Moonchasers & Other Stories

by Ed Gorman

  "Grandad?" Lisa called up from below.

  "Yeah, hon?"

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine, hon. How about you?"

  "God, I shouldn't have asked you if I could write about this for my class."

  "Oh, why not?"

  "Because this could be real serious. I mean, maybe it wasn't accidental."

  "Now you sound like your grandmother."

  "Huh?"

  "She'd always do something and then get guilty and start apologizing." I didn't add that despite her apologies, her grandmother generally went right back to doing whatever she'd apologized for in the first place.

  "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, Grandad."

  Lisa never used to treat me like this. So dutifully. Nor did her mother. To them, I was just the biggest kid in the family and was so treated. But the cancer changed all that. Now they'd do something spontaneous and then right away they'd start worrying. There's a grim decorum that goes along with the disease. You become this big sad frail guy who, they seem to think, just can't deal with any of life's daily wear and tear.

  That's one of the nice things about my support group. We get to laugh a lot about the delicate way our loved ones treat us sometimes. It's not mean laughter. Hell, we understand that they wouldn't treat us this way if they didn't love us, and love us a lot. But sometimes their dutifulness can be kind of funny in an endearing way.

  "You 'enhance' it any way you want to, pumpkin," I said, and started to look around at fields sprawling out in front of me.

  I also started sneezing pretty bad again, too.

  I spent ten more minutes in the loft, finally deciding it was safe for us to venture out as soon as we finished with the milking for the day.

  On the way out of the barn, I said, "Don't tell your mom. You know, about the gunshot."

  "How come?"

  "You must be crazy, kid. You know how she worries about me." Lisa smiled. "How about making a bargain?"

  "Oh-oh. Here it comes."

  "I won't tell Mom and you let me drive the tractor."

  Lots of farm kids die in tractor accidents every year. I didn't want Lisa to be one of them. "I'll think about it, how's that?"

  "Then I guess I'll just have to think about it, too." But she laughed.

  I pulled her closer, my arm around her shoulder. `You think I'm wrong? About not telling your mom?"

  She thought for a while. "Nah, I guess not. I mean, Mom really does worry about you a lot already."

  We were halfway to the house, a ranch-style home of blond brick with an evergreen windbreak and a white dish antenna east of the trees.

  Just as we reached the walk leading to the house, I heard a heavy car come rumbling up the driveway, raising dust and setting both collies to barking. The car was a new baby blue Pontiac with official police insignia decaled on the side.

  I stopped, turned around, grinned at Lisa. "Remember now, you've got Friday."

  "Yeah, I wish I had Saturday, the way you do."

  We'd been betting the last two weeks when Chief of Police Nick Bingham was going to ask Emmy to marry him. They'd been going out for three years, and two weeks ago Nick had said, "I've never said this to you before, Emmy, but you know when I turned forty last year? Well, ever since, I've had this loneliness right in here. A burning." And of course my wiseass daughter had said, "Maybe it's gas." She told this to Lisa and me at breakfast the next morning, relishing the punchline.

  Because Nick had never said anything like this at all in his three years of courting her, Emmy figured he was just about to pop the question.

  So Lisa and I started this little pool. Last week I bet he'd ask her on Friday night and she'd bet he'd ask her on Saturday. But he hadn't asked her either night. Now the weekend was approaching again.

  Nick got out of the car in sections. In high school he'd played basketball on a team that had gone three times to state finals and had finished second twice. Nick had played center. He was just over six-five. He went three years to college but dropped out to finish harvest when his father died of a heart attack. He never got the degree. But he did become a good lawman.

  "Morning," he said.

  "Pink glazed?" Lisa said when she saw the white sack dangling from his left hand.

  "Two of 'em are, kiddo."

  "Can I have one?"

  "No," he said, pulling her to him and giving her a kind of affectionate Dutch rub. "You can have both of 'em."

