Full Wolf Moon

by K. L. Nappier

  Max was suddenly aware that he had already known that Ataki was dead. Something in him had known...for how long? His throat began to tighten. His chest drew into itself. The brain case was empty. He'd known that, too. But how? He heard someone scream and he jumped.

  He saw Mrs. Tebbe and the chief look at him. "Are you all right, Captain?" she asked.

  "I'm sorry. That cry startled me."

  "What cry?"

  "You didn't hear it?"

  Mrs. Tebbe looked at the police chief as if to ask if he had, but he shook his head. Max shrugged and tried to respond normally through the incessant buzzing. "I guess you've got my imagination going, Chief."

  "This is nasty news. I'm glad this'll be your mess soon and not mine."

  The buzzing in Max's ears was so great now he could barely hear. Images began to swim across his vision, faces he almost knew, faces he should know. Ghastly. Withered. He stood up, said something about going back to Lakeside to begin his report, asking the chief to call him as soon as the coroner's results were in. He was amazed at his own ability to sound and seem normal. He could see that his feigned normality had fooled his companions.

  Driving back, it was Annie's face he saw before him, Annie's mouth gaping and wailing, filling with blood.

  Chapter 11

  Tulenar Internment Camp

  Afternoon. Second Quarter Moon.

  The gongs sounded all through the camp, white funeral banners waving at every barracks in Block Four. Doris stood at the back of the little building that served Buddhist, Shintoist and Christian alike, according to their holy days. Today, the tradition was Shinto. It was just a matter of time before the procession would begin, the regaled priest leading the dead man and his mourners to the camp gates, endless blocks away.

  So strange to see all this white. It almost hurt her eyes. The color was surreal to Doris's western mind, bizarre and out of place, made all the more so by the weeping mourners and the droning priest. What were they thinking? What were they thinking, the Asians, to use white as their funeral color? It blanched everything, seemed to drain the blood out of every face.

  Doris didn't know how much longer she could endure. The service threatened to sink into her bones; the gongs and the bells and the stifling incense, the droning, monotonous chants. And she was being stared at. No one could seem to decide if it were appropriate or outrageous for the Center Administrator to be there.

  Neither could she. She was intensely aware of how she was dressed, in her somber navy skirt and jacket. But she just couldn't wear white to a funeral. She just couldn't.

  Good Lord, it was impossible to stay. Her heart would be crushed under the weight of Mrs. Ataki's stricken face. To have already witnessed the widow's suffering once this week was all she could bear.

  What an inadequate surrogate she had been for Mrs. Ataki's only living family, her still-imprisoned son. But Doris refused to leave this woman in the hands of minor staff and had escorted her to Disjunction Lake's morgue. So pale and withered, like a flower left to die. All the way there. All the way back.

  Doris saw the white-shrouded coffin hoisted by the pallbearers. The priest and widow moved forward, mourners rose like a pallid tide of death crested by the coffin, and the whole thing was coming toward her. It was too late to flee, but someone was touching her arm gently. Arthur Satsugai, wearing black, thank God, because he was in his collar.

  "Are you all right?" he asked, and she nodded, but she used his arm for a crutch as they waited for the procession to pass. They tried to follow.

  But Doris kept seeing Mrs. Ataki's eyes roll back into her head as the widow had collapsed to the morgue's flat gray floor. She saw herself again following the coroner into that cold, antiseptic room and the dead man's sunken face, the color of rotting straw. Buried for days, his brain case cracked and empty...

  Doris's legs buckled. "I'm going to be sick."

  Mr. Satsugai pulled her away from the tail of the procession and set her on the steps of the nearest barracks. He insisted she stay there while he knocked on the door behind her. But getting no response beyond the flapping of the funeral banners, he took it upon himself to enter, then returned with a hand towel, cool and wet. He sat next to her and laid it against her neck.

  "Better?" he asked.

  "Getting there."

  Mr. Satsugai said nothing more, but curled his fingers through hers while Doris bent forward, letting him hold the towel to her nape. She fought against tears. She fought against a wrenching desire to lean her forehead to his shoulder.

  "Mr. Satsugai..."

  "Yes."

  "Mr. Satsugai..."

  He didn't reply right away. Then he said, "Call me Arthur. I want you to call me Arthur."

  Doris's fingers curled all the tighter around his, but she couldn't raise her eyes to him. Arthur lifted her hand to his face, brushing her fingers across his lips before resting them against his forehead.

  / / / /

  For the second time in sixteen days, Tsuko Ataki left camp. His cemetery plot lay just north of Monterey, not far from where the Atakis' ranch-style home sat boarded up and smeared with anti-Japanese graffiti. Mrs. Ataki was allowed to watch as the back of the hearse closed over her husband and disappear down the gravel road. Then the M.P.'s took her back to her barracks.

  / / / /

  "What happens now?" Doris asked.

