Crowned Heads

by Thomas Tryon

  “Try Dial-A-Prayer, Willie.”

  Bill came back in, spooning baked beans from an open can. He slumped down on the bench, eating, watching the wax fall, drop by drop.

  “Where’s the Wimp?” Arco asked over his shoulder.

  “On the phone.”

  “Get her in here.”

  Bill shouted; they waited; he shouted again. Finally Judee came, doing her trash walk, trying to balance the crown on her head. From her other hand the Jesus doll dangled by one arm. “Hi, gang, I was placin’ obscene phone calls.” She did a funny little duck, made one of her outrageous faces. “No, no, I’m just kiddin’. I was talkin’ t’Gary in Nashville.”

  “Come here.”

  Her smile faded as she passed through the gate. He held the candle out to her. “Do it,” he ordered.

  “Oh, let him down anyways,” she said, looking up at the sight on the cross. Wax was piling up on the tops of Willie’s insteps, with ugly red marks around them. “Do it,” Arco told her again. He shoved the candle at her and went through the gate.

  “Oh, Arco, honest …” She lowered her eyes, the lashes fluttering, as she held the candle the way she had been shown, dripping the hot wax. “Honest,” she said prissily, “this is getting all over the carpeting. It’s just silly, if you want to know the truth. Whyn’t you tell, sweetie, huh? Whyn’t you just whisper it to me?” He shook his head. She was staring at his shorts, the expensive tricot fabric now spattered with blood. She touched the embroidered coronet above the hem of one thigh. “What’s it mean?”

  Willie chuckled with soundless mirth. What indeed? Grace and favor from His Holiness, but it wouldn’t help him now. He didn’t want to think about it. “Countess Mara,” he said; his joke was wasted on her.

  “She royalty?”

  “Neckwear, dear.”

  “Huh?” She still didn’t get it. She continued her task the way Arco had instructed her, watching Willie’s toes jerk and curl as the hot drops struck them. “Makes ya twitch, huh?”

  “‘My little feet may be dancing …’”

  “Huh?”

  “‘But my little heart is breaking …’”

  She didn’t get that either.

  “Joan Crawford,” he explained; the name meant nothing. When she felt sure the other two had disappeared again she blew out the candle and put it on a bench. She sat the doll beside it, and stole to the organ and began playing softly.

  “‘My ma-ma done tol’ me’”—bump.

  “Water,” Willie said.

  Looking back over her shoulder, she traced the whispered word with her eyes, shook her head. “He’d get mad.” She indicated the ceiling with her chin. From overhead came the noisy vibrations of heavy boot treads, and the sounds of their ransacking could be heard as they threw open doors and marched from room to room.

  “‘When I was in knee pants’”—bump—“‘A woman’s a two-face, a worrisome thing—’”

  “Judee? Please?”

  “‘Who’ll leave ya t’sing—’”

  “Please?”

  “I guess with a little practice I could get that bridge right.”

  In the game room the radio station had signed off. Only a dull intermittent buzz came between the organ phrases. The sounds had crept inside Willie’s head, they seemed to ring and leap with electrical shock, and behind his lids pinwheels of light whizzed and whirled, bright hot sparks flying off in all directions, blazes and showers of light, fireworks. His eyes opened again, softly metallic globules of moist transparency floated past his vision, while all the time the blood flowed from a dozen wounds. He was weaker. He moaned. He prayed. He waited for a cold hand to touch him, to end it; it did not come. His expiation was slow, painfully slow; he saw how angry Arco could be.

  They returned lugging a giant gilt frame, the canvas back-to; Willie recognized it without seeing the front. It had by Bee’s decree hung in his bedroom, her “later” portrait for which she had sat to the Laguna painter; Willie despised it and at her death had banished it to a closet.

