Salvation on Sand Mountain Read Free Page A

our assessment of people and their intentions, but we had a simple, childlike faith, something Jesus said he approved of. And if my experience in that church did nothing else for me, it accustomed me to strange outpourings of the Spirit and gave me a tender regard for con artists and voices in the wilderness, no matter how odd or suspicious their message might be. I believe it also put me in touch with a rough-cut and reckless side of myself that I otherwise might never have recognized, locked way back somewhere in cell memory, a cultural legacy I would have otherwise known nothing about. You see, growing up in East Lake, where people were trying so hard to escape their humble pasts, I had come of age not knowing much about my family history. As far as we were concerned, the Covingtons went back only two generations, to our grandparents.
My grandfather on my mother’s side had been a railroad detective and had died of syphilis. My father’s father had also ridden the trains, as a postal clerk. Later, I would discover that Covingtons had not always lived in Birmingham, but that at some point we, too, had come down from the mountains, and that those wild-eyed, perspiring preachers of my childhood were kin to me in a way I could never have expected or fully appreciated. In retrospect, I believe that my religious education had pointed me all along toward some ultimate rendezvous with people who took up serpents.
     
     
     
     
    Even without the snakes, my first trip to a snake-handling church had been exhilarating and unsettling. I drove back to Birmingham that night in a heightened and confused state, as though the pupils of my spiritual eyes had been dilated. The sensation was uncomfortable but not entirely unpleasant. Whatever this was about, I wanted to experience more. And of course I had to see what they did with the snakes.
    It was the very next night, on my second trip to The Church of Jesus with Signs Following, that the snakes came out. Brother Carl Porter had driven from his home church in Kingston, Georgia, to deliver the message. A retired truck driver whose CB handle had been “Sneaky Snake,” Brother Carl looked more like a barber, or someone’s favorite uncle.
He was an unassuming man in his late forties, with a nose that was a bit flattened on the end. His eyes were close together, and his hair was thin. Nothing in his demeanor hinted at his peculiar power behind the pulpit. Seeing him on the street, you would never have suspected that the Spirit of God regularly moved upon him, or that he handled rattlesnakes.
    But to the congregation of The Church of Jesus with Signs Following, Brother Carl was a special man indeed. Ever since Glenn Summerford’s arrest, he had been driving over when he could to fill in for Glenn. It was clearly an uncomfortable position for him to be in, now that Glenn had been convicted, but Brother Carl must have seen his duties as a kind of mission.
    On this night, Brother Carl was accompanied by his wife, Carolyn, and some other members of their church in Kingston, including Aunt Daisy Parker, a severe-looking old woman with an unpredictable temperament. The singing and praying had gone on for about an hour when Aunt Daisy suddenly leapt to her feet and began to prophesy.
    “There’s gonna come a day,” she said, “when the bellies of the earth will open up, and some’ll be set free and some’ll be devoured!”
    Then she started marching. Daisy’s white hair was tied in a bun at the back of her head. She was skinny and hunched
a bit at the shoulders, and she swung her arms in the air as she marched. “And oh Lord, on that day, there’s gonna be some that’ll be taken out of that prison and put back in the heart of God where they belong!”
    The rest of the congregation amened. “Oh, the earth is gonna shake!” she said. “It’ll tear the chains from the wall that are holding him. And the sky will turn as red as blood. They’ll be smoke and confusion everywheres when