The Big Old Snake Tale

The Big Old Snake Tale The Big Old Snake Tale

A Twice Told Tall Tale
THE BIG OLD SNAKE TALE
(c) copyrighted 1997 by Franchot Lewis

Not too many people used to go down the way by the old dried up creek. The reason was that the road came to an end before you got halfway there. Weeds so thick and high, growing over eight feet, took over the road. The whole country back there looked like a weed swamp without the standing swamp water, and was mighty hard to get through on a mule. In a car, it was impossible, and on foot, only after clearing a path, and with heavy work, with a sharp sickle, could get you through alright.

Only an old negro woman lived out there. She was the last one left of the negro families that farmed the land years ago before the dam was built and the creek bed dried out. The old woman lived in a rickety old house. Only the Good Lord knows why a wind didn't come along, a long time ago, and blow the house to pieces. Maybe the Lord was waiting for the house to fall down on it own. It always looked like it was nearly about to collapse at any minute.

This old woman lived so far in the weed swamp, from any human being, that the people from the county welfare office were worried about her -- and one of the South bottom's biggest farmers, had it in his mind that all the land along the old creek would be prefect to plant cotton on again, once water was piped in. In the meantime, he thought the old woman's land as more than suitable for him to build sheds, where he could store more of his surplus cotton.

The reason me and John Tower went there was that John Tower was on the county welfare board, and he did lawyer work for the big south bottom farmer. He went to talk to the old woman. I went along to hack away the weeds, so that he could get through the weed swamp, and to shoot any snakes that we might run into. Let me tell you: There were a lot of snakes in that swamp. More on the snakes, later.

Some people, very few, did hike out to the old woman's place on a regular basis. I was one of them. She kept a sugar cane patch and had an old shack near-abouts, the house where she cooked shine. She told people that the shine wasn't ordinary shine, but medicine and that it cured every kind of ills, not only physical ills, but it also kept the body free of the influences of demons. All sorts of people drank her shine. I guess a large part of the county's old timers did, though it would have loathed them to admit it. Of course, they paid the few adventurous ones like me, who would go out there to get them some of the old woman's shine. The shine tasted good, but not better than the best that could have been gotten to much easier in the county, but it was priced cheap. She didn't charge anymore money than she needed to keep up her annual county taxes. The sheriff's mother loved the stuff and swore by it. I know because I supplied her. Shine was supplied to all of the sheriff's kin. So you see, that was why the Sheriff never tried to interfere with the old woman's moon shine operation.

Did I tell you, that the old woman was kind of spooky too? I thought from the first that I started to deal with her, that she had a lot of witch in her, not the mean kind of witch, but witch just the same. A time before, I went there for shine and when I got out there she was fresh out. She told me I should wait a few minutes for the new batch. I waited around the shack with her and watched the shine getting ready, and I sat down on a stool and started eating a piece of the uncooked cane. She asked me about myself, about my family, and then she started telling me about her self, but she told stories, not real stuff. I know this because everything she told sounded like a spooky story. I didn't say anything. I didn't tell her that all those things she said she'd seen and that happened to her, and to her family, were things that happened just the same way to people in the made-up stories that my grandmother told me.

I did say, "Uh, uh," and, "Mammy, I am a grown-up white man, you know?"

She said, "We'll see how grown-up you are, mister, when you see a ghost standing over your head looking at you like it wants to do it own little wicked business to you?"

"Ghosts!" I laughed, poking fun at her. "You colored people really believe too much in ghosts!"

"Listen one time to me, will you?" she said. "We are sitting around like we're friends, so I'll tell you this, ghosts are as close to us as our skins, and only a body who don't mind having them near her can laugh at them."

It was nineteen twenty five, but I could see that the old woman was still living in the times before nineteen hundred, when nearly everybody thought they had a ghost living in their house, so I let the matter drop.

I grinned and stretched my legs out, and got comfortable on the stool. I said to her, "Mammy, when will that shine be ready?"

Well, then I heard something beating on the wall of the shack behind me. It was a loud noise, sounded like somebody'd got tore up, and tore off a big stick of cane plant and was whacking it on the wall.

At the first beat on the wall the old woman got up from her stool and said, "Stop that!"

The beating didn't stop. I said, "What is that?"

She said, "Don't let it worry you none."

Well, I got up. I didn't want to just sit there, during all of that loud noise. I said, "Who ever that it, he better stop."

The old woman said, like she was speaking to the thin air, "Listen, you. Nobody is going to go because you is feeling unpleasant."

I started to go and look outside the shack to catch who it was making the racket. The old woman tried to stop me. She said: "It's nobody, just a ghost trying to scare you."

