Light to the Hills: A Novel (55)

Amanda shrugged, shaking off the bad memory. There was nothing for it now. Although when she was with a family like the MacInteers, cutting up with each other over supper and each one doing their share, Amanda had to admit that a kind of homesickness for her own parents settled in her heart. She still taught Miles bits of scripture, as her daddy had long ago taught her, and she sang to him the same songs she’d learned as a child. She wouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Where was the common sense in that?





Chapter 16


Beady Wick must have combed over her conversation with Rai MacInteer a hundred times since the woman and her children had come to the assembly. She’d been chatting along easy as you please when Rai had mentioned meeting Amanda by way of that librarian job. Sounded like she’d been up to their place at least a handful of times, which was more than Beady could say. She couldn’t stand it. She wanted like everything to ask after her daughter, but it was outright shame that stopped her tongue. What kind of mother wouldn’t already know the answers to the questions she wanted to ask?

During the service, she’d almost worked herself up to ask anyway—just a small inquiry, so she wouldn’t seem eager—but then Jack had started up with the snakes and the MacInteers had slipped out right quick. Beady had been snappish with him for the rest of the week until he’d finally demanded, “Out with it, woman! What’s got you riled?” And of course, she couldn’t say.

Oh, why had Jack chosen that exact moment for his faith testing? Beady could see by Rai’s hasty exit that the woman didn’t fancy having her children cooped up in the same room with rattlers. Some folks just didn’t take to the serpent handling, and Beady had to admit she didn’t come to it natural herself. Jack had journeyed back to the church at Blackstrap time and again to witness the services and understand their methods right about the time their daughter Amanda had been courting Frank, the man she’d eventually married. The mountains were chock-full of snakes, and most folks killed them on sight, given the opportunity. Jack explained their use in parsing out a person’s trust and measure of faith, a quick and definitive means to sift the wheat from the chaff.

Jack had assured her he wouldn’t be putting himself in harm’s way because it was part of his calling. Why would God call him to such if he couldn’t stand up to the rigors of being tested? In Blackstrap, he said, he’d run across two boys—twins, in fact—who agreed to help him rustle up some snakes.

Jack had been so stirred up by the process that he’d come home briar-scratched and sweaty, eager to tell Beady the tale. “The three of us set off through the broom sedge, and ’bout thirty minutes later, a buzz come out of the grass.”

Beady’s hand had paused midbite as she’d sopped up the red-eye gravy on her plate. She pictured the barbed fangs sinking into her husband’s leg and shuddered.

“Now Pete—that’s one of the twins—raised a finger, and we all froze like stones where we stood.”

“What if you’d been bit, Jack?”

“Well, I wasn’t,” he said, continuing without a pause, “so Pete and Repete fanned out on either side while I stood still, holding the open mouth of that sack.

“A fat timber rattler drew itself into a coil, with its head raised up. One of them boys eased that hook to press down near the end of its tail, you see, anchoring it to the ground, while the other’n stretched his arm toward the snake’s head.” His dinner forgotten, Jack wielded the fork and mimed the motions with his arms while he spoke.

Beady had lost her appetite. She held the edge of her apron in her hands, worrying and twisting it as Jack talked.

“Repete pinned the snake’s head to the ground between the forked ends of the stick, and now, with both ends held down, it couldn’t thrash or strike. Right about then, up come a cloud of this foul, musky smell.

“‘He’s mad he’s been snookered,’ Pete said. That ol’ snake, he bobbed and twisted but couldn’t move free without use of his tail.

“Then they gimme a sack and told me what to do. Everything them boys did was cautious and slow, not like I’d imagined it would be. Well, Repete pushed the head down inside the sack and backed off. Pete tickled its underbelly so it would shy away, farther into the sack, as he dropped the tail. Once it was bagged, I clamped the top shut quick as a hare and gave it a twirl.

“Them boys said we prob’ly done passed by three or four without knowing about it. Nice warm day like that, they li’ble to be stretched out anywhere.”

“Lord a’mercy,” said Beady, letting out a long breath. “That sure won’t make me sleep good at night.”

Jack laughed. “Just need to put ’em in a wood box with the lid shut, but holes for air. They don’t need a lot of vittles, or water neither. A fed snake is livelier. You want ’em a little peckish if you plan to grab one up. They’ll still bite—that’s always a possibility, make no mistake. Toss in a mouse ’bout once a month and then leave ’em be after that for a week or so.”

“There’s a steady supply of mice in the corncrib,” Beady allowed.

“Slow and steady is the name of the game,” Jack explained. “You move real easy like. Hum if you have to, to calm the jangles in your nerves.”