Several years back, when my studio apartment was new and bare, I bought a bust. I was milling around at a plain gray rummage sale in the basement of a local public school. There were lots of used clothes and books, odd-shaped ashtrays and coffee mugs, and a bicycle with a banana seat that I almost instinctively jumped on to ride around in circles. Then, he caught my eye. He was perched in the middle of a card table, surrounded by forgettable junk. Noble and dignified, the head of a man had been sculpted, looking slightly down and to the side, mounted on a thick block of wood. I bought the head for $8.
The head was made of a gray metal already turned green with age. He was probably sixty years old, and looked unforgiving and shrewd. His face was frozen in concentration as if someone were telling him something. “I want to marry your daughter, sir.” “No way in hell,” was his response. He’d never read a self-help book and his inner child had been put to work in a shoe factory.
A thick collar rested around his neck. It looked like a bathrobe. So he had spent his later years reflecting and reading John Stuart Mill in the study, on a dark-red leather chair, encircled by dusty books, alone. His nose was strong and very W.A.S.P.y and hinted at the glass of Scotch, always beside him on the antique table. He had been wealthy; his money was of the “old economy”, either steel or railroads or the spice trade.
I brought the head home – immediately; it’s not the sort of purchase you stick in a plastic bag and continue shopping. I marveled at its mysterious age and history. It was going to be the centerpiece of my interior furnishings, which were otherwise a bed, a stereo, and the cardboard box the stereo had come in. I mounted a bookshelf (my first) to serve the head’s new home. I placed it there, reverently, above eye level, staring down.
Staring down at me.
That night, I turned out the lights, crawled into bed under the covers, and tried not to think about him. I opened my eyes and could easily see his dark, sunken features – that mean mouth and those merciless eyes – glaring at me. He was angry, I could tell. I’d seen enough horror movies to know where this was going: he’d either start talking (which I did NOT want), or beam lasers out of its eyes (ditto), or carry me across London to witness Christmases past (might be fun). Whatever my fate, I wanted sleep, not haunted floating head terror and my guts splattered all over the walls.
What always bothered me about horror movies is that the helpless victims are too clueless to exercise even a little common sense.
Not me. I got out from under the covers, turned the lights back on – quickly, before he could start to fly – and brought him into the bathroom. I shut the door. Good.
I turned the lights back off, got under the covers, closed my eyes, and thought happy thoughts. But almost immediately, he was back in the picture. NO! I tried hard to not imagine the haunted house where he had died of mysterious causes. Was that a noise in the bathroom? The head would start banging on the door soon, or scrawl backward words on the mirror in blood.
I was feeling silly, but not half as silly as I would if my dark premonitions were to come true. I got out from under the covers, turned the lights on, and prepared to enter the bathroom. As my trembling hand pushed open the door, my trembling legs were preparing to flee. I snatched the head (remarking that it hadn’t moved from where I put it), and quickly ported the satanic object to the back door. My apartment has access to a garden, so I placed Mr. Evil Head outside, away from the building, as far away from the building as possible, next to garden’s back wall, where he couldn’t even look in the window. Now it was the head’s turn to feel fear, vulnerable – as it was – to the other creatures of the night.
That was several years ago, and I no longer fear the head. It’s found a happy home in my garden, with the English Ivy and the squirrels and the half-finished packs of cigarettes some mysterious neighbor regularly throws out the window. I’ve never once woken in the dead of night to find the head hovering outside my window. It still hasn’t said a word, and it only freaks out the squirrels. I see they keep a safe distance from him.
If it weren’t for my garden, that head would have spent its first night out by the garbage cans. The next morning, some fool would have picked it up, brought it home, and endured his own night of terror.
This morning, I decided to wash the head. The rugged outdoor living had left him looking pretty crappy. Dirt was covering his eyes, blocking his ears, and was surely clogging the pores in his skin. Worms had made their home in his wooden base and some weeds were soaking up all his sun and threatening to bury him.
What he really needed was a Loofa scrub and mango facial, but instead he got a bucket of warm water and my finger nail. I doused him, then started picking clumps of mud off him like a gorilla cleaning its child. Believe me, some areas were difficult to reach. I kept having to stick my fingers in his ears, in his nostrils, and in his eyes. He didn’t flinch once. What a good boy. Presently, he’s drying in the sun, like a tomato or a water buffalo.
It’s been a strange journey for that head. First, a large life on earth, then death, then an afterlife in my back yard. Bet he wasn’t anticipating that last one. I don’t even know his name (though I’d call him Eddie, if we were on friendlier terms). I expect to meet him one day, reincarnated, alive and walking into Starbucks. I wonder if he’ll recognize me, or if he’ll thank me for being such a good son.