by Joe Hill
“No. It doesn’t make sense to me either. That’s why I want you to tell me.”
Terry’s tongue darted out and touched his dry lips. When he spoke, his voice was calm but a little rushed. He said, “I decided I was going back to L.A. Getting out of the mental ward. Dad was pissed at me. Vera’s in the hospital, and no one knows where you’ve been. But I just got it in my head that I wasn’t doing any good in Gideon and that I needed to go, get back to L.A., get busy with rehearsals. Dad told me he couldn’t imagine anything more selfish than me taking off with things like they are. I knew he was right, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter. It just felt good driving away.
“Except the farther I got from Gideon, the less good I felt. I’d be listening to the radio, and I’d hear a song I like, and I’d start thinking about how to arrange it with the band. Then I’d remember I don’t have a band anymore. There’s no one to rehearse with.”
“What do you mean there’s no one to rehearse with?”
“I don’t have a job,” Terry said. “I quit. Walked away from Hothouse.”
“What are you talking about?” Ig asked. He hadn’t seen anything about this on his trip into Terry’s head.
“Last week,” Terry said. “I couldn’t stand it. After what happened to Merrin, it wasn’t fun anymore. It was the opposite of fun. It was hell. Hell is being forced to smile and laugh and play party songs when you want to scream. Every time I played the horn, I was screaming. The Fox people asked me to take the weekend and think it over. They didn’t come right out and threaten to sue me for breach of contract if I don’t show up for work next week, but I know that’s in the air. I also know I don’t give a shit. There’s nothing they got that I need.”
“So when you remembered you didn’t have a show anymore—was that when you turned around and came home?”
“Not right away. It was scary. Like…like being two people at the same time. One minute I’d be thinking I needed to get off the interstate and head back to Gideon. Then I’d go back to imaginary rehearsals again. Finally, when I was almost to Logan Airport—you know that hill with the giant cross on it? The one just past the Suffolk Downs racetrack?”
Ig’s arms prickled with cold and gooseflesh. “About twenty feet tall. I know it. I used to think it was called the Don Orsillo, but that’s not right.”
“Don Orione. That’s the name of the nursing home that takes care of the cross. I pulled over there. There’s a road that leads up through the projects to the thing. I didn’t go all the way up. I just pulled over to think, parked in the shade.”
“In the shade of the cross?”
His brother nodded in a vague sort of way. “I still had the radio on. The college station, you know. The reception gets crackly that far south, but I hadn’t got around to changing it. And the kid came on for the local news, and he said the Old Fair Road Bridge in Gideon was open again, after being closed for a few hours in the middle of the day, while police salvaged a firebombed car from off the sandbar. Hearing about that car gave me a kind of sick feeling. Just because. Because we hadn’t heard from you in a couple days and the sandbar is downriver from the foundry. And this is around the same time of year when Merrin died. It all felt connected. And suddenly I didn’t know anymore why I was in such a hurry to get out of Gideon. I didn’t know why it was so important for me to go. I turned around. I came back. And as I was pulling in to town, I thought maybe I should check the foundry. In case you came out here to be close to Merrin and…and something happened to you. I felt like I had no business doing anything until I knew you were okay. And…and here I am. And you’re not okay.” He looked Ig over again, and when he spoke, his voice was halting and afraid. “How were you going to…kill Lee?”
“Quickly. Which is better than he deserves.”
“And you know what I did…and you’re letting me off? Why not kill me, too?”
“You aren’t the only person to fuck a thing up because he was scared.”
“What’s that mean?”
Ig thought for a moment before he replied, “I hated the way Merrin used to look at you, when you’d play the trumpet at your performances. I was always afraid she’d fall in love with you, instead of me, and I couldn’t stand it. Do you remember the flow charts you used to draw, making fun of Sister Bennett? I wrote the note telling on you. The one that got you an F in Ethics and tossed out of the end-of-year recital.”
Terry goggled at him for a moment, as if Ig had spoken to him in an incomprehensible tongue. Then he laughed. It was a strained, thin sound, but real. “Oh, shit. My ass is still sore from the beating Father Mould gave me.” But he couldn’t hold on to the smile, and when it was gone, he said, “That isn’t the same as what I did to you. Not in kind and not in degree.”
