Iona Moon

by Melanie Rae Thon

  “I mean the leg. Will you take it off?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to sleep with just you.”

  He stared at the pink thing, stranger in this bed.

  “You don’t need legs to make love,” she said.

  He loosened the valve above the knee, and it let out a hiss of air. He grabbed the limb with both hands and rocked it until the suction broke with a pop. When he pulled the leg away from the stump, Iona took it, surprised by its weight, the heavy wood inside. She laid it on the floor, gently, as if it were a living thing.

  In this light, the stump was purple at the base, cut by a single scar from side to side, rose-colored, raised off the skin, more like a new scar than an old one. She touched the leathery flesh with her fingertips. “Does it hurt?” she said.

  “Not so much anymore.”

  “But it did?”

  “I used to bang my stump on the floor. They put all us cripples together on one ward. So we wouldn’t drive the others crazy. Every night you’d hear it, that thumping—some poor bastard with a twitch or a burn. Goddamn nerves don’t know the leg is gone. You get a cramp in your missing foot and the only way to make it stop is to hammer the tile with what’s left of your leg.”

  Iona stood up.

  “What are you doing?” Eddie said. He reached for her as if he were afraid she might leave him like this.

  She pulled off her jacket and shirt. “Getting undressed fast,” she said. She took off her shoes and jeans, unhooked her bra, peeled off her underpants, left them where they fell. Eddie took off his shorts too. She had seen her brothers standing in a row, peeing in great arcs, the only contest Dale ever won. They jumped naked in the river and pranced naked on the shore. She watched her father piss in the gutter of the barn while they waited for the calf. She’d felt Jay Tyler’s hard penis, gripped his balls and made him come. But she was afraid when she saw Eddie; she wanted to hide him, even from herself.

  She lay down, pulled a blanket over them. Rain tore against the pane. He held her, and she felt everything at once: muscles of his arms, hands on her back, curve of his chest, warmth of his belly; she felt his penis against her leg, felt the weight of his left leg over hers and the space in the bed where his right leg had been.

  The square of sky in the window above them was dark and yellow. She thought of Everett coming to Sharla in a dream after he died, Everett with a hole in his skull. She reached down to touch the stump, to feel the ridge, hard as the knotted scar on Everett’s shoulder.

  He said, “I can feel it sometimes, the whole leg, not in the bad way, just a kind of warmth, like the blood going all the way to my toes.”

  “I feel it too,” she said. “It is warm.”

  They clung to each other like children lost in the woods; and when they kissed, mouths open, eyes closed, the last space between them disappeared. Eddie tried to move inside her, slowly, slowly, and she said it didn’t hurt, but it did, and she was surprised because she thought she was past all that. He wet his fingers and touched her until she opened and she said okay, it’s okay, but it still hurt and she said, I can’t. His tongue was in her ear, his fingers in her mouth. He tried again, and this time she pushed through the pain. Waves swelled under her buttocks and thighs, lifting her toward him. He was a fish in the tide, pulled into her, washed back. He whispered: Is it safe? And she didn’t know what he meant, so she said yes, breathed the word, yes. But it wasn’t safe, nothing was safe now. She opened her eyes, but his stayed shut, closed to her. Each time he thrust against her she felt the old hurt, a tearing deep in her chest; she was tossed out to sea, and there was no boat to carry her back. Cold waves broke over her head; black water filled her mouth and lungs till she couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. And though Eddie held her this close, he didn’t seem to know how afraid she was, or how alone. She saw her mother’s body and her father’s hands as he washed her; she saw her mother standing on the back steps at dusk, calling her name. She hid in the barn and didn’t answer. She was nine years old. Now she would answer, now she wanted to answer, but Eddie was the one saying Iona, and she was digging at the bed, clawing at the blanket as he shuddered inside of her.

  14

  Iona wondered if making love always forced you to see things you were trying to forget. Afterward Eddie held her for a long time. The pain faded. Her flesh felt tender but not torn. The vision of her mother on the back steps was just a memory like any other, not a voice she still heard, not a hole opening in her chest, not a child whose body was her own. She knew now why she hadn’t answered, knew she was ashamed and afraid: she thought Hannah would know what had happened in the barn. But she never guessed, and this was worse. Iona was scolded, in the usual way, neither punished nor protected.

