IT was mid-morning of Second Sunday in August, and John Lewis was drinking beer on the back porch of his father's house in Burnside, He had moved his chair from the left to the right end of the porch so he could watch a snake that had crawled from the woods into the weeds and grass that filled all except a corner of the sunny yard like a small jungle. The dark-gray snake was a water moccasin. Head lifted, upper body straight and unmoving, the snake rested like part of a poison tree left to rot.

In Burnside, Second Sunday in August began the week-long revival at St. Matthew's Baptist Church. People who had gone away made it a special point to come home for Second Sunday, and John Lewis had returned yesterday with his family for the church meeting. He had driven from New Jersey in his Buick Electra 225, making the trip in less than ten hours.

Now he sipped beer and watched the moccasin. Probably the snake had come to high ground looking for food and water because the creeks and rivers had dried up in a drought of biblical proportions. The snake was a big one, all right. Judging from his head and upper body, he was about six feet long, perhaps longer. John thought that if he lay side by side with the snake, they'd probably both be about the same length. Twenty, 30 years ago, some farmer plowing in the lowground would have killed that snake before he grew.