Randy Jessup took it in his arms and held its head away from his body. Its tongue flicked out intermittently, and its body laid limp in Randy’s lap. He moved his hands toward its head in slow motion, and when they reached its base, they twisted around it. The preacher pulled on the cottonmouth’s head, and its body writhed around. He disregarded the way the snake hissed and squeezed until the head popped off clean. The body flexed and coiled and flopped down onto the floor when Randy Jessup stood.

He dropped the head into the pinewood box and told Cory to get rid of the carcass. He walked down the aisle and looked down at me. The preacher told Cody to let me up from the floor. He wanted to speak to me face to face.

My back crackled when he pulled his knee from between my shoulder blades. I rolled over and used the pew next to me to stand.

Randy Jessup asked me to sit and shrugged when I didn’t. Cody stepped forward to force me but stopped when the preacher said, “If he’d like to stand, that’s okay, Brother Cody. The Lord spoke to me while I took the life from that cottonmouth and said he wouldn’t fight.” Randy Jessup paused, turned to me, and asked, “What did you think of that?”

“Looks to me like a weak man likes to prey on things that ain’t got no more sense than to trust him. Like a woman that’s scared to death of him.”

Randy Jessup’s mouth made a hard line across his face. His eye wandered over the paintings of Jesus hanging from the sanctuary walls, each depicting a different scene from his life. The preacher’s hands shoved into his pockets, and he said, “If Sister Jessa has any fear of me, it’s not because I’ve preyed on her. It’s because of how the Lord’s used me. Not all of His children receive His word joyfully. Some react in fear, others in anger, and still others react in sadness and repentance. Have you never read the Parable of the Sower, friend?”

“Parable of the who?” I asked. “That some kinda riddle?”

“Brother Dooley,” the preacher drug out my last name like it was stuck to his tongue, “Jesus taught in stories that we call parables. One of the most famous parables is from the Gospel of Matthew. It’s about a sower sowing seed. This sower spreads his seed in all kinds of different ground. Some seed falls where there’s no soil, some falls on rocky ground, some of the ground is filled with thorns, and some of it is good. The soil represents a person’s heart, and I can tell you right now Sister Jessa’s heart is full of thorns.”

“Preacher,” copying the way he drew my name out, I said, “I think there’s a different way to interpret this parable. Sounds to me like you’ve got this preacher trying to spread his seed among all these gullible women. They all react in different kinds of ways like women are bound to do. But the preacher takes it personal when the woman he’s got his good eye set on acts kinda prickly towards him. Maybe he don’t plow her garden right or his seed ain’t potent. You can’t never know when a woman’s reasoning is involved.”