Ed Gorman - Bad Moon Rising

While she was gone I eased myself off the examination table and tested my legs. Shaky, but not as bad as Alan predicted. I walked over to the sink. I moved slowly, carefully. There was a moment when my left leg lurched wildly. I stood absolutely still, waiting for the shock of the lurch to recede. Then I started walking again, much more slowly this time.

I made it to the sink and back before Wendy returned.

“Good boy,” she said. “I’m sure you were walking around while I was gone but I appreciate you pretending you didn’t.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

I didn’t argue.

At Wendy’s I lay on the couch watching a rerun of I Love Lucy while Wendy worked in the kitchen. My impression was that I dozed off for a few minutes. But when I woke up to the aromas of good food, Wendy informed me that I’d been out for nearly forty-five minutes and that she hadn’t started breakfast until she heard me stirring.

“I thought you might like this. Scrambled eggs, French toast, bacon, orange juice.”

“God, thank you, I’m starved.”

“Sit up then, we’ll go out to the breakfast nook. I wanted to entice you with this food in case you tried to tell me you weren’t hungry.”

“Thank you very much, Wendy.”

“How’s your head?” she asked as she helped me up off the couch.

“Tolerable.”

“How about the stitches?”

“Sting a little.”

“I’ll run some warm water on a washrag and hold it against your wound while you eat.” She kissed me on the cheek. “So eat.”

I ate. A window in her breakfast nook allowed me to glance outside at a backyard filled with the green, green grass and the blue and red and yellow of various birds that were almost, but not quite, as beautiful as those in Disney animation. Wendy held the washrag against the back of my head for nearly fifteen minutes. She did this while sitting in a chair and drinking coffee and smoking Winstons. “Lady Madonna” played low on the radio.

“Do you remember me helping you to bed?”

“Vaguely. I was exhausted. And maybe I just didn’t want to think about everything that had happened so I blacked out.”

“Survival tactic.”

“That sounds like something your shrink would say.”

“He talks like that.”

“You sure he’s not trying to get you into the sack?”

“That was the last one. That’s why I got this new one. And this new one looks very tame. He wears Hush Puppies. I’m pretty sure if you wear Hush Puppies you’re faithful to your wife.”

I hate laughing with my mouth full.

Then she said: “It’s in the paper. They make you sound like a hero. How you suspected there was something wrong about that trailer and how you went to arrest Cameron and how his sister knocked you out.”

There was a reason for the favorable treatment. A distant cousin of mine was now the editor. If Cliffie could rely on kin, why shouldn’t I? But Wendy was only repeating what my mother, my friend and landlady Mrs. Goldman, and Kenny had told me earlier this morning when they’d called to see how I was doing.

“Well, we’ll see how it plays with the people. Cliffie will say I got beaten up by a girl.”

“Did I ever tell you that Cliffie groped me once?”

I had to speak around a large bite of French toast. “Cliffie did?”

“One of those Christmas dances for charity. Several years ago. Cliffie’d had plenty of eggnog. He grabbed me and dragged me to the dance floor. I swear that guy has six hands. Just when I was brushing his hand off my bottom he started dry-humping me. He even started kissing my neck. I was worn out after one dance. And I knew he remembered because every time he’d see me afterward he’d look away. This went on for a long time. Now he’s back to ogling me. So don’t worry about what Cliffie thinks. He’s an idiot.”

The kitchen phone was a bright yellow. It was affixed to the wall next to the counter space in the kitchen and its ring complemented the color. It trilled yellow. Honest.

I enjoyed watching her walk to the phone in her red shorts and loose white blouse. A comely woman. When we were apart I could actually feel her sleep warmth. I considered that a very good sign.

“Hello.” Then: “He’s right here.”

She held the phone out to me and when I took it she was nice enough to lean into me and kiss me on the cheek again.

“Are you all right? I was so scared reading about you. I’ve said a lot of prayers already. Oh-sorry. Good morning, Mr. C. I should have said that first I guess.”

My secretary, Jamie, has come a long way. She still can’t type but at least she catches about half her mistakes and retypes them over Wite-Out. The problem here being that she’s a bit sloppy with the white stuff so that it tends to run down the page and smear some of the words below. But the fault is mine. I was forced to take her in trade from her father who couldn’t pay the bill he owed me for representing him in court. She’s cute and sexy and as good-hearted as Bambi. Despite my attempts to explain why Turk, the lazy, shallow, and self-absorbed love of her life, was bad for her, she went back to him after a long break-up Wendy and I had helped along. Turk had apparently interpreted their wedding vows to include his right to hit his wife, which he’d done on at least one occasion.

“Good morning, Jamie.”

“I really like Wendy, Mr. C. You two should get hitched.”

The “Mr. C” owes to the fact that the people on Perry Como’s TV show called him “Mr. C.” I know-my name doesn’t begin with C. But as Jamie explained, “There’s a C in the second and third letters.”

“We’re working on that, Jamie. What’s going on?”

“The police station called and they said that Sarah Powers wants you for her attorney.”

Days that began with surprises were not my favorite. Somehow the surprises were always bad. “All right. I’ll stop there before I come in this morning.”

“Oops. There’s the other line, Mr. C.”

I finished my eggs and a fresh cup of coffee while telling Wendy about Sarah Powers.

“Be careful she doesn’t still have that steel rod. You sure you want to help her?”

“No.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because there’s nobody else who’ll sign on. And she definitely needs help.”

“You have a lot of other things to do.”

“I just hate to see her in jail. She’s sort of a sad case. In her mind she was just trying to help her brother.”

“Why is she a sad case?”

“The ugly girl. The fat girl. The boyish girl. Easy to imagine how the other kids treated her growing up. She and Cameron lost their parents when they were still kids. She was defending the only real friend she’s ever had.”

“I hate to remind you, Sam, but you’re still wincing from your headache because of her.”

“Maybe I’m doing it just to piss off Reverend Cartwright.”

She poked me on the shoulder. “Now there’s a reason I can understand, Sam.”

“Hippies,” Cliffie Sykes said. “I had my way we’d deport their asses.”

“Sounds reasonable to me.”

The police station was relatively new, thanks to a matching grant from Sykes Foundation. Old man Sykes even sprang for some new Western-style uniforms. Now all the officers dressed like Cliffie, military tans and campaign hats. He had the usual state-celeb political black-and-whites framed on the wall along with a melancholy painting of Jesus.

Behind him, the centerpiece of the office-ruling over all four dark green filing cabinets, the desk, the three-button phone, and the family portrait-was an outsized framed photo of John Wayne all dressed up as a marine in his laughable propaganda movie The Green Berets. I preferred looking at the family portrait. Cliffie’s youngest daughter suffered from spina bifida. When you saw how gentle and loving Cliffie was with her, you couldn’t quite hate him for the bumbling, bigoted fool he was. You could dislike him but not hate him, though I was in a pissy enough mood to give him grief. While I didn’t have a steady headache, I did have attacks of sharp pain that forced me to close my eyes and grit my teeth. “You like ’em, don’t you? You and friend Kenny, you guys were beatniks and now you’re hippies.” I was here to see Sarah Powers, but as Potter had told me last night, I needed to see Cliffie first-the mandatory endurance contest I always had to survive.