The Plague of Doves

I started up in a moment of fear, and as I did, my copperhead struck me full on, in the shadow of my wing, too close to my heart not to kill me. […] I lay down. I let the poison bloom into me. Let the sickness boil up, and the questions, and the fruit of the tree of power. I let the knowing take hold of me. The understanding of serpents. My heart went black and rock hard. It stopped once, then started again. When the life flooded back in I knew that I was stronger. I knew that I’d absorbed the poison. As it worked in me, I knew that I was the poison and I was the power.

Get away from him and take the children, the serpent said to me from her glass box, as she curled back to sleep in her nest of grass.

And as he bucked and sank away I got the picture. I’d tie a loud necktie around his throat, winch him up into the rafters. Got Bliss cutting him down. Got the sight of him lying still in the eyes of others, got the power of it and the sorrow. I got my children’s old gaze, got them holding me with quiet hands, and got them not weeping but staring out calmly over the hills. I got Bliss running mad, foaming, blowing her guts, laughing and then retrieving Billy’s spirit from its path crawling slowly toward heaven, got the understanding she would organize the others and take over from Billy, but that before they could pin me down in the Manual of Discipline we’d have scooped up the money already and run.

Oh yes, I got us eating those eggs at the 4-B’s, me and my children, and the land deed in my name.