Moonrise

by Sarah Crossan

  Anyone could have guessed.

  We were kind of expecting it.

  And not expecting it at all.

  Aunt Karen had been at some of the short trial,

  came home and

  told us things weren’t going Ed’s way –

  for starters, there was his confession

  the day after he got arrested.

  She said that if she’d been on the jury,

  she’d have locked him up and

  thrown away the key herself.

  ‘He didn’t do it,’ Angela told her.

  ‘I don’t know any more,’ Aunt Karen said.

  ‘He looked pretty guilty to me.’

  And the day that second call came,

  I was the only other person at home,

  alone again with Mom in the house

  and

  I didn’t know what to do.

  I mean,

  Mom was always freaking out, but not like that:

  an animal caught in wire.

  I went to her,

  tried to get her to stand,

  but

  she wouldn’t.

  She couldn’t.

  Mom stayed

  down for a

  really

  long

  time.

  AUNT KAREN

  Three hours after the bad news

  our Aunt Karen came to stay.

  ‘I’m all you’ve got,’ she told us.

  She stared at the ketchup stains on my white T-shirt,

  like that was proof our family

  couldn’t take care of itself.

  I wiped my nose with the back of my hand

  and she flinched.

  ‘We don’t have space,’ Angela explained.

  Aunt Karen scratched her nose with her

  thumbnail.

  ‘I’ll take your room. You can share with Joe

  for a while.

  Ed’s old bed is still in there.’

  Angela stood up as tall as she could.

  ‘I need my privacy,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Mom mumbled, cradling a gin.

  ‘But I have exams,’ Angela tried again.

  ‘I know you do,’ Aunt Karen said.

  ‘And you’ll pass them. I won’t have you go down

  the same road as Ed.’

  It didn’t matter how hard we stamped our feet,

  Aunt Karen had made up her mind

  and Mom was in no state to argue:

  Aunt Karen was staying and

  we would start going to church,

  not just on Sundays but after school too.

  TV was

  out

  and Bible study was

  in.

  Karen knew how to save our souls

  from falling into the darkness

  that had carried off our brother,

  and the first part of her plan was

  to never mention Ed again.

  HOW MOM HANDLED IT

  Mom stopped going out.

  She littered the house with empty pill bottles.

  She watched infomercials,

  shopped through the TV,

  said she was waiting until people forgot,

  that she’d get her act together and

  go back to work

  once the worst blew over.

  But

  she never returned to work and

  when she finally ventured out,

  she didn’t come back.

  AUTO SHOP

  When I told Reed’s uncle at the auto shop last week

  that I was headed to Texas for the whole summer,

  he didn’t take it well either.

  ‘I don’t know if I can keep your job open, Joe,’

  he said.

  ‘I got guys queuing up to apprentice here

  and you’re taking off?’

  I hadn’t explained to anyone apart from Reed

  the real reason I’d be gone.

  I was ashamed and Reed must have guessed it.

  ‘Give him a break, Uncle Sammy.

  Joe’s got some girl knocked up

  and needs to get out of Arlington

  before her brothers do him in,’ Reed said.

  Sammy rubbed his greasy hands against

  his blue overalls and frowned.

  ‘You’re lyin’.’

  ‘He’s lyin’,’ I said.

  ‘But I gotta go.

  I’ll be back though.’

  Sammy sighed. ‘OK. OK.

  You’re a hell of a lot better than

  Reed at getting dirty under a hood

  anyway,

  I’ll give you that.’

  Reed grunted and reached for a wrench.

  ‘I prefer to get dirty in other ways.’

  Sammy watched me.

  ‘You’re still standing there, Joe.

  What do you want?’

  I didn’t like to ask.

  It felt like begging.

  ‘I’m owed two weekends.’

  Reed snickered.

  Sammy rolled his eyes, reached into

  his pocket and pulled out a roll

  of twenties.

  ‘How much?’ he asked.

  TEAM WRONG

  Back at the motel, I call Angela.

  Her voice is high pitched and

  something is buzzing in the background.

  ‘I can’t hear you, Ange!’ I shout.

  The buzzing stops.

  ‘I’m at the bar making mojitos,’ she says. ‘You OK?’

  I want to tell the truth, say,

  No, I’m not OK.

  It’s hot.

  I haven’t any more money for food.

