The Bighead (20 page)

Red, mortared bricks—surprisingly
unfaded—composed most of the north interior wall, while
half-paneled sheetrock formed the south wall. A strange design, but
then, Jerrica noted, so was the entirety of the building itself.
Inside and out, it completely defied what she expected. Abbeys
brought with them a certain connotation; in her mind she pictured a
great edifice, slate-roofed, made of stone, something medieval and
churchlike. Wroxeter, instead, proved to be more akin to an lodge,
centuries old, or a vast cabin. A bell tower, bereft of bell,
reminded Jerrica of something headless.

But the diversity of building
materials were plain; the outer walls, she saw with astonishment,
were made from long, stout trees stripped of their bark, stained,
and lain lengthwise, seamed with mortar, and ancient cedar shingles
crusted the slanted roof. An old Colonial design, which Alexander
verified upon arrival. “The abbey was built in the late 1600’s, in
case you’re curious about the logs. But the interior is totally
different, due to several overhauls. Wroxeter is actually one of
the oldest Church properties in the state.”

Fascinating. Like a log cabin on a
larger scale. It sat nestled fully in the grips of the forest, at
the end of a long, rising dirt lane. From what Jerrica could
discern, the elevated terrain ended abruptly, as if Wroxeter were
erected on a wooded precipice which descended shortly past the
building’s rearmost limits.

“
So you can see,” the
priest had gone on, “why the Church wants to use it for a rehab
facility. Way out here in the woods, all this peace and
quiet.”

“
Yes,” she agreed. Well,
sort of anyway. “It’s a beautiful area. It’s just that the abbey
itself looks so bizarre. I expected something huge, something with
turrets and stonework, high windows and all that. But this place is
only one story. It just looks so…weird.”

Alexander laughed, hoisting a box full
of tools from the Mercedes. “The Catholic Church doesn’t give a
squat about what it looks like. All they care about is the price,
and the price is right: free.”

Jerrica picked up the supplies they’d
bought in town, and followed the priest. Inside proved even more
peculiar, an obtuse collision of designs. The entry and vestibule
stood tall and dark in tudor stone archways, sconces, and lancet
windows which once had no doubt been inset with stained glass, but
only lead webbings remained now. A slate floor proceeded to the
central hall, carpeted literally by an inch of dust. Rotten rugs,
whose original color was anyone’s guess, led down the main
corridor.

“
Just like Trump Towers,
huh?” Alexander joked. Then he’d whipped out his xeroxes of the
floor layouts, began to scrutinize them.

“
I can’t believe how hot it
is,” Jerrica commented, sweating profusely already.

“
Yeah? You should’ve been
here yesterday, before I had a chance to break out the planks
nailed over the windows at each end of the main hall. It was like a
sauna. At least now we’ve got a little bit of a
cross-breeze.”

A little bit was right. “How did you
break the window planks out?” Jerrica asked, for lack of anything
else.

“
Trusty old twenty-pound
sledge,” the priest answered, and hoisted its haft from the
toolbox.

Jerrica giggled lightly. “Somehow,
it’s hard for me to picture a priest knocking out window planks
with a sledge hammer.”

“
Well, when I find out
where the admin office is, you’re gonna get to see a priest knock
down a brick wall with one.” His eyes tarried over the blueprint
copies. “This is gotta be it,” he supposed. “Right here. Take a
look. Doesn’t this look like new brickwork to you?”

Jerrica felt flattered he’d asked her
opinion. Generally, men relegated her as a party host and a
bedmate. But when she glanced at the indicated area, she saw what
he meant. Newer, darker-hued brick filled a gap between the older
work. “I’m sure you’re right,” she acknowledged, brushing sweat
from her brow with her forearm. “Why else would that newer brick be
there?”

Alexander nodded in ascent, then
grabbed the sledge. “Only one way to find out.”

