Sam McCain - 04 - Save the Last Dance for Me Read Free

and monsignors I grew up with all wore various liturgical hats, caps, and beanies, but one thing you could say in their favor was that they never brought any rattlesnakes to mass, God love ‘em. If they had any rattlesnakes, they kept them in the privacy of the rectory and didn’t tell
    us about it.
    But then there was the sadness of these people. Not even Steinbeck had gotten to it. The Okies were just displaced farmers who wanted to work and prosper. I never read anything about Okies and rattlers.
    Dreiser kinda got to these people, I guess. That opening scene of An American Tragedy where the family is there on that twilight street corner. I could see these people on that same corner, snakes and all. They were the lost ones and didn’t even know it. Few of them would have indoor plumbing; some of them wouldn’t even have electricity. A good number of them would die young because they didn’t see doctors. And they would spend too much of their time fearing a Jesus who was a parody of the man or god who lived not quite 2eajjj years ago. In their version, He despised them and they were appreciative of that fact. It gave some explanation, I suppose, for their smashed and shabby lives.
    The singing continued even though John Muldaur set down his microphone and suddenly walked down the aisle between the folding chairs. By this time, his entire upper body glistened with sweat and he was muttering some kind of prayer to himself in the sort of hypnotic fashion people speaking in tongues get into.
    No doubt about where he was going, what he was doing.
    He swooped up the two cages of snakes and transported them back to the makeshift altar.
    The air changed. Not just because of the hissing and the rattling. Because of the excitement. I’d never been to an orgy before but I was sure at one now.
    Kylie nudged me. Whispered, “This is scary.”
    I knew what she meant. There was a sense of violence in the orgiastic response to the snakes. Women moaned in sexual ways; men stared as if transfixed. The children looked confused but excited and afraid, their tiny faces darting up to survey the faces of their parents, wanting some sort of verbal explanation.
    Muldaur reached out his hands. His wife, Viola, took his left one; his teenage daughter, Ella, his right. Both were buxom, frizzy-haired, and aggrieved-looking. They looked as troubled and angry as the rattlesnakes. All three Muldaurs
    raised their locked hands and said a brief
    prayer. “That I am pure of soul, I have no doubt, my Lord. Bless me in my purity, Father.
    Bless me.”
    Muldaur dropped the women’s hands and turned to the snakes once again. A collective emotional upheaval rumbled through the church. The big moment was approaching. The electric guitar played quick, exotic, crazed, off-key rifts.
    Moans; shouts; cries. The snakes were coming.
    Orgasm.
    My body spasmed when he reached into the cage and brought forth snake number one. Now slow down and think about this: You have a small cage containing four or five poisonous snakes, all right?
    So what do you do? You just plunge your hand in the open lid up top and grab one of the buggers?
    Aren’t you risking being attacked by one if not more of the snakes in the cage?
    But if he was afraid—or even hesitant-he sure didn’t show it.
    “God has sent us the serpent to reveal our true nature,” Muldaur said. Or intoned, I guess. The rattler had brought out his intoning side. “Who wants his soul judged by the serpent?”
    This part, I suppose, you’re familiar with.
    You go up there—y, not me—and let the good Reverend Muldaur hand you off the rattler. Then you proceed to grasp it while all the time trying to keep it from biting you. If you manage to hold it for a minute or two without being bitten, that means that your soul is pure and you’re one of the chosen. If the snake bites you, you’re a sinner whose sins must be redressed. Right after they rush you to the hospital.
    Two men and a woman went up and it was