Just then, the wall was being hit so hard that the wall's wood boards were shaking and dust, and dirt were falling off them, like flying dust bugs.

"That's no ghost, but somebody's who is giving me a headache. Somebody who is going to get my foot kicked up his hind end! " I said.

I went out the shack's door. As I did, I heard the old woman mumbled, "You might as well go. He still won't believe you're a ghost."

Outside -- I sneaked around the side of the shack. I peeked around the corner and I saw nothing. Nobody was there. Nobody that my eyes could see. But I heard something, banging away at the wall. Just banging away. And to this day, I don't know what, not for sure. There was no wind. The air was calm.

"I told you, it is a ghost."

I turned around and the old woman had a broom in her hand. The floor of her shack looked like it had never been touched by a broom, but she had one in her hand. She waved it at the shack's wall. She said, "I'm telling you to be quiet. You is going to get this boy so scared that he is going to pee in his britches, and run all the way home to his mama, and is not going to want to come back here, and how is I going to hold on to this place, if you scare away my customers?"

I wasn't scared, but I wasn't feeling easy either. I had no explanation. I didn't want to stick around for one. I was ready to go without the shine. Then, that was when I saw the snake. I didn't ask myself why I hadn't seen it before. But when I saw it, I felt some what… a little better, not a whole lot better, because this was one huge snake, a large, big, and old black monster of a snake! He looked twenty feet long, maybe thirty, or fifty, even a hundred feet or more. I now, having the benefit of the distance of time, think it was perhaps ten feet long. It reared its head up, out of the patch of tall weeds behind the shack, and started to bang its head hard against the wall. I saw it was no ghost, but I was ready to leave there in a hurry. I didn't have my gun with me. I did have a sickle, but I didn't think it was long enough, with a strong enough handle for me to take on a big, old black snake like that. So I moved away, shouting to the old woman to run. She didn't. She raised that broom higher, like she was threatening to whop a ground worm. "Get!" she said. And don't you know the snake got, like it was a pet. It crawled away from the shack and went into the weeds.

I shouted at the old woman, "How can you live out here with snakes like that!"

"That wasn't no snake," she said.

"Wasn't no ghost!" I told her. I told her that I wasn't ever coming back to her for shine or for anything. I knew I would. She knew I would too, but I would always have my gun with me.

She said, "Come back inside, the shine will be ready soon."

"No!"

"Don't worry, he won't be back," she said.

I shook my head. "It is not safe."

"The ghosts won't bother you, " she spoke to me gently like I was a child.

I snapped, "I'm not talking about ghosts!"

##

Well, I did wait for the shine. I waited out side, my eyes ready. I didn't want to tangle with a snake the size of the one I'd seen, but I didn't want to leave empty handed with no shine either.

I didn't see that big snake again, until I went out to the old woman's place with the Lawyer Tower.

She welcomed Tower and me, and asked us to sit on the stools in her shack. Tower graciously sat down. I stayed standing. I hadn't forgotten the snake and I wanted to be standing with my rifle, in case it returned. She offered us uncooked cane to chew. I took a piece.

Tower asked for a sample of her famous shine, which she served him gladly. She filled an empty jug from the still and handed him the jug.

He thanked her, said, "Let me take a little sip before we get to business." He took a long sip, had the jug right up to his mouth, covered his whole face. The shine must have tasted good to him. So much so that I didn't think he would stop tasting, and begin with the reason why he'd come.

"Well, mammy, you are an old woman. It must be hard for you to do for yourself, you know?" Tower began.

"The Good Lord has never given me a reason for a compliant," the old woman said.

"When was the last time you've had fresh meat?"

"Sir?"

"Your diet?"

I looked at Tower, curious about why he was asking the old woman about her diet.

"I don't eat any meat, except for a few strips of salt pork I put on my beans," she told him.

"Salt pork?" he said, like he was waiting for her to pause, so he could say that, and I then saw that he thought he was playing the wise cat to the dumb mouse.

Old mammy smiled. "A man didn't have any money just some salt pork, he wanted some shine," she told Lawyer Tower.

"Hmm . . . " Tower stopped a minute, waiting for old mammy to pause, so he could spring something on her. He took a swig from the jug in his lap. He smiled at the old woman. He sat there for a good minute smiling. I don't know why he smiled like he did, as long as he did. Nobody ever found anything good in a lawyer's smile. I knew what he was plotting. I didn't wonder if old mammy could tell. I knew she had to be able to. His smiling was a give-away. But mammy kept talking to him, answering him, talking pretty at ease to him.

