Black Milk

by Robert Reed

  “Because I told her that I got it into the net.” He meant his mother. I knew because he stiffened a little bit and halfway smiled. “I told her it ripped loose.” He paused, then he said, “I pretty much lied, huh?”

  “Why?”

  “Because she bought the net for me,” he said and shrugged. “I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know.”

  Just the two of us went hunting the next time. Marshall didn’t want any excess noise, he claimed. But despite our silence and Marshall’s new confidence, we only managed to make the dragon scream at us from across the bottoms. We couldn’t coax it closer…not after an hour of trying…Marshall fiddling with the scream and the volume and me thinking: “It knows better now. It’s gotten wise to us.”

  “I’ve got a better plan anyway,” said Marshall. “For the next time.”

  The next time we crossed the bottoms and hung the net where he had hung it the first night. Marshall had rigged a model car with a speaker, plus a tape of the scream, and he had rigged a phony dragon around the car body. It was long and white, made of tough paper and plastic, and it was silly. Nothing was going to be fooled, and I had to tell him so. “We’ll see,” he said with a brittle confidence. “We’ll just wait and give it a chance. All right, Ryder? All right.”

  Nothing answered. Not once. It was a warm night full of sucking bugs and biting bugs, and I swatted myself a hundred times. For all I knew the dragon was watching us from the shadows, laughing to itself. After a while the silly car tipped and smashed itself on the slabs. Marshall cursed and stomped for a moment, then he lifted a chunk of gray concrete over his head and crushed the car and everything. “Okay,” he said. “All right. I’ll just figure something else.”

  “It’s too bad,” I admitted. “Maybe next time.”

  He sucked air through his teeth. “No problem,” he said.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Anyway, I’m glad you’re sticking with me, Ryder.” Marshall nodded and gave me a long look. He wasn’t going to let himself be unhappy. He said, “That’s the important thing. I can trust you.”

  I was hunting for Cody after school, but her house personal said, “No one’s home, Ryder. I’m sorry.”

  “Tell her I’m at the oak for a while?”

  “I promise, and good day to you.” It was a summer-hot day, brilliant and dry. The dry white dust rose while I walked down the graveled road, taking my time, then out of the corner of my eye I saw one of Jack’s brothers. He was standing on the back porch, fingers cocked inside his belt loops. He was watching me, I realized, and I began to pick up my pace.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Don’t fucking run on me!” He waved and said, “Get over here, kid. Hey, I’m not going to kill you.” He laughed and said, “I just want to fucking talk a minute, okay?”

  I turned and blinked, holding my ground.

  “Yeah, you!” He was a tall, lean young man dressed like a shabby boy. He had Jack’s face and a weak beard and the Wellses’ wiriness too. Something about him made me feel cold. He smiled and waved and said, “What the fuck are you scared of, kid? Come here. Right now. I got a question to ask.”

  I walked to the old fence encircling their yard—a thing built from wooden posts and hog wire and partly flattened by the vines and brush growing through it. He shuffled toward me. What could he do to me? I wondered. It was daylight and I was ready to run, on my toes and halfway leaning to one side. I almost wished he would make a grab for me, just so his intentions would become clear.

  I was scared.

  I was ever so alert.

  “What question?” I asked, my mouth dry as the road itself.

  He said, “I’ve got a friend,” and he coughed into his balled-up fist. His eyes were red and sleepless, but he spoke as if he was sober and straight. “The friend’s got a buddy who works maintenance out at the big house. You know. The mansion? Florida’s?”

  I nodded.

  “So I thought maybe you’d know, one way or another.” Jack’s brother blinked and said, “What with you and His Majesty being so tight.”

  I waited.

  “This maintenance guy? He’s been telling stories. Crazy things. He says people at the mansion are talking about something going on inside the moon’s moon. Some sort of wildfire burning.” He paused and looked straight at me, his tongue pressed against one cheek. He said, “I don’t know. Maybe Florida hasn’t said anything. But I figure you’re a clever kid. Aren’t you? Like my shit-for-brains brother thinks he’s clever? So tell me. How can a fucking fire burn in outer fucking space?”

