Save The Last Dance For Me

Eleven

John Parnell was a chunky guy with a limp that resulted from a grade-school tractor accident. He wore a lime-colored

T-shirt and jeans and sandals. He was bending over a Ford station wagon to slap a leaflet beneath its windshield.

“Hi, John.”

He backed himself off the car hood he’d been bent over and said, “Hey, McCain, how ya doin’?”

“Fine. Or I was till I saw you putting those leaflets on car windows.”

He grinned. “Yeah, that’d make the nuns mad, wouldn’t it?”

I nodded to the stack of leaflets in his car.

He was still the freckled, snub-nosed guy I’d always known. I couldn’t connect him to the leaflets.

“You printed them and now you’re distributing them?”

“Yep. That’s what God wants me to do, McCain.”

“He told you that?”

“Now you’re being blasphemous, Sam.”

Maybe this wasn’t the old Parnell I’d known.

“You’re a Catholic, Parnell, and you’re handing this stuff out?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore I’m not.

A Catholic, I mean.”

“Since when?”

He shrugged. “Well, the wife-I’m not sure you ever met her, gal from Sioux City I met when I was doing my printing apprenticeship up there-anyway, she was raised as an evangelical. And what with one thing and another she kinda got me interested in the whole thing. She always says you should feel bad when you go to church.

And I tried ‘em all-Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian. But they always tried to make you feel good. But bad’s the only way you know your religion’s workin’ for you. When you feel terrible.

And that’s what we both liked about Reverend Muldaur. His whole deal was how unworthy we all are. And I believe that, McCain. You might believe something else-but that’s what I believe, McCain.”

“But the snakes-”

“That’s what people don’t understand.”

“What don’t people understand?”

“They’re not snakes.”

“They sure looked like it to me.”

“They’re devils. Really and truly.

Devils. Evil spirits. I’ve held them. I can feel their evil. I truly can. But they didn’t bite me because Reverend Muldaur cleansed my soul before he handed me the snakes.”

“But all this bullshit about Jews and Catholics-”

“I don’t use words like bdds. anymore, Sam. But I’ll tell you, they’re both out to conquer the world. They know they can’t do it alone, so they’ve joined forces. And the only people who can stop them are people like me.” He leaned forward confidentially. He smelled of sweat and onions.

“And there’re a lot of people in this town who believe the same way I do, Sam. But they don’t want people to know it.”

“So you just gave him all this printing free?”

“Heck, no. A friend of his paid for it.”

“What friend?”

He leaned toward me again. He mst’ve had an onion sandwich with some onion rings and onion juice on the side. “Like I said, Sam, there’re a lot of folks in this town who agree with everything we do. And one of them was nice enough to pick up the tab for the printing. I just charged my costs.

No profit. That wouldn’t be right, seeing’s how I was doing it for the Lord.”

Parnell, Parnell, what did somebody drug you with? How can you possibly believe this crap?

Then I realized it was time for me to go pick up the rabbi and the monsignor. We were doing some target practice this afternoon with the guns in the church basement.

“I’d really appreciate it if you told me who paid for the printing, John. I’m trying to find out who killed Muldaur.”

“I know you are. We all hear the Judge is trying to get it all cleaned up before Nixon gets here. Now, there’s a guy with almost as many Jew friends as Kennedy has. Hard to know who to vote for.”

I couldn’t deal with it any longer.

“You’re making me so damn sad, Parnell.”

“And you’re making me sad, too, Sam. I saw you over there eating with that Jewess. She’s not fit company for a true Christian, Sam.”

“Well, she’s fit company for me. She’s a damned good woman, in fact.”

He shook his head. He really did seem sad. “The ways of the flesh, Sam, the ways of the flesh.”

At one time, the two-room house had probably looked pretty nice sitting all alone by the fast creek in the curve of a copse of pine. It looked like one of those houses a fella could order himself from the Sears Roebuck catalog late in the 1890’s. Such homes came with assembly instructions; the fancier kits even included hammers and other tools. You could see some of these Sears houses standing well into the 1940’s, by the grace of spit and God, as the old saying had it.