Jerrica started at each
steady impact, priest suddenly becoming construction worker,
or
de
struction
worker in this case. Alexander wielding the long-handled hammer
with something akin to expertise—not exactly what she would’ve
expected.

chink-chink-chink!

The hammer smacked on and on as she
watched, and it wasn’t long before some of the darker emplacements
of brick began to give, sifting powdered mortar from their
seams.

chink-chink-chink!

He stopped a moment, to wipe his own
brow. “Thank God this is slipshod brick-laying; these bricks are
coming out pretty fast. Like they were set in putty.” Then he
sighed, wiped his brow again, and slipped out the white Roman
collar. “Christ, you’re right. It’s hot as hell in here.” Then he
took off the black cotton shirt.

chink-chink-chink!

Jerrica watched on, no longer
interested in the man’s deftness with a sledge hammer. Instead, she
couldn’t take her eyes off his body…

He was nude now from the waist up;
Jerrica found him ever more attractive. Tight, modest muscles
flexing beneath tighter skin. No body fat at all. He was not
possessed of the extended musculature of Goop, of course, but
Father Tom Alexander was nonetheless not lacking in physical
definition. A faint crucifix of hair crossed his denuded chest.
But—

“
Wait,” she asked without
thinking. A flurry of pocks graced his lower side. “What’s
that?”

The priest lit a cigarette, leaning on
the hammer’s haft. “Shrapnel scars,” he answered without a flinch.
His fingers brushed over the slightly darkened pits. “I was on a
LRRP, that’s long-range-reconnaissance patrol; I was backing up the
point man, a buddy of mine. Anyway, he tripped a Russian-made
APERS.”

“
APERS?” Jerrica,
fascinated, asked next.

“
Anti-personnel mine. Not
much more than a grenade hanging in the bush. My buddy tripped it,
bought the farm—” Alexander crossed himself. “I lucked out and
caught a few pieces in the side. Actually it’s the best thing that
ever happened to me because I got airlifted out by some pure-ass
crazy warrant officer, and I sat in a med-unit while the Tet was
going on that year. If that shrapnel hadn’t hit me, there’d be some
other over-the-hill priest banging this brick wall.”

“
You’re not over the hill!”
Jerrica immediately objected.

“
Hey, I’m pushing fifty and
probably look sixty.”

Jerrica’s eyes rose, a
breath stalled in her bosom. “Believe me, you look
good.
”

Alexander smiled, the cigarette
hanging. “Oh, yeah? Well, thanks for the compliment. Hey, how about
doing me a favor. See if the access is blocked to the bell tower,
for one. And see if there’s a basement. The blueprints aren’t clear
on that.”

“
Uh, okay,” Jerrica agreed.
She knew she would agree to anything he asked. And she also knew
this:
He cut that off real fast because he
knows I think he’s hot.
Why else would he
thank her for the compliment, then send her off?

Didn’t matter,
though.
Shit, he’s a priest,
she reminded herself. After a few moments of
scuttling through dust down the north end of the hall, she found a
door which led up to the bell tower. There were several unsealed
rooms down this end, dorm rooms they looked like: stripped cots,
old wall lockers.
The nuns must’ve slept
here,
she reasoned. A larger dorm contained
half a dozen stripped convalescent beds: the in-patient area. All
pretty boring stuff.

But next she found another door in the
same stairwell leading down to the basement. When she hurried back
and reported this to Alexander, she saw that he’d knocked out all
the new bricks, which lay now in a sifting heap at his feet.
“Shit,” he remarked. “I could lay better brick than that! Let’s go
in.”

Another boarded up room,
stuffy nearly to the point of suffocation. The priest’s sledge
hammer—
Ka-CRACK!
—promptly knocked out the planks, filling the office with
sunlight and fresh air. Alexander’s lean muscles flexed when he
yanked open the first of many rusted file cabinets, celebrating,
“Halford was right. All the records are still here.”

“
That’s great,” Jerrica
said, simply just to agree with him.

