Joe Hill - Horns

Dale sat breathing strenuously in the muck. He looked up the shaft of the pitchfork and squinted into Ig’s face. He shaded his eyes with one hand. “You got rid of your hair.” Paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, “And grew horns. Jesus. What are you?”

“What’s it look like?” Ig asked. “Devil in a blue dress.”

I KNEW IT WAS YOUR CAR right away,” Dale said, behind the wheel and driving again. He was calm now, at peace with his own private demon. “Soon as I looked at it, I knew someone had set fire to it and pushed it into the river. And I thought you were probably in it at the time, and I felt…felt so…”

“Happy?”

“Sorry. I felt sorry.”

“Really?”

“That I wasn’t the one who did it.”

“Ah,” Ig said, looking away.

Ig held the pitchfork between his knees, the tines sticking into the fabric of the roof, but after they’d been driving for a bit, Dale seemed to forget about it. The horns were doing what they did, playing their secret music, and as long as Ig wasn’t wearing the cross, Dale was helpless not to dance along.

“I was too scared to kill you. I had a gun. I bought it just to shoot you. But the closest I ever came to killing anyone with it was myself. I put it in my mouth one night to see how it tasted.” He was silent briefly, remembering, then added, “It tasted bad.”

“I’m glad you didn’t shoot yourself, Mr. Williams.”

“I was scared to do that, too. Not because I’m afraid I’ll go to hell for committing suicide. It’s because I’m afraid I won’t go to hell…that there isn’t a hell to go to. No heaven either. Just nothing. Mostly I think there must be nothing after we die. Sometimes that seems like it would be a relief. Other times it’s the most awful thing I can imagine. I don’t believe a merciful God would’ve taken both my little girls from me. One from the cancer and the other killed out in the woods that way. I don’t think a God worth praying to would’ve put either of them through what they went through. Heidi still prays. She prays like you wouldn’t believe. She’s been praying for you to die, Ig, for a year now. When I saw your car in the river I thought…I thought…well. God finally came through on something. But no. No, Mary is gone forever, and you’re still here. You’re still here. You’re…you’re…the fucking devil.” Panting for breath. Struggling to go on.

“You make that sound like a bad thing,” Ig said. “Turn left. Let’s go to your house.”

The trees growing alongside the road delineated an avenue of bright and cloudless blue sky. It was a nice day for a drive.

“You said we have things to discuss,” Dale said. “But what could we possibly have to talk about, Ig? What did you want to tell me?”

“I wanted to tell you that I don’t know if I loved Merrin as much as you did, but I loved her as much as I knew how. And I didn’t kill her. The story I told the police, about passing out drunk behind Dunkin’ Donuts, was true. Lee Tourneau picked Merrin up from in front of The Pit. He drove her to the foundry. He killed her there.” After a beat, Ig added, “I don’t expect you to believe me.” Except: He did. Maybe not right away, but soon enough. Ig was very persuasive these days. People would believe almost any awful thing their private devil told them. In this case it was true, but Ig suspected that if he wanted to, he could probably convince Dale that Merrin had been killed by clowns who had picked her up from The Pit in their teeny-tiny clown car. It wasn’t fair. But then, fighting fair was what the old Ig did.

However, Dale surprised him, said, “Why should I believe you? Give me a reason.”

Ig reached over and put his hand on Dale’s bare forearm for a moment, then took it away.

“I know that after your father died, you visited his mistress in Lowell and paid her two thousand dollars to go away. And you warned her if she ever called your mother drunk again, you’d go looking for her, and when you found her, you’d knock her teeth in. I know you had a one-night stand with a secretary at the dealership, at the Christmas party, the year before Merrin died. I know you once belted Merrin in the mouth for calling her mother a bitch. That’s probably the thing in your life you feel worst about. I know you haven’t loved your wife for going on ten years. I know about the bottle in the bottom left-hand desk drawer at work, and the skin magazines at home in the garage, and the brother you don’t talk to because you can’t stand that his children are alive and yours are dead and-”

“Stop. Stop it.”

“I know about Lee the same way I know about you,” Ig said. “When I touch people, I know things. Stuff I shouldn’t know. And people tell me things. Talk about the things they want to do. They can’t help themselves.”

“The bad things,” Dale said, rubbing two fingers against his right temple, stroking it gently. “Only they don’t seem so bad when I look at you. They seem like they might be…fun. Like I’ve been thinking how when Heidi gets on her knees to pray tonight, I ought to sit on the bed in front of her and tell her to blow me while she’s down there. Or the next time she tells me God doesn’t give anyone burdens they can’t bear, I could slug her one. Hit her again and again until that bright look of faith goes out of her eyes.”

“No. You aren’t going to do that.”

“Or it might be good to skip work this afternoon. Lie down for an hour or two in the dark.”

“That’s better.”

“Have a nap and then put the gun in my mouth and be done with this hurt.”

“No. You aren’t going to do that either.”

Dale sighed tremulously and turned in to his driveway. The Williamses owned a ranch on a street of identically dismal ranches, one-story boxes with a square of yard in back and a smaller square in front. Theirs was the pale, pasty green of some hospital rooms, and it looked worse than Ig remembered it. The vinyl siding was mottled with brown splotches of mildew where it met the concrete foundation, and the windows were dusty, and the lawn was a week overdue for a mow. The street baked in the summery heat, and nothing moved on it, and the sound of a dog barking down the road was the sound of heatstroke, of migraines, of the indolent, overheated summer staggering to its end. Ig had hoped, perversely, to see Merrin’s mother, to find out what secrets she hid, but Heidi wasn’t home. No one on the whole street seemed to be home.

“What about if I blow off work and see if I can get shitfaced by noon? See if I can’t get myself fired. I haven’t sold a car in six weeks-they’re just looking for a reason. They only keep me on out of pity as it is.”

“There,” Ig said. “Now, that’s what I call a plan.”

Dale led him inside. Ig didn’t bring the pitchfork, didn’t think he needed it now.

“Iggy, would you pour me a drink out of the liquor cabinet? I know you know where it is. You and Mary used to sneak drinks out of it. I want to sit in the dark and rest my head. My head is all woffly inside.”

The master bedroom was at the end of a short hall done in chocolate shag carpeting. There had been pictures of Merrin along the whole corridor, but they were gone now. There were pictures of Jesus there instead. Ig was angry for the first time all day.

“Why did you take her down and put Him up?”

“Those were Heidi’s idea. She took Mary’s photos away.” Dale kicked off his black loafers as he wandered down the hall. “Three months ago she packed up all of Mary’s books, her clothes, her letters from you, and shoved them in the attic. Merrin’s bedroom is her home office now. She works in there stuffing envelopes for Christian causes. She spends more time with Father Mould than she does with me, goes to the church every morning and all day Sunday. She’s got a picture of Jesus on her desk. She doesn’t have a picture of me or either of her dead daughters, but she has a picture of Jesus. I want to chase her out of the house, shouting her daughters’ names at her. You know what? You should go up in the attic and get down the box. I’d like to dig out all Mary’s and Regan’s photos. I could throw them at Heidi until she starts to cry. I could tell her if she wants to get rid of our daughters’ pictures, she’s going to have to eat them. One at a time.”