Quentin – 2010
I’d told myself I wasn’t going to go see any of them while I was back home again for the first time in a whole lot of years. Didn’t want to see them. Didn’t want to think about them, or about Samuel. It was all in the past, finished and gone. I was just planning to visit my mama and my sister and leave again as quick as I could. There was nothing else for me there. Not anymore.
So naturally I find out about their granddaddy DEL THIS SLASH \the minute I get into town.
I’d walked down to have a look at the river and found myself going past the diner before I noticed where I was. That’s when I saw Eddy coming out the kitchen door in the ally, wiping his hands on his cook’s apron and staring transfixed at something high up on the brick wall in front of him. That was just exactly the sort of thing I’d expect to find Eddy doing, even after all these years, and it made me laugh. I walked over to say hello, despite my intentions. After he got over being shocked to see me materialize in front of him, he told me about his granddaddy.
It had just happened the day before. He had a heart attack, but Eddy was quick to let me know what it was that caused the heart attack. He’d gotten ahold of a snake, although they were leaving that part out of what they were telling people. I was touched to realize how quick Eddy accepted me right back as one of them, how he didn’t hesitate to tell me the real story.
I knew what he was doing with that snake without Eddy spelling it out. It didn’t just come sliding out from under some rock and bite him. They were a weird bunch, no matter how I felt about them, but that’s one reason me and Samuel always got on so good. We were both outsiders, me with a black mama and a white daddy I never met, and him with dead parents he mostly didn’t remember plus a snake handler granddaddy. None of it did much to help our social standing in that town. We felt more at home with each other than with anyone else, and I felt like that about his brothers and sister too.
When we were kids they used to go to a creepy old church way up on top of Snake Mountain, the big dark mountain that looms over the town. I always heard the mountain was named for that church. Their granddaddy’s daddy started it. He was the first snake handling preacher way back then. By the time we were old enough to go to the services, they weren’t pulling out snakes any more because of what happened with Samuel and them’s mama when Jessie was just a baby. That caused a big rift, Eddy told us, and a lot of the members left. The ones who didn’t intend to give up their serpents. The ones that stayed were still a scary bunch, though. Most of them were old men and women from up in the hills, looking like they got to town about twice a year. The services we went to sometimes were usually pretty tame stuff, but once in awhile they would get all full of the spirit and dance like they were having fits, and speak in tongues. Nothing like the buttoned-up Baptists who make up most of this town and believe those backwoods Pentecostals are offshoots of Satan himself. I’d had no other experiences with church at all myself, since my mama never went, but most of the kids at our school were Baptists and liked to poke fun at the Pentecostals.
Eddy was getting ready for what passed as a dinner rush at the diner so didn’t have time to catch up, but he invited me out to the house later on. His little brothers were back in town and I wanted to tell his grandma I was sorry to hear what had happened. She’d always treated me like one of her own grandkids. So had their granddaddy really, for better or worse.
Seeing Eddy made me think about Samuel, of course. And all that stuff I’d tried hard to forget. Walking back home I passed the rusty hunk of what had once been a Ford Taurus in the old Harris field, and my mind immediately flashed back to Samuel’s time machine. I hadn’t thought about it in years, like I don’t think about any of my previous life now, but coming home just got everything stirred all up again.
Samuel was certain he could build a time machine. At least I guess that’s what he really thought. Sometimes you’d swear he was just kidding about it, other times he seemed serious as death, positive that one day he’d get it right. Then he could take off for the past, or maybe the future. We spent years fiddling around with that thing, pieced it together with scrap metal and junked car parts in his granddaddy’s old barn. Even after all that time we used up, I don’t know if Samuel really believed it would work. He probably didn’t know if he believed it himself. We sure spent a lot of our hours on it, though. LOTS OF ITS (WORD) IN THIS PARAGRAPH — JUST NOTING
His little brothers were fascinated with it. Especially Joel. Joel flat out worshiped Samuel and never doubted for a minute that Samuel could make a time machine. Ben was more realistic. Once in awhile he’d kind of believe, but mostly he’d make fun of Joel’s faith in it. They were funny kids. Twins, but didn’t look a thing alike. Ben was taller and skinnier, gray eyed, with floppy black hair like his other two brothers. Joel was a little pudgy, had lighter hair, big blue eyes, and the occasional asthma attack. They didn’t act much alike either. Ben had a sarcastic streak and a wicked sense of humor. Joel was a lot like Samuel, sweet natured, cheerful and friendly. Smiled all the time. Totally different, but you hardly ever saw one without the other.
