The Bighead

by Edward Lee

  “You son of a bitch,” Halford muttered, then confessed, “All right, I’ll level with you. But I wasn’t lying. Just call it a minor circumvention of facts.”

  “Great. Bullshit by any other name is still—”

  “I ought to fuckin’ transfer you!” Halford suddenly jumped up, pounded his fist, and bellowed.

  “Watch that foul language, Bob.”

  “You’re way out of line pulling a stunt like this!”

  “Relax.” Alexander shrugged in his seat, puffed his ’rette. “Just tell me the real scoop, will ya?”

  Halford sat back down, fuming. “We waived filing with the county so they wouldn’t send an inspector. We didn’t want a county inspector out there because the fiscal year ends in April. We said we closed the place in April instead of July because we didn’t want to have to pay hospice taxes for the following year. The Church isn’t tax-exempt on everything, boy genius.”

  “All right, I can dig that,” Alexander agreed. “But there’s more, so just have out with it. Hospice taxes, I’ll admit, I didn’t know about those, but I do know that the transport of intensive-care patients, such as terminally ill priests, must be legally filed with the county health commissioners office. I called them too, Bob. You guys never filed shit.”

  Halford’s shoulders slumped, like a poker player whose bluff had been called.

  “What’s the real reason, Bob? There’s no record of any of Wroxeter’s in-patients being moved after the place was closed. You guys did this waiver bit, not to beat hospice taxes, but to prevent a county inspector from going out there, because you were afraid he’d see something. I want to know what it was you didn’t want him to see.”

  Halford was grinding his teeth, wringing his hands. “There was still evidence on the premise. We didn’t want a county title inspector going out there and filing a police report.”

  Alexander gaped. “A police report?”

  “A homicide report. Christ, Tom. Why can’t you just do what you’re told? I sent you out there to get the place ready to reopen. Twenty years is long enough that no one’s going to ask questions. But back then? That’s just not the kind of thing that the Catholic Church could afford being publicized.”

  Now Alexander was lost. “You couldn’t afford to have what publicized?”

  Halford threw his hands up in disgust. “The nuns were murdered,” he said.

  — | — | —

  FOURTEEN

  (I)

  “Make me wanna holler!” the voice cracked.

  Jerrica shirked in the sun. Yes, this was the bad part of town, all right. What am I doing? I must be crazy.

  Federal Street existed as a vanishing point into desolation and strewn bits of litter; the street itself reeked, and Jerrica thought she could even see its fetor wafting off the asphalt with the heat waves. Dark faces peered at her from rowhouse porches.

  Jerrica was terrified.

  “Uh-huh. Yeah.” The black man approached from an alley that seemed to gush a distilled stench of urine. He was tall, lanky, but with biceps like veined baseballs, shoulders like sculpture. Jeans, a tight t-shirt that read NWA. Quite uncharacteristically, though, he wore a huge afro, like something from the 70s. Uh-huh,” he repeated. “I say she just make me wanna holler ’cos I ain’t never see a white woman so fine-lookin’.”

  “Hi,” Jerrica said rather stupidly. Only now did she imagine how preposterous this must look, how crazy. A young white woman, in cutoffs and a halter, walking alone through a ghetto.

  “I’se kin tell, sho’,” he said. He squinted at her, cut a smile like a knife blade. “I’se kin tell whats you need.”

  “Yeah?” she said, trying to sound unafraid.

  “I’se kin tell juss by lookin’ at yo eyes, and what’choo want, lets me guess. Ice, you want Ice, I gots it, have you flyin’ fo’ ten hours. Or how’s about some top-dro’ Rock? A ten-piece, a twenty? I gots it.”

  This truth wilted her even more, that he could see the desperation in her eyes. “I want blow,” she said. “I’ve got two hundred dollars.”

  The smile beamed. The big hands rubbed together, like black ferrets tussling. “An’ I’se got blow too, lots of it. Come on, over here ta mys office.”

  Jerrica quailed; his hand bid the alley. “Can’t we just do it right here?”

  “You crazy, bitch? You wanna buy drugs from me in the middle’a the street? Shee-it.”

