Curtis—happily—smacked away at his supper while Farish continued to clickety-click about Gum with abrupt offers of food and service, all of which, with an air of affliction, she sadly waved aside. Farish was fiercely attached to his grandmother; her crippled and generally pitiable air never failed to move him, and she in turn flattered Farish in the same soft, meek, obsequious manner that she had flattered their dead father. And as her flattery had encouraged all that was worst in Danny’s father (nursing his self-pity, feeding his rages, pampering his pride and above all his violent streak), something in the way she fawned on Farish also encouraged his brutal side.
“Farish, I can’t eat that much,” she was murmuring (despite the fact that the moment had passed, and her grandsons all had plates of their own now). “Give this plate to Brother Eugene.”
Danny rolled his eyes and pushed back slightly from the table. His patience was badly frayed from the crank, and everything in his grandmother’s manner (her weak gesture of refusal, her tone of suffering) was calculated—sure as the multiplication table—to make Farish whip around and blow up at Eugene.
And sure enough it did. “Him?” Farish glowered down at the end of the table at Eugene, who sat gobbling his food with hunched shoulders. Eugene’s appetite was a sore point, a source of relentless strife, since he ate more than anyone in the household and contributed little to the expenses.
Curtis—mouth full—reached out a greasy paw to take the piece of chicken that his grandmother proffered with trembling hand across the table. Quick as a flash, Farish slapped it down: an ugly whack that made Curtis’s mouth drop open.
A few globules of half-chewed food fell out on the tablecloth.
“Aww … let im have it if he wants it,” Gum said, tenderly. “Here, Curtis. You want you some more to eat?”
“Curtis,” said Danny, bristling with impatience; he didn’t think he could stand to watch this unpleasant little suppertime drama unroll for the thousandth time. “Here. Take mine.” But Curtis—who didn’t understand the exact nature of this game and never would—was smiling and reaching out for the chicken leg trembling in front of his face.
“If he takes that,” growled Farish, looking up at the ceiling, “I swear I’ll knock him from here to—”
“Here, Curtis,” Danny repeated. “Take mine.”
“Or mine,” said the visiting preacher, quite suddenly, from his place by Eugene at the end of the table. “There’s plenty. If the child wants it.”
They had all forgotten that he was there. Everyone turned to stare at him, an opportunity Danny seized, inconspicuously, to lean over and scrape his entire disgusting dinner onto Curtis’s plate.
Curtis burbled ecstatically at his windfall. “Love!” he exclaimed, and clasped his hands.
“It all sure tastes mighty good,” said Loyal, politely. His blue eyes were feverish, and too intense. “I thank you all.”
Farish paused with the cornbread. “You don’t favor Dolphus in the face one bit.”
“Well, you know, my mother thinks I do. Dolphus and me are fair, like her side of the family.”
Farish chuckled, and began to shovel peas into his mouth with a wedge of cornbread: though he was visibly, clatteringly, high, he always managed to pack his dinner down around Gum so as not to hurt her feelings.
“Tell you one thing about Cain, Brother Dolphus sho did know how to raise it,” he said through a mouthful of food. “Back there in Parchman, he told you to hop, you jumped. And you didn’t jump, well then, he’d jump you. Curtis, goddamn,” he exclaimed, scraping his chair back, rolling his eyes. “You like to make me sick. Gum, can’t you make him get his hands out of the food plate?”
“He don’t know any better,” said Gum, standing creakily to push the serving platter out of Curtis’s range and then easing herself back down into her chair, very slowly, as if into an ice-cold bath. To Loyal she made a nod of obeisance. “I’m afret the Good Lord didn’t spend quite enough time on this one here,” she said, with an apologetic wince. “But we love our little monstrer, don’t we, Curtis?”
“Love,” cooed Curtis. He offered her a square of cornbread.
“Naw, Curtis. Gum don’t need that.”
“God don’t make mistakes,” said Loyal. “His loving eye is on us all. Blessed is He who varies the aspect of all His creatures.”
“Well, yall better hope God’s not looking the other way when yall start handling them rattlesnakes,” said Farish, casting a sly eye at Eugene as he poured himself another glass of iced tea. “Loyal? That your name?”
“Yes sir. Loyal Bright. The Bright is after my mama’s side.”
“Well, tell me this, Loyal, what’s the point in hauling all them reptiles down here if they have to stay in the damn box? How many days you been running this revival?”
“One,” said Eugene, through a mouthful of food, not looking up.
“I can’t predetermine to handle,” said Loyal. “God sends the anointment on us, and sometimes he don’t. The Victory is His to bestow. Sometimes it pleases Him to try our faith.”
“I reckon that makes you feel pretty foolish, standing up in front of all those people and not a snake in sight.”
“No sir. The serpent is His creation and serves His will. If we take up and handle, and we’re not in accordiance with His will, we’ll be hurt.”
“All right, Loyal,” said Farish, leaning back in his chair, “would you say that Eugene here isn’t quite right with the Lord? Maybe that’s what’s holding you up.”
“Well, tell you one thing,” said Eugene very suddenly, “it don’t help for people to poke at the snakes with sticks and blow cigarette smoke in on em and mess with em and tease em—”
“Now wait just a—”
“Farsh, I seen you fooling with them out back in the truck there.”
“Farsh,” said Farish, in a high derisive voice. Eugene had a funny way of pronouncing certain words.
“Don’t make mock of me.”
“Yall,” said Gum weakly. “Yall, now.”
“Gum,” said Danny and then, more softly: “Gum”; for his voice was so loud and sudden that it had made everybody at the table jump.
“Yes, Danny?”
“Gum, I meant to ast …” He was so wired that he could not now remember the connection between what everyone was talking about and what was now coming out of his mouth. “Did you get picked for Jury Duty?”
His grandmother folded a piece of white bread in half and dipped it in a puddle of corn syrup. “I did.”
“What?” said Eugene. “When’s the trial start?”
“Wednesday.”
“Hi you going to get there with the truck broke?”
“Jury Duty?” said Farish, sitting bolt upright. “How come I aint heard of this?”
“Poor old Gum don’t like to bother you, Farish.…”
“The truck’s not bad broke,” said Eugene, “just broke so she can’t drive it. I can hardly turn the wheel on it.”
“Jury duty?” Roughly, Farish pushed his chair back from the table. “And why are they calling up an invalid? Looks like they could find some able-bodied man—”
“I’m happy to serve,” said Gum, in a martyred voice.
“Hun, I know it, all I’m saying is that looks like they could find somebody else. You’ll have to sit down there all day, in those hard chairs, and what with your arthritis—”
Gum said, in a whisper: “Well, I’ll tell you the truth, what worries me is this nausea I’ve got from the other medicine I’m taking.”
“I hope you told them that this is like to put you in the hospital again. Dragging a poor old crippled lady out of her house—”