Joe Hill - Horns

Terry goggled at him for a moment, as if Ig had spoken to him in an incomprehensible tongue. Then he laughed. It was a strained, thin sound, but real. “Oh, shit. My ass is still sore from the beating Father Mould gave me.” But he couldn’t hold on to the smile, and when it was gone, he said, “That isn’t the same as what I did to you. Not in kind and not in degree.”

“No,” Ig agreed. “I just mention it to illustrate the principle. People make lousy decisions when they’re afraid.”

Terry tried to smile but looked closer to crying. He said, “We need to go.”

“No,” Ig said. “Just you. Now.” As he spoke, he was already lowering the passenger-side window. He balled the cross up and threw it out into the grass, got rid of it. In the same moment, he put his weight and will behind the horns, calling to all the snakes of the forest, calling for them to join him in the foundry.

Terry made a sound, down in his throat, a long hiss of surprise. “Haaaa-horns. You…you have horns. On your head. What…my God, Ig…what are you?”

Ig turned back. Terry’s eyes were lamps, shining with an elevated kind of terror, a terror that approached awe.

“I don’t know,” Ig said. “Demon or man, I’m not sure. The crazy thing is, I think it’s still up in the air. I know this, though: Merrin wanted me to be a person. People forgive. Demons-not so much. If I’m letting you go, it’s as much for her as for you or me. She loved you, too.”

“I need to go,” Terry said in a thin, frightened voice.

“That’s right. You don’t want to be here when Lee Tourneau arrives. You could be hurt if things go wrong, and even if you aren’t, think of the damage you could do to your reputation. This has nothing to do with you. It never did. In fact, you will forget this conversation. You never came here, and you never saw me tonight. That’s all gone now.”

“Gone,” Terry said, flinching and then blinking rapidly, as if someone had dashed a handful of cold water in his face. “Jesus, I need to get out of here. If I’m ever going to work again, I need to get the fuck out of this joint.”

“That’s right. This conversation is gone, and so are you. Take off. Drive home, and tell Mom and Dad you missed your flight. Be with the people who love you, and have a look at the newspaper tomorrow. They say they never report good news, but I think you’ll feel a whole lot better about your life after you see the front page.” Ig wanted to kiss his brother’s cheek but was afraid-was worried he would discover some hidden deed that would make him rethink his desire to send him away. “Good-bye, Terry.”

HE GOT OUT OF THE CAR and stood back from it as it started to move. The Mercedes rolled slowly forward, crushing the tall grass before it. It went into a big, lazy turn, circling behind a great heap of rubbish, bricks, old boards, and cans. Ig turned away then, didn’t wait to see the Mercedes come around the other side of the midden heap. He had preparations to attend to. He moved quickly along the outer wall of the foundry, casting glances toward the line of trees that screened the building from the road. Any moment now he expected to see headlights through the firs, slowing as Lee Tourneau turned in.

He climbed into the room beyond the furnace. It looked as if someone had come in with a couple buckets of snakes, tossed them, and ran. Snakes slid from the corners and dropped from piles of bricks. The timber rattler uncoiled from the wheelbarrow and fell with an audible thump to the floor. There were only a hundred or so. Well. That was enough.

He crouched and lifted the timber rattler into the air, hand under her midsection; he was not afraid of being bitten now. She narrowed her eyes in a sleepy expression of affection, and her black tongue flicked at him, and for a moment she whispered cool, breathless endearments in his ear. He kissed her gently on the head and then walked her to the furnace. As he carried her, he realized he could not read her for any guilt or sin, that she had no memory of ever having done a wrong. She was innocent. All snakes were, of course. To slip through the grass, to bite and shock into paralysis, either with poison or with the swift crunch of the jaws, to swallow and feel the good, furry, slick lump of a field mouse go down the throat, to drop into a dark hole and curl up on a bed of leaves-these were pure goods, the way the world was supposed to be.

He leaned into the chimney and set her in the stinking blanket on the mattress. Then he bent over her and lit each of the candles, creating an intimate and romantic ambience. She settled down into a contented coil.

“You know what to do if they get by me,” Ig said. “The next person to open this door. I need you to bite and bite and bite. Do you understand?”

Her tongue slipped out of her mouth and lapped sweetly at the air. He folded the corners of the blanket over her, to hide her, and then set upon it the smooth pink soap shape of Glenna’s phone. If by some chance Lee killed him, instead of the other way around, he would go in there to blow out the candles, and when he saw the phone, would want to take it with him. It had been used to call him, after all, and it wouldn’t do to leave evidence lying around.

Ig eased himself out of the hatch and pushed the door almost all the way shut. Candlelight flickered around its edges, as if the old furnaces had been lit once more, as if the foundry were returning to life. He grasped his pitchfork, which was leaning against the wall just to the right of the hatch.

“Ig,” Terry whispered from behind him.

Ig spun around, his heart lunging in him, and saw his brother standing outside, rising on his tiptoes to look through the doorway.

“What are you still doing here?” Ig asked, flustered by the sight of him.

“Are those snakes?” Terry asked.

Terry stepped back from the door as Ig dropped through it. Ig still had the box of matches in one hand, and he flipped them to the side, onto the can of gas. Then he turned and jabbed the pitchfork in the direction of Terry’s chest. He craned his head to look past him, into the dark field. He didn’t see the Mercedes.

“Where’s your car?”

“Behind that pile of shit,” Terry said, gesturing back toward a particularly large mound of trash. He reached up with one hand and gently pushed aside the tines of the pitchfork.

“I said to go.”

Terry’s face gleamed with sweat in the August night. “No,” he said.

It took Ig a moment to process Terry’s unlikely reply.

“Yes.” Pushing with the horns, pushing so hard that the feeling of pressure and heat in them was, for once, almost painful-a disagreeable soreness. “You don’t want to be here, and I don’t want you here.”

Terry actually staggered, as if Ig had shoved him. But then he got his feet set and remained where he was, an expression of grim strain on his features.

“And I said no. You can’t make me. Whatever you’re doing to my head, it has its limits. You can only make the offer. I have to accept. And I don’t accept. I’m not driving away from this place and leaving you here to face Lee alone. That’s what I did to Merrin, and I’ve been living in hell ever since. You want me to go, get in my car and come with me. We’ll figure this out. We’ll figure how to deal with Lee in a way where no one gets killed.”

Ig made a choked sound of rage in his throat and came at him with the pitchfork. Terry danced back, away from the tines. It infuriated Ig that he couldn’t make his brother do what he wanted. Each time Ig came toward him, prodding with the fork, Terry faded out of reach, a weak, uncertain grin on his face. Ig had the helpless sensation of being ten years old and forced into some backyard game of grab-ass.