by Joe Hill
If there was a place left to Ig that he could call his own, it was this car, his 1972 AMC Gremlin. The apartment belonged to Glenna. She had lived there before him and would continue to live there after they were through with each other, which was apparently now. He had moved back in with his parents for a time, immediately after Merrin was killed, but he’d never felt at home, no longer belonged there. What was left to Ig now was the car, which was a vehicle but also a place of habitation, a space in which much of his life had been lived, good and bad.
The good: making love to Merrin Williams in it, banging his head on the roof and his knee on the gearshift. The rear shocks were stiff and screeched when the car jolted up and down, a sound that would cause Merrin to bite her lip to keep from laughing, even as Ig moved between her legs. The bad: the night Merrin was raped and killed, out by the old foundry, while he’d been sleeping off a drunk in this car, hating her in his dreams.
The AMC had been a place to hang out when there was nowhere else to go, when there was nothing to do except drive around Gideon, wishing something would happen. Nights when Merrin worked or had to study, Ig would cruise around with his best friend, tall, lean, half-blind Lee Tourneau. They’d drive down to the sandbar, where sometimes there would be a campfire and people they knew, a couple trucks parked on the embankment, a cooler full of Coronas. They would sit on the hood of the car and watch the sparks from the fire sail up into the night to vanish, the flames reflected in the black, swiftly moving water. They would talk about bad ways to die—a natural subject for them, parked so close to the Knowles River. Ig said drowning would be worst, and he had personal experience to back it up. The river had swallowed him once, held him under, forced itself down his throat, and it had been Lee Tourneau who swam in to pull him out. Lee said there was lots worse than drowning and that Ig had no imagination. Lee said burning had drowning beat any day of the week, but then he would say that, he’d had an unfortunate run-in with a burning car. Both of them knew what they knew.
Best of all were nights in the Gremlin with Lee and Merrin both. Lee would accordion himself in the rear—he was courtly by nature and always let Merrin sit up front with Ig—and then lie stretched out, with the back of his hand draped over his brow, Oscar Wilde lounging in despair on his davenport. They’d go to the Paradise Drive-In, drink beer while madmen in hockey masks chased half-naked teenagers, who would fall under the chain saw to cheers and honking horns. Merrin called these “double dates” Ig was there with her, and Lee was there with his right hand. For Merrin, half the fun of going out with Ig and Lee was ragging on Lee’s ass, but the morning Lee’s mother died, Merrin was the first to his house, to hold him while he wept.
For half an instant, Ig thought of paying a visit to Lee now; he had pulled Ig out of the deep water once, maybe he could again. But then he remembered what Glenna had told him an hour ago, the terrible bad-dream thing she had confessed over doughnuts: I got carried away and went down on him, right there with a couple guys watching and everything. Ig tried to feel the things he was supposed to feel, tried to hate them both, but couldn’t even manage low-grade loathing. He had other concerns at the moment. They were growing out of his fucking head.
And anyway: It wasn’t as if Lee were stabbing him in the back, swiping his beloved out from under him. Ig wasn’t in love with Glenna and didn’t think she was or ever had been in love with him—whereas Lee and Glenna had history, had been sweethearts once upon a very long time ago.
It was still maybe not the sort of thing one friend would do to another, but then Lee and Ig weren’t friends anymore. After Merrin had been killed, Lee Tourneau had casually, without overt cruelty, cut Ig out of his life. There had been some expressions of quiet, sincere sympathy in the days right after Merrin’s body was found, but no promises that Lee would be there for him, no offers to meet. Then, in the weeks and months that followed, Ig noticed he only ever called Lee, not the other way around, and that Lee did not work too hard to hold up his end of a conversation. Lee had always affected a certain emotional disengagement, and so it was possible Ig did not immediately register how fully and completely he’d been dropped. After a while, though, Lee’s routine excuses for not coming over, for not meeting, added up. Ig was maybe not smart about other people, but he’d always been good at math. Lee was the aide to a New Hampshire congressman and couldn’t have a relationship with the lead suspect in a sex-murder case. There were no fights, no ugly moments between them. Ig understood, let it be over without begrudging him. Lee—poor, wounded, studious, lonely Lee—had a future. Ig didn’t.
