A Feast of Snakes Read online

  “What’d you sell today?” Joe Lon said.

  “Ain’t sell much,” said George

  “How much?” he said. “Where’s you marks?”

  George took a piece of ruled tablet paper out of the bib of his overalls. The paper had a row of little marks at the top and two rows of little marks at the bottom. It meant George had sold twenty bottles of beer, five half pints, fourteen pints, and one fifth, all bonded. He had also sold ten Mason fruit jars of moonshine.

  “Hell, that ain’t bad for a Thursday,” said Joe Lon.

  “Nosuh, it ain’t bad for a Thursday,” George said.

  “I got it now,” said Joe Lon. “You go on home.”

  George stood where he was. His gaze shifted away from Joe Lon’s face until he was almost looking at the ceiling. “Reckon I could take me a little taste of sompin? Howsomever, it be true I ain’t got no cash money.”

  Joe Lon said: “Take yourself one of them half pints a shine. I’ll put it on you ticket. Bring the one of them bonded whiskeys while you in there.”

  George brought the whiskey and set it on the counter in front of Joe Lon, dropping as he did the half pint of moonshine into the deep back pocket of his overalls.

  Joe Lon had brought another ruled piece of tablet paper out of a drawer in front of him. “Damned if you ain’t drinking it up bout fast as you making it, George.”

  “I know I is,” George said.

  “You already behind on the week and it ain’t nothing but Thursday,” said Joe Lon.

  “It ain’t nothing but Thursday an I already be behind on the week,” said George, shaking his head.

  George hadn’t moved so Joe Lon said: “You don’t want to borrow money too, do you? You already behind.”

  “Nosuh, I don’t want no money. I already behind.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Mistuh Buddy. He done locked up Lottie Mae again.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yessuh.”

  “For what?”

  “Say she a sportin lady.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yessuh.”

  Buddy Matlow would take a liking to a woman and if she would not come across he would lock her up for a while, if he could. As soon as he had been elected Sheriff and Public Safety Director for Lebeau County he started locking up ladies who would not come across. They were usually black but not always. Sometimes they were white. Especially if they were transients just passing through, and a little down on their luck. If he got to honing for one like that and she wouldn’t come across, he’d lock her up no matter what color she was, sometimes even if she had a man with her. He had been called to accounts twice already by an investigator from the governor’s office, but as he kept telling Joe Lon, they’d never touch him with anything but a little lecture full of bullshit about how he ought to do better. Hadn’t he been the best defensive end Georgia Tech ever had? Hadn’t he been consensus All-American two years back-to-back and wouldn’t he have been a hell of a pro if he hadn’t blown his right knee? And hadn’t he gone straight to Veet Nam, stepped on a pungy stick that had been dipped in Veet Nam Ease shit? Hadn’t they had to cut his All-American leg off? Goddammit he’d paid his dues, and now it was his turn.

  “I’ll see about it,” Joe Lon said.

  “Would you do that, Mistuh Joe Lon? Would you see about it?”

  “I’ll talk to him tonight or first thing in the morning.”

  “I wisht you could axe him about Lottie Mae tonight.”

  “Tonight or first thing in the morning.”

  He cut the seal on the whiskey with his thumbnail and took a pull at it. George started for the door. Joe Lon waved the bottle in the air and gasped a little. He’d taken a bigger swallow than he meant to. He followed the whiskey with a little beer while George waited, watching him patiently from the door.

  “Lummy git them Johnny-on-the-spots?”

  Lummy was George’s brother. They both worked for Joe Lon Mackey. They’d worked for Joe Lon’s daddy before they worked for Joe Lon. They’d never been told what they made in wages. And they had never thought to ask. They only knew at any given moment in the week whether they were ahead or behind on what they’d drawn on account. Ahead was good; behind was bad. Everybody was usually behind on everything though and nobody worried about it much.

  When George didn’t answer, Joe Lon said: “The Johnny-on-the-spots, did Lummy git’m?”

  Nothing showed in George’s face. He said: “Them Johnny-on-the-spot.” It wasn’t a question. He’d just repeated it.

