Serpent Box (P.S. Series) by Vincent Louis Carrella

From the Publisher

In the deep mountains of Appalachia, the Flints of Leatherwood, Tennessee, spread the word of the gospels by handling deadly serpents and drinking lye in front of large gatherings of the faithful. Believing his ten-year-old son Jacob—called Toad or Spud—to be a prophet, Charles, the patriarch, takes the boy down a long and arduous path as they travel the back roads of the postwar Deep South in search of God and plumb the depths of their unorthodox brand of faith. But sudden, shocking tragedy will shatter Charles's cherished dream of building a ministry and a permanent church—and set young Jacob on a dramatically different course.

Publishers Weekly

In his lyrical if somewhat scattered debut, Carrella paints a vivid picture of a family struggling to survive and retain their faith in Depression-era Tennessee. Though his wife, Rebecca, is days away from giving birth, Pentecostal preacher Charles Flint feels the call of God and embarks for Slaughter Mountain, the site of a legendary Pentecostal church. Charles is gone when Rebecca, caught in the woods during a thunderstorm, gives birth to Jacob inside an ancient tree. Born deformed, Jacob is a quiet, pensive child, but as he grows up, Charles becomes convinced that Jacob is imbued with the Holy Spirit. When Jacob turns 10 and survives a bite from one of the snakes Charles uses when preaching, Charles decides to return to Slaughter Mountain, where Jacob can help spread the word. But when the Flints' faith is shaken by a tragedy, Jacob must decide how to both carry on his father's dream and protect his family. Despite an abundance of gorgeously rendered scenes, the narrative begins to lose steam midway through the book. With an atmosphere richer than its heroes, this first effort intrigues but does not wholly satisfy. (Feb.)

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Chapter One

Toad

It is still that part of the morning before the mist rises, in the time of ocher and amber and blue light that glows at the edges of things. Golden comes the sun through the ground clouds like a Bible picture.

Jacob Flint, a boy of nine summers, a boy of oddly shaped bones, whose large left eye seems to swirl in the socket of a head that, at a distance, appears to have been carved from a rough potato. It has that same organic, subterranean quality that earned him such names as Spud and Toad and Newt and Hog. There is no end to what he resembles from the very earth from which he sprang.

He stands alone now against a sycamore tree that is as small and crooked as himself, in the far corner of the play yard at the Toe Heel School in Leatherwood, watching the mist swirl above the ankles of the other boys, whose recent scorn has cast him again to the outskirts of the field. Here, the boys pay him no mind. They fight playfully among themselves over a handmade ball and thus pay him no mind. For the moment, he is invisible.

The ball is made of a rich brown hide stuffed with straw and sewn together with sinew. It wobbles in the air and careens off their fingertips. It flies off in his direction, vanishing beneath the mist and rolling unseen to his feet. They turn. Suddenly he is no longer the invisible boy.

He was at one moment part of the tree, part of the mist. Jacob Flint, part of the earth, part of the stone. A shard of ancient rock. A crude thing hammered out with the slow and deliberate chipping motion of a human hand. The jagged son of dust and chert. And now the eyes ofthe boys are upon him. They watch to see what he will do, if he will stand or if he will run. But they're not the only ones poised there waiting, watching, to see what he might do—his sister is in the tire swing, spinning slow, holding the rope in both hands and leaning up over the top of the tire to see if her little brother will stand or run.

Magdalena Flint can lick them all together if need be, she can swoop in like a hawk and save him the way she's done, and done, and the way she wants to do now. It's been hard for her to keep her oath to him, to keep her distance, to let him fend for himself. A man must fend for himself. But he will not have her protect him anymore. Tomorrow he will be a boy of ten summers, and perhaps, soon, a man of one. If what his daddy says is true, that manhood is not something you do, but something that is done to you, it could happen. So maybe it will come. It could come anytime. Ten is so close. It could come. It could come now if he stands and does not run. A man must fend.

The boys watch him. Jacob stoops down to pick up the ball. He pulls it out of the mist and holds it up to the light as if it was something he had discovered in a nest, and he holds it up for them to see in a gesture meant to claim it as his own. One of the boys steps forward. He is not the biggest of the bunch but he is by far the worst.

The Toad done got it, he says. Give it here, Toad.

They call him this a lot now. Because of his eye. He has not grown into his big eye as some have promised, and of all the names that are not his own this is the name that's stuck. It is not the worst thing he is called, only the most physically descriptive, the most relevant, and thus the most painful. You cannot run from what is true.

Jacob holds the ball. The hide is smooth beyond the stitching, and worn clean, and cracked in places, and it's cool and smooth like a good baseball glove, like the pocket of an old and trusted mitt. It feels good just to hold it.

I said give it, Toad, says the boy. The worst boy. Jude Acheson, with those Chinese eyes of his, and that flat pig nose, and all them square little goat teeth that bit Jacob once to the bone, the scar still there on his finger that holds the ball that feels so nice to hold. The other boys mumble and look to see what he will do. The tire swing is empty and spinning fast. Jude Acheson reaches down into the mist to pick up a walnut-sized stone.

Toad don't learn, he says. Do he?

Go get him, Jude.

Squish the Toad.

Jacob waits, too. He waits to see what he himself might do. His mind tells him to stand and fight, but his body wants to run. Why should this time be any different?

Toad, you got two seconds to find yourself some smarts.

Why not now? Jacob thinks. Why can't it happen now?

The stone comes at him like it was shot from a gun. It makes an audible pop when it strikes him in the head, just above his eye. Jacob drops to his knees. He sees stars. But he does not falter. He puts his fingers to his head and feels a small trickle of blood. He does not drop the ball. Jude Acheson stoops down for another stone.

You want it again, Toad? I can hit that big eye of yours. I been practicing for that.

Go get him, Jude.

Squish the Toad.

Kill the Toad.

I ain't gonna, Jude says. Let the Toad come to me. Come or run, Toad.