Biting the Moon (14 page)

Andi gestured for her to be quiet. She set the blue-black gun on the ground and whispered, “Lie on the ground and double up. Groan.”

With those brief commands, Andi burst, much like the coyote had, into the clearing, shouting, “Mister! Mister!”

He whirled, going again for the gun he'd just holstered. “Where'd you come from? What you want, girl?”

“It's my sister! My sister got shot by that plane that went over. There's blood all over! Oh, please come and help!”

“That copter? My God, where is she?”

“Over here, come quick!”

He was too fat to be quick, and probably a smoker to boot. He coughed and wheezed as he walked.

Mary lay on her side, legs pulled up, arms hugging herself. She groaned.

“Where'd you get hit, fer the lord's sakes? What you doin' round here anyways? I don't see no blood, here, let me—” He tried to pull her arms from her midsection but Mary just yelled.

“It hurts!”

Andi mimicked hysteria. “Do something!” she screamed, wringing her hands.

He bent farther down to try and hitch his arm behind Mary's shoulders, and at that moment Andi bent quickly down. It took her two seconds to yank the gun from its holster, wrenching the flap up. She tossed it into the trees.

“What? Whatcha doin'? Girl, you crazy?” he shouted as he flung his hand to his holster.

Stiff-legged, arms extended, Andi pointed the Smith & Wesson. “Get back.”

He yelled, “Hell you think you're doin'? I'm gov'ment, lady! I'm with ADC. You cain't move against the U-nited States
gov'ment
! That's . . . uh . . . that's—”

“Treason,” said Andi. “Toss over your ID but be careful you go real slow getting it out.”

Almost daintily, little finger extended, he opened his shirt pocket with thumb and forefinger and drew out a black casing.

“Toss it to her.” Andi's head inclined toward Mary.

Mary caught it, opened it. “He's an agent. ADC, it says.” Mary frowned. “Robert ‘Bub' Stuck's his name. So I guess he does work for the government.”

“Better believe it! You girls, you are in big trouble. Now, just gimme back my gun—”

Andi smiled. “I don't think so. What's ADC stand for? Probably, what the ‘gov'ment' calls animal control. Now, you just back up against that tree. Mary, go get that rope and that wire he was using—no, wait. Toss your gloves to her.”

“Kid, don't you hear good? You're talkin' to the fuckin' U-nited States
gov'ment
.”

Andi didn't respond except to move the gun abruptly from him to the tree. Her face was expressionless.

He stumbled backward, thudded into the tree.

“Toss over your gloves, I said.”

He yanked them off, tossed them in the dirt. Mary went over to pick them up.

“Your-all's ass gonna be in a
sling
, you mess with a gov'ment
agent
.”

Mary climbed over the rotted logs and was about to pick up the roll of wire. Then she looked at the pup, lying as it had lain, still alive. Putting on the gloves, she carefully unwound the piece of wire from around its chest. Mary pulled off her gray sweatshirt, which was made of soft cotton, spread it out, and carefully and slowly lifted the coyote cub just enough to slide the shirt under it. Then she wrapped it around the body, left the face out, free and clear. Its eyes, the color of smoked crystal, glittered. Mary put her hand on its head and murmured some useless words of comfort. She hoped it sensed someone now was trying to help. She grabbed up the wire and the rope and climbed back over the logs.

Bub Stuck stared at her. “Now just wait a damned
minute
, here. You ain't goan tie me up with that there shit, no way.” He was sweating profusely.

“Will you do it? Or me?” asked Andi. “One of us has to hold the gun on him.”

“I'll tie him,” said Mary. She started toward the agent.

He balked, yelled, “You think I'm lettin' two little girls tie me up?
Nossir!
” He took a step away from the tree. “You ain't goan tie—”

The dusty earth at his feet exploded. The shot was so loud and unexpected, he slammed, open-mouthed, back into the tree.

“We ain't?” Andi's voice was as cold and level as the gun. “Tie him up, Mary.”

Carefully, first wrapping the wire around a lower limb, Mary started moving around the agent. Pricked by the barbs, he yelled.

Andi said, “Do it a little loose. But not so loose there's play in the wire. Just so it touches skin.”

