Joe Hill - Horns

Merrin pushed her wrist into her stomach, as if just the thought of Ig caused her physical pain.

“I d-don’t know. He left.”

“You told him?” Lee asked.

Merrin turned her head to look out at The Pit, but Lee could see her reflection in the glass, could see her chin dimpling with the effort it took not to cry. She was shivering helplessly, so her knees almost knocked.

“How’d he take it?” Lee asked, couldn’t help himself.

She gave a quick shake of the head and said, “Can we just go?”

Lee nodded and pulled out into the road, swinging the car back the way they’d come. He saw the rest of the evening as a set of clearly ordered steps: drop Terry at home, then drive her to his house without discussion, tell her she needed to get out of her wet things and into a shower, in the same calm, decisive voice she’d told him to get into the shower the morning his mother died. Only when he brought her a drink, he would gently draw the curtain aside to look at her in the spray and would already be undressed himself.

“Hey, girl,” Terry said. “You want my jacket?”

Lee shot an irritated look into the rearview at Terry, had been so preoccupied with thoughts of Merrin in the shower that he’d half forgotten Terry was there. He felt a low current of loathing for smooth, funny, famous, good-looking, and basically dull-witted Terry, who had ridden a minimal talent, family connections, and a well-known last name to wealth and his pick of the finest pussy in the country. It made sense to try to twist Terry’s faucet, see if there wasn’t a way to make him pour some celebrity the congressman’s way, or at least some money; but in truth Lee had never much liked him, a loudmouth and an attention hog who had gone out of his way to humiliate Lee in front of Glenna Nicholson the very first day they met. It sickened him, watching the oily fuck turn on the charm for his brother’s girlfriend, not ten minutes after they broke up, as if he were entitled, as if he had any right. Lee reached for the air conditioner, annoyed with himself for not turning it off sooner.

“’S all right,” Merrin said, but Terry was already handing his coat forward. “Thank you, Terry.” Her tone so ingratiating and needy that Lee wanted to backhand her. Merrin had her qualities, but fundamentally she was a woman like other women, aroused and submissive in the face of status and money. Take away the trust fund and the family name and Lee doubted she ever would’ve looked at sorry Ig Perrish twice. “You m-must think-”

“I don’t think anything. Relax.”

“Ig-”

“I’m sure Ig is fine. Don’t worry yourself.”

She was still trembling, hard-a little bit of a turn-on, actually, the way her breasts were quivering-but she pivoted to reach a hand into the backseat. “Are you all right?” When she drew her hand back, Lee saw blood on her fingertips. “You ought to have some g-gauze for that.”

“It’s fine. No worries,” Terry said, and Lee wanted to backhand him. Instead he pushed down on the pedal, in a hurry to dump Terry at his house, get him out of the picture as quickly as possible.

The Cadillac rose and fell, swooping along the wet road and swaying around the curves. Merrin hugged herself under the robe of Terry’s coat, still shivering furiously, her bright, stricken eyes staring out from the tangled nest of her hair, a mess of wet red straw. All at once she reached up and put one hand against the dash, her arm stiff and straight, as if they were about to pitch off the road.

“Merrin, are you all right?”

She shook her head. “No. Y-yes. I-Lee, please pull over. Pull over here.” Her voice was thin with tension.

When he glanced at her again, he saw she was going to be sick. The night was shriveling around him, slipping beyond control. She was going to puke in the Caddy, a thought that frankly appalled him. His favorite thing about his mother’s illness and subsequent death was that it left him sole right of the Cadillac, and if Merrin threw up in it, he was going to be pissed. You couldn’t get the smell out no matter what you did.

He saw the turnoff to the old foundry coming up on the right, and he veered off the road into it, still going too fast. The front right tire bit into the dirt at the shoulder of the road and flung the back end out to the side, not the thing you wanted to do with a sick girl in the passenger seat. Still decelerating, he pointed the Caddy up the rutted gravel fire lane, brush swatting at the sides of the car, rocks pinging against the undercarriage. A chain stretched across the road rose in the headlights, rushed toward them, and Lee kept the pressure on the brakes, slowing steadily, evenly. At last the Caddy whined to a soft stop, bumper right against the chain.

Merrin opened the door and made an angry retching sound, almost like a wet cough. Lee slammed it into park. He felt a little tremulous himself, with irritation, and made a conscious effort to regain his inner calm. If he was going to get her into the shower tonight, he was going to have to take it a step at a time, lead her by the hand. He could do it, could steer her where they were both headed anyway, but he had to get control of himself, of the wilting night. Nothing had happened yet that couldn’t be fixed.

He stepped out and came around the car, the rain plopping around him, dampening the back and shoulders of his shirt. Merrin had her feet on the ground and her head between her knees. The storm was already tapering off, just dripping quietly in the leaves overhanging the dirt road now.

“You all right?” he asked. She nodded. He went on, “Let’s take Terry home, and then I want you to come over to my place and tell me what happened. I’ll fix you a drink, and you can unload. That’ll make you feel better.”

“No. No thank you. I just want to be alone right now. I need to do some thinking.”

“You don’t want to be alone tonight. In your state of mind, that’d be the worst thing. Hey, and look. You have to come to my place. I fixed your cross. I want to put it on you.”

“No, Lee. I just want to go home and get into some dry things and be by myself.”

He felt another flash of annoyance-it was just like her to think she could put him off indefinitely, to expect him to pick her up from The Pit and dutifully drive her where she wanted to go with nothing in return-and then he pushed the feeling aside. He eyed her in her wet skirt and blouse, shivering steadily, then went around to the trunk. He got his gym duffel, brought it back, and offered it to her.

“Got gym clothes. Shirt. Pants. They’re dry and they’re warm, and there’s no sick on them.”

She hesitated, then took the strap of the bag and rose from the car. “Thank you, Lee.” Not meeting his eyes.

He didn’t let go of the bag, held on to it, held on to her for a moment, kept her from striding away into the night to change. “You had to do it, you know. It was crazy, thinking that you could-that either of you could-”

She said, “I just want to change, okay?” She tugged the bag out of his hand.

Merrin turned and walked stiffly away, her tight skirt stuck to her thighs. She passed through the headlights, and her blouse went as clear as waxed paper. She stepped around the chain and continued on into the dark, up the road. But before she disappeared, she turned her head and gave Lee a frowning look, one eyebrow raised in a way that seemed to ask a question-or offer an invitation. Follow me. Then she was gone.

Lee lit a cigarette and smoked it, standing next to the car, wondering if it would be all right to go after her, not sure he wanted to head into the woods with Terry watching. But in a minute or two, he checked and saw that Terry had stretched out across the backseat with an arm over his eyes. He had rapped his head good, had a red scrape close to the right temple, and he’d been pretty out of it even before that, as baked as a Thanksgiving turkey. It was funny, being out here at the foundry, where he had first met Terry Perrish the day he blew up the big frozen bird with Eric Hannity. He remembered Terry’s joint and felt in his pocket for it. Maybe a couple tokes would settle Merrin’s stomach and make her less shrill.