Joe Hill - Horns

Glenna rattled her fingernails against the window. They were painted the color of ice, long and pointed, witch fingernails. He looked again at his mother but could see in a glance he wouldn’t be missed. Lydia was wrapped up in what she was saying, shaping something in the air, the perfect head of hair or maybe an imaginary sphere, a crystal ball, and in the ball was a future in which the nineteen-year-old hairdresser received a big tip if she could just stand there and nod her head and chew her gum and let Lydia tell her how to do her job.

When Ig came outside, Glenna had turned her back to the window and planted her firm, round bottom against the glass. She was staring at Highway to Hell and his long-haired buddy. They stood with the trash can between them and a garbage bag pulled open. The long-haired kid kept reaching up to touch Highway to Hell’s face, tenderly almost. He laughed a big, goofy guffaw every time the kid caressed him.

“Why did you give Lee that cross?” Glenna said.

It jolted Ig-of all the things she could’ve said. He had been asking himself the same question for over a week.

“He said he was going to fix it,” Ig said.

“It’s fixed. So why doesn’t he give it back?”

“It isn’t mine. It’s-This girl dropped it in church. I was going to fix it and give it back, but I couldn’t, and Lee said he could with his dad’s tools, and now he’s wearing it in case he runs into her when he’s going door-to-door for his charity.”

“His charity,” she said, and snorted. “You ought to ask for it back. You should ask for your CDs back, too.”

“He doesn’t have any music.”

“He doesn’t want any music,” Glenna said. “If he wanted some, he’d get himself some.”

“I don’t know. CDs are pretty expensive and-”

“So? He’s not poor, you know,” Glenna said. “He lives in Harmon Gates. My dad does their yard work. That’s how I know him. My dad sent me over there to plant peonies one day by myself. Lee’s parents have plenty of money. Did he tell you he can’t afford CDs?”

It disoriented Ig, the idea that Lee lived in Harmon Gates, had a man to do his yard work, a mother. A mother especially. “His parents live together?”

“It doesn’t seem like it sometimes, because his mother works at Exeter Hospital and has a really long commute and isn’t around so much. It’s probably better that way. Lee and his mom don’t get along.”

Ig shook his head. It was like Glenna was talking about a completely different person, someone Ig didn’t know. He had formed a very clear picture of Lee Tourneau’s life, the trailer he shared with his pickup-driving father, the mother who had disappeared when he was a child to smoke crack and sell herself in the Combat Zone down in Boston. Lee had never told Iggy that he lived in a trailer or that his mother was a drug-addicted hoor, but Ig felt that these things were implied by Lee’s view of the world, by the subjects he never discussed.

“Did he tell you he doesn’t have any money for things?” Glenna asked again.

Ig shook his head.

“I didn’t think,” she said. She toed a stone on the ground for a moment, then looked up and said, “Is she prettier than me?”

“Who?”

“The girl from church. The girl who used to wear that cross.”

Ig tried to think what to say, mentally flailing for some graceful and considerate lie-but he had never been any good at lying, and his silence was a kind of answer in and of itself.

“Yeah,” Glenna said, smiling ruefully. “I thought so.”

Ig looked away from her, too distressed by that unhappy smile to maintain eye contact. Glenna seemed all right, direct and no bullshit.

Highway to Hell and the long-haired kid were laughing over the trash can-the loud, sharp cries of crows. Ig had no idea why.

“Do you know a car you could set fire to,” Ig said, “and get away with it? Not like a car someone owns. Just a wreck?”

“Why?”

“Lee wants to set fire to a car.”

She frowned, trying to figure out why Ig had shifted the conversation to this. Then she looked at Highway to Hell. “Gary’s dad, my uncle, has a bunch of junkers in the woods, out behind his house in Derry. He’s got a home auto-parts business. Or at least he says he has an auto-parts business. I don’t know if he’s ever had any customers.”

“You should mention them to Lee sometime,” Ig said.

A fist rapped on the glass behind him, and both of them turned to look up at Ig’s mother. Lydia smiled down at Glenna and lifted one hand in a stiff little wave, then shifted her gaze to Ig and opened her eyes in a wide, strained look of impatience. He nodded, but when his mother turned her back to them, Ig did not immediately move to reenter the salon.

Glenna cocked her head to an inquisitive angle. “So if we get some arson going, you want in?”

“No. Not really. You kids have fun.”

“You kids,” she said, and her smile broadened. “What are you going to do with your hair?”

“I don’t know. Probably what I always do.”

“You ought to shave it off,” she said. “Go bald. You’d look cool.”

“Huh? No. No, my mom.”

“Well, you ought to at least clip it short and punk it up. Bleach the tips or something. Your hair is part of who you are. Don’t you want to be someone interesting?” She reached out and ruffed up his hair. “You could be someone interesting with a little effort.”

“I don’t think I get a say. My mom is going to want me to stick with what works.”

“Ah, that’s too bad. I like me some crazy hair myself,” Glenna said.

“Yeah?” said Gary, aka Highway to Hell. “You’re going to fucking love my ass.”

They both swiveled their heads to look at Highway to Hell and the long-haired boy, who had just wandered over from the trash can. They had collected hair clippings from the garbage and glued them to Gary’s face, making a tufty reddish brown beard of the sort van Gogh wore in his self-portraits. It didn’t match with the blue bristle of Gary’s shaved head.

Glenna’s face shriveled in a look of pain. “Oh, God. That ain’t going to fool anyone, you asshole.”

“Give me your jacket,” Gary said. “I put your jacket on, I bet I could pass for at least twenty.”

Glenna said, “You could pass for retarded. And you aren’t getting arrested in this jacket.”

Ig said, “That really is a nice jacket.”

Glenna gave him a mysteriously miserable look. “Lee gave it to me. He’s a very generous person.”

LEE OPENED HIS MOUTH to say something, then changed his mind and closed it.

“What?” Ig asked.

Lee opened his mouth again and closed it and opened it and said, “I like that rat-a-tat-tat Glenn Miller song. You could make a corpse dance to that song.”

Ig nodded and didn’t reply.

They were in the pool, because August was back. No more rain, no more unseasonable cool. It was almost a hundred degrees, not a cloud in the sky, and Lee was wearing a strip of white suntan lotion down the bridge of his nose to keep it from burning. Ig was in a life ring, and Lee hung off an inflatable pool mattress, the both of them floating in the tepid water, so heavily chlorinated that the fumes stung their eyes. It was too hot to horse around.

The cross still hung from Lee’s neck. It was spread out on the mattress, stretching away from his throat and toward Ig-as if Ig’s stare had the power of magnetism and was tugging it in his direction. The sun caught it and flashed gold in Ig’s eyes, producing a steady staccato signal. Ig didn’t need to know Morse code to know what it was signaling him now. It was Saturday, and Merrin Williams would be in church tomorrow. Last chance, the cross flashed. Last chance, last chance.