Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

Jordan was lying on his back, forearm over his face to block out the light. “Let’s go into town around dinnertime,” he said.

“How far is it?”

“Like ten minutes, tops.”

“Cool.”

Chase wondered when Jordan would tell him how things had gone with the cleaning girl in Idaho Falls. He had not volunteered a report, so Chase assumed it went badly. However it went, it took all night to get there. Jordan had returned from their ice cream run in the morning, ready to resume the drive north.

Chase tried to nap, since it seemed that’s what they were doing, but the sitting in the car for nine hours had made him restless. He rose and announced that he was going to check out the creek. “Don’t fall in,” Jordan said from under his arm.

THE water rushed past his feet, causing reeds to bow and tremble. The rumbling hiss and the churn of bubbles suggested surprising force. It was a narrow creek and the opposite bank, ornamented with smooth stones and high grass, looked landscaped to Chase. He crouched and reached out to the water, sinking his fingers into the effervescent wash. It was icy cold. Actually, it seemed colder than ice. Was that possible? The notion to drink the water passed through his fingers and up his arm into his head.

Yeah, but not just a drink.

He reached into his pocket and drew out one of the pills. Shaped like a dull diamond, colored a dull blue. He placed it on his tongue and reached down to scoop up a gulp of creek. He had taken a pill the night before and nothing had happened. Maybe he just needed more. Maybe the stuff just needed to work its way into his system. He drank from his hand and tipped his head back. The chill ran through him as the pill tumbled down. He chased it with another icy swallow.

“I wouldn’t drink this water.”

It was Jordan, behind him. He looked up from his crouch, squinting. Jordan stood between him and the sun. How long had he been there?

“I thought you said you drank right out of the streams? You and your dad.”

“Yeah, from those lakes in the mountains, where no one goes. But down here you have cows shitting and pissing in this water. Or worse, lying dead in it.”

“Oh,” Chase said. He looked into the water, as if trying to spot foul microbes rushing by. He didn’t know much about how this place worked. Was he already feeling ill? He focused on his stomach, his hand resting on it, trying to sense if any trouble was already brewing.

Jordan came forward, stood next to him in silence. He was quiet for too long.

“Once,” he finally said, “when we were up there, I jumped over a stream like this and my foot hit something hard in the grass. I looked and it was a huge bone, half sunk in the mud. I pulled it out. It was like holding a dumbbell. I thought it was something prehistoric. It was mossy and stained brown and yellow. My dad was still on the other side of the creek, talking to our guide, so I held it up. I thought he would be interested in it because that’s exactly the kind of shit he loves, but he just kind of squinted and went back to talking. I was like, Okay, fucking whatever, and I tossed it in the water. Then, he finally finishes his conversation and jumps across and he’s all, Where is it? Where’s what? The bone? He goes, Was that a bone? When I said I threw it in the water, I could tell he was disappointed. I mean, he’s looking for it down in the water. So, I just jump right in thinking I would find it. Right into the freezing water! As soon as I hit it, I can’t breathe. It literally takes my breath away. Next thing I know the guide has pulled me out and he’s telling me to get out of the wet clothes. He starts building a fire on the spot while my dad is just yelling, Where’s your goddamn head?”

Chase didn’t know what to say. He sensed that this was a meaningful disclosure, but he didn’t know what it meant, other than the fact that Jordan’s dad sounded like a real asshole. It was hard to imagine Jordan being so interested in pleasing his father, or anyone. He hated his mother especially. “How old were you?” Chase asked.

“I must have been about eleven.”

Chase did the math. That would be two years before he lost his eye, maybe a year before his dad was killed. Hit by a car while biking to work. “Fuck” was all he could think to say. He tried to put some feeling into it, but the word offered a short runway for empathy.

“Yeah,” Jordan said.

“I wonder if it’s still there.”

“The bone?”

“Yeah.”

They both looked down at the water rushing by, as if this was the very stream from Jordan’s story. Or maybe as if the bone could have traveled through the network of snowmelt rivulets, urged along by the insistent current and gravity, to this very spot.

“I doubt it,” Jordan said. “I’m not even sure if all that happened. I mean, I remember it, but what am I remembering?”

THE town’s main drag looked like the set for a classic Western, with its raised boardwalk and hitching posts, windows framed by shutters that would surely be swung shut during gunfights in the narrow street. Chase even speculated that maybe the over-familiar structures were just flat movie set façades, supported from behind with long diagonal posts of local lumber. They ventured into many saloons to test their authenticity. Sure enough, there was floor space, tables ringed with diners, bars lined with locals.

Chase was shy about pushing through and ordering. They were both underage in California and they had no idea what the drinking age was here. Apparently they exceeded it, at least in appearance, because they were never carded. The beer was unbelievably cheap, too. And people were friendly, asking them what brought them to town and looking very impressed when they said they were from California. There were many offers to point out the best places to fish, or buy bait, or hike and camp. Chase’s initial feelings of unease quickly dissipated. He had expected they would be eyed with suspicion and shunned as outsiders. He had expected cowboy hostility. But these people were just people, like the people at home.

Still, Jordan was watching them closely, for reasons different from Chase’s wariness. “Some of these people aren’t sleeping,” he said, eyes scanning the room as he drained a mug.

“Just about all of them look like they’re awake to me,” Chase said.

“You know what I mean.”

Chase studied the scene with insomnia in mind. There were indeed tired locals nursing drinks at the bar. The workday had exacted a visible toll. They slumped over their beers, glancing at the small TV in the corner. Brighter-eyed tourists were clustered around tables, flaunting their vacation energy with bursts of laughter and fevered backslapping. Chase’s eyes settled on a stuffed bobcat that was mounted over the bar. The fur looked weathered, bordering on mangy, and there was something unnatural about the pose. Shoulders too stiff. Legs too woodenly arranged. Only the eyes, which gleamed with a convincing wetness, seemed to hint at a life once lived. They stared out over the scene, unblinking. What sights had they witnessed?

Jordan gave Chase a nudge. He nodded toward an elderly man who had appeared behind the bar, relieving the burly biker who had served them. His eyes were not unlike those glued in the head of the stuffed wildcat—glassy, staring into nowhere. He was remarkably filthy. His hands and thin arms were mapped with grime, and a black crescent sat under each yellow fingernail. There was dirt on his face and in his woolly, graying beard, actual grains of dark soil dropping from it when he turned. His hollow cheeks and brow appeared to be stained by dirt-colored sweat, giving his flesh the finish of a church pew. Little streams of dirt trickled from the creases in his clothing. There was a tiny mound on his right shoulder, as if it had been gently troweled there. He smelled like freshly exposed earth and moved stiffly, as though maybe he too was stuffed, only with soil instead of sawdust.