Bad Moon Rising

by John Galligan

  “He followed me.”

  Her voice was raw and toneless.

  “I brought him to you.”

  For a moment, Fanta’s watering eyes focused. In this lurid instant, FROM HELL HOLLOW’s screeds had coalesced, and the great poet Yeats had been answered: What rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

  Jim Golly.

  “A thousand pardons, friend,” the “bad Golly” wheezed. “Faithy, stand down. Tippy, I said off. Let the man alone.”

  “He left a note,” she rasped.

  “Well, read it to me, woman.”

  Fanta’s tears of pain thickened, blurring and melting the Gollys and their dog. He tried to rise.

  “ ‘It seems you want to talk to me,’ ” she read sluggishly, stepping back over Fanta. “ ‘So let’s talk. I’ll be back here tomorrow, at new midnight sharp. Leroy Fanta.’ ”

  “Ha-ha!” Jim Golly celebrated. “Back to work on our story, yes? Tippy! Off! Faith, help him up. This is the newspaperman. Indeed, Mr. Fanta, let’s get back to the story. Come, come, I’ve been cooling off in the creek.”

  “No.” He coughed as he came to his knees, gripping the bumper of the white truck and tasting blood off his scalp. “No, Jim, thank you. I believe I’ll head back out now. Sorry I intruded. As I said, I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  It seemed as if Golly hadn’t heard. He emitted a hiss. Tenderly the dog took Fanta’s entire hand in its mouth.

  “Come cool off in the creek. Faith, get wine. Tippy, bring Mr. Fanta.”

  * * *

  Under a double umbrage of dusk and shade, as caterpillars gnawed the glowing canopy, Fanta drifted in and out of awareness, blood dribbling off his scalp and spreading pinkly through his wet shirt while he sat on the creek bottom in a cold, stony riffle.

  “A man goes back to the land, Mr. Fanta, and the land attacks him. Our weary Mother makes an example of the fool. Makes a prophet of him. How’s that for an angle?”

  Golly wallowed in a deeper pool, dammed by stacked cobble. There he soaked his gray skin flaps, his bloated hands. Splashing himself, he canted his skull to peer through the swelling murk of night.

  “After twenty years of venison, my eyes are kaleidoscopes, Mr. Fanta, from the infected deer prions massed in my corneas. You, my friend, are carved into a dozen pretty pieces.”

  He hummed and splashed himself some more.

  “But it’s a gift. The gift of vision. This is how you write it up in your story, yes? The man was given a gift. He was chosen to see.”

  “Sure. Yes.”

  “Mother chose me. This is why I must live at all costs.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Nothing unjustified.”

  “No.”

  Fanta recalled Jim Golly’s recorded voice. Liar! This is what liars did. They accused others. Jim had lied to him years ago about the brothers’ background, while his quiet twin, Jon, had sat watchfully by.

  “Jim… where is your brother?”

  “Shall we stick to the story? Jim Golly was chosen to suffer, to see the truth, and to burn brightly for the world to see. How does that sound?”

  Just then his silver-braided Faith appeared out of the dim forest understory, bearing along with her rifle and her dull frown two wooden cups and a tall green-glass bottle.

  “Woman, you look hot.”

  Obediently she stripped and stepped naked into the creek and from Jim Golly took a cracking slap on her flank. Randomly, it seemed, Fanta realized why the old white pickup was familiar.

  That was Larry “Derp” Hubbard’s truck. He was sure of it. He knew Derp, a prolific trespasser and poacher, and an occasional performer over many years in the weekly sheriff’s report. Maybe it wasn’t much to look at, but the vintage International Harvester had great nostalgic value for him. He had made Derp an offer.

  “Cheers,” Golly said, raising his cup.

  Fanta complied, tasting elderberry wine with a mineral edge.

  “Here’s to France,” Golly said. “That I make it.”

  He meant to the Group of Seven, the G7 assembly of world leaders. Fanta remembered this from the letter he had brought along. The summit would take place in Biarritz, France, in two weeks. This nude and delusional ex-Floridian sitting in a creek in Bad Axe County believed he was going there to change the course of world history.

  Dear Mr. Secretary: Look out the window.

  But why was Faith Golly driving Derp Hubbard’s truck? How had the Gollys acquired the man’s most prized possession?