  “Hunters’ll start coming in tomorrow,” said Joe Lon. “If the Johnny-on-the-spots ain’t in the campground we in trouble.”

  “Be in trouble,” said George.

  “What?” said Joe Lon.

  George said: “What it was?”

  “The shitters, George!” said Joe Lon. “Did Lummy git the goddam shitters or not?”

  George’s face opened briefly, relaxed in a smile. He did a little shuffle with his feet, took the moonshine out of his back pocket, looked at it, felt of it, and put it back. “Sho now, Lummy come wif the shitters on the truck all the way from Cordele.”

  “I didn’t see’m on the campground,” Joe Lon said. “I should’ve seen’m.”

  “He ain’t taken them shitters offen the truck, but he have’m everone. I seen’m mysef. Mistuh Joe Lon, them shitters be fine.”

  “Just so you got’m, and they out there when the hunters start rolling in.”

  “You drink you whiskey, Mistuh Joe Lon. Don’t think twice. Lummy and me is put our minds on the whole thing.” The screen door banged shut behind him, and Joe Lon poured another dollop of whiskey down. It wasn’t doing any good much, didn’t seem to be taking hold. He knew nothing was going to help a whole lot until he saw Berenice and either made a fool of himself or did not. He had the overwhelming feeling that he was going to make a fool of himself. Tear something up. Maybe his life. Well, at least he got the Johnny-on-the-spots. Last year it had taken two weeks to clean the human shit up in Mystic. There’d been about three times as many people as there had ever been before.

  The rattlesnake roundup had been going on now as long as anybody in town could remember, but until about twelve years ago it had been a local thing, a few townspeople, a few farmers. They’d have a picnic, maybe a sack race or a horse-pulling contest and then everybody would go out into the woods and see how many diamondbacks they could pull out of the ground. They would eat the snakes and drink a little corn whiskey and that would do it for another year.

  But at some time back there, the snake hunt had started causing outsiders to come in. Word got out and people started to come, at first just a few from Tifton or Cordele and sometimes as far away as Macon. From there on it had just grown. Last year they had two people from Canada and five from Texas.

  Mystic, Georgia, turned out to be the best rattlesnake hunting ground in the world. There were prizes now for the heaviest snake, the longest snake, the most snakes, the first one caught, the last one caught. Plus there would be a beauty contest. Miss Mystic Rattler. And shit. Human shit in quantities that nobody could believe. This year, though, they had the Johnny-on-the-spots. Chemical shitters.

  The telephone rang. It was his daddy. He wanted Joe Lon to send over a bottle with George.

  “Ain’t here,” he shouted into the phone. “He already gone.”

  “Send somebody else then. Damn it all anyhow, I want a drink.”

  “Ain’t nobody here but me. What happened to that bottle I left by this morning?”

  “I drapped it and broke it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Joe Lon, I’m gone have to shoot you with a gun someday, talking to you daddy like that.”

  “Who’d run the store if you done that? Maybe Beeder could run the goddam store. Tote you goddam whiskey. Maybe she’d quit with the TeeVee and act normal. Send her over here right now and I’ll give her a bottle for you.”

  “You a hard man, son, making such t
alk about you only sister. Lord Christ Jehovah God might see fit to strike you.” Joe Lon wanted to scream into the telephone that it was not Lord Christ Jehovah God that struck his sister. But he did not. It would do no good. They’d been over that too many times already.

  “All right,” he said finally, “never mind. I’ll bring the whiskey myself. Later.”

  “How later?”

  “When I git a chance.”

  “Hurry, son, my old legs is a hurtin.”

  “All right.”

  Just as he put the telephone down, a car drove up. It stopped but nobody got out. Carload of niggers. He sighed. Joe Lon Mackey carrying shine for a carload of niggers. Who would have thought it? He looked down at his legs as he was going into the little room behind the counter. Who would have thought them wheels, wheels with four-five speed for forty yards, would have come to this in the world. Well, anything was apt to come to anything in this goddam world. That’s the way the world was. He spat as he took down the half pints of shine from the shelf.