  Under Arco’s direction it was leaned against the doorframe, and another Beetrice Marsh gazed complacently out. Older, old, gone to fat, her hair dyed a reddish blond and screwed into a fashionable cap of curls, her chins choked by a triple strand of pearls, the flesh of one wrist plumply bulging between diamond bracelets, her eyes half hidden in fatty creases as if they had seen too much of the world, the wrinkled cheeks rouged and powdered, the too-red painted smile revealing a smug self-satisfaction. Her jeweled fingers held, almost coyly, face up on her ample lap, a hand mirror. The mirror; Willie wondered if they’d noticed. Arco hadn’t, apparently. He stood looking up again, his hands flatly extended in a gesture of offering, ceremonially, like the figure in an Egyptian frieze; Willie’s eye fell not on his face but on his palms, remembering the lines he had read. No need to warn young Bill, he was a part of them; even in horror a kind of togetherness. Arco blinked in the light, looking for a clue, the hint of solution to the mystery between them.

  “Tell.”

  No reply.

  He went away again and returned with a tin can: starter fluid from the barbecue. He squirted a stream of fluid onto the wax covering Willie’s feet and ignited it. The fluid blazed up, coldly blue, and made a flashing sound, then quickly died out. He used more, touching flame to it and standing back. As soon as the fire had evaporated in flame more was squirted from the punctured top of the can and reignited. The wax melted, the fire seared in quick painful spurts, and they took turns in a new sport of tossing lighted matches at him. The fire leaped higher, up his shins, to his knees, his thighs, higher. They seemed to revel in his screams. They were kids in a playground, taking turns on a ride.

  They tired of the sport and went away again. Willie hung on the cross, his cries dying to whimpers. He desperately wanted something to drink. Finally Arco let Judee bring him another glass of water. She stood on the bench and held it to his lips and he took it greedily; much of it dripped down his front. Then his kidneys gave way. She jumped back. Fastidious Willie was disgusted; the body’s natural processes had always made him squeamish.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Like, man, when you gotta go you gotta go. It’s okay, you can clean it up.” She’d taken the Bible from the altar and brought it to a bench, where she sat comfily, a coed in the window seat of a dorm, her granny glasses perched on her nose, studiously turning the pages and occasionally perusing them.

  “Hey, listen to this,” she said once, “it’s really terrific.” She read:

  “‘For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt dil—dil-i-gently consider his place, and it shall not be.’ Oh,” she said fervently, mulling over the words, “I hope so. Honest.” She continued:

  “‘But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.’” She held the book on her lap and said to Willie, “See? That’s what we’re gonna do.” She continued in her childish, winsome voice. “‘The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation.’ See, that’s just like Arco says; it’s all right here.”

  She glanced toward the doorway and went into another fit of laughter. “Oh, Arco, honest—you’re such a crazy person. Look at you.”

  He came as a priest, wearing the purple cassock, the lace surplice, the stole, the square purple biretta. One hand lay reverently folded on his breast over a pectoral cross, while the other bore a small jar. With mock reverence, he made the familiar sign.

  “Ego te absolvo …”

  Willie wrenched his head away.

  “Unction, Willie,” he said soothingly. “Ease. It’s here. You want it?” Willie shook his head, raised it higher, so he would not look.

  “Extreme, Willie,” Arco said significantly. “Last rites, understand? The real article, not what you gave that poor slob in It’ly.” He stood on the embroidered pad of the bench, touched his thumb to oi
l in the jar. The liquid felt cold on Willie’s lips as the mock priest applied it. “For your sins, Willie, I forgive you”—crossing the oily liquid over his lips—“the lies this mouth has spoken. I forgive you your false cross, your false reliquary, your false chapel, I forgive you your false beliefs. In nomine Patri et Fillii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

  On the cross, Willie shook his head violently back and forth. His tongue slid out, tasting. It was the salad dressing; vinaigrette. The purple-robed priest dipped his thumb again, and applied it to Willie’s nose, his eyes, ears, uttering words of forgiveness with each application, speaking of vanity, falsehood, lust, gluttony, then stepping down again and pouring the remainder over the bare charred feet, whose toes twitched unceasingly. The mixture dripped onto the embroidered cushion, ran down the leg of the bench onto the red rug. Arco said, “That’s the best I can do f’r you, Willie … unless you want somebody to pray for you. Read him something from the good book, Wimp.” He went away again.

