For Ingmar Bergman

As he was taking the bible from his nightstand, Tore King called across the hall to his daughter and told her to wake up. She did not answer him back, and he heard no indication that she was stirring as he passed her closed door on his way into the den. Small spikes of ice hung from one of the logs in the wall where rain had seeped in during the night. King broke the ice down into a pot and placed it on the warm black stove in the center of the room.

“Karen,” he called, “I said to get up. I ain’t going to meeting this morning so you’re gonna have to take the serpents early.”

After a moment, her voice drifted back, “I’m awake, Daddy,” and he heard the first faint rustlings of her sheets. He dipped a cloth into the pot and washed his lean face and neck. Then he wrapped the cloth around the handle and took the steaming water to her thin, wooden door and knocked.

When it opened, the girl was still in her white nightgown. Though she was fifteen, she looked no more than twelve. Her face was round, with ruddy cheeks and a thick ball of a nose. “You ain’t going to meeting?” she asked, taking the handle from him.

“Got rained out yesterday,” he reminded her. “The mill’s been setting idle two days now. I reckon my ox in a ditch. You need to get moving,” he added as he walked away. “I had enough of your sleeping.”

She nodded and closed the door, and he walked over to his reading table. He was sitting there with his bible when she came out, still in her nightgown, and warmed herself by the stove. Pressing his reading glasses to his thin, skin-flaked lips, he watched her and thought of whipping her for slothfulness. He decided not to. It was Sabbath morning, and he did not want to begin it with a beating.

“I spect they’re gonna be needing the serpents down there before noonday,” he commented. “Brother Hiram asked us special to get them there early.”

“Brother Hiram,” the girl sneered. “I don’t know why you pay that man no mind at all after the way he done Momma.”

King stood and walked over to the stove to warm his hands. “Best be watching your tongue, girl,” he warned causally. “He’s still the shepherd of our flock.”

“Daddy,” she scolded, “he said Momma died on account of her not having enough faith. Momma! You know that ain’t the truth, but you let him say it.”

“Girl!” he shouted, jerking toward her, his narrow face tilting in so that the cold blue of his eyes seemed to jump at her. Shrinking away from him, she tightened her muscles, ready to absorb a physical reprimand, but he steadied himself, rocking on the heels of his work-boots, his long, thick hands still at his sides.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said, her back touching the cold logs in the wall.

“Just hush,” he said quietly, squeezing his eyes shut. “Just hush. Now listen. The preacher’s a good man of God. He may not a been right about Momma, but that ain’t for us to handle. We got to handle our own faith and for us the believing is in the forgiving. I forgive him even if he’s wrong. That’s the whole thing. Your Momma was as good a woman of the Lord ever walked this earth. She’s with Him now. You just keep that in mind, and remember that she’d have you forgive Brother Hiram.” His eyes opened and he smiled softly at her. “I’ll tell you… You’re so much like her, wanting to go around carrying other folks’ crosses. But you can’t. You got to learn that.”

The girl nodded and her father walked back to the table saying, “You just never need to forget that in the eyes of Jesus, we’re all of us sinners.”

After a quick breakfast of biscuits and coffee, King walked out to the wooden shed behind the house. It was sturdy and well insulated, and stood between the house and the horse barn. In the floor of the shed were two small doors, which King pulled open. He drew out two finely crafted stained-oak boxes. On the lid of each box shone a brass handle and latch and the inscription: Mark 16:15-18. King carried the boxes to the barn and saddled the girl’s horse, clamping each box into a special iron rigging on the saddle.

A slow, heavy thunder tumbled over the dampened mountains. When the girl came outside she wore a maroon dress and a thin, emerald jacket her mother had made for her. In the bruised sky above her a white mist twisted and unfurled like a banner on the breeze.

“You go get a heavier coat, girl.”

She frowned. “This one’s pretty, Daddy.”

Her father grunted, “You go get a heavier coat fore I whip you. I can’t make you wear it, but it ain’t a bad idea to have it along.”

