Read Online A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Harry Crews
Ads: Link
the scalding bourbon and drunk on the honeylegged memory of Berenice.
He somehow managed to get what he wished was true confused with the facts of his own life. It wasn’t the first time it had ever happened. It was a little quirk his head had of working when he was lost in the sour mist of bourbon whiskey. He had gotten out of his pickup truck in the dark—the moon had gone now, setting behind a black cloud—and gone through the dark, narrow little passageways of the double-wide, stripping his clothes as he went, and fallen finally, savagely, in the bed, not upon his child-ruined wife Elfie but upon the heaving flesh of the University of Georgia’s golden head cheerleader, Berenice, or so he thought in the addled disorientation of his alcohol-splattered brain.
But of course it had been poor old Elf, caught unawares and sleeping, her sore flapping breasts vulnerable to his hard square hands. She had come awake with a little muffled cry, protesting, her thin arms trying to push him away, but he had her pinned, driving her against the headboard of the bed. It was a God’s wonder he hadn’t broken her neck. And when he woke up the next morning he saw her pale face turned off toward the window, her lips partly open, showing her discolored tongue and teeth, the blue smear of a bruise running up from the corner of her mouth, and he knew as the sorry night came back to him in painfully clear memory that he had called her Berenice again and again while he had taken her through the whole routine of enthusiastic sexual gymnastics he and his old high-school sweetheart used to work upon each other’s bodies when the world was still a place where such things were not only possible but also a great singing joy in his heart.
There was no joy singing in his heart though when he woke up and realized what he had done, so he had slipped quickly into his Levis, a T-shirt, and a denim jacket, and left the trailer. When he fired up his pickup, he heard both baby boys scream simultaneously. He wondered if something might not ail them younguns, crying the way they did all through the day with such fantastic stamina.
He drove over to the high school first, where they were already building the snake. The cheerleaders, led by Hard Candy Sweet, had sorted out their materials and were starting now to stretch the chicken wire over the frame that eventually would be a papier mache rattlesnake standing thirty feet high and coiled to strike. That night after the dancing it would explode in one sudden bursting bonfire. Hard Candy was up on a piece of scaffolding and turned to wave to him, but apparently wasn’t going to come down to talk to him. He wanted to ask her about Berenice, to ask if she had gotten in from the university yet. Eventually though, watching her bend and stretch there inside her tight red-hot little short shorts (the weather was still holding warm), moving her firm round arms, making her little titties lift and soar, made him impossibly anxious to see Berenice, so he left and drove back to his ten-acre campground, where sure enough Lummy and his brother George had set out the Johnny-on-the-spots in just the neatest and best way, so that he could hardly believe it.
He was standing by the little lady under the white bonnet looking at her thousand-snake masterpiece, admiring the way the deer’s hooves showed sharp as razors there above the snake, when Lummy appeared out of the crowd at his elbow.
“Mistuh Joe Lon?”
Joe Lon did not turn to look at him; rather he recognized his voice and kept staring at the fine sharp detail of the rearing deer’s hooves. “Everthing’s fine,” he said. “You and George done a good job gitten them shitters ready.”
“Say we done good,” said Lummy. “Howsomever, it don be whatall I come to axe you bout.”
Joe Lon looked at him for the first time.
“It be Lottie Mae.”
“What about her?”
“I want to thanks you for gittin Mistuh Buddy to letter loose.”
Joe Lon said:
He somehow managed to get what he wished was true confused with the facts of his own life. It wasn’t the first time it had ever happened. It was a little quirk his head had of working when he was lost in the sour mist of bourbon whiskey. He had gotten out of his pickup truck in the dark—the moon had gone now, setting behind a black cloud—and gone through the dark, narrow little passageways of the double-wide, stripping his clothes as he went, and fallen finally, savagely, in the bed, not upon his child-ruined wife Elfie but upon the heaving flesh of the University of Georgia’s golden head cheerleader, Berenice, or so he thought in the addled disorientation of his alcohol-splattered brain.
But of course it had been poor old Elf, caught unawares and sleeping, her sore flapping breasts vulnerable to his hard square hands. She had come awake with a little muffled cry, protesting, her thin arms trying to push him away, but he had her pinned, driving her against the headboard of the bed. It was a God’s wonder he hadn’t broken her neck. And when he woke up the next morning he saw her pale face turned off toward the window, her lips partly open, showing her discolored tongue and teeth, the blue smear of a bruise running up from the corner of her mouth, and he knew as the sorry night came back to him in painfully clear memory that he had called her Berenice again and again while he had taken her through the whole routine of enthusiastic sexual gymnastics he and his old high-school sweetheart used to work upon each other’s bodies when the world was still a place where such things were not only possible but also a great singing joy in his heart.
There was no joy singing in his heart though when he woke up and realized what he had done, so he had slipped quickly into his Levis, a T-shirt, and a denim jacket, and left the trailer. When he fired up his pickup, he heard both baby boys scream simultaneously. He wondered if something might not ail them younguns, crying the way they did all through the day with such fantastic stamina.
He drove over to the high school first, where they were already building the snake. The cheerleaders, led by Hard Candy Sweet, had sorted out their materials and were starting now to stretch the chicken wire over the frame that eventually would be a papier mache rattlesnake standing thirty feet high and coiled to strike. That night after the dancing it would explode in one sudden bursting bonfire. Hard Candy was up on a piece of scaffolding and turned to wave to him, but apparently wasn’t going to come down to talk to him. He wanted to ask her about Berenice, to ask if she had gotten in from the university yet. Eventually though, watching her bend and stretch there inside her tight red-hot little short shorts (the weather was still holding warm), moving her firm round arms, making her little titties lift and soar, made him impossibly anxious to see Berenice, so he left and drove back to his ten-acre campground, where sure enough Lummy and his brother George had set out the Johnny-on-the-spots in just the neatest and best way, so that he could hardly believe it.
He was standing by the little lady under the white bonnet looking at her thousand-snake masterpiece, admiring the way the deer’s hooves showed sharp as razors there above the snake, when Lummy appeared out of the crowd at his elbow.
“Mistuh Joe Lon?”
Joe Lon did not turn to look at him; rather he recognized his voice and kept staring at the fine sharp detail of the rearing deer’s hooves. “Everthing’s fine,” he said. “You and George done a good job gitten them shitters ready.”
“Say we done good,” said Lummy. “Howsomever, it don be whatall I come to axe you bout.”
Joe Lon looked at him for the first time.
“It be Lottie Mae.”
“What about her?”
“I want to thanks you for gittin Mistuh Buddy to letter loose.”
Joe Lon said:
Similar Books
