Biting the Moon

by Martha Grimes

  “Love,

  “Elizabeth Loomis

  “P.S. Not to be called ‘Wine’ anymore.”

  Reuel folded the white pages carefully and slipped them back into the gray envelope and put that in his pocket. Gave it a pat for safekeeping.

  Mary looked over at Andi and saw something in her face you often see in the faces of the very old, a tiredness that seems to say, It’s time to go, as if she’d had about enough of life and didn’t want to fight any longer.

  A life not even pegged front and back with solid numbers. Mary realized it made her anxious, this uncertainty about Andi’s age, as if such knowledge were necessary to hold people to earth, to keep them from floating up and off into the numb gray sky. Which further led her to wonder what would happen to her, Mary, if Andi got killed. For she did dangerous things. What would happen if she had drowned? For Mary felt Andi to be a screen set before raw experience, a filter or scrim that made whatever was on the other side just bearable. It was as if Andi did the actual looking, reporting back to the encampment from the front lines.

  Mary looked down at the picnic table and made wet circles with her Coke can, thinking of the main difference between them. Here she was, not giving thought to the dog Stevie or to the poor woman’s being forced to the edge of Weeping Rock, no. Mary was thinking (as usual, she guessed) about herself.

  All of this went through Mary’s mind in seconds. She raised her head briefly to look at Andi again. Andi’s face had a stricken look, eyes narrowed, peering off toward the horizon as if across its blurred dark line walked the shape of Beth Loomis.

  Mary opened her mouth to say something, shut it—uncertain if the silence should be disturbed, for it seemed to have been here for a long, long time. But she said, “That’s terrible,” and felt foolish for saying it, something so obvious.

  Abruptly, Andi came to as if she’d been in a coma. “Not once did she say the name. She never said Harry in that letter. It’s like she was afraid of the name, that it could call up demons that would curse your tongue to name it.”

  Reuel looked at her. “Well, I expect that’s how she did feel. Even his name must have felt dangerous to her.”

  Speech lapsed into silence again while Mary tried herself to see into the dark depths of the woods.

  Then Andi said, “Why does he hate you?”

  Reuel considered. “I guess because I’m on to him. I won’t let that Atkins girl go. And other things.”

  “Like what?” Andi asked.

  Reuel grunted. “You don’t have to know everything, girl.”

  Yes, I do. Mary knew that’s what was in Andi’s mind, though she never said it.

  One thing about Reuel: You couldn’t pump him for information. If he wanted you to know, you’d know. If he didn’t, you wouldn’t. Mary found it comforting to know here was someone you couldn’t manipulate.

  But, of course, Andi wasn’t really trying to manipulate. She just wanted to know. So as if he hadn’t spoken, Andi asked again, “What things?”

  Reuel leaned back and turned his face upward as if imploring whatever was up there that this yoke be lifted from his shoulders. “My lord, girl!” He looked at her foursquare. “I’ll tell you this much: Harry ain’t no friend to Bonnie Swann. Nor her kids.”

  Mary again saw Harry coming out of the Swanns’ house with that expression on his face that coupled rage and satisfaction. That was so strange—as if fury sated some kind of hunger in him.

  Mary gasped. “Didn’t you tell the police?”

  Reuel heaved a big sigh. “Girl, you are the biggest one for police I ever did know. Anyway, one day Beth came out and said, ‘I guess you must wonder why I’m so bruised up, Reuel.’ She said it ever so sad. And I told her yes, I did, actually. And she said, ‘Harry.’ And nothing else. It wasn’t for some time after that she ever said more. The only place she got to go was the dump, right here. He wouldn’t let her go into town until the bruises all disappeared. Then it’d start all over again. So she hardly got out at all.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police?” Mary asked. She was surprised by her own anger, not at Reuel but at life or fate or whatever there was to rail against.

