Fred and I, therefore, continued to attend various serpent-handling churches together and separately, sometimes accompanied by a newspaper associate, photographer Mike DuBose. From the first what was proposed was not a highly theoretical study, as might be the case in a theological, anthropological, or sociological treatise. We were interested rather in presenting a descriptive, analytical, partly oral-historical insight into the belief and the believers of the taking up of serpents as an act of Christian obedience. What we wished to provide was a perspective for understanding the people as well as the practice.
That perspective, however, is not easily attained.
Since most of us tend to seek simple, concrete explanations for phenomena, it is easy to view one aspect of serpent handling rather than the whole and, consequently, either to romanticize or brutalize the people and the practice. One can feel after attending a service that it is completely irrational, wild—people running around, falling down, quivering, uttering strange sounds; drinking deadly poisons; taking venomous serpents (giant and tiny ones, coiled, extended, limp, knotted together, rattlers, cottonmouths, copperheads, cobras) and staring at them nose to nose, wrapping them around their necks, wearing them on their heads, pitching them, carrying armloads of them, shaking them, petting them; displaying arms tattooed with snakes, hands atrophied by bites, fingers missing, clothing embroidered and etched with snakes—or feel the same sense of the bizarre after going into homes and seeing live deadly snakes in closets and adjoining rooms, pictures framed on the wall of people with handfuls of rattlers, photo albums of disfigured bodies from venom poisoning, or a huge frozen rattlesnake taken out of a freezer by a relative of a person whom the serpent killed during a funeral service for yet another snakebit victim. All of this can seem as abnormal as an episode from “The Twilight Zone.”
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Ophites screamed in the middle of the night, sitting bolt upright and terrifying everyone on the Hekate cabin.
Luckily, Megara was right there. At the first movement her son made, she squeezed him tight and said, “Hush, sweetheart, it’s all right!”
“Papa!” Ophites shrieked.
“What’s the poor bairn on about?” Lou Ellen asked, sitting up slowly, as if her joints needed oiling.
Megara knew exactly what Ophites must be imagining. She whipped the blanket off the bed and scooped Ophites into her arms, wrapping both of them in the blanket. “We’ll be a moment,” she said, and exited the cabin.
Outside, everything was peaceful, and quiet, and Megara gazed up at the starlight. Heracles had his own constellation now… if she saw it, would he see her, too? She shook off the thought, and sat with Ophites in the grass, her legs crossed as he sat in her lap and burrowed his face into her neck.
“Tell me about the dream, Ophi,” she said softly.
“Papa hurt you,” Ophites whispered. “There was blood… and you were bending and breaking… and he wouldn’t stop…”
There it was, just what she’d thought, playing out in her baby’s mind. She rocked, hoping to soothe him as she once had, feeling as he dampened the front of her shirt with tears. “Moraki mou,” she whispered, “my dear little baby… that wasn’t your father.”
“I know… it was Queen Hera… but it was Papa’s face… his eyes were so scary…”
“I’m okay now, Ophi. Hera won’t hurt us again.” Because I’ll sacrifice my desire to see your father again so I can make sure she doesn’t, she thought.
“She’s hurting us now,” Ophites said. “She’s keeping Papa away.”
“No, she doesn’t even know about us,” I hope, “and I told your Papa not to come looking for us, remember?”
“What if I see him and all I can see is…” he started to sob again.
Megara rocked him again. There was nothing easy about this, no simple solution. “You’re a strong little boy,” she told him. “Hera isn’t stronger than you. You love your father, don’t you?”
“Yeah…”
“Can you love him more than you fear him?”
“I… think so?”
“Because I know him. I know that when he lost you, it must have broken his heart. And I know that he wants to see you again, because you are his little shadow. When he sees you, his heart will burst with happiness. You won’t see that scary face, ever again, because now that he’s a god, Queen Hera can’t make him do those things.”
Ophites was silent for a moment. “You mean it?”
“Do I lie?” Megara asked, a slight edge in her voice.
“No… no you always tell the truth. So… you don’t think I’ll see…?”
“Your father is not a monster. His smile will melt your heart, and his eyes will make you want to fly. You are his son and he loves you. That’s the simplicity and the beauty of it. You can be together again, despite the odds, because the Fates were kind enough to give you a second chance.”
“To be a family?” Ophites ventured.
“Yes,” Megara confirmed, glad that he seemed to be getting it and responding positively.
“All of us together?”
Megara bit her lip. “Don’t ask the Fates for too much, Ophi.”
“But you love him, too.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. I’m not his wife.” Her face may as well have turned to stone, as she gazed up at the stars without really seeing them. “But you will always be his son.”
“All the things you said… they’re true for you.”
“No,” she kissed the top of his head. “Aren’t you excited?” she asked, injecting false excitement into her own voice. “Tomorrow you will see him, and you shall have pizza!”
“Won’t you stay?” Ophites asked. “Won’t you say hi?”
“No, I can’t, I told you.” She stood up. “Dream about your papa and pizza, Ophites. That is your future. There’s no need to dwell on the past.” She’d make sure he had a pleasant dream to replace the nightmare when they got back inside. Once more she glanced at the stars. Since he was a god, she sent up a prayer to Heracles.
