It has carried dear old Warren,
It has carried dear old Warren,
It has carried dear old Warren,
Get on board, Children, get on board.
I thought of Earl, too. I could see him standing at his old desk in the church office, talking on his old-fashioned dial phone. Worried about the Second Coming. The millennium. Calling me up to warn me.
It was just like home, sort of. Talking about the apocalypse. Singing the old hymns. Arguing over Jesus’ Name vs. Trinity. Friendly and not so friendly arguments over scriptural texts.
Things hadn’t always been so bad between Earl and me. He showed up in Naqada the day after Daddy was killed, Daddy and twenty-seven others, in an explosion in Occidental Number Five. The whole town was gathered around the pit head. Nobody knew what had happened and the company officials were saying that the mine had just been inspected by the state and there hadn’t been any violations found. The president of the UMWA was there, and the Secretary of the Interior, and they were trying to calm everybody, and then Earl walked through the crowd up to the pit head and started to sing “Precious Lord, take my hand,” and everybody got real quiet, and pretty soon everybody started to sing:
Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, help me stand,
I am weak, I am tired, I am worn.
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light,
Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me home.
And then he started to preach, and you might have thought it was Jesus himself come to lead us home.
It took three days to get all the bodies out. Daddy’s was one of the last. There wasn’t much left of him, but enough to tell. What happened was methane gas had accumulated in part of the mine that should have been sealed off. The State of Illinois hadn’t found any violations, but the federal inspectors had cited more than thirty violations.
Earl was helping everyone, including Mama and me. The bodies were taken to the junior high school, which they used as a morgue. All the bodies were burnt pretty bad. Earl went with us.
Number Five was one of the biggest shaft mines in the world and one of the best mechanized. But that didn’t help Daddy.
Earl was everywhere. He and his friend Gene had come up from Middlesboro, over in Kentucky, where there was a big serpent-handling church, when he heard about the mine disaster. And just stayed. Stayed at a motel for a few days and then moved in with DX, who was engaged to my cousin Sally. DX was trying to hold the church together—the Church of the Burning Bush with Signs Following—but he didn’t have the gift of preaching like Earl and he was having trouble and was glad to let Earl start preaching. I was taken just as hard as everyone else in the congregation. Earl was tall and handsome in a funny way. Or maybe ugly in a funny way. Like the picture of Abe Lincoln in the hallway at the high school. You got used to it, and after a while it became handsome.
He had a wonderful voice that filled the whole church, proclaiming immortality and the victory over Death and Sin, and made me think of Elvis. We weren’t allowed to listen to Elvis. But I’d heard him at my friend Tilly’s house. Tilly didn’t belong to the Church of the Burning Bush, and my parents didn’t like me going to her house after school, but sometimes I did anyway. To listen to her old records.
There was always competition to invite Earl to dinner. That was our way. And, of course, there was competition among the unmarried women, though this wasn’t the sort of thing anyone said openly—not through hypocrisy, but through a kind of breeding, good taste.
My mama didn’t know what to do with herself with Daddy dead and buried, and she was glad to turn me over to Earl. I was fourteen at the time, and sixteen when we finally got married.
14
A Snake Is a Snake
It was the end of winter break, the beginning of a new semester. Jackson had just come back from Naqada and was upstairs taking a shower. Claire was sitting at the kitchen table, looking at the pictures in The Flavor of France. I was fixing poule au riz—chicken and rice. As I added two egg yolks to the top of a double boiler, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of well-being, a sense that the answers to life’s big questions had fallen into my lap. From Madame Arnot in French 101 I’d learned that life is a party and that it’s okay to be sexy and sophisticated and to drink kir royale and to fuck like a Greyhound bitch. From Professor Henry in Great Books I’d learned that life is a journey (Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Aeneas) and that you can’t expect any help from the gods along the way. Just the opposite, in fact. From Claire in English 207 I’d learned that life is a story and that intentionality is the enemy. From Cramer in Biology 120 I’d learned that we are a part of the universe, not separate from it, that we share the room, that taking turns is important. And from Jackson?
