3

MICHAEL STOOD WITHOUT moving and watched the rattlesnake.

He knew the snake could kill him; still, there was something majestic about it. It was coiled into a rope of thick muscle that quivered like a blood pulse and its tail hissed a sickening warning. The whirring of the rattles mesmerized Michael. It was as though the tail performed rites of a ceremony as ancient and dark as time. Circe’s magic, thought Michael. Sweet as death, the rattler’s song. The snake’s head danced against its swollen, dark body. Its mouth opened and closed in a white smile and its teeth glistened. Its red-string tongue slithered like a whip.

Michael was not afraid of the snake. It was an even match. The snake had quickness and its vial of poison and its Devil’s noise; he had size and strength and a pinning stick. The stick was long—six feet, at least—and Michael had trimmed one end into a fork, where two limbs had branched away.

He gouged gently at the snake’s head and whispered teasingly as he turned the stick in his hands: “Shhhhh. Be quiet, my little one. You’ll get your bite soon enough. Soon enough.”

The snake’s body tightened into a hard knot. Its head sank backward like a raised fist. Michael knew the snake would strike soon. He tapped above the snake’s head, then flipped the stick quickly and pushed hard, catching the snake behind the hard bone of its jaws. The snake’s body writhed, turned upside down, uncoiled, convulsed, fought hard to pull its trapped head free, and if not free, then off. The instinct for suicide in trapped animals was great and Michael knew it. He pushed steadily as he eased down the length of the stick to the snake.

“Easy up, now,” he said to the snake. “No need of fightin’ it. Not now. Not now. You lost it. Fair and square.”

The snake’s body lashed at the pinning stick, wrapping it in a death choke. Michael reached across the stick and caught the snake behind its flat jaws with his right hand. He squeezed hard with his fingers and the snake’s mouth gaped open and he could feel the long ribbon muscles contracting as the snake swallowed involuntarily. He stood, lifting the snake still coiled to the pinning stick.

“Ah, you’re a beauty,” Michael said proudly. “A four-footer, I’d wager, and you’ve killed your share, you have, of rats and lizards. Swallowed ’em up whole. And I’ve got another swallow for you.”

He chewed into the wad of tobacco leaf in his mouth, squashing it flat. He could feel the burn of the leaf against his tongue, and his mouth filled with saliva. Then he turned the snake’s head to him. He pinched the snake’s mouth open against the stick and spit the brown juice of tobacco deep into the snake’s throat. The snake’s head twisted angrily and its venom dripped from the tips of its teeth as the juice slipped into its body.

“That’s enough,” Michael said gently. “Just enough to calm you down. That’s all.” He waited patiently until the snake’s body began to relax and loosen on the pinning stick. “Don’t go dyin’ on me, now,” Michael coaxed. “You’re not to go dyin’. Not yet.”

He uncoiled the numbed snake from the stick and dropped it carefully into a thick cloth sack. He tied the top of the sack with a leather strip and looped it around the gargoyle head of his walking stick. Then he shouldered the stick and began walking happily through the woods.

* * *

It had been seven days since Michael had begun his surveillance of the house of the three women. The house was an unplanned fortress, standing on the tip of a plateau that rose like a wave against the mountains behind it. It was surrounded by oak and chestnut trees, with a hairline of pines running from the mountain down into the belly of the valley. The trees around the house clustered like sentries, their highest limbs interlocking in fingers of leaves, and the house, as well as its inhabitants, was protected by an isolation that seemed almost mystic. Michael knew of isolation. He understood it. Isolation enforced order and habit, a rhythm of days that rolled into other days until it created a monastic sense of timelessness. And so it was with the house of the three women. Their waking and sleeping ticked slowly on an internal clock of repetition.

The only intrusion had been the wagon with the man and the boy. Neighbors—the Crider man Lester Caufield had described—Michael judged. He had watched from the woods below the road as the man disappeared into the house with his bundle of goods, reappeared at the well, and then left. And then he had taken the risk of stepping into the road above the creek and having the boy see him. But that had been a small risk. Only, he was intrigued that the boy had not moved from the wagon and that Dora and Sarah—he had easily identified the women on his first day of watching them—had not left their work in the garden to speak to the man with Rachel. There was something to be learned from their behavior. Michael replayed the actions again and again in his mind; intuitively, he knew it was a pinspot of weakness and it would serve him well.

Each day he had watched and waited and lived comfortably in the lush growth of the mountain. He was not unsure, as he had been when he had camped above Lester Caufield’s house. Lester had told him what he needed to know. Lester had told him of Eli—how he was like Eli—and of the three women, and he had known immediately. He could be patient. He had waited two months since the Caufields. He had traveled up to Knoxville and worked in a tannery before returning to the mountains, and had plotted his drama with exacting detail. For two months he had repeated the names of the women. He had drawn the features of their blank faces in his mind and had heard their voices and cast them in their roles. And now he was ready.

