Like I said, Chambliss stood back while Molly handled that snake and he watched her catch hold of the Holy Ghost, and when he felt like she was good and filled up with it he went to her and put his good hand on her head. Then he took up that microphone and prayed into it. I remember just exactly what he said because it was the last time I ever heard that man preach. It was the last time I ever stepped foot inside that church until now.
He said, “O dear, sweet Jesus, take this woman and fill her up with your spirit from head to foot. Fill us all, sweet Jesus, with your good Holy Ghost. Lift us up in your name, dear Lord.” And when he said that, he put his good hand under her elbow and helped her lift that snake up over her head. He moved away real slow, and she just held it there above her like she was making sure God could see it, her eyes closed tight, her feet running in place, her mouth alive and moving in a prayer she probably hadn’t ever prayed in her life.
When she lowered that copperhead is when it happened. The first time it struck it caught her just under her left eye, right along her cheekbone. And when she went to pull it off her face it got her on her right hand, right in between her thumb and her finger, and it wouldn’t let go. She hollered out and cracked that snake like a bullwhip, but it was too strong. Chambliss dropped his microphone, and him and two of the deacons laid her down right there in front of the church. They held her still and finally got that snake’s fangs to turn her hand loose. You could tell by the way they handled it that they didn’t want to hurt it, and they didn’t want themselves to get bit either. Chambliss picked it up just as gentle as he could and then opened the top of that crate with the toe of his boot and let that thing slide right back inside. Everybody stopped their dancing when they heard Molly hollering, and soon the music stopped too. That church was quieter than it had ever been until Chambliss got down on his knee beside Molly and put that microphone up to her lips like he expected her to say something. “Go ahead,” he said to her, but all you could hear was the sound of her panting like she couldn’t catch her breath. Somebody brought her a glass of water, and those two deacons helped her raise herself up and take a drink. When they sat her up, you could see that her cheek had started to turn blue, and they had to tip the water glass into her mouth because her lips were almost swollen shut.
“Sister Jameson,” Chambliss said, “you’ve stepped out in faith, and we’re all witness to that belief you have in the love of Jesus Christ to protect you and keep you safe, whether it’s here with us on this sinful earth or at home with him in glory.” Whispered “amens” rose up out of the congregation, and people waved their arms over their heads in hallelujah. “I’m going to ask the rest of the deacons to come up here with me and lay their hands on you, Sister, and maybe the good Lord will let us pray you through this.” The sound of folding chairs being pushed across the linoleum rang out, and groups of men went up on the stage and kneeled around Molly and laid their hands on her and prayed different prayers, some of them in tongues, some of them calling on God and asking him to save her. Chambliss stayed knelt down beside her and kept his eyes closed, his good hand on her head, the burned one still holding on to the microphone.
“God’s sent his angels,” he whispered. “I can hear their foot-falls up on the roof above us; I can hear their wings just a-fluttering, Molly. God’s sent his angels to be with you this very morning, and we don’t know if they’re here to watch over you and keep you with us, or if he’s sent them to carry you home to glory, but we feel them here with us, don’t we, and we feel Jesus’s love washing over us this very minute.” He looked up at the congregation. “And all God’s people said, ‘Amen.’”
“Amen!” the people hollered back. Chambliss stood up and looked out at us, and then he looked back down at Molly where she was laid out and surrounded by all those men who were still busy praying over her.
“But the world ain’t made up of God’s people,” he said. “The world ain’t given to know what we know. The world ain’t going to understand this woman’s faith; it ain’t going to understand her wanting to take up that serpent to conquer the Devil. And I can tell you that the world ain’t ever going to understand the will of God in allowing her to come home to him.”
“That’s right!” someone hollered out. “Hallelujah!”
“But we know,” Chambliss said. “We know what’s at work here. We know God has a plan for his people. We know God lets only the righteous into Heaven. We know God brings only the worthy home.”
“Amen!” another voice said.
“And I tell you,” Chambliss said, “it’s a good day when one of us goes home. It’s a beautiful Sunday morning when one of us is called back to Jesus. Hallelujah!” He dropped his hands to his sides and shuffled across the front of the church like he was dancing. “It gives me joy to see it! No tears. No sadness. Hallelujah! Just joy. Joy that this woman’s going home. We got that good Holy Ghost power up in our church today, praise God!” He looked over to where Mrs. Crowder sat behind the piano, and he nodded toward her and she took up playing and pounding away at the keys. The drums and the guitar picked up after that, and before I knew it the congregation had started in on “Holy Ghost Power” and everyone had took to dancing and singing like nothing had ever happened, like they’d all done forgot that Miss Molly Jameson was dying from a snakebite right there in front of us, the music so loud and pulsing you could feel it in your chest. A couple of deacons picked Molly up and carried her out of the church, right down the middle aisle, right past everyone there, but not a single one of them people even seemed to notice.
A few days later I was down at the post office in Marshall when I heard a woman at the counter telling the postman about how Molly’s sister-in-law came over to the house and found Molly dead in the garden on Wednesday evening. Said she was out there laying facedown in a row of tomatoes, a spade still in her hand.
“What took her?” the postman asked. He wet his finger with his tongue and counted out dollar bills for the woman’s change, and he laid them out on the counter like a fan.
“They don’t know exactly what got her,” the woman said. She tore a stamp from the sheet the postman had just given her, and she licked it and smoothed it out on her letter before handing it over to him. “But they reckon a snake must’ve been hiding in them tomato plants. By the time they found her on Wednesday her right hand had turned black, and she had a black lump under her eye too. It was just as round and hard as it could be,” she said. “Shiny too, like a ripe apple but for the blackness.”
They buried Molly that Friday, and Chambliss preached her funeral.
After that I understood that my church wasn’t no place to worship the Lord in, and I realized I couldn’t stay. I’d been a member of that church in one way or another since I was a young woman, but things had been took too far, and I couldn’t pretend to look past them no more. If having Molly Jameson die right in front of that church didn’t convince Carson Chambliss to stop his carrying on, who’s to say that somebody setting themselves on fire and burning down the church would change his mind? There wasn’t no amount of strychnine that could’ve got him to stop; wasn’t no kind of snake that man wouldn’t pick up and pass around.
Even though that newspaper in the windows kept folks from seeing inside that church, I figure everybody in town knew what was going on, and it wouldn’t be long before they had the law down there trying to break it up. I didn’t like none of it one bit at all, and I knew if it wasn’t a safe place for an old woman, then there wasn’t no way it was a safe place for children, and so I prayed on it and I prayed on it, and that’s when God laid it on my heart. Addie, he said, just as clear as day, you need to get out of that church, but you know you can’t leave them children behind. And I knew then that I’d have to stand up to Carson Chambliss, that I’d have to tell him that what he was doing was wrong.