When she was through with both the barbed wire and the rope, Mary stepped back and went over to Andi, who said to Bub Stuck, “I wouldn't try too hard to get myself untied, if I were you. It might cause some damage.” Andi still held the gun, straight out.

“Now, you just listen—”

“Seems to me you're the one that's in the listening position, Bub.” To Mary, she said, “There's some bandages in my backpack. Do you think the blood's not so bad that pup can be wrapped up?”

“I don't know, I don't know.” Looking at the small body, Mary was about to weep.

“The stuff's in a brown paper bag.”

“Okay.” Mary rushed off toward the car.

Bub spat. “Yeah, I figured you was part of one of them fuckin' animal bunches.”

“Stop figuring, Bub. You weren't born to figure.” When he tried to lurch forward, the barbs raked his skin and he gave out a bansheelike cry. “We told you not to move, didn't we?”

“You cain't shoot me, girl!”

Andi gave a stagy sigh. “Someone ought to've put you out of your misery when first you were born, Bub.” She shrugged. “But then, how could your poor momma know how you'd turn out?”

His voice tight with rage and fear, Bub yelled, “You two're goin' to jail, you know that? To prison. This here's a federal
o
-fense you're committin'. I'm a gov'ment agent, lady!”

“I can hardly wait to tell my folks this is where their tax money's going. They'll be pleased.”

Mary was back with the paper bag.

Unable to thrash around in the barbed-wire casing, all he could do was talk. Repeat the same things over and over. Shout. Whine.

“Good.” Andi lowered the gun. “He's not going anywhere. I only wish he'd stop talking.” She raised her voice. “I think I should shoot him just for talking, don't you?” Andi snapped the gun up, sighted.

The movement was so quick and practiced, it scared Mary.

It certainly scared Bub. “You hold it, now!” He screeched as the wire bit into his skin.

Andi shook her head, set the gun carefully on a stump.

Together they went to bend over the pup. Blood seeped through the shirt. Mary was cold without it; she hadn't noticed until now how cold it was. “He's awful torn up,” she said.

Andi nodded. She looked over to the well-camouflaged den. “See there.” She inclined her head.

Mary saw two pairs of eyes just barely over the edge of the hole. “He didn't get them all, thank God.”

“That's why he was building the fire,” Andi yelled. “Hey, Bub, there's at least three or four more coyotes you missed.”

He called back some indecipherable words, cursing them to kingdom come.

Andi ran her hand over the soft coat of the little coyote. “I'm going to have to shoot it, Mary.”

“Ah,
hell
.” Mary got up and stamped around. “Ah, hell!”

Andi retrieved the gun. “I'm sorry. It's just too cut up and—” She didn't finish; she raised the gun. But it seemed to freeze there. Andi's hands lowered the gun but couldn't seem to release it. For a frozen moment she just stood there. Her head fell forward and her arms down. “I can't.” She sounded bitterly ashamed.

Mary went over to her, put her hand on Andi's shoulder. “It's okay. It's okay. I'll do it, Andi.”

Andi's fingers loosened, and she released the gun. Then she walked off, started walking in circles with her hands over her ears, muttering something.

The cub was dying, and it had to be dying painfully, yet its eyes as it followed Mary's movements looked unbelievably bright and inquisitive, as if asking her if she could find some way out of this mess, some solution. Mary's hands were shaking. She managed to lock them around the gun. For a frozen moment she just stood there, watching Andi, who had stopped walking but who stood now with her face turned toward the sky, her hands pressed over her ears, her mouth open. Mary heard no sounds at all, not from Andi, not from Bub, not from whatever was alive in the woods. This must be what war was like, the beseeching wounded, the foxholes of soldiers, the long lines of refugees, those pictures in the paper of old people walking, children crying, forced from their homes, beaten, shot, and seeing, as they walked or fell, as she saw now, that last bit of horizon, that last line of woods. When she finally raised the gun and shot (and she did not close her eyes; she had to look at what she was doing), the explosion rent the sky and the forest, as if the damage were uncontainable, and the shot had taken the world with it.

They drove a long way in silence.

It was a heavy silence, Mary thought. She said, “How come I feel guilty?”