Maybe because he’d been thinking of the sandbar, he wound up parked off Knowles Road, at the base of the Old Fair Road Bridge. If he was looking for a place to drown himself, he couldn’t have hunted down a better spot. The sandbar reached a hundred feet into the current before dropping off into deep, fast, blue water. He could fill his pockets with stones and wade right in. He could also climb onto the bridge and jump; it was high enough. Aim for the rocks instead of the river if he wanted to do the job right. Just the thought of the impact made him wince. He got out and sat against the hood and listened to the hum of trucks high above him, rushing south.
He had been here lots of other times. Like the old foundry on Route 17, the sandbar was a destination for people too young to have a destination. He remembered another time down here, with Merrin, and how they had gotten caught out in the rain and sheltered under the bridge. They were in high school then. Neither of them could drive, and they had no car to run to. They shared a soggy basket of fried clams, sitting up on the weedy cobblestone incline under the bridge. It was so cold they could see their breath, and he held her wet, frozen hands in his.
Ig found a stained two-day-old newspaper, and when they got bored of not really reading it, Merrin said they should do something inspiring with it. Something that would lift the spirits of everyone everywhere who looked out on the river in the rain. They sprinted up the hill, through the drizzle, to buy birthday candles at the 7-Eleven, and then they ran back. Merrin showed him how to make boats out of the pages of the newspaper, and they lit the candles and put them in and set them off, one by one, into the rain and gathering twilight—a long chain of little flames, gliding serenely through the waterlogged darkness.
“Together we are inspiring,” she said to him, her cold lips so close to his earlobe that it made him shiver, her breath all clams. She trembled continuously, struggling with a laughing fit. “Merrin Williams and Iggy Perrish, making the world a better, more wonderful place, one paper ship at a time.”
She either didn’t notice or pretended not to see the boats filling with rain and sinking less than a hundred yards offshore, the candles in them winking out.
Remembering how it had been, and who he had been when they were together, stopped the frantic, out-of-control whirl of thoughts in his head. Perhaps for the first time all day, it was possible for Ig to take stock, to consider without panic what was happening to him.
He considered again the possibility that he had suffered a break with what was real, that everything he’d experienced over the course of the day had only been imagined. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d confused fantasy with reality, and he knew from experience that he was especially prone to unlikely religious delusions. He had not forgotten the afternoon he spent in the Tree House of the Mind. Hardly a day had passed in eight years that he hadn’t thought about it. Of course, if the tree house had been a fantasy—and that was the only explanation that ever made sense—it had been a shared one. He and Merrin had discovered the place together, and what had happened there was one of the secret silken knots that bound them to each other, a thing to puzzle over when a drive got dull or in the middle of the night, after being woken by a thunderstorm, when neither of them could get back to sleep. “I know it’s possible for people to have the same hallucination,” Merrin said once. “I just never saw myself as the type.”
The problem with thinking that his horns were nothing but an especia
lly persistent and frightening delusion, a leap into madness that had been a long time coming, was that he could only deal with the reality in front of him. It did no good to tell himself that it was all in his head if it went on happening anyway. His belief was not required; his disbelief was of no consequence. The horns were always there when he reached up to touch them. Even when he didn’t touch them, he was aware of the sore, sensitive tips sticking out into the cool riverside breeze. They had the convincing and literal solidity of bone.
Lost in his thoughts, Ig didn’t hear the police car rolling down the hill until it crunched to a stop behind the Gremlin and the driver gave the siren a brief whoop. Ig’s heart lunged painfully, and he quickly turned. One of the policemen was leaning out the passenger window of his cruiser.
“What’s the story, Ig?” said the cop, who was not just any cop but the one named Sturtz.
Sturtz wore short sleeves that showed off his toned forearms, toasted a golden brown from routine exposure to the sun. It was a tight shirt, and he was a good-looking man. With his windblown yellow hair and his eyes hidden behind his mirrored sunglasses, he could’ve been on a billboard advertising cigarettes.