The kitchen was warm and smelled of chicken stock and wine and onions. I could imagine spending the rest of my life in this kitchen, but was this what I really wanted to do? That was one big question that hadn’t fallen into my lap. One of these days Jackson was going to propose, seriously, and I didn’t know what I was going to say. I wouldn’t know till he did it, and then I’d surprise myself one way or the other. But I wasn’t going to Paris with Jackson. I was going to the ASIH conference in California with Cramer.
“The stock is simmering,” I said. “What am I supposed to do now?”
Claire looked at The Flavor of France. “Beat the egg yolks and then start adding the stock. Strain it first.”
“I’ve already strained it.”
“The stock’s got to be hot but not boiling.”
“It’s hot.”
“Add the stock slowly and stir it with a whisk until it begins to thicken and then add a tablespoon of butter.”
I whisked the egg yolks with a wire whisk and started to add the hot stock, a little bit at a time. I kept whisking, watching the stock to see if it was starting to thicken. It wasn’t.
Claire wanted to open the champagne, but I told her to wait till Jackson came down.
Claire had spent every day of the semester break, from Christmas to late January, including Sundays, up in the apartment, writing two thousand words a day. She’d finished a sixty-thousand word novel. Or a sixty-thousand word manuscript, and she too seemed to be filled with a sense of well-being. The novel was not going to be about her affair with the astrophysics professor; it was going to be a woman’s extreme adventure novel, but she hadn’t shown me anything she’d written. Whenever she got stuck, I’d feed her another snake story or give her some of her own advice: intentionality is the enemy; write without stopping; be open to surprises at every step of the way.
She was leaving in the morning, Monday morning, to go back to her family. Her first class wasn’t till Tuesday, so she still had Monday to prepare. She’d brought a bottle of expensive champagne, which was sweating on the table next to a bottle of crème de cassis.
Jackson came into the kitchen, his wet hair combed straight back. I was poking at the chicken. “Rice,” he said, looking into the copper pot on the stove. “One of the great mysteries of agriculture.”
“I thought that was corn,” I said.
“Corn too. Another one of the great mysteries of agriculture.”
“What about wine?”
“Wine too. Mysteries everywhere.”
“What about millet?”
“I don’t know about millet.”
Claire poured a little crème de cassis into three wine glasses. She opened the champagne and filled the glasses. I took a sip. It was sooo good. We drank to Claire’s manuscript, and to my hot-snake certificate, which was propped up in the center of the table, and to Jackson’s NHI proposal, about which he was very excited.
“Earl’s an interesting guy,” Jackson said. “Too bad he doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
There was no point in bringing up my opposition to his trips to Naqada, so I bit my tongue. I spread the rice out on a platter and put the chicken pieces on top and spooned the sauce, w
hich had finally thickened, slightly, over them directly from the double boiler.
“Bon appétit,” Jackson said.
“Bon appétit,” I said, automatically.
“His pal DX has a two-headed snake. Rattlesnake. He read in Time magazine that there’re only about twenty two-headed snakes in the world. He thinks he could get a lot of money for it.”
“Jackson,” I said, “if you’re going to tell me you handled that snake, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Moloch and Beelzebub. Those are the two heads. Earl handled it. He held it right up against his chest and scratched the two heads. Moloch and Beelzebub.”
“You didn’t handle it, did you?”
“I just touched it. Put my fingers around it. It was fantastic. Like putting your hand on a powerful erection, a superhuman erection. It’s really something. I didn’t want to let go. It’s really something.”
“How many powerful erections have you held in your hand?” Claire asked.
“Just one. Well, the same one, I mean. The same one more than once. Well, not the same one, actually.”
“It’s all right, Jackson,” Claire said. “We know what you mean.”
“It’s really something, all right,” I said. “It’s a rattlesnake. You’ve got no business messing with it. What if you got bit?”
“Then I guess it would be up to the Lord.”
“Jackson, don’t talk like that. It’s not funny. You’re supposed to be a scientist, not a snake handler.”
