The Collective (46 page)

was the thing to do; that was the ticket. Never mind the eyebrow pencil, just forget that - she had none of the signs of brain injury she had seen on the afternoon stories and Marcus Welby, M.D., that was the important thing. She was all right. As for the eyebrow pencil, she would just forget that part.

And so she had, at least until now. She looked at her half-eaten dinner and realized with a sort of dull humor that she had been wrong about her appetite - she couldn't eat another bite.

She took her plate over to the garbage and scrapped what was left into the can, while Ozzie wound restlessly around her ankles. Joe didn't look up from his magazine. In his mind, Nancy Voss was asking him again if that tongue of his was as long as it looked.

She woke up in the middle of the night from some confusing dream in which all the clocks in the house had been talking in her father's voice. Joe lay beside her, flat on his back in his boxer shorts, snoring.

Her hand went to the Band-Aid. The hole didn't hurt, didn't exactly throb, but it itched. She rubbed at it gently, afraid of another of those dazzling green flashes. None came.

She rolled over on her side and though: You got to go to the doctor, 'Becka. You got to get that seen to. I don't know what you did, but -

No, she answered herself. No doctor. She rolled to her other side, thinking she would be awake for hours now, wondering, asking herself frightened questions. Instead, she was asleep again in moments.

In the morning the hole under the Band-Aid hardly itched at all, and that made it easier not to think about. She made Joe his breakfast and saw him off to work. She finished washing the dishes and took out the garbage. They kept it in a little shed beside the house that Joe had built, a structure not much bigger than a doghouse. You had to lock it up or the coons came out of the woods and made a mess.

She stepped in, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and put the green bag down with the others. Vinnie would be by in Friday or

Saturday and then she would give the shed a good airing. As she was backing out, she saw a bag that hadn't been tied up like the others. A curved handle, like the handle of a cane protruded from the top.

Curious, she pulled it out and saw it was an umbrella. A number of moth-eaten, unraveling hats came out with the umbrella.

A dull warning sound in her head. For a moment she could almost see through the inkstain to what was behind it, to what had happened to her

(bottom it's in the bottom something heavy something in a box what Joe don't remember won't)

yesterday. But did she want to know?

No.

She didn't.

She wanted to forget.

She backed out of the little shed and rebolted the door with hands that trembled the slightest bit.

A week later (she still changed the band-Aid each morning, but the wound was closing up - she could see the pink new tissue filling it when she shone Joe's flashlight into it and peered into the bathroom mirror) 'Becka found out what half of have already either knew or surmised - that Joe was cheating on her. Jesus told her. In the last three days or so, Jesus had told her the most amazing, terrible, distressing things imaginable. They sickened her, they destroyed her sleep, they were destroying her sanity ... but were they wonderful? Weren't they just! And would she stop listening, simply tip Jesus over on His face, perhaps scream at Him to shut up? Absolutely not. For one thing, he was the Savior. For another thing, there was a grisly sort of compulsion in knowing the things Jesus told her.

Jesus was on top of the Paulsons' Zenith television and He had been in that same spot for just about twenty years. Before resting atop the Zenith, He had rested atop two RCAs (Joe Paulson had always bought American). This was a beautiful 3-D picture of Jesus that Rebecca's sister, who lived in Portsmouth, had sent her. Jesus was dressed in a simple white robe, and He was holding a Shepard's staff.

Because the picture had been created ('Becka considered "made" much too mundane a word for a likeness which seemed so real you could almost stick your hand into it) before the Beatles and the changes they had wreaked on male hairstyles, His hair was not too long, and perfectly neat. The Christ on 'Becka Paulson's TV combed His hair a little bit like Elvis Presley after Elvis got out of the army. His eyes were brown and mild and kind. Behind Him, in perfect perspective, sheep as white as the linens in TV soap commercials trailed away into the distance. 'Becka and her sister Corinne and her brother Roland had grown up on a sheep farm in New Gloucester, and 'Becka knew from personal experience that sheep were never that white and uniformly woolly, like little fair weather clouds that had fallen to earth. But, she reasoned, if Jesus could turn water into wine and bring the dead back to life, there was no reason at all why He couldn't make the shit caked around a bunch of lambs' rumps disappear if He wanted to.