The girl shrugged and loped back inside. King surveyed the sky again. Around the darkened edges of the trees the sky was starting to turn pink, and the moon was evaporating into the mist. When the girl came back outside she was smiling, still wearing the emerald jacket but carrying a thick brown coat.

“What’re you grinning like a possum at?”

“I’m just happy,” she said. “It’s Sabbath day, and I ain’t got to help at the sawmill none.”

He shook his head. “That all Sabbath day is to you? A reason not to work?”

She climbed onto the horse and straightened her skirt. “No, Daddy. It’s a opportunity to forgive Brother Hiram his trespasses.”

He pulled his long, callous fingers across his scalp of graying-blond hair. “I can’t believe I raised such a blaspheming girl.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said. “I’ll be good.” She leaned down, a wisp of her long blonde hair floating beneath her chin, and stuck out her lips for a kiss.

He kissed her. “I won’t be at meeting tonight, neither,” he said. “I got to finish working that back acre. You come on home tomorrow morning if Sister Barris will put you up tonight. If she don’t, you just head on home after dinner this afternoon.”

“Yes, Daddy,” she said.

King watched his daughter ride and feared that he detected the first scent of a hard rain.

Halfway between her cabin and the church, the girl met two strangers on the road. One was thin shouldered and bearded. He wore a floppy gray hat and when he smiled at her and said, “Howdy, sweet miss,” she saw that he had only a few blackened-teeth left in his mouth.

She nodded politely and said, “Howdy,” clutching the horse’s reign. On the wooded ridge just above her, a heavy fog hung in the trees like a drawn curtain and the croaks, loud and fat, of unseen toads echoed down the slope.

The other stranger was a shivering boy who was not much older than Karen. He had many teeth, big and jumbled in his mouth, so that when he smiled they almost seemed to spill out. The boy held an old, skinny goat by a frayed rope.

“Would you like to buy that goat there, miss,” the man asked her. “We ain’t got no food, nor no money for food. Ain’t even got a gun to shoot us a squirrel with. Just this here goat, and we ain’t got the heart to kill him for eating.” He glanced back at the boy. The shaking youth rubbed his yellowed palms together, staring at Karen with a dull smile drifting across his lips like an afterthought. “Don’t mind him,” the man told her. “He can’t talk. Not a word.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t have no money. I’m heading to the church house, and I need to be hurrying.” She wanted to get past the men quickly now that she knew that they were hungry, because she feared they would steal the horse, or her coat, and sell them. She had heard of such things.

“Ain’t going to put no money in the plate this morning?” the man asked.

“I reckon not today,” she said. In a small, white purse tied to her belt beneath the coat she had a dollar that she intended to give to the church as an offering. “If y’all want to come with me, I reckon you’d get some dinner after meeting.”

“That’s mighty sweet,” the man said, smiling again, the pointed, red cheeks above his beard nearly obscuring his eyes in crinkled flesh. He walked over and stroked the horse’s neck, and as he did his narrow chest touched the white lace hem of her dress. “What kind of church are you?”

His proximity sent a chill down her back. It was new to her, a different fear than had ever fallen on her before. Her skin felt heavy and thick, like another coat the man might want to steal.

“Holiness,” she said. “We’re Holiness.”

The man smiled even wider. “You all are snake handlers, ain’t you?”

“Yes sir,” she said. She motioned back at the boxes. “I’m taking the serpents up to the church house. My daddy’s an elder and we keep the serpents for the church.”

“I’d sure like to see them snakes,” he said.

“Well,” the girl said, “I got to take them to meeting. I’m already late.”

“No,” the man said. “No. You’ll be there. Ain’t it your duty to show us them snakes? I reckon I seen plenty, but I ain’t never seen no snake handler’s snakes.”

“Just serpents,” the girl whispered, almost obscured by the croaking toads. “Copperheads.”

“Copperheads! Y’all handle copperheads!”

Karen smiled. “Scripture says, them with faith shall pick up serpents and not be hurt.”

