The Shadow of the Moon

by Michael Dunn

  “How much do you want for it?” Tony asked, ignoring JP.

  “How much boys got?”

  “I have almost two hundred dollars.”

  “Well, it’s almost two hundred dollars,” Lammy said, with very black and spacious smile.

  “Wait,” JP interrupted. “If we pay cash, can you have it towed to his house?”

  Lammy thought about it for a moment. It would mean extra work, but it was cash and untaxable if he chose.

  “Tell you what, if you tow it, we’ll have the cash in hand within an hour, and ready to do the paper work,” JP spoke up for his bashful friend.

  Lammy thought again. It was an easy two hundred dollars, and just in time for poker night, but he might have to give it back if certain technicalities were not considered.

  “You kids eighteen?”

  “Um . . . sure,” JP said, smiling and shrugging. It was the smile of the cat that swallowed the canary and then had the aquarium fish for dessert.

  Lammy knew they were lying, but they were a walking, talking, two hundred dollars and that was all that mattered.

  “We’ll be back in an hour. Have the papers ready.” JP said.

  “Hey, where do I gotta tow it too?”

  “Paradise Trailer Park, lot 15,” Tony said.

  “Paradise Trailer park? You one of them weirdoes?”

  Tony, JP, and the others residents of the trailer park had to endure the verbal daggers and whispers behind their backs since they were born. Trailer trash, weirdoes, aliens, mutants, Satanists, Communists, they had heard them all. Most people in the town had a fearful conceit about the residents of Paradise Trailer Park. They were suspicious of the way they all stuck together and possessed a nearly clan-like nature.

  “Do we look like weirdoes, mister?” JP asked, holding back his tongue for Tony’s sake, while his hands balled were into tight fists.

  “No, I guess you don’t look like weirdoes.”

  They didn’t, not in Lammy’s opinion. They were just two normal teens he had just swindled for almost two hundred dollars.

  “That was awfully nice of you,” Tony told JP as they walked home away from the junkyard.

  “It was nothing. Now, you just work getting it running. You got that?”

  “Yeah,” Tony smiled.

  4

  The residents of Paradise Trailer Park who were home watched out of curiosity when Lammy’s tow truck wheeled its way into the community, and then lowered the rusty frame onto a set of cement blocks Tony had situated in his yard. Usually, Lammy came by to pick up a trashed car, but not to drop one off.

  Eunice Brandner was doing the dishes when she looked out the window and saw a rusted car frame being lowered down on to the cement blocks in her front lawn. She ran out of the trailer, screaming in protest as to what her child was doing.

  “No, you can’t put that, that thing there! What the hell do you think you are doing? Don’t even think about putting that in my front yard! Tony, what’s going on?”

  “Mom, mom, it’s okay!”

  “Why is he…?”

  “I bought a car.”

  “You what?”

  “Mom, mom, I saved up enough money from work to buy a car.”

  “A car? You’re only fourteen! Look at it! You’d have been better off buying a plastic model car than this!”

  “I can fix it up! I promise!”

  “There’s no windshield!”

  “I know, mom.”

  “It has no tires.”

  “Yes, I know, mom.”

  “Does the engine even work?”

  “Um… not yet.”

  She was about to walk up to Lammy Sidomak and demand he take his car back and give her son back his money. If he would not, then maybe the police or perhaps a nasty letter from an attorney would be more convincing, and if that was not enough, she knew better, more direct ways of persuasion.

  “Mom, mom, wait! It’ll be okay! Just listen!”

  Tony managed to calm his mother down and tried to convince her he would fix it up, but she would not listen.

  “Wait until your father sees this! Oh, you just wait until your father comes home and sees this!”

  Eunice stormed back into the trailer as Tony looked to the ground and shook his head. He heard a toe-tapping close by. Tony looked up to see Bordeaux standing on his front porch, watching, saying nothing.

  Tony ignored his mother for the moment and helped Lammy set the car down. He knew he was going to pay for it later, but it could wait a few more minutes, before being grounded for life.

