The Bighead (18 page)

Then he gots ta wittlin’.

Yes sir. Tritt Balls whipped out his
buck again an’ got ta whittlin’ on this fat gal fierce. She were
screamin’ she were, whiles Balls whittled off all the skin off her
fingers, like they was carrots! Then he whittled alls the skin
offer arms, an’ off it came like sheets’a wallpaper. Then he
sloughed off all the skin offer back an’ legs, he did, which made
even bigger sheets, an’ she were screamin’ the whole time like a
cat throwed into a combine, she was, as all that fat white skin
fell ta the ground, a fat cracker blood-red mess she were!
’Ventually, he got ta whittlin’ the skin offer toes’n feet. “Hail,
Dicky,” he commented. “Lookit these feet, wills ya! Bet she wears a
size 12, I’ll’se bet! Thems the biggest feet I ever did seen onna
gal!” She finally died once he got ta cuttin’ on her more. Clipped
off her big pale nipples, he did, then he sliced off those
big-as-a-baby’s-head hooters, an’ held ’em up in his hands an’
squeezed the blood out ’em like they was big warm wobbly sponges.
Dug her eyeballs out her head too, just fer fun, an’ popped ’em in
his hands like they was big white grapes.

“
Come ons, man,” Dicky
complained. By now, even his stomach were feelin’ sick wacthin’
this. “She dead, Balls. Let’s git on outa here.”

“
Git outa here, hail!”
Balls responded. “My dog’s hard again, ands I’ll’se be damned if
I’se gonna waste it! Gots me a load’a spunk in theres somewhere,
an’ I’se gonna pop it!”

Tritts Balls, then, began to fornicate
with the fat, eyeless, and thoroughly flensed corpse, humpin’ her
dead girlworks a right fierce, he did, an thens he pulled out’n
spooged right inta her agape yap, dead as she were.

Balls, sees, he were’t very
par-tick-ah-ler ’bout the kinda gal he made whoopee
with.

—
| — | —

NINE

(I)

Morning seemed to blossom into
afternoon, akin to the thousands of flowers in the back yard.
Charity elected not to join Jerrica and Father Alexander on the
trip to the general store; lazing around the house seemed more
appealing, and sorting her thoughts and contemplations.

There were many…

For one, the yard itself. It was
beautiful, meticulously trimmed and weeded, and tracked by fine
fieldstone walkways which must’ve cost quite a bit. A sub-planted
sprinkler system, a luxurious kiosk, and an open shed full of
groundskeeping equipment: a tiller, a power edger, a hedge trimmer,
and a stout rider mower. Aunt Annie was poor. Where did she get the
money for all this? And where did she get the money for the
boarding house’s exorbitant renovations? She even had a hired hand
now…

“
Hi, there, Ms. Charity!”
Goop Gooder, of all people, greeted, coming round the side of the
house. He was trundling a wheelbarrow full of pine bark mulch.
“I’se say, you’re lookin’ mighty fine today.”

“
Thank you, Goop,” Charity
replied. “That’s nice of you to say.” But she wondered. Was it
really true, or was he just being polite? The paranoia deepened. If
she was attractive, what could explain her ceaseless misfires with
men? And there was always the image of Jerrica—
more
paranoia. The image nagged at
her: Jerrica could be a model in
Swimsuit
Illustrated.
What could I be?
Charity glumly asked herself now.

And Goop standing there
made it even worse. The broad chest and back, the muscled arms, the
long hair. An emblem of fresh, vibrant lust. The caricatured
“farmboy,” country youth and virility.
Jerrica had sex with him last night,
she reminded herself, still mildly shocked at the thought. Was
she jealous about that too?
Would I want
to have sex with…Goop?
She didn’t think
so.

So why these incessant
dwellings?

It seemed almost as if Jerrica proved
the archetype of all the things Charity wished she could be. Yes.
Jerrica.

“
Have you seen Jerrica, Ms.
Charity?” Goop asked next, leaning forward on his wheelbarrow
handles, as if to denote secrecy.

“
She went to town with
Father Alexander,” Charity said.

