Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

He stepped out of the truck, but paused, trying to think up a semiplausible excuse for his actions. Anything that could get him some real clothes. He could tell the guy that he had tried to pay but there was no one working the register. If the man demanded payment, he could leave a sheep as collateral, saying he had to drive back to town for his wallet. He hated the thought of losing a sheep, though. He wasn’t sure how many he had, but whatever the number, he did not want to see it diminished. Fortunately, the subject of his thievery never came up. As he approached, the man had other things he wanted to talk about, confirming Chase’s suspicions about his state of mind.

The man, his eyes heavily bagged and bleary, squinted up at Chase and said, “You can see from up here what they’re doing from being this high up when the clouds aren’t in the way. You can see all their business being conducted clear as day like it was. I watched them change the cards and I’m telling you they swapped those cards like nothing hard. They literally swapped the cards no ifs about it if you can believe that or buts.”

“I can believe it,” Chase said.

“Yessir! They switched the cards to God-knows-what and you might as well burn the black curtain!” He made the whooshing sound of something going up in flames. “No one ever’s going to pull that curtain closed with those cards switched.”

Chase had no idea what the man could mean. He studied him, trying to determine whether he was dangerous. Maybe he’d just push past him and go in the house, pick out something to wear. The man was probably in his late forties. He wore a dirty baseball cap, and his hair, or what could be seen of it hanging out the back, was going gray. He had a big cop mustache that hung over his upper lip, and small icy blue eyes. Those eyes were almost smiling when he said, “So I shut everything down on my own with my own hands one by one because I’m not letting them do it! I’m going to do it myself goddammit and I think it went okay I think it went okay.”

He stood. “Look for yourself and you tell me.”

The man beckoned Chase up the steps to the threshold of the house, where he held open the door. Chase obliged. The rubber soles of the built-in boots softened his footsteps on the hollow porch. Inside the dim space, Chase could see three children and a woman lying on the floor, faceup with their hands at their sides. Their eyes were closed and they had been arranged in order of size: a toddler, then a boy, an older girl, and a woman. Sleeping? He felt a rush of envy. But as his eyes adjusted, he saw that the only movement in the room was that of some flies, flitting about the blank faces, landing on alabaster eyelids. Chase went cold.

“It went okay don’t you think seeing them there that it wasn’t too bad?” the man was asking.

“Wait here,” was all Chase could think to say. He backed away, then trotted down the stairs. He said, “Be right back.” But it was more of a whisper drowned out by the creaking of the rubber waders as he made for the truck.

HE drove with the fear swelling up inside him. It was in his stomach like a mass of cold dough, expanding into a tight void. It generated a disorienting feeling like standing on a ledge, going woozy at being so close to the drop. The guy’s face, his eyes—those small squinting eyes. Something animal was there, and a human thing missing, seeped out, so dumb to the horror. Did he strangle them one by one? A sleepless killer with animal eyes. Chase’s hands shook, so he gripped the wheel and pumped the gas, then the brakes, then the gas again, taking the tight curves through the mountains. The sheep groaned as they slid around, knees locked, like end tables. The shifting weight felt like gusts of wind hitting the truck and Chase wished they didn’t insist on standing.

“Get down!” he yelled out at them though the rear window.

Or was he yelling at himself, that part of himself that still stood? How could he still be aroused after what he had just seen? His state was some kind of punishment, he was now sure. Payback for some ill way of looking at the world. Because that’s the stem, the fuse to a lifelong implosion, the hook for dreams and the on-switch of death. And now there it was, the thing normally most hidden, out in front of him and insisting with its posture, its wicklike attitude, on being lit.

HE began sobbing but he wasn’t sure what, exactly, was bringing forth the tears. It wasn’t the children he had seen, so still and waxy like dolls. Nor was it pity for the man who had, because of some sleepless delusions, somehow executed each of them. Fuck, he just needed to see Felicia.

HE encountered few vehicles on the road, even after completing the descent and moving through more populated areas. As they passed, Chase tried to read the faces of the drivers for insomnia. They blurred by too quickly to tell. There were several cars abandoned at the side of the road. He overtook an RV that was weaving and saw an elderly woman at the wheel, an old six-shooter on the dash. The road took him through a few towns, which were alive with people, some of them staggering on the streets. Chase couldn’t tell if they were drunk or sleepless, but after the incident at the Top of the World, he was too afraid to stop and investigate. The occasionally shattered window of a storefront or streets clogged with haphazardly parked cars seemed to indicate that the epidemic was in play. There was no sign of authorities, not even a ranger.

As evening approached, he could no longer ignore the fact that he had to piss—a basic function complicated by his condition. He looked for a place to leave the highway, eventually deciding on a dirt road that ran alongside a creek through wooded terrain. The sheep, which had quieted as the highway straightened but were now jostled by the rutted road, resumed voicing their annoyance with congested bleating. “Yeah, yeah,” Chase said. “We all need a break.”

The place he chose to park was a grassy opening along the bank, a gap in the trees that lined the creek. He pulled to a stop and walked into the water as the sun set, tossing his shirt to the bank and peeling down the waders. They served their true purpose, protecting his feet and legs from the cold water as well as from his own fluid, which he released in uncomfortable, arcing spurts. When he finished, he continued to stand in the water, his face slack in a stupor of exhaustion. He felt the current pulling at his legs as he watched the mayflies swarm. Frogs started up their chorus and bats dipped and flittered overhead. He recalled how he and Jordan had used a fishing pole and peach beetles to hook bats when they were kids. Standing on the roof of the restrooms at the neighborhood park, casting up at the sky. Chase wondered where Jordan was now. Had he gotten away? Not likely, since he was so dopey with drugs these days. Turns out Jordan had grabbed morphine along with the sleep stuff. And it was the only thing that was given him any kind of relief. Chase insisted that he wasn’t really sleeping on the stuff, but only hallucinating that he was sleeping. “What’s the difference?” Jordan had asked.

He turned and looked at the truck. In the dusky light, the sheep were huddled in the bed, some with their faces turned his way. He wondered if he could let them out so they could eat the grass and drink from the creek. But how would he ever get them back in the truck? They would probably scatter in all directions. They would roam the woods and one by one fall victim to predators—wolves, bears, pumas. He couldn’t let that happen. Not to his sheep.

He waddled out of the creek and around to the passenger side of the truck, where he pulled out the metal tub and cornflakes he had stolen. Everything he owned, he had stolen, he realized. And to think that he had been so uptight about stealing the drugs from the pharmacy. He would have to steal gas too, he knew. The thought of it made him anxious. He told himself to stay focused on feeding and watering his sheep.