Harry Crews - A Feast of Snakes

When they got to his purple double-wide, Joe Lon skinned snakes in a frenzy. He picked up the snakes by the tails as he dipped them out of the metal drums and swung them around and around his head and then popped them like a cowwhip, which caused their heads to explode. Then he nailed them up on a board in the pen and skinned them out with a pair of wire pliers. Elfie was standing in the door of the trailer behind them with a baby on her hip. Full of beer and fascinated with what Joe Lon was doing, none of them saw her. But Joe Lon could feel — or thought he could— the weight of her gaze on his back while he popped and skinned the snakes. He finally turned and looked at her, pulling his lips back from his teeth in a smile that only shamed him.

He called across the yard to her. “Thought we’d cook up some snake and stuff, darlin, have ourselves a feast.”

Her face brightened in the door and she said: “Course we can, Joe Lon, honey.”

Elfie brought him a pan and Joe Lon cut the snakes into half-inch steaks. Duffy turned to Elfie and said: “My name’s Duffy Deeter and this is something fine. Want to tell me how you cook up snakes?”

Elfie smiled, trying not to show her teeth. “It’s lots a ways. Way I do mostly is I soak’m in vinegar about ten minutes, drain’m off good, and sprinkle me a little Looseanner redhot on’m, roll’m in flour, and fry’m is the way I mostly do.”

“God,” said Susan Gender.

Duffy Deeter slapped Joe Lon on the ass and said, “Where’d you get this little lady, boy? Damn if you haven’t got you some little lady here.”

Elfie blushed, and Joe Lon didn’t answer. They followed him into the trailer. Joe Lon put on a stack of Merle Haggard and Elfie took the snake into the kitchen, where she wouldn’t let the other two girls come, saying: “It ain’t but room for one in a trailer kitchen. I’ll cook it up in two shakes.” Joe Lon got some beer out of the icebox and they all sat in the little living room looking out onto the campground. The babies lay in their playpen where their mother had put them, screaming and refusing to suck their sugar-tits. Joe Lon pulled at his beer and then said something to Hard Candy he’d been thinking on and off most of the afternoon.

“Why don’t you call you house and tell that sister of yorn to come eat snake with us?” He was unable to make himself say the boy’s name. “Tell’r to bring him that plays debate too if she feels like it. We got enough snake here for everbody.”

Hard Candy got up and called her sister. Directly, she came back and sat down. “Berenice said she’d be sliding in here in a sec but not to wait the snake on her.”

They all sat now without talking, pulling easy on the beers, a little stunned with alcohol and exhausted with dancing. Susan Gender said she hoped they had not hurt the little Spic and that he’d get back to Mystic all right, but nobody wanted to talk about it, so they let it alone and watched the layering smoke over the campground above the open fires that were starting up now among the trailers and campers and tents. Although it was still about four hours until sundown, the afternoon was beginning to turn cool.

Joe Lon had just come back from the icebox with more beer when Berenice came sliding into the yard beside his pickup in her new Austin-Healy. She had two batons with her, and she came prancing through the door, turning her brilliant smile on all of them, and explaining that Shep had stayed to talk with her daddy because he was seriously considering becoming a brain surgeon.

“Besides,” she said, a little breathless, beaming still, “the notion of a snake steak supper just made’m want to throw up. Shep’s got delicate digestion.” While she talked the batons slipped through her long slender hands in slow revolutions.

When neither Joe Lon nor Willard introduced them, Duffy said: “My name’s Duffy Deeter. That’s Miss Susan Gender. We’re both from Gainesville.” He gave her his own blinding smile. “Gainesville, Florida, not Georgia.” Duffy was wondering if his head could withstand a serious scissors grip from those powerful baton-twirling thighs.

“Why that’s the University of Florida, isn’t it?” said Berenice, whose fine-grit voice education had turned to Cream of Wheat.

“I’m in philosophy and theater arts,” said Susan. “Duffy’s not connected with the university. He’s a lawyer.”

“Oh, I do wish Shep had come. He’s so interested in philosophy and theater arts and law. A mind like a sponge, just like a big old sponge.” Susan and Duffy and Berenice beamed one upon the other. Joe Lon and Willard and Hard Candy sat bored and unsmiling and drunk along one wall.

Elfie came out of the kitchen wiping flour on her pretty apron. “We can eat any …” Elfie stopped and looked at Berenice. “Any time we want to we can eat,” she said, a sad tentative smile fading on her mouth. “Hi, Berenice. I didn’t know you was here.”

Berenice high-stepped across the linoleum rug and hugged Elfie like a sister. “Just got here,” she said. “Come through the door this minute. How you been, honey?” And without waiting for an answer: “You looking good. You looking one hundred percent.” She turned and pointed to the two babies lying now curled in exhausted sleep in their playpen in the middle of the room. “You got two handsome little man-babies, honey. I was just looking and thinking how handsome them little darlings were.”

Elfie blushed. “Thank you. Me and Joe Lon … Joe Lon and me, why, we think that… think that too.”

“You want a drink?” said Joe Lon.

Berenice shifted her beatdown magnificent haunches and turned to look at him. “A little light something might be nice before we eat,” she said.

“Oh, I’ll get it,” said Elfie quickly. “Let me get it.”

“Let me help you,” said Berenice.

“No, I can …” But the two of them were gone through the door together before she could finish.

When they were gone, Willard said: “She used to bubble a bottle like a goddam sawmill nigger. Now she wants a little light something. Jesus!”

“I got a little light something I’m gone give her,” said Joe Lon.

“She needs to be opened up some so she can breathe,” said Hard Candy, “that sister of mine does.”

“You gone try to put wood to Berenice?” said Willard. “Right here in the trailer with the babies and the old lady standing around?”

“Shut up, Willard,” said Joe Lon bitterly. “It ain’t nothing funny.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” said Willard Miller. “I’ll come over there and let you smell you daddy’s fist.”

They sat glaring at each other, but Joe Lon was bored with the game. Seemed it was one game after another.

“I don’t understand,” said Duffy, but he already suspected he did. “Run it by me again.”

“Them two used to be a case here in Lebeau County,” said Willard evenly without ever taking his eyes off Joe Lon. “They used to be a case when Joe Lon here was Boss Snake of the Mystic Rattlers.”

“She’s a fine-looking girl,” said Duffy Deeter.

“The world’s full of fine-looking girls,” Joe Lon said sourly.

“It ain’t full of Berenices,” said Willard. “Was, she couldn’t strike a lick on you like she does.”

“Then it must be my turn,” said Joe Lon. “Git everybody out of the trailer after we eat them snakes.”

“How the hell I’m sposed do that?” said Willard.

“You’ll think of something,” said Joe Lon. “You Boss Rattler now. It’s you goddam job to think of something.”

But he didn’t think of something. He was not the one. It was Susan Gender at the suggestion of Duffy Deeter who thought of something. After they had eaten the snakes and after Lummy had brought another bottle of whiskey and stood around at the back door long enough to tell them how Big Joe had called the store for somebody to come and bury Old Tuffy, and Duffy Deeter had found out that tomorrow night there was going to be a dog fight — champion dogs on which money could be bet — after all of that, during which time Berenice had talked excitedly and in detail about her trip to Europe to study French and Joe Lon had sat listening, choking on both snake and the thought that he had spent his time and life selling nigger whiskey and watching Elfie’s teeth fall out, they were once again cramped into the living room when Susan Gender said: “Hard Candy, let’s go outside and have us a twirl-off. Settle this snake down some.”