Эд Горман - Moonchasers and Other Stories

“—broke his leg,” Barney said.

Barney could sometimes be real dumb. My dad Clarence came into Hamblin’s at least once a day. And when he wasn’t sporting a broken leg—

“At least we think it’s broken,” I said. “You never can tell with a broken leg. One minute it’s broken and the next it’s—”

“And the next it’s what?” Hamblin said. “Huh?” Barney said.

By now Hamblin was watching us very carefully. “You’re up to something, aren’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Your pop don’t have a broken leg any more than I do, does he?”

“Huh?”

“I ain’t talkin’ to you, Barney. I’m talkin’ to Tom.”

“No, sir,” I said, “he doesn’t have a broken leg. We’re just getting this stuff so we can learn first aid.”

“You two troublemakers learn first aid? For what? So you can patch up all the people you play jokes on?”

“We don’t do that anymore, Mr. Hamblin.”

“No, sir, we don’t,” Barney said.

“We want to join the Civil Air Patrol and one of the requirements is that you learn first aid.”

“Civil Air Patrol, huh?”

“Yessir,” I said. Actually, I had a cousin over in Cedar Rapids who was in the Civil Air Patrol, and he got up before dawn three mornings a week and went out to this little office on top of the broadcast booth at the football stadium and scanned the sky with his binoculars. He was supposed to be looking for Russian bombers that had somehow gotten through our radar but what he mostly saw was UFOs. According to him there were a lot more UFOs than most people realized.

“I’m going to give you boys this stuff but if I find out that you pulled any practical jokes on anybody tonight—”

“We don’t do stuff like that anymore,” I said. “We’re in high school now.”

We ordered six more items, all medical-type stuff, and Hamblin slammed each one down as he set it on the glass top of the display case.

He put it all in a paper bag and then without thinking I opened my fist, the one I had all the new green money inside of, and then the money all fluttered to the ground.

“God!” Barney said. And we were both on the floor picking it up.

I kept looking up at Hamblin. He kept staring at all the fifties and twenties in disbelief.

“Where’d you boys get money like that?”

“Huh?” Barney said.

“Savings,” I said. “I’ve been saving my Christmas money for the past five years and here it is.”

Which he didn’t believe at all, of course. Not at all.

I took a twenty and paid him but he took it without looking at it, his eyes still fixed on all the other bills fanned out in my hand.

I stuffed the bills in my pocket and watched Hamblin go down to the cash register and punch the amounts up. The register bell dinged when the cash drawer opened. Barney started to say something but I shook my head.

Hamblin came back with my change, counted it out and handed over the bag.

“Your pop at home, Tom?”

“Yes, sir.”

And that was all he said. But of course he didn’t have to say any more at all.

I picked up the bag and Barney and I walked out.

Barney said, “Old man Hamblin’s gonna call Clarence.”

“I know.”

“And Clarence is gonna have a lot of questions for you when you get home tonight.”

“I know.”

“And then the cops are gonna find out about Roy.”

“I know.”

“Sonofabitch,” Barney said, “I don’t want to see the cops get Roy, do you?”

“I sure don’t,” I said.

We went inside Henry’s Hawkeye Supermarket and did the grocery shopping fast, getting stuff Roy could eat without cooking, cold cuts and Roman Meal bread and Hostess cupcakes and freezing Pepsis from the cooler and then Barney said, “You go ask the checkout girl to help you find something.”

“Huh?” I said, sounding just like Barney.

“Go on.”

So I did. She was the only employee I could see anywhere in the store. She helped me find paper lunch sacks, which I made a big fuss about needing desperately. I kept wondering what Barney was doing.

Then he was back and said, “Well, I’d better be going, Tom. George wants me home early tonight.”

So we all went up to the lanes and she checked us out and Barney kept giving me this look I’d never seen before and without knowing quite why, I knew I wanted to get the hell out of there and fast.

On the street, Barney said, “I got ’em.”

“Got what?”

“Cigarettes. Three packs. Chesterfields. I couldn’t reach anything else. That’s why I had you distract her.”