The man grinned at the boy and said, “She’s quoting scripture at us now.”

The girl was looking up at the mud-red sky through skeletal tree limbs. “My daddy says that when you hold the serpent you’re holding your faith in your own hand. That’s when you feel the Lord. My momma had faith,” she said. “She did. She handled serpents most her life.” She shook her head. “But one bit her a year ago. The preacher said that if she’d had enough faith she would of not died.” She shook her head again. “My momma had faith.”

“You got faith?” the man asked, lightly touching the silent box.

Karen’s face was dry and the veins at the bridge of her nose were pale green. Her cheeks were almost purple with the assault of the constant, icy wind, and when she frowned at him, she looked as if she were in pain. “I got faith,” she said. “I never handled them afore, but I got faith.” She stared at the man’s sneer and said again, “I got faith.”

She climbed down from the horse and began to wrestle one of the boxes out of its rigging. Walking around the horse, the boy watched her, his mouth hanging open.

The girl laid the box on the ground and knelt by it. She touched the lid’s simple, cold latch. Gray in the man’s tilting shadow, she stared down at the box.

“Are you ready?” she asked, and he grabbed her hair and flung her backwards into the mud. The horse jumped and started to gallop down the trail. “Get it!” the man yelled at the boy. Karen scrambled to her feet and lunged towards the woods. The man grabbed her muddied, emerald coat, and she turned and struck him in the mouth. Her face was tight and hard now, and he punched her, but she was free from him and was already to her feet.

He clutched his face, yelling, “Get the horse!” but the boy stood there dumbly, the goat kicking at his feet. The man turned and ran after her.

He caught her beneath a bare birch tree and threw her to the ground, and she cried out, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God! In the beginning was the Word…”

He pinned her knees to the ground with his own and grasped under her dress, savagely tearing away her undergarment. She screamed as if he had torn away a piece of her flesh. The boy was beside them, rubbing his hands for warmth, his mouth hanging open and silent. Karen frantically called out, “The Word was with God and the Word was God! “

“Well, hold her hands,” the man grunted. The boy reached down timidly and clutched her wrists. As Karen thrashed about beneath him, the man picked up a smooth rock near his feet and struck her face with it.

***

Wet, steady winds shook the bending pines, and droplets of rain sprayed the two killers like pellets of bird shot. The man sat down, looking away from the body. “Well, now let me figure,” he said, sullenly. He rubbed his mouth; a quiet ache had begun where the girl struck him. He looked up at the boy, who stared blankly at the body. “That horse is gone to hell and back. No use a-looking for it anyhow on account of it’s probably lost in the woods where the trail goes thin.”

The boy watched gray, dappled sunlight fall on the girl and shine in the tiny bubbles of rain on her cheeks. He walked over to her and bent down. The man turned and struck him in the thigh and the boy slithered away. The goat jumped with him and fell into a pile of wet leaves.

“You keep away from her,” the man grumbled. “You ain’t got to spoil her too.” He turned away, looking up into the pines and trying to catch some light on his face. A hard wind slapped the tree tops and rain fell on him “Well,” he said, hanging his head and rubbing the back of his long neck, “we got a coat for you, I reckon.”

The boy shook his head.

The man peered up at him. “You ain’t a-telling me you ain’t gonna to wear it on account of it’s a girl’s?”

The boy had not stopped shaking his head.

“God damn you,” the man cursed. “It’s a good coat. If it’d fit me, I’d by God wear it.”

The boy was still shaking his head.

The man shrugged. “Well, I ain’t a gonna make you wear it if you’re set again it, but you’re a goddamn fool if ever I saw one. Gonna to freeze your ass when that rain comes back.”

The boy smiled. The man shook his head again. “Fool,” he grumbled.

They walked back up to the muddy trail and glared at the snake box. “Snake handlers,” the man scoffed. “There’s crazy sons of bitches, I’ll tell you what.”

The boy nudged the box with his toe and squinted at the man.

