Iona Moon

by Melanie Rae Thon

  In the nights that followed, Jay Tyler lived like a prisoner in his room. He did a hundred sit-ups and fifty push-ups, every morning, every night. He was going to be strong. He heard his father go to his mother’s room on Wednesday, and again on Saturday. He hated them. He clumped back and forth down the hall, running with one cane, filling the house with his horrible, three-legged sound.

  13

  Iona and Eddie didn’t go to the boat again, and didn’t speak of it either, so it began to seem like an accident or a dream. When they ate breakfast together, Eddie often found some excuse to remind her he was old enough to be her father. “Not my father,” Iona said. “But old enough,” Eddie told her. Yes, if he’d started at seventeen—he knew plenty of guys who had. So did Iona, girls too, and even younger. She thought of Muriel Arnoux who moved away before her time. But people knew. She came home changed, a girl with a wound that wouldn’t close, like Everett, who had to wound himself a second time and die so that everyone could see he’d never healed.

  When Eddie talked stupid, Iona excused herself and ducked into the bathroom of the Western Coffee Shop. Across from the toilet was a map of the United States with a red pin stuck through every town that had a rodeo. Oskaloosa, Kansas; Lovington, Texas; Rosebud, Montana—she liked the names, liked imagining a life where you didn’t stay anywhere too long.

  She lay on her bed in the afternoon, too hot to move. No one in Seattle could remember so many days without rain. She needed a fan. The air was dead, heavy as a blanket pulled up over her mouth and nose. But she was saving her money. She stashed thirty dollars a week and kept it rolled in a sock at the bottom of her suitcase. Already the wad had grown fat.

  Someone scratched at her door and scuttled away. Iona recognized the fluttery steps of the Scavenger Lady. For weeks now Iona had found her gifts: a tea tin without a lid, a hammerhead without a handle.

  This time it was a naked doll with no legs. The doll’s face was dirty, and the paint had worn off her lips. Her glass eyes rolled as Iona picked her up: one eye drifted to the left and one peered straight ahead. Iona washed the doll in the bathroom sink. Its hard plastic body was molded to look soft and plump—a lie, Iona thought, another broken promise.

  The doll seemed more naked after it was clean. Holes gaped where legs had joined the torso. She was too hard to take to bed, too ugly to set on the dresser. Iona wrapped it in one of her T-shirts and laid it on the chair. A lid stuck. The doll stared up at her with one blue eye.

  Iona pulled the blind and went back to bed. She’d never had a real doll. She remembered stuffing the toes of her knee socks with rags and tying them off with string. She’d made half a dozen lumpy-headed creatures. They had long, droopy bodies, no arms or legs, no eyes or hair. She hid them in her bed and talked to them at night. She asked them if the land floated on the oceans or if it was anchored to the core of the earth. Because when I start to fall asleep, she said, I feel myself being swept away. The sock dolls never answered.

  She woke after dark. The legless doll was a dream, she thought, nothing more than a vision, like the visions of the Scavenger Lady herself, standing over Iona’s bed, hands open, face in shadow. So she was surprised to find the thing, lying there in the chair, wrapped in her own shirt. Somebody had slipped a note under her door: You owe me $2 for the baby.

  Iona grabbed the doll by the head and let the shirt fall to the floor. She marched down the hall and pounded on the woman’s door. No one answered. She knocked harder. The man in the next room yelled: “She don’t wanna talk to you.” Iona stuffed the note in a leghole and propped the doll against the wall. Its wild eye spun in the socket.

  Iona opened a can of sardines and made a sandwich with the last two slices of bread. She wondered if stolen food always had a bad taste. The fish was an unlucky choice. Oil soaked into the white bread. The smell would linger for days. She blamed it on the heat. Everything reeked: the bathroom, the hall. Streets ripened with the stench of garbage, a fermenting mash, cans full of corn husks and apple peels, chicken fat and black bananas.