"Another man gave me two hogs for shine. I could have had some fresh meat, but I can't keep nothing penned up, so I let them loose. I couldn't eat them, and I couldn't feed them. I guess, they're now two wild hogs out in the reed swamp. I guess, they're making it on their own."

"Ah, " Lawyer Tower said, "a person these days needs fresh meat in her diet, or she will just fall apart. Her bones will get brittle. Her teeth will fall out."

The Lawyer Tower looked very concerned and serious, and was not smiling so much now, outside, but inside he was grinning like an old mouse-happy-cat.

"I still have all my teeth," the old woman said.

"You could get used to fresh meat, and it is just a shame, a crying shame, that you can not afford to live better than you do."

Lawyer Tower tried his best to look so sincere.

The old woman said, smiling to herself then, "Sir, what is it that you are trying to slip pass(‘d) old mammy?"

"Dear, I am thinking about you."

"About me?" The old woman sat up on her stool and looked at him, and she smiled, sweet.

"Yes."

"I don't remember working in your mama's house. I wasn't your nanny. You did not suck my tits. Why are you thinking about me?"

"I am on the welfare board, " Lawyer Tower said. He knew she had him caught, inside the outhouse hole, fallen down there with dung on himself and his shoes, that he wouldn't be able to get off.

"I know, and you are Mr. Sam Flowers' lawyer?" the old woman said.

"Huh, yes?" Tower said. He looked at me like I'd spoken about his business to the old woman. He looked none too happy.

I hadn't told the old woman anything about his business. Half the people in the county knew that he was Sam Flowers' lawyer.

"Mr. Flowers himself came here a week ago. He sat where you are sitting," the old woman said. "He is a mighty hungry man. He would eat his own hand, if he got hungry enough. He spits when he talks, you do know that? And he picks his teeth. He is a some fine gentleman, that you work for. He comes in here like he's stealing into a sheep pen with an axe. He wants to hit me in the head with the blunt side of an axe, chunk! like that."

"Mr. Flowers is a fine man!" Tower raised his voice.

I know, you know where this tale is going -- sticking it to the crooked lawyer, right? Well, I'm telling you about the encounter of Boss Flowers' lawyer with Miss Tilly, the old colored woman. And you know what they say about lawyers? When can you tell a crooked one? When he puts up his shingle. When can you tell, if he's lying? When his mouth moves. What do you call a burning building with a hundred lawyers trapped inside? A good fire. You know the jokes. They were old in 1925. Darn, they were old in ancient times! Like the truth is old. Well, whenever somebody tell(s) the truth on lawyers that he knows, in his own life, certain snooty people will start to criticize him for trying to breathe life into spent and bent stereotypes. Well, Tower fit the stereotype. He was one hundred percent crooked lawyer. Maybe I should just say: He was a lawyer.

The old woman said to Lawyer Tower about Boss Flowers, "I see, he done chunk you on the side of your head and has your sensible side slung over his shoulder. He's got your wise-ass-side coming out here to try to take my home from me, and to see me off down the road. But I saw you coming this way."

Lawyer Tower stood. His face was dark red as the sin of those who crucify, and who took the Blood of Jesus. He shouted at Miss. Tilly, "You are crazy! That's what you are! Crazy! You will be committed into the care of the county!"

"Well, poor old Mr. Flowers, he threatened me too. I told him:

“Sir, there ain't nothing you can do to me, and there is no place you can hide from me."

I see Tower all of a sudden scrambling for words. That was the first time I saw what a lawyer's face looked like, when he didn't know what to say. He looked like a rat caught in a trap and couldn't get loose. He then began to curse. This shocked me. I had never heard a gentleman of Mr. Tower's professional status ever being rude to a woman. It was beyond the pale for any man to be so disrespectful that he would curse at an old woman. I was so stunned that I couldn't speak.

He ranted at the old woman, "I see, there is no reasoning with you! I can't talk sweet to you! I tried to be nice, now I am going to be right!"

"Ha!" the old woman laughed. "You stand there and wait for judgment, whether you are going to get fifty more years of a hard life. You will have your time doubled in Hell, anyway."

He cursed again. I was suddenly twisting and squirming in my shoes as I heard him. I shook off being stunned, and you know, I quickly grabbed Tower by his collar before he could get another shameful curse word out of his mouth. I shocked him. His eyes started getting scared, getting weak as water. I said to him that he wasn't acting like a man, and he started mumbling that I was damn trash, and he mumbled a curse at me, too. For a minute I thought that I just had to have me a taste of his blood, just had to get in a couple of punches, make his lip bleed. But I thought this for only a moment. I thought on him some more and knew that I didn't have a great hankering to who(m)p on him. After I gave him a little bit of a shaking, nothing more than just a few quick shakes, I let him go. He hollered at me to let him go, even after I had. He ran out of the shack's door.

