Which it wasn’t.
Also, when Sarah saw the beautiful house, she knew she wanted to live there and raise children and be happy.
But they had no kids.
Unfortunately, a side effect of all that serpent juice was that the Reverend Pinkerton’s sperm was as dead as Claudette Bruchard’s lovers. He had been firing blanks since he started firing and his libido was practically nonexistent, which he put down to piety and loving Jesus, but actually this was due to an almost complete absence of testosterone, which is also attacked and killed by snake venom.
They could have gotten help for this infertility but they believed that interfering with the reproductive process, even if it was faulty, was anti-God. It was against His plan. It never occurred to them that God may have provided the world with a vast array of very brainy medical types for the very reason of solving problems such as theirs. However, there is one thing that the medical profession cannot do and that is save people from being idiots.
Like many devout people, Alexander and Sarah saw God as a Great Big Luddite who didn’t like smart-asses (and let’s be honest, they’re usually Jews or Japanese) messing with His stuff. So they lived functional, cold lives, doing church, doing the groceries, and doing each other every now and again but they didn’t really click. They had no shared porridge atoms, so they made do. Tried not to get in each other’s way.
Sarah hated snakes and hated that her husband, every week, would hold at least one in his hands and speak in tongues. (She didn’t really get that either. She thought that her husband, when he did speak in tongues, sounded like an irate Norwegian who had inhaled helium.)
In the spirit of peace and to avoid a showdown, Alexander let her sit at the back of the church away from the snakes during services, which was a little unseemly for the minister’s wife but was infinitely preferable to what Sarah wanted, which was not to attend at all.
They bored each other but didn’t annoy each other, so it was a fairly comfortable marriage until Alexander brought the Martini boys home.
The problem was, as usual, Leon.
Saul noticed it from the moment they arrived. The way that women looked at Leon, they just couldn’t help themselves, and the fact that Sarah, a healthy forty years old when the boys arrived, had never been decently fucked in her life definitely contributed to the situation.
Very quickly the boys were integrated into the life of the Pinker-tons. They worked with Potter doing odd jobs and helping re-roof the old church in the woods. They slept in the Pinkerton home. They rose early and prayed with Alexander and Sarah. Alexander noted with satisfaction that since the boys had arrived, Sarah seemed to have gotten a new lease on life, joining in with morning devotions and checking on the repair work at the church every day, bringing the boys lemonade and sandwiches that they shared with the confused but grateful Potter.
Alexander thought that these boys were just what he’d been looking for.
It was just what any church needed. New blood. Young blood. Blood.
The boys shared a room across the upstairs landing from the Pinkertons, and when they knelt to say their prayers before sleeping, Sarah would watch them, her face full of what she thought looked like motherly love but what Saul could see was hunger. He could see the ache in her eyes. He knew she was hungry. Ravenous for his brother. He didn’t condemn her for it, he’d grown resigned to the fact that this was the way things were going to be, but he knew it was dangerous and he didn’t want to leave because Saul himself had fallen in love.
Not with Sarah, or with God, or with snakes, or even with Reverend Alexander Pinkerton, but with the Church.
The power and the theater and the thrill of the Church called to Saul like polyester to an Osmond. He could not resist it.
His first snake-handling service had been a revelation.
He and Leon had arrived with the Pinkertons early on Sunday morning for their first service. The Reverend said that they should sit at the back with Sarah, that perhaps it would be a little strange for them at first. So they sat on either side of Mrs. Pinkerton. Saul noted that she pushed her thigh against Leon’s, he could almost smell her desire; he was actually a little surprised that the Reverend hadn’t noticed it but then he didn’t seem to notice his wife much at all, which was a crime given how sexy she was.
They watched as the parishioners arrived.
They came in ones and twos, mostly white but there were a few black faces, mostly elderly (more inclined to go to church as death becomes imminent, mused Saul logically), and mostly poor. Just boring, dusty, middle-of-the-road people. Plain folks. They sat on plain wooden pews and faced the pulpit, an oddly gothic dark wood platform reminiscent of a ship’s bows. It was incongruous with the spartan nature of the rest of the church. It was high and grand and towered over the congregation. A harpoon could be thrown from it.