  Judee read: “‘Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from Mount Gilead.’” She smiled up at Willie. “Isn’t that the most beautiful? I had no idea.” Her eye returned to the page, her finger following along under the words as she read. “‘Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks…. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.’” She giggled. “Gets sort of sexy, huh? ‘Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.’” She had a good deal of trouble with “myrrh” and “frankincense.”

  “That’s enough,” Arco told her, returning with Bill. He brought them together to the altar railing and made them kneel, speaking in Latin to them.

  “Jesus, Arco, I can’t do this,” Bill protested. “I’m Baptist, see? This’s a Cath’lic church.”

  Arco’s face grew red; he raised his pointed finger to the ceiling and brought it downward. “On your knees!” he roared wrathfully. “Pray for the poor old bastard! Pray, you fuckers, pray, pray!” He danced around, holding up the hem of his cassock, then moving between the other two, shoving their heads down, slamming the palms of his hands onto their backs. “Pray! Pray, you fuckers. Pray like you never prayed before!”

  “Our Father who art in Heaven,” Bill began. He got as far as “forgive us our—” but couldn’t remember if it should go “debts” or “trespasses.” Judee looked up past her shoulder at Arco.

  “Pray!”

  “Now I lay me down to sleep,” she piped in her thin voice. “With a bag of peanuts at my feet!” She collapsed on the carpet, laughing.

  Willie watched Arco go, hiking the purple cassock up about his shins, bobbing and weaving, the biretta rakishly canted, the skirts swirling, swooping, a stoned goblin priest waltzing in dreamlike circles into darkness, into nothingness, and then all there was was the disembodied laugh. Willie’s chin fell weakly onto his chest again, and he fainted.

  He came to, how much later he didn’t know. The dogs snored at the foot of the cross. Out past the lanai the sky had become lighter. Then from far away, traveling as through a tunnel, came the hollow reverberations of the clock: a single chime. Half past—what? The light hurt his eyes, but through its moted haze he could see into the dark shambles of that bright and glittering room: Warsaw under siege. The shock of pain had sobered him considerably. He thought surely they must let him down now.

  Out of the darkness the girl came. He recognized the silver brocade dress: she’d been going through Bee’s closets.

  “Hi,” she said softly, the metallic threads gleaming as she moved into the light. She modeled it for him, a grotesque, camp mannequin. “Swanky, huh? Don’tcha think it’s me? Very fifties?”

  “Yes—very you, my dear,” he replied weakly. He looked down at her with traces of a sad, wry smile. The dress had cost eight hundred dollars; Don Loper had created it for Bee for a party. It had a train. One dress dragged from among many out of a closet, out of another time. He could even recall the party—Master Bobby Ransome had performed for the guests. Willie had thought it an ugly dress then; on the girl now it looked merely pathetic.

  “Keep it.”

  “Gee. You’re really swell.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  She held the skirt out and examined it. “Was it hers? Bee’s? I mean”—she said it shyly—“your mother’s?”

  “Once.”

  “I always wondered what they did with dead people’s clothes. You ought to give them all away—you’ve got tons of them up there.” She thought an instant, then innocently, as if it were perfectly natural: “Do you ever wear them?”

  “Sometimes.”

  She turned to the portrait leaning against the doorway: now she would notice the mirror; but she seemed not to. “Look,” she said, “same dress.” She scrutinized the face, then said with a child’s candor, “She doesn’t look like a very nice lady, y’know?”

  “That was no lady—that was my wife.”

  “You loved her anyway, huh?”

  “Every boy … loves his mother,” he replied dryly. Talking was difficult; the words came hard. “Every … good boy, that is.”

  “I don’t know,” she said speculatively. “Maybe a person’s better off being an agency baby. But then, blood’s thicker than water, I guess.” She glanced down at the stains on the carpet.

