Iona Moon

by Melanie Rae Thon

  Horton called to his son. Willy didn’t like the sound of his name as it echoed through the trees. When he got his badge, he was going to call himself Bill. If children stopped him on the street and asked his name, he’d point to the badge and pat their heads.

  He met his father at the shed. “Four o’clock,” Horton said. “Let’s call it a day.”

  Flo had already heard the news from Fred Pierce; he’d called to let her know where Horton was and not to expect him back any time soon. She had dinner ready: roast beef and boiled potatoes, green beans and chocolate cream pie. She wore a pair of tight lime pants, a stretchy material that made a scratching sound as her thighs rubbed together. Willy saw the lines of her girdle. She was packed in tight, not like this morning when she’d scurried around in pink disarray. Even her hair was pinned up on her head, and her glasses hid her eyes.

  Horton shoveled down his food as fast as he could, gulping his milk. He had to swallow hard because he wasn’t taking time to chew. Flo served him and let him suffer. She didn’t say, Slow down, honey, you’ve got plenty of time; she poured him a second glass of milk, then went to the living room. Willy could see her through the doorway, flipping the pages of a magazine too fast to read or even see the pictures.

  He picked at his food. He was hungry, but every bite stuck. He wished he liked one of the guys well enough to pick him up and go for a long ride. One beer wouldn’t kill him. He supposed Luke was the best of the lot if it came to that. His father’s hat was on the table. His plate was empty. He was lucky. The cruiser was in the drive and he had somewhere to go.

  Horton wiped his mouth. “Gettin’ to be that time,” he said.

  Willy cleared his throat. “Dad?” Horton waited and Willy realized he didn’t know what he wanted to say. I know who did it. “Can I come with you tonight?”

  Horton nodded and they left their dirty plates on the table.

  It was a quiet Saturday, despite the fact that graduation was only two nights away. Kids partied all over town, but Horton Hamilton wasn’t interested in catching them. He did break up a fight at the Roadstop Bar. Usually he would have hauled the men downtown and locked them up till they cooled out, but tonight he let them off with a warning, said he was coming back in half an hour and they better both be gone.

  Horton and Willy were up at six Sunday morning. They ate toast and eggs and drank coffee at the Park Inn. “Don’t want to wake your mother,” Horton said. They headed back to the shed, but there were no more clues than the day before. The boys must have left Iona’s shoes somewhere else. A crew had doused the embers a second time, and Horton stomped through the soggy ashes, poking at them with a stick. He and Willy walked up and down the tracks. Willy knew exactly where he’d left Matt Fry, but the grass had sprung back: there was no imprint of a boy’s body on the ground.

  At night the stars seemed dangerously close; Willy swatted the air with his hands as if sparks flickered against his face. He thought about his mother whispering to God in the dark. Her god would shelter the boy, hold him in his arms, keep him warm at night and invisible by day. The god Horton knew would be stern and still forgive, would call Matthew out of the woods and make him face all that he had done. Only Willy’s god could remain hard, impassive to argument or explanation, absolutely certain. His god would chase Matt Fry into the clearing and say: So, you add rebellion to your sin.

  Matthew hid himself for another night and another day. Late Monday afternoon, he let Horton Hamilton find him. When Horton came out of the woods to beep his horn and wait for Willy, he found Matt squatting in the coals.

  Willy was less than a minute behind his father. Horton moved slowly, too weary to chase a scared kid. “Come on out o’ there,” he said. But the shed had no roof and no walls, no doorway and no windows. So how could Matt Fry come out? He looked at Horton Hamilton, his face and hands covered with soot. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  Matt stood up. He was three years older than Willy but looked younger, fifteen at most. His sleeves were too short, and his hands dangled at his sides, big and strange. His loose pants flapped around his legs. Jesus. Willy barely heard the word his father breathed.

  The three of them stood there, just like this, waiting. Willy wondered why the sun didn’t set. Why didn’t it get dark. Why didn’t the scrawny boy run or blow away. “I want to help you,” the man said. Only a few seconds had passed. Why should Matt Fry believe that? I got a gun. Willy wished the boy would charge his father, teeth bared and snarling. Self-defense. Horton Hamilton would have to shoot. Willy was his witness.