In the far right corner, away from the Pequod pulpit, an elderly woman played long wavery chords on a cheap electric organ as the faithful filed in. Next to her sat a ratty-looking kid at a drum kit, and Potter Templeton on a creaky plastic chair with a pedal steel guitar on his lap. Potter and the ratty kid didn’t play. They waited.
When everyone was in and the ceremony was about to begin the doors closed.
Saul looked around. They were passing a bowl. People were putting money in it. A dollar each. Saul figured nearly fifty people. Fifty bucks. Not much. Not for the life he had planned.
The Reverend Pinkerton climbed into the control tower. Over his cheap dark suit he wore lush purple robes that Sarah had made from some old curtains. Saul was amazed by the transformation of the man. His dull and mousey features now looked dark and dramatic, his eyebrows were bushier, his nose was stronger and straighter, he seemed to have cheekbones. He no longer looked like the gaunt depressive who had taken them in, he looked like a fanatic, a dangerous, powerful fanatic. He looked like the man who put mental in fundamental.
He spread out his arms, gesturing to the harmless old biddies sitting in arthritic discomfort on the wooden pews, and yelled, “Sinners all!”
The elderly organist, the ratty kid, and Potter backed his exclamation with a crashing discord. Then the ratty kid hit an up-tempo 8/4 beat on the snare, hi-hat, and kick drum, and Potter danced a plectrum on a low E behind the organ noise. The music was basic but it did the job, provided a sense of drama, of anticipation.
Something real big was coming.
“Something real big is coming,” cried Pinkerton. His voice in a vague impression of an enthusiastic Negro ringmaster.
“Something real big is coming!”
The congregation got on their feet. They raised their arms, they shouted amens. The whole place had sprung to life. Saul’s penis went to DEFCON 2. Half-chub.
“Can you feel it?” yelled Pinkerton again.
The parishioners yelled their assents.
“I said CAN YOU FEEL IT!”
Saul could feel it. Full stiffy. Woah.
“Jesus is here. Right now. Welcome . . . welcome Jesus!”
Everybody welcomed Jesus. They yelled and waved and wept and rattled their walkers. Saul thought if the Holy Carpenter of Nazareth had walked in on this bunch of wailing nutjobs, he would have been terrified, but he kept his thoughts to himself and welcomed Jesus along with everyone else. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Sarah’s welcome of Jesus was more muted. She had a little heretical restraint.
No wonder she stays at the back, he thought.
Leon was loving it, though. Jumping and singing and joining in. Saul hadn’t seen his brother so animated since they fled the killer ducks.
This is it, thought Saul. This is how I save my brother from himself. This is how I keep him by me. This is how we shall live. Happy and together with Jesus.
But he saw Sarah look at his brother and smile. He had seen that smile before, the first night they had stayed at her house and her husband had placed her dessert in front of her at dinner.
The Reverend Pinkerton continu
ed with the service. The music stopped while he berated his congregation for their wickedness.
These people are about as wicked as bunny rabbits, thought Leon, but he went with it. Pinkerton ranted about the evil in the world—evil governments, hippies, Muslims, evolutionists, abortionists, television, and homosexuals. He said that their only hope was to prove to Jesus that their faith was strong, that they loved him.
Loved him enough to handle the Deadly Things.
Then the music started again and the Reverend got down from on high and got a sleepy-looking snake out of a cardboard shoe box that had holes cut in it. He danced around, holding the snake in the air, trying to make it look more evil. (This was the snake’s favorite part of the whole deal; if it had had vocal cords it would have gone “Wheeeeeeee,” but like all good actors, it internalized the wheeeee. Less is more.)
A few worshippers danced forward and joined in, dancing next to Pinkerton, yelling their helium Norwegian gibberish. Saul saw his brother move to go forward but Sarah put her hand on him and held him back.
