In Chicago. In the neighborhood. In school. Long enough.”

  “So George has known you nearly as long as Klara’s son, and George is loyal to her—so why isn’t Klara’s son working with you? Or taking care of her?”

  “There was an accident, it wasn’t really anyone’s fault, if Klara had been paying attention—”

  Abe lifts his right hand, claps it over Fiona’s neck, pressing her back so tightly against the seat that she can’t move her head. His words snarl around the cigarette still pinched between his lips. “How do you do that? Get people so twisted up they say things they shouldn’t.…” He pauses, then mutters, “Might be useful, someone like you, in the organization. If you weren’t a woman. And George’s wife.”

  She twists. Let there be bruises on her neck, too, then, or red marks at least.

  Abe pulls his hand away, as quickly as if he’d just been struck by a snake.

  Abe speaks softly: “Don’t try and turn Klara into a foe. And George never questioned my loyalty or competence until you came along, Fiona.”

  The rest of the trip is made in silence as gray and suffocating as the laden sky. It’s only when they reach the turn off Kinship Road, where at the bottom of a scant hollow sits Lily Ross’s farmhouse, snug under a soft mantle of snow, gray tendrils of smoke rising from the chimney, that Fiona fully exhales and realizes she’s been holding back her breath.

  CHAPTER 17

  LILY

  Friday, November 25, 1927

  4:00 p.m.

  Lily sits in the back pew of the simple church. She wipes her handkerchief across her sweaty brow. She’s kept on her coat, because of the scarf sling holding her throbbing shoulder still. The sanctuary is overly warm from a coal stove burning in the corner behind her.

  The heat, and the scene unfolding in front of the altar, make her light-headed, as does fighting the impulse to rush forth, to put a stop to what she is witnessing, to cry out against its madness, its danger.

  But such action is not her place. All she can do is force herself to sit still.

  There on the simple platform, beneath a cross twined together from two branches as rough and unhewn as Lily’s impromptu walking stick from minutes ago, stands the preacher—Brother Stiles—speaking so fast, so thickly, that Lily must guess at the words he is saying. A few other people stand in front of the simple bench pews, hands aloft, eyes heavenward, swaying back and forth, some mumbling, some crying out, “Yes, Jesus. Praise Jesus!” Others sing, old hymns that seem as ancient as the earth, the sounds emitting from some place deep within the singers’ souls. A few dance—though they’d not call it that—stomping, jumping, or whirling in circles. One or two are stock-still, as if struck by the hand of God.

  A few speak in words that sound like language but not English or the languages sometimes heard from immigrants in towns like Rossville: Lithuanian, Italian, German. “Speaking in tongues.” It’s a phrase Lily knows, referenced by her Presbyterian church’s pastor in a sermon condemning the practice. He’d cited Paul’s teachings in 1 Corinthians 14, exhorting believers in the value of preaching plainly: If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad?

  And, indeed, this looks like madness.

  The greatest madness, though, is Dora Harkins lying on a homemade stretcher at the front of the altar. Over her stands Leroy.

  Tears stream down his face.

  Standing several feet away is Ruth. She has her arms wrapped around her siblings, the twins, holding their faces against her skirt, as if she does not want them to see, even as she looks on, transfixed, at her father.

  In both hands, outstretched as far from his body as he can, Leroy holds a snake.

  A timber rattlesnake.

  “Blessed be this man, asking for forgiveness! He has confessed his sins and prays God shows mercy for his faith, prays that God will release his Holy Retributions, which he has smote upon Leroy’s wife, will see this act of belief and faith and respond in kind! Remove this cancer from her, O heavenly Father, that this sinless woman might live, and in living might show the heathens your mighty power!”

  The snake’s head and upper third of its body, from Leroy’s hand forward, is still as a stick. The rest of the snake’s body droops, undulating.

  Lily is as rigidly still as the snake’s upper body and—for now—its rattle.

  But her mind is aswirl.

  Is the snake terrified? Or perhaps mesmerized by the activities of the people before it, unsure how or where to strike?

  If it does come back to itself, Leroy has easily allowed enough of its body length to bend back so it can strike the underside of his wrist, his forearm, or inside of his elbow.

  It is possible to survive a rattlesnake bite. Death is not certain.

  Snake handling—or serpent handling, to signify that the snakes used for the rite are poisonous—began to be taken up in parts of Appalachia just seventeen years ago, in a Holiness gospel church, based on one Bible verse from the book of Mark. Lily’s pastor had warned against this new movement, based on a verse taken out of context.

  Forcing the will or word of God through signs, he’d said, is its own blasphemy.

  Lily agrees.

  And yet.

  She also understands what drives Leroy, what drives these people.

  From the fraught look on Leroy’s face, he wants only to conjure a miracle to save his wife’s life.

  Perhaps this is why the others are here, too. In solidarity with Leroy’s deep, desperate need. Perhaps they’d been drawn to this church for similar reasons. Or their own deep unease with their wrongdoing. Or the fear of death. Or from other fears and questions that plague every human in an always uncertain world, yet always feel so private, so individual.