  Her hands were unsteady around the coffee cup. She was still queasy and shaken, sitting with Arthur in her office. It was Saturday, she realized. Yet she had asked Arthur to escort her here instead of her little tar paper house. He sat at the side of her desk, one arm resting on the desktop as he leaned into his chair.

  "I don't know."

  She had hoped, on some level, that he would have replied, "What do you mean?" She wanted an out. She wanted a chance to say she was talking about the camp, talking about the murder. But he knew exactly what she was talking about, and now she had to continue. She concentrated on every sip of coffee for a while.

  "I'm not very good at these things," she finally confessed, eyes fixed on her cup. Then she looked at Arthur. "I wasn't very good at them before Abel married me. After his death, I only seemed to get worse."

  Arthur suddenly bristled. "This isn't a thing. You and I, we can't afford a simple thing. Look where we are, look at who we are. This is serious, Doris. You and I..." He took a breath. "Are we serious?"

  "We don't need that question yet," she replied. "This is too complex to shove through the chute."

  Arthur nodded, without smiling. His silence seemed intended to force more from her, but she wasn't ready for more, she wasn't ready to deal with what was happening inside her. Doris needed something to hide behind, and chose the biggest blind she knew.

  "We're going to have to question those boys, you know. Somebody must be able to identify the gang members."

  Arthur stared at her, the creases of his eyes hardening like ceramic. She wasn't sure if he was angry because she had changed the subject, or because he knew where she was going with it.

  She said, "If we co-operate, we may be able to keep military involvement to a minimum."

  "You can't honestly believe a handful of kids, whose greatest crimes have been graffiti and bravado, is capable of doing what happened to Mr. Ataki."

  "Their greatest crimes are assault and battery. Three separate incidents. They even implied to two of the victims --"

  "And you actually believe they murdered him."

  Doris pushed her cup away and pressed her hands to the edge of her desk. "Those threats are sufficient to warrant questioning. Pierce is going to want those kids, he's going to want them badly. What else would you suggest we do?"

  "Look in town! What about the hate group that's culling membership there? K.A.F.A. Keep America For Americans, isn't that their standard? Fully grown adults with enough animosity to do something every bit as repugnant as that murder."

  "I'm sure they'll be questioned, too..."

  "Are you?"

&
nbsp; "Yes, I am. I promise you, I will not let this turn into a witch hunt. If those boys are innocent-"

  "Don't make promises, Doris! When the military steps in, what good will your promises do?"

  Doris leaned toward him. "I'm not impotent here, for crying out loud, I'm Center Administrator! And I can be a real bitch when I want to be!"

  Arthur fell back, looking a bit surprised. Then, in the midst of his silence, he chuckled and his shoulders relaxed.

  "I'll just bet you can," he replied.

  Doris sat back as well, managing a smile and realizing how knotted her muscles were. She crossed her legs as she cast her gaze to the ceiling, then looked at Arthur again.

  "Too much all at once," she said.

  Arthur nodded. "I know."

  "We've got to identify and question those boys --"

  "I know," Arthur repeated, raising a hand in resignation, but his voice held only mild rancor. His head drooped a little and his gaze fell to her crossed legs, then flicked back to her face, as if hoping she hadn't noticed. "And so...?"

  Doris shrugged. "And so. I'm meeting with Pierce tomorrow. But there's not much any of us can do until we know who the Inu Hunters are. K.A.F.A. is in Disjunction Lake's jurisdiction."

  "Will you keep a tab on that investigation for me?"

  "I'm keeping a tab on it already for myself. I'll tell you as much as possible. As my police liaison, you're entitled. But much of it will be classified, you know that."

  Arthur didn't budge. "Tell me what you can, Doris."

  "Of course."

  They stared, no words left to say. Doris wanted badly to swallow and ease her dry throat but she didn't dare. It was finally Arthur who made the first motions of leaving. Doris stood.

  Before he turned to the door, Arthur asked, "Will I see you tomorrow?"

  "I...I don't know. There's a lot to do..."

  He didn't reply, but neither did he look away. At last he said, "Will you be all right, by yourself?"

  "Absolutely," Doris replied, probably too quickly.

  At long last, he turned to leave and Doris suddenly asked, "Do you still want me to call you Arthur?"

  He stopped and looked at her, a near-smile on his lips. "Yes, I do."

  "I never told you that you could call me Doris," she said, just to aggravate him.

  He smiled more fully. "Well, we can't undo what's already been done."

  Doris smiled, too. Then Arthur left her office, and she was alone again, standing by her desk like a sentry.

  Chapter 12

  Lakeside Assembly Center

  Night. Last Quater Moon.

  Mine. Mine!

  Max runs, propelled by anger, propelled by greed. The gravel road to Tulenar clacks and grates, he feels it give under his bare feet, but he is unaware of any pain. The air is cold on his skin, naked and damp, his genitals retreating for warmth, but the cold and discomfort are nothing compared to his need to rush to the claim.

  They have no right!

