Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

by Ray Garton

  Hal looked down at the upturned face of the wooden Christ. A million tiny, icy spiders crawled down his spine.

  The lips of the savior's unnaturally large, yawning mouth were peeled back over small teeth that had been filed down to fine points. A wreath of thorns encircled the crown of the head, the thorns deep in the flesh and bleeding copiously. Blood that had spilled down from the wounded brow ran along the edges of the lips and clung to the sharp, slightly protuberant teeth. From that angle—looking straight down at it—Jesus no longer appeared to be at the agonizing precipice of death. The pain and misery the figure seemed to bear when it was up on the wall changed to something else from a higher angle looking down at the crucifix. The flexed muscles made Christ appear to be defiantly struggling against his bondage, trying to escape the cross rather than humbly accepting his fate as the Savior of mankind. The fingers were curled like claws around the heads of the spikes that stuck out from the bloody palms. The dark eyes were wide beneath the hood of a frowning brow and filled with something that hit Hal like a fist to the solar plexus. The eyes bubbled over with hatred and anger and vengeance.

  Hal took in a deep breath and sighed, "Well, it's, uh...it's certainly unlike any other crucifix I've ever seen." He reached down and hooked the tip of his index finger under the upper teeth, feeling the sharp tips. They had been filed down to fat, stubby needles. The teeth looked absolutely real. So did the tongue. And the blood. It was a very disturbing piece.

  "I like it," Hal said.

  "Honey, that is just...well, it's..." Jacquie sighed. "Honey, it's hideous."

  "Yes, but I like it. It's one of a kind. This is...I don't know, Jesus the Vengeful. The angry. How often do you see that? By the way—" He turned to Markum. "—does it have a name?"

  "No. And I don't have any idea who carved it, either, or when," Markum said. "I must say, the work itself is quite remarkable, but...well...I was raised in the Church of Christ. I'm a secular humanist now, but growing up in the church like that...I don't know, it leaves something behind in you. It left something in me that just can't stomach this piece."

  "I understand," Hal said with a nod.

  "Where will you put it?" Jacquie said.

  "On the wall over the couch in the living room. I'll take down American Headless."

  American Headless was a print of a painting by Kristin Kingsbury. It was the first entry in a series of paintings called, collectively, Classic Dreams. American Headless was a replica of Grant Wood's American Gothic, in which a farm couple, a man and his older, unmarried daughter, stand before a house, the man holding a pitchfork, tines-up. But in Kingsbury's painting, the woman's head was impaled on the pitchfork, and the woman held the man's severed head cradled in the crook of her right arm. Their necks were blood-spurting stumps, as if they had just been decapitated. Hal had a Kingsbury print in almost every room in his house.

  He would replace American Headless with his new purchase, the heavy, nightmarish crucifix.

  "I think it'll look good there," Hal said. "Don't you?" He looked at Jacquie with raised eyebrows. She gave him a dubious look.

  He turned to Markum, who simply smiled and said, "If you say so."

  2.

  Jacquie took a couple of steps back and cocked her head to one side, her slender arms folded before her. "Well, I'm not going to say it ties the room together, or anything, but...it has...a certain...something. I guess. I think it's fortunate that we can't see the face from here. If the face were pointing forward, I would've advised against putting this thing in your living room. Are you happy with it there?"

  "Yes, I am," Hal said.

  "Good."

  Hal and Jacquie stood and stared at it, his arm around her shoulders, her head leaning against him.

  "It's a very strange thing to hang in your living room," Jacquie said.

  "No stranger than a painting of two bloody headless people."

  "No, but certainly more volatile."

  "Who am I going to invite over here who will be offended by it? I don't know any fundamentalist Christians."

  "What about your parents?"

  Hal chuckled. "My parents have been offended by everything I've done in my life ever since they found out I wasn't going to be a Baptist minister. They had their hearts set on it. I'm sure this won't surprise them. Besides, like you said, they can't see the face."

  "I'd think you'd be filled with a little more dread at the prospect of their seeing it."