His partner, Posada, behind the steering wheel, was trying for the same look but couldn’t carry it off. His build was too slight, his Adam’s apple too prominent. They both had mustaches, but on Posada it was dainty and vaguely comical, the sort of thing that belonged on the face of a French maître d’ in a Cary Grant comedy.
Sturtz grinned. Sturtz was always glad to see him. Ig was never glad to see any cop but in particular preferred to avoid Sturtz and Posada, who had, ever since Merrin’s death, made a hobby out of hassling Ig, pulling him over for going five miles above the limit and searching his car, ticketing him for littering, loitering, living.
“No story. Just standing here,” Ig said.
“You been standing there for half an hour,” Posada called to him as the partners got out of their cruiser. “Talking to yourself. The woman lives back that way brought her kids in because you were freaking her out.”
“Think how freaked out she’d be if she knew who he is,” Sturtz said. “Your friendly neighborhood sex deviant and murder suspect.”
“On the bright side, he’s never killed any kids.”
“Not yet,” Sturtz said.
“I’ll go,” Ig said.
Sturtz said, “You’ll stay.”
“What do you want to do?” Posada asked Sturtz.
“I want to run him in for something.”
“Run him in for what?”
“I don’t know. Anything. I’d like to plant something on him. Bag of coke. Unregistered gun. Whatever. Too bad we don’t have anything. I really want to fuck with him.”
“I want to kiss you on the mouth when you talk dirty,” Posada said.
Sturtz nodded, unperturbed by this admission. That was when Ig remembered the horns. It was starting again, like the doctor and the nurse, like Glenna and Allie Letterworth.
“What I really want,” Sturtz said, “is to bust him for something and have him put up a struggle. Have an excuse to knock his fucking teeth out of his sorry mouth.”
“Oh, yeah. I’d like to watch that scene,” Posada said.
“Do you guys even know what you’re saying?” Ig asked.
“No,” Posada said.
“Kind of,” Sturtz said. He squinted, as if trying to read something printed on a distant sign. “We’re talking about whether we ought to bust you just for the fun of it, but I don’t know why.”
“You don’t know why you want to bust me?”
“Oh, I know why I want to bust you. I mean I don’t know why we’re talking about it. It’s not the kind of thing I usually discuss.”
“Why do you want to bust me?”
“Because of that faggot look you’ve always got on your face. That faggot look pisses me off. I’m not a big fan of homos,” Sturtz told him.
“And I want to bust you because maybe you’ll struggle and then Sturtz will bend you over the hood of the car to put the cuffs on,” Posada said. “That’ll give me something to beat off over tonight, only I’ll be picturing both of you naked.”
“So you don’t want to bust me because you think I got away with killing Merrin?” Ig asked.
Sturtz said, “No. I don’t even think you did it. You’re too much of a pussy. You would’ve confessed.”
Posada laughed.
Sturtz said, “Put your hands on the roof of the car. I want to poke around. Have a look in the back.”
Ig was glad to turn away from them and stretch his arms out over the roof of the car. He pressed his forehead to the glass of the driver’s-side window. The cool of it was soothing.
Sturtz made his way around to the hatchback. Posada stood behind Ig.
“I need his keys,” Sturtz said.
Ig took his right hand off the roof and went to dig them out of his pocket.
“Keep your hands on the roof,” Posada said. “I’ll get them. Which pocket?”
“Right,” Ig said.
Posada eased his hand into Ig’s front pocket and curled a finger through his key ring. He jangled them out, tossed them to Sturtz. Sturtz clapped his hands around them and popped the hatchback.
“I’d like to put my hand in your pocket again,” Posada said. “And leave it there. You don’t know how hard it is not to use my position of power to cop a feel. No pun intended. Cop. Ha. I never imagined how much of my job would involve handcuffing fit, half-naked men. I have to admit, I haven’t always been good.”
“Posada,” Ig said, “you should really let Sturtz know how you feel about him sometime.” As he said it, the horns throbbed.
“You think?” Posada asked. He sounded surprised but curious. “Sometimes I’ve thought—but then I think, you know, he’d probably pound the snot out of me.”
