Headhunter (37 page)

This head was worse than the others.

For there he was again, my friend, the Great White Hunter in his sweat-stained khaki safari jacket. Only this time he was in the background, standing. Remington ready, in the door of a grass hut. You could see him between the Jivaro's legs which made up the picture's foreground. The cover focused on an Indian's loins from his waist down to his knees. That was all that you could see of him as he walked away from the hunter. Except, of course, for his hands.

His left hand held the machete dripping blood and gore.

His right hand held a leather thong attached to both ends of
a
needle. This needle was made of slivered bone about ten inches long. It had been rammed through one eardrum of the head until it had passed through the brain and out of the other ear. The head itself took up a good one-third of the page. Trickles of blood ran down from the corner of each eye. The eyes had rolled up in the head, one of them nothing but white road-mapped with red veins. The other revealed just the barest hint of a pupil.

I tried to turn away. But I couldn't. I tried to run. But I couldn't. I tried to shut my own eyes. But I couldn't.

"Please, Father," I whispered. "Turn that picture away." My hope was that he'd stop it like he had that time before.

"What's going on here? You're talking to yourself."

"It's back, Dad. It's back. Make it go away."

A hand fell onto my shoulder, giving it a shake.

"Are you all right, son?" the voice of the druggist asked.

And that was when I knew for sure that no matter how much I needed him my father would never be there again.

I guess I panicked.

For a moment there I looked again at the cover and thought that this time I saw my father's eyes staring out at me from that chopped head strung on a string. His pale gray eyes shone faintly through the flesh of those rolled back whites.

Then I broke away from the druggist and made a dash for the door. With glass shattering and exploding in razor-sharp
 shards around me, I ran right through the pane set into the metal doorframe.

Outside it was raining. That's usual for this city.

I was more than a block away from the store and still running through the downpour when I realized I was cut. Both my hands were slashed and gouged and smeared with blood. I stopped running abruptly and sat down on the ground beside a puddle rippled with raindrops. For maybe half an hour I sat there thinking about my father trapped inside that hacked-off head, watching the water distort my reflection and wash my blood away.

Four days later I knew something was wrong.

At Vancouver General Hospital a doctor had put forty-seven stitches into my hands. My mother was upset as hell and equally pissed off. Paying for the door had cost her fifty bucks that we could ill afford; my father because of his drinking had let his insurance premiums lapse. But more than that, the thought of her son with his hands paralyzed because of severed nerves and tendons had cost her several nights' sleep. And she had desperately needed that rest. It had only been a few weeks since they had found the wreckage of the plane and I know she was struggling against odds to hold up a strong front for the sake of me and my brother.

I never told her about the head on the front of the magazine. At eight years old I was now the man in this family Men like Charles Atlas weren't afraid of magazine covers.

She was the best type of mother. She didn't pry.

The only punishment I got was that four days after the accident she sent me to the drugstore to buy replacement bandages for my injured hands. Like most mothers she saw me off with words something like this: "I hope this trip reinforces the lesson you should have learned. You know you could have been killed."

I bypassed the drugstore with the piece of plywood set into its door—in fact I never went there again—and walked six blocks down from Victoria Drive till I came to a Rexall Pharmacy. Through its glass door I could see shelves of medicine, Band-Aids, candy, toys, and that the bald-headed druggist was passing a youth a package that seemed to emharrass him. There was a young teenage girl about the same age as the youth waiting expectantly outside the store.

I first knew something was wrong when I couldn
't
through the door.

It was science fiction come true: I was held off by some sort of force field.

Holding both arms out before me I tried to will my hands to press the metal bar that stretched across the door. But my arms refused to move. It was weird and I felt frightened.

The girl outside noticed I was in difficulty and she came sauntering over, peeking shyly into the store as she did so. "Must hurt, eh?" she said, looking at my bandaged hands and pushing open the door to help me.

"Yeah, it does," I said, and I tried to step forward. But now my foot refused to move. It was as if the sole of my penny-loafer was glued to the concrete. I tried to move a second time, and then the fear really set in.

Something's wrong with me,
I thought.
I can't get into the store!

Just then the youth rushed out through the door, pushing me aside. "I got'em," he said excitedly. "An' these ones are lubricated."

"Jeez, Tim," the girl said, her face becoming bright pink, "you hit that little kid."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, kid." He gave me a disdainful look. Then noticing my hands he said: "You need some help?"

"Would you buy me some bandages?" I asked. "While I wait out here?" 

He looked at me queerly but did as I requested. A few minutes later as he walked away with his girl I heard him say, "You know there's somethin' odd with that kid."

And he was right.

I knew it too.

It wasn't long before my friends were privy to the secret. When one in their midst is unable to go into a confectionary to buy Double Bubble gum and has to tell his compatriots what comic books to buy him while he waits outside the drugstore, eight-year-olds cotton on fast to the fact that something's queer. Eight-year-olds also have this need to set the world a-right.

I suppose that's why Jimbo made the mistake.

You see, we had gone to the Queen Bee Market one fine April afternoon—Corry and Jimbo and I—to buy ourselves each a pop. I was hooked on cream soda at the time, and hoping to find a bottle of white stuff, not the usual red kind. The woman who ran the Queen Bee was a woman who knew her pop. And just for me she kept her eyes peeled for a case of white each time the delivery truck came around.