“No,” Ig agreed. “I just mention it to illustrate the principle. People make lousy decisions when they’re afraid.”
Terry tried to smile but looked closer to crying. He said, “We need to go.”
“No,” Ig said. “Just you. Now.” As he spoke, he was already lowering the passenger-side window. He balled the cross up and threw it out into the grass, got rid of it. In the same moment, he put his weight and will behind the horns, calling to all the snakes of the forest, calling for them to join him in the foundry.
Terry made a sound, down in his throat, a long hiss of surprise. “Haaaa-horns. You…you have horns. On your head. What…my God, Ig…what are you?”
Ig turned back. Terry’s eyes were lamps, shining with an elevated kind of terror, a terror that approached awe.
“I don’t know,” Ig said. “Demon or man, I’m not sure. The crazy thing is, I think it’s still up in the air. I know this, though: Merrin wanted me to be a person. People forgive. Demons—not so much. If I’m letting you go, it’s as much for her as for you or me. She loved you, too.”
“I need to go,” Terry said in a thin, frightened voice.
“That’s right. You don’t want to be here when Lee Tourneau arrives. You could be hurt if things go wrong, and even if you aren’t, think of the damage you could do to your reputation. This has nothing to do with you. It never did. In fact, you will forget this conversation. You never came here, and you never saw me tonight. That’s all gone now.”
“Gone,” Terry said, flinching and then blinking rapidly, as if someone had dashed a handful of cold water in his face. “Jesus, I need to get out of here. If I’m ever going to work again, I need to get the fuck out of this joint.”
“That’s right. This conversation is gone, and so are you. Take off. Drive home, and tell Mom and Dad you missed your flight. Be with the people who love you, and have a look at the newspaper tomorrow. They say they never report good news, but I think you’ll feel a whole lot better about your life after you see the front page.” Ig wanted to kiss his brother’s cheek but was afraid—was worried he would discover some hidden deed that would make him rethink his desire to send him away. “Good-bye, Terry.”
HE GOT OUT OF THE CAR and stood back from it as it started to move. The Mercedes rolled slowly forward, crushing the tall grass before it. It went into a big, lazy turn, circling behind a great heap of rubbish, bricks, old boards, and cans. Ig turned away then, didn’t wait to see the Mercedes come around the other side of the midden heap. He had preparations to attend to. He moved quickly along the outer wall of the foundry, casting glances toward the line of trees that screened the building from the road. Any moment now he expected to see headlights through the firs, slowing as Lee Tourneau turned in.
He climbed into the room beyond the furnace. It looked as if someone had come in with a couple buckets of snakes, tossed them, and ran. Snakes slid from the corners and dropped from piles of bricks. The timber rattler uncoiled from the wheelbarrow and fell with an audible thump to the floor. There were only a hundred or so. Well. That was enough.
He crouched and lifted the timber rattler into the air, hand under her midsection; he was not afraid of being bitten now. She narrowed her eyes in a sleepy ex
pression of affection, and her black tongue flicked at him, and for a moment she whispered cool, breathless endearments in his ear. He kissed her gently on the head and then walked her to the furnace. As he carried her, he realized he could not read her for any guilt or sin, that she had no memory of ever having done a wrong. She was innocent. All snakes were, of course. To slip through the grass, to bite and shock into paralysis, either with poison or with the swift crunch of the jaws, to swallow and feel the good, furry, slick lump of a field mouse go down the throat, to drop into a dark hole and curl up on a bed of leaves—these were pure goods, the way the world was supposed to be.
He leaned into the chimney and set her in the stinking blanket on the mattress. Then he bent over her and lit each of the candles, creating an intimate and romantic ambience. She settled down into a contented coil.
“You know what to do if they get by me,” Ig said. “The next person to open this door. I need you to bite and bite and bite. Do you understand?”
