The experience with Michael, Emma remembered.
Being consumed by lust the week after that, she remembered.
The snakebite did nothing to erase those memories, or the coinciding fire that burned along with them.
Michael wasn’t there, but her memory of him was firmly intact as the last summer days checked off the calendar as Labor Day arrived.
For her father and the church, Labor Day was a major annual event -- when the Sand Mountain Pentecostal Church held its annual Pastor Appreciation picnic on the parsonage grounds. Most every member came to the picnic, since her father made careful note of who wasn’t there. They knew her father kept a mental roll, as if he were a first grade teacher.
Emma helped prepare for the event, with a double-long list of chores in the days approaching Labor Day. The summer’s heat was beginning to break and Sand Mountain was always four of five degrees cooler anyway than the rest of the region due to its elevation. It is still the Deep South, and Northern Alabama can only get so cool until October.
But every little bit of respite helps.
A late summer cool front had passed through on Sunday, and the sky is deep blue on Labor Day. A soft northerly wind cleansed humidity from the air, and the temperature just after the noon hour hovers between 75 and 76 degrees, according a thermometer near the parsonage back steps.
Birds chirp, and the call of the locusts has quieted to just a murmur in the late season. Butterflies flitter lazily about amid the smell of warm ham and deviled eggs.
Emma is wearing sandals, and a lavender cotton dress that drops to just beneath her kneecaps. The sleeves of her dress are cropped tightly, just covering her armpits, and they are accented in white lace, matching the rim around the neckline that covers her collarbone. Emma’s hair, pulled back on each side and connected at the back with a barrette, shines brightly in the holiday sun.
Tables line the parsonage grounds. The pastor, keeping with tradition, provided the main course of the day – a ham he paid for with money from the church’s entertainment fund. Emma’s mother made the deviled eggs and jugs of sweetened iced tea, also per tradition, and the church members are bringing everything else potluck style, offering up whatever they felt like making.
Some made main courses, like tuna casserole, while others brought vegetable side dishes made from produce they had grown over the summer, including black-eyed peas cooked with bacon, green beans sautéed with onion, and corn shaved from the cob and prepared in a peppery-sweet style.
Deacons had come over early that morning to set up tables and chairs.
The crowd is steadily arriving just after noon, and after a short iced tea social, Emma’s father calls all together near the front of the food line for a prayer.
“Dear Heavenly Father,” he says. “Bless the men who work so very hard each and every day to provide for their families on this special day. We honor them today.
“Amen,” he says.
“Amen,” say the members.
Smiles abound in the crowd as the line formed at the serving table for lunch. The annual picnic is a highlight for the church. It is the one time that Emma’s father relaxes with congregation members, and the one time the members don’t have fear in the name if scripture flaunted at them.
Emma works in the serving line, carving ham and serving it onto plates held by members passing through one by one. Each says a pleasantry to her like “nice dress” or “Bless you, dear” as Emma serves them a slice.
The men, she's sure, just want to fuck her. They want a big piece of ham all right. But what they really want, she thinks is to fuck her.
She sees them stare at the points where her medium sized breasts strike the dress with perky nipples. She sees them gaze at her calves, working their way up to the hemline. She thinks her father knows this, and wonders if that's not why he makes her serve from the front of the line -- just to make sure everybody in attendance is well fed.
Her father had assigned that job to her years before, just after her breasts budded, saying her bright smile would start them off right. He also told her to serve generous portions, so they felt “God’s love.”
So she gives a big smile, and a big slice, to all -- especially the dirty old men.
Emma is otherwise paying little attention to the details of who is coming through the serving line until Judith, the girl her age from the church, approaches holding her two-year-old daughter by the hand. Judith’s daughter has plump cheeks and arms, and is dressed in a white cotton dress with pleats from the waist down.
Judith is wearing tight, low-riding blue jeans and a snug white t-shirt with an American flag emblem on the front under the words “God Bless America.”