West Palm: The Complete Novel (18 page)

I
t was midafternoon when Smoker reached the site of Zachariah Whitman's first murder. Two mountains cast intersecting shadows, explaining how Cross Bottom, Tennessee, got its name, and Smoker wondered what sort of people would choose to live in this hollow of foreshortened days. People of faith, he reckoned, who saw the sudden drop of darkness as the hand of God.

When night's full darkness dropped on him he was in his room at the Sleep Well Motel. According to the folder on his bedside table, he was still in time for squirrel hunting, and the fish were biting; he noticed that many of the motel's visitors were dressed in vests with multiple pockets and armed with fishing tackle and coolers. The exceptions were the Saturday night lovers next door, four in one room. Unlike Matthew's porcelain cairn terriers, all of them were humping.

The small space heater did little to dispel the mountain coldness, so he drew himself a hot bath through vintage plumbing that emitted a musical series of sputterings. After drying himself with the thinnest towel he'd ever encountered, he put two plugs in his ears, laid a sock across his eyes to block out the light that came through the gap between the curtains, and went to sleep.

Next morning he drove to a long dirt road, at the end of which stood the Holiness Fire House of Prayer, a barn dwarfed by the surrounding mountains. No sign marked it as a church, a sign in itself that they'd had trouble with the law. According to the printouts the Crooked Man had given him, the new young generation of snake handlers in Tennessee worshipped openly, but this congregation near Cross Bottom was old enough to have suffered several Sabbath deaths over the years, which accounted for its wariness.

A single half-ton truck was parked in the field. The driver stepped out, eying Smoker quizzically.

“I hope I've come to the right place,” said Smoker. “I was told there'd be a church at the end of the road.”

“Depends what road you're on.”

Smoker wasn't sure if this was hostility or a style of preaching. Optimistically assuming the latter he said, “I'm hoping it's the road to Jesus.”

The man studied him closely, then seemed to relent a little. “You're on it, brother, but you've come a long way.”

“A friend sent me here.”

Suspicion resurfaced like a snake from its hole. “And who might that be?”

“He calls himself Zachariah Whitman.”

“Let me mull that over.” He walked around to the back of his truck and lifted out a box. Smoker heard a rustling sound coming from it.

“Go on in and get yourself a seat up front,” said the man.

Smoker did as he was told, choosing a folding chair in the first row. A pleasant smell of old hay and horses still lingered in the barn, and he found himself wondering about real estate in rural Tennessee. Just as he'd pictured himself tying up his nonexistent boat at Seafarers Landing, he pictured himself now with a stable for his nonexistent horse.

Shafts of winter sunlight shone down through the cracks in the roof, and a chain formerly used to off-load hay hung above the slightly elevated stage; at the end of the chain, instead of a pulley, hung a cross made of twisted branches. A cast-iron coal stove gave off just enough heat to take the chill out of the barn.

As the congregation trickled in, Smoker noticed a subtle dress code among the women. Nothing tight, low-cut, or flashy. No makeup or short haircuts. Some of the men carried boxes, which they placed on a table on the stage.

Three musicians arrived with a set of drums, guitar, bass, and amplifiers. Even here in this unmarked church at the end of nowhere, you couldn't escape amplifiers. The bass player frowned at Smoker as he tuned his instrument, either with suspicion or listening for the note he was after.

At ten o'clock the doors were closed, and the man Smoker had
met outside mounted the stage. He tapped his microphone, gazed in silence at the congregation until silence settled on them too, and struck up the service by calling for the song “Jesus Took the Outlaw Out of Me.” Smoker learned that the outlaw in question had been partial to pills, booze, and fast women, until he was led out of darkness.

When the tune was finished, the preacher read a passage from the Bible, then swung into a rhythmic commentary, punctuated by drum rolls, jingling tambourines, and a scattering of “Hallelujahs” and “Amens.”

Gradually, both mood and music intensified. The preacher paced excitedly back and forth, banging his Bible for emphasis. A couple of elders moved through the congregation, anointing heads with oil. As the oil touched the man to Smoker's left, the gentleman began talking in tongues, sounding like something from the flight deck of a space alien movie. When the oil-soaked finger touched Smoker, he bowed his head and prayed he wasn't on a wild goose chase. A woman behind him started sobbing. A little boy leapt out of his chair and took the opportunity to show off his cartwheeling. As if on cue, the musicians launched into a rocking beat that pulled the rest of the congregation from their seats.

An ecstatic feeling was building, but with ominous overtones.

Only Smoker was still sitting.

Overcoming his reticence, he got to his feet. Now that he was upright he couldn't just stand still and gawk, so he clapped and swayed with the rest, as the preacher punched the air and shouted, “Satan, take
that.
”

The preacher spun round toward the table where the boxes had been placed, opened the lids, and plunged his hands in without giving any thought to what the snakes were up to. “When you grab the Lord, you grab everything,” he shouted, drawing forth two handfuls of huge serpents and turning back to the congregation.

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.