Her tongue slipped out of her mouth and lapped sweetly at the air. He folded the corners of the blanket over her, to hide her, and then set upon it the smooth pink soap shape of Glenna’s phone. If by some chance Lee killed him, instead of the other way around, he would go in there to blow out the candles, and when he saw the phone, would want to take it with him. It had been used to call him, after all, and it wouldn’t do to leave evidence lying around.
Ig eased himself out of the hatch and pushed the door almost all the way shut. Candlelight flickered around its edges, as if the old furnaces had been lit once more, as if the foundry were returning to life. He grasped his pitchfork, which was leaning against the wall just to the right of the hatch.
“Ig,” Terry whispered from behind him.
Ig spun around, his heart lunging in him, and saw his brother standing outside, rising on his tiptoes to look through the doorway.
“What are you still doing here?” Ig asked, flustered by the sight of him.
“Are those snakes?” Terry asked.
Terry stepped back from the door as Ig dropped through it. Ig still had the box of matches in one hand, and he flipped them to the side, onto the can of gas. Then he turned and jabbed the pitchfork in the direction of Terry’s chest. He craned his head to look past him, into the dark field. He didn’t see the Mercedes.
“Where’s your car?”
“Behind that pile of shit,” Terry said, gesturing back toward a particularly large mound of trash. He reached up with one hand and gently pushed aside the tines of the pitchfork.
“I said to go.”
Terry’s face gleamed with sweat in the August night. “No,” he said.
It took Ig a moment to process Terry’s unlikely reply.
“Yes.” Pushing with the horns, pushing so hard that the feeling of pressure and heat in them was, for once, almost painful—a disagreeable soreness. “You don’t want to be here, and I don’t want you here.”
Terry actually staggered, as if Ig had shoved him. But then he got his feet set and remained where he was, an expression of grim strain on his features.
“And I said no. You can’t make me. Whatever you’re doing to my head, it has its limits. You can only make the offer. I have to accept. And I don’t accept. I’m not driving away from this place and leaving you here to face Lee alone. That’s what I did to Merrin, and I’ve been living in hell ever since. You want me to go, get in my car and come with me. We’ll figure this out. We’ll figure how to deal with Lee in a way where no one gets killed.”
Ig made a choked sound of rage in his throat and came at him with the pitchfork. Terry danced back, away from the tines. It infuriated Ig that he couldn’t make his brother do what he wanted. Each time Ig came toward him, prodding with the fork, Terry faded out of reach, a weak, uncertain grin on his face. Ig had the helpless sensation of being ten years old and forced into some backyard game of grab-ass.
Headlights wavered on the other side of the line of trees that screened the foundry from the road, slowing steadily as someone prepared to turn in. Ig and Terry both stopped, looking up at the road.
“It’s Lee,” Ig said, and focused his furious gaze back on Terry. “Get in your car and out of sight. You can’t help me. You can only fuck things up. Keep your head down, and stay out of the way where you won’t get your ass killed.” Urging him back with another thrust of the pitchfork and at the same time putting one last blast of will behind the horns, trying to bend Terry.
Terry didn’t fight this time but turned and ran, through the tall grass, back toward the midden heap. Ig watched until he had reached the corner of the building. Then Ig pulled himself through the high doorway and into the foundry. Behind him the headlights of Lee Tourneau’s Cadillac were sliding through the air, slicing the darkness like a letter opener cutting into a black envelope.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
NO SOONER HAD HE PULLED himself into the room than the headlights swept through the windows and doors. White squares of brightness streamed over the graffiti-covered walls, picking out ancient messages: TERRY PERRISH BLOWS, PEACE ’79, GOD IS DEAD. Ig stepped away from the light, to one side of the doorway. He removed his coat and threw it into the middle of the floor. Then he crouched in the corner and used his horns to call to the snakes.
They came from the corners, fell from holes in the wall, skated out from under the heap of bricks. They glided toward the coat, sliding over one another in their haste. The overcoat squirmed as they gathered beneath it. Then it began to sit up. The coat rose and straightened, and the shoulders began to fill out, and the sleeves moved, swelling, as if an invisible man were pushing his arms into them. Last rose a head, with hair that twisted and spilled over the collar. It looked as if a long-haired man, or perhaps a woman, were sitting in the middle of the floor, meditating, head down. Someone who was shivering steadily.
