My mother and I were poised on the fake leather sofa in our living room watching The Exorcist on television when my father sneaked up behind us and yelled "WAAHHHHHH!" as loud as he could without pulling a neck muscle. I nearly jumped out of my dermis, and I imagine my mother did, too, because she promptly grabbed a thick, vanilla-scented candle off the coffee table and chucked it at him, missing wide to the left. The candle landed dully in the corner, and she emerged from her afghan and griped across the blue shag carpet to retrieve it. "Asshole," she hissed, not quite under her breath. My father orangutan-laughed and moseyed off to the bathroom with the sports section and a pack of Winstons. Startling people when they were lost in thought or folding laundry or reading an issue of Mad Magazine remained one of his few hobbies. No daydreaming or concentrating in the Williams household.
I don't remember much about The Exorcist because I could not sit through the entire movie—far too scary for a ten year old with the jitters—and I've never seen it since. Poor Linda Blair's face had that gnawed-on-by-a-horde-of-rats veneer, and she sounded like a gargoyled Louis Armstrong. When you're a kid and your parents, teachers, and every other hapless adult have trained you to believe that god and the devil exist, then the raw gutterality of Linda Blair's voice becomes the most frightening expression imaginable—more frightening than the crack of a belt against flesh.
Though we had school the next morning, my older sisters had gone out for the evening: Susan with the gear-heads and Quaalude-munchers and Patty with the cheerleaders and jocks. I holed up in their bedroom until the movie ended, listening to Robin Trower's "Bridge of Sighs" on the record player and trying on their adjustable mood rings. By the time I resurfaced, my father had been exiled to the ragged gold beanbag in the family room and, still shaken, I convinced my mother to let me sleep in their king-size bed with her.
After donning my customary slumbering attire, sweatpants and a Miami Dolphins jersey, I lay under the covers while she loaded her blond hair with curlers. She was a heavily freckled woman, not very tall, not yet overweight, and when she smiled the split between her front teeth unveiled an earthy pragmatism. She did whatever she had to do to survive. If her husband grew angry with her for breaking one of his million niggling rules and confiscated her checkbook and car keys, she waited patiently at home until he needed her to make a purchase or run an errand. Quote life unquote always snapped back into place.
When we finally settled in and my mother turned out the light, I couldn't get the image of Linda Blair's mauled face out of my mind. All those scratches and gashes and bloated purple bruises had looked so convincing to me. My heart raced, and I felt goosebumps crystallizing on my arms. I wondered if Lucifer could indeed appear in the form of some ruthless fume and take possession of a person's body like that. And I wondered what happened to the girl's soul. (I believed in the soul then.) Where was she taken? Was there another world, inside this one, where the forces of good and evil engaged in a fateful thumb-wrestling match—with humanity standing by, waiting for a clear victor to emerge? Dumb, I know.
"So Dad's sleeping out in the family room?" I murmured into the faltering darkness.
"He better not come in here," my mother replied.
"Did you finish watching that movie?" I said.
"Yeah."
"What happened?"
"There was a priest who made the devil jump into his body and then he threw hisself out the window to save that little girl."
"Did it work?"
"I guess so, but another priest was standin' at the top of the stairs where the first'n landed, and he had a funny look on his face."
"What do you mean?"
"Kinda weak, like he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation. . ." Before she had finished her thought, we sensed an obvious moaning and carpet-scuffling in the hallway outside the bedroom.
"What is he doing?" she rasped.
"WHOO-OOOH," went my thirty-four year old paunchy and relentless father, as he crawled on his hands and knees into the bedroom, mocking our anxiety.
"Get the hell out of here!" my mother shouted.
She must have hurled one of her house-shoes at him because something smacked against the wall next to the walnut case that held his favorite guns: a smooth-bore Savage shotgun, a Winchester rifle with a telescopic sight, the Dan Wesson .44 Magnum, and a Smith & Wesson 38-caliber revolver with unbelievably pristine bluing. He didn't say a word in response to her wild pitch; he merely snickered and crawled off in the direction of the family room.
"Why won't he leave us alone?" I asked.
"He thinks it's funny," she said. "But if somebody done it to him he'd have a fit."
Beneath dense, itchy blankets we lay in silence for at least half an hour, unable to fall asleep. The house we lived in generated a lot more noise than usual. Every few minutes we heard a beguiling pop in the dry wall, then a conspicuous splintering. The refrigerator buzzing in the kitchen filled the air with spectral voices. The fan on the outdoor heat pump whirred. My mother kept clearing her throat and swallowing, clearing her throat and swallowing.
"Was that a door?" I whispered.
"Well, I guess I'm gonna have to go scare his ass," she harrumphed.
More shocked than ecstatic, I watched her buck out of bed, step into the hallway, and disappear. Still as a vault, I waited, lying on my back, listening so intently that my ears burned. But I couldn't hear a thing (the family room was too far away). If the wife planned to sneak up on the snoozing husband and pour a cup of cold water on his head, she'd better be careful. He could turn the most innocent prank into a call to arms. Once, when she pretended not to have cooked enough chicken and dumplings for dinner, he raked the serving dishes and plates onto the floor, smashing everything to pieces. My sisters and I couldn't leave the table until she swept up the entire mess and carried it to the garbage.
When my mother padded back into the room I said, "What happened?"
"He's crazy," she said, climbing into bed. "I just about slipped and fell on a pile of bullets. I spilled water all over myself."
"What?"
"He's just a big baby." She pulled the covers almost up to her chin. "Like he'd shoot me for tryin' to sneak up on him." Apparently, the man had gone out to the truck to retrieve one of his other handguns. He laid it on the floor next to the bean bag and scattered half a dozen rounds nearby. She must have slipped on the bullets when she tried to surprise him. Paradoxically, the appearance of a gun corresponded to the punch line of a family joke. "I don't think he'll bother us no more," she yawned.
I rolled over on my side and stared at the wall, where a tendonous strip of light fluttered lightly and then split. No way would I sleep. I considered tip-toeing to the kitchen for some ice cream, but I didn't want to leave the safety of my parents' bedroom. I pictured my mother and I trapped in a flimsy green tent in the woods and a big black bear snooping around the campsite, trying to locate our supplies. Without moving, I asked her when my sisters were supposed to get home, but she was already asleep. Lucky her. I closed my eyes for a minute. I'm pretty sure I could hear my father's thunderous, paint-peeling snores from all the way out in the family room.
