Wormwood

It all started with pinworms. Them making me crazy.

I remember scratching up into that itchy pinched cave and plucking ‘em out like a chimp harvesting ants with a stick. I never ate ‘em though. That’s just something chimps do. I saw it on a National Geographic special one Saturday night. Chimps are pretty advanced, really. They have an opposable thumb. I have an opposable thumb, too, but I didn’t use it to hook my worms. I just used my ring finger. And like I said, I didn’t eat mine. Chimps might be pretty advanced, but I’m even more so. I’m evolved, as my eighth-grade science teacher said. Mom wouldn’t approve.

So it was a Sunday night. I’d laid out of church, cause my stomach was killing me. Next thing you know, my anus is itching something fierce—another term I learned in science. Just use your imagination. Well, those worms had crept on out my anus and commenced depositing eggs. But me, I was catching ‘em while they worked. It’s the early bird that gets the worms, as the saying goes. They were trapped up there on the tip of my finger, you know, squirming around like they were exploring a new, little world, undulating like belly dancers. That’s a phrase I used once for a vocabulary test. I was pretty proud of it. Mom boxed me on the ears for it, though. She didn’t realize I could’ve said something even dirtier if I’d wanted. I was using restraint. She didn’t know what “undulating” was, but she did know belly-dancers. Belly-dancers belong to the family of Salome and her dance of the seven veils. She’s the one served up John the Baptist’s head on a platter. But I used restraint in my sentence—still, she didn’t approve. See, dancing is a sin in our church. Never mind every time the Holy Spirit falls upon our women they all “undulate,” like Salome’s own direct descendants. And you know, one or two of those women are really hot. Most of them I hate, though.

Anyway, so those little worms were undulating on the end of my finger like they were all caught up in the spirit—and I guess that’s what made me think of it—to provide their own special day of Pentecost.

And it was providence I guess, that the matches were laying right there already. I learned that word in vocabulary, too. I’m big into words. I guess that’s ‘cause I’m what you’d call an avid reader. I read everything. Especially banned books. And banned books are a specialty at my church. Well, those matches were laying there ‘cause Essy had used ‘em earlier in the day to sterilize a needle to dig out her maggots, even though Gert—that’s our church healer—told her not to.

—didn’t I ever tell you about that? The time Essy mowed off all the toes on her left foot? I thought I had. Well, see, we have this really steep bank in the back of the house, and Jake was supposed to be mowing it—‘cause mowing’s men’s work, Momma always says. I was still too young to do it, you hafta be fifteen in our family to mow the grass and Jake was too drunk—he’d taken to sneaking up the mountain to Slim Joiner’s. So Essy mowed off the weeds along with her toes all one sweaty summer day, and I had to leave off watching Perry Mason to bury 'em up under the red maple tree in one of Granny Brew’s snuff cans. Just four of ‘em, though. Never could find her pinkie toe. A neighbor kid thought she saw her cat chewing on it the next morning and brought it over to me. Little twelve-year-old Tater Gord—short for Titania. Her Momma had a thing for Shakespeare. I had a thing for her Momma. I always go for the older woman. Always. Well, Tater showed me what she thought was Essy’s pinkie toe. It was bloody pink like canned tuna, and all curled up on itself. Looked more like a squirrel fetus, and I told her so. Then I told her, “I’ll not have you abortin’ rodent pregnancies on my account!” and she ran off crying. Don’t think she knew what a fetus was, or a rodent either, for that matter. But I had to let her know right off I don’t go for the young ones. Now her Momma on the other hand…well, I’m getting off track. My whole family does that. Momma says we talk like we live—in a rabbit’s warren. Still, I can’t believe I never told you about that. I would of swore I had.

