Iona Moon (31 page)

He was ready for them the next time. He'd bought the brandy and was sitting in his car, patiently, so they had to come to him. He cracked his window, said, “Get in.” When he saw them hesitate, he started the engine—so they'd see he didn't give a damn. Kim knocked on his window and got into the back seat.

“Ten,” he said.

“Ten what?”

“Dollars.”

“Cost you four,” she said.

“Right.”

She dug in her pocket. “I've got eight.”

“Ask your friends.”

Dory and Tina had backed away from the car. Kim opened her window and called to them. “I need two bucks,” she said. They squeezed their fingers down the pockets of their tight jeans, pulled out quarters and dimes, seven pennies. Kim counted in the backseat. “Nine-thirty-seven,” she said. “That's it.”

He pretended to consider this offer. “Too bad,” he said.

“Please,” she said, wheedling. He looked at her in his rearview mirror. He hated whiners and didn't give a shit about her nice ass. “Please, Jay,” she whispered, her voice suddenly soft. She had never said his name before. A hole opened in his chest, as if her voice carved his body, as if her small hand tore muscle from bone. His head throbbed with the strain of holding back tears.
Please, Jay
. Muriel's voice this time.
I
can't
. But they did anyway. He passed the pint to the girl in the back seat, took the wad of bills and coins and turned quickly so she wouldn't guess what she'd done. He wanted to say, “Don't look for me next week,” but he was afraid his voice would break if he tried to speak.

Kim slammed the door. She looped her arms through her friends' arms. “He's an asshole,” she said, loud enough for him to hear. The girls ran toward their car, skidding and squealing across the icy pavement.

Willy saw the dark Chrysler careening across the bridge around midnight. Horton had been on his case all week:
You haven't written a ticket in ten days
. Now it was sixteen days. He couldn't believe his luck. Bad, that is. How could he arrest Delores? He couldn't just write a ticket and let her drive home. Not in her condition. She'd do a U-turn and jump the rail, go flying into the frigid Snake. How could he explain? He hadn't seen her since that day in South Bend. Sixteen days. A coincidence. And hadn't called, either. He hoped she understood but knew she didn't. In a way he was relieved to catch her this way. It restored order: she was drunk; he was a policeman.

He hit the siren and set the blue light flashing. She punched the gas and surged ahead of him, speeding toward the Flats. He hadn't expected this, had imagined instead that Delores Tyler would pull over carefully, sorry and contrite, that she'd climb in the back of his cruiser without any trouble.

The road was slick, puddles frozen in the ruts. He chased her for a mile or more until they were alone on a black road.

She stopped. So this was the point of it all, to be alone. The door opened—not Delores. He'd never considered this. Jay headed toward the cruiser, limping but powerful.

Willy got out too. “You crazy sonuvabitch—you could have gotten us both killed.”

Jay didn't answer and kept coming. Willy thought he might have to take a swing to make him stop, but he couldn't imagine hitting a man with a cane. What would Horton do? No words of wisdom came to mind.

“Motherfucker,” Jay said.

Willy's face felt hot despite the cold.
Motherfucker
. He heard the kid in the alley, saw the crushed jack-o'-lantern, knew the simple truth.
Motherfucker
.

Jay leaped before Willy had a chance to brace himself. Both of them went down, and Jay pinned Willy to the road. Willy remembered wrestling in the grass, how good it felt, nothing like this, a hot summer day, their bodies slippery with sweat, wearing cut-offs and nothing else, moving against each other like fish. Jay wasn't playing now. His elbow hit the center of Willy's chest, a soft spot that took Willy's breath and left him stunned.

Jay kept pressing. He leaned close and Willy saw his face, every muscle tensed, jaw clenched tight forever, tendons popping in his neck. He smelled Jay, bitter, not just his breath but his skin, a burned smell that made Willy taste hot metal. He thought of Horton:
When you catch a whiff of that, you better have your hand on your gun
. But Jay's knees dug into Willy's arms, held them to the ground. He wanted to tell his father:
If you're close enough to smell a man, it's already too late
.

