Iona Moon

by Melanie Rae Thon

  Iona wanted to know her real name and how she paid the rent. In a dream the woman stood by the bed and showed Iona what she’d found: a piece of green glass worn smooth by water, one suede glove, a child’s plastic duck, forgotten at the edge of a pond. The room was bright, but the woman kept her back to the window so her face stayed in shadow.

  Iona had been in Seattle five days and Eddie Birdheart was the only person who talked to her. Every few hours he’d drop by to lean on the counter and drink coffee at ’Round the Clock. He needed to talk in the middle of the night—to anybody, she thought, and she was there. He’d stopped paying, but Iona couldn’t remember how that had happened. She told him about the Scavenger Lady walking into her dream with those strange gifts.

  “My mother could tell you what it means,” he said.

  “She one of those doctors?”

  “No,” Eddie said, “just an old Duwamish woman who understands what people see when they close their eyes.”

  This time, Iona started a fresh pot of coffee before he asked.

  “Got you trained already,” Eddie said. “I never did get too far with the last girl Stanley hired—neither did Stanley, but Odette canned her anyway. Dumb blonde,” he said, “but cute.”

  Iona stared at the thin stream of coffee as it squirted into the pot. Trained. She was going to charge him for this cup.

  “I’m out of cigarettes,” Eddie said, “can you spare one?”

  “I’m out too.” She kept her eyes on the coffee.

  “You’ve got a hundred packs under the counter.”

  “More than that,” she said, “but they aren’t mine.”

  “One could be yours,” Eddie said, “if you opened it.”

  “Marlboros?” she said.

  “That’s more like it.”

  “Seventy-five cents,” she told him, “and twenty-five for the coffee.”

  “Fine,” he said, tossing a crumpled dollar bill on the counter.

  Odette Dorfman gave Iona her first paycheck that morning, $61.28 after taxes, enough for a towel and soap, sheets and a blanket, two shades, one bowl. She had that night off, so there was plenty of time to hang the blinds and make the bed, light a candle and smoke a cigarette, time to open a bottle of Coke and drink it from the glass, her own glass, plenty of time to sit at the window and think about the paper and pen she didn’t buy, the note she wasn’t going to write.

  She saw a pair of lovers on a porch across the street, bodies pressed tight and locked, frightening pair, Siamese twins joined from mouth to knee, shared heart and shared spleen, all their blood flowing, one to the other.

  At eight, Iona was still at the window smoking cigarettes. Kids played kickball in the road, and teenagers lurked in the tall grass of the vacant lot. At nine she went out. She thought she might walk all night and still not be tired enough to sleep. She went to the hill beyond the Olive Street apartment. The Larrys were gone, hundreds of miles south by now. No one knew her. Smooth-skinned girls lived here, Iona thought. They peered out of attic windows shaped like keyholes, slept on brass beds with cool satin pillows. They wore long white nightgowns and had dreams she couldn’t imagine. She thought of Jay Tyler in his prison, a house as big as these but still a cell in the end. Porch swings hung empty, and Iona remembered the wicker chairs on Jay’s porch, the ones where he never sat. If Jay had been her father’s son, Frank would have kicked his butt months ago, told him to get off his ass or get out—an act of love, neither cruel nor kind.

  A pair of stone lions guarded the huge white house at the edge of the park. They roared: jaws opened, chests swelled with breath; in the shifting wind, Iona saw their massive heads turn to watch her pass.

  At eleven, she headed down Broadway, just to find out who worked in the store on her night off. He was a pimply-faced kid, tall and bony as Odette. She bought a box of Animal Crackers to get a good look at him. Eddie sat in the station, rocking back in his chair, feet on the desk. He had a cup of coffee from the store. Was the boy trained? She doubted it. From the looks of him he was pure Dorfman, greasy-haired as his father, stingy as his mom. “Take it or leave it,” he’d say, even if the coffee had turned thick and oily in the bottom of the pot.

