“A minute ago you said you couldn’t see it,” she pointed out. She had him there, and he didn’t respond. “Don’t think you can undo Christ’s return with his army of Niff to defeat the Gnoomes by being cynical about it, even if He did pick your mural to appear on.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Todd. Sarcastic again.
“You’d like to make it all go away, wouldn’t you? You’ve always been self-defeating and self-destructive. You made me that way, too! That’s why I had to get away from you.” She was going to add that was why the baby had died, but no, not here, not in His presence.
But as she came closer, she saw something was wrong. The image was twisting, becoming still more distorted, as if in response to Todd’s derision. For a moment, its face seemed to smirk, with its eyes spilling out of place. She fell to her knees again, whimpering.
“See?” said Todd. “Told you. It’s just a fucking stain on a wall. If your Mr. Jesus ever existed, he’s dead, just like I’m dead.” The image continued to distort, become freakish, ugly. The crowd noticed as well, responding with catcalls and gasps.
Clare was infuriated. “Awright then, if that’s what you want. Go ahead and be dead!” She rose and swung her arm around, hurling Todd’s head at the wall with all her might. It smacked hard near what was left of the image’s face and slid rapidly down, leaving a bloody smear and falling to the ground. There were screams, and hands grabbed her from behind.
CHAPTER 38
JAIME AT THE SPECTACLE
Jaime walked back to the theater, distracted, thinking about death. The image of Todd’s head on the sink and his headless body in the bathtub seemed burned into a part of his brain, like a picture hanging before him, about at the angle of a rearview mirror. He kept glancing and seeing it. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen dead people before, he’d seen a bunch of them, mostly people in his family. The only one he’d seen before that was all bloody and gory like that was Dawnie. He hadn’t seen the car actually run her over, but saw what was left of her right afterward there in the street. He didn’t want that picture popping up either, so tried to think about something else.
But there was only death to think about. Like the time his cat, Nigger, got hit. He was a black cat, that’s why he had that name, and scrawny. Old scary Mrs. Downey from down the street—she was dead now too but this was back when she was alive—had come ambling up across her lawn and yelled at Jaime, who was sitting in the tire swing in the backyard. “Is that your damn cat in the street?” And he ran out to the street in front of the house and there was Nigger, lying dead with his head half tore off and one of his eyeballs broken, part of it hanging about two inches out of his head. Mrs. Downey had followed him and yelled, “That cat was in my basement Tuesday night!” like it didn’t matter that he was dead or that he sure wasn’t going to do it again. Jaime didn’t answer but turned and ran. By the time he got inside the house he was sobbing. He found Mom in the living room, sitting alone, watching one of her soap operas and drinking a beer out of a bottle like she always did. He tried to tell her about Nigger, but she acted mad too, because he was interrupting her show. “Well, you ain’t gonna get another one, so shut the hell up,” she’d said.
Nigger hadn’t really been his cat in the first place, he just kind of lived in the garage. They didn’t feed him too much or anything, though he did get into the garbage they’d put out. Jaime would bring him into the house if no one was around, which was a little hard since Nigger didn’t like to be picked up, and would play with him, putting socks over his head and stuff to see him walk backward and try to get them off with his paws and his feet. Well, maybe Dawnie played with him too, but she’d do mean stuff to him, like throw him down the basement stairs, then she’d go down to find him and he’d be hiding somewhere down there. They never did figure out where he’d hide those times. When Mom noticed him in the house, she’d throw a fit. You didn’t let no animals in the house where she came from, she’d say, though that was before Cheryl Sue got all fascinated with dogs, would even have them sleeping in bed with her. Jaime guessed by then, Mom didn’t care anymore because she was starting to get sick. Baby wasn’t allowed in the house though, he was too stinky.
When Dawnie got hit by the car, she was much more messed up than Nigger had been, but was just like him when it came to one of her eyeballs. It was torn and hanging out of her head in the same way. At least, Jaime thought that was how it was, but he wasn’t sure because he’d only seen her for a couple seconds and it had been so much like a bad dream, hearing the car slam into something, followed by a brief scream and everyone running outside to find Dawnie dead and mangled in the street and the old man behind the wheel breathing hard like he couldn’t stop while Bud Junior yelled at him and tried to get the locked car door open, Ma and Maamaw screaming and wailing louder than ever before. Later he thought maybe her eye wasn’t really like that and he was just remembering what Nigger had looked like because that was another hit and run car accident where somebody dead was left lying in the street.
At Dawnie’s funeral, down in Dayville at the Hardwick Funeral Home, Jaime couldn’t see how her eye was. They had to keep the coffin closed up because of her condition, they said. Ma and Cheryl Sue and old Aunt Dawn—who Dawnie was named after—and Aunt Dell and Aunt Susie and Cousin Florence and some other women relatives he didn’t even know the names of were all screaming so much, like they did at Pa’s funeral and Pappaw’s funeral, which was right after that, but they were both in open caskets and looked like they were asleep except they weren’t snoring or even breathing, just lying there, plus they were kind of shriveled looking and were all dressed up in clothes that looked real uncomfortable somehow. They screamed at Bud Junior’s funeral, only they did it even more so at Dawnie’s funeral because she was a little girl, Jaime supposed. Bud Junior was in a closed casket at his funeral too, and Marlon didn’t even have a funeral because the Hardwicks who had the funeral home got mad at the Tales for having so many funerals they probably didn’t pay much for, so that time everybody came out to the house and screamed there instead.
Jaime figured there wouldn’t be all that screaming at Todd’s funeral, if he had one, because the only other funeral he’d been to that wasn’t for somebody in his family was for Clare’s father, Mr. Hardwick, also down at the Hardwick Funeral Home, and that was really quiet though a lot of people were there. Some were relatives, but not many Jaime really knew, and the Tales didn’t stay very long. Maamaw said she wanted to go to pay her respects and to sign the guestbook, but Mom didn’t act like she even wanted to go. Clare was there and had dark circles around her eyes like somebody’d hit her, but she didn’t cry or say anything at all while they were there. Funny, because with Todd, when she found his head and all, she acted more like people in Jaime’s family, screaming and talking to the dead person and not making sense and stuff. In fact, Clare talking to Todd’s head like that was pretty much the same as Aunt Dell crying and talking to the corpse in the coffin at Pappaw’s funeral.
It occurred to Jaime, as cars passed him by, that Shannon might be driving around in some other car and see him. If he did and came after him, Jaime decided, he’d run, but if he was closing in on him he’d yell that he didn’t have the car no more, it was parked out by Todd’s house. He still wasn’t going to say anything about Todd because that would be too much to yell over your shoulder while you’re trying to run away, and besides, he didn’t really want to get involved with the whole thing. After that thought came to him, each time he heard a car approaching he’d cringe a little, but they’d just whiz by, so apparently Shannon wasn’t in any of them.