Harry Crews - A Feast of Snakes

Susan Gender was excited. They were all excited, except Elfie, who sat feeding the babies Gerber’s strained food out of little green and yellow bottles. They were excited because they watched Berenice still compulsively talking unaware that they were setting her up to be, as Hard Candy said, ventilated by Joe Lon, who by this time had his game face on and was ready to work.

“We can settle the snake and you can all be judges,” said Susan Gender. “You feel up to a twirl-off, Hard Candy?”

“Always,” said Hard Candy.

“You’re up against a good one,” said Berenice. “My sister is a good one.” She crossed her strong baton-twirling thighs and Duffy Deeter thought Joe Lon would fall out of his chair. They were only waiting for Elfie to finish spooning the last jar of Gerber’s into the older baby. “We both went, you know, to the Dixie National Baton Twirling Institute for two summers. Two summers each, both of us.”

“Jesus,” Duffy said. “Really?” Besides liking the marvelously absurd ring of Dixie National Baton Twirling Institute, he loved the excited enthusiastic way Berenice had been babbling ever since she got there.

“Right,” she said. “It’s on the campus of Old Miss.”

“Dynamite,” said Duffy.

She talked on, a little breathlessly, waving her hands, her eyes turning now and again to check Elfie’s progress with the baby food.

“When we were there the Director of the Institute was Don Sartell. He’s known as Mister Baton, you know.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Duffy. He was wishing he and Joe Lon could double-team her little ass and thereby force her to give up all her secrets.

“I’m done,” said Elfie, turning her ruined smile on them. “This youngan ain’t eatin another bite.”

“Let’s get to that twirl-off,” said Duffy. He looked at Elfie. “Want to take the playpen outside for the babies?”

“Oh, they’ll sleep now they full,” she said. “We can leave’m right where they are.”

They let Elfie pass first through the door followed by Willard, Susan Gender, Hard Candy, and finally Duffy, who cast one lingering look over his shoulder toward Berenice just passing in front of Joe Lon. Joe Lon’s face was gray and tight. He looked a little out of control. Duffy closed the door.

As the door closed Joe Lon took her arm and spun her to face him. “Don’t!” Berenice said. “God, we can’t, not here.”

“Oh, I magine we can,” he said.

She wasn’t listening. She’d already broken one of her nails tearing at his belt. He took her by the wrist and led her down the short narrow hallway to a little room and threw her on the bed.

“Git naked and take a four-point stance,” he said.

The bed was right next to a wall and she braced herself firmly against the window ledge. He struck her from behind like she’d been a tackling dummy.

“You’ll make me holler,” Berenice said.

“Holler then,” said Joe Lon Mackey.

“You know how I always holler,” she said quickly. And then: “Oh, Jesus, honey, honey, honey Jesus.”

“Is that what you gone holler?” he demanded. “Is it Jesus honey!”

She could no longer talk. He had driven her close against the window. The blinds were drawn, but around the edge, through a half inch of warped glass, he could see Hard Candy and Susan where they were twirling off while Willard and Duffy and Elfie squatted on the hard-packed dirt, watching. Elfie kept turning back to stare at the trailer, sometimes right at the window where they were locked together looking out. Berenice’s hair lay in a damp tangle on her neck. Sweat ran on their bodies, darkening the sheet under them.

Joe Lon held the sharp blades of her hip bones, one in each hand, while he looked absently through the window. Berenice slowly turned her head to gaze fondly back at him over her shoulder.

“I must tell you, darling,” she said, “I love Shep.”

He told himself that he didn’t care one way or the other if she loved Shep but that talk of love was the last thing in the world he wanted to hear from her. From anybody. He refused to meet her eyes and finally she turned to gaze with him through the warped glass at Elfie where she still squatted outside the trailer with Willard Miller and Duffy Deeter.

“It doesn’t mean I didn’t love you,” she said.

“I don’t want to hear about it,” he said. “I don’t need that.”

“All right,” she said.

Outside, Elf turned to look quickly back toward the trailer but then she didn’t look any more because Willard put his hand on her shoulder and started talking to her, pointing at the girls, who were taking turns testing each other in complicated little dance routines, their silver batons flashing like swords in the sun. In the other room the babies slowly started crying, almost like singing, a chorus of something sad and interminable.

In a light conversational voice while they watched Susan Gender skip across the bare dirt yard outside, Berenice said: “You know, darling, baton twirling is the second biggest young girls’ movement in America. Did you know that? Uh huh, is though. Girl Scouts is Numero Uno. That means first. But baton twirling is the biggest if you don’t count Girl Scouts.” She turned to smile at him over her shoulder. “The reason is … well, there’s three of them.” She didn’t look back at him, but she braced herself with one hand and held up the other hand with three fingers for him to see. “Three. First you don’t have to go nowheres. You can do it in the living room or like them out in the yard — out in the yard. Second. No expensive equipment. Third. You can practice alone.”

“What good is it?” said Joe Lon.

“What?”

“I said what good is it?”

“Here, think about this. Did you know there’s a Who’s Who in Baton Twirling?”

Joe Lon said, “Studying them goddam foreign languages is done ruint you mind.”

“You honey,” she said, smiling back at him as she did. He made her grunt. She had to use two hands to keep from being punched through the window.

He watched Elfie glancing over her shoulder toward the trailer, ignoring the splits, the whirls, the twirling flashing batons. He did not know what love was. And he did not know what good it was. But he knew he carried it around with him, a scabrous spot of rot, of contagion, for which there was no cure. Rage would not cure it. Indulgence made it worse, inflamed it, made it grow like a cancer. And it had ruined his life. Not now, not in this moment. Long before. The world had seemed a good and livable place. Brutal, yes, but there was a certain joy in that. The brutality on the football field, in the tonks, was celebration. Men were maimed without malice, sometimes — often even — in friendship. Lonely, yes. Running was lonely. Sweat was lonely. The pain of preparation was lonely. There’s no way to share a pulled hamstring with somebody else. There’s no way to farm out part of a twisted knee. But who in God’s name ever assumed otherwise? Once you knew that it was all bearable.

But love, love seemed to mess up everything. It had messed up everything. He could not have said it, but he knew it. It was knowledge that he carried in his blood. Elfie was watching the window through which he was looking. He felt her eyes on his eyes. And the wavering window glass made her face softer, more vulnerable and afflicted with the pain of child-bearing than he could stand to look at.

The golden plain of Berenice’s back, gently indented along the spine by twin rolls of smooth muscle, was speckled with glittering drops of sweat. The musking odor of her came to his flared nostrils like something steaming off a stove. She was still talking, had never stopped talking.