Joe Hill - Horns

Ig moved to a position higher on the slope, where he had a better view of both the sandbar and the bridge, and that was when he saw Dale Williams. Merrin’s father stood at the railing among the other onlookers, a pasty man with a buzz cut, in a striped, short-sleeved shirt.

The sight of the nuked car seemed to hold Dale fascinated. He leaned against the rusted railing, his fat fingers entwined, staring at it with a stricken, empty expression on his face. Maybe the cops didn’t know what they’d found, but Dale did. Dale knew cars, had sold them for twenty years, and he knew this car. He hadn’t just sold it to Ig, he’d helped Ig fix it up and had seen it in his driveway almost every night for six years. Ig could not imagine what Dale saw now, looking over the bridge at the fire-blackened ruin of the Gremlin on the sandbar and believing that his daughter had taken her last drive in it.

There were cars parked along the bridge and on the sides of the road at either end of the span. Dale stood on the eastern tip of the bridge. Ig began to cross the hill, angling through the trees toward the road.

Dale was moving, too. For a long time, he had simply been standing there staring at the burned-out shell of the Gremlin, the water pouring off it. What finally broke him out of his trance was the sight of a cop-it was Sturtz-coming up the hill to provide some crowd control. Dale began to squeeze by the other onlookers, making his slow water-buffalo way off the bridge.

As Ig reached the verge of the road, he spotted Dale’s ride, a blue BMW station wagon; Ig knew it was his by the dealer plates. It was parked in the gravel breakdown lane, in the shadow of a stand of pines. Ig stepped briskly from the woods and climbed into the back, shut the door behind him, and sat there with his pitchfork across his knees.

The rear windows were tinted, but it hardly mattered. Dale was in a hurry and didn’t glance into the backseat. Ig understood he might not want to be seen hanging around. If you made a list of the people in Gideon who would most want to see Ig Perrish burned alive, Dale would definitely be in the top five. The car salesman opened the door and dropped behind the wheel.

He took his glasses off with one hand, covered his eyes with the other. For a while he just sat there, his breathing ragged and soft. Ig waited, not wanting to interrupt.

There were pictures taped to the dash. One was of Jesus, an oil painting, Jesus with his golden beard and his swept-back golden hair, staring, in an inspired sort of way, into the sky while shafts of golden light broke through the clouds behind him. “Blessed are they that mourn,” read the caption, “for they shall be comforted.” Taped next to it was a picture of Merrin at ten, sitting behind her father on the back of his motorcycle. She wore aviator goggles and a white helmet with red stars and blue racing lines on it, and her arms were around him. A handsome woman with cherry-red hair stood behind the bike, one hand on Merrin’s helmet, smiling for the camera. At first Ig thought it was Merrin’s mother, then realized she was too young and that it had to be Merrin’s sister, the one who’d died when they lived in Rhode Island. Two daughters, both gone. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be kicked in the nuts as soon as they try to get back up. That wasn’t in the Bible, but maybe it should’ve been.

When Dale regained control of himself, he reached for the keys and started the car, pulled out onto the road with a last sidelong glance in the driver’s-side mirror. He swiped at his cheeks with his wrists, stuck his glasses back on his face. He drove for a while. Then he kissed his thumb and touched it to the little girl in the photo of the motorcycle.

“That was his car, Mary,” he said, his name for Merrin. “All burned up. I think he’s gone. I think the bad man is gone.”

Ig put one hand on the driver’s seat and the other on the passenger seat and hoisted himself between them, sliding up front to sit next to Dale.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Ig said. “Only the good die young, I’m afraid.”

As Ig climbed forward into view, Dale made a gobbling noise of fright and jerked at the wheel. They swerved hard to the right, into the gravel breakdown lane. Ig fell hard against the dash and almost crashed to the floor. He could hear rocks clanging and bashing against the undercarriage. Then the car was in park and Dale was out of it and running up the road, running and screaming.

Ig pushed himself up. He couldn’t make sense of it. No one else screamed and ran when they saw the horns. Sometimes they wanted to kill him, but no one screamed and ran.

Dale reeled up the center of the road, looking back over his shoulder at the station wagon and uttering vaguely birdlike cries. A woman in a Sentra blasted her horn at him as she blew by-Get the hell out of the road. Dale staggered to the edge of the highway, a thin strip of dirt crumbling off into a weedy ditch. The earth gave way under Dale’s right foot, and he went tumbling down.

Ig got behind the wheel and rolled slowly after him.

He pulled alongside as Dale rose unsteadily to his feet. Dale began to run once again, in the ditch now. Ig pressed the button to lower the passenger-side window and leaned across the seat to call out to him.

“Mr. Williams,” Ig said, “get in the car.”

Dale didn’t slow down but ran on, gasping for breath, clutching at his heart. Sweat gleamed on his jowls. There was a split in the back of his pants.

“Get away!” Dale cried, his words blurring together. Geddway. “Gedawayalp!” He said it twice more before Ig realized that “alp” was panic-ese for “help.”

Ig looked blankly at the picture of Christ taped to the dash, as if hoping Big J might have some advice for him, which was when he remembered the cross. He looked down at it, hanging between his clavicles, resting lightly on his bare chest. Lee had not been able to see the horns while he wore the cross; it stood to reason that if Ig was wearing the cross, no one could see them or feel their effects, an astonishing proposition, a cure for his condition. To Dale Williams, Ig was himself: the sex murderer who had bashed his daughter’s head in with a rock and who had just climbed out of the backseat in a skirt, armed with a pitchfork. The golden cross looped about Ig’s throat was his own humanity, burning brightly in the morning light.

But his humanity was of no use to him, not in this situation or any other. It had been of no use to him since the night Merrin was taken. Was, in fact, a weakness. Now that he was used to it, he far preferred being a demon. The cross was a symbol of that most human condition: suffering. And Ig was sick of suffering. If someone had to get nailed to a tree, he wanted to be the one holding the hammer. He pulled over, unclasped the cross, and put it in the glove compartment. Then he sat up straight behind the wheel again.

He sped up to get ahead of Dale, then stopped the car. He reached behind him and awkwardly lifted the pitchfork from the back and got out. Dale was just stumbling past, down in the ditch, up to his ankles in muddy water. Ig took two steps after him and threw the pitchfork. It hit the marshy water in front of him, and Dale shrieked. He tried to go back too quickly and sat down with a great splash. He paddled about, scrambling to find his feet. The pole of the pitchfork stood straight up from the shallow water, shivering from the force of its impact.

Ig slid down the embankment, with all the grace of a snake greasing its way through wet leaves, and grabbed the pitchfork before Dale could stand. He jerked it free from the mud and pointed the business end at him. There was a crawfish stuck to one of the tines, writhing in its death throes.

“Enough running. Get in the car. We have a lot to talk about.”