“They’re so red,” Emma says, focusing on the tomatoes.
Her mother reaches to Emma’s neck and pulls away the bandage covering her wound.
“This needs some air,” her mother says.
Emma turns her head to the left and downward so her mother can reach the bandage. Emma sees a list of chores at the breakfast table.
Weed the garden.
Wash the linens.
Wipe the baseboards.
Mop the floors.
She suspects the list was left for her on Monday, and it’s been there ever since, waiting for her to return and resume.
“So do I,” she says.
“What honey?”
“Air,” Emma says. “Air. So do I. I need some air.”
“Well, let’s have your breakfast first,” her mother says.
Emma’s father starts saying a blessing.
“Let’s bow our heads," he says. "Our heavenly father we thank thee for our many blessings. We thank you for this meal, as we use it for the nourishment of our bodies, to be strong and serve you on this day with our deeds. Heal our angel with your blessings and unleash the serpent upon the world's evildoers.
“Amen.”
“Amen,” said her mother.
Emma sits silent.
Her parents look at her, and then glance at one another.
Emma reaches for the orange juice, pouring her glass half full.
“What’s for breakfast?” Emma says. “I’m quite hungry.”
“Well, I’m sure you are. I thought maybe you were dead back there. Came back to life and died again. But I kept checking you’re breathing, and, sure enough. You were breathing just fine.
“Just sleeping like a dead person,” her mother says.
“What’s for breakfast,” Emma repeats.
“Eggs, bacon and toast, Dear,” her mother says.
“Can you slice a tomato, too?” Emma says. “They look so ripe.”
6.
It Bit Me Here
Our perceptions of reality rarely tell the truth. Such was life for Emma and the Mays family on Sand Mountain as the summer quietly dragged on, creeping toward fall without yielding anything in the way of cooler temperatures.
Everything seemed to be as it was before – after her schooling had ended, but before she had met Michael and fallen prey to the snake. Emma woke up, had breakfast, got her list of chores, did them, went to bed, and did it all over again until Sunday, when she woke up, went to church, went home, went back to church and then went home and soon to bed.
But one big difference. After the bite, and what came after it, she wasn't doing her thing -- not one day a week, much less three while having to fight off doing it the other four.
Michael had disappeared, and so had her want to act on self gratification. Something still burned, but she longed for more.
At the Denton farm, the old tractor was dormant, and Michael was nowhere to be found. Not a tool, not the tractor – nothing had been moved at the farm since she left Michael at the barn that night.
Emma found herself gazing across at the farm often, only to see dove flying around the barn, and little else moving beyond the field grass swaying in the breeze. Emma had not been back to a snake handling service since the night she was bitten.
Once the main service ended each week, and her father made the call for the deacons to fetch the snakes from the box out back of the church, Emma got up and left quietly with those under the age of 18 who were not yet invited or allowed in and those who did not share the same calling or enthusiasm for snake handling like the others.
Her father thought the numbers had dropped in attendance at the snake handling service after Emma went down. His suspicion was they figured if Emma went down, anybody could go down.
This bothered her father, who considered snake handling the key to his job, just as fire is to a cook or a saw is to a carpenter. Thus, he was eager to groom some new passion among the membership for the serpents amid their waning enthusiasm.
But not at the expense of making Emma return before it was time. It was his idea that Emma stop coming to Sunday night snake handling, for a while at least. He suggested she wait a bit, until God called her back.
"He'll tell us when it is time for you to take the serpent in hand again," her father said.
Emma was still fuzzy about how it all happened that Sunday night, beyond what her mother told of the details and the remaining scar she on her neck. But she wasn’t afraid of the snakes, now, not at all. That's not why she wasn't going back. She just didn’t want to spend any extra time in the church that she didn’t have to.
Her father wasn’t making her go, and she wasn’t going.
If he would let her out of the Sunday morning and evening church services, she would skip those too. She had no recollection of it meaning anything to her, anyway.