Well, anyway, about the matches. Essy’d been picking out the maggots from her foot with a sterilized needle. A fly’d got up inside her bandaged-up foot and laid eggs in the wound, so Gert said. But it weren’t no problem, she stressed. Said that’s nature’s way of fighting off infection, back before blankety-blank doctors and all their blankety-blank ways. With maggots. But they were tickling Essy something fierce, so she just had to get 'em out. But back to the matches—they were laying there all providence like. Everything happens according to God's will, you know. When I lit that first match and touched it to that little undulating body…Pssst. In the twinkling of an eye, cloven tongues of fire sat upon it, and it was filled with the Holy Ghost. I got kinda caught up myself.

The house smelled like sulfur, I guess, like matches lit thirteen times to snuff thirteen worms—which is the number I got to before Momma and all the rest got home—‘cause when she did get home she said, “You been smokin’ in here, boy?” Momma hates smokers almost as much as she hates belly-dancers. I ignored her. I was getting big enough to get away with it and not get a whupping. Before, if I’d not answered her, I’d been cutting my own switch off the cow-itch vine out in the ditch.

Jake and Essy were holding the snake boxes. You wouldn’t know what was in ‘em, just by looking. You’d think tennis shoes or baseball cars or, if it was Christmas, a stack cake or something. But you’d never think snakes. Well, Essy lifted ‘em out, plopped their heavy scaled bodies—big wound up mounds sequined in dried bean colors—down into their glass tanks up on top the TV cabinet. They like it there. Warmest place in the house, since the TV’s always on. Bel and Bub (short for Belial and Beelzebub) let out their dry, darty tongues to taste the glass. They were hunting for their dinner, smelling for it, so I bent down to take the latest mouse, still warm yet, off the trap.

“Cord got bit tonight,” Essy told me, putting the screens back up on top the cage. “By Sally Ann’s rattler. Weren’t none of ours.”

Well, that got my attention, and I forgot the mouse layin’ limp in my hand, light as dust in both color and weight. I hated Cord. He was Sally Ann’s new husband, so I thought it was funny, ironic, that it was her rattler that bit him. So I asked, “Is he dead yet?”

Jake started laughing then. He knew my motives. “Nah, he ain’t dead. Got him in his flabby ol’ earlobe. Got hisself a pierced ear now, the damn sissy.”

Momma told Jake to mind his language then. She hates cussing almost as much as drinking and belly-dancing.

Jake pshawed. You know, I never knew what a pshaw sounded like—all those years of reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books (before my banned book stage). But when Jake did it, I knew that’s what it was. He went, “Pshaw, Momma, you gotta call it like it is. Cord is a damn sissy. That rattler hangin’ off his ear like it were a sugared tittymouse, and he commencin’ to shriek like one a Mayor Purdy’s peahens.”

I asked what Sally Ann did. I couldn’t help it. Sally Ann was one of those fine, undulating women. Built like a harlot, Momma’d say—if Sally Ann weren’t a fine, upstanding woman of our church. Round in all the right places, flat in the others. Her eyes looking lit up behind, like a pitcher of sun tea on the back porch—or maybe like Moses after he spoke with Yahweh face to face—yeah, that’s it, ‘cause whenever she’d smile, her lips’d look like the parted Red Sea. Pathway to the Promised Land. I kept hoping Sally Ann’d see what sort of Egyptian heathen Cord was. Now me, on the other hand, she needed to be seein’ me as the fine, strapping David figure that I am—poet and able young warrior—ready to take on her Goliath of a husband at a moment’s notice, slingshot or no. Ready to sing for her psalms of great love.

“Sally Ann didn’t hardly notice,” Essy said. “She got struck by a fit. By meetin’s end, she was sweaty and pale as he was.”

Can’t help telling you, I wish I’d been there to see her fit. That Holy Spirit gets her all sweaty, skirts clinging to her well of living waters and cradling her twin roes. My hart—that’s a deer, but the way, at least literally—anyway, my hart would’ve gone leaping, I’m, sure. In case you didn’t pick up on it, all these literal and figurative words and phrases are from Song of Solomon. Ever read Song of Solomon? That’s one sexy Bible book, and far as I know, it ain’t banned, since it is God’s word and all. So I used to read it right out in the open. Didn’t have to hide it, like I did some of my other sexy literature. Don’t think Momma had a clue, though. Metaphors are lost on her. She’s not a big book person, like myself, so she never knew I was getting all hot and bothered reading the word of the Lord right under her very restrained nose.

