“Motherfucker,” Jay said.
Willy’s face felt hot despite the cold. Motherfucker. He heard the kid in the alley, saw the crushed jack-o’-lantern, knew the simple truth. Motherfucker.
Jay leaped before Willy had a chance to brace himself. Both of them went down, and Jay pinned Willy to the road. Willy remembered wrestling in the grass, how good it felt, nothing like this, a hot summer day, their bodies slippery with sweat, wearing cut-offs and nothing else, moving against each other like fish. Jay wasn’t playing now. His elbow hit the center of Willy’s chest, a soft spot that took Willy’s breath and left him stunned.
Jay kept pressing. He leaned close and Willy saw his face, every muscle tensed, jaw clenched tight forever, tendons popping in his neck. He smelled Jay, bitter, not just his breath but his skin, a burned smell that made Willy taste hot metal. He thought of Horton: When you catch a whiff of that, you better have your hand on your gun. But Jay’s knees dug into Willy’s arms, held them to the ground. He wanted to tell his father: If you’re close enough to smell a man, it’s already too late.
“Buddy,” Willy whispered, “it’s me.”
“Goddamn right,” Jay said. “I fucking know it’s you.”
Willy twisted, arched his back. Jay smacked his chin and rolled off him, grabbing the cane he’d dropped in the snow. Willy took one breath. He thought it was over now, but the quick pain blinded him and a brilliant yellow pool spread in front of his eyes like blood. If he’d had any air he would have screamed, and the cry would have carried across the fields to a girl’s house on the Kila Flats, up the tracks to a burned shed, across the river to his mother’s house, along the tree-lined streets to Delores. She would see them, clearly and without doubt, her lover lying in the snow clutching his balls, her son crumpled to his knees beside him.
The yellow pool bled thin enough for Willy to see sky, but the clouds looked yellow too. Snow melted beneath his back. Snow melted under Jay’s knees.
“Fucking cop,” Jay muttered. “Whatever happened to your goddamn sense of duty?”
Those were his last words on the road, and he remembered them now, just a week later, when he realized he needed Willy Hamilton. He was a policeman, after all. This was his job. Jay didn’t want to make it official by filing a report with Fred Pierce or Horton Hamilton. He didn’t want half the town out looking for his mother, waving their flashlights in the woods, shouting her name in the dark. Besides, she’d left the house at noon and it was only eight. She wasn’t a missing person for another sixteen hours—just an absent mother. A woman needs some privacy once in a while, that’s what Pierce would say, implying Delores was shacked up with her lover for the night and Jay Tyler was a fool.
Jay didn’t have to explain much to Willy. He told him his father was in Boise again and that Delores had been out all day. He said some pills were missing, and Willy said he’d be right over. Willy remembered how Jay felt about Everett Fry: Why’d he have to make such a mess? Jay thought Everett should have jumped off the bridge or swallowed a handful of barbiturates, done it clean and fast, so no one else would have to get down on her knees to wash the tiles. Even then he was more worried about Everett’s mother than he was about the son who’d died.
Jay was waiting at the curb when Willy came by the house. Willy thought of Delores waiting for him three weeks ago, just this way. “What kind of pills?” Willy said as Jay got in the car.
“I don’t know. Sleeping pills.”
“How many?”
“How could I count them if they’re gone?”
They headed out the River Road, toward the bridge. “I know how you are,” Jay said. “You’ll want to blame yourself. But you’re an arrogant bastard if you think one roll with you could make a woman miserable enough to do this.”
Willy nodded. Jay was right. He did want to blame himself. He was an arrogant bastard.
The Chrysler wasn’t parked on the bridge. Jay told Willy to stop and got out of the car to look at the water. Snow on the bridge had frozen to a hard crust. The moon was bright, three-quarters full, and the crescent left in shadow cupped the fuller part, a dark hand holding the yellow head in the sky. Jay peered down at the black water and stony bank. He thought of the story Muriel had told him, of the sisters Mary and Martha, how angry they were when Jesus finally appeared, how they each said to him: “If you had come sooner, Lord, my brother would have lived.”