Ned Blimes, whose last name and current address I’d learned by asking around, didn’t seem to be at home as I pulled my ragtop behind a stand of pine to the west of his house. I didn’t want my car to pick up any stray bullets.

A dainty man, he wasn’t. His meals apparently included a lot of self-shot squirrel meat because the grass on the side of his place was strewn with carcasses. Several gleaming crows hovered nearby. I’d interrupted their meal. I’ve never been able to tolerate the smell of squirrel meat frying. The air was coarse and bloody with it.

I knocked on the front door of the shack-like house. The lone front window was filled with cardboard and just a jagged remnant of the glass that had once covered it.

The crows went back to eating. The pollen got to me and I sneezed. And somebody poked something in my back.

The smell told me it was Yosemite Sam himself.

“Put your hands over your head.”

“This high enough?”

“Higher.”

“This is as high as I can go.”

“What’chu want, McCain?”

“I wanted to ask you some questions.”

“About what?”

“About Muldaur.”

“Don’t want to talk about Muldaur.”

“Why not?”

“Because that was part of the bargain.”

“What bargain?”

He guffawed. Or whinnied. I couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was a guffaw-whinny. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Gee, I haven’t heard that one since third grade.”

“Huh?”

“How about taking the gun out of my back?”

“Then how about you gettin’ in that car of yours and gettin’ the hell out of here?”

Then he started marching me back to my car.

I still had my hands above my head. There was a variety of animal poop all over the buffalo grass. I am happy to report that my black penny loafers didn’t touch any of it.

“What happened out there the day you took Muldaur snakin’?”

“Who tole you somethin’ happened?”

“You did.”

“I did? When?”

“When I saw you at Muldaur’s place. You said something like “He was the only one who made any money that day.””

“Shit,” he said.

“What?”

“You sure I said that?”

“I sure am.”

“Then I shouldn’t’ve. Me’n my big mouth.”

We’d reached my car.

He prodded and poked me with the barrel of his rifle. I got in and got behind the wheel.

“You just forget I said anything, mister.”

“I’m not going to.”

“Well, you damned well better,” he said.

“You can’t make me.”

“Bet I can,” he said, and put the tip of the rifle about three inches from my face.

“You always talk like you’re in third grade?”

“Do you? Now you get the hell out of here and you don’t bother me no more, you understand that?”

When I got back to the office, I got out my list and added a few more items.

Why were Sara and Dierdre Hall so angry at each other?

Who paid Parnell the printing costs?

What happened the day Muldaur and Ned Blimes went snaking? Jamie had left me a typed note:

I Finisshed Up Tyyping Earlie

So Me And Tturc Went Swimming.

This Time Wit Our Close On.

He-he. I Cracked A Funnie,

Mrr C. Jamie

Well, she was coming along, anyway, God love her. A couple of times she’d even mistyped her own name-? Jammie” and “Jaamie”-s hanging around Turk-excuse me “Tturc”-was apparently starting to pay off. The first time I’d interviewed her for the job, she’d told me, “My dad says he hasn’t got a lot upstairs, Turk I mean, and maybe he doesn’t. But he’s got a lot of common sense. Like one day this big dog was really growling at me and he had this kind of foamy stuff dripping from his mouth. And you know what Turk said?

He said, “Don’t try to pet him or nothing, Jamie. He looks kinda mad.” See what I mean? He’s got a lot of common sense, Mr. C.”

The Common Sense Typing Method.

A volume that should be in every school library.

Between 2ccji and 3ccec I got four calls.

Two of the callers were clients explaining why they couldn’t pay me this month, and two were people who wanted to sell me some things. Maybe if the first two callers came through with money, I might be able to buy things from the second two.