  Then Golly began to rant, and Fanta could only weakly agree. Yes, the glaciers were melting, the oceans were rising, and the coral reefs were bleaching. Yes, the insects and the birds were diminishing, and the deserts were expanding. Yes, refugees were moving and borders were hardening. Yes, Venice was drowning, Lady Liberty had got her ass wet in Hurricane Sandy, and the Choctaw bayous were underwater.

  “Am I wrong, Mr. Fanta?”

  He was not wrong. These were all facts from Fanta’s articles and columns. Yes, in twenty years Phoenix was going to be like Pakistan, Pittsburgh like Dar es Salaam. Yes, there was no more Paradise, California, and yes, in twenty years there would be no turning back.

  “Faith, more wine.”

  Yes, in the Bad Axe the whitetail deer herd was grievously infected, and the Lyme ticks had exploded, and the bacilli had evolved into something newer and worse. And yes, there was E. coli in the aquifer, plus Roundup, atrazine, nitrate, and more.

  “Mother wants us out, Fanta. No more shitting in the nest. Precious little time to fix it.”

  The gypsy shrouds muttered above. Fanta looked up into them and said, “Why do you have Derp Hubbard’s truck?”

  “Never heard of the man.”

  “That white truck is his.”

  “Faithy, he’s asking for more wine.”

  The great dog, Tippy, rose and padded yellow-eyed along the creek bank to stand six inches from Fanta’s neck. The creek’s cold rose straight up his spine to meet the dog’s hot breath. The dead man in the ditch, he thought. That ditch wasn’t far from here.

  It’s OK, he told himself. You were killed in Vietnam. You just hadn’t died yet.

  CHAPTER 19

  Heading back to her family, Sheriff Kick made the call she had been dreading. Inside a home in Massachusetts, the phone rang one and a half times.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello.” She tried to keep her voice even, unemotional. “Is this Colleen Greevey?”

  “It is.”

  “My name is Heidi Kick. I’m the sheriff of Bad Axe County, in southwestern Wisconsin.”

  “I see. Yes. Hello.”

  His mother sounded defeated. Probably she had answered this same kind of call a dozen times before.

  “Are you the mother of Daniel Allen Greevey?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s me.” She sighed heavily. “What is it?”

  “Well… I’m afraid I have some sad news. Are you in a place where you can talk?”

  Through the silence, the sheriff sped north along the highway, waiting for a cue to continue. The sunset was complete. The sky had transitioned to an exhausted black-and-blue. The roads, fields, and forests breathed back their accumulated heat, making the night air so heavy that she could feel the Charger straining against it.

  “He was a good boy…”

  Daniel Greevey’s mom made it only that far before she crumpled.

  “And we… did everything we knew… how to do. No matter what…”

  The sheriff said, “I’m so sorry.”

  She waited with the details while the grieving mother wept.

  “No matter what,” Colleen Greevey managed at last, “he’ll always be my little boy. He will always be my baby.”

  * * *

  At home, the sheriff’s husband had pulled their plastic kiddie pool into the center of the front yard and filled it with water from the hose and what
appeared to be all the block ice from the chest freezer.

  She stopped at the spilling rim of the pool. Harley’s dirt-stained Rattlers uniform had been shucked on the grass. He and Dylan sat in the pool dumping cups of cool water over each other.

  “Mommy! Look! Me and Daddy are skinny-dipping!”

  Harley had fastened a bread sack around Dylan’s arm to keep his stitches dry. The brother who had chopped his arm with a hoe was nowhere to be seen, but light shone from the boys’ upstairs bedroom.

  “That must feel good.”

  “Daddy said you and him used to skinny-dip.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “Daddy said you guys—”

  But Dylan fell silent when he saw her looking up where Taylor was. Nightjars whizzed above the roof. The sky had darkened enough for a few stars to prick through. A lone coyote howled.

  Harley said, “Come join us.”

  “I think I’ll take a shower.”

  She went inside, wrenched off her duty boots, peeled off her uniform shirt and her vest, and climbed the stairs in her sweat-sticky sports bra.

  “Mommy’s home.”

