Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon

An engine came to waspish life in the garage, and then a short, broad, almost square-framed sports car came out in a glower of sound. “This is my new roadster,” Barker shouted up from behind the wheel.

Hawks came around, stepped over the doorless flank of the car, and cramped himself into the passenger side. He settled his lower back into the unpadded metal seat, which was slewed around to leave more room for the driver. The entire machine stood perhaps thirty inches high at the peak of its sharply curved dash.

“Hasn’t been really wrung out, yet!” Barker shouted into Hawks’ ear. Claire stood watching, her eyes ashine. Connington, slumped over the wheel of his Cadillac, facing them at an angle, lifted his swollen face and contorted his lips in a sad grimace.

“Ready?” Barker shouted, running up the engine and edging his right foot away from the center of the brake pedal until only the edge of his cheap shower slipper’s cardboard sole was holding it down. “Not frightened, are you?” He stared piercingly into Hawks’ face. “Are you?”

Hawks reached over and pulled out the ignition key. “I see,” he said quietly.

Barker’s hand flashed out and crushed his wrist. “I’m not Connington and that’s no bottle — hand over those keys.”

Hawks relaxed his fingers until the keys barely kept from falling. He put out his other arm and blocked Barker’s awkward, left-handed reach for them. “Use the hand that’s holding my wrist,” he said.

Barker slowly took the keys. Hawks climbed out of the car.

“How are you going to get to the city?” Claire asked as he walked past the steps.

Hawks said, “I walked long distances when I was a boy. But not to prove my physical endurance.”

Claire licked her lips. “No one manages you worth a damn, do they?” she said.

Hawks turned and paced steadily toward the sloped driveway.

He had barely set foot on the downslope when Barker shouted something strained and unintelligible behind him, and the car sprang into life again and hurtled by him. Barker stared intently out over the short hood, and threw the car into a broadside. Spuming up dust and gravel, engine roaring, clutch in, rear wheels slack, it skidded down sideward, its nose toward the cliff wall. The instant its left front fender had cleared the angle of the cliff, Barker banged the clutch up. The right side hovered over the edge of the gut for an instant. Then the rear wheels bit and the car shot down the first angle of the drive, out of sight. There was an instant scream of brakes and a great, coughing scuff of tires.

Hawks walked steadily down, through the turbulent, knee-high swale of dust that gradually settled into two smoking furrows leading from the broad swathes that scarred the bend of the dogleg. Barker was staring out to sea, sitting with his hands clenched over the top of the steering wheel, his sweated face plastered with yellow dust. The car was begrimed, still shivering a little from spring tension as it stood beside the mailbox, separated from the ocean by only the width of the access road. As Hawks came up parallel to him, Barker, without moving his head, said distinctly, “That’s the fastest I’ve ever done it.”

Hawks turned into the access road and began walking down over the wooden bridge.

“Are you going to walk all the way back into town?” Barker bawled out hoarsely. “You chicken-hearted son of a bitch!”

Hawks turned around. He came back and stood with his hands on the edge of the passenger side, looking down at Barker. “I’ll expect you at the main gate tomorrow at nine in the morning, sharp.”

“What makes you think I’ll be there? What makes you think I’ll take orders from a man who won’t do what I would?” Barker’s eyes were sparkling with frustration. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m one kind of man. You’re another.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Barker began beating one palm against the steering wheel. What began as a gentle insistent nudge became a mechanical hammering. “I can’t understand you!”

“You’re a suicide,” Hawks said. “I’m a murderer.” Hawks turned to go. “I’m going to have to kill you over and over again, in various unbelievable ways. I can only hope that you will, indeed, bring as much love to it as you think. Nine sharp in the morning, Barker. Give my name at the gate. I’ll have your pass.”

He walked away.

Barker muttered, “Yeah.” He rose up in his seat and shouted down the road, “He was right, you know it? He was right! We’re a great pair!”

Sunlight danced into his face from the shattered reflections of the whisky bottle on the edge of the road. His expression changed abruptly and he threw the car into reverse, whining up the driveway as quickly as a chameleon drawing its tongue around and in out of sight beyond the dogleg.

Hawks came eventually to the general store which marked the junction of the sand road and the highway. He was carrying his suit coat over his arm, and his shirt, which he had opened at the throat, was wet and sticking to his gaunt body.

He stopped and looked at the store, which was a small, graying frame building with a squared-off false front and weathered cases of smeared, empty, soft-drink bottles stacked beside it.

He wiped his face with the edge of his palm, took off his shoes, and stood balancing like an egret while he spilled the accumulated sand out of each of them in turn. Then he walked up to the front of the store.

He looked past the peeling gasoline pumps, up and down the highway, which burned off into the distance, losing each slight dip in its surface under the shimmering pools of mirages. Only private cars were on it, soughing back and forth past him. The mirages clipped off their wheels as they hissed away through them, and melted the skirts of their fenders.

Hawks turned, pulled open the limply screened door with its grimy bread advertisement pressed through the weave, and stepped inside.

The store was crowded with shelves and cabinets filling almost every square foot of floor space, leaving only narrow aisles. He looked around, blinking sharply once or twice as he did so, and finally closed his eyes entirely, opening them after a moment with an impatient grimace. He looked around again, this time unwaveringly. There was no one in the store. A narrow, blank door opened into a back room from which no sound came. Hawks refastened his collar and straightened his necktie.

He frowned and looked around at the doorframe behind him. He found a bell, suspended from the frame where the swung-back main door would have brushed it. It had been noiselessly cleared by the smaller screen door. He reached up and bent the bracket downward. His precise gesture failed to disturb the bell enough to ring it, and he stood looking at it, his expression clouded. He half reached toward the bell, brought his hand back down, and turned around again. A number of cars passed back and forth on the highway, in rapid succession.

He had laid his coat on the lid of a Coca-Cola cooler beside him. He picked it up now and swung back the cooler’s lid, looking down at the bottles inside. They were all some local brand, bright orange and glassy red, up to their crowns in dirty water. Saturated paper labels had crawled up the sides of some of them. A chunk of ice, streamlined down to a piece like a giant rat’s head, bobbed in one corner, speckled through with the same kind of sediment that formed a scum on the bottles. He closed the lid, again with an automatically controlled gesture, and again there was no sound loud enough to reach the store’s back room. He stood looking down at the cooler, each scratch on it filled in by rust, and took a deep breath. He glanced toward the back room door.