Tony Hillerman - Finding Moon

Moon stopped. He could never talk about this without feeling a rage building up inside him.

Julian sighed. “Tuberculosis,”, he said. “An old-fashioned disease. They could probably have saved him now. Since about 1960 they have a drug that works.”

“I guess he was a little too early or they were a little too stupid. The TB strewed up the vertebrae in the neck and upper back and caused abscesses and put pressure on the spinal column. We used to go visit him in the hospital, the three of us, and when Mother could finally bring him home he was paralyzed. Almost totally from the neck down. Just a little motion in one arm and hand.”

Moon inhaled a great breath and let it out. Father Julian sat motionless just down the pew, head slightly bent. Moon inhaled the smells of spring in the tropics, and of an old, old church, and sorted through the memories.

“It gave me a chance to understand what love is all about,” he said, and he described the way Victoria Mathias had cared for a husband who had become nothing more than a helpless talking head. How she kept the printing operation going to support them, working nights and Sundays on billing and the books, and, when she wasn’t working, being always with Martin. Taking him out to the park in his wheelchair, reading to him, bathing him. Cleaning him up before the doctor came, shaving him.

“She had to do absolutely everything. As if he were an infant.” Moon paused. He had come to the part he had never told to anyone except Halsey. Not even Ricky. Certainly not Ricky.

“You are describing perfect love,” Julian said. “Unselfish. And perfect tragedy.”

“And now the other half of the tragedy,” Moon said. “My father’s half.”

“Yes,” Julian said. “I was thinking about that.”

“He wanted to die. He wanted to set her free.”

“Yes. I would guess that. So would I.”

“I didn’t guess it. It didn’t even occur to me,” Moon said. “It got so I resented him. Ricky did too, probably. But we never talked about it. I’d think, Why don’t you just die? I’d wish it all the time. I’d even pray for it. Pray that when I woke up in the morning he’d be dead.”

“But you never said anything.”

“Of course not,” Moon said. “For God’s sake. No. It didn’t occur to me for a long time that my father was praying for it too.”

“But you figured it out.”

“I didn’t. I wasn’t that smart. Or that kind. I overheard them. Talking.”

Moon paused again. But he knew immediately he was going to tell it all. And he did. He’d come back from the shop early because the printing order he was supposed to wrap and deliver had been canceled. It was Saturday afternoon. Early summer. Ricky had left his bike beside the house, and he decided he’d put it in the garage. That meant a detour that took him across the grass right under the window where Martin Mathias spent his days. He’d heard his parents talking, and the anger in his father’s voice had stopped him. He’d never heard that tone before.

“I think, she’d been cleaning him up. After a bowel movement, probably. Doing one of those humiliating personal things. And something must have gone wrong and he was yelling at her. Or actually, I guess he was yelling at himself. He was calling her names. I remember he kept repeating ‘Stubborn as a damned mule.’ And he said he knew Mother wouldn’t put him out of his misery by killing him, easy as that would be. And he could understand that. He could understand the moral problem. But why wouldn’t she give him a divorce? Would that hurt her pride? Make her feel she’d been a failure? Or put him in a nursing home. Would the neighbors think that was selfish of her? If she didn’t want to have a life for herself, she should have one for Ricky and me. And then my mother said something too low for me to hear, and he said, ‘That’s not true. Dr. Morick is in love with you. He always has been. He could give you a decent life.’ And she said something like, ‘I’d be bored to death.’ And I didn’t hear any more of it.”

“You went away?” Julian asked.

“I went back to the shop and got the pistol my father had kept in a cabinet there. A little twenty-two-caliber revolver. I loaded it and put it in my pocket and went home again.”

“To kill your father?”

“When I had a chance. When my mother wasn’t there.”

Julian shifted in the pew, sighed. “The tragedy multiplies itself,” he said. “Love and pity can make a terrible blend if faith is left out of it.”

“Faith? Faith in what? Faith that God would mend a damaged spinal cord?”

“All right, then,” Julian said. “I hope you can tell me that, without faith, this story of yours had a happy ending. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“Not me,” Moon said, and laughed. “Not likely. Mother went back to the shop after dinner. It was my night to take care of Dad, so Ricky was off somewhere. I went in his room and he said something normal to me, like what was new down at the shop or something like that, and I told him I had overheard him yelling at Mother and I asked him if he really wanted to die, and he said-”

Moon stopped. He was having trouble with this. Julian sat motionless beside him, waiting. Moon cleared his throat.

“And he said he was terribly sorry I had heard that. That sometimes one just loses control and says things he regrets. And I said, But do you really want to die? Would you if you could, if no one would suffer for it, if you could just force yourself to stop breathing, for example? He didn’t answer that for a while. Just studied me. And then he said, Yes, he would. It would be better for him and for Victoria and for all of us. Then I showed him the pistol. I told him I would do it for him.”

Moon stopped again, remembering that moment as he had remembered it a thousand times, remembering fumbling the pistol out of his pocket, its oily smell, showing his father that it was loaded. And his father’s expression. Every time he remembered it, it seemed that when the surprise had gone away it had been replaced by a kind of longing. And then by pride. That’s what it looked like. But how could it have been?

“Tell me why you didn’t,” Julian said. “You were-what? Thirteen or fourteen? Not wise enough yet to see why you shouldn’t.”

“Thirteen by then,” Moon said. “Well, we talked about it, the pros and cons. He said it would be better if he did it himself. Asked me to put the pistol in the hand he could move a little. He could hold it down in his lap, but he couldn’t raise it up to his head. Then he said nobody would believe it anyway. How could I explain his getting the pistol? Too many people would know he couldn’t have shot himself. He told me to take the pistol, and I did, and he asked if there was still that box of rat poison on the high shelf down at the plant. I told him that Mother had said it was too dangerous to have around and got rid of it.

“He said then he guessed we’d have to wait a little while, but not long. Dr. Morick had said his liver was failing fast and he wouldn’t live long anyway. Victoria would not have to put up with him much longer. But if I killed him, I would be her burden for the rest of her life. Her heart would break for me.”

“Indeed,” Julian said, “it would have. Your father was a wise man. So you put away the pistol?”

“Mother came in while we were talking. I must have been terribly upset. I didn’t hear the car.”

“And she heard you?”

“I was still holding the pistol. Dad saw her standing there in the doorway. And he said, ‘ Victoria. Malcolm overheard me yelling at you this afternoon and has offered to solve our problem for us. I think I’ve persuaded him it would just make a bad situation worse.’”