There’s this older kid, Lem, who usually buys cigarettes for Barney and me. He’s real poor and sort of ugly and everybody laughs at him but he’s actually a good guy and he has a six-year run of Amazing Stories and we pay him a dime every time he buys us a pack. But we didn’t have time for Lem tonight.

We walked fast going back to the warehouse. And we walked a little scared.

The warehouse was just as dark as we’d left it. We climbed in through the window and went over to the closet. “Roy, Roy, we’re back.”

The door was still open but there was no answer from the darkness inside. No flashlight clicked on, and there wasn’t any noise, either, that cramped pained noise Roy made every time he breathed.

“Roy?” Barney said.

No answer.

“Here,” I said, handing Barney the sack of groceries.

“What’re you gonna do?”

“Go in there. See what’s wrong.”

We both stared at the dark, dark closet.

I took two, three steps into the closet. I couldn’t see anything.

The dust made me sneeze. What I didn’t need now was an allergy attack.

And then I tripped over something and fell forward, putting my hands up flat against the back wall.

I stood there panting, sweating.

And then I heard him. It was real faint but I knew right away it was him because of the labored, reedy sound of his breathing.

“You OK?” Barney said.

“Get in here,” I said.

By the time Barney made it into the closet, I was on the floor picking up the flashlight and getting it clicked on and shining the beam in Roy’s face.

If he hadn’t been breathing, I would have thought he was dead. One afternoon a few years back Barney and I snuck into the back of the Devlin Mortuary and peeked at two corpses old man Devlin had laid out on gurneys. It was pretty gross, the pasty fish-belly color of the flesh, that is, and the way they didn’t move at all. But then I guess when you think about it, that’s what being dead means, that you don’t move. Never again.

“Hold this,” I said to Barney and gave him the flashlight.

He kept the beam on Roy. I grabbed one of the Pepsis and got it open and put the bottle to Roy’s lips and forced a little into his mouth.

It took him maybe a full minute but his eyes finally came open. And then it was maybe another twenty seconds before he showed any signs of recognizing us. His wound was starting to take its toll. He looked real pale and there was a kind of crust on his lips and his sweat was cold-looking and greasy and, to be honest, he kind of smelled pretty bad. That’s one thing movies can’t give you — smell. When John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd and Al Capone die up there on the screen, the audience doesn’t have any idea of how bad they smell.

“Hey, slugger,” Roy said to me.

“We got your stuff,” Barney said.

Roy raised his eyes to Barney. Even that seemed to take a lot of effort. “Thanks, kid.”

So we fed him. Barney propped the light up on top of the money sack and sat on one side of Roy and I sat on the other. We put the grocery sack between us and took turns feeding him, the way we once fed a hawk. We were out in the woods one bright fall morning and we heard this big booming gun go off and it was this hunter of course and then we heard something fall into the bushes beside us and it was this hawk. He was all covered with blood and his dark eyes were frantic and wild and we were scared for him and scared for us because we didn’t know what to do. And so we just grabbed all these colorful autumn leaves and made him this little bed and he just sat there staring up at us and we tried feeding him grass and we tried feeding him leaves and Barney even dug up some night crawlers with his fingers but the hawk wouldn’t eat any of them and so all we could do was pet him and say soft little things to him like the soft little things you say to sick kitties and we knew he was dying and he knew he was dying and then he started twitching and shuddering and making these tiny scared noises and so Barney picked him up and put him in his lap, not caring about the blood or anything, and sort of started rocking him, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth till I had to say, very softly, “Barney, I think he’s dead” and Barney looked down at the unmoving bird and said, “You’re a fucking liar, Tom, he isn’t dead!” but he was dead, of course, the poor bastard, and so I took him from Barney’s hands, lifted him real gentle, and all the time I did Barney just kept screaming at me “You’re a fucking liar, Tom! That’s what your fucking problem is, buddy-boy! You’re a fucking liar!” And I took the hawk down to the river bank where the earth was softer and I scooped out this grave with my hands and I put him in it and even all the way down to the blue run of river, even above the jays and the owls and the ravens, I could hear Barney crying.