  People were still out in Iona’s part of town. The lovers had disappeared, melted or drowned, and children were in bed, but the gang of teenagers whooped in the vacant lot. Iona heard laughter and slurred words, a boy’s voice saying: You know the rules. In the morning, she’d find the grass stamped flat in one place, a circle of dirt where they’d spun the bottle. She’d discover a torched pack of matches and imagine one girl who sat alone, who lit all the matches at once and held the blazing pack until it burned the tips of her fingers. Truth or Dare: Fire, Kiss, Electric Chair. She’d see broken glass and cigarette butts, flip-top rings and a pair of lace panties. You know the rules. Some dares were more dangerous than others. Kiss was just a peck, the lips of a boy you liked, so you were embarrassed but not too scared. Fire hurt but wasn’t always flame. Electric Chair had to terrify, had to thrill you half to death. When brakes squealed and a horn blared, Iona knew that some quick kid had charged into the dark street, that his thigh barely missed metal as he jumped clear. Lying on her bed, Iona felt his young heart drumming in her own chest.

  Eddie bobbed into the store at twelve-thirty the next night. He asked for coffee, spinning a quarter on the counter so Iona would know he meant to pay. When she started to pour, he said, “Hey, how about a fresh pot?”

  “It’s not that old,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”

  “You sound just like Lyle.”

  “Who’s Lyle?”

  “The Dorfman kid, the one who was working here last night when you stopped by.”

  She felt tears at the back of her eyes, but she didn’t know why. “I didn’t think you saw me.”

  “I told you—my mother’s an Indian, old Duwamish woman, stubborn as a pig and smart as a crow.”

  “So what?”

  “I see things without looking,” he said. “I know things.”

  Her whole body felt hot, as if he’d caught her in a lie, as if he were her own father and was loosening his belt, pulling it from the loops. Tell me the truth and I’ll stop.

  “I’ll take it,” Eddie said.

  “What?”

  “Your old coffee.”

  He came back at three. She relented and brewed a fresh pot. They smoked while they waited, and she forgot to charge.

  “I told my mother about your dream,” Eddie said. “She says the woman isn’t the Scavenger Lady at all. She says your mother’s dead and is trying to bring you something. I told her your name, and she said, ‘What tribe?’ I said you were a white girl, and she said, ‘Don’t be too sure.’” Eddie dumped three sugars in his coffee. “Is she?” he said.

  “Is she what?”

  “Dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mama Pearl knows everything.”

  “Lucky guess.”

  “She sees how people die,” Eddie said. “She sees what they’ll be when they come back. She won’t tell me about myself, says I might try to slip out of town, trick Death, but you can’t—he finds you. She told me about my father. Stranded on an ice floe. He waves his gun and begs. Nobody hears him. Except Mama Pearl in her dream. He hunts walrus in Alaska, cuts off their heads with a chain saw to get the tusks. That’s why I gave my name back to him. Took my mother’s instead. My wife says it’s not legal. She doesn’t care what the man does. Still calls herself Alice Rogers, says she’d rather die than take an Indian name. Mama Pearl laughs. She knows just how that will happen.”

  Odette Dorfman stood at the coffee machine with her back to Iona. The sharp bones of her shoulders poked at her dress like little wings. She counted the foil wrappers three times before she turned, clutching a pack of coffee in each hand. “What is this?” she said.

  “Coffee?”

  “Don’t get wise. I know what you’re up to.” Odette had a trace of a mustache above her upper lip, a d
ozen hairs bleached white. “I’ve been counting these coffees ever since you started. The night my boy worked he used two packs. You go through four. You must have a drawer full of coffee back home.”

  “I don’t even have a coffeepot,” Iona said.

  “So why are you stealing my coffee?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then you must be pouring it down the drain.”

  “It gets bitter.”

  “Are you drinking this coffee? Is that what I hear?”

  “Customers complain if it sits too long.”

  Odette had torn through the foil with her fingernails and the grounds spilled on the floor. “Now look what you made me do,” she said.

  “I’ll get the broom.”

  “You’ll get your ass out of here. And you’ll learn how to tell customers that coffee’s just been made.”

  Eddie stood at the door. He’d done it again. The bell hadn’t rung, and he’d heard the whole thing.

  “Mornin’, Odette,” he said. Iona expected her to snap at him too, but she turned sweet and girlish, gave him her best smile, showed him her big teeth and pink gums.

