Joe Hill - Horns

“Yes,” Ig said. “I believe it. She was smarter than you and me put together.”

Dale snorted, face still turned away. “Don’t you know it. I went to a two-year college, all my old man would pay for. God, I wanted to be a better father than he was. He told me what classes I could take and where I could live and what I’d do for work after I graduated to pay him back. I used to say to Heidi I’m surprised he didn’t stand in my bedroom on our wedding night and instruct me in the approved method of screwing her.” He smiled, remembering. “That was back when Heidi and I could joke about those kinds of things. Heidi had a funny, dirty streak before she got a head full of Christ. Before the world stuck its taps in her and drained out all the blood. Sometimes I want so bad to leave her, but she doesn’t have anyone else. She’s all alone…except for Jesus, I guess.”

“Oh. I don’t know about that,” Ig said, and let out a slow, seething breath, thinking about how Heidi Williams had pulled down all Merrin’s pictures, had tried to shove her daughter’s memory up away into dust and darkness. “You should drop in on her some morning when she’s working for Father Mould at the church. As a surprise. I think you’ll find she has a much more active…intercourse with life than you give her credit for.”

Dale flicked a questioning look at him, but Ig remained poker-faced and said no more. Finally Dale offered a thin smile and said, “You should’ve shaved your head years ago, Ig. Looks good. I used to want to do that, go bald, but Heidi always said if I ever did it, I could consider our marriage over. She wouldn’t even let me shave it to show my support for Regan, after Regan had chemo. Some families do that. To show they’re all in it together. Not our family, though.” He frowned and said, “How did we get off on this? What were we talking about?”

“When you went to college.”

“Yeah. Well. My father wouldn’t let me take the theology course I wanted, but he couldn’t stop me from auditing it. I remember the teacher, a black woman, Professor Tandy, she said that Satan turns up in a lot of other religions as the good guy. He’s usually the guy who tricks the fertility goddess into bed, and after a bit of fiddling around they bring the world into being. Or the crops. Something. He comes into the story to bamboozle the unworthy or tempt them into ruination, or at least out of their liquor. Even Christians can’t really decide what to do with him. I mean, think about it. Him and God are supposed to be at war with each other. But if God hates sin and Satan punishes the sinners, aren’t they working the same side of the street? Aren’t the judge and the executioner on the same team? The Romantics. I think the Romantics liked Satan. I don’t really remember why. Maybe because he had a good beard and was into girls and sex and knew how to throw a party. Didn’t the Romantics like Satan?”

“Yer whisperin’ in my ear,” Ig whispered. “Tell me all the things I wanna hear.”

Dale laughed again. “No. Not those Romantics.”

Ig said, “They’re the only ones I know.”

He eased the door gently shut on his way out.

IG SAT AT THE BOTTOM of the chimney, in a circle of hot afternoon light, holding the glossy mammogram of Merrin’s breast over his head. Lit from behind by the August sky, the tissues within looked like a black sun, going nova, looked like the End of Days, and the sky was as sackcloth. The devil turned to his Bible: not to the Old Testament, nor to the New, but to the back page, where years before he had copied the key to the Morse-code alphabet from his brother’s encyclopedias. Even before he translated the papers within the envelope, he knew they were a testament of a different sort: a final one. Merrin’s final testament.

He started with the dots and dashes on the front of the package, a simple enough sequence. It spelled FUCK OFF, IG.

He laughed-a dirty, convulsive shout of crowlike amusement.

He slipped out the two pages of notebook paper, covered in dots and dashes, both sides, the labor of months, of an entire summer. Working with his Bible, Ig set to translating them, occasionally fingering the cross around his neck, Merrin’s cross. He had put it back on as soon as he left Dale’s. It made him feel she was with him, was close enough to lay her cool fingers on the nape of his neck.

It was slow work, converting those lines of dots and dashes to letters and words. He didn’t care. The devil had nothing but time.

Dear Ig,

You will never read this while I’m alive. I’m not sure I want you to read it even if I’m dead.

Whoo, this is slow writing. I guess I don’t mind. It passes the time when I’m stuck in a lobby somewhere waiting on the result of this or that test. Also forces me to say just what needs to be said and no more.

The sort of cancer I have is the same that struck my sister down, a sort known to run in families. I won’t bore you with the genetics. It is not advanced yet, and I’m sure if you knew, you would want me to fight. I know I should, but I’m not going to. I have made up my mind not to go like my sister. Not to wait until I’m filled with ugliness, not to hurt the people I love and who have loved me, and that is you, Ig, and my parents.

The Bible says suicides go to hell, but hell is what my sister went through when she was dying. You don’t know this, but my sister was engaged when she was diagnosed. Her fiancé left her months before she died. She drove him away, one day at a time. She wanted to know how long he’d wait after she was buried to fuck someone else. She wanted to know if he’d use her tragedy to win sympathy from girls. She was horrible. I would’ve left her.

I’d just as soon skip all that, thanks. But I don’t know how to do it yet, how to die. I wish God would find a way to do it to me all at once, when I’m not expecting it. Put me in an elevator and then have the cable snap. Twenty seconds of flight and it’s over. Maybe as a bonus I could fall on someone bad. Like a child-molesting elevator repairman or something. That would be all right.

I’m afraid if I tell you I’m sick, you will give up your future and ask to marry me, and I will be weak and say yes, and then you’ll be shackled to me, watching while they cut pieces off and I shrink and go bald and put you through hell, and then I die anyway and ruin what was best in you in the process. You want so much to believe that the world is good, Ig, that people are good. And I know when I’m really sick I won’t be able to be good. I will be like my sister. I have that in me, I know how to hurt people, and I might not be able to help myself. I want you to remember what was good in me, not what was most awful. The people you love should be allowed to keep their worst to themselves.

You don’t know how hard it is not to talk about these things with you. That’s the reason I’m writing this, I guess. Because I need to talk to you, and this is the only way. A bit of a one-sided conversation, though, huh?

You’re so excited to go to England, to be up to your neck in the world. Remember that story you told me about the Evel Knievel trail and the shopping cart? That’s you every day. Ready to fly bare-naked down the steep pitch of your own life and be flung into the human stream. Save people drowning in unfairness.

I can hurt you just enough to push you away. I’m not looking forward to it, but it will be kinder than letting this thing play itself out.

I want you to find some girl with a trashy Cockney accent and take her back to your flat and screw her out of her knickers. Someone cute and immoral and literary. Not as pretty as me, I’m not that generous, but it’s okay if she’s not terrible-looking. Then I’m hoping she will callously dump you and you will move on to someone else. Someone better. Someone earnest and caring and with no family history of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, or any other bad stuff. I also hope by then I am long dead so I don’t have to know anything about her.