Moonchasers & Other Stories

by Ed Gorman

  They kept the curtains closed, the TV low and if they spoke, it was so quietly we couldn't hear them.

  I spent an hour with Caesar on my lap and Murch in my ear about politicians. He was a John Kennedy supporter and tried to convince me I should be, too.

  For the next two days and nights, I didn't see or hear either of the Brineys. On Saturday afternoon, Murch returned from one of his patrols with his shoebox. He went in the back and buried a cat he'd found and then came out on the porch to smoke a pipe. "Poor little thing," he said. "Wasn't any bigger than this." With his hands, he indicated how tiny the kitten had been.

  Kelly came out on the porch a few minutes later. She wore a white blouse and jeans and had her auburn hair swept back into a loose ponytail. She looked neat and clean. And nervous.

  She muttered a hello and started down the stairs.

  "Ain't you ever going to talk to us again, Kelly?" Murch said.

  There was no sarcasm in his voice, just an obvious sadness.

  She stopped halfway toward the sidewalk. Her back was to us. For long moments she just stood there.

  When she turned around and looked at us, she said, "Pete don't want me to talk to either of you." Then, gently, "I miss sitting out on the porch."

  "He's your husband, honey. You shouldn't let him be your jailer," Murch said.

  "He said he was sorry about the other night. About hitting me." She paused. "He came over to my mother's house and he told my whole family he was sorry. He even started crying."

  Murch didn't say anything.

  "I know you don't like him, Murch, but I'm his wife and like the priest said, I owe him another chance."

  "You be careful of him, especially when he's drinking."

  "He promised he wouldn't hit me no more, Murch. He gave his solemn word."

  She looked first at him and then at me, and then was gone down the block to the grocery store. From a distance she looked fifteen years old.

  He went two more nights, Briney did, before coming home drunk and loud.

  I knew just how drunk he was because I was sitting on the porch around ten o'clock when a new pink Mercury came up and scraped the edge of its right bumper long and hard against the curbing.

  The headlights died. Briney sat in the dark car smoking a cigarette. I could tell he was staring at us.

  Murch just sat there with Caesar on his lap. I just sat there waiting for trouble. I could sense it coming and I wanted it over with.

  Briney got out of the car and tried hard to walk straight up the walk to the porch. He wasn't a comic drunk, doing an alcoholic rhumba, but he certainly could not have passed a sobriety test.

  He came up on the porch and stopped. His chest was heaving from anger. He smelled of whiskey and sweat and Old Spice.

  "You think I don't fucking know the shit you're putting in my old lady's mind?" he said to Murch. "Huh?"

  Murch didn't say anything.

  "I asked you a fucking question, old man."

  Murch said, softly, "Why don't you go in and sleep it off, kid?"

  "You're the goddamned reason she went to her mother's last week. You told her to!"

  And then he lunged at Murch and I was up out of my chair. He was too drunk to swing with any grace or precision but he caught me on the side of the head with the punch he'd intended for Murch, and for a dizzy moment I felt my knees go. He could hit. No doubt about that.

  And then he was on me, having given up on Murch, and I had to take four or five more punches while I tried to gather myself and bring some focus to my fear and rage.

  I finally got him in the ribs with a good hooking right, and I felt real exhilaration when I heard the air whoof out of him, and then I banged another one just to the right off his jaw and backed him up several inches and then—

  Then Kelly was on the porch crying and screaming and putting herself between us, a child trying to separate two mindless mastodons from killing each other and—

  "You promised you wouldn't drink no more!" she kept screaming over and over at Briney.

  All he could do was stand head hung and shamed like some whipped giant there in the dirty porch light she'd turned on. "But honey . . ." he'd mumble. Or "But sweetheart . . ." Or "But Kelly, Jeez I. . . ."

  "Now you get inside there, and right now!" she said, no longer his wife but his mother. And she sternly pointed to the door. And he shambled toward it, not looking back at any of us, just shuffling and shambling, drunk and dazed and sweaty, depleted of rage and pride, and no longer fierce at all.