He called her name, and it bounced off the water: Delores. “But Jesus wasn’t too late,” Muriel said, “and he led Lazarus from the tomb, though he’d been dead four days.”
Jay used the loud voice of a man, but inside a child cried: Where are you? This child was lost in his own house. There were so many rooms. He went from one to another, opening closets, peeking under beds, as if this was a game. But he wasn’t having fun. He felt that frustration now, the panic in his chest as he ran up and down the stairs. His legs were short and tired. He was four years old.
“Where to?” Willy said when Jay got back in the car.
“To that place where we always parked.”
As much as Willy wanted to find Delores, he hoped she’d gone somewhere else. Maybe he was an arrogant bastard to imagine he had anything to do with her unhappiness, but it would be hard not to blame himself if this was the place she’d chosen.
Jay and Willy both thought of the woman who’d jumped from the bridge and was saved. They saw her red coat billow around her, a small parachute slowing her fall, a preserver that kept her afloat when she hit the water. They saw her blue lips when the men pulled her from the river. They saw her breathless body and knew that she was dead in this moment. But the man struck her chest. Water spurted from her mouth. He pressed again with both hands until she sputtered and gagged. He breathed into her, covered her nose and mouth with his mouth, called her back with his own breath, gave her his own life. Damn you. Her words of gratitude, the only ones the curious boys heard. She moved away a month later, left her husband and five kids in their trailer. Jay wondered if she was thankful in the end, if leaving her troubles was better than leaving her life, or if her problems followed her to every little room, if one night she leaped from a window instead of a bridge, to cement instead of water. He wondered if Lazarus lived long and joyfully, or if he grew sick and bitter, if he cursed the Lord and wished there had been no miracle.
There was one car parked by the river. Willy thought the Pinto with the fogged windows belonged to Twyla Catts. He hit the car with his high beams but no heads appeared. They were down on the seat for sure, eyes screwed shut, bodies locked. If a flood swept their car into the river the divers would find them this way: arms clutching, legs entwined, hair tangled together. Willy laid on his horn, and Jay grabbed his wrist. “Save it,” he said.
“Any other ideas?” Willy said when they were back on the road.
“Just drive west for a while.”
Every time they rounded a curve, Willy expected to see the Chrysler hunkered on the shoulder. Maybe she’d slid into the ditch and had been out cold for hours. She might wake at any moment, confused and afraid. He imagined her running on the road, her blond hair blowing. He drove slowly so he could stop in time.
Jay said, “I’m sorry about the other night.”
And Willy said, “Forget it.”
“Lost my head.”
“I deserved it.”
“Maybe,” said Jay, “but not from me.”
“She’s your mother.”
“I haven’t treated her so well myself.”
They were halfway to South Bend and had only seen two cars coming toward them on the narrow road. Each time they thought it must be her, heading home. But the cars were unfamiliar, driven by strangers who didn’t know how cruel they were to drive this road, to give boys hope and snatch it back.
“This is stupid,” Jay said. “We won’t find her this way. Maybe the pills rolled under the bed—why should she off herself when she can just leave?”
But they both knew she didn’t have t
he courage for that: running away meant making a new life. “Let’s check the bars,” Willy said.
“Yeah, why not.”
They stopped at the White Bull and River’s End on Main, but no one had seen her. As they veered east, Willy suddenly felt certain they’d find her at the Roadstop, drunken Delores about to fall off her barstool, leaning up against any guy who happened to sit beside her. They’d scold her and take her home. They’d laugh in the car, pretending they weren’t that scared.
But the Chrysler wasn’t in the lot. “She’s not here,” Jay said.
They drove to the bridge again but crossed it this time and headed toward the Flats. Willy slowed as they passed the cluster of trailers. The stuffed man with the pumpkin head still sat guard, but the head had rotted and begun to shrivel, sinking into the shoulders.
Jay said, “Take me home. I think she’s at home.” Willy saw that Jay’s cheeks were wet.
