Эд Горман - Moonchasers and Other Stories

The way Roy had been killed made me sick inside. The way Cushing made me sick inside.

“What’re we gonna do?” Barney said.

“Tell the chief.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

Barney and I took one last look at Roy, bloody and waxen and dead, propped up sad and awkward against the wall. There was just this silence, a deeper silence than I’d ever heard before, and then I figured out what I was listening to — eternity. That’s what I was hearing, something I’d always heard about but never heard for myself before. Eternity.

On the way in, Barney and I decided to tell our dads first — and let them tell the chief. It would be better that way, at least for us, even though telling Clarence and George wasn’t going to be easy.

There was a fight on TV when I reached the front porch. Clarence was a boxing fanatic. He sat there in those purple Bermudas of his and whaled away at empty air just like he was Marciano whaling away at an opponent. He liked Negro boxers fine, especially if they reminded him in any way of Joe Louis, whom he inevitably called “poor Joe Louis,” but for some reason he hated Mexican fighters. Maybe a Mexican beat him up once or something.

Anyway, that was the scene when I got home that night, Clarence alone in the living room in his purple Bermudas throwing lefts and rights and jumping up and down in his recliner and grunting and groaning loud enough to make the family cat look real spooked. Mom and Debbie were long gone, of course. They knew better than to watch Clarence at the fights.

Anyway, Clarence in his purple Bermuda shorts and throwing punches with great and noisy abandon — he turned and looked at me and said—

“Somethin’ wrong, son?”

“I need to talk to you, Dad.”

“Son, there’s a fight on.”

“I know there’s a fight on.”

“It’s Hurricane Jackson. He’s getting ready to throw his bolo punch.”

“Dad—”

His attention roamed back to the screen where two Negroes were pounding on each other.

“Dad—”

Glancing over at me desperately: “Son, is it anything that can wait?”

“No, Dad, I’m sorry but it can’t.”

“Is this real serious or something?”

“Real serious, Dad.”

“You want me to get your mom?”

“No, Dad. I just want to talk to you. Alone.”

“Then let’s go out to the kitchen. I need a beer.”

So we went out to the kitchen and sat down and—

He had a beer and I had a Pepsi.

“So, son, what is it?” Clarence said as we sat in the kitchen where it was at least ten degrees hotter than the living room. The kitchen was great in the winter but in the summer it was a sweat box with only one tiny window for a breeze.

“You know that money I told you I found?” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t find it. Somebody gave it to me.”

“Gave it to you? Who gave it to you?”

So I told him. Every single bit of it, right up to tonight where we left Roy dead in the warehouse.

“And Cushing killed him?”

“Yessir.”

“And it wasn’t self-defense, you don’t think?”

“Nosir, Roy couldn’t even hold up his lighter a few minutes earlier.”

“So Cushing murdered him in cold blood?”

“Yessir.”

“And then took the money?”

“Yessir.”

“You don’t have any doubt about that?”

“Nosir.”

He pawed sweat from his face. “You’re going to be in a lot of trouble, son.”

“Yessir.”

“Why the hell’d you help out a bank robber, anyway? And don’t tell me it was because he looked like Robert Mitchum. That’s the craziest goddamn thing I’ve ever heard of.” He shook his head. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, because he looked like fucking Mitch?”

Until that very moment in my young life, I had never heard Clarence use the F word. And issuing from his lips, it sounded both more vile and more silly than it ever had before.

“Chief Pike’ll probably bring charges against both you and Barney.”

“I know.”

“This is going to be pretty embarrassing at the Rotary.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“A goddamn bank robber. Haven’t I raised you better than that?”

“Yessir.”

And then we heard the first sirens, loud and near on the hot dark night.

“They’re probably going to get the body.”

“Yessir.”

He swigged more beer. “You let me go talk to Pike first. I’ll tell him everything and then I’ll call and have you come down.”

“All right.”

“He won’t be happy when I tell him about Cushing. He’s got a blind spot for that guy. Thinks he walks on water. I guess it’s because his own son died in that tractor accident awhile back and Cushing sort of fills the void. And Cushing’s own folks died in that car accident when he was ten.”

“Yessir.”

He stood up. “I’m going to go get ready. Put on a clean shirt and all.”

“Yessir.”

“I’m also going to tell your mother.”

I nodded.

He stood looking at me for a long time in silence then he shook his head and left the kitchen.

I went into the living room. I could feel this awful sadness come over me. I just kept thinking of Roy and how sad and frail he looked when he dropped the lighter because he’d been too sick to hold it up—

And right then I became aware of the lighter in my pocket. I dug it out and then turned on the floor lamp and held the lighter up to the round yellow bulb.

It was Roy’s, the Zippo with the skull and crossbones designed into the silver surface. I must have stuck it in my pocket after I lit his cigarette. I shoved it back in my pocket. I wasn’t going to mention it to anybody. It was something I intended to keep.

Clarence came down with Mom right behind him. They looked the way they usually do at funerals, grim in a very formal way. Clarence had on a short-sleeved white shirt and a dark pair of pants. He reeked of Old Spice. He walked over to me and said, “I’ll call you in a little while.”

I nodded.

Clarence went over and gave Mom a quick small peck on the cheek and then went out, the screen door banging behind him.

Mom went over and sat primly on the edge of the couch. I could tell she wanted to talk. I could also tell she didn’t know what to say.

After a time, she cleared her throat and said, “You’ve hurt your father very deeply.”

“I know.”

“He has to maintain a certain reputation in this town.”

“I know.”

“And he’s worried that you might—”

“I know what he’s worried about, Mom. That I might have to go to reform school.”

And then she broke into tears and in the light from the floor lamp she looked suddenly old and haggard and even more frail than Roy had there at the last, and so I went over to her and took her in my arms and held her and just let her cry the way Clarence would have in this circumstance. There really wasn’t much else I could do.

Every few minutes while we waited, I’d touch the lighter and think of Roy dying and I’d get sad all over again. I’d never see him or hear him again. That’s the strange part. How people just vanish from your life like that. Forever.

Just after eleven, the phone rang. Mom insisted on getting it.

After she spoke a few words standing next to the stairway, I knew she was talking to Clarence.

She still looked pretty old, as if some kind of age transformation had taken place just in the last hour and a half.

Then she said, “Your father wants to speak with you,” and held the phone out to me.

Clarence said, “You’d better get your butt over here fast. This isn’t turning out the way I thought.”

“I’m not sure what that means.”