  I’m solo doing this,

  which isn’t how it should be.

  I’m seventeen years old, for Christ’s sake.

  Why aren’t you here?

  Why isn’t Aunt Karen? Mom?

  ‘I found an apartment,’ I say,

  leaving out the bit about the bugs.

  ‘Will the cash have cleared in my account yet?’

  She coughs into the phone.

  ‘Should have,’ she says.

  ‘But then that’s it.

  The boss won’t give me an advance

  so it’ll be next month before I’ve got

  cash to come down there.’

  ‘Aunt Karen?’ I ask hopefully.

  ‘No way. She’s still super pissed.

  She picked up more stuff,

  said she isn’t moving back in.

  I don’t even know how we’ll make the rent

  unless she changes her mind.

  And how the hell are you gonna eat?’

  ‘I’m looking for work.’

  ‘I wish I could get more cash, Joe.’

  I half-laugh.

  How exactly?

  Ask strangers for handouts?

  We could never get away with that –

  begging for loans to be with our brother.

  See, we aren’t the people anyone pities.

  No one cares whether or not we get to be with

  Ed at the end,

  how poor or hungry we are.

  The cop’s widow though?

  If she set up a crowd-funding account

  to buy a black dress and matching hat,

  you’d have people donating

  big time.

  The widow of a murdered guy?

  Do you take Mastercard?

  But we aren’t her – we’re not the victims here.

  Instead we’re on the other side of right –

  players for Team Wrong.

  ‘Have you seen Ed?’ Angela whispers.

  I go to the bathroom,

  run cold water into the shower.

  ‘No,’ I admit.

  I haven’t even tried.

  CHICKEN SHIT

  Ed wrote to me last month

  asking for help.

  I’m the one he thought he could rely on.
/>   He probably imagined his baby brother

  had grown into a

  man.

  But I’m too chicken shit

  to even call the prison

  and enquire about visits,

  let alone

  drag my sorry ass

  up to the gates

  and try to get in.

  LETTER FROM ED

  Hey Joe,

  How you doing man?

  You best be studying hard or I’ll kick your ass!

  Nah, I’m just playing.

  Thing is,

  I didn’t write Angela this week.

  Tell her it’s my bad,

  but

  I need you to break something to her.

  I got my date through.

  Guys here telling me it’s nothing to panic about.

  Just a date.

  But if I’m honest

  it makes me rattle like old bones,

  cos it means they

  made up their minds

  and wanna do me in.

  And for what?

  For nothing.

  For something I never did.

  The date they settled on is August 18, Joe,

  but I got another appeal to go in the state courts

  before then

  and

  we could go to federal for a couple more

  I think.

  Also there’s a chance the governor will stop it

  (or the president!)

  so August 18’s what they’re planning on –

  but if I convince them of the truth,

  it might come and go

  and I’ll still be standing, you know.

  Thing is,

  I got no lawyer to advise me

  and explain how everything works,

  cos the state don’t pay for lawyers until

  eternity, right?

  Anyway the prison’s priest is doing

  some detective work

  and finding out what’s what for me.

  Thing is,

  I’m wondering if you could come visit.

  Father Matthew says that even though

  you’re not eighteen

  they might let you come if Angela can’t,

  on special request.

  I wrote the warden, and I’m waiting to hear.

  In the nine years I been locked up in Wakeling

  I only seen him a handful of times on the row.

  No one comes down to see

  us deadbeats unless they have to, I guess.

  But

  he seems like a regular kind of guy.

  Worth asking.

  Anyway,

  I’ll mail this now and write again when I know more.

  Don’t freak out, OK?

  Let me do the sweating.

  I got plenty of time for it.

  Be cool, little brother,

  Ed x

  WHAT IT MEANT

  I got that letter two weeks ago,

  read it

  then

  threw it on the floor.

  I couldn’t touch it.

  Those words.

  What they meant.

  What I guessed they meant,

  cos even Ed didn’t seem too sure.

  I was standing in my bedroom and

  when I looked up

  Angela was in the doorway,

  purse under her arm.

  She pointed at the rug,

  the letter lying

  face up,

  Ed’s scrawl all over it.

  ‘How is he?’ she asked.

  I wanted to tell her everything

  but couldn’t figure out what I knew.