  And Flo Hamilton would wash the body of Matt Fry as she had washed the body of Everett Fry and the body of Hannah Moon. She would weep for the boy who died, for his scabbed knees and bony butt, for his hands that revealed he was a man, for his wrists that were thin as a child’s. She would weep as she swabbed his dirty ears and clipped his broken nails.

  Horton saw that Matthew wasn’t going to bolt. He didn’t have to step inch by inch or lull the boy with soft, repeated words. “Let’s go, son,” he said. Horton tried to lead him out the back of the shed, straight to the car, but Matt wrenched free and pounded at the air. “The wall,” Willy said, “he thinks there’s still a wall.” Horton turned and Willy pointed to the place where the door had been.

  There was nowhere to take him except jail. “But he hasn’t done anything,” Willy said.

  “What do you suggest?”

  Willy slumped in his seat.

  “What the hell is that?” Pierce said when they brought the boy into the station.

  Horton gripped Matt’s arm and led him down the back hall to lockup. Willy watched them: the big man in uniform, the skinny kid in torn pants. The boy had a limp, and the man moved slowly, as if his whole body ached.

  “Your mother’s been calling,” Fred said to Willy. “She said to tell you two fools to get your butts home. Graduation’s at seven.” Willy looked at the clock: 5:45. Fred laughed and pulled at his mustache. “It’s gonna take you an hour just to get clean. You better scoot on home, boy.”

  Willy heard a yell from the hallway, one short bark, then a long, high-pitched wail.

  “What the bejeezus?” Pierce muttered. “You need me, Horton?” he called. He had his hand on his gun.

  The wailing stopped for a few seconds, then started up again in waves, rising and falling. Horton appeared at the end of the hall; his body waffled beneath the throbbing fluorescent lights as if he were under water. Left foot, right: he had to think to walk. Why didn’t he get any closer? The cries washed over Horton’s body, pushing him forward, pulling him back, while Willy waited and waited.

  “Your wife’s been calling every ten minutes,” Pierce said when Horton finally stood in the front office, when the door to the hall was closed tight, the howls muffled. “Your kid’s graduating tonight. Did you forget?” Fred smirked. “You’re gonna be looking at one furious woman. I wouldn’t want to be in your boots tonight, buddy.” Willy pictured the stupid little man teetering in Horton’s huge black boots.

  “Willy?”

  “Not till seven, Dad—there’s time.”

  But there wasn’t time, not really. At home, Flo buzzed from room to room, half dressed, wearing her slip and skirt but no blouse. She said: “What are you wearing tonight, Horton?” She whispered: “Did you find the boy?” She clicked her tongue and hissed: “Fine thing dragging Willy around with you for three days and now this.” She turned to Willy. “And you,” she said, “you get yourself in the shower—make it quick so there’s time for your father.” Willy looked at his hands, mud under the nails, soot in the fine creases of his palms. It would take days to wash all this away. “Now, Willy,” his mother said, and he felt the burn, the old shame, not again, his bedclothes stained; he was that dirty.

  He scrubbed himself, dressed quickly. He still felt hot and unclean; his clothes stuck to his skin. When he glanced at the mirror, he saw a blue shirt and striped tie but did not see his own face floating above them.

 
Horton locked himself in the bathroom. Six-thirty: there was time enough, but Willy didn’t hear shoes dropping to the floor, didn’t hear water running. Minutes later, Flo stood with her ear to the door, listening to the little gasping noises from inside. “Let me in, Horton.” Glass shattered, and Willy knew his father had looked himself in the eye. Did he break the mirror with his fist or his gun? “Horton—please.” Flo sat down beside the door. “I’m here,” she said. “I’m right here.”

  Willy flung himself across the bed. Lorena and Mariette came to his room, both in peach-colored dresses with peach ribbons in their hair. They looked like overgrown twins in those outfits, and Willy was glad no one was going to see him with them tonight.

  “Aren’t we going?” Mariette said to Willy.

  “No.”

  “You shouldn’t miss your own graduation,” Lorena said.

  “Leave me alone,” Willy said, and the girls in peach both huffed, crossing their arms over their chests.

  “It’s your graduation,” Lorena said. “Do what you want.”

