1

Greg Garrett

Dept. of English

Baylor University

Greg Garrett is Professor of English at Baylor University, and

author of the novels Free Bird, Cycling, and Shame, the memoirs

Crossing Myself and No Idea, and a number of nonfiction books. He is

also a licensed lay preacher in the Episcopal Church.

“I wrote ‘Serpents’ under twin influences,” Greg says. “The first

was the Assembly of God Pentecostalism of my paternal grandparents,

a simultaneously riveting and horrifying way of worship and of life.

This story is also a response to one of my favorite books, Dennis

Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain. Francois Truffaut said that

the best critique of a film was to make another film; I wrote a story

about the things I loved in Dennis’ story. The two come together in

‘Serpents’ in a powerful way, I hope, to show how institutions may fail

us, but hope and love endure.”

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SERPENTS

by

Greg Garrett

My name is Cynthia Oakerhater, and everyone says that I am a

smart girl, but it’s also true that I have made some mistakes of

judgment in my life. The story I am going to tell you now happened

when I was fifteen and didn’t know everything I know now. My great-

great grandfather David Oakerhater was a Cheyenne Indian who

became a Christian and opened an Indian mission at Whirlwind Creek,

about thirty miles out in the country. This was all about a hundred

years ago. He’s dead and all, but the Episcopal Church has made him

a saint, although my family never considered this a big honor, since

we’re all saints in Jesus Christ, and since my family didn’t believe that

Episcopals are really Christians. I myself always thought I would love

to be a certified saint because you could do miracles, and I also had a

soft spot for the Episcopal Church because I heard that they had

women preachers, which my church says is an abomination unto the

Lord. The only woman who ever talks in our services is Sister Eloise

who is ninety-four years old and a prophetess and can translate

tongues and tell the future.

The Watonga Church of Jesus Christ Holiness doesn’t normally

look more favorably on Indians than they do on female preachers, but

my family looks white, and we haven’t practiced Indian ways for

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generations, and I don’t think many people have ever heard about

David Oakerhater. My English teacher at school asked me last year if

our name was German. “Scandinavian,” I said. So much for our Indian

blood. We are all of us Holiness people white and pretty poor, and

some people in town, Methodists and such, look down on us because

we speak in tongues and because they don’t understand about the

snakes, which is okay since almost nobody does.

See, our church is a serpent-handling church, which means that

when the Spirit is moving, men will go down front to the altar and

open the boxes where the poisonous snakes are, rattlesnakes and

water moccasins mostly, and take them out and hold them up high

and pass them around, and if the Spirit is strong in them, they won’t

get bit, or if they do get bit, at least they probably won’t die. It’s a

strange and holy thing and it beats just about everything I ever heard

of. I have seen people get bit and some of them have gotten real sick,

but nobody has died since 1954, when the church had to go

underground for awhile. Brother Claude Butler has been bit above a

hundred times and is still around to testify.

Brother Claude’s family brought snake-handling to this part of

the country in the 1930s. His father came across from Tennessee

because he heard that land could be got cheap in Oklahoma. The

reason land could be got cheap here was because it was all blowing

away. We learned about the Dust Bowl in my Oklahoma History class a

few years back, and I remember thinking then about Brother Claude

and his family and wondering what kind of fool would come to a state

which was mostly airborne, but that was usually as far as I got,

because whenever I thought about Brother Claude’s family, I generally

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ended up thinking about Jeremy, who was Claude’s only son and who

was two years older than me, and who was chosen in the eyes of the

Lord and as beautiful as an angel. He had been speaking in tongues

since he was filled with the Holy Ghost at ten years old, and he had

been handling snakes since he was twelve and had never been bit

once. He even preached now and again at our church and other

churches round about Western Oklahoma. I loved it when he did any

of these things. I could stare all I wanted when everyone else was
looking at him too, but I was ashamed to look at him other times

because he was so holy and because even though I prayed with all my

might and opened myself up to God, I couldn’t get the Spirit to save

my life. My parents never said anything, but I could feel their

disappointment, for they were faithful Christians, and both of them--

my tall farming father and my frail stay-at-home mother--were chock-

full of the Holy Ghost.

