Horns

“I know.”

“You’re going to kill him,” Terry said. It wasn’t a question.

“Obviously.”

Terry considered Ig’s skirt, his grimy bare feet, his reddened skin, which might just have been a particularly bad sunburn. He said, “Let’s go home, Ig. Let’s go home and talk about this. Mom and Dad are worried about you. Let’s go home so they can see you’re all right, and then we’ll all talk. We’ll figure things out.”

“My figuring is done,” Ig said. “You should’ve left. I told you to leave.”

Terry shook his head. “What do you mean, you told me to leave? I haven’t seen you the whole time I’ve been home. We haven’t talked at all.”

Ig looked in the rearview and saw headlights. He twisted around in the seat and stared through the back window. A car was passing out on the highway, on the other side of that thin strip of forest between the foundry and the road. The headlights blinked between the trunks of the trees in a rapid staccato, a shutter being opened and closed, blink-blink-blink, sending a message: Hurry, hurry. The car went past without turning in, but it was a matter of minutes until a car came that would not pass but instead would swing up the gravel road and head their way. Ig’s gaze dropped, and he saw a suitcase on the backseat and Terry’s trumpet case beside it.

“You packed,” Ig said. “You must’ve pla

“I did,” Terry said.

Ig sat up and looked a question at him.

Terry shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Forget it.”

“No. Tell me.”

“Later.”

“Tell me now. What do you mean? If you left town, how come you’re back?”

Terry gave him a bright and blank-eyed look. After a moment he began to speak, careful and slow. “It doesn’t make sense, okay?”

“No. It doesn’t make sense to me either. That’s why I want you to tell me.”

Terry’s tongue darted out and touched his dry lips. When he spoke, his voice was calm but a little rushed. He said, “I decided I was going back to L.A. Getting out of the mental ward. Dad was pissed at me. Vera’s in the hospital, and no one knows where you’ve been. But I just got it in my head that I wasn’t doing any good in Gideon and that I needed to go, get back to L.A., get busy with rehearsals. Dad told me he couldn’t imagine anything more selfish than me taking off with things like they are. I knew he was right, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter. It just felt good driving away.

“Except the farther I got from Gideon, the less good I felt. I’d be listening to the radio, and I’d hear a song I like, and I’d start thinking about how to arrange it with the band. Then I’d remember I don’t have a band anymore. There’s no one to rehearse with.”

“What do you mean there’s no one to rehearse with?”

“I don’t have a job,” Terry said. “I quit. Walked away from Hothouse.”

“What are you talking about?” Ig asked. He hadn’t seen anything about this on his trip into Terry’s head.

“Last week,” Terry said. “I couldn’t stand it. After what happened to Merrin, it wasn’t fun anymore. It was the opposite of fun. It was hell. Hell is being forced to smile and laugh and play party songs when you want to scream. Every time I played the horn, I was screaming. The Fox people asked me to take the weekend and think it over. They didn’t come right out and threaten to sue me for breach of contract if I don’t show up for work next week, but I know that’s in the air. I also know I don’t give a shit. There’s nothing they got that I need.”

“So when you remembered you didn’t have a show anymore-was that when you turned around and came home?”

“Not right away. It was scary. Like…like being two people at the same time. One minute I’d be thinking I needed to get off the interstate and head back to Gideon. Then I’d go back to imaginary rehearsals again. Finally, when I was almost to Logan Airport-you know that hill with the giant cross on it? The one just past the Suffolk Downs racetrack?”

Ig’s arms prickled with cold and gooseflesh. “About twenty feet tall. I know it. I used to think it was called the Don Orsillo, but that’s not right.”

“Don Orione. That’s the name of the nursing home that takes care of the cross. I pulled over there. There’s a road that leads up through the projects to the thing. I didn’t go all the way up. I just pulled over to think, parked in the shade.”

“In the shade of the cross?”

His brother nodded in a vague sort of way. “I still had the radio on. The college station, you know. The reception gets crackly that far south, but I hadn’t got around to changing it. And the kid came on for the local news, and he said the Old Fair Road Bridge in Gideon was open again, after being closed for a few hours in the middle of the day, while police salvaged a firebombed car from off the sandbar. Hearing about that car gave me a kind of sick feeling. Just because. Because we hadn’t heard from you in a couple days and the sandbar is downriver from the foundry. And this is around the same time of year when Merrin died. It all felt co

“Quickly. Which is better than he deserves.”

“And you know what I did…and you’re letting me off? Why not kill me, too?”

“You aren’t the only person to fuck a thing up because he was scared.”

“What’s that mean?”

Ig thought for a moment before he replied, “I hated the way Merrin used to look at you, when you’d play the trumpet at your performances. I was always afraid she’d fall in love with you, instead of me, and I couldn’t stand it. Do you remember the flow charts you used to draw, making fun of Sister Be

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.”