  Yes, Eddie cradled her, and all that went away, back where it belonged, until there was no one else in the room, no hands touching her that weren’t his. And his hands were gentle. His hands moved from shoulder to buttocks, a smooth line, resting there, lightly, as if she were fragile, almost holy, and he said, “I’m sorry if I hurt you. Next time I won’t be in such a hurry.”

  She wanted to tell him it was all right, it didn’t hurt that much, it hardly hurt at all now, and if he just kept holding her, if he touched her forehead and knees, bones of her chest and veins of her hands, as reverently as he touched her behind, she might be healed. But she couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say anything. All the words had been pushed deep inside of her, jumbled and pressed together until nothing she could say seemed important enough and nothing quite made sense. She tried to stay with Eddie but felt herself flowing away from him, her body cool and thin as water.

  At work that night, Eddie came for coffee twice but didn’t stay to talk. The first time he said: “Rain’s stopped,” and the second time he told her: “Might be hot tomorrow.” That was all. But she knew it meant they wouldn’t go to the boat. He was waiting by the car at seven. The clouds broke in the east, and she squinted at the sun, angrily, as if it had betrayed them. “I’ll drive you home,” Eddie said.

  Iona thought they could have breakfast together. Even if they couldn’t risk going on the boat, they could drive to the marina and park by the water, close their eyes and touch each other’s faces. “I can walk,” she said.

  “I want to drive you.”

  She shrugged and followed him to the car, despising his limp for the way it revealed his weakness. She sat as far from him as she could, leaning against the door. A block from the house a small girl charged in front of the car and Eddie slammed the brakes. She turned, two feet from the grille. She was seven or eight, with delicate bones and wispy blond hair. Her lips parted, her eyes opened wide, her whole body said: You almost killed me. She looked toward the sidewalk where the boy who’d been chasing her stood frozen, just as she was. She glanced back at Eddie, wondering which one to blame.

  The boy flew down the alley, and she raced after him. Iona hoped she’d catch him, hoped she’d throw her arms around his legs and pull him down on the gravel. He’d have to go home with torn jeans and bloody elbows. He’d have to tell his mother exactly what had happened.

  The engine had died when Eddie hit the brakes. It choked and sputtered as he turned the key and pumped the gas. The car jerked forward, and Iona said, “You don’t owe me anything.”

  He pulled up across the street from the rooming house, shifted to park but kept the motor running. “I caught hell when I got home,” he said. “She said she could smell what I’d been doing. She thinks I have to pay for it on account of my leg. She thinks she’s the only one generous enough to do it with a mutilated man for free. ‘I bet you found some Indian whore to do it cheap,’ she said, ‘one of those thirteen-year-old bimbos who does six boys a night and douches with 7-Up in between. I know you, Eddie,’ she says, ‘you sorry bastard. Did Mama Pearl let you use her bed? That old witch never did like me.’ She said next time I was late she was going to drive up to the reservation and drag me out of any hole I’d found. She said I better wat
ch myself and sleep with my leg because she might steal it anytime, and then where would I be.”

  “Do you love her, Eddie?”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “You’re just a coward.”

  “A chicken,” he whispered, “a man with a bird’s heart.”

  Iona stared at the stain on the ceiling. The blind was down, but light blistered around the edges and the room was still too bright. She wondered how Sharla Wilder got herself to sleep day after day. Did she close her eyes and imagine Everett Fry—did he come to her every time—did he lie down beside her and touch her eyelids, stroke her belly, kiss her breasts? Did he say I’m sorry a hundred times? I’m sorry I was in such a hurry. I’m sorry I have to go.

  At last the Scavenger Lady left Iona the gift she wanted, a jackknife with two blades, one short, one long, Leon’s knife returned from the river, rusty and stiff, but a knife all the same, something she could use. She stuffed it deep in the front pocket of her jeans, carried it everywhere, gave it a name: my sweet, and paid the two dollars gladly.