The dancers each got a turn to hold the snake but it didn’t bite anyone, it was having too much of a good time. The snake was put back in the shoe box and everyone proclaimed a miracle and thanked Jesus.
Then the basket was passed again and Saul was amazed when he saw the mountain of cash that this bunch of dusty rednecks managed to fill it with. They had had their show, Jesus had turned up, and they were showing their gratitude by giving what they could.
Saul finally knew why he was on Earth. To rescue the lost—like his brother—and to be paid for doing it. God would provide.
Praise the Lord.
And so time passed.
The boys grew to manhood under the tutelage of the Pinkertons and the snake handlers. Saul stuck to the Reverend and watched him work. Watched him hustle for business, for converts, and for lower prices on deadly serpents. He learned the art of grifting from this sad shaman. Pinkerton had all the moves and was a terrific showman but he was just burdened with a terrible handicap. He was trying to sell a product he didn’t really believe in. That, and he seemed a little too fond of the moonshine that he and Potter brewed in an illegal still behind the woods behind the church.
Leon and Sarah kept their affair quiet for years and Pinkerton was always delighted that he had brought the boys home because since they arrived his marriage had gotten much better.
She had needed a child to look after, he thought.
The boys were in their twenties when, one day, Saul and the Reverend Pinkerton returned home early from a snake-buying trip in Tampa and found Leon enthusiastically banging Sarah on top of the tumble dryer in the basement. Pinkerton was horrified. He had never seen his wife in such ecstasy. She was sitting on the dryer barking like a dog as the young man fucked her vigorously. They were both sweating and oblivious. Lost. Sinners.
What he found inexplicable, what confused and disgusted him—and the reason they hadn’t heard him come in—was that the dryer was on.
She had been washing her husband’s purple robes.
A terrible scene ensued with much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth—another little Greek tragedy in the boondocks, the stuff operas and talk shows thrive on. Sarah professed her love for Leon, said she wanted to marry him.
Leon was struck dumb and Saul had to stop the Reverend from fetching his rifle and killing them both. He did this by hitting the preacher over the head with a clothes iron he found next to the washing machine.
The boys hightailed it out of town. Sarah begged to come with them but Saul bopped her with the iron too. He was on a roll. He had been thinking for some time that he and Leon should get out of there and make some real money. He did what all big-timey businessmen do: He turned someone else’s misery into his opportunity.
Saul and Leon stowed away in the back of a big rig that was carrying soft furnishings west from a discount warehouse in Orlando. They snuck aboard when the driver had stopped at a local gas station, just off the interstate, that was popular with truckers for its burgers and the amphetamines that the owner sold under the counter.
THE COLLECTIVE
FRASER WAS FALLING THROUGH SOLID ROCK. He felt surprised and surprisingly clearheaded. He noticed that his breathing was relaxed and normal. He didn’t feel panicky or upset, which was not usual when he was emerging from a blackout. He felt fine, except that it was patently obvious that he was underground and descending at a rapid pace. Through gravel and granite, past bones and temples and broken pots. He wondered why archaeologists were always finding broken pots when they went digging; ancient folks must have been really clumsy or had a lot of Greek-style weddings.
Ancient Greeks—did they even have weddings? mused Fraser.
Weren’t they all gay?
Down and down he went, each layer a civilization.
Millions dead.
Down through treacle-delicious puddingy peat, through hard black and blue coal, through blinding brilliant diamonds, and then the warm balm of white-hot molten lava, which didn’t burn him but made him feel sexy and safe.
Then a breathtaking adrenaline rush as he burst through a rock crust into a sky above a vast subterranean sea. A world lit by the clear light of a full moon, which is impossible given the circumstances, but there it was, off to the north, shining like a fat white bride.
He fell through a cloud bank, tumbling toward the calm black surface of the water. As he neared the water he started to slow down. A wonderful sensation of floating above the surface.