He stopped running and came back, stared hard at me for a second and then started screaming at me like he was a fish wife. He said, I was dead as far as getting business from him and any white person was concerned, that I had sided with a nigger against him, and against Mr. Flowers. Then he shook off his womanish hysteria and went back out the door. I went out after him, shouting at him.

"This isn't about white people and colored people!" I said. "This is about you cursing a woman, that is wrong! You know yourself that is wrong!"

Mr. Tower kept on walking until he came to a big stop. He was so mad that he didn't know where he was walking. He went into the tall weeds, where you can just expect he met the big old snake. Lawyer Tower had a close call with the snake. He was so mad that he didn't see nothing of that snake until he was up on it. We had come to the old woman's place late in the afternoon, and by the time he had finished taking that big sip of shine from her jug, and finished cursing and yelling at her for telling him that he had come to crook her out of her land from orders of his real boss, Boss Sam Flowers, it was getting close to dusk. He couldn't see much of what was in his way, even if he had been calm and was looking. He wore spectacles and he had them hanging half on his face, and one or both of the lens looked a little foggy to me. I guess he got so upset and mad that he perspired, and the water and the heat from his head combined and made his eye wear look a little cloudy. Anyway, when he saw the snake it was up on him, rearing up and hissing, like it was a second from striking, and Lawyer Tower was a second from being dead. I had the presence of mind to take my gun and to fire a shot at the snake. I wasn't that far from it and I was a good enough shot to put a hole clean through it with my rifle fire, but don't you know I must have missed. The snake put its head down and jumped back in the tall weeds, and was gone before I could get off a second shot. I shouted at it, and was so angry at missing that I was ready to chase it further into the weeds. Mr. Tower, he just couldn't stop from talking. He thanked me a thousand times. He was all over me with compliments.

He was grateful. He said, he would do anything for me. He sounded so sincere and good, like he was the innocent Lamb of the Boy Jesus, and never had a bad thought for anybody. He asked me to lead him to the road. I did. I swear, he followed so close behind that I didn't know where my ass ended and he began. He was just like a child out in the woods, scared that some monster was going to chomp down on him, like he was a mere piece of matchwood.

Now, you know a’course, that Lawyer Tower didn't remain good. He was good until he got back to the road and to his car. He didn't say anything wrong the whole trip back to town. He didn't say anything much about the big snake at all, that I heard of. A week later, I heard him say to the Sheriff that The Lord was with him that day he left from out of the old woman's house.

You would think that a man with any kind of sense couldn't stand still when he lied, for fear that the Lord wouldn't hesitate to strike him down with a thunder bolt. Lawyer Tower lied. He told the county judge that the old woman was a danger to herself and had to, in the name of what was right, be declared a ward of the county. You would think that good people would have been able to see into Tower's face and know that he was lying. But I guess that a lawyer like him lied so much, and had been lying so long, that nobody took the effort to look Tower square in the face, and those who did, or were supposed to, like the county judge, the sheriff, and the matron at the receiving home for mentally ill adult women, didn't have the appetite to look, for they knew, when they looked at him that they were looking at Boss Flowers' lawyer, and staring in that direction was looking at Boss Flowers' business, something that everybody knew that nobody was supposed to look too long or hard upon.

##

One hot day when the sun was boiling in the sky, and baking people so that their clothes stuck to their skin, at two or three o'clock, somewhere abouts, three mighty self-important county employees trooped out to the old woman's place. The matron and two sheriff deputies came for the old woman, like they had come out to bring a bad child to the county home. The old woman knew why they'd come before they got there. I heard they were coming and I raced out there a hour ahead of them to warn her. She told me to --“relax, child, and suck on some sugar cane.”

I told her that she was crazy to wait around until the deputies got there, to take her away, to lock her up. "You ought to high-tail it," I said.

She said, "And go where? This is my home. Mine. All mine."

The old woman greeted the matron and the deputies with a friendly smile. Her smile was as sweet as a peck of sweet potatoes. "Come into my shack and have a sip of fresh shine," she said.

The matron got offended by the suggestion that she would sit at an illegal still with the old woman. The deputies got red-faced but said nothing. They knew that the old woman was friendly with the Sheriff's family. I think that nobody would have ever bothered her, if Boss Flowers didn't want her land.

The old woman said, "The shine's just ready, and is good and ready. It will pick you up, shake the ashes out of you. "

"The deputies are here to serve papers on you," the matron said.