  Iona ducked around him, slammed into the door with her full weight. She walked fast and was two blocks from the store before Eddie pulled up beside her in his beat-up black Ford. He said get in, and she didn’t argue. It smelled like her father’s truck, leather and dirt, something half spoiled but sweet. Eddie kept his right leg tucked close to the seat and put his left foot on the gas.

  “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” he said.

  “Don’t matter.”

  “I’ll buy you breakfast.”

  “Why?”

  “I figure I owe you.”

  “Yeah,” Iona said, “you do.” I owe you. She heard Darryl McQueen say the same words and thought of the way he’d paid her back.

  The Western Coffee Shop had ten stools at the counter and four red vinyl booths in back. There was a plastic horse on every table, and a poster of a cowboy with a mean-eyed steer on the wall. Eddie and Iona took the last booth. She ordered pancakes and eggs, a side of sausage. “You don’t look like you could eat half that,” Eddie said.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “I hope so.”

  Eddie got toast and fried eggs, a plate of hash browns. He squirted squiggly lines of ketchup on everything, including the toast, and they ate without talking. Iona knew she had to get it down fast before she felt too full. A radio in the kitchen blasted songs about drinking and cheating, women who made you crazy enough to kill, so you ended up in jail with nothing but time and regret. Sometimes you forgot she was dead. Sometimes you forgot you’d done it. Iona gulped her coffee and swallowed hard.

  “You eat like a starved dog,” Eddie said. “Ever seen an animal eat till its stomach explodes?”

  “No,” Iona said, stabbing her last sausage.

  “I didn’t think so. You wouldn’t eat like that if you had.”

  Eddie was right. It was a mistake to eat so much. Iona lay on her back but couldn’t sleep. The blinds were too narrow and light leaked around the edges. She hadn’t bothered to undress or even take off her shoes. She was too full to bend over. Why did Eddie marry a woman who was ashamed to use his name? Mama Pearl told me to marry a white girl if I could. He didn’t explain that either. Birdheart, chicken heart, it’s all the same, that’s what Alice says. She should know. She’s seen the worst. Thought I’d drink myself to death after the accident, but Pearl says that’s not the way I’ll go. Busted up my leg bad. Guess you can tell. Trapped under a tree. We were clear-cutting, moving as fast as we could. My partner didn’t yell. I said I wanted to die, but they pulled me out. You can’t imagine. You can’t imagine how it felt. Drank myself numb for months. She stayed with me, worked hard, called me a coward. I guess I was. It don’t hurt so bad anymore, You’d be surprised what you can live with. Eddie laughed to make her laugh, but she didn’t. He got serious again. You’d be even more surprised what you can live without.

  The Scavenger Lady flitted down the hall. Iona wanted to call to her, wanted her to come into the room and empty her pockets on the bed. Maybe Eddie’s mother was right, maybe Hannah needed to give her something: a jackknife with one short blade and one long, a felt hat, a rusty key. I’ve been looking for the box all day, the woman said.

  What box?

  She held up the key. The one this opens.

  11

  Stanley kept finding ways to touch Iona. He brushed up behind her as she stood at the register, rubbed against her butt and made a low sound as if something deep in his body gave him a sudden pain. He squeezed her arm when he told her he had a shipment of soup for her to unpack and stock. He stood so close she could smell the grease he used to slick his hair over his bald crown. Iona wondered if she’d always find a man like Stanley—boys by the tracks, brothers in the barn: it was all the same. You take yourself with you. That’s what Hannah would say. No matter how far you run.

  She walked down to the bay. The Space Needle hovered, a flying saucer on a pole. Sailors leaned on rails, waiting. She saw the little girls dressed as women, how they tempted, how they wanted the men and didn’t want them—at the same time. Clean in their white uniforms, the men looked safe, and the girls with red lips looked wild—dangerous, Leon would say. Now she knew why. Rainier rose from a ring of clouds, pink at sunset, a volcano cool with snow but ready to explode.

  When she climbed the hills, she saw the blue lights of bridges flickering across black water: lakes became holes and Puget Sound was the edge of the world.