  It was already nine o’clock. She thought of little Stanley. He liked her. In his way. He’d be hurt if he found out about the sardines and the loaf of bread, all the loaves of bread. Odette would have her excuse at last. Someone would be happy. Iona pictured Stanley sneaking nips. That’s why he’d told her: Don’t ever be late. A half hour could destroy his timing, tip him over the edge from buzzed to bombed. He might get sleepy, put his head on the counter. If some kids found him that way, they’d clean out the register and the cigarette rack, and Iona would have to take the blame.

  She drank a warm Coke. It was too fizzy, disgustingly sweet, but it cut the oily taste. She swished the last gulp like mouthwash and spit it out the window.

  The doll fell into the room when she opened the door to go to work. This time the note said: You touched it. No good to me now. You owe me $2 I mean it.

  No good to me now. A mother bird won’t go back to the nest if a human touches her fledglings. They call to her. All day they peep. Sometimes she circles but doesn’t land. She carries nothing in her mouth. By morning they’re silent. By afternoon they’re dead. No good to me.

  Iona remembered a sign out back of the supply store where they sold rabbits and chickens: Don’t Pet the Baby Rabbits or the Mother Will Kill Them. There were other mysteries. Why did her father shoot the skinny dog that strayed into the yard, and why did he make Leon dig such a deep hole to bury it? What pleasure did her brothers find in propping tin cans on the fence and riddling them with bullet holes? Why was it all right to shoot a duck but bad to kill a loon?

  When she was a child she thought if she could understand these things she might know if she was safe or in constant danger.

  The doll’s face was smudged again, and Iona wiped it with her shirt. Poor walleyed baby—who would take care of it? Iona remembered how she’d found the sock dolls one day: their necks untied, bodies turned inside out, all the stuffing strewn on her bed. Her brothers had found them, had pulled them from their hiding place under her blankets. She threw the rags and string away and put her socks in her drawer as if nothing had happened. In bed that night she held up her hands to make shadows on the wall, long creatures with big mouths. One said, If the land floats, maybe I’ll wake up on the North Pole. The other answered, The land doesn’t float. Iona closed her fists and tucked her hands under the covers. But I feel it, she said, I feel everything shifting under me.

  She could bang on the woman’s door and argue, or leave the doll in the hall again, but she knew she’d find it in front of her room in the morning. There’d be another note, another threat. I mean it. She slipped two dollars under the Scavenger Lady’s door.

  Iona ran all the way to Broadway but was still five minutes late. “I was about to call my boy,” Stanley said. He grabbed her hand and stood too close. She smelled his rum, sweet and hot; she saw Jeweldeen, the two of them lying by the river that night in June, miles from here but not so long ago. She should never have gone to the tracks with Darryl McQueen. Stanley rasped in her face. “Remember what I told you,” he said. “You got to be on time.” He was close enough to kiss her. She could taste his smoky breath. Darryl McQueen put his tongue in her mouth. Darryl McQueen slugged her in the eye. Iona tried to pull her hand away from Stanley, but the little man had a tight grip. “You owe me five minutes,” he said. “I’m keeping track.” He let her go and teetered toward the door. “Five minutes,” he said. “Don’t forget.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Eddie told Iona. They were eating pancakes and sausages at the Western.

  “It’s my money.”

  “You give her two bucks for half a doll and she’ll be leaving you something every day.”

  “What do you care?”

  “I don’t,” Eddie said, smearing butter on his pancakes. He took the syrup and started to pour. But he gave her that look: Don’t slurp your coffee; don’t eat with your fingers; chew your food before you swallow. He was still pouring.


  “I’m not your kid, Eddie.”

  “Thank God,” he said. He slammed the syrup on the table. His pancakes were ruined.

  She didn’t tell him she wanted the doll. She didn’t tell him about her socks with their stuffed heads and their long, legless bodies. When she held them above her in the dark, they seemed alive. If she tossed them above her head, they flew, falling softly against her face and chest.

