The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [103]
But all of a sudden there was an even louder cry, something almost like a cheer, from everybody at once, and all pointed fingers moved from William Wallace to the river. In the center of three light-gold rings across the water was lifted first an old hoary head ("It has whiskers!" a voice cried) and then in an undulation loop after loop and hump after hump of a long dark body, until there were a dozen rings of ripples, one behind the other, stretching all across the river, like a necklace.
"The King of the Snakes!" cried all the Malones at once, in high tenor voices and leaning together.
"The King of the Snakes," intoned old Doc in his profound bass.
"He looked you in the eye."
William Wallace stared back at the King of the Snakes with all his might.
It was Brucie that darted forward, dangling his little thread with the pin tied to it, going toward the water.
"That's the King of the Snakes!" cried Grady, who always looked after him.
Then the snake went down.
The little boy stopped with one leg in the air, spun around on the other, and sank to the ground.
"Git up," Grady whispered. "It was just the King of the Snakes. He went off whistling. Git up. It wasn't a thing but the King of the Snakes."
Brucie's green eyes opened, his tongue darted out, and he sprang up; his feet were heavy, his head light, and he rose like a bubble coming to the surface.
Then thunder like a stone loosened and rolled down the bank.
They all stood unwilling on the sandbar, holding to the net. In the eastern sky were the familiar castles and the round towers to which they were used, gray, pink, and blue, growing darker and filling with thunder. Lightning flickered in the sun along their thick walls. But in the west the sun shone with such a violence that in an illumination like a long-prolonged glare of lightning the heavens looked black and white; all color left the world, the goldenness of everything was like a memory, and only heat, a kind of glamor and oppression, lay on their heads. The thick heavy trees on the other side of the river were brushed with mile-long streaks of silver, and a wind touched each man on the forehead. At the same time there was a long roll of thunder that began behind them, came up and down mountains and valleys of air, passed over their heads, and left them listening still. With a small, near noise a mockingbird followed it, the little white bars of its body flashing over the willow trees.
"We are here for a storm now," Virgil said. "We will have to stay till it's over."
They retreated a little, and hard drops fell in the leathery leaves at their shoulders and about their heads.
"Magnolia's the loudest tree there is in a storm," said Doc.
Then the light changed the water, until all about them the woods in the rising wind seemed to grow taller and blow inward together and suddenly turn dark. The rain struck heavily. A huge tail seemed to lash through the air and the river broke in a wound of silver. In silence the party crouched and stooped beside the trunk of the great tree, which in the push of the storm rose full of a fragrance and unyielding weight. Where they all stared, past their tree, was another tree, and beyond that another and another, all the way down the bank of the river, all towering and darkened in the storm.
"The outside world is full of endurance," said Doc. "Full of endurance."
Robbie Bell and Sam squatted down low and embraced each other from the start.
"Runs in our family to get struck by lightnin'," said Robbie Bell "Lightnin' drawed a pitchfork right on our grandpappy's cheek, stayed till he died. Pappy got struck by some bolts of lightnin' and was dead three days, dead as that-there axe."
There was a succession of glares and crashes.
"This'n's goin' to be either me or you," said Sam. "Here come a little bug. If he go to the left, be me, and to the right, be you."
But at the next flare a big tree