CHAPTER ONE I stand mesmerized by the cacophony of sound and color. The room, as large as a dancehall, is alive with blazing neon and electric guitar--at first I think we''ve stepped inside a roadhouse circa 1958 with a rockabilly band in full swing--until I see the hand-lettered sign at the front: No bad langage. No woman in pants. No long hair. We aren''t in a rowdy nightclub where a pimply-faced Jerry Lee is wailing; we are in church: Whitechapel Church of Lindsey, West Virginia, to be exact, and it''s 2005. But before I can fully savor the first flush of recognition, I see, lifted high above the whirlwind crowd, shimmering obscenely like a naked breast at communion, a tight coil. The sound I make is thankfully absorbed into the din surrounding me. A man holds a large snake in his palm.
No need to fear being forced to the front where the serpents are. I know, according to the documentary I''d seen in seminary, there are many other snakes, that they are kept in wooden cages with chicken wire up front until the right moment, when the Holy Spirit dictates. I also know they use rattlers, or, failing that, copperheads; that before us lies a great mystery as old as time, as universal as pain; and that it does not require my belief to work its wonders. When someone pats my arm, I turn and see Murphy sitting in the back pew against the wall. Dad sits beside him, his gnarled hands loosely clasped before him, the veritable picture of unhip humility. What in the world are a rock legend, his lapsed-pastor son and alcoholic manager seeking here? But it will do no good to ask. My father doesn''t answer questions; he takes hostages. "We''ll just watch," Murphy shouts near my ear.
I sit down and face forward. I''ve gone from a crowded, diesel-reeking bus to a snake-handling church in under an hour. Am I rolling toward Nineveh or heading back inside the whale''s belly? (The latter, I figure, strangely calm.) The music, I now see, pours from the hands of a teenaged boy sitting on an ancient tube amplifier that once might''ve belonged to Chuck Berry. The kid''s old Les Paul sounds good as he fingers non-stop lead riffs. No chords, no discernible melody, just continuous sound. I have to laugh. Maybe that''s all he knows.
But it is enough, along with the tambourine, flailed by a tight-permed, grey-haired grandmother moving in rhythm (not dancing, no!) with the others up near the front. Every now and then the sea of bodies parts, and I glimpse a man holding a snake on his palms, his sweaty brow furrowed in concentration, and I can''t help wondering what he is seeing and feeling. Judging by his closed eyes, sweating forehead and swaying body, it is the opposite of fear. (And what is that? Love?) He handles the treasure in his hand so gently, making me imagine those coal-seamed hands on his wife or children, hopefully just as tender. Then up fly both arms as he holds his offering aloft. To God? Or to his fellows? "See: I am this moment without sin." To be bitten--and people are, but not as often as you''d think--means taking your eyes off the savior, or worse, some secret sin now bared before all. And the pain of public humiliation probably dulls, even annihilates, the pain of the bite, which a preacher on the video claimed was like a thousand toothaches.
I lapse into a daze that carries some part of me--my soul?--to the front of the church. At the same time I know I''m dreaming, it''s intensely real. The walls, the wailing, stomping, suffocating mob surrounding me fall away; even the enveloping night, suffocating, too, in its vile darkness--all fall away and I enter a waking vision . I bend, open my palms, and somehow the serpent is in my hand. I do not clearly see the instant when flesh and scales meld. (The Lord takes care of that--otherwise it could be too terrible to bear.) Once I feel the steely weight of living chain in my hands, obedience is complete. I am the boy with his fingers gritting against strings; the preacher striking the anvil air with his words; the children clapping in their pews; the old woman beating the tambourine against her hip.
We are all part and parcel of the same body. For, once my arms are aloft, I look around me at the swirl, see sweat purling on the end of a young man''s nose, scent the thickness of menstruating females, hear the roar of blood in my head, though I''m calm as a babe in Mama''s arms. The creature in my hands is of God, therefore is God. As if I''ve been underwater, my dreaming mind breaks the surface, I''m back inside my body at the back of the church, my hands are empty and I hear the words they are singing: "If you don''t want it, give it to me." Grotesque. Beyond bizarre. Yet somehow as ordinary as any Christian''s belief in miracles. "If you don''t want it .