I know I should have been wary—what with it being April Fool's Day and all—but the morning was bright with sunshine and my bandages had just come off for good. Much to my mother's surprise, my fingers weren't paralyzed. Anyway, we reached the store and I gave Jimbo my dime. "The white kind, right?" Jimbo asked as Corry opened the door.

"Yeah," I said, totally unsuspecting. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the magazine rack. I was turning a little more to the left to put the rack out of sight at my rear when they pulled the trick.

"April Fool!" Jimbo said and he pushed me through the door.

I have never felt such panic: it literally closed my throat so I couldn't get any air. My heart was leaping about in my chest as I scrambled to get back outside. But they were both blocking the door. Jimbo was laughing and chortling and Corry was slapping his sides. That's when I broke Jimbo's nose. I recall wildly swinging my arm in a pitcher's circle and giving him the old one-two. I popped him square in the middle of his face and heard the small bone crack. Jimbo dropped like a sack of onions down onto his knees. Corry had stopped laughing but was still blocking the door. With a flying tackle I hit him in the chest and with one hand clawed at his eyes. I distinctly remember shouting "Lemme out! Lemme out!" as I pounded him again and again.

"Stop it!" Corry yelled. "You're hurt . . ." (I hit him) "Stop it, you're hurting me!"

Both of us were now thrashing as we stumbled back out through the door.

Then once outside, I stopped.

When I got home that night it was my brother who opened the door.

He took one look at me all bashed up, and then he began to cry.

Different guy my brother. Then only five years old. Why'd he have to go and die?

It was later that month that I developed a fear of blood.

I recall my mother in the kitchen chopping vegetables ! was at the table drawing my own comic book. It was about a superhero I called "The Butcheress." She wore these blue tights and a purple cape shaped a bit like Batman's. She was armed with that most sensible of weapons for today's superhero—a giant meat cleaver. I was getting very good at drawing her breasts.

Plop . . . plop . . . plop . . .

I could hear the sound of the vegetables landing on the chopping board. Heads would make a sound like that when they dropped from the guillotine.

Plop . . . plop . . . plop . . .

Then my mother cried out in pain and ran out of the kitchen. Holding her hand. The knife was on the cutting board with its tip stained crimson.

I ran into the bathroom after her and saw her blood all over the floor. There was the whoosh of tapwater flowing which seemed to magnify and grow into the hoarse roar of a waterfall. The room began to wobble. "Will you get me a Band-Aid?" my mother asked as the bathroom walls swayed, as the sound of the water faded in and out, as the tiles of the floor came up to meet me and slam against the side of my head.

I came to, to find myself cradled in her arms.

She was crying (we all seemed to cry a lot that spring) and she was holding me against her, while one hand gripped her other palm still trying to stop the flow of blood as she coaxed me back to consciousness.

I loved you, Mom.

That night I awoke in my room all alone in the dark. I could hear whispering.

When I looked around there was nothing but black, black, black.

And then I saw a point of light up in the comer off to my left where two walls met the ceiling. It was this light that was whispering as it slowly, ever so slowly, began to spin in a circle. Imagine a tiny point of light on the tip of a pinwheel blade and you'll know what I mean. Round and round and round it went in an ever-widening circle. Spinning as it corkscrewed down toward me.

I remember pulling the bedcovers up to the bridge of my nose.

Then I waited, transfixed and watching, until the point of light was halfway across the space separating it from me.

That was when I saw the face.

It was this little wee miniature face circling slowly round and round, shining with eerie light.

Its features were those of the Great White Hunter and he was whispering at me: "Watch out! Watch out! Watch out! I'm going to take her too."

I never got back to sleep that night, not until dawn came peeking in with the light of the following morning. It was Jimbo who found the solution. I'll give him credit for that. The opportunity to find it had cost him a broken nose.

"Okay, here's what we do," Jimbo said confidently. "I go in and scout the place and find the magazine rack. Then I come out and tell you where it is and the three of us go in. You, me, and Corry. You in between. Got it. Okay?"

No, it was not okay.

"Now once we get through the door, I'll hold up my jacket so you can't see the rack. If you try to look, then Corry grabs you, I throw the jacket over your head, and we drag you back outside. Then we try it again."

It took half an hour's persuasion before the three of us came through that door.

But it worked, by God. Somehow it broke the spell.

Or maybe it was just the fact that I never saw another magazine cover drawn by that particular artist.

And so it was that Jimbo—in a triumph for amateur psychology—took care of the drugstores, took care of the newsstands, took care of the confectioners.

But he didn't take care of the blood.

Good Lord, I don't believe it! I think I'm in love!

I went to the seminar, God knows why—maybe cause Ruryk suggested it and maybe I thought I'd find a key to unlock more of myself. Who knows why! Who cares!

Good God, what a woman! You should see her!

Genevieve, Genevieve,
Genevieve
—
where have you been all my life?

Just my luck she's married—so what if it's one-way love.

Oh God, to have this feeling again.

Genevieve DeClercq—I LOVE YOU.

Oh happy day.

* * *

So let's talk about severed heads.

The human brain can live for up to a minute on the blood-oxygen supply within it at any given time. Cut the head from the body and the mind lives on. Consciousness survives.
Why do human beings so fear a severed head?
Is it because we know instinctively that if decapitation should happen to us, our mind lives on? But tell me something.

If this is everyman's general fear, why must I be plagued with it multiplied a thousand times?

Why must this fear also be my particular neurosis? Can you answer that,
YOU IN HERE WITH ME?

Genevieve, Genevieve, Genevieve! Will you be my salvation?