And her eyes reopened on the man,
relishing his hard flesh. Even the darkened pits of his war scars
seemed erotic to her…

She leaned against the wall, a hot
breath growing hotter in her chest. Her vision shifted to the most
treacherous deceit: in her mind, then, she saw the two of them
making love, right there in the inch-thick dust on the floor,
groveling over each other, licking each other’s sweat. Her eyes
widened but she saw the fantasy as if they were closed and she were
dreaming. She was desperately yanking down his priestly black
slacks, admitting his penis to her mouth. Then she was sitting on
his face, going cross-eyed as his tongue tended her clitoris and
his fingers entered her sex. First one finger, then two, then…four.
It was another of her countless fantasies: to be fisted till her
throat felt full, till she couldn’t see straight. And here he was,
the goodly Father Alexander, doing just that in the scape of her
scurrilous mind… Fisting her. Moaning for her as she sucked him.
His muscles clenching. She sucked him harder, felt his penis throb
and his testicles draw up. Then all that pent-up come, from so many
years of celibacy, jettisoned out to flood the back of her throat.
She swallowed it all like warm, salty soup as she came, screaming
aloud…

“
Hey. Jerrica. Where you
at? The Twilight Zone?”

She snapped to, probably blushed. “Oh,
I was just…thinking.”

“
Thinking, huh?” Did he
suspect her forbidden thoughts? Could he tell? His frown melded to
half-smile. “Look at this. Isn’t this off-the-wall?” He’d opened
all the desk drawers, which remained full of office supplies and
even some personal effects: letters, a locket, a monogrammed prayer
book, an old bracelet that read JOYCLYN in cursive
engraving.

“
And check this
out.”

Jerrica turned. Along the wall sat a
glass-paned metal cabinet. She tried to turn the handle but found
it locked. The priest wiped dust off the panes, peering in. “This
is amazing. There are still pharmaceuticals in there.”

“
Pharmaceuticals?”

“
Remember, this place
served as a hospice for terminal priests. I’m sure most of them
were on some sort of medication or another, and this is obviously
where they kept them, in the abbess’ office.”

“
That really
is
bizarre,” Jerrica
noted. “Medications, drugs? You would think the Church would’ve
taken them all out of there when the abbey closed.”

“
Yeah,” Alexander agreed,
scratching his head. He shrugged.

“
Let’s go check out the
basement, see what’s down there.”

She followed him
sheepishly. He redonned his black shirt but didn’t button it back
up.
He knows,
she
feared, digging her fingernails into her thigh.
Why else would he have put his shirt back on? He knows I’m
staring at him, he knows I’m fantasizing.

His black priest shoes snapped echoes
up into the hollow staircase. She followed him down. Her nipples
tingled, she knew they must be standing out like points through her
white halter. At least Alexander seemed distracted now, flipping
through more blueprint copies.

At the landing, they turned, followed
down a dark, hot hall of bare cement flooring.

“
Unexcavated,” the priest
murmured.

“
What?”

“
That’s what these plans
say. They say the entire basement is unexcavated.”

“
I don’t…quite follow
you.”

He lit another cigarette, the insides
of his pectorals showing in the opened black shirt. “These plans
are pure garbage. I can’t believe Halford would do this to
me.”

“
They must be out of date,”
she guessed.

“
Fucked up,
is what they are,” the priest obscened. “Pardon my
language, but this is par for the course of the Catholic Church.
What kind of bullshit is this?”

“
I still don’t understand,”
Jerrica said.

He frowned up at her then, the
cigarette fuming. “We’re standing in the basement,
right?”

“
Right.”

“
Well, according to these
blueprints, there
is
no basement.”

Jerrica shrugged. Big deal, they were
old blueprints. Her fantasies, though, continued to drag at her,
like undertow. More dices of sunlit flesh, more prurient images:
Now she lay naked with her legs parted so thoroughly he tendons
hurt. But the pain only added to the pleasure. He was on top of
her, thrusting into her…

“
That son of a bitchin’
Halford,” Alexander remarked.