  Willy pulled his pillow over his head but still heard his sisters’ heels clicking down the hall.

  Later, the bathroom door opened. Willy looked from his dark room to the bright hallway and saw his mother slip inside. The door closed again. He knew his mother held his father, rocked him, said: It’s not your fault. Now that Horton blamed himself, she could forgive him. Who will forgive me, Willy thought. Who will rock me and make me small again. A car passed on the street. His sisters giggled in their room. He rolled to his back and stared at the black ceiling.

  Iona heard about the yellow lighter and knew it was the one she’d tossed to Darryl McQueen down by the river. So she was the one who set the fire. She brought the boys to the tracks. She teased them. She fought them off. If they’d gotten what they’d wanted from her, they never would have gone after Matthew.

  Before Horton Hamilton found him, she’d told herself he was free and flying. She thought she’d fly too, and find him again, in some other place—a place where Matt wore clean clothes and combed his hair, learned to talk and got a job. Maybe they’d rent an apartment. And if none of that could happen, they could just dig a cave in the ground, burrow into the hole, lie down together where no one would ever find them.

  He was calm now, Iona was sure of that. Two men in a van had come for him, wrapped him in a white shirt, tied the sleeves behind his back. He was safe in South Bend. But a nuthouse was worse than jail because there was no sentence to serve. This time he was gone for good. They’d clean him up and strap him in a chair. In the afternoon, when the sun was warm, someone might scoot him to the window where he could watch the river swirl and splash against the dam.

  “What is wrong with you?” Leon said. Iona had already burned her hand on the casserole and spilled her milk. It was Wednesday, and they were only halfway through dinner.

  “She’s had a feather up her ass ever since her old sweetheart got busted,” Rafe said. “She’s afraid she’s never gonna see him again.”

  “Unless she goes crazy too,” Dale said.

  “She’s got a good start,” said Leon.

  Frank Moon tapped his empty glass on the table. “Looks like rain tomorrow,” he said. That’s as close as he could come to telling the boys to leave her alone. Right then Iona saw exactly how her life was going to be as long as she stayed in this house. She was going to burn her fingers and spill her milk. Her father would talk about the rain or the lack of it. One way or another, her brothers would torment her. I’ve got a quarter. What’ll you do for a dollar? Every boy she’d ever known ended up sounding just the same.

  As she washed the dishes that night, Iona thought how easy it would be to let the plates slip from her hands. She thought how much sense it made to smash the glasses instead of washing them, to start all over again with one new plate and one new glass: her own.

  She smiled as she set the dishes in the drainer, unbroken and dripping, some still slick with soap. What did she care? She was never going to eat off this plate again, or this one. No sense in breaking them when you can just walk away. Hannah would have thrown them to the floor. Hannah would have needed the sound of splintering china because she had nowhere to go.

  The highway, the river, the tracks, three ways out of town, but people only leave here by dying. That’s what Hannah said. Iona thought about her mother’s life on the Flats, sixteen years in a trailer, a tin box that expanded in summer and contracted in winter until the roof cracked and the rain seeped in, until the walls heaved and the wind blew. In the winter, they nailed plywood over the windows and lived in the dark for five months. Sometimes Hannah’s father worked and sometimes he didn’t. In the summer the children gathered dandelion greens and berries. The boys fished for trout: rainbow, steelhead, cutthroat. They ate well. In the winter they made squirrel stew, and no one asked if the carrots and potatoes had been bought or stolen. No one mentioned that the skinned squirrel looked big and had long legs, like a cat.

  Hannah’s drunken father drove off the road one cold night, hit a pole and banged his head, just a little bruise the doctor said, he would have been fine, but he froze to death instead, two miles from home. The light outside the trailer burned and burned.

  Thinking about her mother’s life made Iona ashamed to feel sorry for herself. And this was only the beginning. Hannah lived on the Flats for twenty-five more years, in a big house with a solid roof, with a husband who stayed home when he drank, safe and warm. But the windowpanes still rattled in winter, and sons were not so different from brothers. Hannah’s brother Quinte mangled three fingers in a thrashing machine, and Raymond blasted two with a firecracker. A man and a half. They laughed and laughed. But their sister Margaret said: Less than that, not one full life between them. Though her sons stayed whole, Hannah saw them in dreams: hands bloodied, toes shot off, ears nipped by the spray of BB pellets. She waited for this so long it might as well have happened.