  She, too, had lain in the stolid darkness of the night, yearning for that still small voice to speak and give her hope, comfort, direction.

  And heard nothing.

  Such silence could drive one to extremes.

  So all she can do is sit in silence, in stillness, considering: power, money, drink, rationalizations, even rites of belief—masks to hide from facing the darkest of all truths: No one can control much of what happens to them or their loved ones. Death and illness, pain and sorrow, will come.

  But without those masks, what is there to make that darkness tolerable?

  She ventures a glance at Benjamin, sitting next to her. He looks completely shocked at what is unfolding.

  Then she looks at Marvena, a few rows up. She, too, is
swaying, arms heavenward. Lily cannot tell if she is adding to the cacophony of voices. But she notes the tightness in her friend’s shoulders, the rigidity in her back, as if she is forcing herself to participate, as if she can will herself toward belief.

  And then it hits Lily—this is what Jurgis meant when he’d snapped at Marvena, You haven’t given our way a try!

  Marvena had not taken up a snake. Or allowed Frankie to do so. As Marvena had said at the still, she believes snakes to be creatures best left to their own devices.

  And Lily cannot blame her.

  But though Lily is angry at Jurgis for trying to push the choice, neither can she blame him for the desperation that’s driving him.

  The preacher swiftly moves a stick, with a thin wire loop on the end. He swoops the loop over the snake’s head, harnessing the creature, which begins to thrash, but the preacher pulls on the end of the wire, tightening the loop around the snake.

  Lily gasps, worried on behalf of the snake. Surely he’s not going to decapitate the creature? But then another man steps forward with a box, sliding back a lid that must fit in carved grooves at the top, and the preacher lowers the snake in the box. The man—a deacon, Lily supposes—slides the lid closed over the snake.

  Wait—Lily recognizes the man. Arlie Whitcomb, a distant cousin of Marvena’s. He’d worked for Marvena near on three years ago at her still. And he’d betrayed her, forcing Lily’s hand to bust up Marvena’s operation and haul Marvena into jail. And now they’re both worshiping here? Have they put aside their differences—or has Arlie gone back to working for Marvena’s new operation?

  But such concerns quickly slip aside as Leroy drops to his knees beside his wife, whether in relief or supplication to her or to God it is impossible to say. Sobs wrack his body as he lowers his head to her chest.

  At this, Lily must look away, though the congregants continue as before.

  Benjamin catches her eyes. She’d expected to see disgust or revulsion for what was happening before them, and indeed he might feel those things later. But in this moment, his eyes glisten with sorrow, and she knows it is for Leroy and Dora.

  Instinctively, Lily reaches to put a comforting hand on his arm, but Benjamin catches her hand mid-reach.

  Ah, there it is. The answer to her earlier question: But without those masks, what is there to make that darkness tolerable?

  There is connection. Community. Sometimes, love.

  She does not pull away.

  * * *

  After some time, the service ends.

  Then Leroy and Arlie come back up the aisle, carrying Dora on her stretcher. As she passes, people cry out with shouts of praise and thankfulness, as if Dora has already cast aside illness and miraculously risen to walk healthy and whole. As they approach the back of the church, Leroy ignores Lily completely, his face turned so she can’t catch his eye. Ruth and the young twins are still at the front of the sanctuary, taken over by several of the churchwomen, fussing and clucking over them.

  Dora calls out, “Sheriff Lily!” Her voice is thin, watery. If she’d uttered a word during the earlier events, Lily had not been able to hear it.

  Lily moves toward the end of the aisle, but Leroy and Arlie keep walking.

  “Please, please, stop!” Dora cries.

  Leroy takes mercy on his wife. They lower Dora to the floor at the end of Lily’s aisle.

  Lily rushes over, drops to her knees quickly. She’d nearly forgotten about her shoulder with all that has transpired, but the jolt to the floor ricochets up her body and into her shoulder, and she almost winces. She gulps a cry of pain back just in time as Dora reaches her hand out from under her blanket.

  She grasps Lily’s good arm, her hand surprisingly strong but oh so cold. The coldness of granite. Lily meets Dora’s seeking gaze, the woman’s watery blue eyes nearly twitching with a need to know.

  “My boy … my boy…”

  Lily hesitates just a moment. Zebediah had led a revenuer here—or tried to. But Marvena was a moonshiner as well as a worshiper here, and hadn’t Marvena snapped just yesterday that some of her best customers were also worshipers here? She does not yet know if the revenuer is here—if he’d found sanctuary. Or if she would need to come back with more bloodhounds and men and search for him.

  Lily leans forward, whispers gently, “He has come around. He will live. He will be fine.”

  Lily sits back up. Now Dora’s eyes overflow, but there is a spark of joy in them. And something else—a release. Knowing her boy will be fine is all she needs to finally let go.