"You could use a swig to cool off," the old woman said to the matron.

The matron answer was, "You are in my charge right now."

The old woman smiled. "That's all right, I just had a tasting sip of my shine and I ain't so particular as to in whose charge I am in just now. A swig of my shine would do you fine. Let me get you a jug?"

The matron replied, "No!"

"Just a swig? You can use the kind of seasoning a swig of my shine will give you. It might make you fit to talk to people."

The matron brushed off the remark. "Where are your things? In the shack?"

"Let me see the papers," I said to the matron.

One of the deputies said to me, "Boy, this don't concern you, stay out of it."

I didn't like this deputy. I'd known him all of my life and have hated him since he sat in the row across from of me at school, and was a mealy mouth snot nose. I didn't like the deputy who was with him either, though this deputy never said much. He was always coming up on to people's private property and sniffing and snooping, like a hound dog on the trail of somebody hiding something or doing something, he thought he had ought to spy on. He snooped on me as I was running shine plenty of times, but he never caught me. He'd let the old woman's shine alone on her property, following orders from higher-ups, but he dogged anybody making or running shine anyplace else.

The deputy, the old classmate from my school days, stepped closer to me. He was smelling like raw onions. I was about to say something to him, when the old woman stepped between us. She said to the deputy, "You sure you don't want some of my shine?"

He said, "We ain't fixing to be here that long."

"C'mon," the old woman said.

"No, I've had a brush with your shine. It laid me out on the high rafters for a long time," he said.

"I bet you got a mighty good feeling laying on those rafters," the old woman said. "I can just see you sitting up there, so happy that you is singing softly, maybe dancing around on your butt a little, and is tapping your feet."

The deputy smiled.

The old woman said, "The shine is ready, and you is here serving your papers and your work for the day is near about done."

"They're here to take you away," I said to the old woman. "You understand that?"

"I told you to shut up," the deputy said to me.

"Let there be no scuffling here," the old woman said.

"I'm telling him to shut-up! He is interfering with official law business," the deputy said. "This is court business."

"Your fussing isn't good for my nerves. I'm going to have a swig on my jug," the old woman said and started for the shack.

"Stop her!" the matron said.

"Ma'am?" the deputy mumbled.

"She is in my custody," the matron said. "Tell her to stop."

The old woman didn't stop. She went into the shack. The matron and the deputies followed. The deputy ordered me to wait outside. I didn't argue with him.

They were inside a minute talking to the old woman when the loud knocking on the wall began. I heard them through the shack's walls. I could tell that the matron's and the deputies' insides were jumping. I held to my rifle. The deputies came running outside, accusing me of making the noise, until they saw me standing there with my hand on the rifle, looking as bad as their heads felt. I had an answer for the noise: The snake! I didn't tell them, you know. I wanted them to be frightened , and I hoped, maybe, they would run away. I heard the old woman tell them about the ghost. The deputies ran around to the back of the shack like I'd done.

The matron came out of the shack, with her hands over her ears and calling to the deputies, "Did you get him?"

The old woman came out of the shack behind the matron, said, "That is nobody but my late brother come to pay me a little visit."

The deputy looked at the matron, his eyes said: “Ma'am, sure enough she's crazy.”

I said, "She's crazy? What's making that noise?"

The matron and the deputies saw the back wall of the shack shake like some invisible thing was pounding on it. Like I said, I knew there was a big snake somewhere in the weeds that was doing it. I didn't know how. And though I had an explanation, seeing the boards move and listening to the loud pounding was still unsettling. The matron and the deputies were ready to go. Whether it was really a ghost trying its hand at chasing them out of there, or whether there was another explanation, didn't matter.

"We've come for the old woman, let's take her and go," the matron said.

The deputy said, "Aren't we going to get her things?"

"No!" the matron replied.

"But you don't take a woman in without giving her time to gather up some of her things," the deputy said.

"I said, no," the matron replied, "they are rags anyway."

"We have to let the woman get her things," the deputy said.

"We will give her things to wear," the matron said.

"You can't go now," the old woman said. "My brother's mad as a hatter. He won't let you get to the road. Well, come on to the house, do come. I don't have much, but you can make yourselves at home. Stay here until my brother settles down. You might not be able to leave for some time, but I have a place for each of you."

The matron said to the old woman. "If you get violent, these deputies will restrain you."

When she said that the pounding noise stopped and the big snake stood up in the tall grass and hissed. The matron fainted straight away and fell to the ground. Nobody stopped to pick her up. All eyes were on the snake. The old woman tried to shoo and to wave it away.