" I glance at Murphy, staring straight ahead. Dad''s manager tolerates this as he does all of my father''s eccentricities; it''s an experience, like his boss''s awful concerts, to be endured. Back at the motel, after Dad''s show later tonight, there''ll be time for him to erase visions of snake-waving ecstatics with a quart or so of bourbon before bed. He looks as bored as a kindergartner watching porn. Less than two hours ago, I''d met Murphy at the auditorium''s back door. It had taken eight hours from New Prestonburg, Ohio, to Charleston, West Virginia, on the bus--and I had the bad luck to sit next to a gum-chewing cell-phone addict. The Whale was parked behind the auditorium. Good thing Murphy prepared me.
No longer blue, the re-tooled Greyhound has been painted dull beige. It mostly fools media, if not fans. If I hadn''t been so tense, I would''ve laughed at the block lettering: Senior Tours: See American Historical Sites . I wasn''t about to barge on-board--it''s been my plan, since getting the phone call, to observe unobserved. Beside the auditorium door my father would soon walk through leaned Gunnar Oesterreich. I grinned at the appearance of the big German kid Dad adopted as his personal bodyguard back in ''91: a foreign exchange student who''d defected, first, from his sponsoring family; then from his native country for reasons never clear to me. Gunnar is Dad''s doppelganger, whose entire spoken word-stock consists of one-word sentences: Stop. Come.
No. Though he hadn''t laid eyes on me in four years, the German nodded solemnly and summoned Murphy to my side within moments. When the manager emerged from darkness, he was grinning his satanic smile. His olive face looked like the cracked leather of a suitcase that had lain in an attic for decades. As usual, he reeked of alcohol and tobacco. "Good to see you, Skip. I mean, Reverend." "You, too.
" I hadn''t expected to be glad to see the alcoholic most responsible for my dad''s departure from any semblance of reality; Murphy Angus Kelleher: pimp, jester and errand-boy; who provided his boss with so much more than women, drugs and amusement, who provided him complete freedom from life, period. My father had never written a check, bought a gift or shopped for insurance. Murphy was the filter, fence, door and wall against distractions, enabling him to do all he''d ever wanted to do--or at least all he''d ever done--which was write, record and sing songs. Murphy wrung my hand, and his felt warm and rough. "Does he know I''m here?" I said. He shook his head. "Is it drugs?" Another solemn shake. "Since the Bigger One, nada.
No drugs." He snorted. "Not even cigarettes." He smiled, proud daddy of a precocious six-year-old. After Dad''s first heart attack in ''01, dubbed the Big One (Dad named everything), until the second, two years later, I figured he''d probably abstained from cigarettes, booze and various controlled substances for a month or two, then gone right back, exceeding his earlier consumption. Resulting of course in the Bigger One. I''d been AWOL for that one. "You''re kidding.
" He stuck out his chest, gripped his belt buckle, a tarantula, with his bricklayer''s hands. "I''d know." "Whatever you say, Murph." Before I knew it, I reached out and squeezed his bicep, my pastorly way of solacing men, and though I recognized it as a mistake--you don''t touch men like Murphy unless you want to feel their fangs--the aging alcoholic smiled, the corners of his watery, pickled blue eyes furrowing as his face unfolded a little. "I''ll go get him." And like that, the journey began. The inside of Whitechapel Church is now sweltering with over-heated bodies, a holy-roller mosh pit from the fifties. While the walls ring with the too-loud-by-half guitar assault, the bodies continue to sway and weave together.
Before long, I see a grandmotherly woman, her thick glasses blanking out her eyes, holding two coils above her iron-grey hair squeezed into a tight bun. Her mouth twists as she speaks in a language only her savior knows. I am surprised to find myself unafraid, resi.