Moonchasers & Other Stories

by Ed Gorman

  "I see."

  "I would like to meet you tonight. I am staying in Iowa City but I would meet you at The Fireplace restaurant. You know where is?"

  "Yes, The Fireplace is downtown here."

  "Yes. Would seven o'clock be reasonable for you?"

  "I have to say eight. There's a meeting I need to go to first."

  "I would appreciate it, Mr. Wilson."

  She sounded intelligent and probably middle-aged. I got no sense of her mood.

  "Eight o'clock," I said.

  After dinner, I took a shower and climbed into a newly washed pair of chinos and a white button-down shirt and a blue windbreaker.

  In town, I parked in the Elks lot. Across the cinder alley was the meeting room we used for our support group.

  The hour went quickly. There was a new woman there tonight, shy and fresh with fear after her recent operation for breast cancer. At one point, telling us how she was sometimes scared to sleep, she started crying. She was sitting next to me so I put my arm around her and held her till she felt all right again. That was another thing I'd never been too good at till the cancer, showing tenderness.

  There were seven of us tonight. We described our respective weeks since the last meeting, exchanged a few low-fat recipes and listened to one of the men discuss some of the problems he was having with his chemotherapy treatments. We finished off with a prayer and then everybody else headed for the coffee pot and the low-fat kolaches one of the women had baked especially for this meeting.

  At eight I walked through the door of The Fireplace and got my first look at Nguyn Mai. She was small and fiftyish and pretty in the way of her people. She wore an American dress, dark and simple, a white sweater draped over her shoulders. Her eyes were friendly and sad.

  After I ordered my coffee, she said, "I'm sorry I must trouble you, Mr. Wilson."

  "Robert is what most people call me."

  "Robert, then." She paused, looked down, looked up again. "My brother Ngyun Dang plans to kill you."

  I told her about the rifle shot this morning, and the envelope later.

  "He was never the same," she said, "after it happened. I am his oldest sister. There was one sister younger, Hong. This is the one who died. She was six years old. Dang, who was twelve at the time, took care of the funeral all by himself, would not even let my parents see her until after he had put her in her casket. Dang always believed in the old religious ways. He buried Hong in our backyard, according to ancient custom. The old ways teach that the head of a virgin girl is very valuable and can be used as a very powerful talisman to bring luck to the family members. Dang was certainly lucky. When he was fourteen, he left our home and went to Saigon. Within ten years, he was a millionaire. He deals in imports. He spent his fortune tracking you down. It was not easy."

  "Were you there that day?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you see what happened?"

  She nodded.

  "I didn't kill her intentionally. If you saw what happened, you know that's the truth."

  "The truth is in the mind's eye, Robert. In my eye, I know you were frightened by a Cong soldier at the other end of our backyard. You turned and fired and accidentally shot Hong. But this is not what my brother saw."

  "He saw me kill her in cold blood?"

  "Yes."

  "But why would I shoot a little girl?"

  "It was done, you know, by both sides. Maybe not by you but by others."

  "And so now he's here."

  "To kill you."

  During my second cup of coffee, she said, "I am afraid for him. I do not wish to see you killed but even more I do not wish to see my brother killed. I know that is selfish but those are my feelings."

  "I'd have the same feelings." I paused and said; "Do you know where he is?"

  "No."

  "I looked for him today, after the envelope came."

  "And you didn't find him?"

  I shook my head. "For what it's worth, Mai, I never forgot what happened that day."

  "No?"

  "When I got back to the states, I started having nightmares about it. And very bad migraine headaches. I even went to a psychologist for a year or so. Everybody said I shouldn't feel guilty, that those accidents happen in war. Got so bad, it started to take its toll on my marriage. I wasn't much of a husband—or a father, for that matter—and eventually my wife left me. I'd look round at the other guys I'd served with. They'd done ugly things, too, but if it bothered them, they didn't let on. I was even going to go back to Nam and look up your family and tell them I was sorry but my daughter wouldn't let me. At that point, she was ready to put me in a mental hospital. She said that if I seriously tried to go, she'd put me away for sure. I knew she meant it."