I looked through some court documents the county attorney had shipped me; a dunning letter from my alumni association; a copy of Time with Ike on the cover. The Wwii people would always be my true heroes. Even a little town like ours lost twenty-eight men and women in the war. And you never forgot. Some people talked about their war experiences and some didn’t. But whether they held their memories public or private, they could never let go of them. There are some things you go through that change you forever -even if you don’t want to be changed-and war is one of them. My dad still has nightmares sometimes, my mom says, and they’re always about his war experiences. I didn’t agree with everything Ike believed politically but I admired him a damned sight more than I did showboats like Patton and MacArthur. MacArthur I gave up on when he said we should drop atomic bombs on China. He enjoyed war too much to be trusted. He loved posing against a backdrop of explosions and bombed-out people trooping down lonely roads. I always laughed about what Ike said when asked what he’d done as an Army captain in the South Seas during the 1930’s, when he’d served as MacArthur’s secretary: “I studied drama under General MacArthur.” MacArthur never forgave Ike for that crack.

Just before Sara Hall was due, my dad called and said, “Don’t forget Monday’s your mom’s birthday.”

“God, I’m glad you reminded me.”

“She says she doesn’t want us to make a big deal of it. But you know better and so do I.”

“Mind if I bring somebody new? And she’s not a date exactly. Kylie Burke.”

“That newspaper girl? She’s sure a cutie. And nice, too. She interviewed a bunch of us at the Vfw last year. Sure, bring her.”

“Maybe Kylie can help me pick out a gift, too.”

“Well, I’m goin’ fishin’, son. Talk to you later.”

Four-fifteen and Sara Hall still hadn’t appeared. I picked up the phone book, found her number, dialed it. No answer.

Four twenty-one. A timid knock.

“Yes?”

“It’s Dierdre Hall, Mr. McCain.”

“C’mon in.”

She was dressed as she had been earlier, but her shades were pushed back on her head.

“Where’s your mom?”

“I-I’m not sure.”

“Boy, are you lousy at it.”

“At what?”

“Lying. Your entire face is red.”

“Oh, shit.”

“C’mon in and sit down and let’s talk.”

“I’m sorry I lied.”

“It’s all right. Just sit down. We can talk about your mom later. What I want to know for now is why you decided to come over.”

She hesitated a long time. “My mom’s going to kill me for coming here.”

“Let’s worry about that later.”

She scanned my office for gremlins, a pretty girl with more poise than one would expect in somebody her age. That was my thought, anyway.

But then she sort of spoiled the impression by jerking up from her chair, covering her mouth with her hand-the way I always did when the Falstaff beer started backing up-and rushed out the door to the john on the other side of the coatrack.

My charm had worked once again on a female.

They didn’t usually go so far as to barf literally.

Only figuratively.

The exterior door opened and Sara Hall, angry and frantic, rushed in, scanning my office much as her daughter had only moments earlier, and said, “Where is she?”

She wore the same outfit she’d worn earlier, too, but her shades were over her eyes.

“Who?”

“I don’t want any of your guff,

McCain. You know who. If you don’t tell me, I’ll have Sykes arrest you for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Or maybe statutory rape would be even better.”

“Why don’t you sit down and quit acting crazy?”

“Where is she, McCain? I’m serious about calling Sykes.”

And then we both heard Dierdre throw up for the second time.

“Oh, Lord,” Sara said. She didn’t sound angry; she sounded drained, weary.

She came in and sat down and took off her sunglasses and then covered her face with lovely fingers.

“Sara, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

She shook her head. Said from behind her hands, “I can’t, McCain. I wish I could. I wish I could tell somebody, anyway.” Then, “This is when I resent my husband dying on me. He should be here. He was stronger than I was with things like this.” Then, whispering, “This whole thing.”

I almost asked what whole thing.

“You’re not weak,” I said.

“No, I’m pretty strong. But this whole thing-”

We were back to the this-whole-thing thing.

Toilet flushing. Water running. Paper towel being cinched free from the dispenser. Door opening.

She came up to the door and said, “Mom!”

Sara turned in her chair as if she’d been shot.

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

“You told me you trusted McCain, remember? So when you snuck away this was the first place I thought of.”

“I didn’t tell him anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Sara seemed ecstatic. “Really?”

“Really, Mom.”

Then to me: “Really? She didn’t-?”

I shook my head. “Didn’t have time. Started to. Then got sick.”

Sara was as bad at lying as Dierdre.

“She’s been sick-the flu-”

“We’re way down the road on that one, Sara,” I said.

“I don’t know what that means.” Sounding scared.

