Darrell Schweitzer - Full MoonCity

The thing came out of the darkness beside her, a moon-colored blur moving in swift smears across the night, across a lawn from shadow to shadow, and then suddenly right before her. Golden feral eyes met hers. She ought to have been terrified but it was as if she’d expected this, as if someone had told her it was coming. The rich, dark voice-real or imagined-said, “You’ve borrowed something of mine, I’m afraid, that you should not have.”

She thought of words to say but couldn’t find them before the eyes swelled like twin suns and drank her down.

“It was terrible,” said the branch manager. Iancu Svekis nodded.

“A tragedy, I’m sure,” he said.

“They could have killed them. You know, that’s what everybody’s scared will happen in a robbery. That one girl-the one they shot-she’s going to be okay.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“But you were there, right? I had to call Erica, because she’d put through your wire transfer and she knew what was going on with it-”

“Yes,” he said heavily, “I was there.”

“That thing in the bathroom-she said even the cops can’t figure it out. They think maybe it was a gang thing, but nobody saw any gang, did they?” Svekis said nothing, but she went right on. “Of course, finding the bodies in that car trunk along with the money-that’s got everyone thinking it’s a gang thing, too. It’s so weird .” When he only sighed, she seemed to understand that he didn’t want to talk about this any further.

“Anyway,” she said, and handed him back his passport, “everything’s fine, your money was transferred from overseas into your new account. Here’s the documentation and the number. You can draw on that at any of our branches anywhere from here to Boston. There’s a list of addresses in here, too. But you should get your ATM card in about ten days.”

“Thank you.” He took the envelope she held out and started to get up.

“I was wondering,” she said. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Yes?”

“Um, Erica wanted to know how you got your passport back. She said she was sure they scooped it up when they were cleaning out the tellers.”

He looked at her with some concern. “Oh, no,” he assured her. “They left it on her desk and I took it back when they weren’t watching.”

“Wow. That was pretty brave.”

“I did not, you know, think of it that way. Perhaps brave, perhaps foolish. But then, stealing is foolish.” He tucked the envelope into his jacket and reached out. “Thank you,” he repeated, and she shook his hand. No one was watching, and he only needed to hold on to her for a few moments.

He left her sitting, staring off into space. Someone would notice eventually and shake her back into the here and now, but she would remain vaguely confused as to what had occurred and to whom she’d been speaking just before she dozed off.

Svekis pushed open the door and walked out into the light.

Even once a month, Arceneaux hated driving his daughter Noelle’s car. There was no way to be comfortable: he was a big old man, and the stick-shift hatchback cramped his legs and elbows, playing Baptist hell with the bad knee. Garrigue was dozing peacefully beside him in the passenger seat, as he had done for the whole journey; but then, Garrigue always adapted more easily than he to changes in his circumstances. All these years up north in the city, Damballa, and I still don’t fit nowhere, never did.

Paved road giving way to gravel, pinging off the car’s undercarriage… then to a dirt track and the shaky wooden bridge across the stream; then to little more than untamed underbrush, springing back as he plowed through to the log cabin. Got to check them shutters-meant to do it last time. Damn raccoons been back. I can smell it.

Garrigue didn’t wake, even with all the jouncing and rattling, until Arceneaux cut the engine. Then his eyes came open immediately, and he turned his head and smiled like a sleepy baby. He was a few months the elder, but he had always looked distinctly younger, in spite of being white, which more often shows the wear. He said, “I was dreaming, me.”

Arceneaux grunted. “Same damn dream, I ain’t want to hear about it.”

“No, wasn’t that one. Was you and me really gone fishing, just like folks. You and me in the shade, couple of trotlines out, couple of Dixie beers, nice dream. A real dream.”

Arceneaux got out of the car and stood stretching himself, trying to forestall a back spasm. Garrigue joined him, still describing his dream in detail. Arceneaux had been taciturn almost from birth, while Garrigue, it was said in Joyelle Parish, bounced out of his mother chattering like a squirrel. Regarding the friendship-unusual, in those days, between a black Creole and a blanc- Arceneaux’s father had growled to Garrigue’s, “Mine cain’t talk, l’t’en cain’t shut up. Might do.”

And the closeness had lasted for very nearly seventy years (they quarreled mildly at times over the exact number), through schooling, work, marriages, family struggles, and even their final, grudging relocation. They had briefly considered sharing a place after Garrigue moved up north, but then agreed that each was too old and cranky, too stubbornly set in his ways, to risk the relationship over the window being open or shut at night. They met once a week, sometimes at Arceneaux’s apartment, but more usually at the home of Garrigue’s son Claude, where Garrigue lived; and they both fell asleep, each on his own side of the great park that divided the city, listening to the music of Clifton Chenier, Dennis McGee and Amédé Ardoin.

Garrigue glanced up at the darkening overcast sky. “Cut it close again, moon coming on so fast these nights. I keep telling you, Jean-Marc-”

Arceneaux was already limping away from the rear of the car, having opened the trunk and taken out most of the grocery bags. Still scolding him, Garrigue took the rest and followed, leaving one hand free to open the cabin door for Arceneaux and then switch on the single bare light in the room. It was right above the entrance, and the shadows, as though startled themselves to be suddenly awakened, danced briefly over the room when Garrigue stepped inside, swung the door to, and double-locked it behind them.

Arceneaux tipped the bags he carried, and let a dozen bloody steaks and roasts fall to the floor.

The single room was small but tidy, even homely, with two Indian-patterned rag rugs, two cane-bottomed rockers, and a card table with two folding chairs drawn up around it. There was a fireplace, and a refrigerator in one corner, but no beds or cots. The two windows were double-barred on the inside, and the shutters closing them were not wooden, but steel.

Another grocery bag held a bottle of Calvados, which Arceneaux set on the table, next to the two glasses, deck of cards, and cribbage board waiting there. In a curiously military fashion, they padlocked and dropbolted the door, carefully checked the security of the windows, and even blocked the fireplace with a heavy steel screen. Then, finally, they sat down at the table, and Arceneaux opened the Calvados and said, “Cut.”

Garrigue cut. Arceneaux dealt. Garrigue said, “My littlest grandbaby, Manette, she going to First Communion a week Saturday. You be there?” Arceneaux nodded wordlessly, jabbing pegs into the cribbage board. Garrigue started to say “She so excited, she been asking me, did I ever do First Communion, what did it feel like and all…” but then his words dissolved into a hoarse growl as he slipped from the chair. Garrigue was almost always the first; neither understood why.

Werewolves- loups-garoux in Louisiana-are notably bigger than ordinary wolves, running to larger skulls with bolder, more marked bones, deeper-set eyes, broader chests, and paws, front and rear, whose dew claw serves very nearly as an opposable thumb. Even so, for a small, chattery white man, Garrigue stood up as a huge wolf, black from nose to tail-tip, with eyes unchanged from his normal snow-gray, shocking in their humanity. He was at the food before Arceneaux’s front feet hit the floor, and there was the customary snarling between them as they snapped up the meat within minutes. The table went over, cards and brandy and all, and both of them hurled themselves at walls and barred windows until the entire cabin shook with their frenzied fury. The wolf that was Arceneaux stood on its hind legs and tried to reach the window latches with uncannily dextrous paws, while the wolf that was Garrigue broke a front claw tearing at the door. They never howled.