He saw a small sailboat in the distance and he noticed he was headed toward it. As he approached it came into focus.
The boat was about twelve feet long with a wooden hull aged by countless storms and salt. The sail was probably white but seemed silver in the moonlight. At the tiller sat a rickety thin old man in a coarse brown monk’s habit. He had a long beard and the bushiest eyebrows Fraser had ever seen. The eyebrows were so dense and bucolic that they hung down over the old man’s piercing green eyes, giving him the air of a creature watching from behind a thicket.
Fraser wafted gently on the breeze and floated down on the bench in the middle of the boat facing the old man.
The two looked at each other for a moment.
“Hello,” said Fraser.
“Hello,” said the old man, and Fraser instantly knew that the old man was speaking Icelandic but he also knew he’d be able to understand it.
At last Fraser twigged. He must be dreaming.
“Carl, it’s you, right?”
“No,” said the old man. “My name is Saknussem. Arne Saknussem.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m Fraser Darby. Nice to meet you.”
He offered his hand for the old man to shake. Saknussem looked at it for a moment, then at Fraser, then back to the hand. He took his own hand from the tiller and the boat was adrift for a moment as he clutched Fraser’s in his big skeletal claw. Fraser felt a chill shoot up his arm toward his throat. He pulled away quickly.
“Wow. You’re cold.”
The old man nodded.
“Still, cold hands, warm heart, right?”
The old man put his hand back on the tiller.
“No, cold hands, cold heart, cold teeth, cold hair, cold ears,” he grumbled, his breath making his wispy mustache flutter up.
“Right-o,” said Fraser. He was afraid of the old duffer. He was always excessively polite to people who freaked him out.
“So, where we headed?” he asked.
The old man gave him a look that told him their conversation was over. Fraser tried to fly away but found his bottom was stuck to the seat. The wind came up and Fraser had to duck as the old man swung the sail around and they tacked to the west.
The boat clipped along at a surprising speed and the old man’s eyebrows were flattened by the breeze. He looked like a dog that had its head stuck out of a car window. Fraser found he could turn around and face in the direction they were traveling, and although he would rather not be in the boat
at all, at least he didn’t have to play jailhouse stare with the malevolent old collie at the helm.
Off on the horizon, a small island with three palm trees was silhouetted against the underground sky. Fraser couldn’t help but laugh when he noticed it.
After a while, milky-white chalk cliffs began to loom up ahead of them and eventually the boat washed up on a shingle beach, the almost still sea lapping quietly at stones like an old cat drinking.
Fraser turned and looked at Saknussem, who pointed to a gray workman’s porta cabin about two hundred yards up the beach next to the cliffs.
“On you go,” he said.
“Right,” said Fraser. He clambered out of the boat and started walking. Halfway up, he turned and saw that Saknussem was heading back out to sea. He shouted after him, “Thanks for the ride!”
The old man lifted his middle finger and gave Fraser a “Fuck you” gesture without even turning to look at him.
Charming, thought Fraser, and he headed toward the little hut.
A handwritten sign on the door of the hut read PLEASE KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING. Fraser tapped politely. No answer. He opened the door and walked in.
The interior of the cabin was set out in the style of a Beverly Hills dermatologist’s waiting room. Comfortable soft furnishings from Z Gallerie or the Pottery Barn, in this case two large green sofas.
There was an aged pine coffee table with copies of Architectural Digest and Golf Pro magazines piled on top. Fresh flowers were arranged, hanging in little sconces. It was all very tasteful. Very nice. Relaxing.
A man sat on one of the sofas smoking a cigarette. He looked worried, his hand shaking with either nerves or the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. He was a big man, handsome, very nice sandy-brown hair that he kept running his fingers through, about fifty years old.
Rakish, thought Fraser.
He wore a checked jacket and dark slacks with white loafers, and he wore a cravat. He looked up anxiously as Fraser entered.
“Carl?” asked Fraser.
“No, sorry,” said the man in a soft Irish accent.