Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

When he came around to the tailgate with a box of cornflakes, the sheep moved away from him, pressing into a tight scrum at the opposite end of the bed. They were afraid of him. He tore open the box and scattered fistful of cornflakes on the floor of the bed, which was smeared with droppings. The sheep showed no interest in the cereal. Who would? he conceded. No one wants their food mixed with shit.

He tore open all the boxes and poured the cereal into the tub. Then he lowered the gate and slid it along the grooved floor. Still the sheep kept to the other side of the bed. The closest had their backs to him. He reached in for their stub tails, but they nudged and squirmed away, fighting to be farthest from the gate, from him. The truck shook under their desperate maneuverings. Had they learned to be this fearful? he wondered. Or were they born with the fear built in?

He stared at them, glazing over—their pungent odor and presence somehow soothing and hypnotic. To his exhausted eyes, they were identical. All clones of the same self-replicating animal. There seemed to be more of them than there had been earlier, and they appeared to be smaller. He tried again to count them, but their roiling movements and their uniformity made it impossible. In the failing light, they seemed to merge, then pull apart, entire creatures engaged in bodily mitosis.

Maybe he could no longer count. He seemed to find it difficult. He studied his hand, counting his fingers, but lost interest before completing both hands. What he should do, he realized, is move away from the truck. Maybe they would eat the cereal if he wasn’t standing right there.

From the peak of the grassy bank, where he sat in the waders, he watched the slow churning of the sheep in the truck bed. They had no interest in the cornflakes. They didn’t seem to recognize them as food. After a long while, Chase stood and shuffled back to the truck. He pulled out the tub and grabbed a handful of flakes and stuffed it in his mouth, crunched vacantly, and swallowed hard. He ate more, then tipped the tub, spilling the flakes into a pile on the ground before walking the tub into the darkening waters of the creek. It filled quickly but he found that it was too heavy to carry when full. He poured out all but about three inches of water, which sloshed against the tin sides as he carried it slung against his thigh.

This time, after he had slid in the tub and backed away, the sheep came forward. They mobbed the tub, lowering their heads into it and lapping at the water. Or, it seemed to Chase, they sucked up the water. The fact that they were drinking what he had provided moved him, causing his chin to quiver with a strange current of emotion. The event seemed to prove that all of this was sustainable, that it could go on forever so long as they were all allowed to play their roles.

Again, the animals jockeyed, shouldering and nudging others aside as they struggled to drink, pushing in and complaining.

“Hey, easy,” Chase called to them. “There’s a whole river of water right there.”

Oddly, they all froze and looked his way. He was startled to see all the gleaming eyes swing in his direction, and lock in on him. They looked him in the eye, which he found unnerving. How do they know that these are my eyes? Or that eyes are where you should look on a person? What teaches animals that eyes are where to look?

“What are you fucking staring at?” he shouted. He heard his own voice echoing in the distance.

What are echoes? he wondered. Another me shouting in a different dimension.

One by one, the sheep slowly disengaged, returning to the business of drinking.

He knew they needed food too. His hard-on stabbed at his stomach as he bent over and tore a fistful of grass from the sloping bank. He pulled up a few more handfuls, then tossed the tiny bundle into the bed. They went for it, sniffing with caution, and then lipping it up and into their mouths.

They bleated for more, so he started ripping at the hillside and lobbing loose fistfuls of grass over the side racks. He could hear the rhythm of their chewing, the crunching followed by a chorus of hard swallows. Then they would look out at him, eyes full of longing. They must be starving, he figured. He tried to keep the grass coming. But harvesting was difficult in that it involved stooping over and his inflated anatomy and rubber wardrobe got in the way. He took to bending at the knees and tearing at the grass at his sides. Handful after handful until he had a bundle in his hands, which he would toss in from afar.

The sheep would devour it before it had settled on the floor.

He kept at it late into the night, moving robotically in the darkness as though in a dazed state. At one point, he tried to use the hatchet from behind the driver’s seat, swinging it at the taller grass along the water’s edge. This quickly exhausted him, so he went back to pulling at the grass on the bank. His efficiency dwindled to the point that at times he was throwing nothing more than a few blades, fistfuls of air. The animals ate whatever he managed to land in their tiny mobile corral. Finally he realized how hungry he was himself. He searched the ground for the cornflakes he had poured out earlier. They had been trampled, pressed into the moist earth by his own rubber-soled feet. He picked out what he could, then lay back looking up at the stars, his erection painfully tenting the rubber pants. The sheep, he knew, were watching him.

HE felt sleep trying to arrive in his body. It was like watching a wave rolling forward, advancing on the shore, but never actually crashing. Just rolling in place, endlessly. Frustration welled inside him. This is how it had been ever since the drugs stopped working. This is how it was for the entire world—sleep hovering over, feeling as if it would drop down over you any minute but never falling. It seemed to tease, playing little presleep movies, flashes of visions, yet the full show failed to unfurl. It was like realizing that some vital part of you had been lost. Like waking up in a hospital bed without your legs, or knowing your face has been forever altered by fire or violence. You were grotesquely diminished without it. You would die without it.

He sat up, sobbing mechanically. The night intimidated him. His fearful mind conjured up the usual scenarios—people coming along, bad things happening. He had always been like that, his thoughts running dark at night. Worst-case scenarios playing out in his mind, an endless reel. His anxieties blooming. Now that no one was sleeping, he thought, there’s no need for night.

He remembered how Felicia worked the late shift, waitressing at a coffee shop. He couldn’t bear the thought of her driving home alone and insisted on picking her up at three A.M. every night. He couldn’t sleep knowing she was out there. He started carrying a knife in those days, when he first fell in love. For the first time in his life, he knew he could drive a blade into someone’s chest. He fingered it in his pocket as he watched strangers attempt to flirt with her at the counter. She found it in his glove compartment while searching for a map and threw it away—literally tossed it out the window as they drove through the desert, traveling to her family reunion.

He sat on the hood of the truck, missing her. Maybe not even the real her, but the dream version of her. In waking life, it was too complicated. He was hit with flashes of scenes—their bodies moving together, that fitted connection, the heat of her. That’s the only place—inside a booth of sleep—where he could fully act upon his desire for her. He obeyed an urge to address the always-aroused part of himself, there on the hood of the trunk. The wader squeaked against the metal as he rolled it down to his knees and spat into his hand.

He finished quickly, though no resolution phase followed. His readiness persisted. It was as though he had told his cock an incredible story and it had laughed and cried, then turned to him and said, “Then what?”