  Reuel seemed to know this and didn’t mind if she chose him. “I didn’t tell them because she was scared to death of Harry. She said he threatened to kill her if he ever even suspected she’d told anybody. I told her, ‘Well, Beth,’ I said, ‘the danger is he’ll do that anyway.’ ” He picked up a rag and wiped down the pipe. “I’ll say this: it’s easy for us, for people that ain’t in that position, to sit around saying things like, ‘Why does she put up with it?’ or ‘I’d leave him; why doesn’t she just leave him?’ Stuff like that. But you got to have firsthand knowledge about a situation like that, you have to be just as scared to death as she was, you’ve got to have worn your brain down to a nub trying to think of a way out—before you start second-guessing the person that’s in that spot.”

  Mary could feel herself coloring; she felt a little ashamed. “I guess. But what happened to Beth?”

  “I don’t know. That ‘heading West’ business sounds a lot like death to me. Or maybe she meant it literal and just left. But I have my suspicions that he just might have beat her finally ’til he couldn’t beat her no more. All I know is, I never saw Beth again.”

  Mary put her hands to her face and just shook her head. She could sense a terrible heaviness within Reuel. He grew still and stopped wiping the pipe and just looked off across the Dumpsters, out over the ledge and the land.

  Andi said, “Couldn’t you’ve stopped him yourself? I mean, you knew about it. Even if you couldn’t tell the sheriff?”

  Reuel just looked at her as if all his patience were being brought to bear on listening to them criticize. He nodded toward Mary. “She’s all for tellin’ and you’re all for stoppin’.” He shook his head, looking at Andi. “You are the righteousest person I ever come across.”

  Andi blushed, but smiled at the same time. “I just don’t like it when people get pushed around, that’s all.”

  “Most of us don’t like that, I guess, but you—you don’t like it with a vengeance. How have you got pushed around yourself?”

  “I can’t remember.” She too lifted her eyes to gaze off across the landfill.

  Reuel was silent for a few moments as if considering the piece of pipe, but Mary knew he was thinking about Andi’s answer. “Now, do you mean that in a kind of general way, like most of us can’t remember lots of things in our past? Or is it something in particular you can’t remember?”

  His tone was offhand, but his eyes looked almost as if they were hurting for her. Mary could see why Beth had talked to Reuel and why Beth knew her secret would be safe with him.

  “It’s particular,” Andi finally said, and turned her eyes on him, made honey-colored by the sunlight. Her long light hair almost turned to silver. “I don’t know who I am. I mean, I’ve got amnesia. It’s been going on for four months, since winter, since January.” She looked away as if she was ashamed for not knowing, as if it were her fault, not remembering.

  Reuel put down the wood. “What happened back then? It must’ve been pretty bad.”

  Andi told him about the bed-and-breakfast, but not about the man, only that she’d been there with “somebody.” She didn’t know what happened.

  Reuel regarded her as he ran his thumb over the bone handle with its intricate carving of a bison or buffalo. It was the way Rosella (Mary thought) might knead a bit of jasper in the palm of her hand for its magical properties. Reuel, though, was not the kind who would have much truck with magic. He gave his wrist a little flick to close the knife and stuck it in his back pocket. He said, “I kind of thought something was wrong. Though I sure never thought of amnesia.” He shook his head. “It’s a funny thing. You take Mary, here”—and he nodded toward her—“she seems born and bred of a past you could almost touch.”

  “My mom and dad were killed in a plane crash. My sister was murdered.” Mary blurted
this out in a kind of desperate attempt to show that her own life was as bad as Andi’s. But she knew it wasn’t. At least she herself had a past, which was what Reuel meant.

  Reuel was silent for a few moments. He pulled out his knife again and picked up the piece of wood. He said, “I’m real sorry, Mary. That’s an awful lot for a person to have to bear.” The knife’s point probed a place in the wood. “But I guess it’s what I meant: with you, Mary—well, a person can almost see the baggage you’ve got to carry around—all of your past, I mean. All them ghosts and so forth. But you”—he spoke to Andi—“you’re like somebody that just turned up.”