  I said, “It can’t.”

  “You don’t sound too sure to me.” He breathed, his breath hot and sour. We were several feet apart, and I blinked when the smell hit me. He said, “What I was thinking…I was thinking maybe this moon’s moon is full of weird chemicals. It’s a comet, right? Comets are full of oils and that sort of shit. And Florida’s got all that machinery up there doing the mining for him, and maybe…well, who knows what?”

  “I don’t think it can burn,” I admitted. “The comet.”

  “Maybe not. I don’t know.” He didn’t want to debate the point. “I just think it’s fucking crazy to push things around in the sky. You know? Someone could do something stupid, and then what?” He jabbed his own temple with a long finger, telling me, “Florida’s got those genius genes, sure. But don’t think he can’t screw up. No matter what he’s got for brains, let me tell you…all of us are pretty damned stupid. You just think about that, okay?”

  I started to nod.

  “You think I’m right, squirt?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “I fucking guess so.” He laughed and grinned, saying, “You’re not so bad a shit. Not a snob like most kids.” He reached for his back pocket. “Tell you what. Let me slip you a little sip of something. Just the thing to put hair on your cock—!”

  I eased away from the fence.

  “Hey, kid!” He laughed and turned and slapped his butt. “Nothing in the pockets, I guess. Sorry.” Then he farted with force, laughing louder and shouting, “Run, kid! Run! It’s a goddamn chemical spill!”

  I turned and fled, racing through the pasture, and the ugly laughter faded into the wind sounds on the grass. Nobody was chasing me. I was alone, running because it was fun to slip through the grass, watching the bugs and moths and grasshoppers leaping out of my way. I caught one of the grasshoppers, then another, and I stopped long enough to press their faces together, their strong front legs starting to wrestle. Then I tossed them into the air. They were springtime hoppers, small and green, and they flew without weight or strength, the gusting wind catching them and carrying them over into the trees.

  I turned and looked back at the Wellses’ house.

  Nobody was outside. I remembered how empty it had seemed for years and years, spooky in a harmless way, and then the Wellses had arrived in their old cars, their possessions stacked high and tied down with knotted straw-colored ropes. That’s when I saw Jack for the first time—ill-dressed and tiny next to the others. The house had seemed neater when it was empty, I realized. In a matter of hours, after much cursing and two fights between brothers, the Wellses had settled and a strange volatile quality hung in the air. The four of us were building our treehouse; it was summer. We sat on the treehouse’s new bones, wondering aloud what might be happening inside the white walls. There were odd parties at unusual hours. Feral young women arrived, and we heard the harsh music mixed with shouts, and sometimes a beer bottle would sail out a window, shattering on the graveled road. I remembered Cody’s mothers telling about radios being stolen and tools lost and wallets misplaced and then found empty in street gutters. It was the Wellses who were to blame, of course. Everyone knew it, and we were part of everyone. They were the sworn enemies of the neighborhood, and we would watch them to keep track of them…and because they were so different and fascinating, at least to us.

  One night we were in Cody’s bedroom. Marshall was playing a ga
me against Cody and me. Beth was reading. Cody’s mother May knocked and came inside. “Do me a favor? Stay away from the windows, okay?” Her pretty face was excited about something. Not scared, but concerned. We asked what was happening, and she told us there was trouble across the street. “At the Wellses’ place,” she said, and she left us.

  Of course Cody turned off the lights and lifted a window shade. We were curious. Police cars lined the street, red lights spinning, and Cody said, “Quiet,” and nudged open the window. “Shush.”

  The humid summer air poured inside. Jack’s father was standing on the porch—a loud, harsh man who was lean but for the considerable gut over his belt. His beard was gray and ragged, his hair gray and ragged, and he was staggering whenever he moved, I thought he must be ill. He raised his arms over his head, then he dropped them and said, “He takes he gives he rises and falls to the bumpy places,” with every word slurred.

  “What’s the matter with him?” asked Beth.