  He wasn't what you'd call handsome but there was a quiet manliness to the broken nose and the intelligent blue eyes that local ladies, including my own daughter, seemed to find attractive, especially when he was in his khaki uniform. They didn't seem to mind that he was balding fast.

  Emmy greeted us at the door in a blue sweatshirt and jeans and the kind of white Keds she'd worn ever since she was a tot. No high-priced running shoes for her. With her earnest little face and tortoiseshell glasses, she always reminded me of those quiet, pretty girls I never got to know in my high school class. Her blond hair was cinched in a ponytail that bobbed as she walked.

  "Coffee's on," she said, taking the hug Nick offered as he came through the door.

  We did this three, four times a week, Nick finishing up his morning meeting with his eight officers then stopping by Donut Dan's and coming out here for breakfast.

  Strictly speaking, I was supposed to be eating food a little more nutritional than donuts but this morning I decided to indulge.

  The conversation ran its usual course. Lisa and Nick joked with each other, Emmy reminded me about all the vitamins and pills I was supposed to take every morning, and I told them about how hard a time I was having finding a few good extra hands for harvest.

  Lisa sounded subdued this morning, which caused Emmy to say, "You feeling all right, hon? You seem sort of quiet."

  Lisa faked a grin. "Just all that hard work Grandad made me do. Wore me out."

  Lisa was still thinking about the rifle shot. So was I. Several times my eyes strayed to Nick's holster and gun.

  Just as we were all starting on our second cup of coffee, Lisa included, a car horn sounded at the far end of our driveway. The mail was here.

  Wanting a little time to myself, I said I'd get the mail. Sometimes Lisa walked down to the mailbox with me but this morning she was still working on the second pink glazed donut. The rifle shot had apparently affected her appetite.

  After the surgery and the recuperation, I decided to spend whatever time I had left—months maybe or years, the doctors just weren't very sure—living out my Chicago-boy fantasy of being a farmer. Hell hadn't my daughter become a farmer? I inhaled relatively pure fresh air and less than two miles away was a fast-running river where, with the right spoon and plug and sippner, you could catch trout all day long.

  I tried to think of that now, as I walked down the rutted road to the mailbox. I was lucky. Few people ever have their fantasies come true. I lived with those I loved, I got to see things grow, and I had for my restive pleasure the sights of beautiful land. And there was a good chance that I was going to kick the cancer I'd been fighting the past two years.

  So why did somebody want to go and spoil it for me by shooting at me?

  As I neared the mailbox, I admitted to myself that the shot hadn't been accidental. Nor had it been meant to kill me. The shooter was good enough to put a bullet close to my head without doing me any damage. For whatever reason, he'd simply wanted to scare me.

  The mailbox held all the usual goodies, circulars from True-Value, Younkers Department Store, Hy-Vee supermarkets, Drug-town and the Ford dealer where I'd bought my prize blue pickup.

  The number ten white envelope, the one addressed to me, was the last thing I took from the mailbox.

  I knew immediately that the envelope had something to do with the rifle shot this morning. Some kind of telepathic insight allowed me to understand this fact.

  There was neither note nor letter inside, simply a photograph, a photo far more expressive than words c
ould ever have been.

  I looked away from it at first then slowly came back to it, the edge of it pincered between my thumb and forefinger.

  I looked at it for a very long time. I felt hot, sweaty, though it was still early morning. I felt scared and ashamed and sick as I stared at it. So many years ago it had been; something done by a man with my name; but not the same man who bore that name today.

  I tucked the picture into the envelope and went back to the house. When I was back at the table, a cup of coffee in my hand, I noticed that Emmy was staring at me. "You all right, Dad?"

  "I'm fine. Maybe just getting a touch of the flu or something."

  While that would normally be a good excuse for looking gray and shaken, to the daughter of a cancer patient those are terrifying words. As if the patient himself doesn't worry about every little ache and pain. But to tell someone who loves you that you suddenly feel sick. . . .