The mountains had been cold and harsh before, in March; now they were warm by day and cool by night and the air was as sharp and clean as ice. Michael did not mind the waiting. He had learned of the ecstasy of being alone. Each day he worked with his knife, carving a figure from a heart of cedar that he had found in the woods. The carving relaxed him, narrowed his vision to exacting detail. And it satisfied an artistry that often confused him because it seemed to belong to another person. But it was patient work and patience was necessary. Rest. Think. Listen. There could be no blundering. It would be fool’s work to blunder. Fool’s work, and Michael O’Rear was not a fool. When the curtain parted, he would be prepared. He would not be a stammering fool. Rest. Think. Listen.

* * *

On the eighth day, in early morning, Michael covered his campsite and packed his knapsack. The snake was in the sack, which was hanging from a limb. He slipped his walking stick through the loop of the leather strip, tied it securely, lifted the sack from the limb, and placed it on the ground. The snake squirmed and rolled weakly. “Soon, my beauty,” Michael whispered. “Soon.” At midmorning he began the long, circling trip around the farm, and at noon stood above the house. Soon Sarah would emerge from the house and drive the cows from the barnyard to graze in the open field below the woods. She would sit in the shade of a great cedar tree and watch over the cows until Dora called her from the house, almost precisely two hours later. It had been the same every day Michael had watched the house. It was the routine he needed, the way of introduction that would take him among the women. He sat in the shadows and waited and ate part of a trout cooked the night before and stared intently at the house below him, trying to imagine the rooms and the furnishings in them.

He did not move until he saw Sarah leave the house and cross to the barnyard. Then he untied the sack and eased the snake onto the ground, catching it carefully behind the jaws in the narrow of its throat. He slipped his knife from its sheath with his left hand and forced the blade into the snake’s opened mouth, behind his needle teeth. He began massaging the snake’s head with his right index finger and the milky venom oozed from the snake’s teeth, across the knife blade. “Get it out,” he whispered. “Don’t be leavin’ more’n a drop or two. You wouldn’t want to kill Michael O’Rear, now would you?”

He looked toward the house and saw the cows plodding up the hill, followed by Sarah. He eased the knife from the snake’s mouth and wiped the blade across the fur back of a moss stand. Then he turned the snake’s head toward him and winked. “Now’s your vengeance, little friend,” he said in a low voice. “Do it well.” He turned the snake’s head quickly and thrust its mouth on his left arm, above the wrist. He could feel the snake vibrate with a sudden life as its teeth sank deep into the muscle of the arm. A hard pain exploded in his body and he yanked viciously at the snake, ripping it away from his arm. The snake hissed and he snapped its head against the ground and then crushed its skull with the heel of his knife. The snake’s dying body rolled in a wrapping motion, like a screw, thrashing in the pine needles. Breathing heavily, Michael caught his arm above the wound and watched the snake die.

He could hear the cows nearing him. He moved quickly, gathering the snake and rolling it in a loose coil ten feet behind the spot where Sarah always rested. He positioned the snake’s head over a rock and covered the rock with leaves. It would work, he thought. He could slip his hand beneath the crushed head and flip it high, and the snake would appear to be alive. That would be enough. The rest would be convincing. He stepped back and judged his work. He was pleased. He felt the ache grow in his arm and he realized the weak poison was seeping throughout his body.

* * *

Sarah was happy to be outside. She had worked that morning in the house, across from her mother at the quilting frame. The work was slow and monotonous and her mother had retreated into the silence that often fell over her like a shadow. Once, when she was younger, Sarah had asked her mother about the mood and Rachel had replied, “You’ll learn it soon enough.” Sarah had known this was not an answer, but a warning of something that would sour with the passing of time. It was a fear to be endured, like the stories she had been told by Dora about monthly bleedings when her time for the cycle had begun. Sarah had not questioned her mother again about the aloneness she pulled around her like a garment; afterward—instinctively, in perfect imitation—she, too, had begun to slip into her mother’s silences.

She walked past the grazing cows to a soft sandbar she had heaped into a cushion beneath the cedar that stood alone in the line of pines lacing the edge of the woods. She sat lazily, her knees up, stretching her body forward to feel the pleasing strain of muscles pulling in her shoulders and back. A very small breeze washed across the side of her face, like a breath. She crossed her arms over her knees and leaned her head against her elbows and listened to the easy beat of her heart echoing in her temples.

When she heard the man’s voice, her body started violently.

She rolled forward, to her left, turned on her hands and knees and looked up. He stood not fifteen feet away. His right hand was raised, palm up, toward her. He pointed to the ground with his left hand.

“Shhhhh,” Michael whispered. “It’s a rattler, long as my leg.”

A scream exploded from Sarah’s throat. She scrambled awkwardly backward, crawling on her hands and knees.

Suddenly, the man before her dove to his left, his arms locked in front of him like a shield. She saw his knees hit the ground and his hands fight something before him. She heard him cry, saw his shoulders recoil, then fall forward again. She saw the snake spin through the air and fall heavily, and then the man was over it, swinging a rock. The rock fell again and again against the ground. Sarah could hear the pounding and feel it thundering through her hands.

Then he slumped back into sitting. He was breathing harshly through his mouth, his head nodding as he inhaled and exhaled. His face was flushed and perspiration dripped from his forehead. He held his left arm stretched out before him.