  "Did you talk to the police today, about his taking a shot at you?"

  "You've got to understand something here, Mai. I don't want your brother arrested. I want to find him and talk to him and help him if I can. There hasn't been a day in my life since when I haven't wanted to pick up the phone and talk to your family and tell them how sorry I am."

  "If only we could find Dang."

  "I'll start looking again tomorrow."

  "I feel hopeful for the first time in many years."

  I stayed up past midnight because I knew I wouldn't sleep well. There was a Charles Bronson movie on TV, in the course of which he killed four or five people. Before that day in Nam, when I'd been so scared that I'd mistaken a little girl for a VC, I had been all enamored of violence. But no longer. After the war, I gave away all my guns and nearly all my pretensions to machismo. I knew too well where machismo sometimes led.

  Ten hours later, coming in from morning chores, I heard the phone ringing. Emmy said it was for me.

  It was the motel man with the merry red suspenders. "I heard something you might be interested in."

  "Oh?"

  "You know where the old Sheldon farm is?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Well there's a lime quarry due west of the power station. You know where that would be?"

  "I can find it."

  "There's a house trailer somewhere back in there. Hippie couple lived there for years but they moved to New Mexico last year. Guy in town who owns a tavern—Shelby, maybe you know him—he bought their trailer from them and rents it out sort of like an apartment. Or thought he would, anyway. Hasn't had much luck. Till last week. That's when this Asian guy rented it from him."

  The day was ridiculously beautiful, the sweet smoky breath of autumn on the air, the horses in the hills shining the color of saddle leather.

  The lime quarry had been closed for years. Some of the equipment had been left behind. Everything was rusted now. The whining wind gave the place the sound of desolation.

  I pointed the pickup into the hills where oak and hickory and basswood bloomed, and elm and ash and ironwood leaves caught the bright bouncing beams of the sun.

  The trailer was in a grassy valley, buffalo grass knee-deep and waving in the wind, a silver S of creek winding behind the rusted old Airstream.

  I pulled off the road in the dusty hills and walked the rest of the way down.

  There was a lightning-dead elm thirty yards from the trailer. When I reached it, I got behind it so I could get a better look at the Airstream.

  No noise came from the open windows, no smoke from the tin chimney.

  I went up to the trailer. Every few feet I expected to hear a bullet cracking from a rifle.

  The window screens were badly torn, the three steps tilted rightward, and the two propane tanks to the right of the door leaned forward as if they might fall at any moment.

  I reached the steps, tried the door. Locked. Dang was gone. Picking the lock encased in the doorknob was no great trouble.

  The interior was a mess. Apparently Dang existed on Godfather's pizza. I counted nine different cartons, all grease-stained, on the kitchen counter. The thrumming little refrigerator smelled vaguely unclean. It contained three sixteen-ounce bottles of
Pepsi.

  In the back, next to the bed on the wobbly nightstand, I found the framed photos of the little girl. She had been quite pretty, solemn and mischievous at the same time.

  The photo Dang had sent me was very different. The girl lay on a table, her bloody clothes wrapped round her. Her chest was a dark and massive hole.

  I thought I heard a car coming.

  Soon enough I was behind the elm again. But the road was empty. All I'd heard was my own nerves.

  During chores two hours later, Lisa said, "You find him?"

  "Find who?"

  "Find who? Come on, Grandad."

  "Yeah, I found him. Or found his trailer, anyway."

  "How come you didn't take me with you? I'm supposed to be your partner."

  I leaned on my pitchfork. "Hon, from here on out I'll have to handle this alone."

  "Oh, darn it, Grandad. I want to help."

  There was a sweet afternoon breeze through the barn door, carrying the scents of clover and sunshine.

  "All that's going to happen is I'm going to talk to him."

  "Gosh, Grandad, he tried to kill you."