  “Drugs in his blood,” said Cody. “Quiet.”

  The police approached Mr. Wells. One of them said, “We have a warrant to search your home, sir—”

  “The sun the sun the sun!” he shouted. “Look!”

  “Crazy talk,” mumbled Marshall.

  A policeman said, “Let us pass, sir. Please.”

  Mr. Wells wobbled, stumbled and then righted himself with a sudden strange poise. His back was straight and I saw his face in the porch light. Later, knowing more about the world, I would remember that face and realize that he wasn’t drunk or drugged. He was pretending.

  “Mice!” he snapped. “Mice mice mice!”

  “Sir—?”

  “God’s sweet cheese!” He staggered forward and stomped at the porch steps, trying to crush phantom mice. He seemed to be rushing the line of policemen, and they shot him several times. I heard the rush of air and saw one of the darts smack home on his chest. He straightened for a moment, then he moaned and tumbled. He was lying on his back, on the sidewalk, and the policemen handcuffed him and brought out the rest of the family. Jack was among them. One brother was missing. I watched Jack standing apart from the rest, his fists trying to stuff themselves into his pants pockets, and later, wiser, I would remember his hard eyes and the defiant expression on his face. He was already staking out his independence.

  The house was searched several times, nothing was found, and Mr. Wells vanished into jail for the night. For disorderly conduct.

  Then came the rumors. Cody’s mothers heard every rumor, of course, and they repeated the one that smelled truest. It seemed the missing brother had been seen slipping out the back of the house two seconds before the police cars arrived. He had grabbed a shovel and carried a box under one arm, running into the parkland, and when the police were gone again he emerged from the woods with just the shovel. No box. And no one knew where the box might be buried. Or what might be inside it.

  “We could dig it up,” said Cody. “Just think! We could do it now.”

  “You’ll get into trouble,” cautioned Beth. She shook her head and told us to think first. So we sat and thought and three of us thought it was a fine idea. Marshall and Cody slipped little garden shovels into their shirts, and we left Beth at Cody’s house. We walked past the Wellses’ house and felt terribly clever and bold. My job was to hunt for ground that had been disturbed. Was there some place recently worked by a shovel? I warned them, “I can’t walk everywhere. He could have gone anywhere.”

  “It’ll be in the woods,” said Cody. She smiled and told us, “There might be a reward or something. Just think!”

  We crossed the bottoms and climbed the tilted slabs, and I found a small patch of freshly turned ground. Marshall took two bites with his shovel, then stopped and stepped backwards. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?” asked Cody.

  “They might…see us.” He meant the Wellses. “They might—”

  “So?” asked Cody. “What’ll they do? Kill us?”

  Marshall shook his head. He was sweating like a runner. “I’m not staying, guys.” He put down the shovel with both hands, and he said, “Are you coming with me? Ryder?”

  “No.” I felt safe with Cody, and I said so.

  Cody said, “Enough talk. Let’s dig,” and she smiled at me. Marshall melted into the trees, and the two of us got on our knees and began flinging the soft soil to either side. I was wondering what the brother had buried in the hole. Something stolen? Drugs, maybe? Or what? I took a deep breath and stabbed with the blade, and something went thunk with a forbidding hollow sound.

  Cody said, “Great!” and swept away the loose earth. “A box, all right. Look at it!”

  She lifted the box from the hole and looked everywhere. She even glanced up into the trees. It was an ordinary box of pressed wood and plastic seams, and its lid was fastened with a single bent nail.

  I asked, “What about booby traps? Bombs?”

  “Then we’re dead,” she said simply. She gripped the nail and jerked once, straightening it, and then she bent low and hunted for wires or other triggers, smiling and saying, “Now watch.”

  The lid creaked as it opened.

  I looked inside. Wrapped inside thick plastic, snugly secured, was a small dead dog halfway rotted to nothing.

  The stink of the rot welled up into our faces, and we coughed. Cody said, “Shit,” and slammed the lid down and laughed. Then she rebent the nail and eased the box back into its hole, always laughing. Then we kicked the dirt back over everything and tamped it flat, and we pulled twigs and dead leaves over the grave, thinking that was right, working hard to make certain that it resembled nothing but the surrounding forest floor.