The deputy said to her, "Is that your pet?"

"No, he's nobody's pet," the old mammy replied. "He's a pest. He keeps stomping around here, sniffing into my business. He's seen that I can handle myself." She shook her fist at the snake.

"If you don't do something about him, we're going to shoot him, " the deputy said. "We ought to shoot him anyway."

"Go ahead on and shoot him," the old woman said. "He's a ghost. Your bullets against him won't amount to nothing."

The deputy shook his head, told the old woman, "You're trying to cook without a pot."

"He can't hurt you either, but his friends can," the old woman said, pointed at the matron. "You better carry her to my shack."

Before the deputy could answer, SNAKES, so many snakes, more snakes than I had ever seen in my whole life, a whole field full of snakes, reared up from the weeds, thousands, at least hundreds of them. Snakes were everywhere, surrounding us and hissing at us!

I said, "Are they ghosts?"

The old woman said, "Please! No ghosts are like them. First of all they have teeth that can rip the flesh off you and they have poison that will kill you good. You all should take my advice and come to my shack. Those snakes look like they want to taste blood. The way my brother's got them riled up, hmmm, you might have to spend the rest of the day and the whole night. Snakes get might(y) hungry, when you see that many of them, standing up like this, like they are ready to grow legs and to start walking around, and move your clothes back, before they take a bite out of your behind."

The quiet deputy, the snooper, all of a sudden got panicky and he started firing at the snakes. The sound of his gun fire woke up the matron who sat up on her own and almost fainted again when she saw all the snakes. The deputy's gun only had six shots. He fired six times and had six misses. He broke down and cried.

"Oh, that's all right," the old woman chuckled. "My brother doesn't mind. He kind of enjoyed seeing you do that. Your bullets tickled him and his friends."

"You are kind of enjoying this?" I spoke harshly to the old woman. "You act like you don't care about scaring four people, half to death."

"You scared too?" she said.

"I'm about ready to pee in my drawers," I said.

"But you ain't here to take what's mine," she said. "It won't be none of my fault if they gets bitten."

"You are raising snakes!" the deputy shouted. "That is against the law!"

"We're going to have the state police out here and the state health authority. And people are going to be looking at you to see what kind of a nut would keep snakes," the deputy said.

The old woman smiled at him so sweet, then said, "The Sheriff and me had an understanding, and we're going to have an understanding again, as soon as I see to his tired self. As for you, my brother will make a path, so that you can put your hands over your asses and cover your tails and run away quick. But, come here again, boy, with this do-do-face matron, and the Lord A’Mighty won't look curious upon you."

The deputy was about to say something when the old woman gave him a fierce look. Yeah, she looked him hard in the eye, and she flung up her hands, said, " Lord, have mercy! Let them pass. Keep my brother's pets from eating their ass!"

Yep, the snakes vanished, were gone as quickly as they appeared. Whether they were pets and all on-signal crawled back into holes in the ground under the weeds, I don't know. I left. I didn't stick around to ask any questions. I didn't want to stay in case something went bad. I did not return until six months later for shine. I never saw the big snake again, and I never saw anymore snakes on her property, ever again. I think nobody ever did.

I started leaving before the matron and the deputies did, but they were right behind, and moving fast. I heard the matron half-heartedly mention the old woman's name, and the deputy said that he would need fifty deputies to help him. The matron didn't say anything else. She was on the stout and plump side, and some what slow in moving. I suspect, normally, in walk-running too. I think she was somewhat prudent and didn't want to be fresh meat for the snakes. I don't think she or the deputies turned back and looked one time. I know I didn't. I couldn't get the snakes out of my mind, especially the big black one that the old woman said was her brother.

Nobody bothered the old woman after that. Like I've said, I didn't go out there and see her for a while. I know the judge tore up the papers on her, and I know that Boss Sam Flowers fell on hard times.

He got so mad and mean that everybody left him. His wife, his servants. His children wouldn't come and see him. He worked late at his office trying to hold on to his business. Most nights when he got home, he was dozing before he could close the front door. He was too tired to eat his supper, so he usually went straight to bed. One night, he wasn't in bed a minute before he knew he wasn't in bed alone. He felt something moving around under the blanket. His eyes jumped wide awake. He jumped out of bed.

He turned on the light and saw a big old nasty snake squirming around on the bed like it belonged there. This was the high end part of town and the mice problem there wasn't that bad. Snakes came into houses with bad mice problems, or with holes in the walls and floors, or in houses that didn't have screens on the windows and doors. Mr. Flowers house had no holes in the walls and floors, and he had good screens. He couldn't believe he had snakes. Yes, snakes. He heard something behind him. He turned around and saw a whole knot of them snakes, wiggling around together like somebody had dropped them there. He shouted, cursed, that he was going to kill somebody. He grabbed a pistol from the bed stand. People like him kept loaded pistols close by because they had enemies.

