Between the Bridge and the River (15 page)

Alexander Pinkerton’s grandfather Abraham was a mad drunk who had emigrated to the South from Scotland when he was a boy. He paid five dollars for his pregnant daughter to hold the evil-looking killer. She knew better than to protest. Better to take your chances with the world’s deadliest snake than a Scotsman drunk on moonshine and religion. Cletus didn’t feel too good about it either but he could see a steely psychotic purpose in the old man’s eyes and also witnessed the fearful acquiescence of the other parishioners. He took the snake from the basket using the little stick and lasso he used to protect himself from it.

Darlene stretched out her plump hand, ready to die if it be the wish of Jesus and her daddy, and the bored snake took a halfhearted stab at her wrist, more out of a sense of duty than any real snakiness. (He’d been biting his way around the Southern states and had figured out that biting was a way to avoid being prodded—rather like a Hollywood film star who finds out that bad behavior is rewarded in show business.)

Darlene didn’t faint or feel any the worse for the bite, and her father proclaimed a miracle. It is true that the bite should have killed her and her unborn child within a few minutes but nothing happened, nothing visible anyway.

In reality, only the tiniest amount of venom reached Darlene’s central nervous system. The poor snake was almost out—it was over-milked. The effect of the meager dose of poison was that it acted like a vaccination, rendering Darlene and her unborn clergyman completely immune to all snake venom.

This, of course, is impossible but it happened. Just like when a bumblebee flies or when Fraser’s invitation was delivered on a Sunday.

Still, even this story did not help the Reverend Pinkerton in converting many new souls to his church, so when Potter presented him with Saul and Leon, two lost white boys who obviously needed to be shown the Way, he was indeed delighted.

He was appalled at the story of two young men being persecuted by heathens for their love of Christ, and he insisted that the boys come
and live with him and his wife, where they would be safe from satanic governmental indoctrination.

He would regret that.

Reverend and Mrs. Alexander Pinkerton lived in a large white wooden house on the outskirts of Crawford’s Creek. The house had been in the Pinkerton family for generations; in fact, it had been built by the Reverend’s mad Scottish grandfather.

It was a beautiful big American house with a wraparound porch complete with rocking chairs, whitewashed fencing in the yard, and a covered well. It looked more New England than Old South. A Colonial masterpiece. Anyone would want to live there.

It was the main reason Sarah Pinkerton (née Muller) had married her husband. Sarah came from a family of Baptists, the tenth of thirteen children, and was hardly noticed by anyone until she hit puberty, when for some strange reason, her gawky bucktooth appearance was transformed. She filled out across the hips and lips and tits and became a pure corn-fed farmer’s daughter fantasy girl. Had she not lived in such an out-of-the-way area, fashion vultures and show business hyenas would have swooped, snatching her for cash and prizes, mauling and pawing at her until they had drained her of all possibilities.

Her father noticed her beauty and sought to protect her by marrying her young to a good family. In Sarah Muller’s father’s bleak German eyes, a snake-handling family was mystic royalty. The off-spring of snake handlers was as the Dalai Lama. Almost Jesus. A rock star. A great big celebrity worthy of his genetic treasure. Almost as good as a Baptist minister but he couldn’t find one of those who wasn’t obviously gay.

Alexander and Sarah’s marriage was arranged by their parents. Neither one of them thought to protest, they had been in a vise since birth, they didn’t really know that protest was an option.

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 continued 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.