Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

“You’re not afraid of snakes, are you, Sheriff?”

I looked back over at Chambliss. He was smiling again.

“I wouldn’t say afraid. Wary. But not afraid.”

He walked over to the wall and ran his fingers through the snake skins. Some of them had rattles on the end, and they sounded like tiny maracas when he jostled them.

“Where did you find all those?” I asked.

“Oh, they’re easy to find if you know where to look,” he said. “I guess you could say I collect them. I like to think they remind us that we can change into something new. That’s what the good Lord can do for us when he grants us salvation, Sheriff. He makes us new. All the old, dead life falls away from us.” He looked over at me like he expected that to leave some kind of impression.

“I’ve heard something about that,” I said. “And I can see how that would mean something to you as a pastor, especially after what happened to you down in Georgia-that fire and all.” He looked up at me like he was shocked that I even knew about that, much less had the guts to bring it up.

“I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at,” he said. “I don’t think you understand either.”

“Sure you do,” I said. “A couple phone calls, and I traced you back to Toccoa real quick. I’ve just never had a reason to let on that I know about it until now. But like I said, I can see how you’d like those snakes. They shed skin, men shed skin. Skin grows back, sometimes it gets grafted on.”

“I served my time for that,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re even talking about it. It’s got no bearing on my life here.”

“It might and it might not,” I said. “But it’s funny what you find out about people after a little boy dies. It’s funny how it gets folks to talking about things they hadn’t talked about in years.”

“What are you getting at?” he asked.

“Does the name Molly Jameson mean anything to you?”

“I had nothing to do with that,” he said.

“Nothing that I could charge you with,” I said. “At least not right now. But this other, this little boy, that’s something else altogether. This thing can’t be left out in a garden and forgotten. It’s got to have some kind of conclusion.” He must’ve been telling the truth about that bulb having a short in it, because the light began to flicker off and on, and before I knew I couldn’t hardly see anything inside that barn. “You mind if we talk outside?” I said.

“Not at all,” he said. “But I need to tell you that I’m attending a prayer meeting this evening.”

“I won’t keep you long,” I said. “I promise.”

I WALKED OUT INTO THE LIGHT OF THE BACKYARD, AND HE FOLLOWED me. That thunderhead was getting closer, and the sky had started to darken even though we had a couple hours of daylight left.

“The days are getting shorter,” I said. “Seems like every year I forget it’ll happen, and every year it surprises me.”

“I know you didn’t come out here to talk about the weather, Sheriff,” Chambliss said. He was holding a rag and wiping at his hands. I watched him use it to get in between his fingers.

“I know you know that,” I said. “And you know I’ve never given a damn about what y’all do up in that church. I’ve never passed judgment about how y’all chose to worship, no matter what I heard people say about it. But this is different. Something happened up there on Sunday night, and I need to find out what it was.”

“What happens on Sundays in your church, Sheriff?”

“Mr. Chambliss, I haven’t stepped foot in a church in about twenty-five years, and stories like this one here make me think that’s been a pretty good decision.”

Chambliss laughed to himself and looked down at his hands and kept wiping at them like he just couldn’t get them clean enough.

“A few of the folks I’ve talked to seem to think y’all were attempting some kind of healing,” I said.

“If I knew who you’d been talking to, I might be able to give you some kind of bearing on the truth.”

“Well, I ain’t going to tell you who I talked to, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I said.

“You know Adelaide Lyle’s about out of her mind,” he said. “You can’t trust a word an old woman like that says.”

“You trust her with the church’s children, don’t you? As far as I know, one of them never died while she was watching them. That boy had a bruise the size of a football on his backside. I don’t guess you’d know anything about that, would you?”

“I can’t say that I do,” he said. “Young boys are likely to get all kinds of bruises.”

“That’s true,” I said. I turned toward my car like I was thinking about leaving. I even took a step toward the yard, but then I turned around and looked at Chambliss.

“I almost forgot,” I said. “You ever hear of something called petechiae?”

“No,” he said. “I ain’t never heard that word.”

I put my hands in my pockets and looked down at the gravel. “That’s okay,” I said. “Most folks haven’t.” I looked up at him again. “And I’ll admit that I hadn’t heard it either until it showed up in a coroner’s report about fifteen years ago.” I took a step toward Chambliss. “Down in Hot Springs, a man named Chestnut had strangled his girlfriend with a telephone cord and then shot himself in the head. It was just an awful scene in their trailer: blood everywhere. But as bad as that scene was, as bad as it was to see that man’s brains blown all over the wall and all over his sofa, nothing bothered me until I saw that woman’s face. Her eyes were open, and they looked like somebody had come along and just poured blood into them. I learned from the coroner that they looked that way because her vessels had exploded because her air had been cut off while he was strangling her. It wasn’t just her eyes, though. You could see that her vessels had burst under the skin around her cheeks, her neck. I can still see her face, just as blue as a robin’s egg, those eyes swimming in blood.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked. “I didn’t even live here then. I never knew those people.”

“That’s true,” I said. “You didn’t live here then, but you’re here now, and I’m telling you this because Christopher had petechiae, just like that poor girl did. But we know Christopher wasn’t strangled with a telephone cord. He died from broken ribs-three of them. That’s a strange thing to die of, isn’t it?”

“I reckon it is,” Chambliss said.

“Well, he didn’t die just because his ribs broke. The coroner’s report says he died because one of those broken ribs punctured a lung. He died of asphyxia. That means he suffocated, Pastor.

“Now, I don’t know what y’all do up in that church that could cause something like this to happen, but I want you to know that it’s all going to come out eventually. And I can tell you, the sooner it does the better it’s going to be for everybody. If it takes the court and subpoenas and the jail to get you to talk, then that’s what it’ll take. But this family’s got themselves a dead boy and no answers.”

“Are you threatening me, Sheriff?”

“No, I ain’t threatening you,” I said. “But folks get to talking after something like this happens. People get ideas, and they’re likely to place blame whether it’s deserving or not.”

“Are you one of them people?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not one of them people. I ain’t ready to blame anyone just yet. All I’m doing is looking for facts and trying to make sense of them. But it probably ain’t me and my blame that you need to be worried about.”

“Who, then?”

“You must not have seen what that boy’s daddy did to those men you sent out there to Miss Lyle’s on Sunday night.”