Joe Hill - Horns

“Sometimes I come here for lunch,” she said, and held up a sub in one hand, wrapped in white waxed paper. “It’s quiet. Good place to think. About Ig and…stuff.”

He nodded. “What’ve you got?”

“Eggplant parm. Got a Dr Pepper, too. You want half? I always get a large, and I don’t know why. I can’t eat a large. Or I shouldn’t. I guess sometimes I do.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m really trying to take off ten pounds.”

“Why?” Terry asked, looking her over again.

She laughed. “Stop it.”

He shrugged. “I’ll eat half your sandwich, if it helps with the diet. But you don’t have anything to worry about. You’re all right.”

They sat on a fallen log along the side of the Evel Knievel trail. The water was spangled gold in the late-afternoon light. Terry didn’t know he was hungry until she gave him half her sandwich and he started to eat. Soon it was gone, and he was licking his fingers, and they were sharing out the last of the Dr Pepper. They didn’t talk. Terry was fine with that. He didn’t want to make small talk, and she seemed to know it. The silence didn’t make her nervous. It was funny, in L.A. no one ever shut up; everyone there seemed terrified by a moment of silence.

“Thanks,” he said finally.

“Don’t mention it,” she said.

He pushed a hand back through his hair. At some point in the last few weeks, he had discovered a thinness at the crown, and he had responded by letting it grow out until it was almost shaggy. He said, “I should’ve come by the salon, had you give me a cut. My shit is getting out of control.”

“I don’t work there anymore,” she said. “Gave my last cut yesterday.”

“Get out.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Well. Here’s to going on to other things, then.”

“Here’s to going on to other things.”

They each had a sip of Dr Pepper.

“Was it a good cut to end on?” Terry asked. “Did you give someone a completely awesome trim to finish up?”

“I shaved a guy bald. An older guy, actually. You don’t usually get older guys asking for a buzz job. That tends to be more of a younger-dude thing. You know him-Merrin Williams’s dad. Dale?”

“Yeah. I kind of know him,” Terry said, and grimaced, fought back an almost tidal surge of sadness that didn’t entirely make sense.

Of course Ig had been killed over Merrin; Lee and Eric had burned him to death because of what they thought he had done to her. Ig’s last year had been so bad, so unhappy, Terry almost couldn’t bear to think about it. He was sure Ig hadn’t done it, could never have killed Merrin. He supposed that now no one would ever know who had really killed her. He shuddered, remembering the night Merrin had died. He had been with fucking Lee Tourneau then-the revolting little sociopath-had even enjoyed his company. A couple of drinks, some cheap ganja out on the sandbar-and then Terry had dozed off in Lee’s car and not woken again until dawn. It sometimes seemed like that had been the last night he was really happy, playing cards with Ig and then aimlessly driving around and around Gideon through an August evening that smelled of the river and firecrackers. Terry wondered if there was any smell in all the world so sweet.

“Why’d he do it?” Terry asked.

“Mr. Williams said he’s moving down to Sarasota, and when he gets there, he wants to feel the sun on his bare head. Also, because his wife hates men with shaved heads. Or maybe she’s his ex-wife now. I think he’s going to Sarasota without her.” She smoothed a leaf out on her knee, then picked it up by the stem, lifted it into the breeze, and let go, watched it sail away. “I’m moving, too. ’S why I quit.”

“Where to?”

“New York,” she said.

“City?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hell. Look me up when you get there, why don’t you? I’ll show you some good clubs,” Terry said. He was already writing the number to his cell on an old receipt in his pocket.

“What do you mean? Aren’t you in L.A.?”

“Naw. No reason to hang around without Hothouse, and I’d take New York over L.A. anytime. You know? It’s just a lot more…real.” He handed her his number.

She sat on the ground, holding the scrap of paper and smiling up at him, her elbows back on the log and the light dappling her face. She looked good.

“Well,” she said, “I think we’ll be living in different neighborhoods.”

“That’s why God invented cabs,” he said.

“He invented them?”

“No. Men invented them so they could get home safely after a night of drunken carousing.”

“When you think about it,” she said, “most of the good ideas came along to make sin a whole lot easier.”

“True that,” he said.

They got up to walk off their sandwiches, went for a meandering stroll around the foundry. As they came to the front, Terry paused again, looking at that wide swath of burned earth. It was funny the way the wind had channeled the fire straight to the town woods and then set just a single tree aflame. That tree. It still stood, a rack of great blackened antlers, terrible horns clawing at the sky. The sight of it gave him pause, held him briefly transfixed. He shivered; the air suddenly felt cooler, more like late October in New England.

“Lookat,” Glenna said, bending and picking something out of the burnt undergrowth.

It was a gold cross, threaded on a delicate chain. She held it up, and it swung back and forth, flashing a golden light into her smooth, pretty face.

“Nice,” she said.

“You want it?”

“I’d probably catch fire if I put this thing on,” she said. “Go for it.”

“Nah,” Terry said. “This is for a girl.” He carried it over to a sapling growing up against the foundry, hung it on one of the branches. “Maybe whoever left it will come back for it.”

They went on their way, not talking much, just enjoying the light and the day, around the foundry and back to her car. He wasn’t sure when they took each other’s hands, but by the time they reached the Saturn, they had. Her fingers slid from his with unmistakable reluctance.

A breeze lifted, raced across the yard, carrying that smell of ash and the fall chill. She hugged herself, trembled pleasurably. Distantly there came the sound of a horn, a saucy, jaunty thing, and Terry cocked his head, listening, but it must’ve been music from a car passing on the highway, because in a moment it was gone.

“I miss him, you know,” Glenna said. “Like I can’t say.”

“Me, too,” he said. “It’s funny, though. Sometimes…sometimes he’s so close it’s like I might turn around and see him. Grinning at me.”

“Yeah. I feel that, too,” she said, and smiled: a tough, generous, real smile. “Hey. I should go. See you in New York, maybe.”

“Not maybe. Definitely.”

“Okay. Definitely.” She got into her car and shut the door and waved to him before she began to back away.

Terry stood there after she was gone, the breeze tugging at his overcoat, and looked again at the empty foundry, the blasted field. He knew he should’ve been feeling something for Ig, should’ve been racked with grief…but instead he was wondering how long after he got to New York it would be before Glenna called, and where he ought to take her. He knew some places.

The wind gusted again, not just chilly but genuinely cold, and Terry cocked his head once more, thought for a moment he heard another distant snatch of trumpet, a dirty salute. It was a beautifully wrought little riff, and in the moment of hearing it he felt, for the first time in weeks, the impulse to play again. Then the sound of the horn was gone, carried away on the breeze. It was time for him to go, too.

“Poor devil,” Terry said before he got into his rent-a-car and drove away.