“Buddy,” Willy whispered, “it's me.”

“Goddamn right,” Jay said. “I fucking know it's you.”

Willy twisted, arched his back. Jay smacked his chin and rolled off him, grabbing the cane he'd dropped in the snow. Willy took one breath. He thought it was over now, but the quick pain blinded him and a brilliant yellow pool spread in front of his eyes like blood. If he'd had any air he would have screamed, and the cry would have carried across the fields to a girl's house on the Kila Flats, up the tracks to a burned shed, across the river to his mother's house, along the tree-lined streets to Delores. She would see them, clearly and without doubt, her lover lying in the snow clutching his balls, her son crumpled to his knees beside him.

The yellow pool bled thin enough for Willy to see sky, but the clouds looked yellow too. Snow melted beneath his back. Snow melted under Jay's knees.

“Fucking cop,” Jay muttered. “Whatever happened to your goddamn sense of duty?”

Those were his last words on the road, and he remembered them now, just a week later, when he realized he needed Willy Hamilton. He was a policeman, after all. This was his job. Jay didn't want to make it official by filing a report with Fred Pierce or Horton Hamilton. He didn't want half the town out looking for his mother, waving their flashlights in the woods, shouting her name in the dark. Besides, she'd left the house at noon and it was only eight. She wasn't a missing person for another sixteen hours—just an absent mother.
A woman needs some privacy once in a while
, that's what Pierce would say, implying Delores was shacked up with her lover for the night and Jay Tyler was a fool.

Jay didn't have to explain much to Willy. He told him his father was in Boise again and that Delores had been out all day. He said some pills were missing, and Willy said he'd be right over. Willy remembered how Jay felt about Everett Fry:
Why'd he have to make such a mess?
Jay thought Everett should have jumped off the bridge or swallowed a handful of barbiturates, done it clean and fast, so no one else would have to get down on her knees to wash the tiles. Even then he was more worried about Everett's mother than he was about the son who'd died.

Jay was waiting at the curb when Willy came by the house. Willy thought of Delores waiting for him three weeks ago, just this way. “What kind of pills?” Willy said as Jay got in the car.

“I don't know. Sleeping pills.”

“How many?”

“How could I count them if they're gone?”

They headed out the River Road, toward the bridge. “I know how you are,” Jay said. “You'll want to blame yourself. But you're an arrogant bastard if you think one roll with you could make a woman miserable enough to do this.”

Willy nodded. Jay was right. He did want to blame himself. He was an arrogant bastard.

The Chrysler wasn't parked on the bridge. Jay told Willy to stop and got out of the car to look at the water. Snow on the bridge had frozen to a hard crust. The moon was bright, three-quarters full, and the crescent left in shadow cupped the fuller part, a dark hand holding the yellow head in the sky. Jay peered down at the black water and stony bank. He thought of the story Muriel had told him, of the sisters Mary and Martha, how angry they were when Jesus finally appeared, how they each said to him: “If you had come sooner, Lord, my brother would have lived.”

He called her name, and it bounced off the water:
Delores
. “But Jesus wasn't too late,” Muriel said, “and he led Lazarus from the tomb, though he'd been dead four days.”

Jay used the loud voice of a man, but inside a child cried:
Where are you?
This child was lost in his own house. There were so many rooms. He went from one to another, opening closets, peeking under beds, as if this was a game. But he wasn't having fun. He felt that frustration now, the panic in his chest as he ran up and down the stairs. His legs were short and tired. He was four years old.

“Where to?” Willy said when Jay got back in the car.

“To that place where we always parked.”

As much as Willy wanted to find Delores, he hoped she'd gone somewhere else. Maybe he was an arrogant bastard to imagine he had anything to do with her unhappiness, but it would be hard not to blame himself if this was the place she'd chosen.

