The Bighead (24 page)

He thoughts then again ’bout that big
boomin’ Voice he’d heard, tellin’ him ta COME. Bighead weren’t one
ta clearly see a whole lotta meanin’ in life but he figgurt it
cain’t hurt ta foller the Voice like he been tolt. An’ that’s just
what he been doin’! Walkin’ fer miles ever day, not knowin’ at all
where he were goin’ but goin’ just the same. “The meanin’ of
life’ll call ya someday, Bighead,” Grandpap’d tolt him shortly
’fore he died. “An’ ya gots ta foller that meanin’.”

Just a bit’a heat lightnin’ crackled
just above him, an’ The Bighead heard the Voice again.

COME, it said.

An’, well, Bighead were’a comin’, but
he was gittin’ ta need to come in another way, ya know, an’ he were
terrible hungry.

An’ that’s when he saw that there li’l
farmhouse…

(II)

“
That’s a good girl, that’s
my baby…”

Ned cowered in the dark of his room,
listening.

“
Ow, Daddy!” his sister
fairly screamed. “It hurts!”

“
Aw, now, darlin’,” came
their father’s voice. “What’cha gots ta learn is that some things
in life’ll smart a little. Ain’t nothin’. You’ll’se git used ta
it.”

It happened most every night: Daddy’d
come off the farm with the big green seed drill or the baler, and
he’d sit and sip his shine till the moon came out. And that’s when
it always happened.

Ned was thirteen, Melissa was twelve.
Their Mommy had died a few years back, some kind of cancer, the
doctor told them. And ever since then, things just hadn’t been
right.

Young Ned
knew
they weren’t right,
because he listened to the other kids at the middle school, and
none of them ever talked about such things happening. So Ned kept
quiet about it, didn’t want his friends to think his family wasn’t
normal.

But it just kept going on and
on…

Daddy’d always start with
Melissa first. Ned never actually saw, but he could guess. “It’s
Daddytime, Melissa,” Daddy’d always say. They could smell that
awful shine on his breath. Ned would wait in his room till it was
his time. He’d hear what went on, though, and sometimes Daddy’d get
a right nasty—Ned could hear the sharp wet
slaps!
That would be Daddy cracking
Melissa in the face when she whined or didn’t go along. Ned knew,
because he got the same treatment too.

“
That’s it, sweetheart,”
Daddy was saying now on the other side of the wall. “All I wants is
ta git ready fer yer brother, that’s all.”

She cried some more, like she was
trying to swallow her sobs. Daddy made Melissa bleed most of the
time, and that wasn’t surprising, because it made Ned bleed
too.

“
Good girl. That’s
Daddy’s
good
little girl. The smartin’s over, honey. Daddy’s all
finished.”

Oh, no,
Ned thought. Because when Daddy said that, it
meant it was Ned’s turn.

Ned did the only proper
thing he knew to do: he prayed to God. “‘Trust ye in the Lord
forever,’“ Father Karpins would say every Sunday at church, before
the church closed down. “‘Believe in God, and He will help thee.’“
Well, dammit, Ned
did
believe in God, and he prayed every night, but not once since
mama died had God ever answered one of Ned’s prayers.

The door clicked open. The hall light
lanced into the room, landing on Ned’s face.

“
It’s Daddytime,
son…”

He’d long since stopped trying to
fight it; Daddy hit him when he did. “You know what to do,” Daddy
said.

His thing was sticking out, kind of
bobbing, as he stepped forward.

“
Be a good boy, now, and do
good to yer Daddy.”

Naked, shivering, Ned leaned forward.
He didn’t want to do it, but, God!, he didn’t want to get hit.
Daddy hit hard.

“
Good boy. That’s a good
son…”

Ned had it in his mouth now, just the
way Daddy had showed him. It tasted sharp and kind of salty, and
Ned knew that was because Daddy’d just taken out of his sisters
babyhole. He could hear his sister crying in the other
bedroom.