  After the car was safely set down on the cinder blocks, Tony offered to shake hands with Lammy, who didn’t take it, refusing to shake hands with anyone from this wretched trailer park. He then got back into his tow truck and sped out of there as fast as he could.

  Tony’s next worry was how to explain this to his dad. Purchasing a car without his parents’ permission was something that could prevent him from ever getting his driver’s license, which would make all this pointless. He had to convince them he was serious about this purchase, because outside of basketball, and his part-time job, he had no other interests. Working at the gas station/garage would help him learn how to fix the car, but until the day the car would run, and he was legally able to drive it, he would invest every dollar that would come his way to make sure it did.

  When Gard came home from his job at the post office, and saw the remnants of a car on blocks in his front yard, he found his wife waiting for him.

  “See? See what your son bought today?”

  Gard sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “Honey, he must be serious if he spent every penny he ever made into buying this. Also, if he’s out here working on the car, then we know where he’s at and what he’s doing.”

  Soon Tony and Rene Naschy, Benny’s father and competent auto mechanic in his own right, began to work on the car. Tony spent his afternoons working at the gas station and auto garage, so he was getting a fine education, and he put what he had learned into the car. Rene Naschy enjoyed the project and JP, Benny, and Larry worked on it too and contributed to the car fund. The boys knew that car was as much of an investment for themselves as for Tony.

  5

  Much like the car itself, most of its new parts also came from Lammy’s junkyard, but Lammy was unaware of these other acquisitions. It started almost a week after the car was set down in the Brandner front yard.

  Tony said, smiling, “JP, I need a favor.”

  JP growled and sighed whenever Tony asked him to play watchdog, but he understood why Tony always asked him and rarely the other guys. Sure, he was Tony’s best pal, but more importantly in these instances, Attila wouldn’t bother them if JP was around. Therefore, JP kept watch as Tony did his ‘grave-robbing,’ a phrase Tony hated.

  JP spent these nights practicing seeing in the dark. He worried Lammy may discover some missing inventory and learn that Attila was an ineffectual watchdog (at least when it came to him), and come down for a night with a shotgun. During these nights, JP would crouch in the shadows by wherever Tony was working, smoke his cigarettes, and watch.

  One problem JP had was Tony was loud during these clandestine visits. Between his banging around the stacked metal bodies with his steel tools, shining his searchlight of a flashlight, and singing a capella from the limited jukebox in his head, JP wondered how all of Bestiavir didn’t know they were there. Sometimes Tony’s off-key renditions of the Beatles, Beach Boys, and Elvis tunes (Tony was weened on Elvis songs, because Gard Brandner thought Elvis was God), drove JP crazy. Those times he wished Tony would learn some discretion or just shut the fuck up.

  Sometimes on the really long nights, JP would occupy his time by chasing rats, which helped develop his quickness. He wouldn’t catch every rat, but enough, and he increased his average at every outing. Over time, regular practice perfected JP’s technique where all he had to do was reach out, snatch a rat, squeeze it to death within two seconds in his bare hands, then di
scarded it like a swatted fly. Now that there was a game involved, JP looked forward to these nights to improve his hunting and stealth skills.

  Tony called to JP, “Watch out, I’m coming down!”

  Their augmented strength helped with some of the parts they boosted, especially when Tony fell somewhere between ten to fifteen feet carrying a 6-cylinder style mounted radiator between his arms. The fall would have killed a normal person, but he landed on his feet unharmed. Tony did not bounce or trip.

  He would shrug and say, “Let’s go,” and they would head back home.

  6

  After more than a year, there were a few less than subtle clues left behind following Tony and JP’s after hours raids of Lammy’s junkyard. A master thief, Tony was not. Lammy noticed the lost inventory, and two sets of sneaker footprints in the dusty ground, along with a littering of more than a few of suspiciously dead rats. While Lammy was certainly not Sherlock Holmes, he was not blind enough to realize there have been several late night thefts, and decided it was time to do some moonlight reconnaissance with Attila, always faithfully next to his master, but Lammy wondered why Attila had not scared them off.