  I reached across the table and said to Nick, "You mind if I hold hands with your girl?"

  Nick smiled. "Not as long as you don't make a habit of it."

  I took her hand for perhaps the millionth time in my life, holding in the memory of all the things this hand had been, child, girl, wife, mother.

  "I'm fine, honey. Really."

  All she wanted me to see was the love in those blue eyes. But I also saw the fear. I wanted to sit her on my lap as I once had, and rock her on my knees, and tell her that everything was going to be just fine.

  "Okay?" I said.

  "Okay," she half whispered.

  Nick went back to telling Lisa why her school should have an especially good basketball team this year.

  On the wall to the right of the kitchen table, Emmy had hung several framed advertisements from turn-of-the-century magazines, sweet little girls in bonnets and braids, and freckled boys with dogs even cuter than they were, all the faces and poses leading you to believe that theirs was a far more innocent era than ours. But the older I got, the more I realized that the human predicament had always been the same. It had just dressed up in different clothes.

  There was one photograph up there. A grimy man in military fatigues standing with a cigarette dangling from his lips and an M-16 leaning against him. Trying to look tough when all he was was scared. The man was me.

  "Well," Nick said about ten minutes later.

  Emmy and Lisa giggled.

  No matter how many times they kidded Nick about saying "Well" each time he was about to announce his imminent departure, he kept right on saying it.

  Emmy walked him out to the car.

  I filled the sink with hot soapy water. Lisa piled the breakfast dishes in.

  "Grandad?"

  "Yes, hon?"

  "You sure you don't want to tell Mom about the gunshot?"

  "No, hon, I don't. I know it's tempting but she's got enough to worry about." Emmy had had a long and miserable first marriage to a man who had treated adultery like the national pastime. Now, on the small amount of money she got from the farm and from me paying room and board, Emmy had to raise a daughter. She didn't need any more anxiety.

  "I'm going into town," I said, as I started to wash the dishes and hand them one by one to Lisa, who was drying.

  "How come?"

  "Oh, a little business."

  "What kind of business?"

  "I just want to check out the downtown area."

  "For what?"

  I laughed. "I'll fill out a written report when I get back."

  "I'll go with you."

  "Oh, no, hon. This is something I have to do alone."

  "Detectives usually have partners."

  "I think that's just on TV."

  "Huh-uh. In Weekly Reader last year there was this article on Chicago police and it said that they usually worked in teams. Team means two. You and me, Grandad."

  I guessed I really wasn't going to do much more than nose around. Probably wouldn't hurt for her to ride along.

  By the time Emmy got back to the kitchen, looking every bit as happy as I wanted her to be, Lisa and I had finished the dishes and were ready for town.

  "When will you be back?"

  "Oh, hour or two."

  Emmy was suspicious. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

  "Nothing, sweetheart," I said, leaning over and kissing her on the cheek. "Honest."

  We went out and got in the truck, passing the old cedar chest Lisa had converted into a giant toolbox and placed in the back of the pickup. She had fastened it with strong twine so it wouldn't shift around. It looked kind of funny sitting there like that but Lisa had worked hard at it so I wasn't about to take it out.

  Twenty years ago there was hope that the interstate being discussed would run just east of our little town. Unfortunately, it ran north, and twenty miles away. Today the downtown is four two-block streets consisting of dusty redbrick buildings all built before 1930. The post office and the two supermarkets and the five taverns are the busiest places.

  I started at the post office, asking for Ev Meader, the man who runs it.

  "Gettin' ready for school, Lisa?" Ev said when we came into his office.

  She made a face. Ev laughed. "So what can I do for ya today?" 'Wondering if you heard of anybody new moving in around here?" I said. "You know, filling out a new address card."

  He scratched his bald head. "Not in the past couple weeks. Least I don't think so. But let me check." He left the office.

  I looked down at Lisa. "You going to ask me?"

  "Ask you what, Grandad?"