One Sunday morning in May, Brother Claude spoke from the

Book of Matthew about the man who built his house on solid rock and

the man who built his house on sand and said that the solid rock was

Jesus Christ and the sand was the world and that the world could up

and blow away anytime, which I guess he and his family would know

more about than most, but the rock would stay firm in place, the rock

would not be moved. He was wearing his one dark blue suit which was

shiny at the elbows and the knees and a white shirt and a blue tie,

which is mostly how the men were dressed. We women wore blouses

and skirts and our hair was long and pinned up on top of our heads

because Paul said in First Timothy that we should dress with modesty

and in First Corinthians that our long hair should be our glory.
 5

Brother Claude moved around behind the pulpit and stepped up

and back and shook his head, although his hair never moved. That

man used more hairspray than anybody I ever heard of. He danced a

little skip-step as he preached, and this is what he said.

“Brethren, there’s but one God, and his name is Jesus.”

Amen. Praise His name.

“There’s one church, one God, one way to Heaven.”

Amen.
“You better know who your savior is. You better know his name

is Jesus. You better know he gave us the Holy Ghost to fill us up and

draw us to him.”

Amen. Help us, Jesus.

“He gave us the Holy Ghost to give us power over this world.

Power over the things of this world. Power to resist the serpent. Power

to raise the serpent and not be bit.”

Amen.

“Let’s praise God.”

We stood up from our folding chairs and struck up a chorus that

Brother Claude wrote about Christ the Solid Rock, and the Spirit was

moving, the guitar was playing and the tambourines jangling, and

some of the men, my dad included, stepped forward to the snake

cages and began taking them out. My dad pulled out a four-foot rattler

that wound around his arm and went to rattling and raising back its

head like it wanted to strike, and my heart leaped most out of my

chest as he raised it high, speaking in tongues all the time and

praising God. He passed the snake to Jeremy, who took the snake just

behind the head and brought it close to his face and danced in a circle
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and his face was bright and eyes were shining and I wanted to feel

what he was feeling and at the same time I wanted to be that snake

next to him and then I dropped to my knees and prayed to God to

take away those unholy thoughts, and before I knew it church was

over and we were outside under the tall cottonwood trees having

dinner, fried chicken and potato salad and baked beans and cole slaw

and my mom’s chocolate pudding cake that was so rich and moist that

Jeremy came over twice to our table to pass on his compliments.

That night he called my house. I had never really even talked to

him before, and it was good that he did most of the talking at first,

because there was a lump in my throat so big the words couldn’t

squeeze past.

“I was watching you today,” he said. “When we got the snakes

out. Do you want to see them up close? Touch one?”

“Women don’t handle snakes,” I managed to get out.

“Meet me at the church tonight,” he said.

“I can’t.” I wasn’t worthy to do such a holy thing, and moreover,

my dad would kill me for sneaking out of the house, and he would

surely misunderstand if I tried to tell him where I was going and who

I’d be with.

“Meet me there at midnight,” he said. “I’ll get the keys when my

daddy goes to sleep.” Besides being our pastor, Brother Claude was

produce manager at the Homeland grocery store and he had to be at

work before dawn. I had a tingling feeling that I thought might be the

Spirit working in me, and I decided.

“Okay,” I said.
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I went out my window at eleven and walked across the fields,

wheat brushing against my shins. The moon was big and bright and I

saw well enough. When I arrived at the church, Jeremy’s car, an old

Mustang, was parked around back. He was waiting inside the church.

“I can only turn on a few lights,” he said when he opened the

door and led me down to the front altar. “I don’t want anybody to be

able to see from the road.” I thought the church was far enough in the

country that no one was likely to see lights, but I could see the cages,
and that’s all I wanted to see.