  “Out of nowhere,” said Mary, sitting down hard on the polished surface of the granite rock. She watched where Andi was hunkered down on the ground, sitting back on her heels with her thumbs hooked around her ankles in the way kids do. She looked like one, like a small child. In the evening sun her hair became almost transparent, like strands of light. Out of nowhere. That’s what it was, she thought, that feeling that Andi had just materialized before her, back there in the pharmacy, in the cubicle where Dr. Rodriguez filled his prescriptions: Andi standing there in a cone of light. Mary remembered thinking how eerie it was. She felt bleak, as if something important were slipping away, as if one of Rosella’s precious stones had given her a quick glimpse into the future and some great lack in it, some awful absence. Something cold began in the pit of her stomach.

  Reuel went on. “I expect you’re going to be leaving soon?” He looked from Andi to Mary and then back at his task, oiling the pipe. “I remember you said you was to be here only a few days.”

  Just then, she thought Reuel looked like a man who’d lived a hard life and not been rewarded for the hardness of it. As if the staying or going were up to her, Mary said, “Well, we can stay maybe another day. I don’t much want to leave right now; it’d be as if I was running out on Floyd.” And saying it, she realized it was true. “I can’t do that.” She shrugged, feeling grim. “But we can’t stay long.”

  Reuel nodded. Then he said to Andi, “But that ain’t home to you, girl, is it, so you’d just as well stay here with me.”

  He snapped the knife closed, purposefully.

  38

  Mary could hardly believe what she’d just heard, along with the matter-of-fact tone of the man who had said it. She looked at Andi, expecting—what? Amazement? Laughter? But Andi wasn’t even smiling; instead, she gazed at Reuel with an intensity that even for Andi was remarkable. Now she looked as if she’d been handed an especially difficult puzzle to work out: Andi appeared to be seriously considering Reuel’s offer.

  Reuel turned to Mary. “I can drive you back, as I think you’ve probably not yet got a license. And then I could find my own way back here. Train, plane, don’t much matter.”

  To Mary, his suggestion was so outlandish she had to start first with a minor objection. “Drive me? But . . . the woman who looks after me, Rosella, she’ll be back in Santa Fe by then.” Of course, Reuel wasn’t aware of this complication. “She’d wonder who you are and . . . everything.”

  Reuel blew sawdust and splinters from the piece of wood he’d been fooling with. “We could concoct some story or other, between us.” He went back to planing the wood. “Must be awful important, then. For you two to drag yourselves all these hundreds of miles.”

  Mary looked at Andi, feeling it was her place to explain, if she wanted to explain, that is; it was she who’d been damaged badly enough to travel those miles. But Andi said nothing. Mary said, “The thing is, we’re really not supposed to be here at all.”

  He gave her a slow, considering smile. “I kind of figured that.”

  What Mary couldn’t understand was why Andi didn’t reject Reuel’s offer immediately, even though in this case it was obviously motivated by kindness and concern. So Mary herself raised another objection. “If Andi stayed with you, people at the trailer park would think . . .” Mary shrugged. “You know what.”

  Reuel had picked up the pipe and was sighting along it. “Uh-huh. But don’t worry. I’d come up with something to explain her.” He lowered the metal. “I could maybe say my brother’s girl’s come to visit awhile.”

  That was kind of weak, thought Mary. Her throat hurt; she feared she’d be crying in another minute. For she thought that Andi would accept Reuel’s proposal to stay—nothing permanent, of course, just on a trial basis. It was, in a way, a solution: not only would she gain a sense of belonging but she’d be right here on Harry Wine’s doorstep. Mary thought she herself must be jealous, pure and simple. His invitation hadn’t been extended to both of them, not even as an afterthought.

  Andi still said nothing, but had this considering look on her face. A silence lay over them, over the landfill. The only sound was the scraping of Reuel’s knife point inside the metal tube.

  And then Andi suddenly asked, “Where’s this canned hunt?”

  They both stared at her. She hadn’t, Mary thought, been turning over Reuel’s offer at all. With a small shock, Mary thought she’d misunderstood Andi all along. Whatever reasons she would have for going or staying had nothing to do with Reuel or Mary either, nothing to do with her personal wishes.

  Reuel had picked up a hammerhead and now tossed it on the reject pile, disgusted. “Why you want to know that?”

  He didn’t (Mary knew) really have to ask that question.

  “Because I want to see it.”

  Reuel snorted in a way meant to imply he had no intention of discussing it. “Ain’t none o’ your beeswax, child.”