  During the next hour he sold more than had been sold all day, most of it to blacks who drove up and stopped under the single little light hanging from a pole in front of the store. He wished to God they were allowed to come inside so he wouldn’t have to cart it out front to them. Of course, they were allowed to come inside. Except they were not allowed to come inside. It had been that way for the twenty years his daddy had run the store and it had been that way ever since Joe Lon had taken it over. He hadn’t really kept it that way. It had just stayed that way. Nobody ever complained about it because if you wanted to drink in Mystic, Georgia, you had to stay on the good side of Joe Lon Mackey. Lebeau County was dry except for beer, and since Joe Lon had an agreement with the bootlegger, his was the only place within forty miles you could buy you a drink.

  He worked steadily at the whiskey in front of him, chasing it with beer, and by the time Hard Candy’s white Corvette car pulled up out front, he was feeling a little better about the whole thing. The Corvette was Berenice’s old car and it reminded Joe Lon of everything he had been trying not to think about. Willard came in ahead of Hard Candy. He was an inch taller than Joe Lon and looked heavier. He had a direct lidless stare and tiny ears. His hair was cut short and his round blunt head did not so much sit on his huge neck as it seemed buried in it. He was wearing Levis and a school T-shirt with a tiny snake printed over his heart. His worn-out tennis shoes didn’t have any laces in them. He sat on a stool across the counter from Joe Lon and they both watched Hard Candy come through the door stepping in her particular, high-kneed walk that always seemed to make her prance. She took a stool next to Willard. Nobody had spoken. They all sat, unsmiling, looking at one another.

  Finally Willard said: “Me’n Hard Candy’s just bored as shit.”

  Joe Lon said: “I got a fair case of the cain’t-help-its mysef.”

  “I don’t guess a man could git a goddam beer here,” said Willard.

  “I guess,” said Joe Lon.

  “Two,” said Hard Candy.

  Joe Lon said: “Hard Candy, if you don’t quit walking like that somebody’s gone foller you out in the woods and do sompin nasty to you.”

  “I wish to God somebody would,” she said.

  “Somebody already has,” said Willard.

  Joe Lon got up to get the beer. When he came back he said: “You want to hold this whiskey bottle I got?”

  “We et us some drugs to steady us,” Willard said. “I don’t guess I ought to drink nothing harder’n beer.”

  “Okay.”

  “But I will,” Willard said.

  “I thought you might,” Joe Lon said.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Hard Candy said.

  Willard bubbled it four times and set it on the counter. Hard Candy took it up.

  “We’ll probably die,” she said, a little breathless when she put it down.

  “Probably.”

  They sat watching the door for a while, listening to the screenwire tick as bugs flew against it.

  “I think it’s gone be a shitty roundup,” said Joe Lon.

  “Will if this hot weather holds,” Willard said. “Must be fifty degrees out there right now. Shit, it’s like summer. Won’t be a snake nowhere in the hole stays this warm.”

  They sat and watched the door again. A car passed on the road beyond the light now and then. Hard Candy turned and looked at Joe Lon.

  “You reckon we could feed one?” she said.

  “Let’s wait a little while,” Joe Lon said. “Maybe somebody’ll come in we can take some money off.”

  “You got one back there that’ll eat you think?” asked Willard.

  “I try to keep one,” Joe Lon said.

  They watched the door some more.

  “Hell, it ain’t nobody coming,” said Willard. “Git that rascal out here and let’m do his trick.”

  “I’ll bet with you,” said Hard Candy. She opened the little clutch purse she was carrying and bills folded out of the top of it.

  “I don’t take money from my friends,” said Joe Lon.

  “If you gone bet with him on the snake,” said Willard, “you might as well go ahead and give him the goddam money anyway. You sure as hell ain’t gone beat him.”

  “I lose sometimes,” said Joe Lon, smiling.

  “Git the goddam snake,” said Willard. “Shit, I’ll bet with you.”

  “You ain’t bettin with me,” said Joe Lon.

  “I’ll make you bet with me,” said Willard.

  They were both off their stools now, kind of leaning toward each other across the counter. They were both smiling, but there was an obvious tension in the attitude of their bodies.