“No way. I bet he’s been waiting for you to do it. Why do you think he leaves the top button of his shirt open like that?”
“I’ve noticed he never gets that button.”
“You should just unzip his fly and go down on him. Surprise him. Give him a thrill. He’s probably only waiting on you to make the first move. But don’t do anything until I’m gone, okay? Something like that, you’re going to want your privacy.”
Posada cupped his hands around his mouth and exhaled, sampling the odor of his breath.
“Hot damn,” he said. “I didn’t brush this morning.” Then he snapped his fingers. “But there’s some Big Red in the glove compartment.” He turned and hurried over to the cruiser, muttering to himself.
The hatchback slammed. Sturtz swaggered back to Ig’s side.
“I wish I had a reason to arrest you. I wish you’d put a hand on me. I could lie and say you touched me. Propositioned me. I’ve always thought you looked more’n half queer, with your swishy walk and those eyes that always look like you’re going to start crying. I can’t believe Merrin Williams ever let you in her jeans. Whoever raped her probably gave her the first good fuck of her life.”
It felt as if Ig had swallowed a coal and it was stuck halfway down, behind his chest.
“What would you do,” Ig asked, “if a guy touched you?”
“I’d shove my nightstick up his asshole. Ask Mr. Homo how he likes that.” Sturtz considered a moment, then said, “Unless I was drunk. Then I’d probably let him blow me.” He paused another second before asking, in a hopeful sort of voice, “Are you going to touch me so I can shove my—”
“No,” Ig said. “But I think you’re right about the gays, Sturtz. You’ve got to draw the line. You let Mr. Homo get away with touching you, they’ll think you’re a homo, too.”
“I know I’m right. I don’t need you to tell me. We’re done here. Go on. I don’t want to find you hanging around under the bridge anymore. Got me?”
“Yes.”
“Actually, I do want to find you hanging around here. With drugs in your glove compartment. Do you understand?”
�
��Yes.”
“Okay. Long as we got that straight. Now beat it.” Sturtz dropped Ig’s car keys in the gravel.
Ig waited for him to walk away before he bent and collected them and climbed behind the wheel of the Gremlin. He took a last glance at the cruiser in the rearview mirror. By then Sturtz was sitting in the passenger seat holding a clipboard in both hands and frowning down at it, trying to decide what to write. Posada was turned sideways in the seat so he was facing his partner and was looking at the other man with a mix of yearning and greed. As Ig pulled away, Posada licked his lips, then lowered his head, ducking under the dash and out of sight.
CHAPTER SIX
HE HAD GONE DOWN to the river to work out a plan, but for all the thinking he had done, Ig was as mixed up now as he’d been an hour ago. He thought of his parents and even got as far as driving a couple blocks in the direction of their house. But then he nervously jerked the wheel, turning the car off course and down a side road. He needed help but didn’t think they’d be able to give him any. It unnerved him to think about what they might offer him instead…what secret desires they might share. What if his mother harbored an urge to fuck little boys? What if his father did!
And anyway, it had been different between them in the time since Merrin died. It hurt them to see what had happened to him in the aftermath of her murder. They didn’t want to know about how he was living, had never once been inside Glenna’s place. Glenna asked why they never had a meal together and insinuated that Ig was ashamed to be with her, which he was. It hurt them, too, the shadow he had cast over them, because it was a well-known fact in town that Ig had raped and murdered Merrin Williams and got away with it because his rich and connected parents had pulled strings, called in favors, and twisted arms to interfere with the investigation.
His father had been a small-time celebrity for a while. He had played with Sinatra and Dean Martin, was on their records. He had cut records of his own, for Blue Tone, in the late sixties and early seventies, four of them, and had scored a Top 100 hit with a dreamy, cool-cat instrumental called “Fishin’ with Pogo.” He married a Vegas showgirl, played himself on TV variety shows and in a handful of movies, and finally resettled in New Hampshire, so Ig’s mom could be close to her family. Later he had been a celebrity professor at Berklee College of Music who sat in on occasion with the Boston Pops.