The Tommyknockers

  Jesus was on top of the Paulsons' Sony TV. He had been there for just six years. Before that, He had rested atop two Zeniths. 'Becka estimated that Jesus had been in roughly the same spot for about sixteen years. Jesus was represented in lifelike 3-D. This was a picture of Him that 'Becka's older sister, Corinne, who lived in Portsmouth, had given them as a wedding present. When Joe commented that 'Becka's sister was a little on the cheap side, wa'ant she, 'Becka told him to hush up. Not that she was terribly surprised; you couldn't expect a man like Joe to understand the fact that you couldn't put a price-tag on true Beauty.

  In the picture, Jesus was dressed in a simple white robe and holding a shepherd's staff. The Christ on 'Becka's TV combed His hair a little bit like Elvis after Elvis got out of the Army. Yes; he looked quite a bit like Elvis in G.I. Blues. His eyes were brown and mild. Behind Him, in perfect perspective, sheep as white as the linens in TV soap commercials trailed off and over the horizon. 'Becka and Corinne 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 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 knew why, oh yessirree! Boy howdy! 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 Magnum or Miami Vice," he'd say. "Why not put it up on your bureau, 'Becka? Or ... I'll tell you what! Why not put it up on your bureau until Sunday, then you can bring it down and put it back while you watch Jimmy Swaggart and Jack van Impe? I'll bet Jesus likes Jimmy Swaggart a helluva lot better than He likes Miami Vice."

  She refused.

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

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

  Joe, a good poker player, bridled. "Then it was the devil's work bought you your blow-dryer and that garnet ring you like s'well," he said. "Better take 'em back for refunds and give the money to the Salvation Army. I think I got the receipts in my den."

  So she allowed Joe to turn the 3-D picture of Jesus around 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 had wanted to get rid of that picture. He must have had the idea all along that that picture might be a magic picture. Oh, she supposed "sacred" was a better word, magic was for pagans, headhunters and cannibals and Catholics and people like that, but they almost came to the same thing, didn't they? Anyway, 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 had known something was going on. He was never after her at night anymore, and while that was something of a relief (sex was just as her mother had told her it would be, nasty, brutish, sometimes painful, always humiliating), she had also smelled perfume on his collar from time to time, and that was not a relief at all. She supposed she could have ignored the connection--the fact that the pawings had stopped at the same time that occasional smell of perfume started showing up in his collars--indefinitely if the picture of Jesus on top of the Sony hadn't begun to speak on July 7th. She could even have ignored a third factor: at about the same time the pawings had stopped and the perfume smells had begun, old Charlie Estabrooke had retired from the post office and a woman named Nancy Voss had come up from the Augusta post office to take his place. She guessed that the Voss woman (whom 'Becka now thought of simply as The Hussy) was perhaps five years older than she and Joe, which would make her around fifty, but she was a trim, well-kept fifty. 'Becka would admit she herself had put on a little weight, going from one hundred and twenty-six to two hundred and three, most of that since Byron, their only chick, had left home.

  She could have ignored it, would have ignored it, perhaps even have come to tolerate it with relief; if The Hussy 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 The Hussy was little more than an animal herself. Also, it freed 'Becka of a tiresome, if ever-more-occasional, obligation. She could have ignored it, that was, if the picture of Jesus hadn't spoken up.

  It happened for the first time at just past three in the afternoon on Thursday. 'Becka was coming back into the living room from the kitchen with a little snack (half a coffee cake and a beer stein filled with cherry Za-Rex) to watch General Hospital. She could no longer really believe that Luke and Laura would ever come back, but she was not able to completely give up hope.

  She was bending down to turn on the TV when Jesus said, " 'Becka, Joe is putting it to that Hussy down at the pee-oh just about every lunch-hour and sometimes after quitting time, too. Once he was so randy he put 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 took care of.'

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

  'Becka screamed again and fell on her knees. "My Lord!" she shrieked. One of her knees landed squarely on her piece of coffee cake (which was roughly the size and thickness of the family Bible), squirting raspberry filling into the face of Ozzie, the cat, who had crept out from under the stove to see what was going on. "My Lord! My Lord!" 'Becka continued to shriek. Ozzie ran, hissing, for the kitchen, where he crawled under the stove again with red goo dripping from his whiskers. He stayed there the rest of the day.

  "Well, none of the Paulsons was ever good for much," Jesus said. A sheep wandered toward Him and He whacked it away, using His staff with an absentminded impatience that reminded 'Becka, even in her current frozen state, of her late father. The sheep went, rippling slightly because of the 3-D effect. It disappeared, actually seeming to curve as it went off the edge of the picture ... but that was just an optical illusion, she felt sure. "Nossir!" Jesus declared. "Joe's great-uncle was a murderer, as you well know, 'Becka. Murdered his son, his wife, and then himself. And when he came up here, do you know what We said? 'No room!' that's what We said." Jesus leaned forward, propped on His staff. " 'Go see Mr. Splitfoot down below,' We said. 'You'll find your Haven-home, all right. But you may find your new landlord asks a hell of a high rent and never turns down the heat,' We said." Incredibly, Jesus winked at her ... and that was when 'Becka fled, shrieking, from the house.