Anyway, back to Cord: “So you reckon he’ll live?” I asked, dropping the limp little mouse inside Bel’s tank, trying to keep disappointment out of my voice.

Momma’d had enough talk about Cord. “He’ll live,” she said. “What about you? How’s your stomach?”

I had to admit it was still hurting. She wanted to know how many days it’d been now and I had to answer, truthful, “About four.”

“Maybe it’s worms,” she said flat out. “Gert’s kids got worms. She’s what made me think it.”

Well, I swore it weren’t worms. I’d had worms, we all’d had worms, once before. Seven years earlier, when I was six and Jake and Essy were twelve. I did tell you they’re twins, didn’t I? After the only twins in the Bible Momma knew about? Come to find out later, there are a few more. Course Esau’s no name for a girl, so she’s been called Essy ever since she come out—Jake clutching at her heel (Momma swears it) just like in the Bible.

Anyway, Momma kept on: “Gert’s boys got worms. You been playin’ with ‘em. She’ll be bringin’ by some Pink Root later on, just in case.”

Jake and Essy started laughing. Hee-hawing.

Pink root. I hate that stuff, let me tell you. And when I do tell you, you’ll know why, believe you me. First-off, though, let me explain what it is—if I can. ‘Cause really, I’m not quite sure. Gert seems to be the only one can find it. She got it for Momma last time, too. Supposedly it grows up under some herb on Ponder Mountain, but I tend to think it grows up under Satan’s tail. And Gert looks so much like a witch—what with her warts and hook nose and tarpin-shell eyes—she’d be the one able to pluck it off the Devil’s ass, if anybody could.

Jake was still laughing. He volunteered to make up Momma’s red Kool-Aid for her, to get it ready for me. I thought, if I could give him the worms, I would, the Cooter-Brown-son-a-bitch (pardon my Hillbilly French).

He’s what put it in my mind, I reckon. Well, maybe. All sorts of stuff was spinning round in there already—Cord’s being snake-bit, Sally Ann’s steamy body, my own itchy one, that infernal Pink Root, Momma’s Kool-Aid concoction, and then, finally, that dad-blasted Jake. But I suppose he was the straw that finally broke my camel-ass humped-over brain. But then, that’s providence for you.

So I had my idea, but I had to stall Momma and her Pink Root for a while. Besides, my plan hinged on whether Cord was alive or dead. So I said to Momma, “Hey, Momma,” I said, “my worms can wait awhile, doncha think? Maybe we should head down to Cord’s ‘n see about Sally Ann?”

Now, you might think it’s pretty cold not to say maybe we should head down to Cord’s to see about Cord? Well, there’s nothing we’re allowed to do for a snake-bit member. If they live through the ordeal, it just proves they’re one of God’s chosen, and if they die, well, their faith weren’t strong enough. Still, we could go check on Sally Ann, that was allowed. I know—you’re thinking I just wanted to go see that spicy water garden (Song of Solomon again), but that’s just not all true. Momma was really partial to Sally Ann. She made the best wet coconut cakes in the congregation and, since they were Momma’s favorite, always cooked up an extra for us to take home. According to Momma, Sally Ann was a veritable angel on earth—of course Momma didn’t use the word veritable. So I talked Momma into dropping by for Sally Ann’s sake. I knew Gert wouldn’t be there, since she couldn’t treat Cord and all, and that, if anything, she’d be knocking on our door any minute with her God-forsaken Pink Root. So, really, that was what you’d call my primary reason, I guess. That and seeing if Cord was still kicking.