Me and Samuel were in their barn one afternoon after school. It was late spring, not too long before we’d be getting out for summer break. Samuel was tinkering around with that time machine and I was keeping him company, laying on the hay they kept stacked up for the horse. I loved stretching out in the hay in that barn. Loved just being quiet and daydreaming. I’m glad I didn’t know that was the last time I’d get to.
The twins came stomping in as I was just about asleep. They were both talking a mile a minute, shattering the peace all to hell. They were around 13. Still impressionable.
“Samuel, Samuel!” one of them was hollering as they came through the door. “Guess what? Where are you?”
“Gone to Constantinople,” said Samuel, from somewhere under the machine. “I think it’s maybe 1496 here, best as I can tell. AD, I believe.”
Joel’s eyes got big as dinner plates.
“You got it to work,” he breathed. Ben looked at Joel like he’d lost his mind.
“He’s underneath it, Joel,” he said. “Jesus. If he was in Constantinople, could he be talking to us?”
“Well, maybe,” said Joel, sounding disappointed. “Who knows what will happen?”
“It ain’t working,” I said, sitting up in the hay. “So don’t argue about it.”
“Hey Quentin,” said Joel. “Guess what?”
“The sky’s done fell on ya’ll’s heads,” I suggested. Joel stared at me. Ben laughed.
“Nope, better than that,” Joel said, his eyes all shiny. “Grandpa said he’d take us to the snake church with him tonight. He says you’re coming too, Samuel, and Quentin if he wants. Jessie can’t, though. She’s too little.”
“What snake church?” I said. “Ain’t no snake church anymore.”
Samuel came sliding out from under the time machine, hay and dirt all over him. He looked at me, looked back at them. “Yeah, there’s a snake church,” he said to me. “It’s not the old one. Grandpa’s gotten hooked up again with some of his pals from way back then.”
“Well that sounds like fun,” I said. “How come I’m just now hearing about this?” I can’t decide if I’m more mad that he hadn’t told me or curious about this sudden development.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just…didn’t want to talk about it. I only went once, a couple of months ago.”
That in itself was worrisome. Samuel not wanting to talk about something was not normal.
“How come Grandpa’s wanting to do that? And why did he tell you two?” he asked the twins, running his hand through his hair like he’d always do when he was disturbed by something and trying not to say so.
“Samuel,” Joel said, with that rapt and enchanted look on his face that would make you want to laugh at him but also made you wish he wouldn’t have to get any older. “He says you’re one of them. You can handle the snakes, just like they do. He says God chose you.”
“He says we’re old enough now,” Ben chimed in. “He says it’s time for us to understand!”
Samuel dropped his wrench into the floor and it sent a puff of dust rising up. He sat down on an edge of the time machine that used to be a rusty bumper off a junked pickup, and just said, “Dammit.”
Ben was watching him close. As usual, not as taken with the whole thing as Joel. As usual, more cautious.
“Is he right?” he asked. “Can you do it?”
“I did it once,” Samuel said.
Samuel looked over at me again, for once straight-faced and grim. Right then, a shadow fell across us, just like it would have in a movie. We all jumped. Samuel’s granddaddy was suddenly standing in the doorway. He was a black silhouette blocking the late afternoon sun that had been streaming in, with Snake Mountain rising up at the end of the field behind him.
“Hey, Grandpa,” Joel said. “We were just telling Samuel about tonight!”
He came towards us, emerging out of the sunlight, his eyes fixed on Samuel.
