Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

Jordan didn’t stir. Chase reached out with his foot and gave him a light kick. Still nothing. It was clear that he had taken some of the sleep meds. The guy can’t get to sleep one night and he thinks he’s an insomniac, Chase thought. Fuck it. I’ll walk to town.

He figured it would take him no more than an hour to reach the town if they were able to drive it in ten minutes. There was no sign of the horses from the night before. He tried to identify the exact spot where they had their “equine encounter,” as Jordan had later called it, but it could have been just about anywhere along the road. There were hoofprints in the dirt, some mounds of droppings as well, alive with beetles. Were they left by cattle or horses? Chase couldn’t tell.

Soon he came upon a barbed wire fence that marked the edge of the property. It ran along the highway forever in both directions. He watched a shrike impale a grasshopper on one of the barbs, then crossed over the cattle grid where the paved road began. It was hot and he was tempted to take off his shirt, but remembered that a private part of him was jutting out from under his waistband. Don’t want to frighten the locals, he thought. Besides, there were swarms of small insects hovering over the roadside, and Chase assumed they were mosquitoes.

Chase wandered the town and found himself staring up at the stuffed bobcat. Yes, this was the place where they had seen the dirt-covered man, where the bartender had essentially kicked them out. Where that waitress, Macy, worked. He scanned around for the bartender, realizing he could have drifted back into the biker’s sights. He was tempted to turn around and walk out, but the thought of seeing Macy again drew him forward. He sat in a booth. There was another waitress serving sandwiches and beers to the diners. The bartender Rollins appeared and, though he took in the room with a sweeping glance, he didn’t seem to recognize Chase, or to have an issue with his being there. After all, it was Jordan who had offended him. That’s who he probably imprinted in his mind—Jordan, the kid with the fucked-up eye. The kid with the boner was okay.

Chase nursed along a plate of onion rings and some Diet Coke. The server, a heavy-set girl with tattoo sleeves, was diligent with the refills. She asked him where he was from. When he said California, she smiled. She had a sister out there, in Fresno. Chase said he had never been to Fresno and the woman found this hard to believe. “I suppose it’s a big state,” she said. “Not as big as Texas,” she added.

“No,” Chase had to agree. He shifted uncomfortably and adjusted himself under the table, where his erection was lancing at his belly.

He waited another hour, putting off ordering dinner. Then he saw Macy appear, tying on her waist apron. She was stony and serious as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She could definitely be Felicia’s older sister, he observed. It wasn’t just a beer-goggle impression. Thankfully, it seemed Macy was relieving the other waitress. They were conferring about the transition, looking over at each table as the tattooed girl explained the status of service. Chase looked away as their gaze arrived at his table. Then he watched the chunky woman go behind the bar, draw herself a beer, and press against Rollins. Rollins gave her a firm spank on the ass.

Macy eventually made her way to him. “How we doing here?” she asked, distractedly, he couldn’t help but note.

“I think I’m ready to order dinner,” he said. “What’s good?”

“I’ll bring a menu,” she said, then walked away. He watched her go.

Damn. How was he going to get past this strictly business bullshit? He thought about telling her how much she looked like his girlfriend—his former girlfriend. He could even show her a picture on his phone. But wasn’t that probably the lamest way ever to start a conversation? Maybe the California thing would work. Maybe she has a relative there. Or maybe she’s been there and loves it. Probably not where he’s from—what was there to love?—but the beach maybe, like San Diego or Malibu.

She came by and handed off the menu without a word.

He looked through it and settled on a cheeseburger, then closed it as a way of summoning her back. He was repositioning himself under the table when she suddenly appeared, pad at the ready for his order.

“I think I’ll have that cheeseburger,” he said.

“Fries?”

“I just had a bunch.”

“So no fries?”

“Hey, what was with the guy last night?” he suddenly blurted.

“Guy?”

“There was a dirty old guy behind the bar. I mean, he was covered with dirt.”

Her wince turned into a vague, wistful smile that quickly faded. He thought this was an unbelievably pretty thing to do. There was feeling behind his extruded physiology all of a sudden. “Yeah,” she said, “that was Wells. He owns this place and he hasn’t been feeling too good.”

“It was cool how you were taking care of him,” Chase said.

“Someone has to,” she said flatly. “So, no fries?”

Back to business. Fuck.

“Sure, bring fries,” Chase said, feeling defeated.

When she came back with his food, he was ready. “Any chance Wells is an insomniac?”

She looked at him and frowned before turning and walking off.

Two minutes later she was sitting across from him. “How did you know that?” she asked.

WHEN he told her it was an epidemic, that the story was about to break, she put a hand over her mouth, but he still caught the wobble of her chin. And above this mask, her eyes, stricken with an emerging awareness as pieces fell into place. It wasn’t that she was scared, or even that she fully believed him. But the possibility of it all was enough to send her inward. She said, “I thought I caused this. By pulling my hand away that time… it started happening around then.”

She wasn’t really talking to him, and when she realized the volume was on, she hit the mute button in her head. Her shift had ended and she had led him to a table in the kitchen area. Wells would be up soon, she explained, for food.

“Up? I thought you said he wasn’t sleeping.”

“Up from under,” she said.

When she offered no further explanation, Chase went on, parroting Jordan’s warnings, citing his obscure Internet evidence. He claimed he didn’t believe any of it at first. Sure, lots of people couldn’t sleep, but that was always the case. His own mother had trouble, sometimes waking at four in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep. That’s how she got so much reading done. Insomnia was a common topic all along. But stuff he had seen added up to something strange: his boss prancing around with a cello in the music store, his ass and balls exposed to the world. The weird behavior of the cop in Utah. His ex-girlfriend, she worked with sleep researchers at the university, and all communication had been cut off. What was that about?

“It’s like they discovered something, and someone, the government probably, quarantined them,” he said, sounding more convincing than he expected. Really, this thought hadn’t occurred to him until now, but maybe there was something to it. Would Felicia really just shut him out like that? Not on her own.

“Okay, you think that’s weird, come on,” she said. She led him to the venue’s small banquet room and showed him the excavation Wells had dug into the floor. The hole was like a grave, cut right into the middle of the plank wood floor. Macy explained that Wells used an old outhouse door on a pulley to winch up the mounds of dirt. He carted it outside and spread it under the pines at the far edge of the parking lot. “He claims he sees a light down there,” Macy said. “He won’t stop tunneling toward it.”