“Oh yeah,” the man told him, “there’s a snake in there, all right. I’ll bet you she’s a copperhead, too. Crazy. Them snake handlers is crazy in the head.”

The box thumped and the boy jumped back. Shaking with laughter, the man slapped the boy on the back. “Well, go in and get her, Ignorant,” he cackled. He straightened and laughed under his breath. “Oo-ee. Ignorant, I don’t know what kind of man thinks he’s gotta pick up a damn snake to feel the Lord, but you ain’t that kind.”

The boy jerked his head toward the box, his face red and drawn. He waved his hand at it invitingly, mockingly.

“No,” the man said. “I don’t reckon I’m that kind neither. I heard of specters chasing after folks. And the devil coming after you. But I don’t reckon I seen nothing to make me believe in a good ghost, holy or not.”

Thunder broke through the trees, and shadows swayed over the two like black flames. “We got to get out of this here rain,” the man said. He started down the trail and then turned back to the boy. “You go fetch that coat. We can trade it on down the road for a boy’s.”

To this suggestion, the boy nodded in happy agreement.

When Tore King opened his door to the two strangers, he yelled over the storm, “Y’all come in out of that rain!” and the two dashed inside, the boy pulling the goat along. Shaking the rain off, the goat sprayed them all. Tore glared down at it.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, leaning over and kicking the goat in the ribs. “Damn thing.”

King shook his head. “When the rain lets up a little, one of y’all can take him out to the barn.” He sat down in front of the stove, and the other two sat on a narrow bench on the opposite side. “What a day,” King told them. He poured some coffee for them. “Where abouts are y’all from?” he asked, passing the man a steaming cup.

“Down round Black Tree,” the man said. “Just come out of Oklahoma and heading on through. I don’t reckon to be in Arkansas much longer.”

King nodded. “Y’all are welcome to stay the night. I figure it’ll be a cold one tonight.” He stopped and looked directly at the boy. “You don’t say much.”

“Ah, sir,” the man interjected, “he can’t talk. On account of no tongue. He’s born without one. You ever hear of such a thing? I been doing all his talking for him most his life.”

“That’s a mighty heavy cross to bear,” King said. “Don’t reckon I’d want that position.”

The man nodded and ran the back of his thin, hairy hand over his face, wiping off the rain. “Well, sir, it ain’t easy, you know. It ain’t. I done the best I could, though. Ignorant here’s like a brother to me. He is. And I tried to do right by him.” He scratched his head. “Ain’t always succeeded. Got him off track a time or two, I reckon.”

“How’d you go about that?”

The man shrugged. “Oh, getting him into all sort of wickedness with me.” The man looked into Tore’s solemn face and something in it opened him up. “Wickedness follows some folks, I reckon,” he said soberly. “Poor old Ignorant here’s had to catch mine with me. I don’t feel none to good about that, I’ll tell you.”

King nodded like a minister. “The Lord’ll forgive, you just hold onto that.” Then he smiled reassuringly and said, “We’ll feed your body first, how’s that? Y’all hungry?”

The two both perked up and the boy, who had been holding the girl’s rolled up coat under his arm, set it behind his chair and locked his hands on his knees.

King smiled even wider. “I figure I’d be hungry, too, if I was a walking all day. This rain’s kept me in, though. Rained on me for three days now, and the winds have been blowing mighty hard and cold, too.” He shook his head. “I was about to have supper, anyways. You boys pull them chairs to the table and we’ll pass a pork stew around.” He turned to the boy. “You can take that goat out to the barn now, I reckon.”

When the three had positioned themselves at the table, and King had served each bowl an ample scooping of the warm, brown stew, he clasped his hands in front of him, and bent his head. The two watched him, the man slowly bowing his head, and turning his gaze to the table.

Tore prayed, “Our dearest heavenly Father, blessed is Your name. We trust in this as surely as our salvation, o Lord. Bless our bodies with this food as you bless our soul with Christ. Keep my dear wife near you in Heaven, o Lord and keep my daughter near and forgive her her many sins, o Lord. Be with these weary travelers Lord as they leave tomorrow and bless my body for the hard work ahead. Forgive us all our transgressions, o Lord. All this, I beseech in your precious name, Jesus. Amen.”