  When he was inside, the apartment door closed, she said, "I'm real sorry, Todd. I heard everything from inside."

  "It's all right."

  "You hurt?"

  "I'm fine."

  "I'm real sorry."

  "I know."

  She went over to Murch and touched him tenderly on the shoulder. He was standing up, this tired and suddenly very old-looking man, and he had good gray Caesar in his arms. Kelly leaned over and petted Caesar and said, "I wish I had a husband like you, Caesar."

  She went back inside. The rest of our time on the porch, the Brineys spoke again in whispers.

  Just before he went up to bed, Murch said, "He's going to kill her someday. You know that, don't you, Todd?"

  This time I was ready for it. Six hours had gone by. I'd watched the late movie and then lay on the bed smoking a cigarette in the darkness and just staring at the play of streetlight and tree shadow on the ceiling.

  The first sound from below was very, very low and I wasn't even sure what it was. But I threw my legs off the bed and sat up, grabbing for my cigarettes as I did so.

  When the sound came again, I recognized it immediately for what it was. A soft sobbing. Kelly.

  Voices. Muffled. Bedsprings squeaking. A curse—Briney.

  And then, sharp and unmistakable, a slap.

  And then two, three slaps.

  Kelly screaming. Furniture being shoved around.

  I was up from the sweaty bed and into my jeans, not bothering with a shirt, and down the stairs two at a lime.

  By now, Kelly's screams filled the entire house. Behind me, at the top of the stairs, I could hear Murch shouting down, "You gotta stop him, son! You gotta stop him!"

  More slaps; the muffled thud of closed fists pounding into human flesh and bone.

  I stood back from the door and raised my foot and kicked with the flat of my heel four limes before shattering the wood into jagged splinters.

  Briney had Kelly pinned on the floor as he had last week, and he was putting punches into her at will. Even at a glance, I could see that her nose was broken. Ominously, blood leaked from her ear.

  I got him by the hair and yanked him to his feet. He still wasn't completely sober so he couldn't put up the resistance he might have at another time.

  I meant to make him unconscious and that was exactly what I did. dragged him over to the door. He kept swinging at me and occasionally landing hard punches to my ribs and kidney but at the moment I didn't care. He smelled of sweat and pure animal rage and Kelly's fresh blood. I got him to the door frame and held him high by his hair and then slammed his temple against the edge of the frame.

  It only took once. He went straight down to the floor in an unmoving heap.

  Murch came running through the door. "I called the cops!"

  He went immediately to Kelly, knelt by her. She was over on her side, crying crazily and throwing up in gasps that shook her entire body. Her face was a mask of blood. He had ripped her nightgown and dug fierce raking fingers over her breasts. She just kept crying.

  Even this late at night, the neighbors were up for a good show, maybe two dozen of them standing in the middle of the street as the whipping red lights of police cars and ambulance gave the crumbling neighborhood a nervous new life.

  Kelly had slipped into unconsciousness and was brought out strapped to a stretcher.

  Two uniformed cops questioned Briney on the porch. He kept pointing to me and Murch, who stood holding
Caesar and stroking him gently.

  There was an abrupt scuffle as Briney bolted and took a punch at one of the cops. He was a big man, this cop, and he brought Briney down with two punches. Then he cuffed him and took him to the car.

  From inside the police vehicle, Briney glared at me and kept glaring until the car disappeared into the shadows at the end of the block.

  Kelly was a week in the hospital. Murch and I visited her twice. In addition to a broken nose, she'd also suffered a broken rib and two broken teeth. She had a hard time talking. She just kept crying softly and shaking her head and patting the hands we both held out to her.

  Her brother, a burly man in his twenties, came over to the house two days later with a big U-Haul and three friends and cleaned out the Briney apartment. Murch and I gave him a hand loading.

  The newspaper said that Peter James Briney had posted a $2500 bond and had been released on bail. He obviously wasn't going to live downstairs. Kelly's brother hadn't left so much as a fork behind, and the landlord had already nailed a Day-Glo For Rent sign on one of the front porch pillars.

