Tom Piccirilli - November Mourns

Shad’s breathing grew rapid. Had he been this horny for years and only just now noticed?

“Well, what do you want then?” she said. “And why you creepin’ up behind me like that for?”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m just-ah-”

How did you explain yourself, about why you were here? Or why you were glancing left and right looking for your dead sister’s hand to give you some sign?

“You’re just what?”

“Looking for the church,” he told her.

“Why?”

“I want to learn more about it.”

It softened her face, and she said, “Not many strangers are interested in our ways. Who are you?”

“Shad Jenkins.” As if his name held its own meaning and had nothing to do with him at all. “Were you waiting on someone?”

“I was hoping to see him today.”

“Who?”

“Not you. I surely wasn’t expecting you. I don’t think, anyhow.”

Shad couldn’t argue with that so he just stood there. She did the same. The seconds ticked off like the passing of ice ages. You could waste half your life standing around wishing that somebody else would make the first move.

The princess of goblins held firm to her stoic pride, unafraid but expecting him to do something terrible. It got to him after a minute and he backed away and started to walk south again.

“I’m Jerilyn Gabriel.”

“Lucas Gabriel’s daughter?”

“Yes.”

He stepped to her and saw that her eyes were green with flecks of gold in them catching the light. She crumpled the remaining pages into a ball and threw them into the water, picked up a stick, and poked them down until they sank into the mud.

Letters to an unrequited love? Diary entries containing the secrets of her tribe? Some words counted for more if you released them into the world, even if they went unread.

“Can you show me the way to your, ah, settlement?” he asked. He didn’t know if the community even had a name. What did you call it? A community? A colony?

“You from town?”

“Yes.”

“I hardly ever go there into the hollow.”

“Why?”

“They’d call me a witch.”

“Would they? Why do you think that?”

“We handle snakes. That scares a lot of townsfolk.”

Shad couldn’t see it. There were enough granny women still sticking to the old ways that nobody in the hollow would give her any trouble. As he was discovering, the folks he’d known all his life were a superstitious lot that ran on fears they couldn’t even name. No one would bother her except the men at Dober’s Roadhouse catcalling from the alleyways.

“Don’t it worry you none? That I might call a rain of rattlers down on you?”

“No.”

“Maybe I’ll just do so. Teach you a lesson for sneaking up on people.”

She eased closer to him, studying his face. As if he might be someone she knew but didn’t fully recognize. She shifted to one side and checked his profile, reached out like she might ruffle his hair. He was hoping, but she didn’t. She was a girl of many half-completed movements.

“What are you examining me for?” he asked.

“Nothing, just considerin’.”

“Okay. Considering what?”

“You ain’t him, are you?” she said, and her voice was suffused with both hope and regret.

“Who?”

“Him.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then you’re not.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“You want to come for supper?”

Ten minutes ago she’d looked at him like he’d escaped from a chain gang, and now he was being invited home to dinner. “Maybe your family wouldn’t take kindly to having another place set beside them. I just want to talk to some of your congregation for a few minutes.”

“Come eat and talk with them all,” she said. “They look forward to sharing with strangers.”

“Really? Why?” Shad asked, genuinely interested. “I thought you people stuck together because you didn’t want outsiders coming around and inconveniencing you.”

“Nah, the hollow folk are always welcome. But hardly any come round.”

“Hardly any?”

“Some come to sit with my daddy.”

He kept thinking of her father being the Goblin King with two handfuls of destruction.

She led him downstream, over embankments that sloped to marshy areas that reminded him of the river bottoms, even though they were three or four thousand feet above the Chatalaha by now.

The wind blew harsher, carrying with it leaves and moans through the boles. Jerilyn shivered and leaned over to take Shad’s hand. She tugged him closer, insistent but also obliging. Self-assured and sexy but somehow also critical, as if testing the structure of his fingers, reading his scars, appraising the bones. She used her thumb to gently rub across his knuckles, the same way Elfie used to do, like, Baby, baby, all will be fine, go sleep now .

They walked in silence, listening to the complaints of the deepening forest. The sun spun down through the branches laced overhead, skewering the ground with golden spearlike shafts. The woods closed in here, briars knotting into a grove of thorn and thistle anchored by oak and drifting boughs of slash pine. The cedar below was matted and wet with dew and heavy November sap.

Shad scanned the bark and didn’t see any buckshot or bullet holes nearby, but the trunks were scarred with thin chop marks. They probably used machetes to cut through the catclaw thickets.

When they broke into a clearing, Shad heard wild giggling.

“There,” Jerilyn said, pointing. “That’s where we live.”

They had their children out gathering the snakes.

SHE STARTED FORWARD IN A RUSH, AND THE TAWDRY color of the trees reared around her. Shad got his bearings and found himself stumbling into a bedlam of activity, as the brush rustled and parted with laughing kids and rattlers.

Two diamondbacks slithered over his boots. He leaped back with a startled grunt and almost dropped over on his ass.

What would have happened then? Would they have sprung for his face, latched on to his cheeks?

“Goddamn,” he whispered. Revulsion nearly overpowered him. Two girls no more than ten years old bumped into his leg, looked up at him, and smiled. He had to fight the urge to run.

So this was how they had fun up here past Jonah Ridge. Roundups.

He watched the parents carrying their croker sacks, drinking beer, and encouraging their children. They cheered and gave advice, pointing out the snakes in the deep grasses. No one wore gloves. Several Plexiglas containers hung open, with their lids unlatched. Someone sang a hymn Shad didn’t recognize. Adults stood in small groups here and there holding crooked metal rods, pouring gasoline in small amounts and setting fires to drive the snakes from their holes.

Pubescent boys leaped over the flames and dove into the undergrowth.

Nobody showed the slightest bit of apprehension. Kids carried snakes back in their arms, thrown over their shoulders. Holding two or three in each hand. They were playing with the things.

Once their sacks were full the folks emptied them into the containers.

He knew the original intent of roundups was to rid certain areas of rattler overpopulation. Gather and destroy as many snakes as possible. In some states, dealers harvested the skins.

An old-timer with a sunburned pate and a Mount Sinai voice ambled by, and said, “Hey there, how you today?”

Shad couldn’t even bring himself to nod in acknowledgment. The guy used a metal rod to trap a diamondback against the earth, hook it up, and draw it closer. The snake opened wide and bared its dripping fangs as the old man stuffed it into his sack. The muscles in Shad’s jaw ached from clenching his teeth.

He recognized most of the different species from books he’d read in the can. Seeing them all in one place surprised him. He didn’t think so many different species could live together in such a small area: garter, cottonmouth, ringneck, hognose, diamondback, indigo, and yellow rat snake.