She was insinuating (a Kenny Thibodeau dirty-book word) herself against me as hard and fast as I was insinuating myself against her.
I suppose in the murky past I’d wanted the beautiful Pamela Forrest this badly but it was really murky. Nobody had ever seemed as fresh and vital and fetching as Kylie did right now.
And then she was up and grabbing her purse and rushing out the door.
“I’ve got to get out of here!” she said. “I don’t want to do anything I’d regret.
Good-night, McCain! I’m sorry!”
At seven-thirty the following morning I sat in my ragtop on a shelf of shale above the cup of grassy land where the hill folk lived. My field binoculars were trained on the Muldaur trailer behind the church. At 7ccdg, Viola came out with a magazine and a roll of toilet paper in her hand and headed for the outhouse to the east.
How’d you like to face the outhouse every morning?
Summer would be bad enough-but Iowa winter when it was twenty-five below zero?
She didn’t go back to the trailer till 8ccbd.
Daughter Ella carrying, presumably, the same roll of t.p. but a different magazine, emerged from the trailer at 8ccdh and went to the outhouse. She stayed only till 9ccjc.
At 9ccbf I got the opportunity I’d been waiting for. Viola got in the rusty truck and drove away, leaving Ella behind. I drove down to the trailer and walked up to the door.
The place smelled of decades-old grime.
The yard was spiked with broken glass, empty bottles, rusty cans. A Tv turned low hummed in the front wall.
I knocked.
As I waited for a response, I turned to look at the land behind the church. I wondered how thoroughly Cliffie and his minions had searched the area of weeds and buffalo grass and the four rusty garbage cans.
I turned back to the trailer when I heard the door open but by then it was too late. The angry man had his shotgun pointed at me.
Bib overalls, T-shirt beneath, massive head, shoulders, forearms.
“C’mon,” he said.
He was the keeper of the gate. The man who’d let Kylie and me into the church that first night. The man arguing with his wife a little later on, striking her.
“What’s your name, anyway?”
“You think I’m afraid to tell you? It’s Bill Oates.”
“What’s with the shotgun, Mr. Oates?”
“I want to take you somewhere.”
“I came here to see Ella.”
“Ella don’t want to see you.”
“It’d probably be better if I heard that from her myself.”
“We suffered a loss. You don’t seem to understand that. You shouldn’t be botherin’ people at a time like this. If you was pure, you wouldn’t be.”
“How do you know I’m not pure?”
“You work for that Judge, for one thing. And I’m told you’re going around with that Jew woman.”
“And that makes me impure?”
He smiled and for the first time I saw the stubby blackened teeth. “I guess we’re going to find out, ain’t we?”
You’re probably ahead of me on this one. Not even when he marched me over to the church at gunpoint did I realize what he had in mind.
Slow learner, I guess.
The church interior was shadowy. The chairs were arranged in orderly fashion. The altar was dark.
On a hot day like this all the ancient service-station odors rose up. You could almost hear the bell on the drive clanging to life and a motorist saying, “Fill ‘er up, would ya? And I guess you’d better check the oil.”
And then I heard them. And then I had my first understanding-dread, actually-of why he’d brought me here. And the real implication of his “pure” remark.
He nudged me down the aisle with the barrel of his gun.
I began to make out the dimensions of the snake cage. I tried to guess from their sudden hissing and rattling-the approach of intruders-how many of them there were.
“What the hell you going to do?”
“Just keep walkin’.”
I stopped. In an instant I weighed the threat-getting shot in the back versus having to do something with rattlesnakes. So I stopped.
He stabbed the barrel of the shotgun nearly all the way through me.
“I said to keep walkin’.”
“I’m not going near those damned snakes.”
“Watch your language. This is the house of the Lord.”
“And I suppose the Lord wants you to put those snakes on me?”
“You’re not pure.”
I flung myself forward, hitting the floor and rolling to the right. I was slower than I’d hoped and he was much, much faster. He put a bullet about three inches from my head. It ripped up some concrete and ricocheted off the far shadowy wall.
You could smell the gunfire; the rattle of it echoed in the small place.
“Get up.”
He came over and kicked my ankle so hard it felt broken.
“You bastard.”
He kicked me again in the same place. Even harder.
“The next time you use a word like that, I’ll put a bullet in your brain.”
The bullet or the snake? They each frightened me but in different ways. At least a bullet didn’t have those glassy eyes and those fangs and that forked tongue and that-But I got to my feet. I didn’t want to die on the floor there. Got to my feet and tried to stand tall but it was difficult and not just because I’m short. It was difficult because my right ankle hurt so much where he’d kicked me.
He grabbed me by the shoulder and flung me on the altar.
There had to be at least three of them, maybe four.
They made even more noise than the bullet had. Angry, filthy noise.
I stumbled on the altar platform and sprawled facedown before the small raised box on top of which the snake cage sat.
“Stand up.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“You said you were pure? I’ll give you the chance to prove it.”
“I’m not going to handle those snakes.”
“I’m sick of talk, you. Now stand up.”
The pain in my ankle was fading much faster than I had thought possible. But I didn’t want him to kick me again. This time he’d probably break bone.
“I’m not afraid of the snakes because I’m true to my Lord.”
“Is that why you slapped your wife the night Muldaur died? Because the Lord wanted you to?”
“He’s ordained that sometimes man needs to instruct woman in the ways of righteousness.”
“And that includes slapping them around?”
“I don’t take any pleasure in it, if that’s what you mean. I do it because the Lord has ordained it. I’d be committing a sin if I didn’t do it.”
All the time the hissing continued.
“Sometimes one man must instruct another man in the ways of righteousness, too.”
“That’s what you’re doing with me?”
“You need to know if you’re impure. I’m actually doin’ you a favor.”
“Gosh, thanks so much.”
He prodded me with his toe just above the ankle.
I really didn’t want to get kicked again. I pushed myself to my feet. Sometimes, you kid yourself and think you’re tough. But then something like this happens.
I’d banged my head on the floor just now and had a headache. My ankle was sore. I was pasty with sweat. And all I could hear were the snakes.
I was being pushed toward them. They may not actually have been louder, they may not actually have been angrier. But they sure sounded that way. I stumbled toward them.
He clubbed me on the side of the head hard with his rifle barrel.
I dropped to my knees before I realized where I’d be: kneeling next to the snake cage.
“Open it up.”
He had to shout to be heard above the hiss and rattle.
I just looked at him. Terrible things were going on in my throat, my chest, my bowels.
“You open that up and grab one of ‘em. If it don’t bite you then you are judged worthy by Divine Wisdom.”
I couldn’t talk. Literally. I tried. But my throat was raw and dry with fear. Only a few inches and a mesh of metal kept the rattlers at bay.
I wondered if he’d really shoot me. He seemed crazed but was he that crazed? And-a wild thought that should have occurred to me much earlier-what had he been doing in the Muldaur trailer so early in the morning? He’d arrived before I had. What was his exact relationship to Viola Muldaur? Was he pure? Could he pass the snake test?