  As for me, the crew was getting ready to move on. In two more days, we'd pack and head up the highway toward Des Moines.

  I tried to make my last two nights with Murch especially good. There was a pizza and beer restaurant over on Ellis Boulevard and on the second to last night, I took him there for dinner. I even coerced him into telling me some of those good old WWII stories of his.

  The next night, the last night in Cedar Rapids, we had to work overtime again.

  I got home after nine, when it was full and starry dark.

  I was walking up the street when one of the neighbors came down from his porch and said, "They took him away."

  I stopped. My body temperature dropped several degrees. I knew what was coming. "Took who off?"

  "Murch. You know, that guy where you live."

  "The cops?"

  The man shook his head. "Ambulance. Murch had a heart attack."

  I ran home. Up the stairs. Murch's place was locked. I had a key for his apartment in my room. I got it and opened the place up.

  I got the lights on and went through each of the four small rooms. Murch was an orderly man. Though all the furnishings were old, from the ancient horsehair couch to the scarred chest of drawers, there was an obstinate if shabby dignity about them, much like Murch himself.

  I found what I was looking for in the bathtub. Apparently the ambulance attendants hadn't had time to do anything more than rush Murch to the hospital.

  Caesar, or what was left of him anyway, they'd left behind.

  He lay in the center of the old claw-footed bathtub. He had been stabbed dozens of times. His gray fur was matted and stiff with his own blood. He'd died in the midst of human frenzy.

  I didn't have to wonder who'd done this or what had given Murch his heart attack.

  I went over to the phone and called both hospitals. Murch was at Mercy. The nurse I spoke with said that he had suffered a massive stroke and was unconscious. The prognosis was not good.

  After I hung up, I went through the phone book looking for Brineys. It took me six calls to get the right one but finally I found Pete Briney's father. I convinced him that I was a good friend of Pete's and that I was just in town for the night and that I really wanted to see the old sonofagun. "Well," he said, "he hangs out at the Log Cabin a lot."

  The Log Cabin was a tavern not far away. I was there within fifteen minutes.

  The moment I stepped through the bar, into a working-class atmosphere of clacking pool balls and whiney country western music, I saw him.

  He was in a booth near the back, laughing about something with a girl with a beehive hairdo and a quick beery smile.

  When he saw me, he got scared. He left the booth and ran toward the back door. By now, several people were watching. I didn't care.

  I went out the back door after him. I stood beneath a window-unit air conditioner that sounded like a B-52 starting up and bled water like a wound. The air was hot and pasty and I slapped at two mosquitos biting my neck.

  Ahead of me was a gravel parking lot. The only light was spill from the back windows of the tavern. The lot was about half full.

  Briney hadn't had time to get into that nice golden Mercury convertible at the end of the lot. He was hiding somewhere behind one of the cars.

  I walked down the lot, my heels adjusting to the loose and wobbly feel of the gravel beneath.

  He came lunging out from behind a pickup truck. Because I'd been expecting him, I was able to duck without much problem.

  I turned and faced him. He was crouched down, ready to jump at me.

  "I'd still have a wife if it wasn't for you two bastards," he said.

  "You're a pretty brave guy, Briney. You wait till Murch goes somewhere and then you sneak in and kill his cat. And then Murch comes home and finds Caesar dead and—"

  But I was through talking.

  I kicked him clean and sharp. I broke his nose. He gagged and screamed and started puking—he must have had way too much to drink that night—and sank to his knees and then I went over and kicked him several times in the ribs.

  I kicked him until I heard the sharp brittle sound of bones breaking, and until he pitched forward, still screaming and crying, to the gravel. Then I went up and kicked him in the back of the head.

  A couple of his friends from the tavern came out and started toward me but I was big enough and angry enough that they were wary.

  "Personal dispute," I said. "Nothing to do with you boys at all." Then they went over and tried to help their friend to his feet. It wasn't easy. He was a mess.

