 In southern Louisiana, in August, it gets hot enough to smell
the asphalt roads melt, and steamy air wafting from willow, cypress
and tupelo trees carries wet, sticky aromas which aren't perceived
in October or March. |
|
| When I was a boy, August was a time when snakes and turtles
were plentiful and easily caught. My brothers and I would spend the
waning days of our summer vacation in nearby swamps and bayous
hunting for reptiles to include in our backyard snake farm.
Neighborhood children were invited to peer into the home-built
cages of plywood and screen containing all manner of Louisiana
reptiles for twenty-five cents. |
|
| It was during my eleventh summer, and unknown to my brothers,
that I traded a look at our hog-nosed snake for a look at Betsy
Prince's vagina, or "gooter" as she called it. It happened in my
backyard, behind the garage. It happened while my mother cleaned
or cooked in the house, not fifty feet away. Betsy lifted the hem
of her yellow sun dress and tucked it under her chin. Then with both
hands she pulled her cotton panties down to her knees and stood up
straight to give me my look. It was more glimpse than examination,
and physical contact was denied me. She had got to stroke my
hog-nosed snake. |
|
| The weltering of my emotions and feelings was such that
I trembled and I could hear a roar in my ears and I got tunnel vision.
I believe my physical reaction was born less of hormonal stirring
in my groin than the overwhelming pleasure taken in doing something
absolutely forbidden and sinful for the first time in life.
|
|
| I was Roman Catholic and an altar boy and each Saturday
afternoon made an anonymous confession of my sins to an anonymous
parish priest hidden behind the screen of the confessional. But
this sin was so wretched and my guilt was so overpowering that
I couldn't make myself tell it. God would just have to understand
and forgive me without an Act of Confession, or I was resigned
to burn in hell for eternity. You see, Catholics are taught that
to die with a mortal sin on the soul requires a mandatory penalty
of spending the whole of the hereafter in the fires of hell. |
|
| After my transgression, I tried my best to avoid any
contact with Betsy Prince. Dodging her was hard since she lived
almost directly across the street from my house and was constantly
trying to hang around with my brothers and me. The sight of her
made a sinking sick-to-the-stomach feeling of guilt well up in
me -- fast and strong -- so that I stopped what I was doing or
saying for a time until I got control again. I was afraid she'd
tell my brothers what happened and they'd tell my parents. I
knew if that happened I wouldn't have to wait long to find out
what God decided about my hereafter. |
|
| About two weeks after she had touched the hog-nosed she
cornered me outside the gate to my backyard and asked if I had
caught any new snakes. I felt like I was going to puke. |
|
| "No, nothing new," I said. |
|
| "If you let me hold your king snake you can kiss me." |
|
| The guilt was gagging me. Why wasn't she concerned about
burning in hell? "I have to be at swimming practice, right
away," I said. |
|
| She looked up the street and without looking back
said, "You can touch it if you want." |
|
| "I don't want to. We shouldn't have done what we did.
It was a sin and God will punish us for it," I said. |
|
| "You're such a baby, Brett Richards." She put her
hand on my arm. I pulled away, jumped on my bicycle, and began
pedaling down the street all in one motion, trying not to vomit. |
|
| To and from swimming practice and while I swam monotonous
laps of freestyle, then butterfly, then breast stroke, I thought
of my fate and Betsy's and decided I would confess my sin the next
Saturday. I also decided I would talk to Betsy and make her
understand how evil our act was and why she should confess it too,
even if she wasn't Catholic. This course of action became finally
clear to me as I rode home from practice. I felt cleansed by the
bleachy smell of chlorinated water that was on my skin and in my
nose and by the free, weightless feeling that came with resolving
to save my soul and Betsy's too. |
|
| For two weeks I had lived a hell on earth and all of my
energy was spent fighting guilt. I had lain awake each night
wondering what my all-seeing God thought of the scene behind
the garage. If I ever had to face Him in the next life I wasn't
sure I could. I had caught my mother and father looking at me,
knowingly, and had become nauseous. But now I would be forgiven,
officially, by God's ordained soldier in three days, on Saturday
afternoon. I felt saved, absolved, free. |
|
| I quickened the pace of my pedaling. My legs were strong,
freshened by absolution. I raced around the corner into my street
and had to brake hard to avoid hitting a group of people standing
in the street near my house. I recognized their faces. They
were neighbors. Some were crying, all looked concerned or sad.
There were flashing lights, and over the low talk of the crowd I
heard the sound of a police radio emanating from the open door
of one of the several cars stopped haphazardly in the middle of
the street. |
|
| I walked my bicycle toward the center of activity and saw
an ambulance and a police car and an old green pickup truck loaded
with lawn mowers and other equipment used by gardeners. In the back
of the police car was an old black man who was sleeping -- or maybe
just quietly crying -- with his head on his chest and his eyes closed.
On the hot asphalt, near the front tire of the truck was a person
partly covered with a white sheet. The sheet was dark red in a large
irregular spot near the covered head. I could see a leg protruding
from under the sheet but twisted back unnaturally, grotesquely toward
the red part. On the thigh of the misshaped leg, just out from the
edge of the sheet, I saw the hem of a yellow sun dress. |
|
| I tried to scream but couldn't. All of the sounds around
me went silent and I heard only my blood rushing through veins
and arteries in my head. I became dizzy and nauseated and quiet
tears were in my eyes. |
|
| I awoke in my bed with my mother pressing a damp cloth to
my forehead and whispering soft, loving things to me. At the foot
of the bed my father was standing with an arm around my brother,
Jim, and they silently watched my mother attend to me. I sensed
that my hands were clenched in fists and I let them go limp. |
|
| Betsy Prince died with a mortal sin on her soul and she
was surely on her way to hell. God had visited His wrath upon
her and had denied me an opportunity to save her soul. I
understood exactly why Betsy died and I knew that I would never
tell my sin to anyone. I just had to wait for my punishment to
come. It would surely come, but I didn't know when. I waited.
I closed my eyes and slept. |
|
| * * * |
|
|
That was then and this is now and I'm still waiting.
But I have never spoken a word to anyone about why Betsy died.
Priests, doctors and my parents have tried over and over to make
me tell it but I won't. I think I'm going to meet a new doctor
today. He'll try like the others. He'll be wasting his time.
I just need to wait for my punishment to come. I thought it would
come quickly, like for Betsy, but after a year it still didn't happen
and I was sent to the hospital north of Lake Pontchartrain. Over
time my parents quit trying so hard to make me talk. On my
twenty-first birthday my parents and all my brothers came to see
me and when my mother began to cry as she often did on her visits,
I almost said something to her. I didn't though. If I did she
might try to get me to tell it, so I didn't. |
|
| It is August and it is hot. As I sit on my bench outside
the main building at Tall Pines Hospital, I am made drowsy by
moist heat filtered through pine needles. The smell of willows
is on the breeze, and of cypress, and of tupelo gum, and I remember
looking near the bayou bank and around cypress knees in summertime
for turtles and snakes. A nurse appears at the door of the
clinic and starts toward me. She is going to take me to meet
my new doctor. I want to be left alone. I just need to wait.
|
1994.