The Slow Moon (24 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Cox
The biggest monkey, Sam, emerged from the tent, clutching a bottle of chocolate milk left by a child. He looked around, seeming to weigh his options, then ran a few yards before the sharp bang from a gun caused Sam’s eyes to roll. The monkey collapsed on the ground. He looked like a wet mass of fur, his mouth slowly opening. He made a sound like a human cry.
“We should do something,” Sophie urged.
“What can we do?” Crow looked at her.
“I don’t know.”
They stood long enough to watch the boy who had been bitten be taken away in the ambulance, then Blondie and the rest of the captured monkeys were driven away in a large wooden crate, their faces looking through the slats. Next Mackey was ushered out of the tent. They saw Sam carried away, and saw that he was alive, just unsteady, sedated.
“They’ll be okay,” Crow said, trying to reassure. “Look, it was only a tranquilizer gun.”
Sophie nodded. “Thank you,” said Sophie. “For what you did.”
It was not until this moment when they stood in the secure circle of folks outside the tent that Crow recognized how his action in that limited portion of time had been right—not cowardly. He didn’t remember making a decision.
Sophie touched his torn shirt. “Are you all right?”
“Not even a scratch,” said Crow. “I’m okay.” He led her away from the crowd. “You want some more ice cream?”
Sophie smiled. She, too, felt his need to go back in time, to before the monkeys—or even further back to when nothing had been broken or lost.
The police spent thirty minutes tracking down one last monkey who had been spotted scampering toward the river. Over the loudspeaker a man’s deep voice said that rides were now reduced to half price. The voice apologized for the “mishap” and reassured those who had heard the commotion but did not see it that the injured had been taken to the hospital and the monkeys gathered into a safe place. The voice spoke in an even rhythm, like a metronome, comforting the crowd, urging people not to leave—promising prizes, free ice cream, cheap rides.
The Dixieland Band began to play again, and slowly the murmur of voices hummed through the tents, around the ice cream, and into the ride area, where the lights of the Ferris wheel glittered in the half-light. Sophie looked up. “I want to ride in that red seat with a painted moon on the back,” she said.
Crow bought two tickets and told the man running the ride to bring down the red seat. Sophie climbed into the cradlelike chair like a princess, sitting carefully, expectantly, trembling from the episode with the monkeys. Crow closed the long bar in front of them. There were many things they could do nothing about. They both held their breath as the wheel went backward and up.
The wheel went around several times, and finally they relaxed, even laughed, throwing up their arms to feel like falling. Crow put his arm around Sophie, and she leaned into him. “Want to have supper together? We can get some hot dogs. They have the best hot dogs.”
“Okay,” said Sophie, “but what time is it? I don’t have my watch, and I told my mom I’d meet her at the pavilion at six o’clock.”
Crow didn’t want to look at his watch. He didn’t want to tell her what time it was. He didn’t want Sophie to have to leave, so he leaned over the bar and yelled down to the crowd, “Does anybody know what time it is?” The question carried over the heads of the people below, over the pasture to where the horses gave a last ride for the day, over the field to the road with all its cars, then to the river where shoes floated aimlessly on the river bottom.
A few people looked up and said, “What? What is he saying?”
Crow laughed as the Ferris wheel swung down and back up again. At the top they stopped while the man below let on new riders. And Crow could smell Sophie’s fragrance beside him, still like oranges. He could smell her, and he did not know what to do. They sat high above the town, and both suddenly pulsed with a sense of new and possible life. Crow kissed her, unexpectedly and seriously—the cradle rocking slightly—and when Sophie lifted her head she saw a purple streak in the sky, like a long highway going straight into the setting sun.
She raised her arms, profoundly, and the Ferris wheel moved again, taking them over the top, down, then back up out of the earth; and each time they went around they heard the barker calling out about the man the size of a child; they saw the sky changing fast, and the bright strip of river the monkey had tried to run to.
The Ferris wheel rumbled upward, the kiss still hot on their lips. The chorus of crickets had lessened in the last month, but Sophie and Crow could see and hear every warp and woof of what was below them. Every shadow, every crevice, revealed itself, and they watched as though they were looking at the world through a ridiculous glass. All these things created a fabulous order.
But what they saw—what they really saw—was the thin, bright string of light along the hills, a horizon not yet captured, not held down by circumstance. What they saw was the world opening its margin of breath into their green, tremulous lives.
Acknowledgments
I am enormously grateful to my editor, Judy Sternlight, who has worked tirelessly with me on this novel and whose comments and suggestions I greatly appreciate; to Dan Menaker, who has shepherded me through this process; to my agent, Susan Lescher, who has sold every book I’ve written; to Brian Smith, a criminal lawyer in Tennessee, who gave me valuable advice concerning criminal proceedings; to my friends Ginger Smith, Beth Graham, and Jill McCorkle, for their encouragement; to Kittsu Greenwood, who, through many readings, pushed me to finish this book; and to my husband, Michael Curtis, who gives me everything.
About the Author
E
LIZABETH
C
OX
is the author of
Night Talk, The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love, Familiar Ground,
and the story collection
Bargains in the Real World.
She is an instructor at the Bennington Writing Seminars and teaches at Wofford College in South Carolina, where she shares the John C. Cobb Endowed Chair in the Humanities with her husband, C. Michael Curtis. She lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
A
LSO BY
E
LIZABETH
C
OX
Familiar Ground
The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love
Night Talk
Bargains in the Real World: Thirteen Stories
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Elizabeth Cox
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cox, Elizabeth.
The slow moon: a novel / Elizabeth Cox.
p. cm.
1. Teenagers—Fiction. 2. Tennessee—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.O9183S58 2006
813'.54—dc22 2005044781
eISBN: 978-1-58836-534-7
v3.0