Some church members had died during the handling ritual over the years, including her uncle from her father’s side, about a decade before. They say Billy had started gambling and drinking alcohol heavily every week at Saturday night cockfights held in the outskirts of Henegar.
He had lost the family’s money, they said.
He had lost his way in his walk, they said.
He had struck his wife, on more than one occasion, they said.
And, he had denied any wrongdoing at all, they said.
Not one speck of repentance from Uncle Billy.
He had it coming, they said.
“Just a few dollars and a little whiskey,” he had said. “A little fun never hurt nobody.”
God knew better, they said.
Apparently, they were right.
Uncle Billy handled a serpent in a service one Sunday night, taken from the hands of his brother, the preacher. Uncle Billy was bitten in an instant.
Strike!
Billy died on the sanctuary floor an hour later with his wife kneeling beside him, begging for his survival while trying to atone for his sins for him.
“He was a good man, God!” she cried out. “He painted these walls with his own hands.”
But Uncle Billy drew his last breath without muttering a word after the serpent struck him.
God rest his soul, her father said still, whenever Billy’s name came up.
Emma didn’t think her odds were better than Billy’s, or others who had handled snakes without repentance for sin.
She knew her heart. She knew her mind. And she knew both at the moment were at the same place they had been all week.
That’s why Emma had paused when her turn had come to reach out for the rattler. She had feared the inevitable. But once committed to the act, parishioners are admonished for backing off, a sure sign of weakness in guilt, something just as bad, if not worse, as being bitten.
The parishioner might avoid the bite but they can’t survive the scorn. And her very own father, who would have nothing of her rejection of the serpent, was holding the snake.
Turning back was not an option.
Emma had gritted her teeth and pushed her toes hard into the sanctuary’s plank floor. She had reached toward her father, who was holding the gyrating, three-foot rattler in his right hand, and the Bible in his left hand.
“Praise God!” her father had shouted, hoisting the Bible above his head. Though her mouth was too dry to gather saliva, she had swallowed, hard, and opened her palm to take the serpent.
Emma’s father had looked her in the eyes, and smiled dimly with his lips closed. The rattlesnake had coiled as Emma’s hand approached, opening its flexible jaws wide enough that it flashed the underside of its milky-white fangs.
Strike!
With a piercing that felt like the sting of 13 bees at once, the snake’s fangs had dug into Emma’s skin on the right side of her neck, just above her collarbone. She had moaned.
Her father, still holding the recoiled snake midway up its torso, had gasped.
Emma had blinked her eyes. She had pulled back her hand and clutched the wound on her neck. Her head was sent spinning like when she twirled in circles in the yard as a child.
Emma saw bursts of flashing light.
Her knees had buckled. She had fallen to the floor.
Emma had missed Sunday night snake handling the week before, after she had approached her father at the lectern in the moment between when he called for the snakes and the Deacons arrived with them. She had whispered to her father that she did not feel well and needed to leave for home. Emma had told her father she would walk the half-mile home to the parsonage and go to bed early.
But Emma had felt fine that night, nearly perfect even. Maybe better than she had ever felt before, anticipating what lie ahead. She had known the handling of the serpents took an hour-and-a-half or more as charged parishioners hummed about with free-flowing adrenaline long after the last rattler was returned to the wooden box.
She had planned that night to meet Michael in the barn at the Denton farm, which ran parallel to the parsonage across the narrow two-lane blacktop county road. Emma had known the only time she could meet Michael without her parents knowing about it was during the snake handling.
So the plan was made days before, and she had eagerly counted them down.
Michael had recently graduated from Ider High School. He had started working as a hand on the Denton farm doing odd jobs the week before. Emma had seen him a few times over the years, at the market in Ider, and she had noticed him looking at her.
She, too, had looked at him. But they had never spoken beyond the language of a long gaze.
Emma was not allowed by her father to date or see boys at all until she turned 18, and even then, only with his approval. She was 18 now, but any meetings were to be approved by her father and held in the family home under his watchful eyes.