Cord and Sally Ann lived down in the rocky holler of Tuppertown, a good ways off, so we had to all pile into Momma’s Chrysler le Coupe. As usual, Essy and Jake were fighting over the front seat. In most families, it’s the oldest gets to ride up front. But that always was a bit of a problem for us—whose birthright it was, and whatnot. So I just climbed on in the back and got myself as comfortable as my worms would allow and watched the two of ‘em battle it out. Momma hadn’t come out the house yet. She was leaving a note for Gert. But, before too long, we set off, Essy winning out by pinning Jake’s head against the front fender till he yelled “Uncle.” (Essy usually won these skirmishes, thanks in part to her dedication to WWF and WCW, and the Undertaker, in particular.)

The lights were all off when we pulled into Cord’s place. His dogs commenced howling and baying at us like we were the new risen moon. Still, nobody came out to greet us. Matter of fact, the closer we got to the door, the more we thought we could make out a woman’s voice moanin’ all deep and pained-like. That got to me right off, I tell you. I figured Cord’d up and died and this was my God-ordained chance to be the knight in shining belt buckle, or whatever, so I picked up my pace. Momma reckoned the snake thing as me, I guess, cause she high-tailed it straight in the front door, without even knocking, me close on her heels. Essy was right behind me. Jake, though, he set off toward the wood-shop and Cord’s corn liquor stash. All the men in our church keep their corn liquor in the woodshop. It’s just an unspoken rule. Women aren’t meant to be carpenters. Jesus was a carpenter, so it’s sacred work, meant for men only. I guess that’s the reason. Never thought about it too much, really.

Well, me and Momma and Essy found ‘em in the back bedroom and Oh, My, what a sight! I’d never seen such a contortion described—even in Song of Solomon. Momma nearly tripped over herself, trying to hide my eyes. Essy laughed out loud—and that’s what finally got their attention. So much for the veritable angel. I liked her even better, hated him even more.

We were ushered to the car, but then, Jake was nowhere around. Momma yelled at me to “Go fetch your brother! Hurry it up!” She was flustered, never would of sent me to the woodshop otherwise—much as she hated liquor and worried about its influence on me all the time, what with Jake’s troubles and my Daddy being dead of it at age 38. Her sending me out there proved providence, though.

Cord’s liquor was strong stuff, I reckon, but not strong enough to already have Jake to the point of crosst-over eyes. Sure enough, though, there he was, sprawled crosst-eyed and crosst-legged in a mountain of sawdust, moonshine-slapped bruises like welts on his cheeks. Perfect. He must’ve been at it before we even left the house. I’d hafta find his stash and get rid of it ‘fore Momma did.

But then I got to thinkin’—you know, it really was perfect he was already that far gone, ‘cause I'd just got me an idea. That’s just the way providence works, you know. Things just come together when something’s mean to be. So my idea was this—with Cord slap-happy, he’d never see what was going on (and if he did, he’d never remember), so now was my time to spread the wealth a little, go fishin’ with worms, if you know what I mean. I picked up the whiskey stopper, cast off on top Cord’s double-planer, and went spelunking once more.

Was even easier this time to harvest a bushel-full. But these worms weren’t gonna be baptized by the Holy Spirit, these worms were destined for resurrection. I scratched around a good bit, too, to gather up a good clutch of eggs under my fingernails. “Lemme borry your pocket knife,” I said to Jake, who didn’t seem to hear me, which was all the better. So I plucked it out of his jean pocket—serving him up a good portion of my worm omelet in the process (two birds with one stone, so to speak)—and commenced cleaning out under my nails with it, smearing the harvest on Cord’s corn liquor cork.

Outside, I could hear apologies, or some such, tumbling off the front porch. Cord’s voice only, but I wondered if Sally Ann was out there, too, and finished up real quick-like. Grabbing hold of Jake’s Tony Llama fake-snake boots, I had to tug him on out the shop, he was that far gone. I didn’t worry a bit about his head picking up flint, just scoured his flesh through the white-gravel yard, purty as you please. He’s got scars to this day—only he doesn’t remember where he got ‘em! So at least that worked out.