“Amen,” the man repeated somberly. He looked up at the boy but could not hold the youth’s confused stare. “C’mon,” he said, picking up his spoon. “Eat.”

***

In the dark of the next morning, the man showed King the dead girl’s coat. King had awakened the two and set out biscuits to eat. Then he settled down by a lamp with his bible while the man had edged slowly over to him with the bundle.

He unrolled it on a large trunk by the door. “It was our sister’s,” the man told him. “She died not long ago, and it’s all we have left of her.”

King stared at it, his gray eyes hardening in his sharp, wind-burned face. But he said nothing.

“It’s a fine coat, sir. Soft. Pretty. I reckon you said yesterday, when you was praying, that your wife and daughter was with the Lord but I figured if you got a girl in town or somewhere’s it’d be mighty nice to give her.”

King took a deep breath. His bible rested on his thigh, his finger marking a page. He set it on his reading table and took the coat in his hands, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. He held it up to the light.

“It’s muddy,” he said.

“Well, yes sir, it is. It’s been raining these last few days.” King rubbed a small blood stain on the shoulder of the coat and the man told him, “That’s where Ignorant cut hisself a few days ago. It’ll wash out.”

King stared at it a while. “Why’d you keep it?” he asked finally, his voice soft and high, as if he had been crying.

The man looked down at it, his fleshy cheeks and brow bunching together. He scratched the back of his hand with his coarse beard. “I don’t reckon I know really why I kept it. On account of it’s still pretty, I reckon. Like she was pretty. She was a young thing, only twelve year or so. She was innocent still.” He sat down. “Something in that’s a might scary, to see innocence pass on.” He rubbed his temples, and behind him the boy stared at the two men. “I kept it on account of that, maybe. Try to keep some of it alive. But now I got to think of the boy. I was thinking, if you had a coat that’d fit him we could trade. He’s a might cold.”

King looked over at the boy. The youth’s face was blank and ugly, his lank mouth bursting with teeth. King stood and walked over to his own coat hanging on a hook by the door. He pulled it off and took it to the boy, handing it over as if it were something sacred.

“That’s powerful kind of you, sir,” the man said from behind King. “That’s a Christian kindness if I ever seen one.”

King turned to him and nodded. He sighed. “I best go check my horse,” he said.

He walked out to his barn in the first blue hints of dawn, and the empty serpent shed stood black in the dim light. He walked past it hurriedly. The goat was tied to the leg of his workbench in the barn, standing and staring at him, as if it had been waiting all night. King stopped at the bench and suddenly clutched the tabletop, his fingers gripping the wood as if to tear it away. His face was red, and purple bursts exploded in his vision. The only sounds in the barn were the breathing of his horse and his long fingers trembling on the table. A cry, hollow and high, rumbled in his mouth but he bit down on it.

Slowly he stopped, breathing heavy now, his face covered with sweat. On his table were tools. Grabbing the slaughtering knife he used for pigs, he felt its edge. He ran it over the gray sharpening stone quickly, stopping every few moments to listen for sounds coming from the house, but he heard nothing. He tried not to think of his daughter, but he saw her smiling down at him from her horse, her pale face framed by yellow hair.

Finally, he turned to walk toward the house but suddenly, without any thought, he spun around and slashed the goat’s thin, white throat. It kicked and bit him, blood staining them both, but he slashed at it again, and the goat collapsed beneath him. He thought of the two in his home. Their twisted faces, their stench of goat and mud and men. He thought of their smell in her nose, their ugly faces next to hers. He pulled himself up and ran to the house.

