Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

Jordan mouthed, What the fuck?

They watched him attempt to open a bottle of Irish whiskey. His fingers smeared the neck of the bottle. Before he could manage the task, a woman rushed behind the bar and took the bottle from his hands. Chase had noted her earlier—a waitress, probably in her early thirties. Kind eyes, long black hair, maybe Indian. Beautiful, yes. Like Felicia ten years from now, maybe even prettier.

“Come on, Wells,” she said softly, pulling at the man’s arm. “Come have some food. Before it gets cold.”

She turned and yelled with surprising force across the room, “Rollins!”

Rollins was the biker bartender apparently, because the man emerged from the side door, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. He skulked back to his post behind the bar as she led Wells past him. “Just stepped out for a smoke,” he said.

“He can’t be behind the bar,” she told him.

“I know. I know.” He looked at the older man sorrowfully. “Go eat something, buddy. Got to keep wood in the stove.”

Chase and Jordan watched Wells being led away through the swinging door to the kitchen area. When Rollins approached to take their order, Jordan said, “What’s wrong with that guy?”

Rollins looked the two of them over. “Well,” he said, “I don’t see how it’s any of your goddamn business what’s wrong with him.”

“Hey, just asking,” Jordan said.

“Ask for a drink or move along.”

The bartender gave Jordan a long hard stare. Chase felt the danger of it, even though he was once removed from its focal point. Rollins was a large man with a shaved head and a red goatee. He wore a denim shirt with the sleeves cut off, weathered jeans, and dusty biker boots. His arms looked like what most people would call legs. They were blotchy with bad jailhouse tattoos.

“Maybe we should—” Chase began, but Jordan cut him off.

“Didn’t mean to be nosy,” Jordan said. “How about two more?”

Rollins scooped up two cold steins from under the bar and put them under the tap, eyeing them as the mugs filled. “Those are on me,” he said, setting them on the bar. “Drink them and go.”

They did as Rollins suggested, moving to another saloon only two doors down after chugging the beers. “Not the friendliest of dudes,” Jordan said of Rollins.

“No, it was a perfectly normal question,” Chase said. “I mean, that guy was fucking caked.”

“Looked like he’d been buried alive but fought his way out.”

“Maybe he has a garden and he’s way into it,” Chase suggested.

“Maybe he can’t sleep.”

“Here we go,” Chase said. He wanted to know what that had to do with a guy being covered with dirt.

Jordan thought about this.

“Fuck if I know,” he finally conceded with a shrug.

When the bars all closed and the town was shuttered for the night, they stumbled back to the car. They had some work to do. Their plan was to bury all the stolen pharmaceuticals in the old Coleman cooler under cover of night. But on the drive back to the campground, they missed the dark turnoff from the highway twice. They finally found the exit at the end of their headlights and started the bumpy journey down the rutted access road. They were passing through pastureland under a half moon when Jordan slammed on the brakes. Dust clouded the headlights and obscured the shapes of beasts in the road. Horses, eyes glowing in the headlights and looming in an illuminated aura of dust, stood with indifference in their path. They stared back at them in wonder. After a few minutes it became clear the horses had no intention of moving on and letting them pass.

“Maybe honk,” Chase suggested.

“I don’t want to start a stampede. Let’s just give them a minute.”

They sat looking at the horses. This was not something either of them had encountered before, but the scene, at least for Chase, read like a memory. The horses, sentinels along the road into the wild dark, their animal wisdom and ancient life force, humbling the two suburban boys. The bestial presence seemed to accelerate their return to sobriety as they waited. To Chase, they appeared larger than normal horses, but he wasn’t sure of horse sizes. Maybe they are a type of extra large horse? he wondered.

“They’re giant,” he said. “Aren’t they?”

Jordan said nothing. He settled back into the car seat as if he was prepared to wait out the vast span of night behind the wheel.

Maybe, Chase thought, they should go another way.

After a stretch of silence, Jordan said, “I’m thinking I should go back and get her. Just take her for her own good.”

Chase knew he was talking about the girl in Idaho Falls. Not his mother.

“Did you ask her to come with us?”

“She shouldn’t have to suffer.”

“You mean from insomnia.”

Jordan was silent. After a few minutes he got out of the car and staggered toward the horses. He stood among the animals, patting their flanks and urging them off the road. To Chase’s astonishment, the horses obliged. They shambled off, away from the headlight beams and joined the roadside shadows.

Later that night, Chase woke up to find Jordan standing in the tent. “I should never have touched them,” he said.

IN the morning, Chase found that the pills had finally worked. He had taken more throughout the night, in various restrooms of the many saloons they had visited. The tightness of the effect was actually somewhat painful. He squeezed himself and marveled at the hardness. Wow. He could rape a boulder with this thing. Maybe the thing would burst. It was like putting too much air in a tire. Would there be an explosion of blood?

Jordan was fully clothed, sprawled on top of the blankets that served as his bedroll. He was out cold after what was apparently a long night. Chase stood and carefully pulled on his pants, pinning the swelling under his waistband and pulling down his shirt. It was not very noticeable, but not at all comfortable. He left the tent and decided to check on their handiwork from last night. They had loaded the meds into a cooler and buried it in brush. They had covered it with dirt and loose branches. They had done this in the dark while drunk and, seeing it now, Chase had to shake his head at how conspicuous it looked. Couple of retards did this. He worked for a while at making it look more natural.

It occurred to him that he should take advantage of Jordan’s unconscious state, given his body’s reaction to the pills. He did not feel at all aroused, despite what his groin was telling him. Still, now that he knew it worked, no reason to lug this thing around all day. There was no way he was going to jack off with Jordan in the same tent, so he sat in the front seat of the car. There he unbuckled his pants and conjured up some memories of Felicia, using them as fodder for a fantasy that involved his triumphant return and her surprise at what he had brought for her. He imagined himself fucking her mercilessly. Yet he had trouble seeing Felicia’s face. This was not new. When he first fell in love with her, she became increasingly elusive in his waking fantasies, but more vivid in his dreams. His desperation to see her features somehow muddled the access and garbled the pictures. Even now, he was seeing the waitress—Macy, claimed her nametag—just as clearly as glimpses of Felicia. He focused on the older woman and quickly climaxed.

This did nothing to undo his engorgement.

CHASE decided to go into town. There was nothing to do at the campground. Besides, it might be nice to run into that Macy. He couldn’t find the car keys and figured they were in Jordan’s pockets. In the tent, he gave Jordan a nudge with his foot, but this failed to rouse him. Instead, he snorted and turned his face away. “Dude,” Chase called. “Where are the car keys?”