“
Good boy, that’s my son. A
good boy always wants ta please his father.”

Ned didn’t like it at all. After a
while, Daddy’d push the back of Ned’s head and push his thing hard
back against his throat, and sometimes Ned’d gag—he couldn’t help
it.

But that wasn’t the worst
part…

“
Okay, son. You know what
yer Daddy wants. Turn over an’ lay on yer belly. And spread them
cheeks.”

“
Aw, Daddy!
Please—”

Smack!

The crack of his Daddy’s
open palm across his face stung like bees. A tear squeezed out of
Ned’s eye.
Please, God,
he prayed.
Don’t let it
happen again!

But Ned didn’t have much choice, did
he? God, evidently, wasn’t home.

He lay on the bed, on his belly, and
he reached back and pulled apart his cheeks. Daddy moaned, looking
down in the soft, warm darkness, and he spat right in Ned’s
buttcrack.

“
Make yer Daddy feel good
now, son. Like a good boy. This is what all good boys’re s’post ta
do fer their daddies.”

Ned winced. He could feel the end of
Daddy’s thing rubbing up against his hole. Silent tears flowed from
his eyes, drenching the bedsheets.

And even though all of his prayers to
God had been left unanswered, he prayed still:

Please, God. I believe in
Jesus and the Holy Ghost and Old Father Karpins, and I believe in
You. Please, God. Help me an’ Melissa. I beg’a Ya. Please. Make it
stop—

Was there a quick thunking sound? It
sounded like someone big had walked into the room. The end of
Daddy’s thing was just about to push into Ned’s butthole
when—

Daddy went:
Arrrrrrrgh!

And the thing that Ned dreaded more
than anything else…stopped.

Daddy, suddenly, was off of
him, and when Ned turned to see, he couldn’t see much on account of
the room was so dark. But he saw a shadow there, a
giant
shadow, lifting
Daddy up by his head.

Then Daddy got thrown down onto the
floor, and that big shadow was all over him. There was a fierce
stink in the room, and an ugly thunking sound which Ned guessed
were his Daddy’s feet kicking the floor.

Then Daddy screamed…

A chill bolted right up Ned’s spine.
The door swung open further and Melissa rushed in—her little white
nightgown had a red spot in the front—and she squealed when she
looked down.

“
Melissa! Come here!” Ned
shouted.

His sister rushed to him and he put
his arm around her to try to comfort her. It was so dark they
couldn’t really see what was happening, but they knew it wasn’t
good for Daddy, the way he was screaming there on the floor with
that big shadow lying on top of him.

Melissa blurted sobs.
“Who—who
is
it?”

“
I think it’s God,” Ned
said, tightening his grip about his sister’s shoulder. “I prayed ta
God ta make it stop, and it did! That big shadder walked in an’
grabbed Daddy an’ it stopped!”

“
It’s—” Melissa swallowed
another sob. “It’s…
God?
”

“
I—I don’ts know fer shore,
but I thinks so.”

The room rocked with Daddy’s screams.
It was louder and sounded worse than the time the power-tedder
pulled up that big rock in the field and fed it into the works. No,
Daddy’s screams didn’t hardly sound human.

But then they stopped, and then there
were sounds like dry twigs snapping, but they could still see that
big shadow lying on top of Daddy, humping like, and then there was
a grunt and something like a sigh.

Then another sound, something
crunching, like walnuts maybe, and then a wet eating
sound.

And then the shadow stood
up…

It must’ve been eight foot
tall, and its face stepped right into the moonlight beaming in from
the window. And Ned and Melissa—they
saw
that face.

“
That ain’t God!” Melissa
screamed.

No,
Ned reckoned,
I guess it
ain’t.

“
God don’t look like that!
He’s a nice peaceful man sittin’ onna throne, ands he got long
white hair’n a white beard!”

But what they were looking at right
then was a face nothing like what Melissa just said. The head
looked bigger than a watermelon, and the eyes in the
face…

Ned nearly screamed.

