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 he, the boss, sent Hank out to McDonald's to get
his lunch one day. The boss had shit his pants promptly at
quarter past three in the afternoon, as he was slicing luncheon
meat in the deli of Paul's Down-East Grocery Mart. Hank
managed to hold on until punching-out time, and then he sat in
his car, laughing until he almost shit his pants. 'He laughed,'
Jesus told 'Becka. 'He laughed. Can you believe that?'
And these things were only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. It
seemed that Jesus knew something unpleasant or upsetting about
everyone everyone 'Becka herself came in contact with, anyway.
She couldn't live with such an awful outpouring.
But she didn't know if she could live without it anymore, either.
One thing was certain she had to do something. Something.
'You are doing something,' Jesus said. He spoke from behind
her, from the picture on top of the TV of course He did and the
idea that the voice was coming from inside her own head, and that it
was a cold mutation of her own thoughts ... that was nothing but a
dreadful passing illusion. 'In fact, you're almost done with this part,
'Becka. Just solder that red wire to that point beside the long
doohickey ... not that one, the one next to it ... that's right. Not too
much solder! It's like Brylcreem, 'Becka. A little dab'll do ya.'
Strange, hearing Jesus Christ talk about Brylcreem.
Joe woke up at quarter of two, tossed Ozzie off his lap, strolled
to the back of his lawn, had a comfortable whizz into the poison ivy
back there, then headed into the house to watch the Yankees and the
Red Sox. He opened the refrigerator in the kitchen, glancing briefly
at the little snips of wire on the counter and wondering just what the
hell his wife had been up to. Then he dismissed it and grabbed a quart
of Bud.
He padded into the living room. 'Becka was sitting in her
rocking chair, pretending to read a book. Just ten minutes before Joe
came in, she had finished wiring her little gadget into the Zenith
console television, following Jesus' instructions to the letter.
'You got to be careful, taking the back off a television,
'Becka,' Jesus had told her. 'More juice back there than there is in a
Bird's Eye warehouse.'
'Thought you'd have this all warmed up for me,' Joe said.
'I guess you can do it,' 'Becka said.
'Ayuh, guess I can,' Joe said, completing the last
conversational exchange the two of them would ever have.
He pushed the button that made the TV come on and better
than two thousand volts of electricity slammed into him. His eyes
popped wide open. When the electricity hit him, his hand clenched
hard enough to break the bottle in his hand and drive brown glass
into his palm and fingers. Beer foamed and ran.
'EEEEEEOOOOOOOOAARRRRRRRUMMMMMMMM!'
Joe screamed.
