Sara by the Stony Ledge

FICTION Sara by the Stony Ledge Mary M. Carnes Speaking of snakes, I killed a copperhead once myself. I killed it with a hoe. It was a long time ago. I must have been about seven or eight years old. Miss Parker, I remember, was my teacher and she always taught second grade. So I was seven or eight. We still lived at Yellow Mountain when it happened. That's up in the North Carolina mountains , in Jackson County, close by Cashiers, over toward Mill Creek. I'll never forget killing that snake, and coming home, pulling it along behind me on a shoestring. Whoee! You should have seen the look on Grandpa's face, and Mama's too, for that matter, and Daddy's and everybody's, when I came dragging that great long snake into the house. They looked like they'd seen the ghost of old King Saul. Scared, they were—scared shiftless, as Aunt Bessie used to say (may she rest in peace). I didn't know at the time why they were scared; the snake was dead. I killed it myself out in the meadow. The grownups were scattered here and there in the house, out in the barn or in the fields, doing one thing or another. (You know how it is on a farm. There's always plenty to do). I was out in the meadow all by myself that afternoon. I had wandered out over across the creek. I first saw the snake where the grass grows tall, up on a little hill by a stony ledge .... The folks at the house didn't know a thing about it until I came limping back across the meadow, down through the grape arbor and into the yard, dragging my snake behind me. I had my shoestrings tied around its chopped-off neck in a sort of make-shift leash. It worked very well. That way, the old dead copperhead just slithered along behind me, sort of whispering through the grass as I bent towards home, hurrying as fast as I could. My feet hurt. I was running with my toes all bent back tight under the balls of my feet, A graduate of Berea College and Emory University, Mary M. Carnes lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she works as a hospital chaplain. She left Cashiers, North Carolina, at an early age, and still feels the rupture keenly. She drives "an imaginary blue Dodge car up and down the back roads of the South lookingfor a place with my name on it." 30 trying to keep from losing my shoes. Like I say, my shoestrings were tied around the snake. That's how I pulled it home. So down through the yard I came, huffing and puffing, hurrying along in that strange limping, shuffling gait, with that old snake following close behind me. I must have been a pretty sight—all hot and dirty, with all that long white-blond hair of mine blowing free and tumbling down in my face. But I didn't think anything about the way I looked. I just hurried along, panting up to the kitchen door where Mama sat shelling peas for the covered-dish supper at the Baptist Church. The way Mama screamed when she saw me, you would have thought the very Old Scratch had grabbed her by the leg. Grandpa whizzed in through the back door with Daddy right behind him. Grandpa snatched me out of Mama's arms, then Daddy snatched me away from Grandpa. I was astonished to say the least. Such abrupt and unexpected behavior seemed odd for adults, who I had always thought were in total control. Their voices were suddenly loud, high, and overworked as they cried out to one another and to God in rasping, fervent prayers, gnashing their teeth, gasping and sighing, and generally taking on like nothing I had ever seen before. Meanwhile these normally self-composed and gentle people grabbed me from one another's arms, hugging me so tightiy that my ribs hurt. They were frightened. I figured that out. But I did not know why they were frightened. I could not identify their problem...