The Bighead (37 page)

Why not?
she considered. She wanted diversion—here it was.
It was so hot out, and so humid, she could barely breathe. What
better way to get her mind off her problems than a nice, cool
skinny-dip? And who would see? Way out here, in the
sticks?

Her sweat-damp clothes fell to her
feet.

And next, she was sighing to the sky,
stepping into the cool water. The water washed away all her sweat,
and also all her misgivings, her insecurities, as well as her
addictions.

All gone in the cool flow.

I wonder how deep this
lake is?
she wondered. Silt squished
between her toes; she walked further, relishing the unique
coolness.
The water level
rose. Mid-thigh, then to her belly. Then to her bare bosom. Then to
her chin. And then—

What
is…
that?

She stepped on—

(IV)

The afternoon burned on,
then out. Thank God it was cooling down. Annie had been putting
flowers on her mother’s grave for thirty years,
It’s high time I did too,
Charity
thought, and picked some out in the wild garden. She picked a
pretty bundle of Cardinals and Beebalms, a nice flux of reds and
pinks. When Aunt Annie had invited her to go to the cemetery with
her, Charity didn’t even think of refusing.

“
It’s
so
hot,” Annie remarked down the
treed path. She wore a great white sun hat and a light pastel
dress. Oddly, though, Charity couldn’t help but notice how her
aunt, every so often, brought her free hand to her bosom and
rubbed, as though her nipples itched. Charity herself, for a
change, wore shorts and a lime midriff blouse. And her aunt was
right: it was
hot,
even this late in the day.

“
I can’t imagine were Goop
is,” Annie said. “I haven’t seen him, not in the yard, not in the
house. I suppose he’s mad at me for sending him off to Roanoke. He
must know I did it to keep him out of Jerrica’s hair.”

“
I wouldn’t worry about it,
Aunt Annie. He’s off doing something, but—”

Charity’s thoughts bumbled to a halt.
What was she going to say? The question had been rasping at her,
like a rash. “I have to ask you something.”

“
What, hon?”

The sun baked Charity’s cheeks. Weeds
fell under her sandals. “I want to know about the second grave. The
unmarked one I saw you put flowers on the other day.”

Silence. The two of them marched on
down the path. Charity waited, until her aunt finally answered,
“It’s just…something. Don’t’cha worry ’bout it none,.”

Not much of an answer at
all.

And then Annie, obviously
changing subjects, said, “I can’t wait till Jerrica and Father come
back. I
love
cooking for folks. Tonight I’m gonna serve Crawdad Purloo,
Buttermilk Soda Biscuits, steamed Pokeweed shoots, and Pear
Upside-Down Cake fer dessert. Father’ll love it.”

“
He’s a wonderful man,
isn’t he?”

“
Oh, yes, a fine, fine
man’a God.”

But Charity could traipse
through all this small-talk forever. She wanted to ask again, about
the unmarked grave, but figured it would be best not to, not right
now.
She’ll tell me in her own
time…

Eventually they arrived at the
cemetery, its high grasses bright in the sun. When the trail
emptied into the graveyard’s basin, Charity’s foot tripped on a
root, and she stumbled, dropping her flower bundle. “Oh, I’ve got
to rearrange these!” she griped aloud. “Go on to the graves, Aunt
Annie, and I’ll be there in a minute.”

Her aunt walked on, seeming almost to
disappear in the glare of sun. Charity stooped to retrieve her
flowers, paused to refit the arrangement, and—

Heard a scream.

She jerked up, froze, then called out:
“Aunt Annie!”

The only response was another
scream.

Charity ran, stepping on graveplots.
She sprinted out to the far corner of the yard, and saw her aunt
collapsed on the ground.

She also saw something
else:

The graves of her mother, and also the
odd second unmarked grave—

My God!

—
dug up.

—
| — | —

NINETEEN

(I)

Where the hell is
she?
Alexander wondered. He’d given up on
the wall downstairs; there was only so much of him. He’d have to
come back tomorrow, and finish knocking the rest of the bricks
out.
An old fuck priest like me—shit. I
gotta take it one step at a time.

But where was Jerrica?

Bad scene, he knew. That
heavy ration of shit he’d lain on her yesterday? He was surprised
she was still talking to him.
Get a life,
Tom,
he told himself.
People have flaws, give ’em a break.

Still shirtless, and revitalized now
in the fresh air, he walked around the circumference of the abbey.
Tall trees hovered, laden with heavy green branches; honeysuckle
scents nearly intoxicated him, and birds squawked. But Jerrica
wasn’t to be found.

He lit a Lucky, wended down
the path behind the building. “Jerrica!” he shouted. “Where are
you?” But then he thought,
Oh, no,
when he arrived at the end of the trail, at the
lake’s shore. Her sandals, blouse, and shorts lay in a heap.
She’s in the water—can’t say that I blame her, as
hot as it is.
But—

I oughta kick her
ass,
he thought next. He noticed the
bag-corner sticking out of her shorts’ pocket, inspected it. More
cocaine.
Shit…

He glanced out over the lake. One
thing he didn’t need to see—even though a solid part of his
pre-priest self did—was Jerrica rising nude from the water. But she
had to be somewhere. His eyes scanned and roved the entire
perimeter of the lake. Floating sunlight glared, a pane of wobbling
glare. Shore to shore, though, he checked, but there was no sign of
her. Until—

“
Jerrica!” he called
out.

There she was. On the other side. He
could see her coming out of the water—

“
Jerrica!”

