The Little Friend

As he spoke, the two brothers stared off across the clearing and into the dense, silent woods without looking at each other—Farish slouched massively in his chair, Danny standing beside him, like passengers on a crowded train. My people was what their grandmother called her soap opera. Tall grass grew around a dead car; in the high weeds, a broken wheelbarrow wallowed belly-up.

“Eugene says it aint Christian. Hah!” Farish said, and he slapped his knee with a whack that made Danny jump. “Wrestling he don’t think it’s anything wrong with. Or football. What’s so Christian about wrestling?”

Except for Curtis—who loved everything in the world, even bees and wasps and the leaves that fell from the trees—all the Ratliffs had an uneasy relationship with Eugene. He was the second brother; he’d been Farish’s field marshal in the family business (which was larceny) after their father died. In this he was dutiful, if not particularly energetic or inspired, but then—while in Parchman Penitentiary for Grand Theft Auto in the late 1960s—he had received a vision instructing him to go forth and exalt Jesus. Relations between Eugene and the rest of the family had been somewhat strained ever since. He refused to dirty his hands any longer with what he called the Devil’s work, though—as Gum often pointed out, shrilly enough—he was happy enough to eat the food and live under the roof which the Devil and his works provided.

Eugene didn’t care. He quoted scripture at them, bickered ceaselessly with his grandmother, and generally got on everybody’s nerves. He had inherited their father’s humorlessness (though not—thankfully—his violent temper); even in the old days, back when Eugene had been stealing cars and staying out drunk all night, he’d never been much fun to be around, and though he didn’t hold a grudge or nurse an insult, and was fundamentally a decent guy, his proselytizing bored them all to death.

“What’s Eugene doing here, anyway?” said Danny. “I thought he’d be down at the Mission with Snake Boy.”

Farish laughed—a startling, high-pitched giggle. “I expect Eugene’s going to leave it to Loyal while them snakes are in there.” Eugene was correct in suspecting motives other than revival and Christian fellowship in the visit of Loyal Reese, for the visit had been engineered by Loyal’s brother, Dolphus, from his prison cell. No shipments of amphetamine had gone out from Farish’s lab since Dolphus’s old courier got picked up on an outstanding warrant back in February. Danny had offered to drive the drugs up to Kentucky himself—but Dolphus didn’t want anybody moving in on his distribution territory (a genuine worry for a man behind bars) and besides, why hire a courier when he had a kid brother named Loyal who would drive it up for free? Loyal, of course, was in the dark here—because Loyal was devout, and would not cooperate knowingly with any such plans as Dolphus had hatched in prison. He had a church “homecoming” to attend in East Tennessee; he was driving down to Alexandria as a favor to Dolphus, whose old friend Farish had a brother (Eugene) who needed help getting started in the revival business. That was all Loyal knew. But when—in all innocence—Loyal drove back home to Kentucky, he would be carrying unawares along with his reptiles a number of securely wrapped bundles which Farish had concealed in the engine of his truck.

“What I don’t understand,” said Danny, gazing off into the pine woods that pressed dark around their dusty little clearing, “is why do they handle the things in the first place? Don’t they get bit?”

“All the damn time.” Farish jerked his head belligerently. “Go on in and ask Eugene. He’ll sure tell you more than you wanted to know about it.” His motorcycle boot was jittering away. “If you mess with the snake and it don’t bite you, that’s a miracle. If you mess with it and it does bite you, that’s a miracle too.”

“Getting bit by a snake is no miracle.”

“It is if you don’t go to the doctor, just roll around on the floor calling out to Jesus. And you live.”

“Well what if you die?”

“Another miracle. Lifted up to Heaven through getting took in the Signs.”

Danny snorted. “Well, hell,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “If it’s miracles everywhere, what’s the point?” The sky was bright blue above the pine trees, reflecting blue in the puddles on the ground, and he felt high, fine, and twenty-one. Maybe he would hop in his car and drive over to the Black Door, maybe take a spin down to the reservoir.

“They’ll find themselves a big old nest of miracles if they walk out in that brush and turn over a rock or two,” said Farish sourly.

Danny laughed and said: “Tell you what’ll be the miracle, is if Eugene handles a snake.” There wasn’t much to Eugene’s preaching, which for all Eugene’s religious fervor was strangely flat and wooden. Apart from Curtis—who galumphed up front to get saved every time he went—he hadn’t converted a soul as far as Danny knew.