“It means she’s pregnant. That’s why she was throwing up.”

Sara gasped the way women in movies gasp.

Dierdre showed no particular expression.

“Then you did tell him!” Sara snapped, crazed again.

“Mom, he figured it out. Throwing up in the middle of the day. Me coming over here to tell him some kind of secret. You being so wound-up and all-he figured it out for himself.”

Sara turned to me again. “Please don’t tell anybody, McCain. Please promise me.”

My seventeen-year-old sister had gotten pregnant a few years ago. People still whispered about her, snickered, even after she’d fled to Chicago. Nobody deserved that kind of treatment.

“Don’t worry, Sara. I won’t say a word.”

“I have to trust you, McCain.”

“I know.” I reached over and took her hand.

“And you can.” To her daughter, I said, “How about taking ole Mom home and helping her relax?”

Sara smiled anxiously. “Ole Mom here could sure use one.”

I hadn’t learned anything other than that a high-school girl had gotten herself in trouble, the kind of trouble small-town gossips, lineal descendants of the folks who ran the Salem witch trials, loved to dote on. But now wasn’t the time to push for anything more.

“You’re a good man, McCain.”

“And you’re a good woman, Sara.”

Sara and Dierdre hugged briefly and left.

Leaving me to wonder if her pregnancy had anything in particular to do with our two most recent murders.

Twelve

We ended up eating in the backyard that night with Mrs. Goldman. She’d been grilling herself a burger and so we threw our own burgers on the fire and joined her at the small picnic table.

“We tried out that new dance boat last night,” Mrs. Goldman said, in between shooing away flies and slapping mosquitoes.

“How was it?” Kylie said.

“A lot of fun.”

A couple of retired men had spent a year building a large, completely enclosed dance boat that was decorated like a restaurant and dance club inside. Booths lined two of the walls and there were three decks where you could stand for romantic moonlit glimpses of the night.

“How about we give it a try?” Kylie said.

“Fine,” I said.

She mst’ve seen how Mrs. Goldman was watching us.

“My husband and I are separated for the time being,” Kylie said.

“It’s really not any of my business.”

Kylie laughed. “I don’t care about my reputation. It’s McCain’s I’m worried about. I don’t want to spoil his virginal image.”

Mrs. Goldman smiled. “His life seems to have slowed down the last few months here.”

“He’s just resting up. He’ll come roaring back.”

“I really like it when people talk about you like you’re not here,” I said.

Kylie and I were sitting next to each other on one side of the table. Mrs. Goldman’s summer garden imbued the dusk with exotic odors you don’t usually associate with states where corn and pigs are economic staples. I was having my usual reaction to that purgatory between day and night, that melancholy that was not quite despair but came pretty close.

Kylie slid her arm around me. “I wouldn’t have made it these last few days without Sam here.”

“Ditto for her. I’ve been kinda down myself.”

“Well, you never know where things like this will lead,”

Mrs. Goldman said.

Dogs barked; children laughed; a group of three very young teen couples walked down the alley, boys nervously teasing the girls they liked, not knowing what else to do, that wonderful awkward terrifying time of first love; and night, irrevocable and vast, fell upon the prairie. I wanted, for a brief firefly moment there, to be one of those teenage boys, starting all over again, wanting in some ways, what with my failed foolish pursuit of the beautiful Pamela Forrest, to start all over again, an eternal late summer of county fairs and swimming-pool dates and Saturday night movie dates.

But even at the young age of twenty-four things had become irretrievably complicated.

Pamela, whom I shouldn’t have loved; Mary, whom I should have; and poor sad Kylie and her strutting jerk of a husband. I really wanted to sleep with Kylie but she was married. And so I was afraid I would, against my principles; and afraid I wouldn’t, against that pure clean lust I felt for her. She was so damned good and kind and smart and sexy in her kid-sister way.

We all went inside and had some iced tea in Mrs. Goldman’s apartment-Kylie whispering that she didn’t want me to leave her alone just yet-and then around nine-thirty, the fireflies thicker in the perfume-scented night, a white kitten on the garden fence looking as if she were posing before the half moon… we went upstairs.

