“Okay. So, when I watch trains, it makes me think about how much movement there is in the world. How every train has dozens of cars and every car has hundreds of parts, and all those parts and cars work day after day. And then there are all these other motions. People are born and die. Seasons change. Rivers flow to the sea. Earth circles the sun and the moon circles Earth. Everything whirring and spinning toward something. And I get to be part of it for a little while, the way I get to watch a train for a minute or two, and then it’s gone.” The way I get to be part of your life before you’re gone, and I’m left here, watching trains pass me by too.
His cheeks flushed and he looked at the ground, preparing himself for whatever clever thing Lydia had to say. “Anyway. Sorry. Weird.” He glanced over at her. She stared at the tracks.
“No,” Lydia said, all teasing gone from her voice. “Not weird. I mean, obviously you’re still generally weird—let’s not get carried away—but that’s not weird.”
Almost on cue, a train whistle sounded in the distance.
As the train approached, they got up off the picnic table and stood near the tracks, close enough to feel the wind from the train. Dill experienced the familiar rapturous rush of excitement and adrenaline as it neared and began laying on the whistle. That orgasmic rise as the clamor and energy of it built, threatening to overwhelm his senses, until it was right upon him. He closed his eyes and listened to its various parts. Wheels squealing on the rails. The chug-chug-chug of one of the cars. He absorbed its violence and brawn as it slithered past, a massive steel serpent. That pounding, pulsing din stirred something in him.
He’s thirteen and standing at the front of his father’s church with the rest of the praise band. He’s wearing his too-large electric guitar, playing as loud and fast as he can while the drums and bass jar the flimsy walls and low particleboard ceiling of the tiny church. He makes mistakes left and right, but nobody notices because they’re caught up in the Holy Spirit, and the walls also vibrate with the exalted and chaotic glossolalia of tongue speaking. Shoes and boots muddy from the unpaved parking lot stomp and make the floor quake. Several congregants, including Dill’s mother, pound tambourines.
Dill’s father stands at the front of the congregation and raises a mason jar half-filled with strychnine before taking a long swig, his eyes rolling back. He shakes his head, wipes his mouth, and shouts, “Hallelujah!” He hands it off to Dill’s mother, who sips it like it’s lemonade, passes it on, and goes back to beating her tambourine.
Dill’s father strips off his white dress shirt, down to his undershirt. He stands with his arms outstretched. Supplicants approach him and put their hands on his veiny arms and bony shoulders, seeking healing from maladies real or imagined.
A call goes up through the congregation and two of the brothers do a shuffling dance down the center aisle, a wooden box containing a snake in each of their hands. They stop and set them on the ground and Dill’s father dances up to them, clapping his hands. They pull back the chicken-wire lids on their hinges and reach into the boxes with hooked poles, pulling out two rattlesnakes and two copperheads. The brothers begin distributing them among the congregants like so many neckties. Brother McKinnon holds a rattler inches from his face, spraying it with spittle as he prays, daring the serpent to strike and test his faith.
Dill plays faster, his heart thumping, sweating in the suffocating humidity of so many animated bodies pressed into one place. His father starts in his direction, carrying a copperhead draped around his neck. He stands in front of Dill and lifts the copperhead off himself. Dill’s heart thrums in his ears. He stops playing. The bass player and drummer keep on without him, playing ever more furiously. He’s always been afraid of the snakes. He’s never taken them up before and he prays to God to cleanse his soul and to give him the faith, if this is to be the hour. And these signs shall follow them that believe. And these signs shall follow them that believe. They shall take up serpents. And these signs shall follow them that believe. They shall take up serpents. His breath leaves him.
His father reaches out to him with the thick, sinewy copperhead and Dill extends his hands. He imagines how the snake will feel when he holds it. Cool. Dry. Sleek. Pulsing with malevolent vitality. He meets his father’s eyes. His father gives him a slight, sad smile and turns away, holding the snake above his head, triumphant, before handing it off to an elderly sister. Dill breathes again. He tries to pick up the rhythm but he’s shaking too badly. He’s relieved but disappointed that his lack of faith shines through his skin.
A week later, officers arrest his father.
“Hey, Travis,” Dill said as they left Bertram Park. “Any chance your mom might be able to help me by making a birthday cake for my mom for tomorrow? I…don’t have a lot of the stuff you need to make a cake.”
“Yeah, no problem. Especially for someone from church.”
“I can come help after work.”
“Naw. Sometimes my dad’s weird about people coming over. You know.”
Dill handed over a battered package of off-brand yellow cake mix that he appeared to have snagged from work for free. “Thanks. Sorry for the late notice.”
Travis’s mom was happy to do it. He didn’t want to dump the project on her, though, so they made a little mother-son evening of it, with him pitching in to help. It was the perfect night, because his father was playing cards at a friend’s house.
“Really now, this kitchen is an absolute pigsty…,” Travis said in a horrible British accent, imitating his mom’s favorite cooking reality show host from the Food Network.
She giggled. “Oh Trav. You’re too funny.”
His mom’s laughter was one of his favorite sounds. He didn’t hear it nearly enough. Not since Matt died. He kept clowning. He dusted his face with flour and put on one of his mom’s flowered aprons. He was trying to juggle some wooden spoons when they heard Travis’s father stumble in the front door.
They immediately fell silent, hoping he might go right to bed or at least flip on the TV and pass out in front of it. Anything but coming in the kitchen and ruining their night. They stood a fair chance—Travis’s father considered the kitchen to be his mother’s exclusive domain.
No such luck. He staggered in, stinking of bourbon. The minute he saw Travis in the apron with flour on his face, he sniggered.
“Well, ithn’t thith prethiouth!” he said, slurring and lisping, gesturing with a limp wrist. “Look at my two little girlth having the betht old time!” He affected a mincing gait.
Travis smiled uneasily, hoping this was his father’s attempt at humor. The only problem was that his father never quite knew when a joke stopped being funny (or started being funny, for that matter) when he was drunk.
Travis’s mom swept a stray bit of flour into her hand and threw it in the garbage. “Did you have fun at your game, sweetie?”
“Oh heaventh yeth! But not ath much fun ath baking a little cake in my little apron.” He staggered over to Travis and jerked hard on his apron strings, untying them. Travis turned away, avoiding eye contact. He removed the apron and quietly folded it.
“Clint,” Travis’s mother said softly. He ignored her and got in Travis’s face.
“Talked with Kenny Parham tonight. He mentioned homecoming. Since I guess you ain’t playing in the game, you at least taking a girl to the dance?” All hint of playfulness was gone from his voice.
Travis stared at the ground. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. You don’t know what? That you’re going to the dance or that you like girls? You taking your boyfriend, Dillard Early the Serpent Prince, to the dance?”
“No sir. I like girls fine. Just not dances.”
“You a fag?”
His father’s breath made his eyes water. “No sir.” He had a sudden impulse to show his father the picture of Amelia on his phone. But he knew his father would make him regret that too. Say something about Amelia’s body or face. And Travis knew that would make him do something he’d regret.
“You just get your kicks from powdering your nose and putting on aprons and baking cakes with Mama, and not going to dances?”