  2

  She stopped in the back yard, panting, her mousy blond hair hanging in her face, her heart beating so fast 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, who lived in that slutty trailer. The Brodskys were half a mile away. That was good. Anyone who had heard her would have thought there was a crazywoman down at the Paulsons'.

  Well there is, isn't there? If you think that picture started to talk, why, you must be crazy. Daddy'd beat you three shades of blue for saying such a thing--one for lying, another for believing it, and a third for raising your voice. 'Becka, pictures don't talk.

  No ... nor did it, 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. You made that picture of Jesus talk your own self, like Edgar Bergen used to make Charlie McCarthy talk on the Ed Sulliva
n show.

  But somehow that idea seemed more frightening, more downright crazy, than the idea that the picture itself had spoken, and she refused to allow it mental house-room. After all, miracles happened every day. There was that Mexican fellow who had found a picture of the Virgin Mary baked into an enchilada, or something. There were those miracles at Lourdes. Not to mention those children that had made the headlines of one of the tabloids--they had cried rocks. These were bona fide miracles (the children who wept rocks was, admittedly, a rather gritty one), as uplifting as a Pat Robertson sermon. Hearing voices was just nuts.

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

  "No," 'Becka whimpered. "I ain't heard any voices in my head."

  She stood by her clothesline in the back yard, looking blankly off toward the woods on the other side of the Nista Road. They were hazy in the heat. Less than half a mile into those woods, as the crow flew, Bobbi Anderson and Jim Gardener were steadily unearthing more and more of a titanic fossil in the earth.

  Crazy, her dead father's implacable voice tolled in her head. Crazy with the heat. You come on over here, 'Becka Bouchard, I'm gonna beat you three shades of blister-blue for that crazy talk.

  "I ain't heard no voices in my head," 'Becka moaned. "That picture really did talk, I swear, I can't do ventriloquism!"

  Better the picture. If it was the picture, it was a miracle, and miracles came from God. A miracle could drive you nuts--and dear God knew she felt like she was going nuts right now--but it didn't mean you were crazy to start with. Hearing voices in your head, however, or believing that you could hear other people's thoughts ...

  'Becka looked down, and saw blood gushing from her left knee. She shrieked again and ran back into the house to call the doctor, Medix, somebody, anybody. She was in the living room again, pawing at the dial with the phone to her ear, when Jesus said:

  "That's just raspberry filling from your coffee cake, 'Becka, Why don't you just cool it before you have a heart attack?"

  She looked at the Sony, the telephone receiver falling to the table with a clunk. Jesus was still sitting on the rock outcropping. It looked as though He had crossed His legs. It was really surprising how much He looked like her father ... only He didn't seem forbidding, ready to be angry at a moment's notice. He was looking at her with a kind of exasperated patience.

  "Try it and see if I'm not right," Jesus said.

  She touched her knee gently, wincing, anticipating pain. There was none. She saw the seeds in the red stuff and relaxed. She licked the raspberry filling off her fingers.

  "Also," Jesus said, "you have got to get these ideas about hearing voices and going crazy out of your head. It's just Me, and I can talk to anyone I want to, any way I want to."

  "Because you're the Savior," 'Becka whispered.

  "Right," Jesus said. He looked down. Below Him, on the screen, a couple of animated salad bowls were dancing in appreciation of the Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing which they were about to receive. "And I'd like you to please turn that crap off, if you don't mind. We can't talk with that thing running. Also, it makes My feet tingle."

  'Becka approached the Sony and turned it off.

  "My Lord," she whispered.

  3

  The following Sunday afternoon, Joe Paulson was lying fast asleep in the back yard hammock with Ozzie the cat zonked out on Joe's ample stomach. 'Becka stood in the living room, holding the curtain back and looking at Joe. Sleeping in the hammock. Dreaming of his Hussy, no doubt--dreaming of throwing her down in a great big pile of catalogues and Woolco circulars and then--how would Joe and his piggy poker buddies put it?--"putting the shoes to her."

  She was holding the curtain with her left hand because she had a handful of square nine-volt batteries in her right. She took the batteries into the kitchen, where she was assembling something on the kitchen table. Jesus had told her to make it. She told Jesus she couldn't make things. She was clumsy. Her daddy had always told her so. She thought of adding how he sometimes told her he was surprised she could wipe her own butt without an instruction manual, and then decided that wasn't the sort of thing you told the Savior.

  Jesus told her not to be a fool; if she could follow a recipe, she could build this little thing. She was delighted to find that He was absolutely right. It was not only easy, it was fun! More fun than cooking, certainly; she had never really had the knack for that, either. Her cakes fell and her breads never rose. She had begun this little thing yesterday, working with the toaster, the motor from her old Hamilton Beach blender, and a funny board full of electronics things which had come from the back of an old radio in the shed. She thought she would be done long before Joe woke up and came in to watch the Red Sox game on TV at two o'clock.