  “Maybe.” He gagged, made retching noises, fell silent for a moment. Then, in a blurred tone, he asked, “Which market did you say?”

  “Market?”

  “Your mother left you … shopping cart …”

  “The Shermart.”

  “Yes. Shermart. I remember.” His voice cracked. “Mostly shop Beverly Hills. Jurgensen’s. Gourmet.”

  “You c’n afford to, sweetie, you’re rich.” She pouted charmingly. “You’ve got it all. We got nothing.”

  “You have … an island … don’t you?”

  “I think that’s just a dream of Arco’s.” Her voice was wistful; she pulled a frayed silver thread from the front of the dress. “I don’t think it’ll ever really come true. I don’t think dreams ever really do come true.”

  “They do if you’re not careful. Or if you’re unlucky.”

  She regarded him solemnly. “I don’t understand. Did your dreams come true?”

  “Many times. A surfeit of dreams come true.”

  “Like bein’ a big big movie star?”

  “Like that.”

  “I guess it’s everybody’s dream.” Her look became quizzical. “Is there something you’d rather have been?”

  “I suppose not. My cup was ever full, and I drank and it still was full. I often wished that cup would pass from me.”

  “But what would you rather have been?”

  “A floorwalker in the porcelain department of the biggest department store in Mobile, Alabama.”

  She had seated herself at the organ and was again playing.

  “‘My mama done tol’ me’”—bump!

  He managed a sound which might have passed for a laugh. Why, she wondered, was he laughing when he was in so much pain? “What’s funny?”

  “I was thinking … what my mama done told … me.”

  “What?”

  “‘Don’t forget your rubbers, Billyboy.’” Each word was costing him strength. “Judee … little Judee with two e’s … can you get me down? Please?”

  “‘When I was in knee pants’”—bump!

  “Please … ?”

  “‘My mama done tol’ me—Son-n-n!’”

  “Please, Judee … ?”

  Bump. She wouldn’t hear him. The carpet grew more red, a darker one, from the blood. The dogs, as though knowing what and whose it was, daintily avoided it, sat staring up, mute and motionless.

  The girl talked over her shoulder as she worked the pedals, monotonousl
y playing the keys. “I thought you were terrific in the movie, Willie. Fedora was really a big star, huh?”

  “Yes … biggest of them all …”

  “That was funny, when she threw the apple to the queen.” She thought a moment. “Joan Crawford—didn’t she used to be a movie star?”

  “Will always be a movie star, Joan Crawford. Judee … can you … take those things out of me?”

  “The darts? Oh, gee, I don’t think so. Arco …” She thought a moment and looked at him curiously. “He said you wanted to get hurt. Did you?”

  “Get hurt?”

  “No, want to. He said you liked it.”

  “People like different things. Judee—listen … I’m going to die….”

  “Ooh.” She gave a little squeal and waved her fingers as if drying her nail polish. “I toldja—I don’t like that word.”

  “In the drawer, there in the altar—my rosary. Give it to me.”

  She found the chain of beads in the drawer and climbed up to put them in his hand, hanging them over his fingers, which twitched as they touched the pendant cross.

  “Upstairs,” he told her, “in the front bedroom—a dresser. There’s money in the third drawer….”

  Her face lighted up; she glanced toward the doorway and put her finger to her mouth. He shook his head.

  “For Masses. Have a Mass said … for my soul, will you?”

  She nodded, batting her eyelashes at him. She was sucking her fingers, like a baby. “I got this darn hangnail.” Her lips curled; she blew him a kiss. Then she blurred before his eyes, he watched the gleam of silver, heard her platforms rattle over the vinyl, and she was swallowed up by the darkness. He was growing steadily weaker. It was all a joke, but he was going to die of the joke.

  Sometime later Arco reappeared out of the darkness. Had he shrunk? He looked somehow smaller, less ferocious; even light of heart.

  “How’s it going, pops?” Willie stared down at him, saying nothing. “Some big house you got here. Been through every room; can’t find it.” No reply. “Y’know? The safe?”