  Lily blinks hard but does not pull her gaze from Dora.

  “You the praying kind, Sheriff?”

  Lily nods. She is. Intermittently. Often in anger, asking why or why not. Not often enough with thank you, as at dinner yesterday.

  “Pray for me, then?” Dora asks.

  She does not mean pray for her to be saved from cancer, Lily realizes. She means for her journey from this life to whatever awaits on the other shore to be swift and merciful.

  And so Lily nods. “I will.”

  Lily stands, watches the men bear Dora out, hears the shouts of praise and thanks rise again. But to Lily, Leroy and Arlie look like pallbearers.

  Marvena comes up alongside her. By the sorrowful look in her eyes, Lily knows her friend is thinking the same.

  “Come,” Marvena says.

  * * *

  There is a small private room, built off the west side of the church, the only other room besides the sanctuary.

  Lily notes that storage shelves fill one wall of the windowless room: the bottom ones holding several boxes like the one she’d seen the rattlesnake returned to, the other shelves fitted with wood and wire cages.

  Arlie opens an unoccupied cage. A rattle shivers from another cage through the room and up Lily’s spine. Then Arlie holds the trap box perpendicular to the opening to the cage and carefully slides up the lid, freeing the snake to glide into the cage. As soon as it’s in, its head at the back of the cage, he pulls the box away and quickly shuts the cage door, so hard that several snakes rattle and hiss.

  His hands, Lily notes, are trembling.

  “Admiring the handiwork of my dear wife?”

  Lily turns, looks at the preacher—Brother Stiles. This is how Marvena had introduced him. No first name. And not “Pastor.” “Brother,” to imply that he stands equally with his congregants—though, of course, this clearly isn’t the case. This is Brother Stiles’s church.

  His wife isn’t with him, but he’s beaming proudly as he references her. “She’s the one that came up with the system of the cages and boxes. I thought you’d like to know we have a role for women. Figured that’d be important to you.” He gazes at her badge, flicks his eyes back to her. His grin hardens a mite, just a little clench to the jaw to show he doesn’t approve of her taking on a man’s job. “Appropriate roles, of course.”

  Lily looks around. Benjamin, by the door, is scowling at the scene. Marvena, standing by Brother Stiles, is expressionless. Arlie Whitcomb, over by the snake boxes, looks worried, and Lily wonders again about his presence in this church alongside Marvena, given their history. They all stand as if on guard—Lily wonders if snakes can sense human tension.

  “I was actually wondering about the snakes,” Lily says flatly.

  Brother Stiles looks eager. “Well, in Mark, chapter—”

  “I know what the Bible says. I’m curious about their well-being. I don’t see any bedding. How do they get water? Do you feed them? They’re used to certain temperatures outside—”

  Arlie laughs. “The woods are filled with snakes. You’ve seen one snake, you’ve seen ’em all. I’m one of the snake hunters. They’re harder to find in the winter, so we tend to ’em more during the cold months, but they’re aplenty, which, a-course, you can’t know, being from the big town—”

  “Be respectful, Brother Arlie!” the preacher snaps. He looks at Lily with pity. “This soul may yet be saved if she comes to understand o
ur ways. This was the case with you, and even your cousin Marvena, forsaking the sins of liquor, overcoming your past differences to join the body of the Lord.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lily looks at Marvena. Her expression has not changed a whit. Arlie, though, turns a mite red. And there is a pulpy bulbousness to his nose that could be left over from his drinking days—or could be recently worsened.

  “The snakes are ours for using to prove through signs of our faith,” Stiles is saying. “God has provided them for our use.”

  Lily stares at him a long moment. She’d been taught that God had entrusted all his creation to mankind’s care, and to honor the use of his creatures for sustenance or shelter with humility and gratitude. That’s why Mama insisted on saying blessings over each meal.

  She turns to the cages, catching a glimpse of the snake that Leroy had been holding earlier now curled up in a corner. She’d never thought she’d feel sorry for a rattler.

  She looks pointedly back at the preacher. “I’m not here to mock. I’m here to ask about a man named Colter DeHaven. Zebediah Harkins has testified to me that he saw the man shot, and brought him here. For sanctuary. He wasn’t sure where else to take him.”

  The preacher frowns. “There is no man by that name here. You’ve seen our church—there are no places to hide anyone. And why would Zebediah have witnessed such a thing—”

  “Th’boy was working for me,” Marvena blurts. “I—I’ve taken up shining again. I know that means I need to leave the church, but I did it for extra money for—”

  “Sister, if you had need, you should have said something—” Stiles starts.

  “I didn’t need pin money! I needed real money! And Zebediah, well, I caught him loitering near my still when he should have been in school, and I figured the best way I could keep an eye on him was to have him do a little work for me.” She slides her gaze to Arlie, who looks terrified. “He told me he’d learned of my still being back in business through the kids of some of the adults here who’re some of my best customers. But I ain’t naming names.”