Light to the Hills: A Novel (56)

Beady was all set to be Jack’s helpmeet like the Bible said, and she reckoned since she’d faithfully supported her husband in all their days together this far down the road, she could keep on traveling. She’d just have to watch where she let her feet fall on that road now.

“Now, Beady, if he bites you, don’t necessarily mean nothing.” Jack spoke as if Beady intended to take up the vipers herself, which she most certainly did not. “It’s not the biting that’s the problem; it’s the poison what harms you. It’s up to the snake and the good Lord whether they give you a dose of that.”

Beady considered this. She knew of folks who’d been snake-bit. There were heaps of remedies for such a thing, provided it wasn’t in the throat or face. She’d seen dogs and horses with faces so blown up with poison they couldn’t draw a breath.

Jack had returned to Pickins late that day with three timber rattlers jumbled up in a weathered gray box. He’d assured Beady that he’d secured the latch and lashed it to the back of his saddle good and tight. For weeks, Jack watched the serpents in their box in the barn, getting used to their sounds and smell. He’d seen his share of them, like anyone else living off the land, but never in such close quarters and never with the insight of the Spirit. He took to toting his square of a shaving mirror in his shirt pocket so that he could use it to reflect the sun into the dark corners of the box through the air holes without opening it, warming them with its light and studying their movements and moods.

In the heat of the summer, at the end of a sparsely attended Sunday meeting, Jack nudged Beady, and she knew immediately he’d felt a tug from the Spirit. Today was the day. He’d fed the assembly that day from Genesis and the story of the Fall, the serpent in the garden being the perfect introduction to the signs and wonders possible for the redeemed. Without fanfare, he slid the weathered box from its place behind his pulpit and rested it on a bench he’d tugged up front. From that day forward, Pickins’s Nose was baptized in the spirit of the Holiness movement.



A vision of Amanda nursing her new baby sprang into Beady’s head. Had it really been four years ago? Like any good mother, her main concern would be to do for her young’un. Once you felt the weight of that baby in your arms, was there anything you’d not do for it? It had taken her and Jack so long to have a child. There was nothing Amanda could do that would make her stop loving her, and it tore her heart out that she couldn’t see her and her grandson.

Beady had to stand by her husband, though. It was her highest duty. And to Jack, his reputation was everything. They had to live to a higher standard, he’d told her, even if it meant sacrifice. Amanda would know that, wouldn’t she? All she’d need to do was repent of her ways, and they’d welcome the prodigal back. With each passing day of those four years, that possibility seemed less and less likely. Beady had almost—almost—convinced herself life absent of Amanda could be bearable. Young’uns left home and moved off all the time, and you hardly saw them after that. She rarely got over to Paducah to see her own family herself. But then Rai MacInteer had chanced along with her passel of children and news about Amanda to boot, and it was almost more than Beady could stand.

How many times had she wished away the past? If she could turn back the clock, she’d erase that Frank Rye and Gripp Jessup clean away. She never had cottoned to the pair, and somehow, she figured, this whole business was pinned on them.





Chapter 17


Every now and then, Gripp got an itch to see some sights. He’d tell Finn to mind the birds and he’d take off for a week or more, usually after they’d cooked and sold a fair batch and he had a few dollars burning a hole in his pocket. He’d ride the train to a suitable town and spend his money on whatever pleasures he could find for a day or two. He deserved some kick-back time after all the work he put in.

Plus, there was something about riding the rails that curbed his restlessness. It made him feel better, somehow, to scout around for confirmation that he was doing pretty well for himself. Judging by the sorry towns that slid by the moving train, there were plenty of folks doing far worse. Perversely, such a fact bolstered his spirits.

It was on one of these jaunts that Gripp stopped in a town where a tent meeting was going on. He’d mistaken it for some sort of carnival or he would’ve kept on riding. Unfortunately, the tent and its late-night praise and altar calls tended to put a damper on the carousing he meant to do in town. The tent, hung with lanterns and buzzing with activity, served as a momentary reminder to folks in town of how they ought to behave.

Gripp was in no mood for chastising or confessing, as he told the young lady whose bed he shared. “I’ve had enough preaching to last me a lifetime,” he said, stroking the curve of her hip. Had she told him her name? He couldn’t remember.

“It don’t seem to have done you no good,” she teased, biting the tip of his finger. “Now, what cause did you have to go to church?”

“I’m a’ upstanding gentleman, as you can plainly see,” Gripp said. He gestured downward with a proud flourish.

“Indeed.” She arched an eyebrow and smiled.

“I had a partner one time who was courting a preacher’s daughter,” he recounted. “I had to play nice with the family to make some connections in the area. Unfortunately, that meant going to Sunday meetings. At least we got a home-cooked meal on the tail end of the sermons.”