James Sallis - Moth

Here’s what I think in higher flights of fancy. Once there existed beings, a race, a species (call it what you will) who truly belonged to this world. Then at some point, for whatever reason, they moved on, and we moved into their places. We go on trying to occupy those places, day after endless day. But we’ll always remain strangers here, all of us. And for all our efforts, whatever dissimulations we attempt, we’ll never quite fit.

Lights came up behind me not too far outside Greenville — for all I know, the two young men who’d been enjoying their roast beef specials at The Finer Diner.

They, the lights, winked into being far back in my mirror, pinned in the distance at first, believably neons or traffic lights, or one of those blinking roadside barriers. But then they rushed in to close the gap, like something falling out of the sky, and suddenly were there behind me, filling mirror and road.

I pulled over and watched the one in shotgun position climb out and make his careful, by-the-book way toward me. Once years ago I’d made the mistake of stepping out of my car to meet a state policeman halfway and found myself suddenly face-down on the asphalt shoulder with a knee in my back. So now I sat very still, not even reaching for my wallet, watching him come toward me in the rearview, walk out of it, reappear in the wing mirror, then at the window.

He had to be midtwenties at least but looked all of sixteen, with a close-trimmed mustache, discount-store mirror shades, black goat-ropers. Coming abreast and bending down, he removed the glasses in a quick left-to-right sweep, releasing startling green eyes.

“License and registration, sir? Proof of insurance?”

I probably imagined the slight pause and emphasis on sir.

I reached slowly into the glove compartment for the car’s papers, handed him those (in a leatherette wallet) along with my license and rental agreement. He studied them all carefully, looking from the picture on my license up to me and down again. Walked behind the car to check plates against the numbers listed.

“Would you excuse me for a moment, Mr. Griffin?”

He went back to the squad and passed documents across the sill. Waited. Exchanged a few words, straightened, came back toward me: rearview, side mirror, window.

“We apologize for holding you up, sir. You know a Lieutenant Walsh? NOPD?”

I nodded.

“He says thanks. Called headquarters here and asked us to stop you and tell you that. Said you’d be coming through in a Sears rental, gave us the plate number. Said just to tell you thanks, he wouldn’t forget it-you’d know what he meant.”

I smiled. Years ago when things were at their worst, Don was the one who stuck by me. First he, then Vicky, had made it possible for me to go on, helped me find long-lost Lew in brambles of remorse and inaction.

And Verne. How much of what I’ve become owes to Verne? I was never able to tell her what she meant to me; never really knew, until it was too late. And yet, somehow in all those years we circled and closed on one another like binary stars, all those departures and partial returns, somehow, in some indefinable manner, we had held one another up, had been able to climb together (even when apart) out of the wastes of our pasts.

How could I not have known that?

“Mr. Griffin?”

“Sorry. A sudden attack of memory.”

“Right.” He looked at me curiously. “Lieutenant Walsh also said we were to tell you to call if you need him. For anything, he said-anything at all.”

I nodded, thanked him again.

“Drive safely, Mr. Griffin.”

He tipped a brief salute against his hat brim and headed back to his squad.

An hour and spare change later I stood in my newly rented cabin at the Magnolia Branch Motel drinking the cream of a newly cracked fifth of Teacher’s from one of those squat tumblers you never see anywhere else. I’d even had to unwrap the glass, like a Christmas gift, from crinkly, twisted paper. There was a strip of paper across the toilet seat. Rubber flower appliques on the floor of the tub. The bed was equipped with Magic Fingers, but two quarters didn’t persuade them to do anything.

Missagoula, Mississippi, was like a hundred other towns scattered through the South. The interstate zipped by only a few miles away but may as well have been in China. Remnants of an old town square hosted two gas stations (one of which doubled as post office), a cafe and steakhouse, a combined town library and meeting hall, a doughnut shop, a junk store or two, and an insurance office. For two or three blocks around that hub there were a scatter of paint and hardware stores, utility companies, used-clothing or — furniture shops. Then everything opened back up to farmland, trees and sky. I’d counted four churches, so far.

The Magnolia Branch squatted at the border of town and not-town. I can’t imagine who would ever stay there, in a town like that, but rates were cheap and rooms immaculate. They still weren’t very used to having blacks drop in, I’d guess. My request for a room occasioned considerable discussion behind the wall before the clerk (and owner, as I’d later discover) returned to push across a key and take two nights in advance. I asked about the possibility of getting a drink and was told I could get beer down at the cafe but if I wanted anything else I’d have to go over to Nathan’s.

Nathan’s turned out to be the gas station that didn’t double as post office. I dropped off luggage at cabin six, walked back into town and, saying I understood liquor was for sale here, got ushered into a shed out back of the station. Bottles were set out on cheap steel shelving before which the attendant hovered impatiently. I pointed to the Teacher’s and paid him. He followed me out, locked the door carefully behind us.

So now I stood there in my Magnolia Branch Motel doorway lapping at the first few most welcome sips of scotch and looking away (Dixieland!) into dusty Delta distances. News unrolled on the TV behind me. A coup attempt somewhere in Latin America, Philadelphia man’s citizen’s award revoked when it was discovered the recipient routinely molested the adolescents his Care House harbored, Housing Authority of New Orleans under investigation by feds.

Immediately upon returning to the motel I’d phoned Clare. Her recording had come on, and I’d started telling her where I was, how she could reach me. I’d got as far as the Missagoula part when she picked up.

“I’m here, Lew. Where did you say you were?”

I spelled it for her. I may even have got it right.

“And the girl’s supposed to be there?”

“She gave it as an address at the hospital, finally, Richard said. Claimed she lived here with a relative. I’m pulling out in just a minute to try and find the place.”

“Good luck, then.”

“Thanks. I’ll call again tomorrow.”

“Lucky, lucky me!”

I finished my drink, rinsed the glass and put it face-down on a towel. I’d just pulled the door shut behind me when the phone started ringing. I unlocked the door and went back in.

“Lew,” Clare said, “remember when you said that about another man?”

“What?”

“You were talking about my cat. Joking that there was a new man in my life.”

“Oh, right.”

“Well, there is.”

“There is what?”

“A new man in my life.”

I didn’t say anything, and after a while she said, “You there, Lew?”

“I’m here.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you. I kept waiting for the right time, and it never came. Then you left, and the more I thought about it, the worse I felt. After I hung up just now, I knew I had to tell you, that I couldn’t wait anymore.”