A couple of times Joe had tried to move that picture off the TV, and she supposed that now she new why, oh yessirree Bob, oh yes indeedy. Joe of course, had his trumped-up tales. "it doesn't seem right to have Jesus on top of the television while we're watching Three's Company or Charlie's Angels" he'd say. "Why don't you put it up on your bureau, 'Becka? Or ... I'll tell you what! Why not put it up on your bureau until Sunday, and then you can bring it down and out it back on the TV while you watch Jimmy Swaggart and Rex Humbard and Jerry Falwell? I'll bet Jesus likes Jerry Falwell one hell of a lot better than he likes Charlie's Angels."

She refused.

"When it's my turn to have the Thursday-night poker game, the guys don't like it," he said another time. "No one wants to have Jesus Christ looking at them while He tries to fill a flush or draw to an inside straight."

"Maybe they feel uncomfortable because they know gambling's the Devil's work," 'Becka said.

Joe, who was a good poker player, bridled. "then it was the Devil's work that bought you your hair dryer and that garnet ring you

like so well," he said. "better take 'em back for refunds and give the money to the Salvation Army. Wait, I think I got the receipts in my den."

She allowed as how Joe could turn the 3-D picture of Jesus around to face the wall on the one Thursday night a month that he had his dirty-talking, beer-swilling friends in to play poker . but that was all.

And now she knew the real reason he wanted to get rid of that picture. He must have had an idea all along that that picture was a magic picture. Oh ... she supposed sacred was a better word, magic was for pagans - headhunters and Catholics and people like that -but the came almost to one and the same, didn't they? All along Joe must have sensed that picture was special, that it would be the means by which his sin would be found out.

Oh, she supposed she must have had some idea of what all his recent preoccupation had meant, must have known there was a reason why he was never after her at night anymore. But the truth was, that had been a relief - sex was just as her mother had told her it would be, nasty and brutish, sometimes painful and always humiliating. Had she also smelled perfume on his collar from time to time? If so, she had ignored that, too, and she might have gone on ignoring it indefinitely if the picture of Jesus on the Sony hadn't begun to speak on July 7th. She realized now that she had ignored a third factor, as well; at about the same time the pawings had stopped the perfume smells had begun, old Charlie Estabrooke had retired and a woman named Nancy Voss had come up from the Falmouth post office to take his place. She guessed that the Voss woman (whom, 'Becka had now come to think of simply as The Hussy) was perhaps five years older than her and Joe, which would make her around fifty, but she was a trim, well-kept and handsome fifty. 'Becka herself had put on a little weight during her marriage, going from one hundred and twenty-six to a hundred and ninety-three, most of that since Byron, their only chick and child, had flown from the nest.

She could have gone on ignoring it, and perhaps what would even have been for the best. If The Hussey really enjoyed the

animalism of sexual congress, with its gruntings and thrustings and that final squirt of sticky stuff that smelled faintly like codfish and looked like cheap dish detergent, then it only proved that The Hussy was little more than an animal herself - and of course it freed 'Becka of a tiresome, if ever more occasional, obligation. But when the picture of Jesus spoke up, telling her exactly what was going on, it became impossible to ignore. She knew that something would have to be done.

The picture first spoke at just past three in the afternoon on Thursday. This was eight days after shooting herself in the head and about four days after her resolution to forget it was a hole and not just a mark had begun to take effect. 'Becka was coming back into the living room from the kitchen with a little snack (half a coffeecake and a beer stein filled with Kool-Aid) to watch General Hospital. She no longer really believed that Luke would ever find Laura, but she could not quite find it in her heart to completely give up hope.