  Eddie kept to himself for twelve days, brought his thermos of coffee to the gas station and stayed away from the store. Sometimes Iona went back to her room and ate half a loaf of bread. Being full made her groggy, and she could fall asleep. She figured this was how Sharla managed it. She thought of Sharla sitting in her kitchen, eating stacks of pancakes or slices of toast. She saw her in her bed, popping crackers into her mouth, eating herself to sleep one morning after another. No wonder Sharla grew plump and then fat, swollen up with all the babies she’d never have. But nothing made Iona fat. She was skinny as ever. She didn’t like to look at herself. Even when she combed her hair she didn’t use a mirror.

  On the thirteenth day it poured. At five-thirty Eddie Birdheart put a newspaper over his head and clumped from the gas station to the store. He slid his thermos across the counter. “Can you fill this up?” he said.

  “Coffee’s old,” Iona told him.

  “I can wait.” He lit a cigarette. His eyes were bloodshot and his hand shook as he held the cigarette to his lips. “I haven’t been sleeping so well,” he said.

  “Me neither.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “Yes.”

  “Looks like it’ll rain all day,” Eddie said.

  “Looks like it’ll rain forever.”

  “Mama Pearl’s been calling me again,” Eddie said, “the usual way—the phone rings, I pick it up. I told Alice I didn’t have no Indian girl. I told her I paid white man’s money for it right here in town and she shouldn’t worry about me going to see my own mother. I told her I was driving up to see Mama Pearl today, make sure she’s been to the store and has something in her cupboard besides beans.”

  “Bad day to be on the road.”

  “I’m not going,” he said.

  “Coffee’s ready.”

  “I don’t want it now.”

  “You mean I made this for nothing?”

  “I’ll come back at seven.”

  “For the coffee?”

  “Yes, for the coffee.”

  “I’ll keep the thermos,” Iona told him. “I’ll have it ready for you.”

  She met Eddie outside, but he wouldn’t take the coffee. “You hold it,” he said, so she got in the car and held the thermos between her legs.

  As they drove toward the marina, they talked about the rain, how cold it was today, how the sky seemed to be falling.

  Eddie couldn’t run from the parking lot to the boat. He had to hop and skip on his good leg, swing his right leg to catch up, then hop again. “Don’t ever get in trouble with me,” he said, “I won’t get away.”

  Their clothes were wet, so they undressed quickly without touching each other. He sat on the edge of the bed to release the valve on his leg and rock the stump out of the socket. Iona thought of Alice’s threat: You better sleep with your leg. I might steal it anytime. Leaving it on the floor was the bravest thing she’d ever seen Eddie do.

  He was already hard. He had a condom this time and was slowly rolling it over himself. It seemed to take all his concentration, as if his penis were a separate person, a small man in a rubber suit who might try to flee if he let go.

  Iona had seen plenty of condoms, flattened in their cases, stuffed in wallets. Boys started carrying them at twelve and hoped to need them before they were fifteen. She had seen used ones lying on the bank of the Snake River, limp and sodden. She thought she should tell him she’d had her period last week. In the days before it came, she remembered Sharla crouching on the cellar floor and wondered if she could do what Sharla had done. She thought he should ask, but he didn’t, and she wanted to hit him, thinking how afraid she’d been. She pushed him back on the bed and kissed him hard instead. She bit his lower lip and sucked his tongue into her mouth, kept sucking so he couldn’t pull away, and she knew it hurt but didn’t care. He pushed himself inside of her, and that hurt too, but not as much as the last time. She thought the rubber would stop him or slow him down at least, but they were moving against each other, struggling to get something. She saw her father’s dogs tugging at their chains in the yard, nearly choking themselves to get a scrap of meat or bare bone. They shredded the pig’s entrails, devoured its balls. They fought over a bloody piece of cloth, a rag from the truck that Leon had used to wipe his hands after gutting a rabbit. Eddie’s face was red, his eyes pinched shut. Iona gasped, but there wasn’t enough air for both of them. Her lungs tightened, squeezed small as fists as the rain hammered the window and pounded the deck, as the rain pelted the water, as her body turned hard and black as the waves and the rain pierced her back like icy slivers. Eddie pulled her down, hid his face against her chest and moaned—terrible, that sound, Angel’s hopeless cry. Iona saw her father’s arms, dripping blood and mucus. She saw him put his whole arm inside the cow, and she felt it too, felt herself opening wider and wider, but there was no hoof to grab, no blind calf to save, only the carved hollow of her empty body and Eddie inside of her. He arched and heaved, cried out to God though she knew he didn’t believe. A ripple moved through him, chest to thigh, then he lay still, and she lay on top of him. She felt small as a child, floating on his belly, rising and falling with his breath; she was weightless, insubstantial, a man’s dream. She saw her mother holding Angel’s head. She felt her mother stroking her own cheek. Her hands were cool, and Iona’s face was hot with fever.