  "They hardly ever come over. My mother thinks I'm a slob because I don't vacuum and dust the entire house every day. Dad doesn't like it over here because he knows I won't let him watch any televangelists on my TV."

  "I don't think you're being very realistic," Jacquie said with a slight frown. "They're going to completely freak when they see this thing, and you know it. Even though they can't see the face, there's still something...I don't know...something not right about it. Something almost...sinister. Your mother will probably have to be hospitalized."

  Hal laughed. "Either that or she'll think I've come back to Jesus and she'll be thrilled."

  She put her arms around him and nuzzled his neck. "Fortunately for me, you don't care, because if you did, you might not be with me."

  "If I cared what my parents thought, I probably never would have asked you out."

  She kissed him, stroked the back of his head with her left hand.

  "Your parents really wanted you to be a minister?" Jacquie said.

  "They imagined me with my own TV show."

  She chuckled.

  "I'm serious," he said. "They always imagined me with my own television show, my own singers, somebody on a big organ, and there I'd be in a shiny white suit standing before an auditorium full of people. They wanted me to be Rex Humbard when I grew up. He was their favorite televangelist. But all I ever wanted to be was an artist."

  "You're making a living at being an artist. You're very lucky."

  "Not talented?"

  She rolled her eyes. "Of course you're talented. But the world is full of starving talented people, which means you're one of the lucky talented people."

  He chuckled. "I'm a commercial artist at Meany and Bruckner Marketing. It's not quite the same thing as being an artist." Hal also had managed to get some work now and then illustrating limited edition hardcover horror novels for small-press publishers. His dream was to one day have an entire gallery exhibit devoted to his work. But he was not holding his breath.

  "Hey, you're still using your talent, you're still doing what you love to do, right?" Jacquie said.

  "Oh, I'm not complaining, not at all. You're right, I'm very lucky."

  "You still paint, too, and I hope you never stop." Jacquie had four of Hal's paintings hanging in her apartment across town. She was his biggest fan and cheerleader.

  "I don't paint as much as I'd like anymore." Hal had converted his once-cluttered, dusty attic into a studio, where he had planned to paint a few nights a week, although it had been more like a couple of nights a month lately.

  "Maybe the crucifix will bring you inspiration," Jacquie said.

  "Inspiration? I doubt it. Although it might bring me a nightmare or two."

  "I'm gonna head over to my place. Eric will be bringing my lamp over soon."

  "Let's do something later," Hal said. "Dinner and a movie?"

  "Sure. What do you want to see?"

  "Let me surprise you."

  "No horror movies. Please?"

  "No horror movies."

  Hal felt something rub against his right calf. He looked down and saw Grey, his long, sleek, part-Persian cat with a lush, shiny coat of steel-gray. Grey looked up at him with that beautiful face and those big green eyes, and he meowed once.

  "Grey wants to be fed," Hal said as he walked out to the porch. Jacquie trotted down the front walk to her Jetta, got in, and drove away.

  He stood on the porch a moment and breathed in the damp air. It had stopped raini
ng on the drive home and Whintsey Road was wet and spotted with puddles. Now, as Hal stood with his fingers stuffed into the back pockets of his jeans, it began to rain again. Lightly at first, just enough to make the leaves on the oak trees and shrubbery jitter and dance, but it picked up as he turned and went inside, and was soon a low, aggressive roar.

  They were having a long winter in northern California. Marin County and the entire bay area had been getting non-stop rain since last month. People were getting tired of it. Irritable, quick to anger. Even Jacquie, who was the most stable person Hal knew, had been tense. In March of last year, she had spent her free time in her sunny garden. This year, with the month half over, she waited impatiently for the rain to stop.

