Joe Hill - Horns

“Ig? Are you all right?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me. It’s my head. Look at my head, Father.”

Ig stepped forward and bowed slightly, leaning into the light. He could see the shadow of his head on the swept cement floor, the horns a pair of small pointed hooks sticking out from his temples. He was afraid almost to see Mould’s reaction and glanced at him shyly. The ghost of a polite smile remained on Father Mould’s face. His brow furrowed in thought as he studied the horns with a kind of glassy bewilderment.

“I was drunk last night, and I did terrible things,” Ig said. “And when I woke up, I was like this, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I’m becoming. I thought you could tell me what to do.”

Father Mould stared for another long moment, openmouthed, baffled.

“Well, kiddo,” he said at last. “You want me to tell you what to do? I think you ought to go home and hang yourself. That’d probably be the best thing for you, for your family-really, for everyone. There’s rope in the storeroom behind the church. I’d go get it for you if I thought that would point you in the right direction.”

“Why-” Ig started, and then had to clear his throat before he went on. “Why do you want me to kill myself?”

“Because you murdered Merrin Williams and your daddy’s big-shot Jew lawyer got you off. Sweet little Merrin Williams. I had a lot of affection for her. Not much of a rack, but she did have one fine little ass. You should’ve gone to jail. I wanted you to go to jail. Sister, spot me.” He stretched out on his back for another set of reps.

“But, Father,” Ig said. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill her.”

“Oh, you big kidder,” said Mould as he put his hands on the bar above him. Sister Bennett settled into position at the head of the bench press. “Everyone knows you did it. You might as well take your own life. You’re going to hell anyway.”

“I’m there already.”

Mould grunted as he lowered the bar to his chest and heaved it up again. Ig noticed Sister Bennett staring at him.

“I wouldn’t blame you for killing yourself,” she said without preamble. “Most days I’m ready to commit suicide by lunchtime. I hate how people look at me. The lesbian jokes they make about me behind my back. I could use that rope in the shed if you don’t want it.”

Mould shoved the bar up with a gasp. “I think about Merrin Williams all the time. Usually when I’m balling her mother. Her ma does a lot of work for me here in the church these days, you know. Most of it on her hands and knees.” Grinning at the thought. “Poor woman. We pray together most every day. Usually for you to die.”

“You…you took a vow of chastity,” Ig said.

“Chastity shmastity. I figure God is just glad I keep it in my pants around the altar boys. Way I see it, the lady needs comfort from someone, and she sure isn’t going to get any from that four-eyed sad sack she’s married to. Not the right kind of comfort anyway.”

Sister Bennett said, “I want to be someone different. I want to run away. I want someone to like me. Did you ever like me, Iggy?”

Ig swallowed. “Well…I guess. Somewhat.”

“I want to sleep with someone,” Sister Bennett continued, as if he hadn’t said anything. “I want someone to hold me in bed at night. I don’t care whether it’s a man or a woman. I don’t care. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I can write checks for the church. Sometimes I want to empty the account and run away with the money. Sometimes I want to do that so bad.”

“I’m surprised,” Mould said, “that no one in this town has stepped up to make an example out of you for what you did to Merrin Williams. Give you a taste of what you gave her. You’d think some concerned citizens would pay you a visit some night, take you for a relaxing tour of the countryside. Right back to that tree where you killed Merrin and string you up from it. If you won’t do the decent thing and hang yourself, then that’d be the next best thing.”

Ig was surprised to find himself relaxing, unbunching his fists, breathing more steadily. Mould wobbled with the bench press. Sister Bennett caught the bar and settled it in its cradle with a clank.

Ig lifted his gaze to her and said, “What’s stopping you?”

“From what?” she asked.

“From taking the money and leaving.”

“God,” she said. “I love God.”

“What’s He ever done for you?” Ig asked her. “Does He make it hurt less when people laugh at you behind your back? Or more-because for His sake you’re all alone in the world? How old are you?”

“Sixty-one.”

“Sixty-one is old. It’s almost too late. Almost. Can you wait even one more day?”

She touched her throat, her eyes wide and alarmed. Then she said, “I’d better go,” and turned and hurried past him to the stairs.

Father Mould hardly seemed aware she was leaving. He was sitting up now, wrists resting on his knees.

“Were you done lifting?” Ig asked him.

“One more rep to go.”

“Let me spot you,” Ig said, and came around behind the bench.

As he handed Mould the bar, Ig’s fingers brushed Mould’s knuckles, and he saw that when Mould was twenty, he and a few other guys on the hockey team had pulled ski masks over their faces and driven after a car full of Nation of Islam kids who had come up from New York City to speak at Syracuse about civil rights. Mould and his friends forced the kids off the road and chased them into the woods with baseball bats. They caught the slowest of them and shattered his legs in eight different places. It was two years before the kid could get around without the help of a walker.

“You and Merrin’s mother-have you really been praying for me to die?”

“More or less,” Mould said. “To be honest, most of the time when she’s calling to God, she’s riding my dick.”

“Do you know why He hasn’t struck me down?” Ig asked. “Do you know why God hasn’t answered your prayers?”

“Why?”

“Because there is no God. Your prayers are whispers to an empty room.”

Mould lifted the bar again-with great effort-and lowered it and said, “Bullshit.”

“It’s all a lie. There’s never been anyone there. You’re the one who ought to use that rope in the shed.”

“No,” Mould said. “You can’t make me do that. I don’t want to die. I love my life.”

So. He couldn’t make people do anything they didn’t already want to do. Ig had wondered if this might not be the case.

Mould made a face and grunted but couldn’t lift the bar again. Ig turned from the weight bench and started toward the stairs.

“Hey,” Mould said. “Need some help here.”

Ig put his hands in his pockets and began to whistle “When the Saints Go Marching In.” For the first time all morning, he felt good. Mould gasped and struggled behind him, but Ig did not look back as he climbed the steps.

Sister Bennett passed Iggy as he stepped into the atrium. She was wearing red slacks and a sleeveless shirt with daisies on it and had her hair up. She started at the sight of him and almost dropped her purse.

“Are you off?” Ig asked her.

“I…I don’t have a car,” she said. “I want to take the church car, but I’m scared of getting caught.”

“You’re cleaning out the local account. What’s a car matter?”

She stared at him for a moment, then leaned forward and kissed Ig at the corner of his mouth. At the touch of her lips, Ig knew about the awful lie she had told her mother when she was nine, and about the terrible day she had impulsively kissed one of her students, a pretty sixteen-year-old named Britt, and about the private, despairing surrender of her spiritual beliefs. He saw these things and understood and did not care.