Эд Горман - Moonchasers and Other Stories

I couldn’t make out a face inside the car. “Who is it?”

“It’s Michaelson, is who is it. And I’m curious what you boys are doing out here at this time of night.”

And then he hit us right in the face with the spotlight he had mounted on his driver’s door.

Michaelson was this fat slob who sold appliances during the day and was an auxiliary policeman on the side. Now everybody in Somerton knew that the most an auxiliary policeman ever did was direct traffic at the county fair and things like that. What they got was a uniform and a badge and a billy club. What they didn’t get was a gun or a car or any respect. Michaelson had been on the steps of the police department the night Roy was killed — hanging around his supposed friend Cushing. Even Cushing didn’t seem to like him all that much.

Of course, Michaelson pretended he was a pretty big deal strutting around the fair city of Somerton. He had a whip antenna on his ’53 Ford fastback and he wore his uniform just to go buy a loaf of bread and the way he walked around with his gut hanging over his hand-tooled western belt, he gave the impression that he was one tough guy.

“You boys hear me?”

“Huh?” Barney said.

“I asked you what you was doing out here?”

I dug in my pocket and took out my Lucky pack and held it up in the beam of the spotlight.

“This is what we’re doing out here. Smoking. We don’t want our folks to find out.”

“Oh,” he said. Then, “You’re too young to smoke.”

“That’s why we’re sneaking around.”

“I could run you two in.”

Michaelson always said that. About running people in.

Then he did just what you’d expect somebody like Michaelson to do. He killed the spotlight, rolled up the passenger window, and then took off — laying a strip of rubber that must have run thirty feet.

“What a clink,” I said.

We were in the dark again.

“I don’t think we’d better go down to the barn tonight.”

“Neither do I,” I said.

“He’s gonna tell Cushing he saw us out here sure as hell.”

I agreed.

We walked back home.

On the way, he said, “Mom said she’s gonna get a divorce.”

“She always says that after something happens.”

“He knocked her down and kicked her this time. Then I jumped him. This was the other night.”

He sounded confused, and like he wanted to cry again. “I wish I was like Mitch. I wouldn’t take shit from anybody. Not from anybody.”

When we reached the corner where we always said good-bye, I said, “You’re a good guy, Barney, you know that?”

“If I was a good guy, I’d help my mom better.”

“You’re doing all you can.”

“Yeah but when I see her down there on the floor with blood all over her face—”

And this time he took off running, vanished in the darkness outside the small circle of streetlight, loping slapping footsteps in the winter gloom.

Because of Michaelson telling Cushing about us, we decided to wait for another week before going back out to the barn.

The night was somewhere in the low teens. Barney was in a better mood, anyway. George was deep into his penitent role now, begging his wife to forgive him and not toss him out. This was the only time the family really had any peace, when George was like this.

We got to Cushing’s about 7:30. There was a frosty half moon and a sky low and bright with Midwestern stars. No lights shone in the house. No car was parked in the driveway. We checked the corner. We didn’t see Michaelson parked there waiting for us to make our move.

“Ready?”

“Yeah,” Barney said.

We ran across the street and along the walk that paralleled the house and then Barney stopped.

“I’m freezing my ass off.”

“You’ll be fine. You got the whistle?”

“Yeah.”

We’d agreed that Barney would scout — if he saw anything strange, he’d take this basketball whistle that belonged to my older brother, the right honorable Corporal Gerald, and blow the hell out of it.

“Hurry up,” he said.

He was starting to irritate me, the way only somebody you really like can irritate you.

I took off running. The ground was winter-hard between house and barn.

I pushed the big sliding barn door back only far enough so I could slip in. The place smelled of hay and kerosene and sweet horseshit and winter. I got my flashlight on and moved the beam around the place.

It was pretty well empty, actually. From the ancient horsecollars on the walls and the hay rakes and manure shovels stuck in the corners, you could see that somebody had probably kept animals here at one time. Probably had farmed it, too. But that was long ago. Everything was now dusty and stiff and faded.

I’ll skip over the next half hour. It was a bitch but it was also pretty boring. I must have covered every single inch of that barn, as well as the haymow. I had no idea what I was looking for, just something that looked like it would be a good hiding place. I remembered the tarpaulin sack Roy had had the money in. A guy could hide that without too much trouble.

I went up and down the haymow ladder twice, making sure that I hadn’t overlooked anything up there. I went into each stall with the rake and cleared the floor of hay and looked for any kind of trapdoor. A lot of the older barns in this area had them. About halfway through all this, my flashlight started flickering on and off, which reminded me of a pretty neat way the Hardy Boys had sent signals in one of their books. At least it had seemed pretty neat to me when I was a little kid.

I found a lot of dead stuff, too: a cat, two rats, a sparrow and this really obese possum. Poor bastard probably ate himself to death.

And then I was walking straight down the center of the barn and I turned my ankle and I acted real mature about it — I stood right there, pain traveling up my ankle and calf and thigh like thunderbolts — and I must have strung somewhere between fifty and sixty swearwords together. I didn’t know who to be pissed off at, but I was sure pissed off at somebody.

And then I tried to put pressure on my foot and ankle again and I realized that the reason I tripped was that below all the hay, there was a slight indentation in the ground.

I dropped to my knees and started digging up the hay like a dog searching for a lost bone.

I dug up hay and then I dug up earth with the help of the rake tines and then I felt a piece of cold unyielding wood below the level of dirt.

Among all the long-deserted gardening tools, I found a shovel and I went right to work. I was so excited I forgot all about my ankle.

I dug for about ten minutes. The hole grew wide, wide enough that I could reach down and feel the shape of a wooden box.

I set the shovel down. I started to bend over to raise the box from the hole when Barney said, “Tom.”

I turned around.

Barney stood in the door of the barn.

“What’re you doing in here?” I said.

And then a second silhouette stepped up behind Barney. “He didn’t have any choice. Neither of you little girls have any choice now.”

“Aw, shit,” I said. “Aw, shit.”

“Get in there,” Cushing said to Barney and pushed him into the barn.

“Michaelson cruised by and saw me, I guess. He musta gone and got Cushing,” Barney said.

The three of us stood around the hole in the middle of the barn. Wind slammed the hay doors against the barn.

Cushing stepped into the light, such as it was, the flashlight lying on its side on the ground. He wore a nice new overcoat. He always looked spiffy. He also had a gun in his gloved hand.

“Get that box up from there,” he said. “And hurry up.”

“Why?”

He kicked me. There was no warning, there was no threat. He just kicked me. Right in the mouth, and so hard that my mouth filled up immediately with hot, thick blood.