Lottie Mae drew back the light cover that was over her and got up. Her cotton dress was on the bedpost. She slipped it on and buttoned it up the front.
“Chile,” her mother said softly. “Take it off. It got blood on it. I git you sompin else.”
But Lottie Mae went into the kitchen instead, where she drank two glasses of water taken with a dipper out of a metal bucket sitting on a shelf. Her mother limped in behind her. The sockets of her mother’s hips sometimes fused with the miseries and when this happened the girl had to go to the big house to cook for Big Joe and empty his daughter’s slop jar. Her mother came to the water bucket and took her arm. Lottie Mae turned her vacant eyes on her mother. The expression on her face did not change at all.
Her mother smiled but her lips were trembling. “You know chile, Mistuh Big Joe ain’t needin you. I spect he be just fine today lak he is. You gone back to bed. I’m gone git Brother Boy to go to the stow and git you some ice cream.” The smile jerked on her face and the lips still trembled. “Now how you lak that, chile?”
Lottie Mae seemed to know quite clearly that she could not mention the snakes in her mother’s hair or any of the other snakes. She knew it would upset her mother and her mother would not see the snakes and not seeing the snakes would only give her great pain.
“Miss Beeder,” said Lottie Mae. She meant to say more and thought that she had, thought that by simply saying the name she had explained what there was to explain about Beeder Mackey.
Her mother took her hand away and said: “Good Lord knows it true. I’m gone git Brother Boy to go with you. You tell Mustuh Big Joe I got the miseries an you gots to come right back home here and hep me. Tell’m you come to do quick an go, cause you cain’t stay. Brother Boy can wait right there on the back steps for you.”
Brother Boy was her seven-year-old cousin by her Uncle Lummy but the child lived with them because Uncle Lummy and Aunt Lily were bad to fight, fought all the time, had both been cut by razors, each by the other, and drank moonshine whiskey, sometimes separately and sometimes together in the bed, where they were not careful with their nakedness. Maude thought it was sinful and corrupt behavior and had asked for the child. They said she couldn’t have him but that she could keep him for a while. James Booker, whom Maude immediately started to call Brother Boy, had walked to their house with a little pasteboard box full of his things to stay awhile. He had been there two years and nobody ever mentioned anything about him going back home.
It took her and Brother Boy, he holding her hand just as Maude had told him to, thirty minutes to walk to Big Joe’s house. On the way Lottie Mae saw a long metal truck with rattlesnakes nailed to the sides, she saw a whole parade of people — women, men, and children — carrying pictures of snakes—signs—nailed to the tops of wooden standards; then she saw a man get out of the back of a pickup truck with two dead snakes, held by the tail and hanging from each hand like pieces of thick rope. The man was smiling and after he got out of the truck he stood very still while a woman, shrieking with laughter, took his picture.
A boy stood in front of the Mystic grocery store with a snake as big around as her leg and as red as blood draped around his neck. The snake was so long its tail and head both reached the ground. There were people everywhere: in the road, on the side of the road, in the ditches even, beside pickups and cars and buses. They were laughing and talking and shouting to one another and what came to her ears again and again and again from mouths on every side, shouted, said, whispered, sung, was the word: snake snake SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE. They were all talking about snakes. She half expected the heavens to open up and start sending down snakes. She could feel their thick bodies dropping on her head.
Brother Boy said: “Soda crackers sho am crazy bout snakes, ain’t they?”
Her shoulders jerked. “What?” she said.
That word had just come from Brother Boy’s mouth and exploded against the side of her head.
Brother Boy said it all again.
She shaded her eyes with her free hand and pretended to squint up the road. “We gots to hurry,” she said.
“I wouldn’t touch me no snake,” Brother Boy said.
“Mistuh Big Joe don’t lak it to be late,” she said.
“You know they eat them snakes,” he said.
“Brother Boy, don’t,” she said.
He grinned slyly up at her fright and revulsion.
“Every year them soda crackers eat ever snake which they cotch.”
She lengthened her stride and turned loose his hand.
“Go in the woods and cotch them snakes,” he sang. “Skin them snakes! Skin the skin off and put’m in the fry pan!”
Lottie Mae stopped and turned on him. “Brother Boy!” she screamed. “You got… got to … got to …” She uttered the words until her tongue was hard in her mouth like a single enormous tooth growing out of her throat, because Brother Boy’s neck had grown serpentine, undulant under his enormous grinning head.
She turned and ran and Brother Boy chased her all the way to the big house choking on laughter and talking about the white folks’ mouths full of squirmy snakes, chewing snakes, swallowing snakes. Right up through the big barren yard to the back porch and up the steps where she slammed the door in his face.
Brother Boy abruptly stopped laughing, went down into the yard, and started throwing stones at a few dusty dirt-scratching chickens under a chinaberry tree that grew out beside the kennel where the killing dogs were kept.
Lottie Mae went to the kitchen and made Big Joe’s breakfast: four eggs up, cornbread muffins, ham, and grits. She look it in to him where he was still in bed, propped up in a dirt-colored gown, with a rolled-up woman’s stocking pulled onto his head to cover his ears. Propped on the pillow beside him where his wife used to sleep was a bottle of whiskey. When she came in he started shouting.
“Goddammit Maudy, how many times …” And then he stopped, staring at her. “Oh, Lottie Mae,” he said finally and then repeated several times, “Lottie Mae,” in a quiet voice.
Lottie Mae said: “She got the miseries.”
While she set the tray beside him on the bed, he rolled the stocking up until his ears were clear.
“What say?” he demanded.
“Miseries,” shouted Lottie Mae.
“Lord yes,” the old man said. “I guess we all do, ever mother’s son of us.” He pointed to his bottle and then to his breakfast. “You got to put a bottom on whiskey,” he screamed. “Keep a bottom on whiskey and it won’t eat you guts out. What daddy used to say. What daddy used to say. Aye God, he’as right too. Food! Food!” he cried and rolled his eyes.
She shouted twice in his good bad ear that she had to go pretty soon, that she didn’t mean to stay the whole day, because her mother had the miseries.
“Miseries?” he shouted back. “Lord yes, I guess we all do.” As she was leaving he pointed to the wall at the side of his bed where the thumping sound of the television had been shaking an old Currier and Ives print of a bulldog fight. “Don’t forgit!” he shouted, his long bony finger trembled at the wall. “Don’t forgit! Food, slop jar! Food, slop jar!”
“I’ll give her snakes,” said Lottie Mae in a quiet voice the old man didn’t hear.
“And teller I hope she turns the goddam thing so loud she busts it. Teller that!”
Lottie Mae went out of the room and down the long dark hall to the kitchen. She made up some flapjack batter because Beeder Mackey would not eat eggs or meat. She took the flapjacks and butter and cane syrup and a cup of black coffee into the room where the girl was watching a show on television. A man was trying to give two squealing white ladies a new car, except the two white ladies could not get the answer and it was driving everybody crazy. Lottie Mae put the tray on the bed and Beeder immediately sat up, threw off the blanket, and ate rapidly of the flapjacks and syrup, using her hands and making little grunts of pleasure as she swallowed. Lottie Mae stood at the window while Beeder ate, watching the silvered limbs of the leaf-stripped chinaberry tree under the bright winter sun. Two frightened ruffled chickens came running by, Brother Boy right behind them with a long stick in his hand. He swung the stick rapidly as he ran, narrowly missing the chickens’ heads.