He stepped up to one of the cages and pulled out a water

moccasin, long and gleaming black, with white around his mouth. “You

can’t be scared when you handle a snake,” he said. “There’s no place

to be scared. You got to have faith and you got to be in control.”

He raised the snake up to eye level and then passed it over to

his other hand, and then he raised it above his head and the snake

was draped over his shoulder and around his neck and was opening

and closing his mouth, and I could see his fangs.

“I want to hold him,” I said.

At first Jeremy didn’t act like he heard me. Then he looked over

at me and there must have been something in my face, because he

undraped the snake from his shoulders and gave him over into my

hands. I took hold of him about midway along his body and my arm

muscles strained to hold him straight out. His tail dangled below my

arm, but he raised his head and body to look at me, and his eyes

gleamed in the dim light, and he wasn’t at all slimy like I thought he

would be but dry and cool, and there were thoughts that went through

my head that I thought might finally be the Spirit.

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It was just me and the snake, like we were the only things in the

room, in the whole world, and we regarded each other and he coiled

on and around me and I could feel the weight and the movement and

the thrill and the fear and the peace all at once.

It was like a miracle.

“I knew you wanted to,” Jeremy said from a long way off, only it

must not have been a long way off, because all of a sudden I felt his

strong hands at my waist and him nestled in right against me, and it
surprised me so I yelled and lost my grip, and in trying to push Jeremy

away from me, I let the snake uncoil and drop to the floor right in front

of us. Much closer now I heard Jeremy shout “Great God Almighty!”

which I thought at the time might be a prayer but now am pretty sure

it wasn’t.

“Get back!” he said, pushing me to one side as the snake wound

toward us.

“Just pick him up,” I said.

“I can’t,” he said. “Your unbelief might have let a demon spirit

into him.”

I felt heat rising up into my cheeks. “Jeremy Butler, you’ve got

no business grabbing someone who’s holding a snake. You just scared

me, that’s all. There’s no more demon spirit in that snake than there is

in me.”

He looked at me and shook his head, his blonde hair flying in a

way that his father’s hair never ever would, and then turned his

attention back to the snake, which appeared to be ready to strike at

his foot. “I can’t pick it up now,” he said. “It’ll kill me sure as there’s a

God in Heaven.”
 9

“Then let me,” I said. Before I could so much as make a move,

though, he picked up one of the folding chairs to fend it off like a lion

tamer, and he must have slipped or something, because he ended up

pinning its head to the concrete floor with one of the legs, which got

the snake to thrashing about mightily which induced Jeremy to poke it

harder with the chair until finally the snake quit thrashing and quit

twitching and just lay there silent and still.

“He’s dead,” I said.

“My dad’s gonna kill me,” Jeremy said, plopping heavily into a

seat. His snake-taming chair fell to the floor and rang against the

concrete.

I sat down next to him. I wasn’t mad at him anymore, just felt a

hollowness which must have been sadness about the snake, which

had been a beautiful creature. I was also a little scared about what

was going to happen. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“You shouldn’t oughta drop a snake just because a guy puts his

arms around you,” he said, and he smiled at me, and then he leaned

over and kissed me, and I realized that the tingling feeling I’d had

when I talked to him on the phone was not the Spirit moving, had

nothing in fact to do with the Spirit, but was pretty powerful in its own

way and could even be life-changing if I didn’t get up and get out of

there, which is what I did. He wanted to drive me home, but I didn’t let

him. I walked across the fields of grain under the full moon and

climbed through my window and into bed, although I didn’t go to sleep

for a long time.

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On Tuesday night, the phone rang and my dad answered. “A

boy,” he said and raised an eyebrow before handing the phone over to

me.

“Hello,” I said, after my dad had walked far enough away to

indicate that he wasn’t listening, although I would have to make up a

story when I was done because he would want a full report.

