Эд Горман - Blood Moon

Bulbous body; boozy nose; three-piece suit.

The banker’s smile is joined by the priest’s smile and the country club lady’s smile. The banker and the country club lady, in fact, remotely resemble brother and sister. Same kind of middle-aged bodies; same kind of middle-aged do-gooder smiles. The priest is just plain worn out and keeps glancing at the wall clock. Probably time for him to get in his God-mobile and go out and save a few souls.

“Well, now,” the banker says, opening the manila folder particular to the case at hand.

“Yes,” says the country club lady, looking at her own manila folder, “well, now.”

Banker: Looks like you’ve been a good skate.

Him: Good skate?

Banker: Oh. Sorry (smiles). Guess that expression’s a little out of date. Looks like you’ve been a good prisoner, I mean. (But there is irritation in his eyes. He obviously doesn’t like to be challenged, even on this minor a thing.)

Lady: What’s that?

Him: This?

Lady: Yes.

Him: St. Christopher medal.

Lady: You’re Catholic, then?

Him: Yes, ma’am.

Priest: Do you feel that a belief in God gives you the power to change your life?

Him: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lady: I don’t find any prior skills listed here. You’re in the print shop now, correct?

Him: Yes, ma’am. And I really like it. My dad and mom, they really wanted me to make something of myself, and now maybe I am. (Just a hint of nice wet tears on his eyes.)

Banker: Is there any place you’d like to settle if you’re given a parole?

Him: A small town would be nice. Where people, you know, still believe things.

Lady: Things?

Him: Well, you know, where they still have the old values.

Priest: Jesus’ values.

Him: Yes, Father. Jesus’ values.

“So how’d it go?” Lumir of the acrid feet asks that night.

“Real good. Real good.”

“You do all the things you were supposed to?”

“I sat up straight. I didn’t say ain’t. I didn’t flirt with the woman. I got tears in my eyes when I mentioned my mom and dad. And they bought it.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. You shoulda seen them. They were impressed. Take my word for it.”

His parole is turned down.

In the earliest days of Iowa, back in the 1830s, most of the taverns doubled as stagecoach stops. In case you don’t think that traveling by stage, or stopping at such taverns, was dangerous, consider this tip from a brochure handed out to stagecoach passengers:

Don’t point out where murders have been committed, especially if there are any women passengers.

“Merle’s Rack ’n’ Snack” probably wasn’t as dangerous as one of those early stage stops but with half a dozen Harleys out front and the old-fashioned kind of country music blasting from the windows, I assumed that Merle’s probably had its share of nightly violence — you know, the standard romp ’n’ stomp that make bikers such delightful companions.

Which made the presence of the shiny new Lincoln in the parking lot all the more curious. A white Lincoln. Just like the pair the good Reverend Roberts had been sporting in his church driveway that day, and that the very pretty and very deeply disturbed Mindy had been washing and waxing that afternoon.

I went inside and soon enough learned what the “Rack ’n’ Snack” stood for.

“Rack,” which I should have figured out for myself, referred to three bumper-pool tables near the back. While “snack” referred to two (count ’em, two!) small and rather battered microwaves behind the bar. According to the handwritten menu leaning up against several boxes of shotgun shells, and two feet over from car air-fresheners with nude women on them — you know, the sort you hang down from your rearview mirror and which your teenagers would be proud to see you buy... according to the menu you could choose between a

BEER ‘N’ BRAT

BEER ‘N’ BURGER

BEER ‘N’ BUFFALO

I hadn’t ever had a buffalo burger and somehow I wasn’t inclined to try one here.

As I walked over to the bar, the twenty-or-so customers, mostly drunken men, got their first good look at me and I got my first good look at them. It was pretty obvious that they wouldn’t be inviting me to their birthday parties and I wouldn’t be inviting them to mine. The air was ripe with cigarette smoke and beer, just as the john would be ripe with piss and puke. Maybe they had one of those naked-lady deodorizing dealies hanging from the ceiling in there.

In the jukebox darkness, I nodded to the bartender, a guy with a rather theatrical eyepatch and a kind of swarthy, feral face. He wore a T-shirt with a Confederate flag on it and a sneer that was all the more impressive for the white regularity of his store-boughts. He looked pretty much like his friends, whom I saw in the lurid light of the jukebox, all long dirty hair and shirts with the sleeves torn off and even a few headbands and peace signs on the backs of leather vests. I’ve always found it odd that the lower-class men of my generation ended up appropriating all the things they once so despised about all the hippies. But these weren’t hippie faces, all spoiled middle-class piety and sanctimony over the so-called decadent establishment — no, these were sad hard-scrabble faces, faces you got growing up as one of a dozen kids who had to scratch for love and food and self-esteem the way you see chickens scratching for sustenance in barnyards. All those years of deprivation had made them dangerous, and you never knew when their sorrow was just going to overwhelm them and they’d take it out on you.

“Beer, please,” I said.

“We got lotsa beer, pal. What kind?”

“Budweiser,” I said. “Pal.”

While he opened one of the cooling drawers below the counter, I looked around, but there was no sign of Reverend Roberts.

He set my beer down, no glass. I had my dollar bill waiting on the sticky counter.

“The white Lincoln,” I said.

“What white Lincoln?”

“The one in your parking lot.”

We had to shout above Tanya Tucker.

“What about it?”

“Thought maybe I knew who owned it.”

“Who?”

“Reverend Roberts.”

He shook his head, grinned. “That guy would never come in here. Too good for this kind of place. But his old lady—” He grinned with those perfect teeth again. “Booth way in back, by that exit sign over there. She’s back there. That’s where she always sits.”

I walked back, all eyes on me, looked into the booth where a plump woman in a very tight red sweater designed to display her wares prominently sat sipping a drink. She had the sort of cute cheerleader face that not even years and weight could quite decimate, especially given the erotic quality of her full mouth. Her blonde hair was worn short, which was a mistake, and her eyes bore too much eyeliner.

“Mrs. Roberts?”

“Yes.”

“I wondered if I could talk to you.”

“Are you trying to pick me up?”

I smiled. “That would be my pleasure, but actually I want to talk business.”

She visibly winced. “That means my husband, the reverend.”

I nodded.

“Are you police?”

“No, but I’m an investigator.”

She smiled. She had a killer smile. “Why not? Maybe it could be fun.”

I sat down. “Like a fresh drink?”

“No, thanks. I went through two different detox programs in the last year, so I’m sticking to my own little kind of drinky-poos.” She hoisted her glass. “Wine coolers.”