  “You ever come to make me do something,” said Joe Lon, “you bring you lunch. You’ll be staying awhile.”

  “Maybe I can think of something you’ll want to bet on,” said Willard.

  “Maybe,” said Joe Lon.

  He went into the small room at the back of the counter and they followed him. There was a dim light burning. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust. Bottles of various sizes lined the shelves of both sides of the room. One middle shelf toward the back had no bottles on it. It held, instead, five wire cages that were about two feet square and about that high. Four of the cages held a rattlesnake. The fifth cage had several white rats in it. Joe Lon slapped the side of one of the cages with his hand. The snake made no move or sound. Nor did any of the other snakes.

  “I’ve had these so long I probably could handle’m,” said Joe Lon.

  “Why don’t you,” said Willard Miller, showing his even, perfect teeth.

  “Would if I wanted to,” said Joe Lon.

  “Hell, let’s make that the bet then,” said Willard. “The loser has to kiss the snake.”

  Joe Lon looked at him for a long moment. “You couldn’t beat me at that either.”

  Willard Miller said: “I can beat you at anything.” He was still smiling but something about the way he said it had no smile in it at all.

  “You better back you ass out of here before you git it overloaded,” said Joe Lon.

  “If we don’t never bet on nothing, how you know I cain’t beat you?” said Willard.

  “I know,” said Joe Lon.

  Hard Candy said: “I’ll git the rat.”

  She went to the cage, opened the top, and reached in. When her hand came out she had a white rat by its long smooth pink tail. It hung head down without moving, its little legs splayed and rigid in the air. They followed Joe Lon out of the room to the counter, where he set the caged snake down.

  “Ain’t he a beautiful sumbitch?” said Joe Lon.

  “Ain’t nothing as pretty as a goddam snake,” Willard said.

  “I’m pretty as a snake,” said Hard Candy.

  They both looked at her. She was playing with the rat on the counter, holding its tail and letting it scratch for all it was worth. With her free hand she thumped the rat good-naturedly on top of its head.

 
“You almost are,” said Willard, taking a pull at Joe Lon’s whiskey bottle, “but you ain’t quite.”

  Joe Lon took the bottle. “He’s right, you ain’t quite pretty as a snake.”

  “What would you two shitheads know about it anyway?” she said.

  Joe Lon took a stopwatch from under the counter. It was the watch his coach had given him when he broke the state record for the two-twenty.

  “Just for the fun what would you say?” asked Joe Lon.

  “He’ll hit the rat in a hundred and four seconds. He’ll have it swallered in three and a half minutes.”

  “That’s three and a half minutes after he hits it?”

  “Right,” said Willard.

  Joe Lon bent down until his nose was only a half inch from the wire cage. The snake was in a corner, tightly knotted, with only its head and tail free. Its waving tongue constantly stroked in and out of its mouth. Its lidless eyes looked directly back at Joe Lon. The head was wide, wider than the body, and flat with a kind of sheen to it that suggested dampness. The tail was rigid now but still not rattling.

  “This sucker’ll hit right away, maybe twenty seconds. Yeah, I say twenty seconds. That rat’ll be gone, tail and all, in two and a half minutes. That’s total time. So I’m saying two minutes ten seconds after the hit.” He had been staring into the cage while he talked. Now he straightened and backed off. “Drop that little fucker in.”

  “I’m playing,” said Hard Candy.

  “You already got the rat messed up and confused from thumpin him on the head,” said Willard. “Stop thumpin him and do like Joe Lon says.”

  She held the rat up in the palm of her hand. She stroked its head with her thumb, gently. She pursed her lips and whispered to the rat: “Nobody’s gone hurt you, little rat. We just gone let the snake kill you a little.”

  There was a spring-hinged door at the top of the cage that opened only one way. She set the rat on top of the door. It opened inward and the rat dropped through. The door immediately swung shut again. Joe Lon started the stopwatch. The rat landed on its feet, turned, and sniffed its pink tail. It looked at the snake in the corner, sat up on its hind legs, and started licking its front paws. The thick body of the snake moved and a high striking curve appeared below its wide blunt head.