  The man had a point. “All right,” she agreed, and then they walked off the sun-drenched street.

  What am I doing, what am I doing, what am I… The thought tossed round and round in her head. She’d never bought drugs in such an environ, but— She knew she didn’t care. She needed it. The alley’s darkness enshrouded her but lent no relief to the heat. The piss-stench slapped her in the face; she had to breathe through her mouth.

  A hand went to his pocket. “Gots ta hold yo’ green first.”

  Unhesitantly, she gave him the money, and then out came his hand.

  Oh, God.

  Suddenly she felt as though she’d chugged scalding water: burning fear bloating her belly, spreading. It was a small gun that filled his hand now, not the cocaine she craved. The realization smacked tangily as the urine-fetor. I’m going to be robbed, raped, murdered…

  “Please,” was the only word she could say.

  His knife-grin never abated. His eyes looked like white lights set into the dark face. “When a white junkie bitch come into my town fo’ blow, well, that what she gotta do, catch my drift? She gotta blow.”

  “I’m begging you,” she croaked. Her mouth, in an instant, felt devoid of all moisture. “Just, please, don’t—”

  The gun raised its interruption. “What kind’a dumb white bitch’re you anyshow? I’m the Mack Daddy on this street. This my ’hood, baby, and you my bitch right now. I bust a cap in a nigger’s ass juss fo’ lookin’ at me crooked. But a white bitch? Shee-it? Get down on them white knees an’ suck.”

  He already had it out. In the alley’s gulf of shadow, it looked like a dropping snake, a faint shiny line down its side. Trembling, Jerrica lowered to her knees, touched it, and nearly gagged. Now the alley’s stench of urine seemed like perfume; instead, the man’s crotch seemed to bark with a stench of its own. He mustn’t have washed in a week or more. Jerrica wanted to bend over right then and there, and vomit.

  The gun nudged her head. “This li’l thing? It don’t make no noise.” He cocked it. “Suck. Tredell need a good suck.”

  The stench was evil, but the taste was worse: sweat and dirt and old semen from previous engagements. She took it into her mouth; it felt feverishly hot. “Mmmmmm, yo,” he remarked. Breathing through her nose only amplified this crude horror. Had she ever smelled anything so revolting in her life? Probably not. But that’s what this was all about—her life. She could lose her life…

  It came erect quickly, a hair-trigger reflex; suddenly that drooping snake had sprung alive, fat in her mouth. She felt divided immediately: terror versus resolve. If I want to have any hope at all of being alive an hour from now, I better suck this guy’s cock real good, she told herself. Not an easy task, though, with the barrel of a gun to one’s head. It was all she could do not to retch when her lips encircled the glans, sucked it up, and pushed down. There was a significant foreskin, she noted right off, and it was filled with pockets of bitter smegma. “Lotta cheese in there fo’ ya, honey,” he commented, chuckling. “Don’ts worry, a li’l cheese ain’t gonna hurt ya.” She sucked it all off, squeezed her eyes tighter than brick-seams, and let the human paste dissolve in her mouth. Don’t puke, Jerrica. Don’t puke. “Yeah, that’s straightup knob-polishin’, fo’ a white ho,” this Tredell was kind enough to compliment. “Shit, goddamn, git off yo’ ass an’ jam!”

  Jerrica felt like she was dying. This would be her hell, wouldn’t it? To eat the smegma out of this dope-dealer’s foreskin for all time. The crotch-stench steamed into her flared nostrils; then he instructed, “Get a finger up my asshole, bit
ch. Make me come better.”

  Repulsed, she didn’t hesitate. The gun barrel was drawing circles in her hair. She wiped some drool off her lips onto her middle finger, then burrowed the finger up the rank cleft, slipped it up his anus.

  “Yeah, baby. Yeah…”

  Her political correctness as a journalist fractured. You motherfucking dirty criminal nigger. I wish I had the balls to bite this black cock off and spit it in your face!

  Fantasy, though. Of course.