  "I don't think so."

  "But he shot at you."

  "He tried to scare me."

  "You sure?"

  "Pretty sure."

  After washing up for the day, I went into the TV room and called Mai and told her that I'd found where her brother was staying.

  "You should not go out there," she said. "In my land we say that there are seasons of the heart. The season of my brother's heart is very hot and angry now."

  "I just want to talk to him and tell him that I'm sorry. Maybe that will calm him down."

  "I will talk to him. You can direct me to this trailer?"

  "If you meet me at the restaurant again, I'll lead you out there."

  "Then you will go back home?"

  "If that's what you want."

  She was there right at eight. The full moon, an autumn moon that painted all the pines silver, guided us to the power station and the quarry and finally to the hill above the trailer.

  I got out of the car and walked back to hers. "You follow that road straight down."

  "Did you see the windows? The lights?"

  He was home. Or somebody was.

  "I appreciate this, Robert. Perhaps I can reason with my brother."

  "I hope so."

  She paused, looked around. "It is so beautiful and peaceful here. You are fortunate to live here."

  There were owls and jays in the forest trees, and the fast creek silver in the moonlight, and the distant song of a windmill in the breeze. She was right. I was lucky to live here.

  She drove on.

  I watched her till she reached the trailer, got out, went to the door and knocked.

  Even from here, I could see that the man-silhouette held a handgun when he opened the door for her. Mai and I had both assumed we could reason with her brother. Maybe not.

  "You up for a game of hearts?" Lisa said awhile later.

  "Sure," I said.

  "Good. Because I'm going to beat you tonight."

  "You sure of that?"

  "Uh-huh."

  As usual I won. I thought of letting her win but then realized that she wouldn't want that. She was too smart and too honorable for that kind of charity.

  When she was in her cotton nightie, her mouth cold and spicy from brushing her teeth, she came down and gave me my goodnight kiss.

  When Lisa was creaking her way up the stairs, Emmy looked into the TV room and said, "Wondered if I could ask you a question?"

  "Sure."

  "Are you, uh, all right?"

  "Aw, honey. My last tests were fine and I feel great. You've really got to stop worrying."

  "I don't mean physically. I mean, you seem preoccupied."

  "Everything's fine."

  "God, Dad, I love you so much. And I can't help worrying about you."

  The full-grown woman in the doorway became my quick little daughter again, rushing to me and sitting on my lap and burying her tear-hot face in my neck so I couldn't see her cry.

  We sat that way for a long time and then I started bouncing her on my knee.

  She laughed. "I weigh a little more than I used to."

  "Not much."

  "My bottom's starting to spread a little."

  "Nick seems to like it fine."

  With her arms still around me, she kissed me on the cheek and then gave me another hug. A few minutes later, she left to finish up in the kitchen.

  The call came ten minutes after I fell into a fitful sleep. I'd been expecting Mai. I got Nick.

  "Robert, I wondered if you could come down to the station."

  "Now? After midnight?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "What's up?"

  "A Vietnamese woman came into the emergency room over at the hospital tonight. Her arm had been broken. The doc got suspicious and gave me a call. I went over and talked to her. She wouldn't tell me anything at all. Then all of a sudden, she asked if she could see a man named Robert Wilson. You know her, Robert?"

  "Yes."

  "Who is she?"

  "Her name is Nguyn Mai. She's visiting people in the area."

  "Which people?"

  I hesitated. "Nick, I can't tell you anything more than Mai has."

  For the first time in our relationship, Nick sounded cold. "I need you to come down here, Robert. Right away."

  Our small town is fortunate enough to have a full-time hospital that doubles as an emergency room.

  Mai sat at the end of the long hallway, her arm in a white sling. I sat next to her in a yellow form-curved plastic chair.

  "What happened?"

  "I was foolish," she said. "We argued and I tried to take one of his guns from him. We struggled and I fell into the wall and I heard my arm snap."

  "I don't think Nick believes you."

