The Snake People

By Martha Williams

They were bosses till they weren’t.

The Walker family comes from Britain probably. They were “walkers” or “fullers” which means

fabric stompers. They walked right out of Europe onto the shores of Virginia and then

immediately slung into the shape of snakes.

Flying snakes

tail whipping

whipping snakes

mouths wide open

fangs ready to

devour

destroy –

Sliding through the marshes of North Carolina

sneaking, snaking

cutting through Tennessee.

Burying Natives and soft skin

while laying their own kin.

Baby snakes,

slithering in time,

like a bad boy band

with a bad girl lead.

All the way to Alabama and through to Mississippi.

Like a giant infestation

they

came

and

they

destroyed.

This chance at wealth.

This chance to prove to their fathers.

This last chance to spread wings and gather all the riches for themselves.

This was their moment.

Them

and their indentured humans

the people who blew the air this way and that so they didn’t have to touch the ground

their black bodies seen as slave, as “theirs” for their own expansion.

All while

decimating the land

the way of the land

along the way.

Tails wagging

flattening whole villages

grass torn and turned.

John Walker. Caroline Walker. Frances, Martha, Benjamin F., George B., John, Nancy Ann and Moses L. Walker. All together, a caravan of snakes hurling through America on the search for riches.

There was no doubt that it wasn’t theirs.

It was. It always was. And when it wasn’t.

It was always won back.

But Frances and Nancy Ann passed toys back and forth.

Even though mother tongue slasher

hurled words that bound Nancy Ann to the worthless dirt

she was told she was

day in and

day out.

Except Frances knew it wasn’t true.

Nancy Ann could draw anything!

But eventually it all changed, it always does.

Mother tongue slasher grew hot with fear and exhaustion and would beat Nancy Ann.

And after her wind storm of destruction and rueful rage

she’d walk along the river

a whisper of far away regret always tugging.

But snake slasher was big, treacherous and driving and baby snakes multiplied. Seed spread throughout Amite County.

Great Grandma Cobb told me this story last night

as snakes held me tight

in the bright shadow of the

rose quartz song mountain.

She said, we were flying snake people that forgot about the ground, we were lost in the air, darting in straight, breathless lines, arrow-like and screaming, forgetting, forgotten, rabid with grandeur and fear, dear girl, she said.

Then the fires happened.

General Greirson came, with torch in hand, the passion of freedom rang fiery destruction.

The land we claimed,

that we could barely feel,

was torched,

our blessed house a flame.

And tears, so ancient and so big, burst from the snake, so much so,

that it drowned itself until it disappeared into a distant death.

And we travelled north.

I was just a baby, baby girl. But that heat is in me, and it’s in you. The imbalance of nature cracklin in our voices, the whipping of our tails on the bodies of so many, flashing and slashing.

I am sorry, baby girl, but I trust you with this story

to help us to remember

who we are.