One eye was big as a grapefruit, and
the other small as a grape. And the mouth… The mouth looked like a
black hole full of broken glass.

“
It ain’t God, Ned!” his
sister shrieked. “It’s the devil!”

The devil?
But that didn’t make any sense! Ned had prayed
to
God
for help.
Not the devil.

“
It’s the devil,” Melissa
sobbed. “An’ he’s gonna do the same ta us that he just done ta
Daddy!”

But Ned couldn’t believe
it. He
wouldn’t
believe it.
Naw, no way!
God wouldn’t do something so mean like that, would
He? Let the devil hump their heinies after saving them from Daddy
doing the same? No! No way! Ned
refused
to believe God could be such
a right son-of-a-bitch to let something like that
happen!

So he did what he always did. He
prayed.

Please, God. Me’n my
sister, we ain’t done no one no wrong. And we’se know You wouldn’t
let the devil do them things ta us. I thank Ya with all my heart
fer savin’ me from Daddy, but now I’se prayin’ again, just like
Father Karpins said ta. I’m prayin’ fer Ya ta make the devil go
away.

The devil drooled, staring
at them, and that’s when young Ned took note of the size of his
thing. It was
huge,
and—

Aw, no!

It was getting hard again.

It’d kill them both, Ned
could tell just by looking at the size of the thing.
No way!
he thought
again.
No way God’s gonna let this happen
ta us!

Melissa was gibbering. The devil’s
shadow moved closer…

Please, God!
Ned prayed with his eyes squeezed shut.
Please! Make the devil go away! I’m BEGGIN’
ya!

And then that awful stink left the
room. Melissa shuddered in his arm.

When Ned opened his eyes back up, he
saw that the devil had done just what he’d asked God for it to
do.

The devil had gone away.

(III)

Shee-it. They was just
tots, they was! The Bighead stomped off away from the house, inta
the darkness. He’d had hisself a fine nut up the father’s ass, an’
he’d busted open his noggin an’ et some
fine
brains, he did, an’ filled his
belly like it needed ta be filled. An’ then he were hard again
fast, too. But when he saw them there kids—shee-it!

So’s little they was.
Weren’t no point in fuckin’ ’em. Shee-it, big as The Bighead were,
he problee couldn’t even git it
in
’em. Best ta just leave.

Yes sir. That’s what he felt were best
ta do. ’Sides, he were feelin’ grateful, he were. Hadda good nut,
got hisself a good bellyfull’a good hot brains. It were time ta
move on now.

‘
Cos if there were one
thing The Bighead felt more strongly than anything, it were that he
hadda move on. He hadda mission, he did. Didn’t know what it was,
but he still had it.

An’ above him just then, in that big
black sky, more’a that weird silent lightnin’ flashed, an’ when it
flashed, he heard that one familiar word in his head:

COME.

(IV)

“
It was
outrageous!
” Jerrica bragged at the
parlor table. She sat next to Father Alexander, and opposite them
were Charity and Aunt Annie. Annie had poured raspberry wine and
set out a plate of funnelcakes and homemade molasses. Jerrica, more
than half-drunk now, rambled onward, “These two guys, you should’ve
seen them. Lowlife punks to the max. And when they started giving
us a hard time, Father Alexander threw it right back in their
faces! The bearded guy touched me, and when he did, it made my skin
crawl. But a second later, the guy was flying across the bar!
Father punched him right in the face!”

Alexander tried not to show
his smirk. Yeah, he’d kicked ass on a couple of guys that needed
it, but now, after some thinking, he didn’t feel too cool about it.
A line of Scripture kept occurring to him, from the Gospel of
Matthew. ’
All they that take the sword
shall perish by the sword.’
And another,
far more important:
He who smite thee on
the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Alexander, despite Jerrica’s celebration, spewed smoke in
self-disgust.
The guy grabbed her,
he tried to rationalize.
He touched her. For Christ sake, he squeezed her breast. I
had to do
something,
didn’t I?