Ralph Peer and his friends would be setting up their recording machines that weekend, so I tried to slip away Saturday morning to watch them. Daddy caught me though. He put me on a work brigade with Arnie, where our job was to figure out what a new altar might look like. Daddy said it shouldn’t be too fancy, as if we were putting on airs, but it couldn’t be too plain either. After all, it was for the living God. Daddy sent us to the shed behind our house, where he kept some tools along with other odds and ends.
Arnie thought a soapbox might work. He had heard about people doing all kinds of things with a soapbox, such as slapping wheels on it and racing in it, which he desperately wanted to try. He said an altar might be the closest he’d get to doing that. The altar wouldn’t have wheels, but maybe, if conditions were right and Mr. Fowler started to bark, Jesus would lift it up and fly it to heaven.
“You really believe that?” I asked him.
Arnie picked up an old soapbox, brushed it off, and held it out at arm’s length.
“Sure,” he said, eyeing the box. “Don’t you?”
I sighed and helped him with the altar. After sanding and a coat of paint, it actually looked pretty good. We took it to show Daddy and heard him rustling around in the bushes outside the tent.
“Lord Jesus!” we heard him say.
Arnie and I glanced at each other.
“Daddy, you okay?” called Arnie.
He came out from the bushes a minute later holding a snake that must have been four feet long. He gripped it behind the head so it wouldn’t bite him. The snake was a beautiful tan color, with dark-brown markings like coffee stains. It wriggled in his hand.
“Will you look at this?” exclaimed Daddy. “It’s a timber rattler!”
“Wow,” breathed Arnie.
“Be careful!” I said.
“Careful?” said Daddy. “Was Jesus careful? Did he back off from the lepers? Did he run from those Roman soldiers?”
“That thing is poisonous,” I said.
Daddy grinned. “Check your Bible, Son. Mark 16:18. ‘They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’”
Daddy made me nervous when he talked like that. When he quoted weird Bible verses, you never knew what would come next.
“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.
“Maybe we should name it,” he said.
The snake gave off an angry rattle, and Daddy grinned. “Beelzebub, how’s that?”
Arnie perked up. “Isn’t that the devil’s name?”
“Bingo!” said Daddy. “It’s another name for Satan. I’ll shut Beelzebub in a box, then pray about him. Then maybe some Saturday night, when the spirit is sagging, I’ll pull him out to liven things up.”
“Would you?” said Arnie. He bit his lip and his eyes danced. I couldn’t tell if he was scared or excited.
Daddy spent the rest of the morning in the shed, and when he came out, Mama yelled at him. She usually supported Daddy’s projects, but not this one. It brought me up short to hear her talk to him like that. She ordered him to box up that snake and never let it out, then informed Arnie and me that if we went anywhere near it, she’d tan our hides.
The sun beat down hard that day, and the heat lingered into the night, especially inside the tent. But that didn’t keep the people away. They came like always, looking for miracles or maybe just for something to do.
That night, Daddy preached like nobody’s business. He once told me he never knew what he’d say till he got up there and looked in people’s eyes. Then he saw what they needed and would dive right in. He cooked up his sermons the way you’d make a casserole for a church supper, using leftovers and pieces of this and that. This week, one of the pieces was Beelzebub.
He eyed the people, then suddenly exclaimed, “You ever think about snakes?”
Next to me, Mama tensed up. “Dear Lord,” she breathed.
Arnie sat up straight. His eyes glowed, and he started breathing hard, a little bit like he’d done at the Strand Theater downtown when we slipped in the back door and saw Flesh and the Devil with Miss Greta Garbo.
Daddy whipped off his coat and tie. Rolling up his sleeves, he paced back and forth, agitated. “Scientists tell us that snakes are reptiles, just another kind of animal like rabbits and birds. But we know the truth, don’t we? They’re evil. They’re captains of sin, scum of the earth, Satan’s cheerleaders. They crawl on their bellies. Did you know they used to walk? That’s right. Before the Garden, before Adam and Eve, snakes pranced around like you and me.”
“Show us, Preacher!” somebody shouted.
Daddy grinned and demonstrated. He jumped, wiggled, and squirmed. Of course, he was careful not to dance, because that would be a sin.
“Then one day, it all changed,” said Daddy. “A snake tempted Eve. When he was caught, his legs withered up and blew away like dead leaves. Ever since, snakes have slithered around on their bellies.”
Next to me, Mama wrung her hands. Earlier that day, following her orders, Daddy had shut the snake in a box, then built a cage for it on top of a worktable. Daddy called his cage “the snake pit” and had put Beelzebub inside while she had watched. But I knew, just as sure as the world, that one of these days Daddy would open that cage. I wondered if it would be tonight.
Daddy pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped off his forehead. He cleared his throat. He clapped his hands the way he did sometimes to get his blood flowing. He looked over at Mama. Then he shouted “Amen!” and moved on from snakes to other signs of the devil, such as music. It appeared we were safe from Beelzebub, at least for another week.
Later in the service, when it came time for the offering, Daddy stepped up to the new altar. People had no way of knowing that the back of the altar said Ivory Soap.
“My boy Arnie made this,” Daddy announced. “Arnie, come say hi to the folks.”
Arnie, sitting beside me on the front row, hopped up and joined Daddy at the altar.
“What do you say?” Daddy asked him.
“Give to Jesus!” said Arnie.
Daddy passed the offering plate. The crowd must have liked Arnie, because the plate was full by the time it reached us.
Looking down at it, I thought of Sue Dean and wondered what she would think. Maybe this was the family business. Maybe it was just a show. Maybe we really were crazy.
I passed the plate. The walls closed in.