“Just kidding. But when it turned both heads to look at me, the eyes caught the light from the stars. They glittered like diamonds. Earl said it was like looking into the depths of hell, but I didn’t want to let go.”
“You going to put that in your NHI proposal?”
“No.” He laughed. “But I see you’ve got your hot-snake certification, so I don’t see why you don’t want me to have a little fun.”
The framed certificate was on the table. Jackson picked it up and looked at it.
TRAINING CERTIFICATION FOR WORK WITHVENOMOUS SNAKES AT THOMAS FORD UNIVERSITY
I have taken the base module of the online training for personnel involved in animal care. I have read the Procedures for working with snakes compiled in the red binder in Buehl Laboratory (or the copy immediately outside Buehl Laboratory), and have read the policies described above. I have also been trained by Dr. Cramer to work with venomous snakes and to handle a snake-bite emergency according to the procedures described in the red book.
Approved by: Eldon Cramer
Trainee: Willa Fern Cochrane
Date: January 24, 2000
Date: January 24, 2000
Buehl Laboratory was the name Cramer had come up with for our basement snake lab. Victor Buehl had taught biology for forty years at TR. Cramer put up a picture of him next to the door. A distinguished man with a pointed white beard.
I served the chicken and Claire refilled our glasses with champagne, and we ate. I had tried, several times, to talk seriously to Jackson about what he was doing in Naqada, but it was as if there were something he did not want to grasp, and he always retreated behind a wall of jokey humor.
“Jackson,” I said. “What Cramer and I are doing—and Frank and Laura—is science, it’s not getting your kicks by touching rattlesnakes. We’re studying rattlesnakes scientifically. We’re going to catch the snakes in the den that Cramer’s located and bring them into the lab and put radio transmitters in them and take them to a new denning area. Snakes go back to the same den every year. Nobody knows what the impact of translocation will be—releasing them in a new denning area. It’s a big deal for Cramer, a big opportunity.”
Supper was over. “Why don’t we do the dishes?” Claire said. “Maybe Jackson could make some espresso in his new pot.”
I had given Jackson a new espresso pot for Christmas. It had a special valve that held the steam down till the pressure reached a certain point. Then the steam would explode through a filter and form a light crema or foam on the top of the coffee. It was delicious. Jackson loved it. And so did I. But it was temperamental. Sometimes it didn’t produce crema. Sometimes it leaked out the sides. But when it worked, it worked beautifully. And when we were working at the library table and I’d offer to make a pot, he’d hold up his cup of regular coffee and say, “Good idea. I’ll have a cup of coffee while I’m having a cup of coffee.”
After supper we sat in the living room at the big library table, which had room for everyone—it was at least eight feet long—with plenty of room for books, papers, computers. Jackson added a couple of logs to the fire in the wood stove. Claire was writing by hand, with a green-and-black-striped fountain pen, in a special notebook with detachable pages. She’d filled four notebooks since Christmas. Jackson was typing up his field notes on his laptop.
The last thing on Cramer’s agenda—though it was not part of the IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) training program—was a drawing assignment. Laura, Frank, and I were each supposed to draw one of the two old rattlers that we’d practiced on with the new snake hooks and clamps that Cramer had bought. How hard could it be? The snakes were old and tired and just wanted to sleep. They didn’t move around.
“A pencil is the best eye,” Cramer said. “Just draw what you see.”
All semester in Bio 120 I’d been drawing what I saw through different microscopes—losing specimens when switching from high power to low power and then finding them again.
But drawing a snake was harder than I thought. I was never any good at drawing, but a snake is just a hose with a head on it. And that’s what my first drawings looked like—hoses with small football-shaped heads.
Cramer laughed. He had put each of the two old rattlers in an aquarium on one of the soapstone lab tables, and we spent the rest of the day making one drawing after another. Cramer would reappear every hour or so and look at our drawings. “Keep looking,” he’d say. But we didn’t know what we were looking for.
I left the lab at four that afternoon and went to an art supply store on State Street and got a book on how to draw animals. I bought some drawing pencils and some shading pens while I was at it.