Saw Sally Ann before I saw Cord. She was watchin’ what was goin’ on round front, peerin’ from the side of the house, all shy like, a robe wrapped near double round her. Figured it was his’n—even though I didn’t see him as the robe type. He looked more like the hairy natural type to me—specially after what I’d just seen. Anyways, she turned all quick-like when she heard Jake’s head rakin’ through her gravel and shriveled up into the shadows fast as a perfect day. Guess she didn’t mean for me to see her—didn’t mean anybody to see her. She must notta known I was out back collecting Jake. I just walked on by, draggin’ Jake behind me like I’d never noticed her there at all.

When I got up front, there stood ol’ Cord under the porch light, lit up like a freak at the circus. I hadn’t seen eyes that swelled up since I’d sent Tater Gord packing. His ear wrapped round the whole left side of his face and up over the bridge of his nose. He looked kind of like those pictures of John Merrick. Remember the Elephant Man?

Well, anyway, Cord’s face looked like that. Painful. Twisted up. Kinda like his tongue was, apparently, ‘cause his apologies were none too clear. Jake could’ve made more sense than Cord at that point in time. Obviously, though, the fool was gonna live. And that served my purposes well, I suppose, though it woulda worked out better if it weren’t the case.

“It’s okay, Cord,” Momma was yelling up at him, “not to worry,” while I was struggling with getting Jake in the le Coup. She told him to go on back in and lay down, and then she got all embarrassed and tried again, saying to take care of Sally Ann, and then she got even more embarrassed, and finally she just jumped in and sped off, ripping one of Jake’s Tony Llamas off his foot along the way, and snapping his ankle backwards ‘cause he weren’t quite in yet. Jake didn’t know how that happened either, but it got him sobered up a few months. It wasn’t his injuries did it—scared him onto the straight and narrow—it was the loss of the Tony Llamas he paid $49.95 for over at Hammer’s Mercantile.

By the time we got home, Gert’s note was gone off the screen door, and my Pink Root was waiting for me. You’ve heard of the rattlesnake round-ups out west? Well, let me warn you, this was gonna be something like that, only instead of pouring gasoline down the snake’s hole, it’s Pink Root. I tell you, I don’t know which would be worst. I’ve only done the one. But I’ve done it twice, and it ain’t fun. The only consolation I had that second time was that in about a week or two, Cord’d be going through the same thing—and all public like.

So I watched Momma hack off a chunk of the Pink Root and boil it up in a pan with some Kool-Aid till it was bubbling like a hemophiliac’s blood in a stainless steel cauldron. Then Momma served it up into four tea cups. Four! “We all hafta take hit,” she said when I asked. “You coulda spread ‘em everwhere. I ‘spect we all have ‘em by now.”

Well, it weren’t just pinworms, we soon discovered. Round worms had camped out in our hinder-most, yonder-most parts, too, and what ensued was a parasitic Diaspora! When the Pink Root went down, the round worms came up. They spilled out our mouths like we were grain machines. Our nostrils dropped acres of chaff. They rained on the table, they bounced off the floor. Some crawled up our cheeks, vainly trying to outrun death, then turned brittle and died, stuck to our faces like rice. I puked up my guts at the grossness of it all. As did we all. Every last one of us—we heaved and wretched and strained our eyes—and then the pinworms joined the exodus. Diarrhea descended. Lord, what a mess. Puddles of loose-jelly jam, spread through with coconut cream. In the middle of it all, I started laughing. Couldn’t help it, thinking how Cord would look some soon—Wednesday night when we fellowshipped out in the church hall. Course my laughs sounded like sobs and so no one noticed—and they weren’t paying attention anyway, being caught up in their own bodily noises at the moment. It didn’t last too long—though it was plenty violent—and by half an hour or so we were through, laying curled up and spent on the floor.