  "Ask me how come I'm asking Ev about new people moving into town."

  She grinned. "Figured I'd wait till we got back in the truck."

  "No new address cards," Ev said when he came back. "I'll keep an eye out for you if you want."

  "I'd appreciate it."

  In the truck, Lisa said, "Is it all right if I ask you now?"

  "I'm wondering if that shot this morning didn't coincide with somebody moving here. Somebody who came here just so they could deal with me."

  "You mean, like somebody's after you or something like that?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "But who'd be after you?"

  "I don't know."

  The man at the first hotel had a pot belly and merry red suspenders.

  "Asian, you say?"

  "Right."

  "Nope. No Asians that I signed in, anyway."

  "How about at night?"

  "I can check the book."

  "I'd appreciate it."

  "Two weeks back be all right?"

  "That'd been fine."

  But two weeks back revealed no Asians. "Sorry," he said, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders.

  "How come Asians?" Lisa said after we were back in the truck.

  "Just because of something that happened to me once."

  We rode in silence for a time.

  "Grandad?"

  "Yeah."

  "You going to tell me? About what happened to you once?"

  "Not right now, hon."

  "How come?"

  "Too hard for me to talk about." And it was. Every time I thought about it for longer than a minute, I could feel my eyes tear up.

  The woman at the second motel wore a black T-shirt with a yellow hawk on it. Beneath it said, "I'lldo anything for the Hawkeyes."

  Anything was underlined. The Hawkeyes were the U of Iowa.

  "Couple black guys, some kind of salesmen I guess, but no Asians," she said.

  "How about at night?"

  She laughed. "Bob works at night. He doesn't much like people who aren't white. We had an Asian guy, I'd hear about it, believe me.

  The man at the third motel, a hearty man with a farmer's tan and a cheap pair of false teeth said, "No Asian."

  "Maybe he came at night?"

  "The boy, he works the night shift. Those robberies we had a few months back—that convenience store where that girl got shot?—ever since, he keeps a sharp eye out. Usually tells me all about the guests. He didn't me
ntion any Asian."

  "Thanks."

  "Sure."

  "I'll be happy to ask around," he said.

  "Cochran, right?"

  "Henry Cochran. Right."

  "Thanks for your help, Henry."

  "You bet."

  "You going to tell me yet?" Lisa said when we were in the pickup and headed back to the farm.

  "Not yet."

  "Am I bugging you, Grandad?"

  I smiled at her. "Maybe a little."

  "Then I won't ask you anymore."

  She leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek, after which she settled back on her side of the seat.

  "You know what I forgot to do today?" she said after awhile.

  "What?"

  "Tell you I loved you."

  "Well, I guess you'd better hurry up and do it then."

  "I love you, Grandad."

  The funny thing was, I'd never been able to cry much till the cancer, which was a few years ago when I turned fifty-two. Not even when my two best soldier friends got killed in Nam did I cry. Not even when my wife left me did I cry. But these days all sorts of things made me cry. And not just about sad things, either. Seeing a horse run free could make me cry; and certain old songs; and my granddaughter's face when she was telling me she loved me.

  "I love you, too, Lisa," I said, and gave her hand a squeeze.

  That afternoon Lisa and I spent three hours raking corn in a wagon next to the silo, stopping only when the milk truck came. As usual Ken, the driver, took a sample out of the cooling vat where the milk had been stored. He wanted to get a reading on the butterfat content of the milk. When the truck was just rolling brown dust on the distant road, Lisa and I went back to raking the corn. At five we knocked off. Lisa rode her bike down the road to the creek where she was trying to catch a milk snake for her science class this fall.

  I was in scrubbing up for dinner when Emmy called me to the phone. "There's a woman on the line for you. Dad. She's got some kind of accent."

  "I'll take it in the TV room," I said.

  "This is Mr. Wilson?"

  "Yes."

  "Mr. Wilson, my name is Nguyn Mai. I am from Vietnam here visiting."