She was bending down to turn on the Zenith when Jesus said, "'Becka, Joe is putting the boots to that Hussey down at the pee-oh just about every lunch hour and sometimes after punching out time in the afternoon. Once he was so randy he drove it to her while he was supposed to be helping her sort the mail. And do you know what? She never even said 'At least wait until I get the first-class into the boxes.' "

'Becka screamed and spilled her Kool-Aid down the front of the TV. It was a wonder, she thought later, when she was able to think at all, that the picture tube didn't blow. Her coffeecake went on the rug.

"And that's not all," Jesus told her. He walked halfway across the picture, His robe fluttering around His ankles, and sat down on a rock that jutted out of the ground. He held His staff between his knees and looked at her grimly. "There's a lot going on in Haven. Why, you wouldn't believe the half of it."

'Becka screamed again and fell on her knees. One of them landed squarely on her coffeecake and squirted raspberry filling into the face of Ozzie Nelson, who had crept into the living room to see what was going on. "My Lord! My Lord!" 'Becka shrieked. Ozzie

ran, hissing, for the kitchen, where he crawled under the stove with red goo dripping from his whiskers. He stayed under there the rest of the day.

"Well, none of the Paulsons was ever any good," Jesus said. A sheep wandered towards Him and He whacked it away, using His staff with an absentminded impatience that reminded 'Becka, even in her current frozen state, of her long-dead father. The sheep went, rippling slightly through the 3-D effect. It disappeared from the picture, actual seeming to curve as it went off the edge ... but that was just an optical illusion, she felt sure. "No good at all, "Jesus went on. "Joe's granddad was a whoremaster of the purest sense, as you well know, 'Becka. Spent his whole life pecker-led. And when he came up here, do you know what we said? 'No room!' that's what we said." Jesus leaned forward, still holding His staff. "'Go see Mr. Splitfoot down below,' we said. 'You'll find your haven-home, all right. But you may find you new landlord a hard taskmaster,' we said." Incredibly, Jesus winked at her ... and that was when 'Becka fled, shrieking, from the house.

She stopped in the backyard, panting, her hair, a mousy blond that was really not much of any color at all, hanging in her face. Her heart was beating so fast in her chest that it frightened her. No one had heard her shriekings and carryings-on, thank the Lord; she and Joe lived far out on the Nista Road, and their nearest neighbors were the Brodskys were half a mile away. If anyone had heard her, they would have thought there was a crazywoman down at Joe and 'Becka Paulson's.

Well there
is
a crazywoman at the Paulsons', isn't there? she thought. If you really think that picture of Jesus started to talk to you, why, you really must be crazy. Daddy'd beat you three shades of blue for thinking such a thing - one shade for lying, another shade for believing the lie, and a third for raising your voice. 'Becka, you
are
crazy. Pictures don't talk.

No ... and it didn't, another voice spoke up suddenly. That voice came out of your own head, 'Becka. I don't know how it could

be . how you could know such things . but that's what happened. Maybe it had something to do with what happened to you last week, or maybe not, but you made that picture of Jesus talk your own self. It didn't really no more than that little rubber Topo Gigio mouse on the Ed Sullivan Show.

But somehow the idea that it might have something to do with that . that

(hole)

other thing was scarier than the idea that the picture itself had spoken, because that was the sort of thing they sometimes had on Marcus Welby, like that show about the fellow who had the brain tumor and it was making him wear his wife's nylon stockings and step-ins. She refused to allow it mental houseroom. It might be a miracle. After all, miracles happened every day. There was the Shroud of Turin, and the cures at Lourdes, and that Mexican fellow who had a picture of the Virgin Mary burned into the surface of a taco or an enchilada or something. Not to mention those children that had made the headlines of one of the tabloids - children who cried rocks. Those were all bona fide miracles (the children who wept rocks was, admittedly, a rather gritty one), as uplifting as a Jimmy Swaggart sermon. Hearing voices was only crazy.

But that's what happened. And you've been hearing voices for quite a little while now, haven't you? You've been hearing His voice. Joe's voice. And that's where it came from, not from Jesus but from Joe, from Joe's head -