“Listen, Grandpa,” Samuel began. His granddaddy reached out, put a hand on his shoulder.
“You are called,” he said, in that booming voice of his. Just like a preacher. You’d find you had to listen to what he said, like it or not. He could have made a fortune as one of those TV evangelists. “It’s your duty, son. And I want your brothers to observe what God has planned for you.”
He kept his hand on Samuel’s shoulder, looked down at him. Samuel, who wouldn’t never listen to nobody tell him what to do, who always did just exactly like he pleased and laughed about it, looked up at his granddaddy, twisted his mouth a little, and nodded. Rubbed his hand through his hair. His granddaddy nodded too, patted his shoulder.
“Good boy,” he said. “We’ll leave about six thirty.”
He looked over at me then, those blazing eyes going right into mine. “You come too, son,” he said.
“Yessir,” I said, despite not having the first intention of saying that. What I meant to tell him was, I’ll come see that demented bunch of snake handling lunatics when hell freezes over, you crazy old man, but that’s what he always did, to all of us. No matter what he said to do, we all of us shut our mouths and did it. Even me, no kin to him, nothing at all to him but a friend of his grandkids. He nodded at me, turned and walked back out of the barn, disappeared into the low sunlight.
Samuel came over and sat beside me on the hay. The twins watched their granddaddy go, then looked over at us.
“Can you do it again?” Ben asked. “Will you really do it tonight?”
Samuel looked over sideways at me. “You think I might be able to get the time machine to work in the next hour or so?”
“I sure hope so, because if you don’t I ain’t got a chance up there with all them backwoods snake handlers.”
“How come?” asked Joel, genuinely puzzled. I had to laugh at him.
“Have they not taught you about lynch mobs in your history class yet?”
“They won’t bother you,” said Samuel. “They’re not bad people. Besides, you think anybody would have the nerve to even glance at you funny with Grandpa there?”
“You’re right. It’ll sure be something I ain’t never seen before. Guess we could look on it as an adventure.”
“Yeah, some adventure,” said Samuel. “This is not good.”
“Don’t you like being able to handle snakes?” asked Joel, all worried-looking. “It means you’re special, Samuel.”
“Yeah, I know what it means. Listen, you two,” he said, giving the twins a sharp look. “This isn’t what you think. This is going to be scary, all right? Don’t expect it to be fun.”
“Scary how?” asked Joel.
“Just scary. Don’t go up there ready to be entertained. It’s not like a movie, okay?”
The twins stared at him.
“Well, it shouldn’t be like a movie,” Joel said. “It’s God.”
Samuel sighed. “I don’t know what it is, buddy. You guys better go on now, get ready for dinner.”
They nodded, serious. Turned and walked on out. Joel patted the time machine as he went by it. They vanished like their granddaddy into the sunlight at the door.
Samuel was taking long strands of hay, winding them around his fingers, tight as chains.
“Maybe Eddy could go with us,” I said. There’s something calm about Eddy, something makes you feel like things can’t go too far wrong when he’s there.
“He’s working,” Samuel said. “You don’t have to go, you know.”
“Oh, yeah, I do,” I told him. “I’m kind of looking forward to seeing this.” Weirdly, that’s true. Like you kind of want to see a ghost, or a car wreck. Something to jerk you out of normal life.
He sighed. “I’d rather do about anything than go up there but it’s like I don’t have a choice.”
“Well you always got a choice,” I told him. “I know he’s your granddaddy and all, and you feel like you got to do what he tells you, but maybe it’s time to draw a line.”
“It’s more than that,” he said, winding the bands of hay around his wrists now. “It’s something else. I have to do it for more than him.” He looked over at me, puzzled. It was getting darker in the barn. His eyes glowed like a cat’s.
“It’s like something bigger than Grandpa is making me do it against my will. Making me go up there. Like there’s some bigger reason for it. Some cosmic reason.”
I didn’t know what to tell him and didn’t have to tell him anything as it turns out because just then we heard his grandma’s voice floating down the hill from the house, calling us to dinner.