“
Oh…”

Don’t get jealous,
Goop,
she nearly wanted to voice.
The man’s a Catholic priest.
“He seems like a unique man.”

Goop’s face blankened, as
if he weren’t familiar with the word
unique,
which very well may have been
true. “I ain’t met him yet, but Ms. Annie tolds me he came in last
night.”

“
Oh, I’m sure you’ll like
him, Goop. And, by the way, where
is
Aunt Annie?”

“
Off on hers walk, I
’spect. She goes fer a walk’n the woods ever afternoon.”

Charity remembered this; she’d seen
her aunt wandering into the treeline yesterday, with twin bundles
of flowers. And, now that she thought of it, two decades ago, when
Charity had lived here, her aunt had done the same thing everyday,
hadn’t she? Where did she go?

“
She’ll be around,” Goop
assured. But the tint of hurt in his face shone baldly—he was
thinking of Jerrica. “Well, I gots ta go now, talks to ya later.
’Bye.”

“‘
Bye, Goop.”

She watched him push away
behind the wheelbarrow, and wend toward the rear flowerbeds.
Poor Goop,
she
thought.
Don’t you know that you were just
a one-night stand?
What a cruel truth
Charity was privy to. The poor dumb kid was propping himself up for
a heartbreak.

But that thought made her
think ever more incisively about herself.
That’s what my entire adult life has been: one string of
one-night stands…

“
Charity!”

She glanced away, into the opposite
end of the back yard’s shaded spaciousness. There was here aunt,
barely seen, waving to her.

Charity, smiling, walked the stone
aisles, passing great eruptions of flowers. “I was wondering where
you were.”

“
Oh, I’m just picking my
daily flowers,” her aunt replied, bending over a flank of
multi-colored paintedcups and delicate bluecurls.

Charity stood with the sun warming her
bare shoulders. Her aunt was wearing a sundress nearly identical to
her own: a blank, pastel chartreuse. “I remember now,” she said.
“From when I was little. Every day you’d gather flowers and go for
a long walk in the woods behind the house. Where do you
go?”

“
Well…” Annie stood up,
smiled indistinctly at her niece. “After all these years, I guess
it’s time you found out, now, ain’t it?”

Charity didn’t query; instead, she
followed her aunt into the thickening woods. The dense trees—a
conglomeration of Blackjack Oaks, Red Maples, and tall, tall
Mockernuts—made it seem cool as evening, and as dark. The
fieldstone path led on and on, leaving Charity again to wonder
where the money had come from to lay it. “Aunt Annie?” she couldn’t
resist. “I’m really curious about something—”

“
Let me guess, hon,” her
aunt came back. “You wanna know where I got the money.”

Was the fine, old woman psychic? Or
was it a question she’d expected all along? The latter, of course.
“Well, yes, if you don’t mind my asking,” Charity admitted. “I
don’t remember a whole lot about the time I lived with you, but…you
know, the house was run down, there were no fieldstone paths—things
were tight. I mean, that’s why the state took me away from you,
isn’t it? Because they felt you didn’t have enough money to raise
me?”

Annie seemed to wilt, her pace
feebling. Around the next bend came a sitting area, with facing
white-painted iron benches, and, dejectedly then, she sat down,
bidding with her hand for Charity to do the same. “Sometimes I just
feels like luck ain’t on my side, like there’s a blight on me,
honey. But yer right, that’s why the state ’thorities took ya from
me, ’cos they deemed I didn’t have enough money ta raise ya proper.
Guess it were true. I only hopes ya kin fergive me.”

“
Aunt Annie!” Charity
exclaimed. “It wasn’t your fault!”

“
I hope it weren’t, honey.
All I can say is I did my best with what I had.”

“
Of course you
did!”

“
An’ I feel mighty bad
’bout only writin’ ya letters all these years, an’ never invitin’
ya out, but the reason I didn’t is ’cos things never seemed ta
change. Yer ol’ Aunt Annie just kept gettin’ poorer, and the house
kept gettin’ more run down.” Annie brushed a tear from her eye. “I
was just too ashamed ta invite ya back home. But then…”

Charity waited, poised on the hard
metal bench.