  I was at school a couple days after talking to Jack’s brother. It was my morning algebra class, and I was wrestling with problems. The answers evaded me, but I wouldn’t let myself cheat—remembering a solution from somewhere else, say, or finding a similar problem stored in my head. Those would be cheating tricks…so I poked and picked at one problem, then at another, accomplishing nothing until the school principal’s voice came over the intercom.

  Every teacher was to meet in the auditorium, she said. At once, no delays.

  There was an odd nervousness to the voice, I thought. A shakiness that I didn’t recognize. Our own teacher was gone for twenty minutes, and I sat and pretended to work, fooling the personals while I thought about a tangle of things. Our teacher came back into the room—a small, homely woman with white hair and a sudden nervousness of her own—and I watched her standing at the head of the class, mustering courage, then clearing her throat and saying, “People? People? Please look up at me, people.”

  No one made a sound.

  “You’ll hear this soon enough on the news,” she told us, “and I want you to understand. Are you listening to me? There’s been an accident in space, out at the moon’s moon.” She paused, weighing words. Then she said, “It’s a sad disaster, actually. Very sad. People have been injured, and some killed—”

  I turned cold and dead inside myself.

  “A lot isn’t known,” she admitted. “But every network is broadcasting news, and maybe we’ll learn something soon. We can pray it’s not too terribly bad.”

  “How many people killed?” asked one boy.

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice level and careful. Then she took a deep breath. “We’ll have to wait and see. I’m sorry.”

  A girl beside me asked, “Is Dr. Florida all right?”

  “Pardon me?” asked our teacher.

  A boy wondered, “Was he up at the moon’s moon, ma’am?”

  She said, “No.” She shook her head and told us, “I’m sure they would have said something…if he was…”

  But I knew he wasn’t. Dr. Florida didn’t travel in space anymore; he had told me that fact. I nearly said something to my neighbors, and then I stopped myself. I caught my tongue and for some reason kept myself from reminding people that I knew Dr. Florida, personally knew him, and tha
t he was my friend and I was his confidant—

  “Ryder?” whispered a boy beside me. “Ryder? Why are people so weird? It’s a long ways away.” He waved his hand toward space. “Ryder? Who cares what happens on the moon’s moon? Huh?”

  They were little kids in this class. I was the oldest, slowest student, and some days I felt huge and ancient and wise among them. I explained to him that the moon’s moon belonged to Dr. Florida, and it was important for many, many people. I thought of the man with the pregnant wife, then I told him that maybe, just maybe, local people were among the dead. It was possible. And then…then I clamped down on my tongue again. I had this awful swelling sense that something enormous was beginning to show itself. And maybe our teacher had the same sense. I watched her standing at the window for the rest of the hour, her eyes fixed on the outdoors, and she didn’t once notice the kids talking among themselves, algebra forgotten, or even blink when the bell trilled and it was time for us to rise and leave.

  We heard the truth in bits and pieces through the long day.

  There was always one kid in every class who knew something authentic, from peeking at a TV or from a tiny hideaway radio plugged into an ear. He or she would always tell this knowledge with a sober, breathless voice. It was astounding and forever surprising news, and even the tiniest kids in my classes would listen intently. No embellishments were required. And no theatrics, either. Our teachers would stop their work too, perhaps adding what they knew for themselves. Then they would take away any radios, out of tradition, and when they thought nobody was looking they would tuck the little things into their own ears, out of sight…

  Debris was raining down from the moon’s moon, puncturing some of the big farming domes on the moon itself. One kid reported how the moon’s moon looked different. It was missing a couple chunks of its lumpy black surface, and the insides were visible to telescopic cameras. What were its insides? we asked. What could they see? “Crystal things sprouting hairs,” we heard. “That’s what they looked like to me.” He breathed and thought, then he tried describing it in detail. “You know? Like a bunch of dark, dark diamonds with all these real long silvery hairs—”