Tiny as she was, she didn’t turn, or
even acknowledge his call. Certainly she’d heard him…

“
Jerrica!”

She disappeared into the trees at the
other side of the lake.

(II)

Charity struggled
frantically.
Heat stroke,
she feared. And old woman like that? Christ, she
could die! She pulled her aunt across the fringe of the graveyard,
to the cooler shade of the woods.

Too many images piled up at once. Her
aunt lying unconscious before her. But also—

The graves…

She’d seen them, only at a glance. But
a glance was enough. Someone had dug them up.

Animals? Perhaps. But why
just
those two graves?
Sissy’s

—
her mother’s—and the
smaller unmarked plot nearby…

Both dug up, as effectively as if by a
trencher.

First thing was first, though. Aunt
Annie. Her face looked pale, so Charity raised her aunt’s feet with
a rotten log, remembering from a first-aid class in the orphanage,
If the face is red, raise the head, if the face is pale, raise the
tail. But with Aunt Annie’s legs inclined now, her sunskirt fell
down…

Oh, my…God!

Charity couldn’t help but see the
scars. Right there, burned into the insides of the old woman’s
thighs. Fat, reddened worms of scars, like burns, abundant.
Charity’s thoughts came to another guillotine halt, though, when
she looked up. One breast had slipped out of the
dresstop…

The nipple a crust of burn
scars.

“
The broth,” Annie
muttered, still ont conscious.

“
Aunt Annie! Wake
up!”

The old woman’s throat wobbled.
“Geraldine…forgive me. It was the only way…”

The Annie fell silent again, still
succumbed to her faint.

Let her lay still, out of
the sun,
Charity advised herself.
Let her breathe…

She strayed, then, back to the lots,
high, dry grass collapsing beneath her steps. The sun’s heat
crushed her, but eventually she made her way back to the grave
plots.

Yes, it was no trick of vision. Both
plots had been dug up, heaps of soil lying on either side. This was
backwoods, rural—no grave liners, in other words, were implemented
for burials. But the coffins had been pulled out, their lids
unseated and flung open.

Charity, her lower lip trembling,
dropped on one knee and saw—

(III)

Jerrica was gone, ignoring him as she
walked away naked into the opposing woods, but that was no real
surprise. Alexander, however, as he turned, felt his vision
snagged, by—something.

He stood at the lake’s edge,
squinting, the sun-glare on the water bright as the
white-phosphorous they’d pump into VC gun nests back in The Nam,
with their M-79s. Get a load of white phosphorous—willy-pete, as
they called it—into a covered MG nest, and the stuff would burn so
fast, it would suck all the oxygen out. The rest was a turkey
shoot.

The priest shielded his
eyes, leaning forward.
What is…

There was something…

But the sun was blinding him. The only
way he’d be able to get a clearer view was by going to a higher
vantage point…

The tower,
he realized.
The abbey’s
bell tower…

A quick jog took him back
to the building. A tougher jog took him up the tower’s winding
stairwell, decades’ old dust puffing beneath his footfalls.
Christ, quit smoking, you asshole,
he warned himself once he got up top. The bell
tower’s open air rushed his face; he leaned back, gasping, cursing
his multi-pack-a-day habit.

And, as do most smokers, he lit
another cigarette.

Then he turned, gazed out,
and—

Hoooooly motherfucking
shit…,
the priest thought when he looked
again at the lake.

(IV)

It was disgusting, hideous. How could
somebody do such a thing in the first place? Charity felt flensed,
the skin of her reason peeling back at the loss of what she
conceived of as sanity.

Annie partially roused, enough to
walk. “Come on! Come on!” Charity barked, her breasts swaying in
her top. “We’ve got to get you back to the house!”

“
The broth,” her aunt
replied insensibly. “Geraldine…”

Who was Geraldine? And what
was the broth? Charity stripped it from her pondering for now, more
concerned with getting her aunt back to the house alive. But
concerned—
very
concerned—also by what she’d seen at the disinterred plots.
SISSY read the large stone. Its pried open coffin revealed a mere
skeleton. And there was a tiny skeleton, brown-boned, lying in the
smaller coffin—just a small crate—of the other unearthed
plot.

A child’s grave,
Charity knew now.

But it wasn’t so much the infant’s
skeleton itself as it was the scrawl of inscription
inside.

BIGHEAD, it read. BURN IN
HELL.

(V)

“
Who is
Bighead?”

Annie’s eyes drooped.

Charity slapped her aunt in the face.
“Who is Bighead? It’s supposed to be a myth, a fable. Why did
someone write BIGHEAD inside the lid of that coffin?”

“
One of the men, probably,
one of the Ketchum boys, I think,” Aunt Annie mumbled as though her
mouth were full of frogs. “The men got the coffin—it was just a
little packing crate.”

“
And what about Sissy’s
grave!” Charity was hot, riled. She wanted answers. “You said she
shot herself in the head with a shotgun when my father died in the
coal mine…”

Annie’s face went gelid, a frozen, old
mask. Her eyes locked up…

“
Tell me, goddamn it! The
skull in that coffin was intact! What’s going on!”

Dusk was seeping into the windows now,
the heat abating however slightly. It had taken Charity forever to
walk her aunt back to the boarding house.

“
What are those scars on
your legs, and your nipples?” she demanded next, unable to sort her
questions.

“
Geraldine. Forgive
me.”

“
Who is
Geraldine!
”

This was no use. Aunt Annie was out of
it. Her consciousness seemed to lapse, in and out, her eyes opening
and closing.