After we all got cleaned up and got our energy back, I waited three weeks. Till I was sure the eggs were good and hatched, the worms good and sprinkled throughout his system. It was starting to turn cooler at night, by then, which worked out good for me. Momma just thought I was heating me up some apple cider, which I’m right partial to, by the way. So if you see me boiling something on the hot plate, don’t go fretting yourself. Well, I was boiling me some cider, and I’d seen where she put the left-over Pink Root—in case we had us a relapse, so I just dropped a chunk in.

Now I’d taken a gamble with the corn liquor, I realized a few days after I’d done it. There was a good chance that 100-plus proof alcohol would kill off anything within a mile radius, but still, I was holding out hope.

Which brings me to the climax of my story—don’t you go cracking any smiles over that word, now, it just means the good part, got it? Now that night was a good bit cooler than it’d been, and I walked down the hill to the church building with my hot cup of cider in hand. Momma never suspected. Not once. I went on ahead of the three of ‘em, like it was too nippy out to be sashaying around. “It ain’t that cold!” Jake and Essy hollered after me, but I just ignored 'em both. I had to be early. Gert was already there when I got there, mixing up the fruit punch, putting out the glasses. We always serve refreshments Wednesday nights. A few others were there already, too. Not Cord and Sally Ann yet, though, so I let Gert recruit me to serve up the punch cups, so nobody’d be suspicious when the time came. I put my own drink up under the table.

Cord and Sally Ann came in about the same time Momma and them did. Cord was carrying one of Sally Ann’s wet coconut cakes. Sally Ann, herself, was looking straight down at her shoes. Pretty shoes they were, too. Strappy little ankle deals that showed off her cedar of Lebanon calves. Momma tried hard to make small talk, but it still wasn’t back to normal—even though she offered amends by bringing Sally Ann a sawdust salad the day after the snake-bite-ruckus.

While Cord worked his way through the crowd with the cake, I all secret-like, reached down and took up my potion, poured it straight into a new cup and added a bit of Gert’s fruit punch. Had it on hand, ready to offer him when he came through the line. I reckon you think he wouldn’t come through, doncha? But he did. Walked his ugly ol’ self up, set down Sally Ann’s cake, and took a cup straight from me. “Do you smell what the Rock’s been cookin’?” I wanted to yell, to borrow one of Essy’s wrestler’s expressions. But I didn’t. Just served it up quiet and pretty as you please.

But then he took up another cup. “For Sally Ann,” he said. Shit, I thought. Think fast, I thought. Differentiate, I thought. “Here, give her this one instead,” I said, pouring a fresh one. “That one’s been sitting out a while. Besides, this one’s gotta magnolia blossom on it. She likes magnolia blossoms.”

Wrong thing to say, looking back. Cord was a jealous one, that’s for sure. He took the magnolia cup from me, looked me straight in the eye with his own still-bruised-and-swelled-up ones, and drank it down. “I like magnolia blossoms, too,” he spat, drops of fruit punch and slobber hittin’ me square in the face. Then he took the other cup, his cup, over to Sally Ann.

Things get kinda distorted after that. Seems like he walked all slow-motion-like. And maybe I yelled. I’m right sure I did. But if I did, the room sort of swallowed it up fast as it came out—kinda like Sally Ann swallowed up her poisoned pink drink. All I could think about was what Momma’d said. How we all had to take the Pink Root cause worms spread so easy.

And sure enough, he’d spread ‘em clean round his house. You can’t fight providence, but you sure can hate it. I hadn’t delivered her out of the hands of Egypt. I hadn’t felled the mighty giant. I hadn’t even composed for her a beautiful psalm of love. I’d just pointed the plague to her door.

And terror rained down. And there opened up a great sea of woe. And an angel poured forth vials of wrath. Trumpets were heard in the distance. And a great star fell crashing to earth, bitter and burning and broken—Sally Ann’s worms floating dead in the torrent.