  He came rather quickly, but to Jerrica it seemed more like an hour of this. The gun barrel raked her head as his hips flinched. “Suck that whip, baby. Suck out all that spunk…”

  Jerrica, in her expertise regarding male sexual anatomy, had long since noted that, like all people, all men were different when they came. Some spurted abruptly, some shot the freight of their loins in long, long strings, while others merely dribbled. Tredell, instead, oozed—not hot shots to the back of her throat—slowly pouring a voluminous ration of semen onto her tongue, one spurtle after the next. When it was over, she felt as though she had a mouthful of curdled egg-drop soup. She couldn’t wait to spit it out, but—

  “Swallows it all up, ho. See, Tredell like the idea’a all that good gangsta niggah spunk deep in yo’ white-bitch gut.”

  Her eyes crossed at the order. Just…do it. And then her throat audibly clicked when she opened her throat, gulped, and forced it all down like so much thin snot. Don’t puke, she pleaded with herself again. She fell back against the alley’s brick wall, her finger slipping out of his rectum, her other hand uncaringly landing in some unnamed slime. A shadow, to her left, skittered: a rat. She didn’t care. Something like a long, runny worm seemed to settle in her belly.

  “Yeah, that a good li’l white bitch.” Her accomplice, then, stepped forward and wiped his cock off in her pristine blond hair. “Tredell always live large,” he said. “Boo-ya.”

  It was over now, but was it really? What next? He could kill her back here and no one would ever know.

  “Please,” she hacked. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “Shee-it,” he said, standing high above her. “I ain’ts gonna kill ya, baby. You a good customer.” His smile never faded; it seemed to actually cut into the alley’s hot dark. Then he tossed her a small plastic bag of cocaine.

  “Come back when you need some mo’. Ask fo’ Tredell.”

  (II)

  “All of them,” Halford said. Now he lit a cigarette himself, rare for the monsignor. A tendril of smoke coiled up. “Nuns, for God’s sake. Murdered.”

  Alexander knew something was fishy about this whole mess—now he knew what it was. “How come you didn’t tell me?”

  “No need to, Tom—”

  “No need?”

  “No.” Halford’s response was adamant. “You’re just like me, Tom, just like all of us. We serve the Church as the Church sees fit. We don’t ask questions. Am I right or wrong?”

  Alexander bobbed his head. “You’re right, fine. But…shit. Murder? And what about the in-pats?”

  “There were only four or five in-patients at the time, all terminal priests, and they were all murdered too, quite violently.”

  Alexander didn’t ask for the details. But there was one detail he had to ask. “The nuns, the sisters. Was their evidence of sexual assault?”

  “They were raped in a big way,” the monsignor replied, more colloquially. “All of them. But there’s one thing…”

  “What?”

  “Two of the nuns, the abbess as a matter of fact, and her Sister Superior, their names were Joyclyn and Grace, respectively—”

  Alexander frowned. What, I care what their names were? Halford had a talent for making a short story long. “What about them?”

  “What I want you to know—hell, Tom—I was younger than you are now when all this went down, I was intineraire for the monsignor, hadn’t been out of the seminary five years. In other words, I didn’t go to Wroxeter myself, but I overheard the consultation at the time. It wasn’t good. And I also read the diocesan file.”

  “What!” Alexander barked.

  Halford’s eyes turned dark and very sad. “Joyclyn, the abbess, and Sister Grace—”

  “What, for God’s sake. Quit jerking me!” Alexander yelled.

  “They both survived, for a very short time,” the monsignor admitted.

  “How long?”

  “Oh just a few hours after they were found. They died before we could even get an ambulance up there. But a few hours was long enough…”

  “Long enough for what?”

  “To talk, Tom. What I’m saying is they lived long enough to report an identical description of the killer.”

  Alexander’s voice rattled when he said, “Tell me.”

  “It was the strangest thing—I doubt that even I would put any stock in it. Keep in mind, these were cloistered nuns, Epiphanists, for God’s sake, and they’d been viciously assaulted and raped by the perpetrator.”

  “Bob, if you keep jerking my chain, I’m gonna kick your butt from here to St. Peter’s Cathedral.”

  Halford believed it. “Before they died, they both rendered descriptions of the rapist.” Halford abstractedly stroked his cheek. “They said it was a child.”

