Corn-kernel crucifix

The Corn-kernel crucifix is a handmade object whose materials turn corn into a stark parody of a Christian devotional image. Discovered among Vicky’s belongings as she and Burt flee Gatlin, it carries the town’s violence into the car as a tangible, unsettling relic. Its meaning changes again at the novel’s end, when girls make many more crucifixes as protection against further evil: the object is at once evidence, a source of revulsion, and an improvised defense against the power associated with the corn.

Construction and Appearance

Vicky finds the crucifix at the bottom of a suitcase while recounting performers she had encountered on the circuit. Her hands, moving through the case as she talks, snag it and bring it up. The sudden interruption turns an ordinary search through luggage into a moment of concentrated attention: Vicky stares at the object, then gives it to Burt without a word.

The crucifix is made from twists of corn husk, once green but now dry. A dwarf corncob is attached with woven cornsilk. Most of its kernels have been carefully removed, apparently dug out one by one with a pocketknife; the kernels left behind form a crude figure in yellowish relief. The image has eyes made from kernels slit lengthwise to suggest pupils, outstretched arms, joined legs, and roughly indicated bare feet. Above the figure, four raised letters spell INRI. The painstaking carving makes the object more than an incidental scrap of agricultural material, while its corn-based body displaces the familiar Christian image into the physical world of Gatlin’s corn.

Discovery and Immediate Response

Burt calls the workmanship fantastic, registering the care invested in the piece. Vicky responds in a flat, strained voice that it is hideous and tells him to throw it out. Their opposed reactions give the crucifix a double character: it can be inspected as a crafted object, but for Vicky it is repellent and difficult to bear.

Burt argues that the police may want to see it, so he puts it in the back of the car rather than discarding it. He promises that they will give the authorities the body and everything else from the suitcase, and that they will be rid of the object afterward. Vicky answers that he will do whatever he wants anyway, then falls silent and looks at her hands. Burt’s practical decision to preserve possible evidence does not settle the emotional dispute; the crucifix remains between his investigative purpose and her wish to be free of it.

As the car pulls away, the crucifix lands on a pile of clothes beneath the T-Bird’s dome light. Its corn-kernel eyes seem to stare upward. That uncanny image makes the object feel newly present in the confined car, rather than safely put aside as evidence. The light and the fixed gaze sharpen the contrast between Burt’s attempt to manage it by storing it and its continuing power to command attention. Its journey from the suitcase to the back seat carries a fragment of Gatlin’s horror along with the travelers.

Later Use and Significance

The object’s later recurrence gives it a different practical role. In the weeks after the events in Gatlin, girls make many corncob crucifixes to ward off further evil. What had first surfaced as a single, disturbing artifact becomes a repeatable form of protection. The detail links the crucifix’s materials to the threat: corn is not only the medium from which the image is fashioned, but part of the danger the girls fear.

That protective use does not erase the crucifix’s unsettling origin or settle what power it possesses. The account identifies the girls’ purpose—warding off evil—without establishing that the objects work. Its importance lies in this unresolved tension: the handmade image borrows the form of Christian protection while being constructed from the corn associated with Gatlin’s menace. First treated as a possible clue and an unwanted possession, the Corn-kernel crucifix persists as a material sign of how the town’s violence survives its immediate setting, and how its survivors attempt to answer that violence with objects of their own.