  It hurt Hal to see her feeling depressed, because, for one thing, there was nothing he could do about it and it made him feel helpless, and for another, he'd had his share of experience with that particular illness and wished it on no one. He was thrilled that the light worked. When the lack of sunlight was not getting her down, Jacquie was a vibrant, outgoing woman with a laugh that trumpeted through the air like the horn of a playful angel. She was a force of nature—holding hands with her was like holding hands with the wind. Embracing her as she held still was like holding a column of vibrating energy in his arms. This was not to say she was bouncing off the walls all the time or anything—she was a very calm, laid-back person. But it was there, that natural strength, that humming energy. Hal found that he derived strength from it. He had no doubt that Jacquie was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He'd already decided to ask her to move in with him, he simply had not found the right moment, the perfect moment. Because when he asked her to move in with him, he was also going to ask her to marry him. He thought it would be wise for them to live together for a little while first, though, just to make sure they were compatible. He'd been carrying her ring around with him for almost a month, just waiting for that right moment. Maybe it would come tonight, over dinner, or after dinner. He was tired of putting it off, so he would be looking for any perfect moment, not necessarily the perfect moment. Tonight sounded like as good a time as any. To be honest, he was eager to get it over with. He was tired of worrying over how he would react if she said no. In his mind—in his dreams—she'd already turned him down. Several times. Hal usually expected the worst, especially after he'd had plenty of time to worry about something, so by now, he was expecting her to say no, and he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, so yes, he decided it would definitely be tonight.

  Grey meowed again. Hal bent down and picked him up, carried him to the kitchen, talking to him the whole way.

  "You beautiful cat, you, how's my Grey-boy? Huh? How's my Grey-boy doing?"

  In the kitchen, he bent down and put Grey on the floor, then opened one of the cupboards over the counter. He removed a flat, round can of cat food—Ocean Whitefish and Shrimp this time—and hooked his finger in the round loop attached to the top of the can, then peeled the lid off. He tossed it in the garbage under the sink. Took a fork from the drawer, bent down, and scooped the cat food into his bowl, which was black and read in silver letters on the side, Grey. There was a bowl of water next to the food. Grey's litter box was kept out in the garage, and there was a little cat-door in the bottom of the door in the kitchen that led out to the garage. Grey was devoted to indoor living. Even when he went out to the garage when the big door was wide open, he never left the garage. Instead, he went back into the house when he was done with his business. Hal liked that. Indoor cats lived years longer than outdoor cats. He was very attached to Grey—he'd had the cat since Grey was a kitten—and wanted to have him around as long as possible. Grey's favorite spot was in the living room, curled up in Hal's recliner, from which he frequently watched television. When Hal was sitting there, Grey spent a great deal of time in his lap. Hal liked that, too. Grey's second favorite spot was the bed in Hal's bedroom. Grey slept with him every night, and when Jacquie was there, Grey slept tucked between them, sometimes on his back, his big paws in the air with their tufts of fur growing out between the pads of his feet. Grey entertained himself by tossing a catnip-stuffed mouse-toy into the air with his mouth, then diving after it, picking it up off the floor in his teeth and throwing it again, diving for it again, over and over.

  Grey had been in Hal's life longer than Jacquie, so it had been very important to Hal that the two of them get along, because if Hal had to choose between them—well, that would be unfortunate, he decided. The first few times Jacquie came to his house, Grey would not come out of the bedroom, where he hid. He was a very skittish cat, quite picky about whom he showered with affection. Finally, when Jacquie kept coming back, Grey became curious. First, he spent a lot of time cautiously sniffing her. The whole time she was there one night, Grey followed her around wherever she went in the house, sniffing her.

  "This is kind of giving me the creeps, Hal," Jacquie had said.

  "Don't worry, it won't go on much longer. He's just processing all of your many and varied odors. Soon as he's done doing that, he'll be fine. Might even jump in your lap. It's just that cats are very particular about whom they accept, whom they show affection to—if you were someone who hated cats, Grey would know, and he'd probably never come out of the bedroom while you were here. Obviously, you don't hate cats."

  "I love cats," she'd said.

  Hal had smiled. "Then you two should get along well."

  So far, they had. When Jacquie sat on the couch, Grey liked to climb up and get behind her head and just stretch out over her shoulders with the back of the couch to lean against.

  "It's like wearing this big heavy fur," Jacquie had said as she stroked Grey's silky coat. "He's so long and slinky—it's like wearing this really plush kitty stole."

