Where Sins Go
by Leonore Wilson
It was always Stan’s duty to deal with the snakes afterwards, and he had disliked it immensely. Every Sunday church service, he would have to wait for the worshippers to depart, then hang around while his father and the other priests finished their long, serious conversations.
Soon Stan gathered up the royal robes and washed them outside in the big copper pail. Once the chore was completed, he carefully placed the rinsed garments in a large basket his mother had woven and pinned the garments to the fraying clothesline. Stan had asked his father many times if he could please not handle the snakes and crowd them all into the small wire cage, but his request was always denied.
“No questions from a teenager, especially a boy who should have learned bravery by now!”
But Stan had questions. He always did. He wanted to know why the snakes had to be handled as gently as blind puppies, then forced into a tight enclosure where they knotted as one and sometimes bit each other from exhaustion and hunger.
Before the snakes were dangled over the heads of the priests, the men sometimes spoke in strange tongues and no one knew what they said. This frightened Stan, but nothing compared to his fear of snakes. Stan had watched the ceremony every Sunday since he was an infant and held by his mother. The parishioners would sway like windblown grasses, some even weeping in awe and gratitude.
“You’re too sensitive,” Stan’s mother always told him.
“You have no courage! They’re just snakes, for goodness sake. And don’t we sometimes eat their cooked flesh with potatoes and leeks and black-eye peas?”
“Just snakes,” Stan whispered to himself, picking up a hissing one. Their skin was always cold and wet, and they were fairly limp by the time the service had ended.
Stan lifted the snakes one by one as gently as he could and stuffed them into the long burlap sack. There had been five snakes used in the revival today. Five live squealing mice to feed them when he and his father got home and not before. Stan had always left a saucer of water for them, too. How starving and thirsty those snakes must be after their performance. Five hearts beating as one and squeezed into a miserable sack!
“Almost done?” said Stan’s father. “We’re ready to carry next week’s prayers up to heaven, don’t you think?”
“If the snakes agree,” Stan said, and straightened his shoulders. “Where do our sins go?” he asked his father.
“What?” his father shook his head. “I’ve told you the snakes absorb them.”
“Then sins are always in their flesh?” said Stan. “Can’t we just ask God to cleanse us?”
“Wait for next year when you begin your training,” Stan’s father said. “You can ask every Temple priest in the county to answer you.”
“Do you really like being a priest?” Stan asked.
“I love it, not like it,” Stan’s father said. “It’s hard work. But it’s a good living, and I am highly respected and your granddaddy is proud. I am more than humbled that I am able save souls, and my snakes save souls, too. Don’t forget them; they have a purpose.”
“But, Dad, I don’t want to shave my head like you and the other priests. And I’m not sure I want to be a priest at all.” It felt almost dangerous to say it. What if his father got upset that the tradition in his family would end with Stan himself?
Stan’s father gave a low whistle. “I want to be there when you tell that to your mother, young man! And don’t you think granddaddy hears you in heaven?”
Stan didn’t answer. His father was undoubtedly ashamed to think his son could choose another path for the rest of his earthly life. His father was honored to bring redemption to the people, also honored to have a kind and dutiful wife.
Stan’s father didn’t know that his son most likely shuddered every time he saw a snake, every time he heard his father and the other priests speaking in tongues, as well as the saved ones praising and swaying. Stan’s father always believed that Stan’s favorite day of the week was Sunday. He didn’t know that when his only son closed his eyes to chant the sacred prayers, he felt absolutely nothing, that when he looked up at God and his angels and granddaddy, he found himself wishing he were somewhere else entirely, maybe even memorizing theorems or the table of elements.
Stan and his father washed their hands, then exited the big tent and strode into the dirt parking lot. Together they held the heavy cage covered now with a thick towel and placed it all carefully in the bed of granddaddy’s old Ford truck.
It had rained earlier, a light rain, but now the fields were almost dry. Stan’s father shoved his hat as far down on his head as he could.
“Can you believe it’s my last week of school, Dad?”
“Well, your training will be harder than any subject,” Stan’s father said and turned up the collar of his heavy coat against the cold and wrapped his winter scarf around his neck.
“Yes, but I get all A’s,” Stan said, “and you and mother know I study three to four hours a night.”
Stan’s father became quiet and bit his bottom lip. Then both he and his hard-headed son drove the two hours home to mother’s dinner. Not a word was said. Of course Stan hoped supper would not be snake.
Stan and his father settled the caged snakes in granddaddy’s wheelbarrow and then Stan steered it to the barn as he always did. He pushed the wire container into the empty stall where his gelding used to bed down before it got sick with worms and up and died.
When the boy was finally free of the snakes, he turned around, thinking about dinner so relieved that another Sunday service was over. Suddenly he heard a noise, a low hiss. He turned around, startled. Stan had thought that he was alone. He crouched down to see if he could see if anything in the dusk, and thought he saw a flash of movement by the snake cage.
Standing there in the shadows, he could make out the form of his father.