  No wonder, Iona thought, no wonder she found a way to leave.

  Iona rinsed the silverware and sponged the inside of the glass she was never going to drink from again. She kissed her father’s forehead as she passed him in the living room. He patted her arm but didn’t look up. Didn’t he think it strange? When was the last time she’d kissed him—when was the last time he’d looked at her. “Off to bed so early?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m beat.”

  At three-thirty the next morning, Iona Moon packed three pairs of jeans and two sweatshirts, four tops and all the underwear she owned. When she passed her mother’s room, she closed the door. Her father was right. The rain had just started. She took her denim jacket and a rubber poncho, all the grocery money from the sugar tin in the kitchen, sixty-two dollars: she figured she’d earned it. She carried her suitcase out to the barn and milked the cows. She’d worry all day if she left them full and miserable. How many hours would it take for her father and brothers to understand that she was really gone. How many more hours to decide who would milk the cows tomorrow. They’d fight over women’s work. Sooner or later, Dale would lose. Don’t be afraid of her, Iona. A cow likes a girl with a good grip. She imagined her father standing at the window. Rain streaked the glass. At first she thought he was looking for her, but then she realized he was still looking for her mother. Breathe when she does. Her brothers were hungry. Which one of them would open the first can? Don’t take your hands away too fast.

  But she’d already let go.

  9

  Iona drove the truck to town and parked it in the lot at the Roadstop Bar. Drizzle turned to downpour. She sat on her suitcase for almost an hour before a lady on her way to Coeur d’Alene pulled over. The woman had been on the road all night, she said, and hoped Iona knew how to drive. Coeur d’Alene wasn’t exactly on Iona’s route, but it brought her closer.

  “My kid got busted,” the woman said as Iona slid behind the wheel. “Stole a car and headed north. I said, ‘Just ship him home.’ But they wouldn’t do
it. Said I had to come get him. Little sonuvabitch. I said, ‘Why don’t you call his father?’ Of course they didn’t get the joke. Interstate transportion of stolen property—lucky for his ass he’s only sixteen.” She bunched up a sweater and rested her head against the window. “Mind if I catch a few winks?”

  “I don’t mind.” Iona thought about her father finding his truck later today. He’d be pissed. But the car wasn’t stolen, just misplaced. No one would come after her.

  “You sure you know this road?” the woman said.

  Fog rolled over the highway. Iona nodded. Every inch, she thought.

  The woman opened one eye. “I’ve got half a mind to just leave him in jail.”

  Iona always wondered about people who admitted they had half a mind.

  “Teach the little bugger a lesson.”

  Yeah, Iona thought, teach him a lesson. Burn down his shack. Put him in a white shirt. Wrap the sleeves around his body and tie them in a foot. Little bugger.

  “But I’ve got a soft spot for the kid. Know what I mean?”

  Why shouldn’t you? Iona thought. He’s your kid.

  The woman stared at Iona, waiting for an answer. Iona said she knew. “Hey,” the woman said, “you’re not running away, are you?”

  “Visiting my sister.”

  “That’s good. That’s very good.”

  She couldn’t run away. To run away you had to think that someone might try to find you and bring you home.

  The lady fell asleep fast. She snored. No wonder the kid took off. She farted in her sleep. Iona cracked the window and lit a cigarette. The rain had almost stopped and it was growing light.

  Getting out of Idaho wasn’t easy. No roads cut the forests, only rivers, so Iona had to drive south before heading north, or east before west. She took the eastern route, toward Montana.

  A dead skunk got revenge. His scent hung in the fog, filled the car and stayed with them for half an hour. Iona saw a porcupine, two rabbits, five ground squirrels. Some had been stunned but not crushed; they seemed to sleep on the pavement. She remembered a dog with a broken spine. It had dragged itself to the side of the road, and she sat with his head in her lap while he looked at her with his huge wet eyes, big and dark as a doe’s eyes. She felt the dog’s weight against her, felt the wild hammering of his heart—as if he had become all heart. Then she realized: this wasn’t her memory at all, but something Hannah had told her.