  Eddie was right. Iona found another present when she got home, a toaster with half a cord and no plug. No cooking allowed. It was perfect for this place. Iona knew enough not to touch it, not to take it in her room. No good to me now. She stepped over it for two days. On the third day it disappeared. Later Iona glimpsed the Scavenger Lady skittering down the shadowy hallway. She was small and wore a raincoat and scarf, though the day had been hot. She walked fast, shoulders hunched, a full paper bag in each hand.

  The next day Iona came home to discover a ragged green sweater hanging on her doorknob. There was no way to get into the room without touching it. The sweater was hers. She knew what Eddie would say. The bill arrived that afternoon—$1.00.

  The Scavenger Lady stood beside Iona’s bed. She wore the raincoat but no scarf. Her gray hair was long and wet, a tangled mat. She said, “I have something for you.” She held up a tiny pair of shoes. “For the baby,” she said.

  “But she doesn’t have any legs.”

  “That’s your problem.”

  Iona sat up in bed. The woman was gone. She went to the door and flung it open. There were no gifts, no small, terrible shoes.

  When Iona cashed her next paycheck she stuffed the money inside the body of the doll. She took the wad from the sock in her suitcase and put that through the leghole too, then pulled her red T-shirt over the doll’s head and tied it in a knot at the bottom. She patted the doll’s back; its eyes clicked open and shut. “Our secret,” Iona said.

  On the first day in September fog rolled off the water, and mist became relentless rain. Iona kept expecting Eddie to pop in for coffee, kept hoping he’d say, “Let’s go to the boat in the morning.”

  A gang of kids with the munchies burst into the store around 4 A.M. Their hair was damp, their clothes speckled. They prowled the aisles, three boys and two girls. Iona watched the mirrors, but they split in five directions and there was no way to see all of them at one time.

  They stole twice what they bought. Iona saw the lumps in their jackets and jeans. But who was she to act high and mighty—and what did she care about Stanley’s damn Twinkies anyway? She wasn’t going to bar the door and let the boys shove her to her knees while the girls laughed and kept walking. She wasn’t going to call the police and have them show forty-five minutes later. Sure, she could remember the license plate, describe the car, a yellow Maverick—who could mistake it? But the evidence would be eaten, the empty wrappers crumpled and tossed out the window long before the cops found those kids.

  Eddie waited in the rain, leaning against the long black Ford. “At last,” he said when Iona came out of the store.

  “Odette made me mop.”

  “No,” Eddie said, “I mean the rain.”

  “It’s cold,” said Iona.

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t have to buy a fan.”

  “Not this year.”

  “I’ll have to buy another blanket instead.”

  “Get in the car.”

  He didn’t drive toward the rooming house or the Western. He drove toward the marina without asking, toward the place where the blue boat named Peregrine rocked on the dark waves and the only sound was rain on wood, rain on glass, rain on water.

  They parked at the end of the lot; it was a long walk, but Eddie didn’t hurry—Eddie never hurried. The tide was out, so the ramp to the floating dock was steep and he had to grab the rail.

  He picked the lock again and didn’t say: I forgot the key. Inside, they lay down, just as they had before, Eddie pressed to the wall, Iona curved against him. She told him she’d been with lots of boys, but only one had ever held her this way. She wanted to tell him about the cave in the ground, how the roof collapsed in the rain, how Matt Fry ended up in another hole. She wanted to tell him that her mother twisted the necks of chickens and plucked them while they were still warm. She wanted to describe the potato fields in June, tangle of vines and bright heads of yellow flowers.

  The rain had died down to a drizzle; waves slapped the side of the boat. She turned toward Eddie, closed her eyes and touched his face. “This is how I’d see you if I was blind,” she said. She felt the bones of his forehead and high cheeks, the deep sockets of his eyes; she ran her finger across his brows, backward to feel the stiff bristles of hair. She drew a line down his long nose, over his lips, then from the cleft of his chin to his ear. The ear was twice as big as hers, lovely, firm. She loved Eddie for his perfect ears.