Mr. Flowers turned the gun on the knot of snakes. His plan was to kill them, then to get the one in the bed. He fired, blasted away. The snakes rolled apart. They were all sizes and all kinds. But he didn’t hit a single one of them.

The next day, the sheriff came with three deputies. When Mr. Flowers called the law, he got service. The sheriff asked him, "How many did you kill?" Mr. Flowers said he killed none of them, but that he would kill the devil who put them in his house.

Mr. Flowers eyes were so red that you didn't have to get close up on him to see that he hadn't slept in days, and Mr. Flowers‘ business problems were common knowledge. The sheriff figured Mr. Flowers snake problem was mental not criminal.

Some people said that Mr. Flowers never tried to sleep in a bed again. He would try to sleep sitting up in a chair, holding a shot gun, with his finger on the trigger, and only a few nights did he get any more than a doze-eye. People said, he kept firing off his gun, shooting at phantom snakes. He called in exterminators. He saw doctors for sleeping remedies. He moved into his office, tried to sleep there. That is when snakes moved into his office. At least the night watchman saw them. The night watchman saw a lot of things. He was one of Miss Tilly's and my good customers. He loved to taste a little to help him get through the long , boring nights. He(‘d) worked for Mr. Flowers for ten years. Those were ten years of boring nights until his boss stuck around. The man quit after two days. He said he saw the snakes, but then, he also said he saw angels flying in the sky on Christmas Eve … singing and dancing too. Every Christmas, he took off from work. He drunk liquor like it was sin, and like sin was getting scarce, and he spent the holidays sleeping off a jag, so it was nothing for him to see snakes crawling around when and where they weren't.

"It wasn't no snakes," that made him quit, he said. "I ain't afraid of snakes. Snakes can't hurt you --except, maybe, the poisonous ones. "

Yes, Mr. Flowers shot himself in the head. He left a note. Some of the deputies got a kick out of reading it, so that's why I know what was in it. People had something sweeter than piano music to gather people together. People sat around at parties, drinking, reading aloud copies of the note, and laughing about how Mr. Flowers died, I've never heard of people acting that way before. The man's death was funny to them and the way he died just wasn't a curiosity.

He was in his office. He was holed up there for three days. It was a long weekend. He was alone with his madness.

"These damn things aren't real snakes. I've never seen anything like this. Snakes run away, unless you've got them cornered. These are devils, demons, sent for me --" He wrote. "God have mercy."

Oscar was digging Mr. Flowers' grave. Oscar worked twenty years at the graveyard. The work was harder than usual. The ground just got hard, almost like the dirt was some new kind of rock, like the ground knew whose casket the hole would be for and didn't want any part of this. Oscar was strong and he dug away, but he didn't get no farther than a foot, when he leaned back on his shovel. He said he needed to rest.

He said, "That morning I'd woke up late, got to work late, did a little work and was tired. Maybe a bit of the sky was hanging a little low over my head, but thought nothing of it. Then I looked down and saw how much work I had to do and prayed, 'Somebody, please, help me.'"

Oscar said, he saw something moving in the hole. "Then I saw it, the head of a big black snake, sticking out of the dirt and looking right up at me."

Oscar said the snake was big around, ten, twelve, maybe, even fifteen inches. Oscar said to folks later, "Hell, I didn't wait to figure out its size."

Oscar ran. He left his shovel, left everything. He ran clear across town, and didn't stop running until he got to his church. The church door was locked, but he broke in and fell on his knees, and stayed on his knees the whole day. He wouldn't go back to his job. Folks said, Oscar went on a bender. He got mad at his boss and walked off. Digging Boss Flowers' grave was a two-man job, but that Boss Flowers' widow didn't have enough money to bury him properly, and so he was put to rest like a hobo, and there was barely enough money for one grave digger. Folks said, Oscar dug the grave and then quit his job.

Oscar said, "I started digging, but a big snake finished."

There was a lot of talk, but like the sheriff said, scientific people and people who don't get caught up in fantasies know the problems that killed Mr. Flowers were not supernatural but mental. It is a fact that snakes over ran Mr. Flowers' property, eventually got into his house, infested his plantations, destroyed the cotton in his fields, and in his warehouses. He lost his money and rich people just can't take being poor.