“It’s Jeremy. I want you to meet me at the church again

tonight.”
“I can’t,” I said.

“What happened last time won’t happen again. I’ll be strong in

the Spirit.”

“Which thing that happened?”

“Everything that happened.”

I looked at my father’s broad back across the room and spoke

queitly into the receiver. “Did you get in trouble?”

“I put the snake back in the cage. Maybe the other snakes ate

him. He was gone when I looked in on them this morning. Are you

coming?”

“I don’t want to,” which I knew was a lie as soon as I said it. I

wanted to take up snakes again, wanted to feel the calm, the

exhilaration, the confidence, the oneness with God or the Spirit or

whatever it was I had felt.

“I’ll be there at midnight,” he said and hung up. He must have

been pretty confident for whatever reason and I guess he had every

right to be, because come midnight I had made my way across the

fields and through the fences and into the dimly-lit church.

“Hey,” I said, which caused him to look up and smile.

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“Hey,” he said. He came about halfway toward me and then

stopped to wait for me to walk up. “I been thinking maybe we oughta

pray over these snakes this time before we open the cages. You’ve

got to be strong in the Spirit if you’re gonna raise a serpent up to

God.”

I nodded, and we stood over the cages, and Jeremy dispensed a

long prayer which confessed our weakness and frailty on our own and

our strength in Jesus and made reference to the serpent that Moses
lifted up and how people who looked on it wouldn’t die but would live.

Every now and then he would look over at me and then he would

smile and go back to talking. He went on for so long that I was near to

nodding off--it was a regular sermon of a prayer--but at last he asked

the Lord to give me strength and fill my weak vessel with the Holy

Ghost and commenced to conclude, which he did at last and pulled me

to my feet.

“Sometimes my daddy takes them home,” he said as we looked

down at the cages. “He’s got a terrarium in his bedroom that always

has a couple of snakes in it. The light bulb stays on all the time to

keep them warm. It was like a night light when I was little.” He opened

the lid, and several snakes stirred inside. Without looking, he reached

in and took one and pulled it out and raised it up. It was a rattler with

a short thick body and a head so pointed I had a vision of an arrow in

flight. A look came into Jeremy’s eyes that I knew from church, a look

that said he was deep into something, and he brought that rattler up

close to his face. The snake drew back to strike and launched a sort of

half-hearted assault, but he stopped short of Jeremy’s face and just

hung there, and Jeremy began to shuffle and then to turn, and then to
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do a jig full out in a circle and to move the snake up and down until he

was all but slinging it around, and they were a blur of motion and

Jeremy was speaking in tongues and I watched and listened, my heart

pounding with fear and longing until, at last, after a time that could

have been a few seconds and could have been an hour, Jeremy

dropped the snake to his side and looked up at me like he was

surprised to find me there.

“Let me have him,” I whispered, and Jeremy handed him to me,

and it took all my strength to hold him up and at first he squirmed in

my grasp like he sure didn’t plan to put up with any more of this, but

then we looked each other in the eyes, and that feeling came over me

that nothing could happen to me, like I was completely safe and under

God’s care, and I thanked Him for watching over me and it seemed

that I could hear Him answer, and when I came to myself, Jeremy was

looking at me the way I imagined I used to always look at him.

He took the snake gently from me and laid him back in the cage,

and then he closed it and just stood there for a little bit before turning

back around.

“That was beautiful,” he said at last, which surprised me no end

since I didn’t think men even knew how to use that word in a

sentence. “It was a blessing.”

“I know it,” I said. He walked across and took me in his arms and

he kissed me long and hard and I let him. I kissed him hard myself. I

let him ease me down into a chair and I might have let him do more

than that but for the fact that there came a noise behind us and all

the lights went on and I looked up, and there was Jeremy’s father

standing at the back of the church.