  She tapped on the door. When she opened it, Taylor glowered up from a scene he had constructed with Legos and action figures on the bedroom floor. Her already heavy heart sank deeper. He was supposed to be composing two simple apologies. This was the consequence she had designed. But pen and paper sat untouched on his dresser. Between his widespread legs on the floor, a Lego figure stood at the side of a Lego road, a Lego truck approaching.

  “Sweetie, how’s it going? Did you already—”

  He jumped up and bulldozed the door into her, pushed her back until the latch clicked shut.

  She flashed with anger. How dare he treat her that way? Then the anger gave her guilt, and the guilt made her even sadder. How did you ever know if you were doing the right thing? You could miss or mistake something, so easily. And then it could be too late. Colleen Greevey’s sobs still resonated. She had to bite her lip.

  She calmed herself enough and called through the door, “Finish up so you can come out and cool off with us in the pool, OK?”

  She decided not to shower just yet. Outside, she pulled a chair off the porch, unzipped her pants and rolled the cuffs up, took her bra off—this was family—and sat with her bare feet in the pool.

  Harley gave her a minute. Then, underwater, he pulled her toe. “Feels good, huh?”

  “Yeah. Feels good.”

  But it didn’t. Everything felt broken. She missed Opie’s old soul, whoever Opie was turning out to be. One little boy was angry, the other was worried into silence. Right now their little family felt out of balance, and as if to confuse things—

  She jerked in the chair and her foot splashed. For a few busy hours she had forgotten. She touched her bare skin below the navel.

  “What, hon?” Harley looked at her with concern. “Are you OK?”

  “Nothing,” she lied to the man who loved her, feeling another layer of guilt. But at least she could tell that Belle hadn’t passed along her rumors yet. “I’m fine.”

  She would get up before dawn, she decided, put on civvies, and drive the family minivan to Walgreen’s in La Crosse, where hopefully no one knew her. She would buy a test to confirm, then tell Harley.

  More coyotes joined the lone howler. Soon they listened to a full creepy chorus. Then others rejoined from across the hollow.

  “It’s going to be OK!”

  Dylan blurted this. She leaned and rubbed his little shoulders.

  “You’re right. Thank you, sweetie.”

  They sat awhile longer. The coyotes kept it up until Taylor startled them, bellowing out the window, “I’m not sorry! For anything! Ever!”

  His voice echoed. The coyotes stopped to listen. The sheriff and her husband stared at one another through the gathering night. Taylor’s twin brother poured water over his own head, again and again.

  Then Dylan whispered to his mom and dad.

  “You guys, come on. It’s what you always say. In the morning everything is gonna be OK. Right?”

  Fri, Aug 9, 4:33 AM

  To: Dairy Queen (dairyqueen@blackbox.com)

  From: Oppo (oppo@blackbox.com)

  Subject: The Rickreiner Fairy Tale

  The Fairy Tale: Opposition tells a story of suffering and redemption. Father murdered. Son loses his way. Heroin is injected. Crimes are committed. Rock bottom is achieved. Opposition breaks bad habits, leaves bad friends behind, earns degree, deserves your job.

  Characters:

  Ronald Rickreiner, father: farm-to-farm agricultural products salesman; throat slit, May 2003 (body in vehicle pulled from manure pond)

  Barry Rickreiner, son: opposition

  Babette Rickreiner, mother/widow: campaign financier and manager

  Murder suspects: multiple farmers in debt to Ronald Rickreiner

  Omissions:

  Father’s Usury: Ronald Rickreiner credited seed, pesticide, fuel, etc. to struggling farmers at interest rates up to 40% and collected on property liens for non-payment

  Toxic Impact: cash netted from repossessed farms invested in Liquor City, Supercuts, Farmers’ Direct Buy, Dollar Heaven, etc.

  Revenge by Pesticide: suspects passing from sudden, multisymptom illnesses include Kermit Vick (2003) and Horst Millhouser (2004); for similar symptoms, see Kim Maybee autopsy report; Ronald Rickreiner’s product line included Killex

  Brand-New Information: Oppo has just learned that former Rickreiner debtors and murder suspects Jim and Jon Golly (cleared by monkeys f^cking football; departed Bad Axe circa October, 2003) still own their property in Town of Leavings.