“It’s not your fault,” Willy said. He thought it was important to say this now, before they found her. Jay nodded. “If she’s not there, I’m going to call my father.”
“She is,” Jay whispered. “She is.” He saw her, curled in the basement. That’s where he’d found her the other time, wedged in a dark corner under the cellar stairs; he poked at her with his small hands, but she didn’t wake.
The memory of the sirens was so close he had to cover his ears. He was sure he’d find her in exactly the same place. Maybe she’d been there all along. Maybe she’d driven the car away to fool him and had sneaked back later, like a thief in her husband’s house, tiptoeing down the stairs to steal her own life. Her name welled in his chest; the sound of it filled his whole body.
The Chrysler was in the drive. Someone had turned on the porch light. Willy followed Jay, up the walk and into the entryway. At the end of the hall, light burst from the kitchen.
She sat at the table, hair loose at her shoulders, just as Willy had imagined, hours before on the River Road. She wore an oversized cardigan and hugged herself to hold it wrapped around her.
Jay stood in the doorway, eyes filling with shame and gratitude. Willy peered over his shoulder.
“I’m drunk,” she said.
“I was afraid,” Jay whispered.
Delores heard those words at last, the ones Andrew could not say at the river. “I didn’t have the guts,” she said.
“We’ve been looking for you all night.” He gestured toward the doorway with his head. Willy backed into the shadows of the hall. He saw mother and son through a haze, as if a veil had fallen in front of him, and he couldn’t find the place where it parted to let him in. He realized she had spared three lives tonight, that he and Jay had been saved, pulled from the freezing river at the last moment.
He hurried toward the door, his own footsteps so loud they frightened him. He glanced back as he stepped outside. The house was quiet, but the light burned in the kitchen, fierce and steady.
20
Eddie found Iona a 1966 Plymouth Valiant for two hundred. “Takes a long time to warm up,” he said, “and it idles too fast.” The passenger side had been rammed and never repaired. Now rust bloomed where the metal creased. “Don’t open those doors,” he told her. “Tank’s full and tires are good. She’s no beauty, but she’ll get you home.”
Iona packed her suitcase. She was leaving with the same things she’d brought: poncho and denim jacket, three pairs of jeans and two sweatshirts, four tops and a pile of underwear. She took the red shirt off the legless doll and hid the wild-eyed baby in the closet. It felt right, somehow, to travel so lightly, to forget towels and sheets, spoon and bowl, to abandon the hard plastic doll.
Firs stood stark and black on mountain slopes as she crossed the Cascades. She felt small, alone in her car and unbearably human.
Snow fell on the rolling hills as she drove south and east. Snow fell on solitary farmhouses. The earth was white; the houses were white; Iona’s hands on the wheel, white. The road was gray and long, a ribbon of memory unfurling one blank mile at a time. She saw a house, barn, toolshed, chicken coop—a clump of trees, an endless field of dark ground pocked with snow. She saw a man walking in the distance. He carried a shovel over one shoulder. His gait was slow, uneven, his head bare.
The heater in the Valiant blasted warm air in her face, but her feet were cold. She imagined standing on her father’s porch, knocking on her father’s door. It would be rude to go to the back door, to enter the familiar kitchen—now she was a guest, almost a stranger—so she would wait at the front until someone answered, until someone said: Come in. Through all the open doorways she saw her mother at the sink, back curved, arms weary. She spoke her mother’s name, and Hannah turned but did not answer.
She had counted out sixty-two dollars plus three dollars interest. It was right there in the pocket of her jacket, the left one over her chest. If Frank asked about the money that was missing the morning she disappeared, Iona could put the bills in his hand and be done with it.
She knew how Leon would look at her, from feet to head, then back to her belly. He’d wonder what had brought her home. She was too skinny to be pregnant. Rafe and Dale wouldn’t care about her reasons as long as she cooked biscuits and eggs in the morning, as long as she milked the cows and scoured the tub.
How could she explain? I haven’t come back for that.
Her heart was fragile as ice on the river in late spring, so thin a pebble thrown by a careless boy could shatter it. She was glad for the cold outside, glad to be alone, away from the water, traveling on the hard ground of winter.
