Harry Crews - A Feast of Snakes

“Be doin fine,” she said.

“Good,” he said. Then: “Well, somebody got to keep these goddam fools from killing each other. Weren’t for me, these sumbitches would eat each other alive. It’s been times when they damn nigh done it spite of me.”

“I don’t misdoubt it,” she said.

“Want another drink?”

“No.”

He took a long pull at the bottle and then leaned across and flipped down the glove compartment and put the bottle in it. He fumbled there for a moment, and then flipped the door shut.

“I was looking for you this morning,” he said. “Where the hell you been?”

She told him about her mother having the miseries, about how she had to go cook for Mr. Big Joe and Beeder.

“Shit,” he said, “I was over there myself to see that dog of his’n. Musta just missed you over there. I’m gone put ever goddam thing I got in hock to go on his dog Tuff.” He laughed. “Might even mortgage this fuckin Plymouth car.” Then seriously: “Did you see that girl of his, Beeder?”

“Uh huh,” said Lottie Mae. She wondered why he kept squirming around over there in his seat. He was worse than Little Brother in church. But she didn’t look. She didn’t want to know. She stared straight ahead into the gathering darkness.

“You feeling good?” he said.

She still did not look at him. She spoke to the dark flashing trees beyond the headlights. “Where you taking me?”

“It’s all right,” he said.

“Where you taking me?”

“I ain’t seen Beeder Mackey in … what is it now? I was three years ahead of Joe Lon at Mystic High — none of the colored went there then — and he was two years ahead of Willard. Shit, I ain’t seen that girl in, it must be six years. What does she look like now, anyway?”

“Watch that TeeVee of hern,” she said. “An stay in her room.”

“Seem like to me she was gone grow into sompin real good,” he said. “That’s what I remember.”

They drove down a dirt road in silence. Finally he said: “But you feeling all right now, right? You feeling all right?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “All right. That’s fine with me. I don’t want to talk either. Look here what I got. Look at it. Right here. See.”

She knew without looking that this was what he had looked for her for and what he had brought her in the sheriff’s car for and that there was nothing else she could do but look. She turned her head and saw a snake standing in his lap. Right in his lap a snake rose straight as a plumb line, no striking coil in its body but arrow straight on its tail, and at the top of its body the mouth was stretched and she could see the needle fangs like tiny swords. It was the snake she had been waiting for, that she had been preparing for since that morning in Beeder’s room.

“How about that?” he said. “What do you think?”

She did not answer but in a movement she had been practicing in her mind all day she bent to her ankle where the straight razor was wedged inside her shoe and in a single fluid movement she struck his lap and came away with the snake in her hand, its softening head with the needle fangs still showing just above her thumb and forefinger.

She raised it aloft and was amazed that it did not struggle but hung limp from her hand utterly dead and beaten. She raised her eyes to Buddy Matlow’s and found him staring over the wheel of the Plymouth, his face leached of all color, his lips struggling to speak and pointing to his lap where now a fountain of blood shot into the air and ran over his legs and dripped down into the floorboard of the car.

“You … you … cut it off.” He finally managed to say.

She said: “I always known I could. I always known I would.”

She opened the door and got out. Buddy Matlow struggled behind the wheel. He looked at her and made a noise, not a word, just a noise. There was still no pain, but he had gone instantly light-headed with terror and loss of blood. He knew he was dying. He knew he ought to be doing something, but he did not know what it was. Lottie Mae bent and looked at him through the window.

“Wait,” said Buddy Matlow. “Wait.”

“Be through now,” she said and walked away from the car. She did not walk slow, but she did not walk fast either. She had done what she had waited all day to do. She remembered where she was going, that her mother had sent her to Big Joe’s, that she was supposed to help Miss Beeder.

She had to walk past the school and the open field where they did the football. There were more people there and more noise and more open fires than she had ever dreamed there could be in one place at one time in the whole world. In the middle of all the people was a snake, three stories tall standing against the darkening sky, coiled to strike. She kept to the edge of the crowd in the gathering dusk and was not afraid.

At Big Joe’s, she went directly to Beeder’s room and Beeder asked immediately: “Did they burn the snake yet?”

“What it was. You gone have to talk it up?”

Beeder watched Lottie Mae’s slow purple mouth move in the flickering light. But Lottie Mae was already turning to watch the television. Her eyes and teeth were now brilliant in her face. She licked her lips and squinted and did not answer. Tanks roared across the land. Airplanes dropped bombs. Geysers of sand and stone and bits of metal flew from the earth. A turbaned woman knelt beside a man and rocked and wept. She finally turned her face up toward the black sky where airplanes still dropped bombs. She screamed and looked as though she had no lips, as though the lips had been cut away from her dry broken teeth.

Lottie Mae recognized the man who talked when the guns and the planes and the bombs stopped. It was the NBC Nightly News. It was Lottie Mae’s favorite program. Much better than the detective stories where you had to put up with a lot of talking and fooling around before you got to the good parts. NBC Nightly News went straight to the robbing and killing, the crying and the blood, burning buildings and mashed cars. Them NBC Nightly News sumbitches was mean. Soon kill you as look at you. Killed somebody ever night. Sometimes drowned whole towns in the ocean. Or made babies grow together at the shoulder.

A man had come on now trying to sell Ford automobiles: “The closer you look, the better we look!”

Beeder and Lottie Mae’s eyes left the screen at the same time and their gaze joined across the soiled bed.

“I didn’t hear you,” shouted Beeder. “They burn the snake or not?” Then when Lottie Mae still did not answer: “Anybody hurt?”

“Not I’m a mind of.”

“Didn’t fall on anybody, nobody burned, no bones broke?”

“I ain’t seen it.”

They were shouting at each other. It was the only way they could be heard over the NBC Nightly News.

“Can we turn hit down?”

“What?”

“Turn hit down, the TeeVee!”

“What?” shouted Beeder.

Lottie Mae went over and turned the television all the way down. Beeder sat up in bed. “What did you do that for?”

“I wanted to tell you. I cut hit off.”

“You ain’t got no call to turn my TeeVee down. Now turn it back up.”

“I cut hit off at the ground. Shrunk hit up till hit wont no biggern you little finger.”

Beeder was beside herself. “This room’s mine! What I say goes.”

“Tetched it one time with this and hit come off in my hand just like a natural thing.”

Lottie Mae was holding a straight razor up in front of her. The blade was honed thin and bright and terrible. Beeder stopped shouting. She got quietly off the bed and adjusted the sound so she could hear it but not so loud they had to shout. She stood beside Beeder and they both watched the thin shiny steel razor for a long time.