What happened to Lawyer Tower's wife and infant child was sad. His wife gave birth to a boy-child, who was said to have been born with a short pig's tail. I never saw this child, but I heard this from two folks who saw the boy and his little pig's tail with their own eyes. The boy was sent away, out of the state, and was locked deep in an institution. That's all I'm going to say about that.

There was a rumor going around hereabouts that Lawyer Tower strangled the boy. Anyway, Tower's wife died within a week of the birth, and Tower fell from so much grace, was filled with so much shame, that he blamed himself for the boy's birth and his wife's death.

Lawyer Tower was scared all the time. He just knew he was going to die. Day and night, he went screaming around his house, shouting the devil was after him. The deputies locked him up, took him to the county nut house. When the doctors examined him, he got himself right, and they had to cut him loose, though they didn't want to cut him loose. Everybody knew he was crazy all along, but he was a lawyer, who knew all the lawyer's tricks. He knew how to stand still in quicksand and swear he's floating, though everybody can see him sinking all along. The deputies took him in three times and three times the doctors had to let him go.

Lawyer Tower had a law partner, whose name slips my mind. He talked a lot to his law partner. He said that where ever he went, snakes followed him. Folks said nobody could see these snakes but Lawyer Tower.

Lawyer Tower said that even when he went to the nut house, the snakes went right along, but there they went sorta dormant, so after a little while, he could calm himself enough to convince the doctors to release him. But no sooner than he was released were they crawling all over him again.

His law partner tried to help him. Lawyer Tower suspected Miss Tilly was behind his problems, that she was doing some witchy business, so he sent the law partner to find me. Lawyer Tower was afraid to face Miss Tilly, but he wanted his law partner to offer her money to remove what he said was a curse, she'd put on him, and he wanted me to be their go-between. I told the law partner that he and Lawyer Tower could go to hell.

The law partner said, "I don't believe in witchcraft. I'm helping a good man get over his problem."

I didn't say anything, but I was thinking of asking him, "In what way is Lawyer Tower a good man?" But I didn't want to drag out the conversation. I didn't want there to be a conversation. When I speak to lawyers I like to keep things short. Things are better that way.

The law partner offered me a hundred dollars to take him to Miss Tilly. For a hundred dollars I would take God to the devil. That is not saying anything wrong. God can handle the devil. But I wasn't going to take him to Miss Tilly. I remembered the last time I took somebody to Miss Tilly's.

There were many so-called experts around who claimed they knew how to get rid of snakes and curses. One was a man whose people were from Ireland. He sold little packets of dirt that he said was real Irish soil shipped in from the Emerald Isle. He sold this dirt to people to sprinkle around their houses and barns to get rid of snakes He said, St Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. The soil was a blessing to all and a curse to snakes. Lawyer Tower brought a dozen boxes. He filled his pockets with Irish dirt, let it get under his finger nails, put it in his socks and shoes, sprinkled it around his house.

Well, Lawyer Tower went to find that man, to tell him the snakes were still there; the Irish dirt didn’t work.

Well, the man said, "All the real snakes would have died, yours must be in your head."

Lawyer Tower punched that man. I never heard of a lawyer punching a man as hard as he did. Lawyers usually sit back and let others do the punching. That way they stay out of range, incase the other guy hits back. Lawyer Tower must have given that man one stinging jab, He knocked out the man's front tooth. The man had the nerve to threaten to sue.

When the man tried to hire a lawyer, a couple of deputies came by his place of business and knocked out a second tooth. They made an easy ten dollars each.

Another character told Lawyer Tower's law partner that a coil of rope around the house would keep out snakes, that no snake would crawl over a coil of rope that was powered by a secret magical spell. The law partner didn't pass this on. Maybe he thought he went through too much trouble and expense to humor his partner with the other swindler for him to send along this one. Afterall, he had to employ two deputies and pay the exorbitant amount of twenty dollars to extract one tooth. He thanked the man for his time and started ushering him out of the law office. The man was all friendly. He didn't want to go without a demonstration. The law partner wanted to stay friendly. And for a moment it looked like they both were pulling each other's legs. Then, the law partner remembered Lawyer Tower's mood, and he figured up the money it could cost to beat back a possible murder charge, and he grabbed the man by the scuff of the neck and kicked him out the door.

Lawyer Tower drown himself. He jumped into the new government built dam. He didn't leave a note.

I saw pictures of Lawyer Tower's body. The deputies passed them around too. Lawyer Tower's was less liked than Boss Flowers. The pictures were taken on the scene, right after the body was fished out of the dam. There were little wiggly snakes crawling in his hair and from his mouth. How snakes got in the dam? Hell, I'm no expert on snakes or dams.

[END ]
-FDL