Snow fell, light and dry, on the backs of cows in the fields. Wind whipped white swirls across the road and dropped them in shallow ditches. Snow fell over the Cascades behind her and across the Rockies beyond her vision. Snow fell on an unmarked grave at the edge of a potato field and on the blue lids of her mother’s eyes.
When Iona reached South Bend, she knew she’d meant to stop here all along. She was scared now, imagining how she might find Matthew, strapped in a chair at the window, drugged and docile, his hair shaved close to the scalp, eyes milky, spittle at the corner of his mouth and down his chin.
Too late to see him tonight—no visitors allowed after dark, she thought; everything’s safer in the light. She checked into the South Bend Hotel. She was just going to lie down for a minute, rest, then go out again, get something to eat. But as soon as she closed her eyes, her brothers came to the foot of her bed. They were smiling, all three of them in a row, waiting for her to wake. They raised their arms and she saw that their hands were gone, cut off at the wrists. No blood spurted from the stumps. These were old wounds.
She jerked up in bed and flicked on the lamp. She was alone. The hotel was quiet. If she opened the door, she knew no one would be standing in the hall outside her door.
She lay back down but left the light on. The pillow smelled of someone else, faint oil from a man’s hair. She remembered now. Rafe and Dale made gifts at school, pressed their hands into wet plaster, pressed so hard every line of their palms was revealed; and when the white clay dried, each finger’s imprint, each fingertip’s unique whorl was rendered distinct and unmistakable. Hannah hid the plaques in a drawer. Nice present for a woman who lives in town, she said. They reminded her: one brother’s hand mangled by the thrasher, the other brother’s fingers black at the root, blown off, a firecracker held too long. Plaster spilled blood in the brain. Iona made a cast of her hand too. Everyone did. But she didn’t bring it home. She smashed it on the road and kicked the pieces into the gutter.
Now she thought her mother was wrong. It was not a bad thing to remember the lost limbs of mutilated boys. She hoped that somewhere, a long time ago, Eddie Birdheart had found a sidewalk smeared with soft cement. She hoped he had taken off his shoes and walked across it, leaving behind the perfect prints of his two bare feet.
Just before dawn, Iona’s father came to her and stood in the doorway. He was black with mud: hands and face, boots and hair—his whole body dripp
ing, only a ring around each eye wiped clean. All afternoon he’d been in the field, trying to pull Belle from a sinkhole. He’d tied ropes and chains, had gotten her to the brink twice but lost her again both times. Belle, my beauty. She was the cow he’d named himself: because she’s the most beautiful and knows it. When Iona saw him look at Belle’s sad face, she thought he loved the animal more than he loved her. Now he stared at Iona but didn’t see. Now he said: Get me my gun.
“That boy’s long gone,” the woman at the desk told Iona the next morning. A little white hat perched on her head like a child’s paper crown.
“What do you mean?” Iona said.
“Just what I said.” The woman pushed her glasses up her nose with her middle finger.
“He was released?”
“Not exactly.”
“Tell me,” Iona said, “exactly.”
“All information on our patients is confidential.”
“I’m his sister.”
The woman gave herself a push and her chair rolled backward toward the file cabinet. She wore white shoes and heavy white stockings. Her legs were thick, shapeless as sausages in pale casings. She stood to open the top drawer: A–F. The key was on a chain around her neck, and she didn’t take it off, she only bent over to free the lock. The tiny crown never moved.
Iona wondered if Matt was well and strong, gaining weight and speaking in full sentences. Not exactly. She wondered if they’d sent him somewhere else, a place for wild boys who needed separate rooms with padded walls, a place where you could scream all day and not be heard.
The woman pulled a folder from the drawer, leafed through the thin file, then slid it back in place and closed the cabinet. The lock clicked, a final sound, and the woman dropped heavily into her chair, wheels squeaking as she scooted across the floor. She peered down at her desk and started making tiny red x’s in the squares of a chart. “What’s his middle name?” she said.
Iona Moon Page 24