The man seemed to know immediately when the door flung open, and King stood in the breaking dawn before them, what was to happen. He almost laughed–how could this be–and sprung for the stove, hoping to get the black-iron stoker. King struck him in the shoulder with the long, hard knife, and the man screamed as his muscles split apart. Trembling, the boy crept toward the door. King caught him by the hair and flung him back over his reading table. In the same instant, the man hit King’s back with the stoker. King twisted beneath him, plunging the knife into the man’s abdomen. He caught the stoker in his left hand and pulled himself up, slicing the man open from his abdomen to his sternum. The man howled like a mountain lion and thrashed about, falling on to the floor. King, the knife lifted above his head, his face red with the man’s blood, fell on him and slashed his throat open.

When he pulled himself up, he heard the boy fleeing across the wet, open field, which led to the woods. He ran to his room and pulled his Winchester from the wall and hurried outside. He waited until the boy was beside the single oak left in the field, and fired. Blood sprayed from the boy’s back and King waited. Slowly, the boy began to move and King dropped the gun. He rushed to the barn and pulled some rope from the wall and ran out to the field.

The youth lay on his stomach crying, blood covering the soggy brown earth around him. King threw the rope over the lowest tree limb and tied it to the boy’s neck. The boy wept, a horrible gurgling cry shaking his face, his big teeth stained with dirt. King closed his own eyes and pulled the boy into the air. A flailing foot struck his cheek, and he took a few steps back, and the rope jerked. The boy coughed. King clutched the rope, and when he realized that the jerking had stopped, he opened his eyes. The boy swung lifelessly above him, his jaw hanging open, his mouth dirty and empty.

King released the body and it dropped to the earth. King seemed to drop with it, lying beside the dead boy in the mud as long, white branches of lightening flared across the sky, shaking in his vision like the naked limb of a birch tree.

A shower started on his way to find her. It came through the bare trees with cold gusts of wind that pierced his clothing and frightened his horse. His face was tight, lowered to the wind and the stinging drops, and he clamped his teeth down hard.

He wanted to cry out, to yell to God. But the shower was too hard, striking his face like needles, and he could only ride. Was the rain God’s punishment? He thought of the boy lying dead in his field, the man bloody in his den. In his own home lay a man he had slain. The thought shook him worse than the rain or wind.

His hands burned with the cold, but as he clutched them tight, as if to hold on to any warmth he had left, he knew that he would always feel murder in them. He would feel it each time he took up his ax, each time he rubbed them together for warmth, each time he held his bible. A sudden fear struck him that he would not find his daughter’s body, that he would find her alive, riding her horse and smiling.

But as he turned a curve in the road, he saw the box in the road. Tying the horse to a tree, he listened as rain tapped the lid, and he heard the snake inside thumping against the edges. He looked around, and through the trees he saw a speck of unnatural white. He rushed through the woods, wet branches scratching his face as he went.

He dropped beside her.

Her face was clean and white. All the blood had long since drained away and her nose was crushed in, her teeth broken. But she was so white. He held her, and crying sat with her across his lap, as he had when she was young. Something in him wanted to pray, but he found that he could not. He felt that he had no more words to speak to God.

When the rain had slowed, and lighter clouds had drifted overhead, he lay her gently on the ground and stood up. He pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around her head. Walking through the trees, his skin gleaming in the rain, he thought to load her onto the horse and take her home. And yet, the thought of home was ugly to him now. The dead bodies there shook him, and he trembled at the thought of going back. Then he saw the box.

It lay on the muddy trail. He knelt down near it and placed his hand on the lid. The wood was ruined from the rain, the latch already beginning to rust. He could feel the snake inside, dangerous and ready. He took a deep breath and opened it.

The serpent hissed angrily at him. It was sleek and black, and its diamond-shaped head sprung out of the box. King caught it behind its jaw and clutched it tighter than he ever had before. Its tail whipped at him and coiled around his arm, and he pulled it loose with his free hand, holding it in the center. Then he turned the jaw loose. The serpent rose up in front of him, its head seeming to float in the air, its hot yellow eyes locked with his. He watched as its mouth opened, four curved teeth bared, preparing to strike.

————————————————————————————————

Jake Hinkson is the author of the novel Hell On Church Street.