  "He says he knows you."

  "He goes out with my daughter."

  "Is he a prejudiced man, this Nick?"

  "I don't think so. He's just a cop who senses that he's not getting the whole story. Plus you made him very curious when you asked him to call me."

  "I knew no one else."

  "I understand, Mai. I'm just trying to explain Nick's attitude."

  Nick showed up a few minutes later.

  "How's the arm? Ready for tennis yet?"

  Mai obviously appreciated the way Nick was trying to lighten things up. "Not yet," she said, and smiled like a small shy girl.

  "Mind if I borrow your friend a few minutes, Mai?"

  She smiled again and shook her head. But there was apprehension in her dark eyes. Would I tell Nick that her brother had taken a shot at me?

  In the staff coffee room, I put a lot of sugar and Creamora into my paper cup of coffee. I badly needed to kill the taste.

  "You know her in Nam, Robert?"

  "No."

  "She just showed up?"

  "Pretty much."

  "Any special reason?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Robert, I don't appreciate lies. Especially from my future father-in-law."

  "She phoned me last night and we talked. Turns out we knew some of the same people in Nam. That's about all there is to it."

  "Right."

  "Nick, I can handle this. It doesn't have to involve the law."

  "She got her arm broken."

  "It was an accident."

  "That's what she says."

  "She's telling the truth, Nick."

  "The same way you're telling the truth, Robert?"

  In the hall, Nick said, "She seems like a nice woman."

  "She is a nice woman."

  When we reached Mai, Nick said, "Robert here tells me you're a nice woman. I'm sorry if my questions upset you."

  Mai gave a little half bow of appreciation and good-bye.

  In the truck, I turned the heat on. It was 2:00 a.m. of a late August night and it was shivering late October cold.
r />   "Where's your car?"

  "The other side of the building," Mai said.

  "You'd better not drive back to Iowa City tonight."

  "There is a motel?"

  After I got her checked in, I pulled the pickup right to her door, Number 17.

  Inside, I got the lights on and turned the thermostat up to 80 so it would warm up fast. The room was small and dark. You could hear the ghosts of it crying down the years, a chorus of smiling salesmen and weary vacationers and frantic adulterers.

  "I wish I had had better luck with my brother tonight," Mai said. "For everybody's sake."

  "Maybe he'll think about it tonight and be more reasonable in the morning."

  In the glove compartment I found the old .38 Emmy bought when she moved to the farm. Bucolic as rural Iowa was, it was not without its moments of violence, particularly when drug deals were involved. She kept it in the kitchen cabinet, on the top shelf. I had taken it with me when I left tonight.

  In the valley, the trailer was a silhouette outlined in moonsilver. I approached in a crouch, the .38 in my right hand. A white-tailed fawn pranced away to my left; and a raccoon or possum rattled reeds in a long waving patch of bluestem grass.

  When I reached the elm, I stopped and listened. No sound whatsoever from the Airstream. The propane tanks stood like sentries.

  The doorknob was no more difficult to unlock tonight than it had been earlier.

  Tonight the trailer smelled of sleep and wine and rust and cigarette smoke. I stood perfectly still listening to the refrigerator vibrate. From the rear of the trailer came the sounds of Dang snoring.

  When I stood directly above him, I raised the .38 and pushed it to within two inches of his forehead.

  I spoke his name in the stillness.

  His eyes opened but at first they seemed to see nothing. He seemed to be in a half-waking state.

  But then he grunted and something like a sob exploded in his throat and I said, "If I wanted to, I could kill you right now but I don't want to. I want you to listen to me."

  In the chill prairie night, the coffee Dang put on smelled very good. We sat at a small table, each drinking from a different 7-Eleven mug.

  He was probably ten years younger than me, slender, with graying hair and a long, intelligent face. He wore good American clothes and good American glasses. Whenever he looked at me directly, his eyes narrowed with anger. He was likely flashing back to the frail bloody dead girl in the photo he'd sent me.