Horns

He found a pot, filled it with water, put it on the stovetop, turned the heat to HI. There were just two eggs left. He settled them into the water and left them to boil. Ig made his way down the short corridor to the bedroom, stepping around a skirt and a pair of panties that Gle

He turned to the dresser, then paused, frowning. The drawers were all hanging out, hers and his both. He didn’t understand, never left his drawers that way. He wondered if someone had been through his things-Terry maybe, his brother trying to figure out what had happened to him. But no, Terry wouldn’t play private detective like that. Ig felt little details co

He was startled, hadn’t seen Gle

He was holding up his pants with one hand and had a magazine in the other, a Rolling Stone. He lifted his gaze and stared at Ig. Ig stared back. Eric let the Rolling Stone slide out of his hand and fall on the floor. He lifted his pants and buckled his belt. For some reason he was wearing blue latex gloves.

“What are you doing here?” Ig asked.

Eric slid a wooden billy club, cherry-stained, out of a loop on his belt. “Well,” Eric said. “Lee wants to talk to you. You had your say the other day, but he hasn’t had his. And you know Lee Tourneau. He likes to get in the last word.”

“He sent you?”

“Just to watch the apartment. See if you came by.” Eric frowned to himself. “It’s the damndest thing about you showing up at the congressman’s. I think those horns of yours fiddle-fucked with my mind. I forgot right until this minute you even had them. Lee says you and me talked yesterday, but I have no idea what we talked about.” He swung the club slowly back and forth in his right hand. “Not that it really matters. Most talk is bullshit. Lee is a talker. I’m more of a doer.”

“What were you going to do?” Ig asked.

“You.”

Ig’s kidneys felt as if they were floating in very cold water. “I’ll scream.”

“Yeah,” said Eric. “I’m kind of looking forward to it.”

Ig sprang for the door. The exit, though, was in the same wall as the door into the bathroom, and Eric lunged to his right to cut him off. Ig put on a burst of speed, shrinking away from Eric and trying to get out the door ahead of him, and at the same time a shrill, terrible thought flashed through his mind: Not going to make it. Eric had his cherry club back over one arm, as if it were a football and he was about to go long.

Ig’s feet snarled in something, and when he tried to step forward, he couldn’t. His ankles caught, and he plunged off balance. Eric came around with the club, and Ig heard the low whistle of it passing behind his head, then a loud, brittle crunch as it caught the door frame and tore away a chunk of wood the size of a baby’s fist.

He got his forearms up just before he crashed to the floor, which probably saved him from breaking his nose for the second time in his life. He looked down between his elbows and saw that his feet had caught in a pair of Gle

Ig rolled, grabbing blindly at the oar, trying to get it off him so he could stand up. Eric Ha

He moved without thinking, holding the oar up in both hands, almost like an offering. His eyes focused on something written across the handle: “To Ig, from your best pal, Lee Tourneau-here’s something for the next time you’re up the creek.”

Eric came down with the club. It snapped the oar in two, at the narrowest point on the handle, and the paddle flipped into the air and swatted him across the face. He grunted and took an off-balance step back. Ig threw the knotty handle at his head. It struck him above the right eye and bounced off, bought enough time for Ig to push himself up off his elbows and onto his feet.

Ig wasn’t ready for Eric to recover as quickly as he did, but Ha

Ig had backed right up into the coffee table and for an instant he was dangerously close to toppling over it. But he steadied himself while Ha

He turned. Eric Ha

“I didn’t come here to kill you, Ig,” Eric Ha

The horns. It was the horns working on him.

“I forbid you to hurt me,” Ig said, trying to bend Eric Ha

“You forbid shit,” Ha

Ig stared at him through the pass-through window, the blood rushing in him, making a dull roar in his ears like water coming to the boil. Water coming to the boil. Ig looked back over his shoulder at the pot on the stovetop. The eggs floated, while bubbles raced up and around them.

“I want to kill you and cut those fucking things off,” Eric said. “Or maybe cut them off and then kill you. I bet you have a kitchen knife that’s big enough. No one will know I did it. After what you did to Merrin Williams, there’s probably a hundred people in this town who want to see you dead. I’d be a hero, even if no one knows it but me. I’d be someone my dad was proud of.”