Joe Hill - Horns

Terry came through the bushes, saw Iggy, and put on the brakes. Eric Hannity was right behind him and ran into him so hard he almost knocked him down. By now almost twenty boys were gathered around.

Ig sat up, drawing his knees close to his chest. He looked at Lee again and opened his mouth to speak, but when he tried, there was a bitter snap of pain in his nose, as if it were being broken all over again. He hunched and snorted a red splash of blood onto the dirt.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Sorry about the blood.”

“I thought you were dead. You looked a little dead. You weren’t breathing.” Lee was shivering.

“Well,” Ig said, “I’m breathing now. Thank you.”

“What’d he do?” Terry asked.

“He pulled me out,” Ig said, gesturing at Lee’s soaked shorts. “He got me breathing again.”

“You swam in for him?” Terry said.

“No,” Lee said. He blinked, seemed utterly baffled, as if Terry had asked him a much more difficult question: the capital of Iceland, the state flower. “He was already in the shallows by the time I saw him. I didn’t swim out for him or…or anything really. He was already-”

“He pulled me out,” Ig said over him, would have none of Lee’s stammering humility. He remembered quite clearly the feeling of someone in the water with him, moving close beside him. “I wasn’t breathing.”

“And you did mouth-to-mouth?” Eric Hannity asked, with unmistakable incredulity.

Lee shook his head, still confused. “No. No, it wasn’t like that. All I did was smack his back when he, you know…when he was…” He floundered there, didn’t seem to know how to go on.

Ig continued, “That’s what made me cough it up. I swallowed most of the river. My whole chest was full of it, and he pounded it out of me.” He spoke through gritted teeth. The pain in his nose was a series of sharp, bitter shocks, little electrical jolts. They even seemed to have color; when he closed his eyes, he saw neon-yellow flashes.

The gathered boys looked upon Ig and Lee Tourneau with a quiet, dumbstruck wonder. What had just transpired was a thing that happened only in daydreams and TV shows. Someone had been about to die, and someone else had rescued him, and now the saved and the savior were marked as special, stars in their own movie, which made the rest of them extras, or supporting cast at best. To have actually saved a life was to have become someone. You were no longer Joe Schmo, you were Joe Schmo who pulled Ig Perrish naked out of the Knowles River the day he almost drowned. You would be that person for the rest of your life.

For himself, looking up into Lee’s face, Ig felt the first bud of obsession beginning to open in him. He had been saved. He had been about to die, and this pale-haired boy with questioning blue eyes had brought him back. In evangelical churches you went to the river and were submerged and then lifted up into your new life, and it seemed to Ig now that Lee had saved him in this sense as well. Ig wanted to buy him something, to give him something, to find out his favorite rock band so it could be Ig’s favorite rock band, too. He wanted to do Lee’s homework for him.

There was noisy crashing in the brush, as if someone were driving a golf cart toward them. Then the girl, Glenna, appeared among them, out of breath, her face blotchy. She bent at the waist, put one hand on her round thigh, and gasped, “Jesus. Look at his face.” Her gaze shifted to Lee, and her brow furrowed. “Lee? What are you doing?”

“He pulled Ig out of the water,” Terry said.

“He got me breathing,” Ig said.

“Lee?” she asked, screwing up her face in an expression that suggested utter disbelief.

“I didn’t do anything,” Lee said, shaking his head, and Ig could not help but love him.

The pain that had been beating in the bridge of Ig’s nose had flowered, opening behind his forehead, between his eyes, penetrating deeper into the brain. He was beginning to see those neon-yellow flashes even with his eyes open. Terry sank down on one knee at his side, put a hand on his arm.

“We better get you dressed and back home,” Terry said. He sounded chastened in some way, as if he, and not Ig, were guilty of idiot recklessness. “I think your nose is broken.” He looked up then at Lee Tourneau and gave him a brief nod of acknowledgment. “Hey. Looks like maybe I was full of shit back on the hill. Sorry about what I said a couple minutes ago. Thanks for helping my brother out.”

Lee said, “Skip it. It’s not worth making a big deal.” Ig almost shivered at the calm cool of it, his unwillingness to bask in the appreciation of others.

“Will you come with us?” Ig asked Lee, gritting his teeth against the pain. He looked at Glenna. “Both of you? I want to tell my parents what Lee did.”

Terry said, “Hey, Ig. Let’s not and say we did. We don’t want Mom and Dad to know this happened. You fell out of a tree, okay? There was a slippery branch, and you face-planted. That’s just…just easier.”

“Terry. We have to tell them. I’d be drowned if he didn’t pull me out.”

Ig’s brother opened his mouth to argue, but Lee Tourneau beat him to the punch.

“No,” he said, almost sharply, and looked up at Glenna with wide eyes. She stared back at him with much the same look and grabbed strangely at her black leather jacket. Then he was on his feet. “I’m not supposed to be here. I didn’t do anything anyway.” He hurried across the little clearing to grab Glenna’s chubby hand and tug her toward the trees. With his other hand, he carried his brand-new mountain board.

“Wait,” Ig said, getting to his feet. When he stood, a bright neon flash burst behind his eyes, carrying with it a feeling like he had a nose full of packed broken glass.

“I got to go. We both got to go.”

“Well. Will you come over to the house sometime?”

“Sometime.”

“Do you know where it is? It’s on the highway, just about-”

“Everyone knows where it is,” Lee said, and then he was gone, billygoating away through the trees, pulling Glenna after him. She cast a final, distressed look back at the boys before allowing herself to be led off.

The pain in Ig’s nose was more intense now and coming in steady, rolling waves. He cupped his hands to his face for a moment, and when he took them away, his palms were painted in crimson.

“Come on, Ig,” Terry said. “We better go. You need to see a doctor about your face.”

“You and me both,” Ig said.

Terry smiled and tugged Ig’s shirt loose from the ball of laundry he was holding. Ig was startled to see it, had forgotten, until that moment, that he was standing there naked. Terry pulled it on over Ig’s head, dressing him as if he were five and not fifteen.

“Probably need a surgeon to remove Mom’s foot from my ass, too. She’ll be ready to kill me after she gets a look at you,” Terry said. As Ig’s head came through the shirt hole, he found his brother peering into his face with unmistakable anxiety. “You aren’t going to tell, are you? For real, Ig. She’d murder me for letting you ride that fucking cart down the hill. Sometimes it’s just better not to tell.”

“Oh, man, I’m no good at lying. Mom always knows. She knows the second I open my mouth.”

Terence looked relieved. “So who said open your mouth? You’re in pain. Just stand there and cry. Leave the bullshit to me. It’s what I’m good at.”

LEE TOURNEAU WAS SHIVERING and soaking wet the next time Ig saw him as well, two days later. He wore the same tie, the same shorts, had his mountain board under one arm. It was as if he’d never dried off, as if he’d only just waded out of the Knowles.