Callan Wink - Dog Run Moon

—

Denise, Terry’s kid sister, cried for two whole days after he went away. She cried, aware for the very first time in her life that something had passed and things would never again be exactly how they were before. That is adulthood and it comes in many forms. For Terry it came in the parking lot of that topless bar, two counties over, where no one knew his name — his breath coming hard, blood leaking into the gravel, a longneck bottle broken and clenched in his fist. Or, if not there, then some time after, in his bunk after lights-out, looking up at the mattress above him, the exposed box springs like the skeleton of honeycomb, the rusted spring coils groaning under the strain of his bunkmate’s masturbatory vigor.

—

While Terry was away, his grandfather died. They found him sprawled in the grass next to his backyard lake, his torso and legs still on the ground, his head and arms and hands trailing out into the stagnant water like pale, moisture-seeking roots.

“I already talked to the people there,” Terry’s father said when he called. “They’re not going to let you come to the funeral. I told them it was your grandpa and that you were close but they said it doesn’t matter. No releases of any kind for the first year. It’s bullcrap, Terry, I know. But, maybe it doesn’t matter. It’ll just be a body there, at the service. Your grandpa has passed on to his heavenly reward, and that is something in which we should rejoice. He lived a full life, and that’s what we need to remember. Anyway, it’s going to be a closed casket. They said he had a stroke and the way he fell, in the water like that, well, it wasn’t pretty. There were a lot of turtles in that lake, you know that. Remember you and your sister catching those little baby snappers and trying to get them to race? Anyway, he was in the water for a couple of days like that, and the turtles had been at him a little bit. Your mother took that pretty hard. She was the one who found him. She went over there to trade him some rhubarb from her garden for tomatoes from his. He was overrun with them this year, you know, couldn’t give them away fast enough. Anyway, I told her it was just his earthly vessel, and it doesn’t matter because his eternal soul is sitting at the right hand of Christ, our Father in heaven. Well, son, I have to go be with your mother now. It seems that God has given us many trials this year. It is important to keep the knowledge of your faith at the forefront of your consciousness. We pray for you every Sunday.”

A year ago Terry might have cried at the news of his grandfather’s death. But now — holding the phone in the sweat-and-mashed-potato-smelling common area in Saginaw — he did not. He just listened to his father speak, heard his newly discovered God-love dripping from his every word like a self-righteous accent. He hung up and went to his room and lay on his bed and stared at the bunk above him until the box springs swam before his eyes.

Later, when his bunkmate came in, and, predictably, the mattress started to shift and squeak, Terry rose without a word and grabbed him by his neck and leg, pitched him from the bunk onto the concrete floor, and gave him one silent, sharp, vicious kick to the face. He was a skinny kid, about half Terry’s size. He had an explosion of zits across his scrawny back, and he was lying facedown, whining, one of his hands still jammed down the waistband of his boxer shorts.

That kick got Terry a new bunkmate and an additional month’s time. Sometimes, he had dreams where he was fishing with his grandpa. He would turn to him in the boat and see half the flesh stripped from his face — leaking, gaping chunks missing from his neck.

—

While Terry was away Denise had her thirteenth birthday. He called her and told her he was sorry that he couldn’t get her a present and she said it was okay. Mom and Dad were finally letting her get her ears pierced and she was going to the mall today to get it done.

“They make you get studs, at first,” she said. “And you have to wait two weeks before you can change them.”

“Why’s that?” Terry said.

“It’s so the hole doesn’t close up. After two weeks, though, it’s permanent and the holes will be there forever. Did you know that Grandma never got her ears pierced? She used to wear clip-on earrings. That’s what Mom said.”

“No, I never knew that.”

“Mom said that Grandma always wanted to, but that Grandpa didn’t let her. So, she got clip-ons and only wore them when she went to the store and stuff. Anyway, I’m going to get some blue ones with gold studs. I already picked them out. But when the two weeks are up I’m going to get some that have feathers on them.”

“Feathers?”

“Yeah, dangly ones. They sell them at the mall. All different types of feathers. From real birds. They come with a little card that tells you what kind of bird the feather is from, and also about the Indian tribe.”

“Indian tribe?”

“They’re made by Indian women from somewhere out west. They pick the feathers up off the ground and then they attach them with pretty gold and silver wire to earring hooks. My friend Kristy has some made from heron feathers and they are so pretty. They are so light. They just float around her ears, like, well, feathers. I can’t wait.”

“That sounds great. I can almost picture them. How’s school?”

“It’s fine.”

“Do people talk about me?”

Denise was silent for a moment. Terry could hear the sound of her phone cord hitting the receiver as she twisted and untwisted it absentmindedly.

“A little. Not too much.”

“Yeah? Anyone giving you a hard time?”

“No, not really. But, Kristy says that you’re hot, and that she would totally make out with you, if you weren’t in there. I told her she is a slut.”

Denise laughed and then Terry’s time was up on the phone.

“You tell Kristy that in about four years I might take her up on that offer, and you, missy, better not be making out with anyone, you hear me?”

“Eww. Gross, Terry.”

“I’m serious.”

“I don’t like any boys. And I’m not going to date or get married until I find one that’s exactly like you, you know that.”

“Okay. I have to hang up now, Den. Happy Birthday. I miss you.”

Terry went back to his bunk, laced his fingers behind his head and searched for a long time but couldn’t come up with anything, one single thing or person, idea or possibility, now that his grandpa was dead, that he loved more than his sister.

—

While Terry was away his mother, Janelle, let the vegetable garden go to weed and decided instead to cultivate a relationship with a woman she met in a bereavement group at the church. Merriam was forty years old, three years younger than Janelle, with no children or husband. She had lost her twin sister to breast cancer, and she told the group it was like she’d had a limb amputated, or a lobe of her brain removed. She was an operating room nurse and sometimes she laughed and referred to her sister as her phantom limb, and then would cry in tight, dry gasps with her hands over her mouth and her eyes clenched shut. Janelle went to the bereavement meetings initially because of Terry. She felt a little out of place at first because, after all, Terry wasn’t dead. But, he had caused death in another and, to Janelle, this meant that her son had changed in some fundamental way that was not unlike actual death, just more shameful.

After their group met, Janelle and Merriam often went to a diner close to the church. They sat in a booth, coffee going cold in the cups in front of them while they talked. One day, Janelle told Merriam that she would rather Terry had been killed himself. This was the first time she had admitted this fact aloud and saying it was like letting out her breath after holding it for a very long time.