  Murch died an hour and ten minutes after I got to the hospital. I went into his room and looked at all the alien tentacles stretching from beeping cold metal boxes to his warm but failing body. I stood next to his bed until a doctor came in and asked very softly and politely if I'd mind waiting in the hall while they did some work.

  It was while the doctor was in there that Murch died. He had never regained consciousness and so we'd never even said proper good-byes.

  At the house, I went into Murch's apartment and found the shoebox and took it into the bathroom and gathered up the remains of poor Caesar.

  I took the box down the stairs and out to the garage where I got the garden spade. Then I went over and in the starry prairie night, buried Caesar properly. I even blessed myself, though I wasn't a Catholic, and then knelt down and took the rich damp earth and covered Caesar's grave.

  I didn't sleep that night. I just sat up in my little room with my last quart of Canadian Ace and my last pack of Pall Malls and thought about Kelly and thought about Caesar and especially I thought about Murch.

  Just at dawn, it started to rain, a hot dirty city rain that would neither cool nor cleanse, and I packed my bags and left.

  OUT THERE IN THE DARKNESS

  i

  The night it all started, the whole strange spiral, we were having our usual midweek poker game—four fortyish men who work in the financial business getting together for beer and bawdy jokes and straight poker. No wild card games. We hate them.

  This was summer, and vacation time, and so it happened that the game was held two weeks in a row at my house. Jan had taken the kids to see her Aunt Wendy and Uncle Verne at their fishing cabin, and so I offered to have the game at my house this week, too. With nobody there to supervise, the beer could be laced with a little bourbon, and the jokes could get even bawdier. With the wife and kids in the house, you're always at least a little bit intimidated.

  Mike and Bob came together, bearing gifts, which in this case meant the kind of sexy magazines our wives did not want in the house in case the kids might stumble across them. At least that's what they say. I think they sense, and rightly, that the magazines might give their spouses bad ideas about taking the secretary out for a few after-work drinks, or stopping by a singles bar some night.

  We got the chips and cards set up at the table, we got
the first beers open (Mike chasing a shot of bourbon with his beer), and we started passing the dirty magazines around with tenth-grade glee. The magazines compensated, I suppose, for the balding head, the bloating belly, the stooping shoulders. Deep in the heart of every hundred-year-old man is a horny fourteen-year-old boy.

  All this, by the way, took place up in the attic. The four of us got to know each other when we all moved into what city planners called a "transitional neighborhood." There were some grand old houses that could be renovated with enough money and real care. The city designated a ten-square-block area as one it wanted to restore to shiny new luster. Jan and I chose a crumbling Victorian. You wouldn't recognize it today. And that includes the attic, which I've turned into a very nice den.

  "Pisses me off," Mike O'Brien said. "He's always late."

  And that was true. Neil Solomon was always late. Never by that much but always late nonetheless.

  "At least tonight he has a good excuse," Bob Genter said.

  "He does?" Mike said. "He's probably swimming in his pool." Neil recently got a bonus that made him the first owner of a full-size outdoor pool in our neighborhood.

  "No, he's got Patrol. But he's stopping at nine. He's got somebody trading with him for next week."

  "Oh, hell," Mike said, obviously sorry that he'd complained. "I didn't know that."

  Bob Genter's handsome black head nodded solemnly.

  Patrol is something we all take very seriously in this newly restored "transitional neighborhood." Eight months ago, the burglaries started, and they'd gotten pretty bad. My house had been burglarized once and vandalized once. Bob and Mike had had curb-sitting cars stolen. Neil's wife, Sheila, was surprised in her own kitchen by a burglar. And then there was the killing four months ago, man and wife who'd just moved into the neighborhood, savagely stabbed to death in their own bed. The police caught the guy a few days later trying to cash some of the traveler's checks he'd stolen after killing his prey. He was typical of the kind of man who infested this neighborhood after sundown: a twentyish junkie stoned to the point of psychosis on various street drugs, and not at all averse to murdering people he envied and despised. He also knew a whole hell of a lot about fooling burglar alarms.