  Alexander’s faced crimped up. “A child? Come on, Bob!”

  “That’s what they said. When the diocesan counselor asked what age, they said the perpetrator looked to be about ten years old. A child, Tom. A child.”

  “You expect me to believe that a child killed an abbey full of nuns and priests?”

  “That’s not all they said, though. But of course, after a trauma like that? I’m sure they were delusional.” Then a question lit the monsignor’s eyes. “Are delusions ever shared? Or hallucinations? Can two people have the same hallucination, Tom?”

  “Yeah, sometimes,” Alexander replied, exasperated. He wanted answers, not clinical questions. “But it’s rare. It’s called Folie a` deux, there’s plenty of documentation to make it credible. Multiple-hysterical viewpoints, di-exocathesis. But these are psychopathic labels. Maybe they all went nuts up there.”

  “Unlikely,” Halford said. He seemed to be squinting past Alexander, back at the calamity of twenty years ago. “Downing went up there every month to check on things.”

  “Downing?”

  “He had your job then, the shrink for the diocese.” Halford paused. “He’s the one who discovered the bodies.”

  “But if he was checking on them every month—a psychologist, mind you—he would’ve known in an instant if any of the nuns were displaying signs of psychopathy, or any other serious mental disease mechanism. So that rules out your shared delusions theory.”

  “Yes, yes,” Halford vaguely muttered. “It seems so.”

  “I give up!” Alexander’s glare felt honed to the sharpness of a scratch awl. “This a game? I’m supposed to guess? What the hell are you talking about, Bob? What was the goddamn delusion?”

  “They didn’t just say it was a child, Tom.” Halford’s eyes went astray. “They said it was a monster-child…”

  (III)

  “What’s the matter with you?” Alexander asked. “You’re practically shaking, you’re jittery.”

  “I’m fine,” Jerrica complained in response.

  “Fine, huh? You look like you’re having withdrawal symptoms. If you are, I’ll take you to the hospital.”

  “Get off my back,” Jerrica sniped. “Just take me back to Annie’s boarding house.”

  “All right. You don’t want to talk about it, fine. That’s your business. But I thought we were gonna talk about things.”

  “I don’t feel like talking right now,” she said. And she didn’t. What could she say? I just sucked a drug dealer’s cock for cocaine? I swallowed his sperm? No…

  “How was your meeting with your boss?” she asked instead.

  “Enlightening. But it’s confidential so don’t ask.”

  Jerrica slumped. She felt like a piece of
thread twisted out strand by strand. Part of her could only think of how badly she wanted to get back, to fulfill her need. Another part could only recognize that Father Alexander himself was the cure. Still another part reminded her how useless it all was.

  If it’s not one thing, it’s something else…

  She came very close to putting her face in her hands and crying. I love you! Can’t you see that!

  But what difference did it make? He was a priest.

  They drove back to Luntville, in silence. All she could be reminded of was the acrid taste of sperm in her mouth, and the feel of the small plastic bag in her hip pocket.

  (IV)

  The Bighead, he could smell it, he could. Now he knowed somethin’ were up. All this time since he’d left the Lower Woods, that Voice’d been callin’ ta him durin’ the night. It had been leadin’ him somewheres, ain’t it?

  He stopped at the edge’a the trees.

  Couldn’t help hisself. He whupped it out right then’n there, thinkin’ ’bout all that fine splittail he busted in his time. Hot, wet li’l holes he could sink his pecker in. Too bad he’d never hadda proper nut in any of ’em. They was all too small! But he thinked about it anyways, an’ jacked hisself off a dandy load’a dicksnot, which landed inna clump’a weeds. Felt good, it did. A might good!

  But then he got backs ta thinkin’. This place…

  He knowed, he did!

  This was one place the Voice’d been leadin’ him too, weren’t it?. A place fer puttin’ folks’n the ground. Slabs’a stone stuck out ’round the grass. He knowed what this was, ’cos Grandpap’d tolt him.

  This shore’s shit were a cemetery.

  — | — | —

  FIFTEEN

  (I)