Please, darling, please help me heal our son. I can’t do this alone. And with that, half hoping he hadn’t heard, she curled up with her son again, and bespelled him so that he fell into a deep, comforting sleep. louellenthenosestealer
It didn’t quite turn out as funny as I would’ve liked, but I still think it’s cute.
“Hey, Mama!” Ophites called from the door to the Hekate cabin. He was wearing an oversized Camp Half Blood t-shirt, belted to make it a tunic. He was a scrawny kid, but that didn’t stop him from strapping a wooden sword at his hip, even though it thudded against the wooden floorboards as he walked. “Look what I got!”
Megara looked up from a book on forensics—a real book, not a scroll, and a wonder to her mind—and wondered if she’d hidden the evidence of her tears well enough. She saw that he was holding up a flag. “Don’t tell me you got that from the Capture the Flag game,” she said, and found she didn’t quite disguise the quaver in her voice.
Ophites’s smile went lopsided, and his eyebrows curved upward in the middle.
“I’m fine, baby,” Megara said, sitting up, setting the book aside. “Tell me your story.”
Ophites puffed up his chest, slinging the flag over his shoulder as he strode to the center of the cabin standing right in front of Megara. “I got the flag because of the Sunlight Shadow!” he declared.
Megara gave a gasp that was more astounded than she was, but not by much. “Really, now how did that happen?”
“You hold it,” Ophites said, and laid the flag over his mother’s lap, and trotted backwards. “Okay! So, all the big kids were running around fighting each other… but I’m small.” He crouched, and his fingers wiggled as he tiptoed toward her. “I used the spell and then I used one of your ‘finding’ spells, and pow!” He snatched the flag off Megara’s lap. “Nobody even knew the thing was missing, ‘cause when I picked it up, it looked like it had never been there!”
Megara grinned, and clapped for him. “Marvelous! Did you get a laurel for it?” she asked.
“I think they’ll give me one later…” he said, and looked in her eyes. “Mama are you okay? You saw my letter from Papa, didn’t you?”
“Of course, I did, Lou Ellen told me about it.”
Ophites hopped up on the bed next to her and was about to speak, but Megara interrupted, saying, “No weapons on the bed.” Pouting, Ophites slid back off and set the sword down under it before climbing back up.
“Are you going to see him?”
“No.” It wasn’t comforting exactly, but it was somewhat encouraging that she could be so final about it. “I’m not his wife, anymore, Ophi,” she said, and she could hear the quaver come back to her voice. “I shouldn’t…” she looked down at her feet, and hugged herself.
Ophites climbed onto her lap so that she was looking at him. “Mama,” he said, “you are the prettiest and the smartest and the silliest Mama in the kosmos.”
“I’m not silly,” Megara said, wrapping her arms around her son and pouting at him with mock offense.
“No? It must be me that’s the silly one, then!” Ophites grinned. He kissed her nose, and wriggled free, “You wanna play?” he asked.
“Play what?” Megara asked, forcing her voice to sound cheerful.
“Bows and arrows! You can use your staff!”
Megara glanced at the hazelnut wood staff she had leaning next to the bed. She didn’t use it for much, but she’d taken to using it to boost the amount of magic she could channel. “Very well,” she said, taking it and following Ophi out of the cabin.
Ophites skipped ahead, plucking a child-sized bow and quiver of arrows off the ground where it had been propped against the cabin.
“I didn’t know you were good at archery,” Megara said.
“I’m not!” Ophites announced. He threaded the bow well enough, but he swung in a circle, his feet kicking up high as he made a goofy face and shot straight up.
“Ophi!” Megara cried, and zapped the arrow with her staff so that it turned into a flower before it could hit Ophites.
“Oops!” Ophites said, eyes wide. “How did that happen?”
Breathing hard, Megara looked at the boy’s face. “Ophi, that was…” she paused when the flower landed on his head. It could have been an arrow… but it was draped over his forehead, and he blew it upward out of his eyes.
“Funny?” he asked.
“You…”
Ophites plucked the flower off his head. “Oh, thank you!” he said, and bowed. He cast a spell, too, and turned the flower into a flower-shaped arrow. “I am Eros!” he announced, and shot the flower arrow.
Megara watched as it flew in a zigzag pattern for a while, but grew distracted from it by Ophites’s little dance, as he clapped and giggled. “I don’t think your arrow is going to find a target, Eros,” she said. “I think it’s a bit lost.”
“Oh, it knows where to go!” Ophites winked.
Megara drew her attention back to it in time to find that it was heading straight for her heart. It stuck on her bright orange camp t-shirt and she pulled it away. It had landed right on her scar, the sensitive skin thrilling at getting attention. She waved the arrow at Ophites. “Baby,” she said, “this is supposed to make me fall in love with the first person I see.”
“Oh,” Ophites said, putting one hand up to his mouth.
“Don’t worry,” she said, casting the arrow aside. “I loved you already.”
“It was supposed to make you love Papa,” Ophites admitted.
With a sigh, Megara collected Ophites into her arms. “I will always love your father, Ophi. Nothing can ever change that.”
“Because he’s the best!” Ophites cheered.
“You’re right. The best that is or ever was,” she said softly. “Do you want a hamburger?”
“Do I?” Ophites squealed, and leaped out of her arms. “Race you!”
There was no way she’d ever run after him. She sighed, picking up their weapons and putting them back in their cabin. It wasn’t right, but she could still smile. After all, she had her sweet Ophi to make the world a little brighter.