  The first week nothing happened. These nights were relaxing and peaceful, but they made the days much longer and Lammy spent several days living on black coffee. After ten days of night watching, Lammy gave it up. Two weeks later, two sets of tires had been stolen, which made Lammy take to his new night watching with zeal. He walked the perimeter with his shotgun resting on his shoulder feeling like a wilderness sentry. Lammy never made it to the military. Two flat feet kept him from going to Korea, and subsequently, an invitation to the VFW/Moose Lodge. He was fine with being shunned from the VFW/Moose Lodge members, since they were a bunch of stuck-up assholes anyway, in Lammy’s opinion.

  He increased his security measures by changing the bulbs on several of the security lights that had long since burned out, patched up the holes in the fence and added barbed wire to the top of the perimeter fence.

  Ten days later, while he had dozed off during guard duty, he heard a rattling on the fence, then heard banging on the cars like something was jumping on them. Lammy thought it must be some scavenger animals foraging for food, or it could be a couple of stupid kids playing hide and seek, but then again, maybe it was the thieves.

  Lammy proceeded cautiously, looking more like a preposterous Wyatt Earp than a security guard with his rifle practically glued to his hands. As he crept closer, Lammy heard an off-key a cappella rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel” in the distance. When it stopped mid-sentence, Lammy became even more cautious. The junk master walked slowly, almost hunched over, toward where he heard the singing.

  As Lammy got closer, he heard a growling in the shadows. He turned his head and saw the bright, yellow eyes staring at him from the darkness. When Lammy screamed, a white wolf jumped out of the shadows and toward him.

  Terrified, but not petrified, the junk master got off an awkward shot, nicking the wolf in the shoulder, not much, but wounded it enough it no longer attacked. The wolf howled in pain. It lay on the ground, immobile, and bleeding.

  Lammy took baby steps toward the wolf, ready to blow its head off if it moved toward him, but the body didn’t move. It convulsed twice, then did something so incredible Lammy couldn’t believe it. The wolf’s body began to change as the hair receded back into the body as it morphed to that of a naked, blond teenage boy.

  The boy opened an eye and Lammy jumped back clutching his heart, dropping the gun. Lammy smiled, proud of himself he had caught the thief.

  “Hey, I remember you,” Lammy said once his heart started beating again. “You was in here a year or two ago with a friend. He bought that Bel-Air in the back.”

  Lammy stared at the wounded boy for a moment, and realized this boy was no longer a threat. In fact, the boy was helpless.

  “So, you’re the great Beast of Bestiavir?” Lammy asked. “And you’re nothin’ but a fuckin’ thief too.”

  JP was shaking on the ground.

  Lammy stared at the naked boy some more and leered.

  “You’re a pretty boy for a monster.” He said as he undid his belt. “Maybe I won’t kill you just yet.”

  Then Lammy’s eyes bulged as he felt a paralyzing and excruciating pain in his back for a moment and then fell sideways. Tony was standing behind him, holding Lammy’s fatty, enlarged heart in his hairy, brown claw, and then took a bite.

  JP stood up and dusted himself off. He was only winged. The scattering buckshot left a gash in his shoulder, and he would only need stitches. He was lucky Lammy Sidomak was such a lousy shot. JP motioned to Tony he wanted a piece of Lammy’s heart, but Tony refused. It was his kill.

  “C’mon, let’s go.” Tony said, finishing his prized, bloody snack. “Unless you want a piece of the fat man.” Tony picked up the cylinder he came for and headed toward the new hole in the fence they had made. He would wipe the blood off the cylinder when he got home.

  JP thought about it for a moment and said, “No, that’s okay.” He put on his pants and used his shirt as a bandage.

  “Do you think Constance would still be up at this hour?” JP asked Tony.

  “Probably.” Tony said, and led them out.

  Attila howled mourning his master, but its mourning didn’t last long. The guard dog, along with other animals in the area, such as coyotes and natural wolves, feasted on Lammy’s fleshy dead body, over the next couple of days turning the junkyard into a scavenger buffet.

  When the law came to investigate, they had Lammy’s remains cremated and Attila was put down, accused of killing his master and eating him. The junkyard was closed down for good, but that didn’t stop Tony and JP from coming back from time to time when he needed parts.