Jay and Willy both thought of the woman who'd jumped from the bridge and was saved. They saw her red coat billow around her, a small parachute slowing her fall, a preserver that kept her afloat when she hit the water. They saw her blue lips when the men pulled her from the river. They saw her breathless body and knew that she was dead in this moment. But the man struck her chest. Water spurted from her mouth. He pressed again with both hands until she sputtered and gagged. He breathed into her, covered her nose and mouth with his mouth, called her back with his own breath, gave her his own life.
Damn you
. Her words of gratitude, the only ones the curious boys heard. She moved away a month later, left her husband and five kids in their trailer. Jay wondered if she was thankful in the end, if leaving her troubles was better than leaving her life, or if her problems followed her to every little room, if one night she leaped from a window instead of a bridge, to cement instead of water. He wondered if Lazarus lived long and joyfully, or if he grew sick and bitter, if he cursed the Lord and wished there had been no miracle.

There was one car parked by the river. Willy thought the Pinto with the fogged windows belonged to Twyla Catts. He hit the car with his high beams but no heads appeared. They were down on the seat for sure, eyes screwed shut, bodies locked. If a flood swept their car into the river the divers would find them this way: arms clutching, legs entwined, hair tangled together. Willy laid on his horn, and Jay grabbed his wrist. “Save it,” he said.

“Any other ideas?” Willy said when they were back on the road.

“Just drive west for a while.”

Every time they rounded a curve, Willy expected to see the Chrysler hunkered on the shoulder. Maybe she'd slid into the ditch and had been out cold for hours. She might wake at any moment, confused and afraid. He imagined her running on the road, her blond hair blowing. He drove slowly so he could stop in time.

Jay said, “I'm sorry about the other night.”

And Willy said, “Forget it.”

“Lost my head.”

“I deserved it.”

“Maybe,” said Jay, “but not from me.”

“She's your mother.”

“I haven't treated her so well myself.”

They were halfway to South Bend and had only seen two cars coming toward them on the narrow road. Each time they thought it must be her, heading home. But the cars were unfamiliar, driven by strangers who didn't know how cruel they were to drive this road, to give boys hope and snatch it back.

“This is stupid,” Jay said. “We won't find her this way. Maybe the pills rolled under the bed—why should she off herself when she can just leave?”

But they both knew she didn't have the courage for that: running away meant making a new life. “Let's check the bars,” Willy said.

“Yeah, why not.”

They stopped at the White Bull and River's End on Main, but no one had seen her. As they veered east, Willy suddenly felt certain they'd find her at the Roadstop, drunken Delores about to fall off her barstool, leaning up against any guy who happened to sit beside her. They'd scold her and take her home. They'd laugh in the car, pretending they weren't that scared.

But the Chrysler wasn't in the lot. “She's not here,” Jay said.

They drove to the bridge again but crossed it this time and headed toward the Flats. Willy slowed as they passed the cluster of trailers. The stuffed man with the pumpkin head still sat guard, but the head had rotted and begun to shrivel, sinking into the shoulders.

Jay said, “Take me home. I think she's at home.” Willy saw that Jay's cheeks were wet.

“It's not your fault,” Willy said. He thought it was important to say this now, before they found her. Jay nodded. “If she's not there, I'm going to call my father.”

“She is,” Jay whispered. “She is.” He saw her, curled in the basement. That's where he'd found her the other time, wedged in a dark corner under the cellar stairs; he poked at her with his small hands, but she didn't wake.

The memory of the sirens was so close he had to cover his ears. He was sure he'd find her in exactly the same place. Maybe she'd been there all along. Maybe she'd driven the car away to fool him and had sneaked back later, like a thief in her husband's house, tiptoeing down the stairs to steal her own life. Her name welled in his chest; the sound of it filled his whole body.

The Chrysler was in the drive. Someone had turned on the porch light. Willy followed Jay, up the walk and into the entryway. At the end of the hall, light burst from the kitchen.

She sat at the table, hair loose at her shoulders, just as Willy had imagined, hours before on the River Road. She wore an oversized cardigan and hugged herself to hold it wrapped around her.

Jay stood in the doorway, eyes filling with shame and gratitude. Willy peered over his shoulder.

“I'm drunk,” she said.

“I was afraid,” Jay whispered.

Delores heard those words at last, the ones Andrew could not say at the river. “I didn't have the guts,” she said.