“You get up on the altar, McCain.” She sort of waggled the shotgun at me. “We’re going to see how holy you are.”
Snakes. Somehow, it always came back to snakes with these people, that litmus test of spirituality that not even the Aztecs had been nutty enough to use.
“I’m not going to handle any snakes,” I said.
“Sure you are. You just don’t know it yet.
Leastways, you got a chance with the snakes.
Otherwise, I’ll kill you right here.”
She really looked like she knew what she was doing with the gun. She sighted down the barrel and said, “This ain’t nothin’ personal.”
“God,” I said, “I’m glad you said that. That makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“Sarcasm is the Devil’s tongue. Says so right in the Bible.”
“I think there’s something about not killing people in there, too, Ella.”
“Depends on how you read it. Way I read it, God wants us to smite the sinners who won’t see the one true way.”
She was ready. It wasn’t anything she said, anything she did. But some judgment had been reached.
It was right and just and proper to kill me. Any lingering doubts banished.
I was trying to say a prayer for myself but I was too scared to form the words.
Then I said it, the words John Wayne would never say: “I really don’t want to die, Ella. It isn’t your fault you turned out this way. You need to talk to somebody who can help you like I said.” And then: “I’m kinda afraid to die, Ella.” You’ll notice how I sort of slid that “kinda” in there, taking the sting off what a teeth-rattling, knee-collapsing, sphincter-cringing coward I was.
All for naught.
“You get up on that altar or I’ll kill you right here and right now.”
And I knew she would.
She hitched the gun up, sighted even tighter down the barrel. Her elbow kicked slightly as she got ready to fire-And I turned and walked up to the altar.
“Sit in the chair.”
I sat in the chair.
“Mama! Mama! I need you in here!”
About now, I was wondering where Kylie was.
Had Mama found her? Roughed her up?
Mama came through the door. She still had the handgun clutched tight in her fingers.
“You get up here, Mama. I need you to tie him up.”
They’d reversed personalities. Daughter was now mom, and definitely in charge. And mom, a big woman rendered mousy all of a sudden, was daughter.
Mama came up to the floor in front of the altar. Ella stood next to the snake cage.
“I need you to tie him up, Mama.”
“I sure wish you wouldn’t do this, honey.
We’re in trouble enough.”
Ella’s voice crackled. “Not with the Lord, we’re not in no trouble, Mama. Where’s your faith?”
Mama muttered to herself then began walking up on to the platform. I glanced over my shoulder.
A coil of rough rope lay on the rear corner of the platform. Mama, all sweat now, all great sigh, all great dead eyes, dead as the eyes of the rattlers, brought the rope over.
“Tie him up,” Ella said. “Good and tight.”
“You’ve done a great job with her, Mrs.
Muldaur,” I said.
Mama spat in my face. Hot, dirty spittle on my cheek.
She did me good and tight. The circulation left my upper arms and my lower legs. The only thing that could cut me loose would be a scimitar and you just couldn’t hardly find any of those in a small Iowa town like this.
“There you go, hon,” Mama said. No more doubts. No more regrets. She wanted to see me killed. I’d insulted her one time too many.
“Now, you go stand in the back, Mama. I know how you don’t like these snakes.”
“I wish I had better faith, hon,”
Mama said, sounding genuinely ashamed of herself.
“I can’t help it them things scare me.”
She turned-all too gladly, it seemed-and walked back to the door in the rear of the place.
Ella set her shotgun down on the floor with great care. No need to worry about me now. I was all tied up.
The snakes had gotten the message. They were having a snake revival meeting inside the cage. While they weren’t ordinarily much interested in human beings-they only struck out at us because they were as afraid of us as we were of them-they were getting ready to take all their caged frustrations out on me.
Ella went over to the cage, leaned down and did a little work on the latch holding the lid in place. She couldn’t seem to get it open.
Could I be that lucky? Of course not. A couple of seconds later she flipped the latch and then opened the lid a few inches.
You could feel the energy of the rattlers. The thrust and thrum and mean intent of them. Back when our species had been only twenty inches high, we’d learned to dread and fear these creatures. And that dread stayed with us. It was with me right now.
And then she did it. The unthinkable. Just plunged her hand down inside the cage-pretty casually, really-and up came a timber rattler.
I almost felt sorry for it. The thing was in pure frenzy. Ella had obviously mastered the trick of holding it in such a way that it couldn’t angle its head around to strike at her.
“Are you pure of soul, Mr. McCain?” she said. “Somehow, I doubt that you are.”
She carried the snake over to me. Wriggling, wrenching, wrestling its body around in mid-air-and furious-she slapped the lower third of the rattler against my face. I made some kind of undignified sound of terror. I jerked up in my seat, bringing the chair with me.
“You’re sure a ‘fraidy cat, Mr.
McCain.” She said this clinically, as if surprised that anybody my age could possibly fear rattlesnakes this much.
Then she got serious.
Gripping the snake tighter than ever, she brought it even closer, touching the lower part of it to my neck.
“I never was able to get one of these things around anybody’s neck,” she said, again with great cold loony dispassion. “Maybe I’ll have better luck with you.”
This time I didn’t try to come up out of my chair. I knew better. I had to be as still as I could be.
The rattle. The insane hissing.
Ella taking the snake and starting to wind it around my neck.
And then her mama fell face forward.
I’d been concentrating on Ella’s large body but she moved out of the way-trying to get the snake to coil better around my neck-and it was just then that Mama hit the floor. Heart attack?
I couldn’t think of anything that could fell a person so swiftly. I’d have said gunshot but there’d been no sound. Mama was just laid out on the floor.
The snake began to grip onto my neck.
Ella’s science project was going to be a success after all.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to rip through my bonds. I wanted to beg.
But I was too frightened to do any of those things.
And that was when the United States Cavalry, in the fetching form of Kylie, came through the rear door.
Moving fast. Picking up the gun Mama had dropped.
Breaking into a run down the aisle right up to the altar and saying, “Put the snake back in the cage, Ella.”
My heroine.
That same drugged dead response from Ella: “Be fun to try one of the serpents on a Jew.”
Kylie pushed the gun in Ella’s face.
“Put the snake away, Ella, and then stand over there with your hands in the air.”
“You can’t order me around. Only God can.”
The snake was still against my neck. I wasn’t moving.
“Do it, Ella.”
“You won’t shoot me.”
“You might be surprised.”
“You probably never shot a gun in your life.”
“You don’t want to take that chance, Ella.
Believe me.”
And then she did it.
Wasn’t it enough for my heroine to knock out Mama, grab the gun, and then rush the altar to confront the snake girl?
Not enough for Kylie.
She doubled-gripped the gun and fired it just to the side of Ella’s head, the violent noise forcing Ella to jerk away, taking the snake she held with her.