  7

  Unfortunately, some parts had to be purchased legitimately. After a few months, the entire trailer park had contributed something to the car. Jenny Roulet scraped up a few quarters off from her lunch money to buy wiper blades. She had a crush on Tony for the longest time, but she was a little too young for Tony to take notice. The Roulet’s donated a set of headlights and Gard helped Tony pay for a new windshield. JP’s new vocation helped Tony pay for a new gas tank.

  For a while, Tony’s car was on semi-permanent display at Ed Tallfeather’s garage, and became a free-time project for some of the other mechanics who wanted to help Tony out or just liked restoring a classic car.

  The car was finished just before Tony’s sixteenth birthday during a lightning storm late at night. He started it up and revved the engine.

  “It’s alive! It’s alive!” Tony shouted and laughed maniacally. The other boys laughed too. Ed Tallfeather congratulated the boy on his accomplishment.

  JP patted his buddy on the back. “Told ya it would work.”

  “Shotgun!” Larry said.

  “Screw you! I called ‘shotgun’ two years ago!” JP said and jumped in next to Tony. After all those cold nights standing guard and nearly getting raped and killed by Lammy Sidomak, he had more than earned the right to ride shotgun.

  Once all four were in the car, it was time to introduce to New Mexico the latest threat to Western Civilization. Peeling out, and with a triumphant howl from JP, Tony pounced onto the streets of Bestiavir.

  Tony was right. The car made life in Bestiavir fun. They cruised around every weekend with the top down, weather permitting, but that was rarely a concern living in the desert.

  Just about everybody in Bestiavir was impressed by Tony’s car, and most were surprised a kid from the trailer park had a car like that. It certainly wasn’t the prettiest car on the road. It was still rusted even after several coats of paint and some parts of the car were held together with chicken wire and bubble gum, but it was fast.

  Their favorite event, aside from drag racing, which Tony generally won due to his utter fearlessness behind the wheel, was pulling up next to a car full of girls and trying to exchange phone numbers. Sometimes they would flirt and sometimes the girls would fl
irt back.

  One night, before Tony began dating Suzie, the boys pulled up to a stop light next to a convertible of girls who went to their high school. Tony recognized the driver. She was Sandra Kelner, whose father owned the bank in Bestiavir, and thought it was beneath her to speak directly to anybody from the Paradise Trailer Park and instructed her friends to do the same.

  JP smiled and said, “Hi.”

  “Oh, look girls, trailer trash,” Sandra said, as if the boys in the rusty ’57 Chevy Bel-Air were an exhibit at the Albuquerque Zoo. The girls looked away and giggled, waiting for the light to turn green.

  “Hey girls,” Tony voice’s was deep and hoarse.

  When the girls turned and looked at the boys in the fast jalopy, they screamed, because these were not the boys from school. These weren’t the faces they saw in the halls everyday peripherally, and these certainly weren’t the boys they openly shunned. Instead, these were monsters — hairy monsters with large teeth, and sharp claws, and giant wolf heads driving a car. The girls turned away, screaming.

  “Are you okay, Sandy?” Tony asked, in his normal voice a moment later.

  When the girls looked up, they saw the normal faces on the boys, the ones they recognized from school. The safe, familiar faces of the boys they had known since grade school, no sign of any monsters here.

  “Get a load of them. They think we’re the Beatles.” JP got a laugh from everyone in the car.

  “Blue Moon,” by the Marcels, began playing on the radio just before the light turned green.

  Tony turned up the radio and sped away, leaving the snobbish girls scared, confused, and in Tony’s dust.

  8

  “You okay?” Ed asked, as he was attaching the winch to the broken Bel-Air.

  “Huh?” Tony asked and pulled his hand from his car and wiped his eyes. “Yeah, I’m, I’m fine, or at least I will be.”

  Ed turned on the winch and the dead Bel-Air rolled backward and was hoisted on the tow truck. He patted Tony sympathetically on the shoulder.

  “It could’ve been worse, my boy. You could’ve have lost both your girls in the same night. At least the one that matters is still alive. How is she doing?”