Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box

“Why don’t you want me to talk to him? ’Fraid we won’t get along?”

“It’s not that I’m worried he’ll be rude to you or nothin’. He isn’t like that. My daddy is easy to talk to. Everybody’s friend.”

“Well then, what?”

“I never talked to him about it yet, but I just know what he thinks about us taking up with each other. He won’t like it. You the age you are and the kind of music you play. He hates that kind of music.”

“There’s more people don’t like it than do. That’s the whole point.”

“He doesn’t think much of musicians at all. You never met a man with less music in him. When we were little, he’d take us on these long drives, to someplace where he’d been hired to dowse for a well, and he’d make us listen to talk radio the whole way. It didn’t matter what to him. He’d make us listen to a continuous weather broadcast for four hours.” She pulled two fingers slowly through her hair, lifting a long, golden strand away from her head, then letting it slip through her fingers and fall. She went on , “He had this one creepy trick he could do. He’d find someone talkin’, like one of those Holy Rollers that are always kickin’ it up for Jesus on the AM. And we’d listen and listen, until Jessie and me were beggin’ him for anything else. And he wouldn’t say anything, and he wouldn’t say anything, and then, just when we couldn’t stand it anymore, he’d start to talk to himself. And he’d be sayin’ exactly what the preacher on the radio was sayin’, at exactly the same time, only in his own voice. Recitin’ it. Deadpan, like. ‘Christ the Redeemer bled and died for you. What will you do for Him? He carried His own cross while they spat on Him. What burden will you carry?’ Like he was readin’ from the same script. And he’d keep going until my momma told him to quit. That she didn’t like it. And he’d laugh and turn the radio off. But he’d keep talkin’ to himself. Kind of mutterin’. Sayin’ all the preacher’s lines, even with the radio off. Like he was hearin’ it in his head, gettin’ the broadcast on his fillings. He could scare me so bad doing that.”

Jude didn’t reply, didn’t think a reply was called for, and anyway was not sure whether the story was true or the latest in a succession of self-delusions that had haunted her.

She sighed, let another strand of her hair flop. “I was sayin’, though, that he wouldn’t like you, and he has ways of gettin’ rid of my friends when he doesn’t like them. A lot of daddies are overprotective of their little girls, and if someone comes around they don’t care for, they might try and scare ’em off. Lean on ’em a little. Course that never works, because the girl always takes the boy’s side, and the boy keeps after her, either because he can’t be scared or doesn’t want her to think he can be scared. My stepdaddy’s smarter than that. He’s as friendly as can be, even with people he’d like to see burnt alive. If he ever wants to get rid of someone he doesn’t want around me, he drives them off by tellin’ ’em the truth. The truth is usually enough.

“Give you an example. When I was sixteen, I started running around with this boy I just knew my old man wouldn’t like, on account of this kid was Jewish, and also we’d listen to rap together. Pop hates rap worst of all. So one day my stepdaddy told me it was going to stop, and I said I could see who I wanted, and he said sure, but that didn’t mean the kid would keep wantin’ to see me. I didn’t like the sound of that, but he didn’t explain himself.

“Well, you’ve seen how I get low sometimes and start thinkin’ crazy things. That all started when I was twelve, maybe, same time as puberty. I didn’t see a doctor or anything. My stepdaddy treated me himself, with hypnotherapy. He could hold things in check pretty good, too, as long as we sat down once or twice a week. I wouldn’t get up to any of my crazy business. I wouldn’t think there was a dark truck circling the house. I wouldn’t see little girls with coals for eyes watchin’ me from under the trees at night.

“But he had to go away. He had to go to Austin for some conference on hypnogogic drugs. Usually he took me along when he went on one of his trips, but this time he left me at home with Jessie. My mom was dead by then, and Jessie was nineteen and in charge. And while he was gone I started havin’ trouble sleepin’. That’s always the first sign I’m gettin’ low, when I start havin’ insomnia.

“After a couple nights, I started seein’ the girls with the burning eyes. I couldn’t go to school on Monday, because they were waitin’ outside under the oak tree. I was too scared to go out. I told Jessie. I said she had to make Pop come home, that I was gettin’ bad ideas again. She told me she was tired of my crazy shit and that he was busy and I would be all right till he got back. She tried to make me go to school, but I wouldn’t. I stayed in my room and watched television. But pretty soon they started talkin’ to me through the TV. The dead girls. Tellin’ me I was dead like they was. That I belonged in the dirt with them.

“Usually Jessie got back from school at two or three. But she didn’t come home that afternoon. It got later and later, and every time I looked out the window, I saw the girls starin’ back at me. My stepdad called, and I told him I was in trouble and please come home, and he said he’d come quick as he could, but he wouldn’t be back until late. He said he was worried I might hurt myself and he’d call someone to come be with me. After he hung up, he phoned Philip’s parents, who lived up the street from us.”

“Philip? Was this your boyfriend? The Jewish kid?”

“Uh-huh. Phil came right over. I didn’t know him. I hid under the bed from him, and I screamed when he tried to touch me. I asked him if he was with the dead girls. I told him all about them. Jessie showed up pretty soon afterward, and Philip ran off quick as he could. After that he was so freaked out he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. And my stepdaddy just said what a shame. He thought Philip was my friend. He thought Philip, more than anyone else, could be trusted to look out for me when I was havin’ a rough time.”

“So is that what’s worrying you? Your old man is going to let me know you’re a lunatic and I’ll be so shocked I won’t ever want to see you again? ’Cause I got to tell you, Florida, hearing you get kind of crazy now and then wouldn’t exactly be a newsflash.”

She snorted, soft breathy laughter. Then she said, “He wouldn’t say that. I don’t know what he’d say. He’d just find somethin’ to make you like me a little less. If you can like me any less.”

“Let’s not start with that.”

“No. No, on second thought maybe you best call my sister instead. She’s an unkind bitch—we don’t get along a lick. She never forgave me for being cuter than her and gettin’ better Christmas presents. After Momma died, she had to be Susie Homemaker, but I still got to be a kid. Jessie was doin’ our laundry and cookin’ our meals by the time she was fourteen, and no one has ever been able to appreciate how hard she had to work or how little fun she got to have. But she’ll arrange to get me home without any nonsense. She’ll like havin’ me back, so she can boss me around and make rules for me.”

But when Jude called her sister’s house, he got the old man anyway, who answered on the third ring.

“What’n I do for you? Go ahead and talk. I’ll help you if I can.”

Jude introduced himself. He said Anna wanted to come home for a while, making it out to be more her idea than his. Jude wrestled mentally with how to describe her condition, but Craddock came to his rescue.