  She wanted to tell him about Jay Tyler, how kissing him made her feel full and she had been hungry most of her life, how wrong it was for someone who didn’t like you to make you feel that good. She wished Eddie knew about Leon too, about the beautiful little carvings he’d made: roosters and cows and bears, the solid little man with a hat and a shovel that looked just like her father, the little woman with thin arms and sad eyes. He gave them all to Hannah. But Iona threw his knife in Fish Creek, and he never made anything beautiful again. He dug up potatoes and shoveled shit out of the barn. He chopped cornstalks and fixed the fence when the cows broke through. He could have bought another knife, just as sharp and just as fine. She needed to say this now, to tell Eddie: His sorry life isn’t my fault.

  She untied the beaded leather wrapped around Eddie’s braid and slowly fingered the plait, working it loose until she could pull her hand through his long, coarse hair. She pressed it to her nose. It was still damp and smelled of smoke and oil, a fish just caught, a dog’s wet fur: it smelled more like Eddie than Eddie himself. He smelled familiar to her, someone she’d trusted her whole life, but she couldn’t tell him how often she’d heard the snap of tiny bones: a chicken’s neck, Matt Fry’s hands.

  She couldn’t tell him she remembered Leon’s grimy palm over her mouth, his thick thumb. Mama will hate you if you ever tell. Long after he climbed down the ladder, she stayed alone in the loft. That’s when she found it, her brother’s knife in the straw.

  She laid her hand on Eddie’s neck where his shirt was open, unbuttoned the second button and the third to touch his smooth, hairless chest. “Your heart’s beating so fast,” she said.

  “Birdheart.”

  Iona thought of the newborn chicks, so small, nearly weightless, how their whole bodies throbbed when you cupped them in your hand. “Are you scared?” she said.

  “I’m always afraid.”

  She pulled his shirt out of his pants to undo the last buttons.

  “Please,” he said, “don’t.”

  She put her head on his chest and heard the dangerous flutter. “There’s no reason for you to be afraid,” she said.

  “I’m an old man.”

  “I’m not a child.”

  “I have to tell you something.”

  “I know you’re married.”

  “Not that.”

  “It’s all right if it’s just this one time.” She laid her palm flat on his stomach. “Potatoes stay warm after you dig them out of the ground,” she said, “warm as your belly—for hours, sometimes for days.”

  “Please,” he said.

  “Tell me,” said Iona, “tell me what I need to know.”

  “My leg,” Eddie said.

  “Was broken.”

  “Yes, broken.”

  “A tree fell on you in the woods.”

  “Yes.”

  “And crushed your leg.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now you have a limp. You think you’re an old man. You don’t want me to see your scarred leg.”

  “Yes.”

  “I dragged a dead cat out of the Snake River. I carried a rat home by its tail. I saw a
five-legged calf born. I watched my own mother die, Eddie.” She stroked his chest, her ear pressed close to hear his heart.

  “They took my leg,” he said. “Bone broke through my thigh. They set it, but it didn’t heal right. The bone got infected, oozed for weeks. So they took it, Iona. They cut off my fucking leg. I’ve got a stump and a piece of plastic.”

  She started to unbuckle his belt, but he put his hand on hers to make her stop. “You have to let me see,” she said.

  “No.”

  “My brother Leon and I got stuck in a blizzard one time. We had to crawl. The ice froze on my face. I wanted to lie down and die. I saw myself dead, Eddie, and I swore nothing would ever scare me again.” She unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. He pulled his pants down slowly. He wore white jockey shorts. He was hard. The stump of his right leg fit in the socket of the smooth plastic limb. It was pink and shiny, ridiculous next to his dark skin. “They don’t make these for Indians,” he said, rapping the leg with his knuckles.

  Iona moved to the end of the bed to untie his shoes and pull his pants over his feet. She took the sock off his left foot. “You have a beautiful foot,” she said. The toes were long and slender. “I want you to take it off.”

  “I did.”