  She picked up his little blowtorch and lit it deftly with a kitchen match. She would have laughed a week ago if you'd told her she would be working with a propane torch now. But it was easy. Jesus told her exactly how and where to solder the wires to the electronics board from the old radio.

  That wasn't all Jesus had told her during the last three days. He had told her things that murdered her sleep, that made her afraid to go into the village and do her shopping, lest her guilty knowledge show on her face (I'll always know when you done something wrong, 'Becka, her father had told her, because you ain't got the kind of face can keep a secret); that had, for the first time in her life, made her lose her appetite. Joe, totally bound up in his work, the Red Sox, and his Hussy, noticed hardly anything amiss ... although he had seen 'Becka gnawing her fingernails the other night as they watched Hill Street Blues, and nail-biting was something she had never done before--was, in fact, one of the things she nagged him about. Joe Paulson considered this for all of twelve seconds before looking back at the Sony TV and losing himself in dreams of Nancy Voss's heaving white breasts.

  Among others, these were a few of the things Jesus told her, causing 'Becka to sleep poorly and to begin biting her fingernails at the advanced age of forty-five:

  In 1973, Moss Harlingen, one of Joe's poker buddies, had murdered his father. They had been hunting deer up in Greenville and it had supposedly been one of those tragic accidents, but the shooting of Abel Harlingen had been no accident. Moss simply laid up behind a fallen tree with his rifle and waited until his father splashed across a small stream about fifty yards down the hill from where Moss was. Moss potted his father as easily as a clay duck in a shooting gallery. He thought he had killed his father for money. Moss's business, Big Ditch Construction, had two notes falling due with two different banks within six weeks' time, and neither would extend because of the other. Moss went to Abel, but his dad refused to help, although he could afford to. So Moss shot his father and inherited a pot of money after the county coroner handed down a verdict of death by misadventure. The notes were paid and Moss Harlingen really believed (except perhaps in his deepest dreams) that he had committed murder for gain. The real motive had been something else. Far in the past, when Moss was ten and his brother Emory seven, Abel's wife went south to Rhode Island for one whole winter. Her brother had died suddenly, and his wife needed help getting on her feet. While their mother was gone, there were several incidents of buggery at the Harlingen place. The buggery stopped when the boys' mother came back, and the incidents were never repeated. Moss had forgotten all about them. He never remembered lying awake in the dark anymore, lying awake in mortal terror and watching the doorway for the shadow of his father. He had absolutely no recollection of lying with his mouth pressed against his forearm, salty tears of shame and rage squeezing out of his hot eyes and coursing down his cold face to his mouth as Abel Harlingen slathered lard onto his cock and slid it up his son's back door with a grunt and a sigh. It had all made so little impression on Moss that he could not remember biting his arm until it bled to keep from crying out, and he certainly could not remember Emory's breat
hless bird-cries from the next bed--"Please, Daddy, no, Daddy, please not me tonight, please, Daddy." Children, of course, forget very easily. But some memory might have lingered, because when Moss Harlingen actually pulled the trigger on the buggering son of a whore, as the echoes first rolled away and then rolled back, finally disappearing into the great forested silence of the up-Maine wilderness, Moss whispered: "Not you, Em, not tonight."

  Alice Kimball, who taught at the Haven Grammar School, was a lesbian. Jesus told 'Becka this on Friday, not long after the lady herself, looking large and solid and respectable in a green pantsuit, had stopped by, collecting for the American Cancer Society.

  Darla Gaines, the pretty seventeen-year-old girl who brought the Sunday paper, had half an ounce of "bitchin reefer" between the mattress and box spring of her bed. Jesus told 'Becka this right after Darla had come on Saturday to collect for the last five weeks (three dollars plus a fifty-cent tip 'Becka now wished she had withheld), and that she and her boyfriend smoked the reefer in Darla's bed before having intercourse, only they called having intercourse "doing the horizontal bop." They smoked reefer and "did the horizontal bop" almost every weekday afternoon from two-thirty until three or so. Darla's parents both worked at Splendid Shoe in Derry and they didn't get home until well past four.

  Hank Buck, another of Joe's poker cronies, worked at a large supermarket in Bangor and hated his boss so much that a year ago he had put half a box of Ex-Lax in the man's chocolate shake when the boss had sent Hank out to get his lunch at McDonald's one day. The boss had had something rather more spectacular than a bowel movement; at three-fifteen that day he had done something in his pants that was the equivalent of a shit A-bomb. The A-bomb--or S-bomb, if you preferred--had gone off as he was slicing lunchmeat in the deli of Paul's Down-East SuperMart. Hank managed to keep a straight face until quitting time, but by the time he got into his car to go home, he was laughing so hard he almost shit his own pants. Twice he had to pull off the road, he got laughing so hard.