“So,” Kylie said, half an hour later, “what happens if I stay here tonight?”

“I’m of two minds about that.”

“I’m of three or four minds about that.”

“Well, then, it looks like we have a dilemma here, doesn’t it?”

“A conundrum.”

“Where’s Chad tonight?”

“Whereabouts unknown.”

“And you-” his-don’t feel like going through another Strindberg play with him. Strindberg being his favorite writer. So when we get into one of our arguments, he always starts doing Strindberg. And I’ve had enough Strindberg for a while.”

“You can’t ever have too much

Strindberg.”

“You like him?”

“Eh,” I said, shrugging. “In a pinch, I suppose.”

“So I’ll take the couch.”

“You’re too long for the couch.”

“I’m the same size you are.”

“You’re always telling me,” I said, “that you’re taller than I am.”

“Haven’t you figured out by now that I’m an incorrigible liar?”

“I’ll take the couch. It’ll make me feel nobler.”

“I’d really feel awkward doing that to you.”

“You’d deprive me of feeling noble?”

“It’s still pretty early. Could we watch a little Tv?”

“But of course.”

We started out watching “Highway Patrol.”

Broderick Crawford never takes off his trench coat. They could have deep-sea sequences like on “Sea Hunt” with Lloyd Bridges and Brod would still be wearing his trench coat, his Aqua-Lung strapped on outside of it. Oh, and he’d be wearing his fedora, too.

I say “started out watching” because, after about one act of ole Brod barking “Ten-four, ten-four” into his two-way, we gave up and started making out.

I guess we resolved our dilemma and our conundrum.

At least sort of.

It was ninth-grade sex.

We French-kissed but when my hand drooped (of its own volition) toward her chest area (or chestal area as Judge Ronald D. K. M.

Sullivan would say), it was gently moved back up by her hand.

By the time “Highway Patrol” was wrapping up we lay lengthwise on the couch. Pressed very tightly together. She was a great kisser. Maybe the best kisser I’d ever been with. She was such a great kisser that kissing her was almost enough. But my hand kept drooping and her hand kept gently brushing it away. We did a little tenth-grade dry-humping but she wouldn’t let my hand linger on her bottom. I had one of those erections that make you crazy. One of those erections that takes you over so completely you are nothing more than a penis.

She was girl-flesh and girl-body and girl-mouth; girl-sigh, girl-gasp, girl-moan.

She was moaning, I was moaning.

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?

Then he did it. Leaned in, unlatched the simple lock that held the lid down on the cage.

“I’m makin’ it easy for you.”

And for the second time, he fired his weapon.

One year at camp I’d slept in the grass and during the night a bat kept flying inches over my face. I always remembered the heat of its passage. The bullet was like that now. The heat of its passage.

I did a kind of dance on my knees, jerking sideways, frontways, slamming into the snake cage. And then doing, in simple animal reaction, the unthinkable.

I reached my arm out and grabbed the far side of the cage to keep it from falling off the low table it was resting on. And then I jerked back, astonished at my stupidity as the snakes flew out at me, at least two snakes arcing their heads into the top of the cage, trying to get at me.

“Open it!” Oates shouted.

And then swung the rifle barrel into the side of my head again. My entire consciousness was sliding into pain. It was getting difficult for me to think.

I nudged up against the cage.

He swung the rifle around yet another time.

This time I consciously stopped myself from bumping against the cage.

And this time I realized how I could get out of this situation, rifle or no rifle.

It was not without risk. There would be a few seconds there when the snakes would be close to me, able to bite me and hold on if they wanted to.

But I didn’t have much choice. The snakes or the religious crackpot-y decide.

“Open it,” he said. His voice was raw now.

He’d glimpsed the future. One of the snakes striking me, filling me with poison. He spoke in the raspy tone of true passion.

So I opened it.

But I kept hold of the handle to the lid. And instead of shoving my hand inside, I used the handle to swing the entire cage around and fling it at him.

He screamed like a young boy.

He fired two shots.

And he dropped his gun when one of the flying rattlers slapped him across the face.

The gun discharged when it hit the floor.

I was already halfway down the aisle, my sore ankle be damned, heading for my ragtop.