  Hal was ecstatic to see them get along so well. It was a big relief. And whenever he looked over and saw Jacquie sitting there with Grey curled up in her lap, her hand gently stroking his coat—the sight of it made him feel at home.

  3.

  Hal put on, for the first time, a charcoal Armani suit he'd purchased a couple months earlier with a surprise royalty check he'd received for a book cover he'd illustrated. He arrived at her place at seven, and when he saw her, he did not want to go out—he wanted to take her straight to bed.

  "Uh-uh-uh," she said with a demure smile when he moved in and began nibbling on her neck. "We're saving that for later tonight."

  She wore a black-and-red dress with a long skirt, slit up the right side to her hip, showing flashes of her entire long, pale leg. Tiny red gems glimmered in her silver necklace which ended just between the tops of her breasts, and more sparkled in her matching earrings.

  He drove them through the rain in his Taurus, out of their small San Francisco suburb and into the City itself, to Chinatown. There and then, he decided as he parked that he would ask her that night. He decided that, because he found a perfect parking space at the curb without having to drive around the block once. The stars were all in proper alignment, and this would be the perfect night to pop the question—well, questions, actually.

  Hal had called that afternoon and made reservations at Snow Garden, a popular Chinese restaurant. They were seated in a curtained booth in the rear of the restaurant, where they ordered, then leaned close to each other over the square table, all four hands joined.

  "The lamp looks perfect in my apartment," Jacquie said.

  "It does?"

  "Yes. I'm so glad I bought it."

  "How do you think it would look in my place?" Hal said with a smile.

  Jacquie's smile slowly crumbled and a frown cut vertical razor-slices into her forehead. "What?" she said. "What...I don't under...what do you mean?"

  He chuckled and said, "Just what I said—how do you think the lamp would look in my place."

  "You...you want me to give you the lamp? Is that what you're saying?"

  Hal laughed and shook his head. "No, no, that's not what I—" He laughed some m
ore. "I was just asking, in a roundabout way, I guess, if you'd like to move in with me."

  "Okay, let me make sure I've got this straight—you're not going to take my lamp?"

  He laughed some more. "No, I'm not going to take your lamp. I just want you to move in with me. I think we should try living together for awhile, see if we can get along, see if we're a good fit."

  Her frown disappeared and her eyes got a little wider. "You're serious?"

  "Yes, I'm very serious. See, I think it's important that a couple live together first."

  She frowned again. "You're confusing me. What do you mean, first?"

  Hal reached into his right suitcoat pocket and removed the black velvet box, put it on the table, and opened it as he said, just above a whisper, "Will you marry me, Jacquie?"

  Jacquie's gasp was so loud that people outside their closed booth suddenly turned and stared at the curtains drawn around them. One woman dropped her chopsticks.

  Jacquie slapped both hands over her mouth as she let out a yelp, staring at the glimmering ring with eyes bulging.

  "Oh. My. Gawd!" she finally said. "You just—I can't believe—you just, just, right there, you just asked it!"

  Unable to hold back his grin, Hal nodded as he reached out and took her hand in his. He pulled it to his mouth and kissed it, and said, "Yes, I did. I said it, and I meant it, Jacquie. I love you." He kissed her hand again, then lowered it to the table, but did not let go of it. "Are you going to answer?"

  "Oh, of course, of—I mean, yes—I mean, the answer is yes. Yes!"

  Hal scooted out of his side of the booth and she did the same, and from outside the booth, people saw the curtain flutter and bulge, while inside, they kissed.

  4.

  They went to the new Bruce Willis movie, a big-budget action flick that made the theater floor grumble with the sounds of its explosions and exaggerated gunfire.

  Hal and Jacquie saw none of it. They kissed like a couple of teenagers who thought it was time to make out because the lights went off. He slid his right hand beneath the red coat with the black fur collar and squeezed Jacquie's left breast over the silk of her dress. Their kisses were, on occasion, interrupted by breathy giggles with their mouths together, and when one of them giggled, the other one giggled, until they were giggling into each other's mouths.