  Again and again she passed the house of stone lions. Strange firs with limbs like monkeys’ tails grew in the yard. One night a Chinese man watered the grass. He moved without seeing, pulling his hose. He did not live here. A big dog with long red hair leaned out a window on the third story. He was king, the man his servant. Inside the house, a woman played the piano, her song drifting in the dark, two hands dancing: bass refrain and sweet soprano answer. Iona squeezed through the hedges to peer in the window. A boy sat on the floor, under the piano; he touched his mother’s feet as she played, and Iona saw Hannah’s feet—saw herself, washing them. A chubby girl in a white tutu and a rhinestone tiara twirled in front of a mirror. She was too short to be a ballerina, already too heavy; but she was lovely in this moment, in this dream of herself.

  On Broadway she passed a wiry little man with bowed legs. His face was gray with stubble. He wore a sailor’s cap, cropped kimono, loose white trousers. Iona imagined his body, thin, bonehard, painted with blue tattoos, birds of paradise, and naked ladies, a lizard that crawled when he flexed his bicep, his mother’s name, a heart on his thigh for a girl he’d almost forgotten.

  If she climbed enough hills, she was worn out when she came to work, calm, so that when Stanley touched her—as he always did—she didn’t bite his hand or kick his shin. This was good. She’d lasted a month, and Stanley was going to give her the raise.

  Eddie stopped asking for fresh coffee. When it got old, he popped a can of Coke instead. Sooner or later Odette would catch on, but for now she was too busy counting foil wrappers to keep track of anything else. Iona just happened to leave packs of Marlboros on the counter, and Eddie just happened to pick them up. He took her to breakfast once or twice a week. It all worked out. She didn’t steal anything for herself until the middle of July. It started with a can of sardines and a loaf of bread. By the end of the month she was swiping tomato sauce and chunks of cheese, party napkins and peaches in heavy syrup. She made a pyramid of soup cans on her dresser. “I don’t like somebody thinking I’m stealing when I’m not,” she told Eddie one morning. “Odette’s been out to get me from the start.”

  “She knows Stanley, figures he’s got his hands on you.”

  “You’d think she’d be glad for the break.”

  “No woman alive’s glad for that.”

  “He’d hit on anyone.”

  “Anything,” Eddie said, “anything that squeaked and had a tail.”<
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  “I knew lots of boys like that back home.” Iona’s eggs were cold. She thought of Matt Fry drinking them raw, straight from the shell. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  “I’m driving up to Molina,” Eddie told her. “Mama Pearl’s been calling.”

  “I can walk home.”

  “I was wondering if you’d come with me.”

  “To meet your mother?”

  “She wants to see you,” Eddie said.

  “Why?”

  “Who knows why that old woman wants anything.”

  Molina looked like the outskirts of White Falls: little box houses and dented trailers, vacant lots and dusty roads. Street signs struck by cars tilted or lay flat on the ground. Cows grazed. Two dogs romped in the dirt, their blond fur burning with light. An old man led an earless goat down the middle of the road. Beyond the houses, Iona saw grass and then ocean. The place sea became sky was only a curve in the distance where the green of one gave way to the gray of the other. Eddie said, “It’s the wind here that makes you crazy.”

  Pearl Birdheart lived at the edge of town in a three-room pink shack: kitchen, bedroom, living room. But the kitchen was really only an alcove with a plastic accordion door. The shades were pulled, and the front room was full of smoke. Mama Pearl sat at a folding table playing poker with four men.

  “See what I mean?” Eddie whispered.

  Pearl wore a man’s plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up to her biceps. Her hair was steely gray, one long braid pulled tight, like Eddie’s. This woman split her own wood, Iona thought; if her pipes froze, she’d chop a hole in the ice and haul water from the river. She looked as if she could wrestle a man to the ground and keep him there as long as she wanted. But her face was old, cracked like stone, and her eyes were cloudy.

  Pearl introduced three of the men, two bulky, bearded brothers—the Johnstons—and a dark, stubby man she called Blue. They nodded without taking their eyes off the cards or the pile of coins in the center of the table. The fourth was Eddie’s brother. He stood to shake Iona’s hand. “Joey, my baby,” Mama Pearl said. He was six-five at least, with a paunch and a wide face; his hands were paws, callused and fleshy.