  He swerves suddenly, clambering up a hillside, two-footed at first, then scrambling on hands and feet as the climb grows steeper. The sweat is dripping off him like tears, regardless of the cold. His lungs burn and he wonders vaguely how he can keep such a pace - shouldn't it be impossible?- when he bursts onto the clearing.

  The full moon blazes down on Doris Tebbe and David Alma Curar. They are kneeling, digging like dogs, trying to disinter what they have no right to, no right at all. Alma Curar is telling her, "There's still time. If we hurry there's still time."

  Inside the hollow they have dug Max can be seen one bloodless, white hand, stiffened and clawlike, as though the corpse had been scratching at its grave. Max looks down at his own hands with a start, because he is suddenly afraid it is he they are digging up. And when he can find no trace of himself, no trace at all, he knows for certain they are.

  Then he feels the dirt in his mouth and the clots in his eyes, his heart is in pain and despair for being dead and buried so long, so long! Yet he is also still looking through altogether different eyes at Tebbe and Alma Curar, desperately digging at his corpse.

  No, mine!

  Mrs. Tebbe is screaming, "Max! Max!" as she yanks at his dead wrist and forearm, as if she thinks she can awaken him. But Max is no longer in his corpse. He is back in the thing again, the thing full of rage and greed, lunging at David Alma Curar as Mrs. Tebbe's eyes fly wide with horror. She flings her hands upward. Her right palm bears a silver-tinged pentagram.

  Stop them, kill them! Mine! He feels Alma Curar's throat burst between his jaws.

  Max clutched at his own throat when he awoke, gasping and staring wildly about the bedroom, unable to see a thing in spite of the beams of a brilliant half-moon streaking through the window. He groped quickly toward the nightstand where he knew his glasses lay and panicked a little when he almost knocked them to the floor.

  Only when he had them shoved snugly in place did Max lean back against his headboard and try to catch his breath. A nightmare. Just a nightmare. But it was out of sync, out of rhythm. Nightmares as vivid as this one... it wasn't time yet. Max pulled the sheet up to his face, blotting his forehead and throat, so sore where he had clawed himself.

  He thought suddenly, God, I miss Annie, God I miss her! He rose, pulled his robe over his damp shoulders and walked sluggishly into the kitchen. God... Annie.

  Max pulled a bottle of orange juice from the Frigidaire and didn't bother with a glass. His heart was calmer now, as he leaned on the cool, enameled door, the horror of the dream fading. But his longing for Annie was still full and strong. It always was after the nightmares. How he needed her when thrust awake like that. But Annie was not there, had never been there. She had died the very night those awful visions were born.

  Max let his head fall back against the refrigerator. How was he going to get through life without her? And then he wondered how Doris Tebbe, widowed just like he, managed for so many years.

  / / / /

  The news from Mrs. Tebbe's office gave Max a surge of adrenaline, a burst of victory. Her police force had an Inu Hunter in custody.

  This time, when his car passed by David Alma Curar's truck at Tulenar, Max made a point of staring straight ahead. Still, he could see the healer - imperfect though his vision was -see the man from the corner of his eye, see him in the side view mirror as the car trundled past.

  Alma Curar stood by his truck bed, sacking something for a young woman, Nisei most likely, dressed in the crisp white of a nurse's uniform. Like the white and cut of the woman's uniform, so the general shape and identical colors marked the two children with her as twin boys. They circled the truck, making a game of not running, but walking very, very fast as they tried to tag each other. It was Alma Curar's posture that told Max the healer stared after him until the corner was turned.

  Harriet Haku's face seemed all but healed as she escorted Max to Mrs. Tebbe's office. The C.A. finished scribbling on a note pad, poised in a nest of files, before looking up and nodding at him. He looked around the office as he took his usual seat.

  "You've added some things."

  It was still sparse, still intensely practical compared to his office. But, now, the wall behind Mrs. Tebbe displayed framed certificates, a political science degree from Sarah Lawrence, a few pictures of the late Senator Tebbe, with and without her, posing beside various politicians. One was with Herbert Hoover.

  She'd added a slate blue carpet, too, that covered most of the office floor. A square oak table with four chairs was butted up against the window that overlooked the camp.

  "I needed the table for small meetings and, with the carpet, the room finally doesn't sound like a stable when people walk in."

  "It looks good."

  There was a moment of silence. Mrs. Tebbe seemed reluctant to get on with it. She shuffled the paper nest, poked at the errant auburn waves against her nape.

  Max finally prompted, "Well. Are they escorting the young man here, or do we go to the lock-up?"

&nbs
p; Mrs. Tebbe sighed, then stood. "We go there, Captain."

  / / / /

  There was nothing to hint of the teenager's Japanese features as Max walked into the little wooden jail. His wounded vision, glasses or no, couldn't make out the boy's face. But Max could read the posture, the typical American stance of a young tough, reared back on the bunk, one ankle crossed over his knee.

  Not until he was at the long, thin bars could Max really see the boy's face. The Issei jailer produced a small ring of keys and unlocked the door for Max and Mrs. Tebbe.