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There was a silence that came over the place then, and it lasted

for the few moments it took Brother Claude to hoist his jaw back into

place and storm to the front of the church.

“We were just praying--” Jeremy began, which seemed to me a

pretty audacious theory to advance when your daddy has just caught

you with your hand up a girl’s shirt, but maybe it wasn’t so audacious

after all, judging by what followed.

“What did you do to him?” Brother Claude asked me, and he

took me by the shoulder and shook me. “Don’t you know that this boy

is a holy vessel?”

“We didn’t do anything,” I said, which didn’t feel like the

complete truth to me, and I knew it. I thought Satan must have

brought me to that place to be a stumbling-block for Jeremy Butler

and now he was stuffing my mouth with untruths like the Father of

Lies he was. I was so filled with shame I started to cry, and I couldn’t

say anything else.

Brother Claude had let loose my shoulder and so I got up and

ran out the back of the church and across the fields like there were

demons on my trail, and I didn’t let up until I climbed into bed and

threw the covers over my head and lay there until I fell asleep

praying for forgiveness, and for strength to resist Satan, and for

another blessing sometime in my life like I’d felt handling the snake,

and for Brother Claude and Jeremy and their ministries, and for the

church, and finally for just about everybody I knew individually

because I was still awake and while I was praying I didn’t have to lie

there and think about anything that had happened.

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In church the next Sunday the Spirit moved on the congregation

when Brother Claude started singing a chorus, “Everything’s Gonna Be

All Right,” and even before the sermon or the praying over the snakes,

some of the men danced down to the front of the church and the

music swirled and I could feel the excitement building as the snakes

got handed from one man to another and all of a sudden I stood up

and I stepped to the altar and I took the big thick rattler from Brother

Earl Barnes before he could think about what he was doing and I
turned around to the people and raised it up to God and from what I

heard later, I danced before the Lord with the snake in my hands and

my eyes up to Heaven.

It didn’t last long. Brother Claude was deep in the Spirit, but

when he could see what was going on, he went cold silent and the

electric guitar stopped playing and the church stopped singing and the

tambourines jangled away to nothing, and when I stopped dancing

and praising God, their eyes were all on me and the room was silent. I

dropped the snake to my side and then handed him back to Brother

Earl who drew back from me like he was happier to touch the snake

than he was to touch me. I looked around the church and saw every

person staring at me except for my parents, who were appraising the

concrete floor, and for Jeremy, who was likewise checking for

structural defects.

I wanted to sink out of sight, or to ascend like our Saviour, but I

knew neither of those things was likely to happen and that I was just

stuck there standing naked in front of those people who’d known me

all my life and whose mouths were now open and eyes wide. My

footsteps seemed to echo on the concrete as I walked back to my seat

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and sat next to my father. I tried to take his hand, which I hadn’t done

since I was a baby girl, but he pulled it free of my grasp and crossed

his arms and stared straight down and left me sitting as alone as I’d

ever been since I came forth out of the womb.

Into that silence stepped Brother Claude, who pulled his

handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his forehead and then

held up his Bible so the congregation could look upon it.

“Brethren, this is the Word of God.”

Amen.

“This is our sword and shield, our strength, our day-to-day guide

and our wisdom. Everything God wants us to know is right in here.”

Amen. Praise his Holy name.

“The Apostle Paul tells us, ‘Suffer not a woman to teach.’ A

woman is not a preacher. She’s not a teacher. She’s a helpmeet. A

woman’s not to force her way to the front of the church, and she’s not

to take up serpents like a man. First Corinthians says a woman’s

supposed to sit quietly in worship and be in submission. She’s taken

from Adam’s rib to stand beside him, and anybody who thinks that

what we saw here today is of God is deceived by the lies of the world

and the false prophecies, by the whoremongers and the unnatural

women who are of this world. Don’t believe it. Don’t believe it for a

second.”

Save us, Jesus.