That night Jackson suggested taking a photo of my snake and then tracing it. Or drawing a grid on the glass of the cage. Claire said she thought Cramer’d gotten the idea from an essay about Louis Agassiz that showed up all the time in English composition textbooks.
My drawing book was full of good advice: Draw what you see, not what you think you see. Don’t think snake (or lion or elephant or dog or cat), think shapes, distances, contours. Think angular, rounded, sharp, intricate. Look for negative spaces.
I spent another day drawing my snake, and I thought I’d mastered it, but Cramer wasn’t satisfied. “Keep looking.”
That night—the second night of the drawing project—Claire brought an English composition book with the Agassiz essay. It was about a fish, not a snake. It was written by a student at Harvard who’d told Agassiz he wanted to be a naturalist. Agassiz had given the student a fish to draw (a fish preserved in alcohol) and had given him a hard time, just as Cramer was giving us a hard time, even though Laura and Frank were Rembrandts compared to me. Keep looking. But at least I had the idea. I knew what he was looking for. I was looking for information. And the next day I kept looking till I seemed to be seeing the snake for the first time and managed to get a drawing that satisfied Cramer.
And now, sitting at the library table with nothing else to do, I tried to draw the snake from memory. Claire was writing furiously with her fountain pen. Whenever she got stuck, I’d remind her that intentionality is the enemy. Jackson paused from time to time to ask questions that were really intended to convey information. Did I know this? Did I know that? Did I know that in ancient Mesopotamia the world was often depicted as a tree with a pair of intertwined snakes? And that the same snake reappears in the Garden of Eden, and later in the caduceus, borne by Hermes in Greek mythology? Did I know that in all ancie
nt cultures—European, African, American, Asian, Australian—the snake, because it sheds its skin, came to symbolize resurrection or immortality? Did I know that the Greek demigod Aesculapius once killed a snake and saw another snake enter the house with some herbs in its mouth and bring the dead snake back to life? Did I know about the sky serpent of Persia, and the Sumerian salt water serpent, Tiamat, and the Phoenician serpent god, Basilisk? Did I know that in Egypt the cobra represented the goddess of life? That the world’s oldest ritual, over seventy thousand years ago in the Tsodilo Hills in Botswana, involved the worship of snakes, and that according to the San creation myth humankind descended from the python? Did I know that Tore, the god of the Ituri Forest, was guarded by a giant snake?
My answer to these questions was always the same: No.
How about the Near Eastern serpent goddess Anat, sister of Baal? Now there was a name I knew. Baal. “He had a pissing contest with Yahweh, and lost, right?” Here was something Jackson didn’t know.
All I had to oppose this mythological knowledge was my taxonomy. Instead of drawing my inner snake, I wrote out the taxonomy on my drawing pad with a Kimberly 4B pencil:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Reptilia
Subclass: Diapsida
Order: Squamata
Suborder: Serpentes
Family: Crotalidae (pit vipers)
Genus: Crotalus
Species: horridus
Subspecies: horridus
I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I did, I could see the snake in my imagination: the dark dorsal bands, like upside-down V’s, on the yellow-black-brown body, and the flat triangular shape of the head, and the thermal-sensitive pits between eyes and nostrils, the elliptical pupils, the rough appearance created by the petal-like scales; the blotches in different hues, from dark brown to light yellow, that merge with the laterals to form cross bands toward the tail, the dark dots on the cream-colored belly, the irregular dark spots on a white background around the vent, the rows of strongly keeled scales that bordered the dorsal hexagons; I could count the rows of scales between the V-shaped bands and the number of scales in each row. I didn’t have to squeeze these images out of my brain, like toothpaste out of a tube. They were just there—not encrusted by mythology, not overlaid with my own childhood memories; neither devil nor god. Just the thing itself. Crotalus horridus horridus. My hand moved by itself, and the snake emerged out of nowhere—or rather out of a mess of shapes, blank spaces, patterns, distances, contours, relationships, angles, curves—and revealed itself on the page. My sense of well-being, which had been seriously upset, was restored. But I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to get into an argument.