One Day Last Month Iggy Christmas Found God

Look: Iggy Christmas was reading a Stag magazine in this drugstore in Peoria.

Iggy flipped quickly through the pages looking at the pictures. One picture showed a naked Brazilian lady. Another showed a man shoving nails into another man's face. As he studied the pictures Iggy Christmas's eyes were bright as stars.

He was skinny. Big thick-lensed glasses perched on the end of his skinny nose. Big spider-like hands fumbled with page corners and a Timex on his wrist went tick tick tick. His legs were long as broomsticks and his face looked like two eyes set in the middle of a dinner plate. And he had a real hard-on from the picture of that naked Brazilian lady.

Then Voice spoke from inside Iggy's head and Iggy's neck snapped back and his eyes glazed. "Hello, Iggy," said Voice.

"Hello," Iggy whispered to the ceiling.

"Drop the Stag magazine, Iggy," said Voice.

Iggy dropped the Stag magazine.

"Now, Iggy," said Voice, "I want you to go over to the counter, buy a Mars candy bar, and waste the cash register man."

Iggy walked over to the drugstore counter but his eyes were still riveted to the ceiling so he kept tripping over things. The cash register man's name was Old Joe and he looked at Iggy Christmas suspiciously. He was an old man with white hair and buck teeth.

Iggy paid no mind. He tripped over a stack of Mad magazines and fell on his face.

Old Joe tottered over to Iggy and crouched by him. "Hey, son," he muttered. "Quite a fall you took there. You OK?"

"Sure," said Iggy. He grabbed Joe by the head and smashed it against the floor until it broke open. It broke open like a mango.

Then he got up and walked to the counter, picked up a Mars candy bar, put it in his pocket. Carefully, almost daintily, he placed a dime on the cash register.

He stepped over Old Joe and walked out of the drugstore.

"Act like nothing happened, Iggy," said Voice.

Iggy acted like nothing had happened.

Once Iggy's kid brother had asked him a question. This was about two weeks after Iggy had returned from Viet Nam and they were eating breakfast in the kitchen when Iggy's kid brother said,

"Iggy, how are babies made?"

Iggy chewed on his cereal a bit, took his glasses off and wiped them clean. Then he did it again just in case he'd missed something. He stared at his reflection in the kitchen table and made a funny sound in his throat.

"You find them," he said. "Under rocks."

Iggy's kid brother thought about that awhile. Then he said,

"Iggy, why are babies made?"

Iggy's eyes clenched because suddenly a sound screamed through his head and it was an air raid siren eating at his head and making it hurt real bad. He gripped the table and shook his head to make it go away and looked at his kid brother.

He shrugged. "Why are babies made?"

"Because," he said.

Once Iggy actually did find a baby under a rock. It was dead.

In army parlance, it was wasted.

Iggy stared at the baby for awhile. Half of it was gone but at least the ears were still there. In Viet Nam you count bodies by counting the number of ears in a field after an attack and dividing by two.

Iggy carefully counted the ears under the rock. "One, two," he said. Then he divided two by two and got one. "One," he said. He chalked down a slash for "one" in his logbook. The slashes in his logbook looked like this.

Thirteen, he thought, was a very unlucky number. He hoped he'd find another wasted slope before the sun went down.

But Iggy wasn't thinking about that right now. He was thinking about getting the hell out of Peoria. He had his thumb out, walking fast along I-66 on the outskirts. His head was back to normal now and...