It had happened so quickly, in splinters of seconds, faster than Sarah could comprehend. She stood cautiously, staring at the man. Then she turned and began running down the hill.

Michael smiled as he watched her run. He closed his eyes and replayed the assassination of the snake, and as he did, he could hear a ripple of applause building into a chorus.

* * *

Michael was leaning against his knapsack when Sarah arrived with Rachel and Dora. He had tied a handkerchief above the elbow of his left arm and twisted it tight against the artery. The vessels of his forearm bulged in blue cords under his skin and the puncture wounds of the snakebite had blistered into purple dots.

He raised his face to the women and a feeble smile played across his mouth.

“You hurt bad?” Rachel asked tentatively, stepping near him.

“Not hurt, but bit sure enough,” answered Michael.

Rachel’s eyes flicked to his face, to his voice, to the song of his accent.

“Let me take a look,” she said. She knelt beside him and took his arm. She touched the outer circle of the festering wound, pressing it gently.

“We got to cut it,” she told him. “Bleed the poison out.”

Michael nodded. He rested his head against his knapsack and closed his eyes. His mouth was dry and his face burned with the heat of the mild poison spreading through his body. He had not believed it would affect him, but it did not matter. Perhaps it was better that it had.

“Won’t take but a minute, but it’s got to be done,” Rachel added.

He nodded again. He could hear movement about him, could feel other hands on his arm pulling away the handkerchief above his elbow. A stinging rush of blood spread into his forearm. Another woman—Dora—spoke. Her voice was stern and heavy.

“I’ll do the cuttin’,” she said. “I got the knife.”

He felt his arm being lifted and balanced across a lap. Then he felt the quick draw of the blade on his skin, over the bite. His body trembled and his fist closed tight. Blood began to seep from the cut, dripping down his arm like a thick paint.

“We’ll let it bleed a spell and then get you down to the house,” Rachel said bluntly. “You could go into a fever.”

“Rachel.”

It was Dora’s voice and it was a warning.

There was a pause, a silent struggle between the two women that Michael could feel. He opened his eyes and looked at Dora. Her narrow face was cold with contempt.

“You needn’t go to worryin’,” he whispered. “I’m grateful to you and on the word of them that’s holy, you got no danger to be facin’. I couldn’t do fight with the weakest of God’s creatures right now.”

“Nobody’s worried,” Rachel assured him calmly. “Not many people come through here we don’t know, that’s all.”

Michael smiled his understanding. He closed his eyes again and flexed his fist to force the blood out. He could hear footsteps in the leaves around him.

“Mama, here’s the snake,” Sarah said. “He—he killed it.”

“It’s big,” replied Rachel. “Must’ve had plenty of poison.”

“Don’t go touchin’ it,” warned Dora. “Snakes look like they’re dead sometimes when they ain’t.”

Michael moved against his knapsack. He forced a smile.

“Sure enough,” he agreed. “That’s the truth of it. Snakes, you can’t tell about. That’s somethin’ I’ve learned travelin’ about, and it’s a strange lesson for an Irishman. There’s not a single snake in Ireland. Not one.”

“Don’t talk,” Rachel said. “Don’t move around. It’ll just spread the poison that much quicker.”

“I’m at your mercy and grateful for it,” replied Michael quietly. “Whatever it is you want, I’ll be mindin’, but I don’t like bein’ thought of as a stranger. My name’s Michael. Michael O’Rear.”

Rachel opened his handkerchief and refolded it into a bandage. She wiped away a string of blood that had matted in the hair of his arm.

“My name’s Rachel,” she said reluctantly. “Rachel Pettit. The girl, she’s my daughter, Sarah. Dora’s my sister. Dora Rice.”

“You’re kindly people,” insisted Michael. “It’s providence that puts you here, it is.”

Rachel did not reply. She pressed the handkerchief over the cut and held it.

* * *

It was late afternoon before the women moved Michael from the woods to the house, using a mule and a hauling sled with steel runners. Sarah had returned to the house for water and bandages and a salve to apply to the cut, and Rachel had cleaned and dressed the wound. But the women had said nothing. They had sat away from him in silence, and as he rested, Michael had tried to close the distance of their presence by the telepathy of his imagination, to force the ghost of his inner eye to narrow on their faces, to enter their bodies through their breathing. But he could not. He had thought of them for two months, but still they were far away, removed by a mystique that covered them like a transparent lacquer. He did not know what it was, but he knew the drama was forming and he knew his role.

* * *

He was guided by Rachel into her room, through the quilt curtains, and to her bed.

“Take off your shoes and lay down across the top quilt, Mr. O’Rear,” she told him. “We’ll get you some food and I’ll change the bandage.”

“It’s Michael, please, and don’t be troublin’ yourself.”

She looked at him evenly.

“You got bit helpin’ Sarah,” she said. “We owe watchin’ after you.” She turned and left the room.

Michael removed his shoes and stretched across the bed. The bed was soft and cool and had the clean smell of fresh cloth. He smiled easily and cupped his hands behind his head, pushing against the pillow. It was beginning. His own private Chautauqua. He had made his entrance and met his audience. And he had done it with a prop too daring to disbelieve.

He wondered if the women had taken the snake’s rattles as a prize.