  She thought Eddie was falling toward sleep, already slipping out from under her, but his pelvis began to move again, slowly; “I’m still hard,” he whispered. He kissed her palms, her wrists, the tender underside of her forearms. He kissed her neck and bony shoulders, licked behind her ears and at the corners of her eyes. He held her tight to his chest and barely moved, only rocked, as the boat rocked on the water, as the earth wafted on the sea. Iona felt her body growing big again. She clung to Eddie but seemed to hold all of him inside of her, as if they had become the same thing, parts of the same body. Her skin was cool as rain but there was a warm place spreading from her thighs to her belly, a pool, hotter than blood, flowing into her chest and down her legs. Someone was crying. Someone was saying, Don’t, baby, please don’t cry. But the sobbing didn’t stop, and the body that was theirs moved faster and faster, against itself. She closed her eyes and saw the square light of the window flashing in her mind with each thrust, bright though the day was dark, brighter each time she moved until the glass exploded, bursting behind her eyelids. The hot pool flooded her brain, and she knew what Everett felt when the gun went off; she knew what Hannah was trying to say.

  She couldn’t stop sobbing, and Eddie was afraid. Her hands were cramped like claws and her face was numb. Her scalp burned, as if her hair had caught fire, and she saw herself standing at the trash barrel after Hannah had shaved her head. She threw fistfuls of her own hair into the can and struck a match. Eddie kept asking a question she couldn’t answer or understand. Her hair sizzled and stank. She wished he’d leave her alone. Hannah st
ood, watching, beyond the smoke, beyond the mesh of the screen door. Iona wanted to fall into the dark. The ground would be hard when she hit bottom, a well gone dry, too deep, too black to see anyone. She’d lie alone, curled into herself, beyond all voices.

  “Sonuvabitch.” Iona thought the word came out of a dream, her mother cussing at her father, blaming him. She opened her eyes and felt the boat rolling on the water. She was in the wrong place to hear her mother’s voice. “I can’t fuckin’ believe this.” The voice was male, not a dream at all. “A gimp and a piece of jailbait.” Eddie pushed Iona away from him and leaned over the bed, reaching for his leg. “Don’t even think about it, asshole.”

  Iona saw the outline of two men, one tall and thick, the other wiry, half a foot shorter than the big man. The heavy one used his flashlight like a weapon, following the lines of their bodies, slowing to inspect the stump of Eddie’s leg, blasting between his thighs to be sure nothing was missing there. The beam hit Iona’s breasts and neck before it slammed against her face and blinded her.

  Eddie tried to pull the blanket over them, but the little man yanked it from his hands and ripped it from the bed. “You’re in deep, asshole.” He spat the words.

  “Breaking and entering. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” The heavy man had a soft voice, matter-of-fact.

  “Statutory rape.” The way the nasty little one said it made the words seem true, and the light in the other one’s hand cut a bright line from Iona’s chin to her crotch.

  Eddie leaned over the bed again, grabbing for his pink leg. “Don’t do it,” the hefty one said.

  “I’m just getting my leg,” Eddie told him. “Can I put on my leg?”

  He sounded like a child awakened from a bad dream. The light on his stump made the skin look violet; the old scar flared. Everyone on the boat was having the same dream.

  “Yeah, cover up that damn thing.” The big man was sensible at least. “We’re taking you downtown,” he said.

  “You too, sweetheart.” The scrawny one lurched toward Iona and she jerked. “Look at that,” he said. “She’ll fuck a one-legged Indian, but she’s scared of me.”