“Dad, what are you doing there?” Stan asked. Then he heard that loud hissing sound again. Stan’s father slowly walked up to his son holding one of the snakes.
“Hey!” Stan said again. “I haven’t fed them the mice! Or given them water. Did one escape?”
Dad looked stern, sterner than usual, standing there in his big woollen coat and his wool hat on his head. “Dinner here!” he said.
“But you can’t eat a sacred snake!” Stan was appalled.
“Oh, sure I can!” Stan’s father said. “And you can, too. It’s quite easy. You remember how I sliced them open and plucked out their hearts and insides and roasted the meat up with potatoes and leeks.”
“But... no, that’s a Temple snake, Dad.”
His father shrugged. “Either one gets roasted or not. Snakes serve a great purpose saving souls and also by feeding me and your mother and even you.”
“Do you do this... often, Dad? Kill a temple snake? I never figured you did.”
“One Sunday every other month. I watch when you come in the barn door and begin to go out.”
Stan’s father swung the hissing snake from one hand to another and then wrapped it slowly around his neck.
An hour later, Stan was sitting on an upturned wooden crate, warming his hands over the small fire in the hearth. He watched his mother peel the potatoes and rinse the leeks and open a can of black-eye peas. He watched his father split open the thick snake and pull out its heart and insides with the sharp knife that once belonged to Granddaddy. Stan had wanted nothing more than to look away, to stare and stare into the flames.
Stan’s father looked at his son. “You worked at the Temple today. Mother is proud of you, and I am, too. Your granddaddy and your daddy listened to our calling. We were made for this work. This hard, hard work. And you must be a priest, too. Mother agrees, don’t you, Mother?”
Stan’s mother nodded as she rinsed the last of the leeks. “You will make a fine priest, Stan,” Mother said. “That’s been God’s plan since the day you were born. Snake meat for your belly, snake for saving souls. ”
Stan’s dad showed his son the fading tattoo of a sleeping snake on the inside of his wrist.
“We feed you, son. We clothe you, and you have a bed and a roof over your head. Never do you have to fend for yourself. There are people in the world who do not share Temple belief. They are not saved, Stan. They will go to hell someday and be eaten by flames.”
Stan took in his breath, then blew it out again. Stan’s father picked up the knife one more time and divided the snake meat into plump, three-inch chunks. Stan wondered why he had not noticed his father’s tattoo before. The boy was cursed, according to the Temple, if he did not concede to his rightful duty. He would be known as an anomaly, a catalyst of bad luck.
No, he would be taught how to handle the snake, to tame it, to rip open its belly, remove its slowing heart and guts. He imagined himself as a reflection of his father and granddaddy. “Sorry,” Stan said. It was all he could think of to say.
His father and mother both chuckled. “Don’t be sorry!” they said in unison.
His father continued: “It will bring us all bad luck. Eat with your parents. Eat everything on your plate like a good son. If you don’t, we will all wake up tomorrow covered in leprosy.”
Stan took the snake chunks and poked them one by one into and down the bent willow stick.
“Now hold it over the fire like a good boy,” his father said.
Stan did not know what to say. The flames leapt up higher, singeing the meat and the smell that rose up into the air was surprisingly pleasant.
“I don’t know if I can be as good a priest as you and Granddaddy,” Stan said, partly to his parents, partly to himself. “I don’t know if I can save souls, and I’m afraid to speak in tongues, afraid of the crowd swaying and afraid of holding one snake then the others for over an hour, and I’m scared of all the chanting and, well, everything. Who knows if I will save even one lost soul? But I love you, Father, and I can’t think of any other priest that I trust. I always thought about being a teacher, a soldier or a farmer, anything but a priest.”
Stan had never said anything like this to his parents. Never confided his dreams in anyone.
“Well, I don’t blame you,” Stan’s father said. “We all wonder what’s it like to be something other than a priest, but we know saving is in our blood. I’d rather spend my entire life serving God and his followers than partaking in everyday drudgery.”
Stan was feeling quite breathless after his confession. He knew there were people who were neighbors and friends of neighbors who did not believe in Temple or snakes. There were lost souls who cared only for themselves. They had no conscience, no worries about sin or the flames of hell. Maybe he did have courage after all. It was in his blood this courage. He lifted his hand to his neck imagining a snake there curled around like a lasso.
Stan held the stick steady, turning the chunks of meat, making sure they cooked evenly. And when his father announced that the snake flesh had cooked long enough, he took out a little twist of paper from his pocket and sprinkled the browned chunks with a pinch of salt. Stan’s father took the stick from his son, the snake that had once been alive, and held the meat up to his face and breathed in the sweet animal aroma.
“Enjoy, my brave son!” Stan’s father said. “Gratitude to the cleanser of sins and the filler of stomachs!” Then he took a great, ravenous bite, smiling widely through his chewing.
Stan smiled back, took a deep breath and, with newfound courage, ate ravenously, too.
Copyright © 2022 by Leonore Wilson