For a few moments Andi didn't answer. Her face was turned away, looking out the passenger window. Then she said, “I don't know, unless we are.”

Then Mary knew Andi felt it, too.

•   •   •

They had left his gun a tantalizing few feet from him and him they left tied to the tree trunk, bellowing, unable to twist or pull against the wire that would cut him to pieces if he tried too hard.

Just before they got to the Idaho border, Mary pulled the car off the road at one of the emergency telephones.

Andi, who was much better at disguising her voice than Mary (she should, Mary thought, be an actress), made the call to the police.

In a southern drawl she said to whatever state policeman answered, “Back in Medicine Bow there's one fat, unrighteous U.S. gov'ment agent tied to a tree. In case you want to go and cut him loose—which ah don't recommend, but in case you do—be sure to take wire clippers with you.” Silence. “No, ma'am, ah ain't gonna give you my name, but listen up and ah'll tell you wheah he is.” Andi described the place. “And in case you think this is a hoax, well, it ain't. His name's Stuck and he is one fat, stupid sumbitch.” Andi smiled at the receiver. “Ain't they all?” She slammed down the receiver, turned to go back to the car.

“ ‘Sumbitch?' They don't say ‘sumbitch' in the south.”

Andi looked at her as Mary drove. “Sure they do.”

“No, they don't. It's more like in—I don't know, the mountains or somewhere.”

“No, it's not.”

“Yes, it is.”

They drove for some time arguing about the rightful origin of
sumbitch
and trying not to think of what the fat agent who was one had been doing when they caught him.

It took them nearly three hours to reach Little America, where they picked up Route 30. After driving for ten miles, they saw a cluster of buildings—all one long building, as it turned out, with an oddly uneven roof. There were a filling station, a general store, a gift shop, and a café. Andi was driving (slowly, for Mary insisted), and she pulled off the road and parked the car in front of the café. They got out, Andi with her maps, which she took in with her.

The Roadrunner Restaurant (that was its name) was nearly empty, but then it was almost three o'clock, pretty late for lunch. At a table up
front sat two truckers—or so Mary believed them to be and berated herself for stereotyping men with tattoos and well-muscled forearms (all that driving and lifting of cartons).

Andi asked the waitress if they could have one of the big booths because she wanted to consult her maps. Darlene (her name tag read) said sure and scooped up the menus. She asked them if they wanted smoking or nonsmoking and Mary said non. But she thought that was pretty funny, since the room was so small there was no way to keep from getting the other diners' smoke in your face. The truckers were both smoking, and they were only two tables away.

The menu offered a huge enough selection to meet the requirements of anyone: meat-and-potatoes, vegetarian, kosher, New Yorker. No cook could possibly come up with all of these entrees, and Mary assumed they were frozen and then just popped in the microwave: Lobster Thermidor, Bengali Shrimp Curry, Shellfish Normandy—things like that. It was such a strange menu for way out here, where there was only the two-pump filling station, the general store, and the tract town of flat-roofed houses, the desert stretching all the way to the mountains, unrelieved, and here the fancy menus of the Roadrunner Restaurant. She couldn't imagine who brought them business.

Andi asked, “What's Rainbow Trout Dusseldorf? Is it a German dish or what?”

Darlene shook her head. “It's the chef's special—well, one of his specials. His name's Dusseldorf. I know it sounds German, but he's not; he's from right around here. It's real good.”

Mary said, “He must have a lot of specialties. There are a lot of Dusseldorf dishes.”

“Uh-huh. They're all real good.” Darlene shifted her weight to her other foot, her pad and pencil hovering. She did not appear annoyed with their questions; she seemed to enjoy the company. The truckers were getting up to leave, each with a toothpick in his mouth.

“Is his first name Hiram?”

“The chef?”

“It says here”—Mary pointed—“Hiram's Hot Potato Salad.”

“No, Hiram's a completely different person, just a friend. The chefs Herb. That potato salad's one of his best dishes.”

Andi asked, “Well, how's this rainbow trout cooked?”

“It's rolled in crumbs and sautéed. Fried, like.” She smiled at them as if to say, What do you think of
that
!