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Unction
Kevin Clothier Zacharias Stemple was known by folks in Harper County for keeping twelve rattlers in a cage made of plywood and chicken wire in the back of his garage. He'd taken them from the rocks above Jurgen's pond where they nested thick as rats in a ship's hold in late summer. They was mostly canebrakes and black snappers save for one old timber snake named Simon, white as horn and thick as a child's thigh. Sunday afternoons Zacharias hauled his cage of "honeys" out of the garage and loaded it onto a stake-bed truck. Then he drove up Creek Road into Holloway for evening services at the Antioch Church of Holy Light. It was something back then watching old Stemple turning up Main Street with all them snakes in tow, his radio piping out the delirious shouts of Pentecostal praise broadcast from a local station. Folks in Holloway was mixed in their opinions of Stemple. My Pa, who'd grown up Baptist, and was dead set on making sure us kids did the same, swore Zacharias was nothing more than a crackpot set to sully the name of Christ in order to make a name for himself. But there was lots of others who believed the old man was possessed of a mighty unction from the Holy Ghost. Even our pastor, who was straight as knife steel, left a door open to the possibility. When I asked him what he thought about snake handling in the name of Jesus he just shook his mane and said, "the Lord's ways is past knowin’ son." On nights when the moon hung over the hills like a lantern on God's back porch I'd lay in my bed dreaming about old Zacharias slip-stepping across the platform with his head thrown back, eyes narrowed to button holes, and them snakes draped like honeysuckle garlands over his arms. Then I'd see myself take one of them serpents up, feel its cold, slick skin sliding over mine knowing any minute it could strike, sending hellfire down the length of my bones. In the summer of ‘65 an ore cart jumped it's track and pinned Pa under. According to Virgil Renfroe, it took near half an hour for the other miners to haul enough ore away to pull him free. "A man of lesser faith woulda cashed it in," Virgil said, “but your daddy just lay there say'n 'thy will be done' over and over, gazin’ up the shaft into the blue sky." In a month Pa got his walking back, but his chest was stove in so bad he couldn't pull enough breath to stay on his feet for any sizable length. The rest of us did what we could to keep things going. Momma took in laundry and pressing from folks in town, and my brother and I hustled odd-jobs after school. But Pa couldn't abide being cared for by his offspring. He took on some office work and even got the notion to educate himself through the mail, but he had trouble keeping his head clear and eventually took to laying on the couch smoking and watching evangelism TV the day through. In time he was handing money over to any snake oil preacher offering respite against the great darkness that coiled itself round his soul. He sent out for prayer cloths, and miracle bells that tinkled for each soul salvaged from the Devil's dung heap, promise books and copper crosses said to suck stiffness from arthritic joints. With all his groping for relief, Pa fell on the idea of asking Zacharias Stemple over for supper. He'd done some serious thinking bout the ways of faith and figured any old fool crazy enough to trod the holy aisle looped in live serpent skin ought to hold some sway with the Heavenly Father. That night he had Momma put up one of her pot-pies along with a kettle of greens and bacon. When Stemple arrived we was all sitting, scrubbed and sober as nuns, at the table waiting with no small sense of trepidation for the storied snake man. Stemple walked in wearing a pair of dungarees white in the knees and a red flannel shirt. He smelled of Aqua Velva and corn liqueur and it seemed that his whole countenance puckered into itself, except for his eyes that flashed like flint-rock from behind the gray folds of skin that framed them. He nodded at Momma pawing back his hair, then fixed his gaze on Pa where it remained for the rest of supper. Afterward, he rose from his place and went to Pa whispering, " Brother we got some business to take care of,” then he leaned over and gathered Pa's pale, withered limbs into his arms. That night I dozed off to sounds of contrition rising up in yelps and shudders from outside my bedroom door. When morning come Pa was seated at the table looking out the kitchen window to a sun just breaking over the hills. Now I can't say whether it was a healing come to Pa that night, or he just realized how good the life God give him really was. What I do know is he got better. In a week he was up, bright and early, picking beans in the garden, and by the time Spring come round he was back in the mines. Later that Spring word got out that Zacharias had passed. They found him sitting bolt upright in a chair with a Bible in his lap, and Simon coiled at his feet like an old hound. At the table next to him was a glass half filled with rubbing alcohol. Some folks in Holloway said old man Stemple faltered as the mighty zealous are prone to. They said that the weight of transgression bore him down so hard it broke him, but I believe it was the unction, plain and simple, that pushed him to test the hand of the Almighty one last time. The years have come and gone and so have most of the folks in Holloway who knew Zacharias Stemple, but I still think of him now and then. Sometime, when moon glow dusts the tops of the sugar pines outside my bedroom window I see that old man ascending on the back of a great winged serpent, shouting high, holy praise to heaven in tongues that no worldly soul can ever hope to comprehend. |
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