  PLEASE STAND BY… AND DON’T DRINK THE BUTTERMILK…

  CHAPTER 20

  By morning, as incandescent dawn gilds the great brown river and bruised men shuffle out of tents to meet the day, Sammy Squirrel has a new name.

  Hot Dog.

  Last night someone threw him one.

  Oscar Meyer all-beef.

  He didn’t even chew.

  * * *

  Sunk in a foamy Mississippi backwash, he soaks his mosquito bites and his train-jump scrapes and watches the lever of daylight pry up the lid of night and tip it into yesterday.

  Yesterday…

  He sieves his fingers through the murky water. Yesterday? He sifts his bare feet through the silky-warm bottom mud, feeling small sharp things buried, jerks his knees up and grips them, afraid of teeth. Unanchored, he drifts and spins—a mile of brown water, a rust-and-blue barge, a tall green bluff, a coasting pelican with its surveilling black-bead eye, the tent camp. Yesterday has fallen off the spinning earth, vaporized by the new sun.

  “Come on, now, Hot Dog.”

  The boss of the homeless camp, Abraham, a crooked-spine black dude with a gray beard, calls down the riverbank.

  “Bath time is over. Get out that dirty soup, son. Get some coffee in yuz. Then we gonna go get some jingle.”

  * * *

  Sammy Hot Dog shoulders his backpack and follows a loose tribe of shabby men as they limp and scuff and banter along a dirt trail away from the river. They travel through sweltering shadows of bottomland forest, over glinting tracks, through cracked lots between tunnels of rusted fences, up sour-beer alleys to the designated street corner where a few men already loiter, cupping stubby smokes and jeering at the others for being lazy and late.

  “This the jingle train, Hot Dog. Go on, now, line up. Your turn is gonna come.”

  He watches how the jingle train operates. Up pulls a work truck, a foreman looking for a roofer, a landscaper, a flagman for a paving crew. The deal takes place out the window. A door opens and a man has a job. The line moves. Or up pulls an SUV, minivan, or sedan, a homeowner needing a lawn mowed, gutters cleaned, furniture moved. The cops roll by and seem to be searching. Ninety-plus degrees and climbing fast, someone says. The cops roll by again.

  “Hot Dog, how old you is?”

  He lies with ten fingers t
wice.

  Abraham cracks up.

  “Oh, hell, no. I give you sixteen, best. Child, them cops out feeding today. They catch you, they be sending you back to wherever you didn’t want to be.”

  Somebody calls, “Hey, Abe.”

  Abraham looks across the street at a young man in cargo shorts and socks-and-sandals taking cell phone pictures. “That man gonna mess with you too,” Abraham tells Sammy Hot Dog. “That’s a good man, but his mission bigger than yours. Drift back a little. You ain’t wanna get your picture taken.”

  Minutes later, trouble starts on the jingle train, shouting, shoving, and threatening, then two weary black men dancing in the street, shrieking and throwing fists. The cops are back like blowflies, four cars this time, lights and sirens, officers vaulting from their squads as if to stop a war. In a flash the two men are facedown on the scalding pavement, getting cuffed. The young man taking cell phone pictures confronts the cops.

  “Fighting with each other is a crime? But not when they disappear? Five of these men have disappeared. I told you someone is hunting them. And you do nothing!”

  Two officers attack the man, one swiping his phone to the ground, one drawing a club. “Go ahead,” he defies them. He points to cars stopping, drivers with their phones out.

  “Get on, now, Hot Dog,” Abraham tells him in a hushed voice. “Don’t run. Don’t get yourself chased. But this gone bad and you better get back to the camp.”

  A block away, drifting numbly with no idea where the camp is, he hears the voice.

  Cassie wouldn’t stand for that shit.

  A heavy woman in a blue smock watches the commotion through a drugstore window, her hands at work lifting boxes of vape cartridges from a box with a label he can partly read: WARNING: According to the Surgeon General, women should not… And she gives him a disgusted look through the glass.

  Use the rock.

  Smash it.

  Use the fork.

  Stop her. Kill that look.

  No? Then you’re the one who should have burned.

  CHAPTER 21

  At just after six A.M., Sheriff Kick lied to her husband. She whispered into Harley’s ear, “Let’s surprise the boys with milkshakes for breakfast.”