  He used the word deliberately, but if he thought he could deflect her from her question by calling her a child, he was wrong. If Andi minded (and Mary didn’t think she did) this charge of childishness, she would waste precious few seconds in defending herself against it.

  Andi said, “It’s not a secret, where it is. It’s public. And it’s not illegal here.”

  “Some of it sure as hell is. There’s animals floating around that ranch that’s considered endangered species. Last time I looked, that’s illegal.”

  “But it’s not a secret. So all we have to do is ask around.” This was said without rancor as she blinked slowly, like a cat.

  “We?” said Mary. “I never said I wanted to see it!”

  Reuel inclined his head toward Mary. “Younger’n you, and she’s got more sense.”

  That they had no time for this canned-hunt operation didn’t seem to bother Andi one whit.

  “Girl,” said Reuel, his eyes leveled and narrow on her own, “you got enough grief in your life you don’t want to go adding on.” He had picked up and was scrutinizing a length of pipe that brown rust had riddled with holes big enough to stick a finger through. “They wouldn’t let you in there anyway.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of asking.”

  As if giving her only part of his attention, he got up and rolled over a hubcap that probably came from some sporty car and fell to inspecting that. But Mary knew his whole mind was concentrated on Andi.

  “Well?” Andi asked.

  Reuel had a wearisome way of shaking his head. “Ain’t enough happened in the three days you been here? What kind of foolishness are you up to now?”

  Andi, who deemed the question rhetorical, didn’t answer.

  “Just how do you propose to get in? It’s over at the Quicks’ ranch. The Double Q, they call it. Clyde Quick, his name is. He keeps that gate closed tighter’n a tick on a dog. Keeps it closed and padlocked. Don’t think you’re goin’ to climb the fence, neither.”

  “There’s always a way in. That’s the least of it.”

  “Then I don’t want to hear the most of it.”

  “Most of it’s getting you to drive us.” Andi smiled.

  “Us?” said Mary.

  Reuel got more serious, squaring off. “Listen to me: those so-called hunts are full of guns and booze, and guns and booze don’t mix. That so-called game ranch, it’s got folks going up there that’d shoot anything that moves. And them Qu
icks, they don’t give a bloody damn all hell breaks loose, excuse my language.” He stopped and looked at Andi. Then he let the hubcap clatter to the ground, irked to pieces with himself. “I say we best go back to the trailer and have a conflab on this.”

  • • •

  They had their “conflab” sitting around Reuel’s tiny patio, where the evening light spread slowly like honey across the picnic table.

  Reuel had brought out Diet Pepsi and beer and was in the act of lighting up one of his cigars and told them about the Quicks’ ranch. “Used to be a cattle ranch, but things’ve got so dry around here their parcel of land couldn’t sustain a herd of cattle. Now it’s a ‘game ranch.’ The Double Q, it’s maybe a hundred and fifty, two hundred acres. They got half a dozen people working for ’em. Foreigners, mostly. Like Sergei.” His voice diminished, he bent over his cigar.

  “What?” Andi sat up. “Sergei? I can’t—”

  Reuel gestured with his hand, defensively, as if pushing her back. “Can or can’t, makes no difference.”

  “So where do they get these animals?” asked Mary, not really wanting to talk about it but not wanting to appear weak-stomached. She was surprised, too, about Sergei.

  “Different suppliers. Zoos. You ever wondered about what happens to the animal population at zoos? Animals mate, they have offspring. Where do all those animals go when things get crowded?”

  “How does a supplier get them?”

  “Easy. Just goes to one of them exotic-animal auctions. Don’t make no difference some spotted leopard or ibex is on the endangered list. There’s just no way you can control animals being bought and sold.” He turned to Andi, said, “Now you listen up, Andi.” He spoke her name with an air of command Mary was sure he didn’t feel. It was fairly useless trying to pry loose Andi’s mind from whatever it was stuck on. “You don’t want to mess with these people.”

  Again, Andi didn’t bother commenting. The truth of what he said was only too obvious. She drank her Diet Pepsi, watching Reuel. Then she asked, “Do they pay him a lot?”