“
What happened were like a
gift from the Lord. A class-action suit’s what they call it. Turns
out that my land an’ ’bout a thousand acres either way were what
they called Schedule E Mineral Property. And goin’ back ta way back
when, Northeast Carbide was pipin’ natural gas without tellin’ no
one—offa
our
land!
Makin’ millions a year, they were, and, well, some fancy lawyer
from Roanoke got wind of it and he took the case. Proved in federal
court that those Carbide bastards were stealin’ from us, takin’ gas
from our land an’ not payin’. An’ this lawyer, well, he won his
case. So me an’ a whole bunch’a others ’round here got paid what
they call a pro-rata settlement, based on the number’a acres we
each had a deed to. Most of ’em, you know how fellas are, they blew
all their money on gambling an’ such. But I used mine to make
repairs and for signs. That lawyer took a third’a the total take,
but it was worth it. My end was close ta half a million dollars.
Got most of it socked away still, but I used some ta fix the place
up, and post all them signs.”

“
Signs?” Charity
asked.

“
The roadsigns, honey, like
the ones you saw on yer way with yer city friend. Folks on the
highway see the signs and pull in. We’re a good place to stop fer
those headin’ south, and there’s some fine tourist attractions, the
Boone National Forest, Kohls Point, best fishing spot in the state.
And, a’corse, the woods themselfs. An’ ya know what? It worked.
Every fall an’ spring ’specially, I gotta full house, makin’ an
actual profit. That’s how I kin afford to have Goop, and fixin’ up
the flowerbeds. An’ I make a couple thousand a month from bank
interest from what I got left. But—” Annie’s graceful face turned
down, the flowers in her lap like something stillborn. “It just
makes me feel so bad…”

Charity couldn’t for the life of her
understand. “Aunt Annie! That’s wonderful! There’s no reason to
feel bad.”

Annie’s eyes welled with tears. “I
feel bad, dear, on account’a I can’t understand why it took so
long. If this’d happened all them years ago, then I’d’a never lost
ya. I feel like I let ya down…”

Charity got up and sat down next to
her aunt, put her arm about her. “Don’t cry, Aunt Annie. That’s
just the way things happen sometimes.”

“
But that ain’t good
enough,” Annie whimpered. “Yer mama dyin’ so awful by her own hand,
not a year after she gave birth to ya—she was my sister. I felt
obliged to take care’a ya, but I couldn’t. The damn state took ya
away from me.”

Charity stroked her aunt’s shoulder.
“It wasn’t your fault, Aunt Annie. You did the best you could, and
that’s better than most. And, look at it this way. You’re doing
fine now with the boarding house, and I’m doing fine with my career
and my night classes. It’s like they say—”

For some reason, Charity thought
instantly of the priest.

“
God works in strange
ways,” she said.

(II)

“
God works in miraculous
ways,” Alexander stated matter-of-factly, behind the wheel of the
Diocesan Mercedes. He’d been answering a common question, of
Jerrica’s.
If there’s God, how come
there’s war? How come there’s ethic cleansing and murder and rape
and child abuse…
Typical questions of a
non-believer.

“
God does not own the title
deed to the earth,” he said. “The devil does, and he has since Eve
put her choppers to that apple. All God has here is His holy
influence, and His love of mankind.”

“
But what’s miraculous
about war and genocide and rape and everything else?” Jerrica
challenged.

“
Nothing. It’s God’s love
for his kingdom that’s the miraculous part. I can’t judge you
personally,” he said, steering around another sweeping, wooded
bend, “but I can promise you that you’ll know what I’m talking
about when you die.”

Jerrica hitched up her halter,
awe-faced. “You really…believe all that, don’t you?”

Alexander glanced at her,
lit a cigarette. “Yeah. I believe it because it’s true.” Then he
quoted
Psalms.
“‘I
have chosen the way of truth.’ And as for genocide, rape, murder,
war?”
Romans.
“‘The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together
until now.’“ And, finally, from
Isaiah,
“‘I have chosen thee in the
furnace of adversity.’“