“Let us pray for our sister. Let us ask God to forgive her for her

blasphemy.”
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The heat had been rising in my cheeks again and I knew

everybody could see my face flushing and if I could have borrowed a

shovel I guess I would have tried to dig my way into the concrete.

“There’s more, brethren,” Brother Claude said, “there’s more,”

and he wiped his forehead again. “And it pains me to say this, but the

pastor is the authority over the souls of his flock, and what I say about

our sister now, I have to say. The other night I walked through that

door”--and he pointed toward the back of the church and everybody

turned around like they’d never seen it before--“and found our sister

here with her hands all over my boy here, this holy vessel of God.”

Save us from temptation, Lord. Save us, Jesus.

There was a rustling, like people were trying to shift as far away

from me as they possibly could and still sit on their chairs. I heard

somebody say “Jezebel” and my father stiffened beside me and my

mother began to weep softly. I started to get up and run for the door,

but my father pushed me back down, and he stood up himself. He

stood there while Brother Claude went on about the Whore of Babylon

and how women were always the ruination of man, and slowly my

father raised his hand, not to heaven, like he did when he was in the

Spirit and speaking in tongues, but he raised his hand and pointed one

finger right at Brother Claude and Brother Claude seized up with

surprise in the middle of a sentence about Delilah.

“You got no call to talk about my girl that way,” my father said.

His voice was quiet as always, but in that silence you could have

heard a worm crawl. “Cynthia’s a good Christian girl. Never has give

us cause to worry. I’ve seen the way your holy vessel there looks at

her. I don’t think she’s to blame here, no matter what you say.”
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Brother Claude raised his own finger to point at my father and

people between them drew to one side or the other like spiritual

gunfire was going to be exchanged. “This Bible,” and he shook it by

way of illustration, “says I’ve got authority over this flock. And

anybody who says otherwise is out of the Word.”

“Or out of the flock,” my father said, and he took my hand and

took my mother’s hand and lifted us up and led us out the back of the

church. We didn’t speak a word to each other on the way home and
didn’t say much all that day, as I remember. I don’t think I could have

spoken a word if I’d wanted to. All I could do was throw my arms

around my father and weep into his broad shoulder and he held me

tight and at last he pushed me back and wiped my face and said,

“Hush now. Hush. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

And I believed him, but I also know it says somewhere that God

helps those who help themselves, so that night I snuck out the window

and walked to the church. The moon wasn’t as bright, and I stumbled

more than once. The door was locked, but I let myself in a window and

walked down front to where the snakes were kept. I took two

rattlesnakes and three water moccasins out of the cages and put them

in two old plaid pillow cases I had brought from home. Then I hauled

them through the dark night to the Butler’s house and circled the

white frame farm house until I heard Brother Claude snoring through

an open window and saw the glow of his snake lamp inside, and I

hoisted myself up and emptied the snakes onto his comforter and as I

walked away, I could hear him start in screaming.

The papers say he got bit at least six times. It didn’t kill him,

though. Like I said, he’s been bit over a hundred times in his life, and I
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guess God has some good reason for keeping him around, although

I’m hard pressed just now to think what that reason might be.

It seems to me that the church probably drives more people

away from God than the Devil ever could, but it didn’t drive my family

away from God, even though we did have a genuine crisis of faith

there for awhile and we have never been back to the Church of Jesus

Christ Holiness. A few months back, my parents joined a Baptist

church, and although I know they feel the loss of their old friends and
speaking in tongues and snake-handling like a hole in their hearts,

being Baptist has expanded their view of Christianity far enough so

that now they think that most everyone besides Catholics are going to

Heaven.

I haven’t told my parents yet, but I don’t think being a Baptist is

going to work for me. I’ve decided that I’m going to be an

Episcopalian, which I think would make my grandfather proud. Of

course right now I’m the only Episcopalian in town, but I think that’s

okay. That just means that if any more ever show up, I can be their

leader.

(Originally published in Windhover.)