  ‘He’s busy,’ I said,

  which was stupid – he’s in prison –

  how busy could it get?

  ‘Did he like my card?’

  She smiled,

  scratched her belly.

  ‘He didn’t mention it.’

  But he did mention an execution date.

  He said I shouldn’t worry,

  but for the first time in ten years

  Ed asked to see me,

  sort of said he needed me,

  which he’d never done before –

  he’d always known the deal with Karen,

  didn’t want to mess up

  things for Angela or me in Arlington.

  ‘You guys get on with your lives,’

  he said in a letter once.

  So we tried.

  We tried really hard to pretend Ed was OK –

  that his death sentence was mythical

  and not something that would ever really happen.

  I closed my eyes. Rubbed my face.

  ‘What time did you get in last night?’ Angela asked.

  ‘About one,’ Karen snapped, appearing behind her.

  ‘If you want to graduate next year, Joe,

  you have to study.

  Where were you?’

  ‘The year’s almost over, Karen,’ I told her.

  I wasn’t going to admit I was with Reed,

  smoking weed,

  figuring out how to cheat on our Spanish test

  the next day instead

  of just studying for it.

  I closed the door on both of them and

  picked up the letter.

  I read it again just to be sure.

  And I was.

  It was true:

  my only brother would be dead within two months,

  and there was

  nothing

  I could say or

  do to

  stop it.

  A DECISION

  When I finally told Angela,

  she shook and twitched,

  wouldn’t eat the eggs I’d scrambled.

  She said she’d go to the bank

  for a loan, get him a lawyer,

  said she wanted to go down to Wakeling

  to help.

  But then Aunt Karen got home

  from her night shift at the hospital

  and tried to shake sense into my sister.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do,

  and I won’t have you

  wasting your money or your life

  fighting for someone

  who’s not even sorry.’

  ‘Without a lawyer, he has no chance,’ Angela argued.

  ‘That isn’t our fault,’ Aunt Karen snapped back.

  ‘He’s my brother.’

  ‘But not a good one.’

  I stood between them.

  ‘I’m going to Wakeling,’ I announced,

  not knowing before the words

  were out

  whether or not I really wanted to see Ed.

  But someone has to be here.

  Angela’s got a full-time job,

  Aunt Karen hates him,

  and no one knows where the hell Mom is.

  That was decided two weeks ago

  and nothing’s changed except one thing:

  Ed now has even less time to live.

  MUGSHOT

  The only TV channel in the motel that isn’t pure static

  is the early morning local news.

  I watch the muted screen,

  pulling on my sneakers,

  when Ed’s mugshot pops up.

  He looks mean:

  chin raised,

  eyes small,

  face bruised.

  I stare,

  scared.

  What if Ed’s like the guy

  in that mugshot

  and my memories of him aren’t real at all?

  And then his picture vanishes

  and photos of Frank Pheelan flash up –

  blue-eyed on a beach somewhere,

  sand in his toes,

  another of him in police uniform,

  and then a family portrait with his wife and kids,

  strawberry blonds, all of them,

  with ripening smiles.

  I’ve seen these faces before:<
br />
  newscasters love revealing the beauty of the victims –

  like they’re the only ones who got slammed.

  Reporters don’t give a damn about our family.

  We’re not a story. We’re dirt.

  Although,

  I guess that’s a lot easier than having to admit

  that by killing our brother

  they’re just pummelling more people.

  The feature about Ed’s looming execution ends

  and a weather map replaces it.

  Texas is covered in blazing yellow suns.

  I lace up my sneakers;

  I’m going for a run regardless.

  MORNING RUN

  The traffic lights click and change,

  though Wakeling’s streets are still mostly empty of cars.

  I run fast,

  measuring my splits on my watch.

  I’m slower than usual.

  I run and run,

  try to get my speed up

  and don’t see anyone, which

  is exactly why I go out first thing –

  for the quiet,

  the feeling of being the only person alive.

  I pound the sidewalks,

  my heart beating a million miles an hour,

  and all I can focus on is breathing,

  on not keeling over.

  Which suits me.

  Suits me just fine.

  IN WALMART

  Mr Porter stopped me in Walmart.

  He had his son in the cart,

  brown goo around the kid’s mouth.

  ‘Joe.

  I saw Reed last night at training.

  He told me you ain’t going to the track and field