Lee honked his horn.
“Glenna?” he called out. “What are you doing, babe?”
“I’m in here,” Ig called in Glenna’s voice. He squatted just to the right of the door. “Aw, Lee, I twisted my goddamn ankle.”
A car door opened and slammed. Footsteps approached through the grass.
“Glenna?” Lee said. “What’s up?”
“I’m just sittin’ here, honey,” said Ig, Glenna-voiced. “I’m just sittin’ right here.”
Lee set a hand on the concrete and hoisted himself up through the door. He had put on a hundred pounds and shaved his head since the last time Ig had seen him, a transformation almost as astonishing as growing horns, and for a moment Ig couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t assimilate what he was seeing. It wasn’t Lee at all. It was Eric Hannity, in his blue latex gloves, holding his nightstick, and his head all blistered and burned. In the headlights the bony curve of his scalp was as red as Ig’s own. The blisters on his left cheek were thick and broad and looked full of pus.
“Hey, lady,” Eric said softly. His eyes darted this way and that, looking around the vast, dark room. He didn’t see Ig with the pitchfork, not where he was crouching to the right, in the deepest of shadows. Eric’s eyes hadn’t adjusted yet. With the headlights pouring in through the door around him, they never would. Lee was out there somewhere. Somehow Lee knew that it wasn’t safe and had come with Eric, and how did he know that? He didn’t have the cross to protect him anymore. It didn’t make sense.
Eric took small, scuffling steps toward the figure in the overcoat, the club swinging in slow, lazy arcs from his right hand.
“Say something, bitch,” Eric said.
The coat shivered and flapped an arm weakly and shook its head. Ig didn’t move, was holding his breath. He couldn’t think what to do. It was supposed to be Lee who came through the door, not someone else. But then, that was the story of his brief life in the demon trade, Ig thought. He had done his Satanic best to come up with a nice and simple murder, and now it was all blowing away, like so much cold ash in the wind. Maybe it was always like that, though. Maybe all the schemes of the devil wer
e nothing compared to what men could think up.
Eric crept forward until he was standing right behind the thing in the coat. He lifted the club with both hands and brought it down, onto its back. The coat collapsed, and snakes gushed out, a great sack splitting open and spilling everywhere. Eric made a sound, a strangled, disgusted cry, and almost tripped over his own Timberlands, stepping away.
“What?” Lee shouted from somewhere outside. “What’s happening?”
Eric brought his boot down on the head of a garter snake, wiggling between his heels. It shattered with a fragile crunch, like a lightbulb breaking. He made a pained sound of revulsion, kicked away a water snake, backing up, backing toward Ig. He was wading in them, a geyser of serpents. He was turning to get out when he stepped on one and his ankle rolled under him. He did a surprisingly graceful pirouette, spinning all the way around, before unbalancing and coming down hard on one knee, facing Ig. He stared with his small, piggy eyes in his big, burnt face. Ig held the pitchfork between them.
“I’ll be goddamned,” Eric said.
“You and me both,” Ig said.
“Go to hell, you fuck,” Eric said, and his left hand started to come up, and for the first time Ig saw the snub-nosed revolver.
Ig lunged, not giving himself time to think, rising and slamming the pitchfork into Eric’s left shoulder. It was like driving it into the trunk of a tree. A shivering impact ran up the shaft and into Ig’s hands. One of the tines shattered Eric’s clavicle; another punctured his deltoid; the middle tine got his upper chest. The gun went off, fired into the sky, a loud crack like a cherry bomb exploding, the sound of an American summer. Ig kept going, carrying Eric off balance, driving him onto his ass. Eric’s left arm flew out, and the gun sailed away into the dark and fired again when it hit the floor, and a rat snake was torn in two.
Hannity grunted. It looked as if he were straining to lift some terrible weight. His jaw was clenched, and his face, already red, was approaching a shade of crimson, spotted with fat white blisters. He dropped his nightstick, reached across his body with his right hand, and took the pitchfork by the iron head, as if he meant to pry it out of his torso.