Black Moon (16 page)

“Oh,” Chase said. He looked into the water, as if trying to spot foul microbes rushing by. He didn’t know much about how this place worked. Was he already feeling ill? He focused on his stomach, his hand resting on it, trying to sense if any trouble was already brewing.

Jordan came forward, stood next to him in silence. He was quiet for too long.

“Once,” he finally said, “when we were up there, I jumped over a stream like this and my foot hit something hard in the grass. I looked and it was a huge bone, half sunk in the mud. I pulled it out. It was like holding a dumbbell. I thought it was something prehistoric. It was mossy and stained brown and yellow. My dad was still on the other side of the creek, talking to our guide, so I held it up. I thought he would be interested in it because that’s exactly the kind of shit he loves, but he just kind of squinted and went back to talking. I was like, Okay, fucking whatever, and I tossed it in the water. Then, he finally finishes his conversation and jumps across and he’s all, Where is it? Where’s what? The bone? He goes, Was that a bone? When I said I threw it in the water, I could tell he was disappointed. I mean, he’s looking for it down in the water. So, I just jump right in thinking I would find it. Right into the freezing water! As soon as I hit it, I can’t breathe. It literally takes my breath away. Next thing I know the guide has pulled me out and he’s telling me to get out of the wet clothes. He starts building a fire on the spot while my dad is just yelling, Where’s your goddamn head?”

Chase didn’t know what to say. He sensed that this was a meaningful disclosure, but he didn’t know what it meant, other than the fact that Jordan’s dad sounded like a real asshole. It was hard to imagine Jordan being so interested in pleasing his father, or anyone. He hated his mother especially. “How old were you?” Chase asked.

“I must have been about eleven.”

Chase did the math. That would be two years before he lost his eye, maybe a year before his dad was killed. Hit by a car while biking to work. “Fuck” was all he could think to say. He tried to
put some feeling into it, but the word offered a short runway for empathy.

“Yeah,” Jordan said.

“I wonder if it’s still there.”

“The bone?”

“Yeah.”

They both looked down at the water rushing by, as if this was the very stream from Jordan’s story. Or maybe as if the bone could have traveled through the network of snowmelt rivulets, urged along by the insistent current and gravity, to this very spot.

“I doubt it,” Jordan said. “I’m not even sure if all that happened. I mean, I remember it, but what am I remembering?”

THE
town’s main drag looked like the set for a classic Western, with its raised boardwalk and hitching posts, windows framed by shutters that would surely be swung shut during gunfights in the narrow street. Chase even speculated that maybe the over-familiar structures were just flat movie set façades, supported from behind with long diagonal posts of local lumber. They ventured into many saloons to test their authenticity. Sure enough, there was floor space, tables ringed with diners, bars lined with locals.

Chase was shy about pushing through and ordering. They were both underage in California and they had no idea what the drinking age was here. Apparently they exceeded it, at least in appearance, because they were never carded. The beer was unbelievably cheap, too. And people were friendly, asking them what brought them to town and looking very impressed when they said they were from California. There were many offers to point out the best places to fish, or buy bait, or hike and camp. Chase’s initial feelings of unease quickly dissipated. He had expected
they would be eyed with suspicion and shunned as outsiders. He had expected cowboy hostility. But these people were just people, like the people at home.

Still, Jordan was watching them closely, for reasons different from Chase’s wariness. “Some of these people aren’t sleeping,” he said, eyes scanning the room as he drained a mug.

“Just about all of them look like they’re awake to me,” Chase said.

“You know what I mean.”

Chase studied the scene with insomnia in mind. There were indeed tired locals nursing drinks at the bar. The workday had exacted a visible toll. They slumped over their beers, glancing at the small TV in the corner. Brighter-eyed tourists were clustered around tables, flaunting their vacation energy with bursts of laughter and fevered backslapping. Chase’s eyes settled on a stuffed bobcat that was mounted over the bar. The fur looked weathered, bordering on mangy, and there was something unnatural about the pose. Shoulders too stiff. Legs too woodenly arranged. Only the eyes, which gleamed with a convincing wetness, seemed to hint at a life once lived. They stared out over the scene, unblinking. What sights had they witnessed?

Jordan gave Chase a nudge. He nodded toward an elderly man who had appeared behind the bar, relieving the burly biker who had served them. His eyes were not unlike those glued in the head of the stuffed wildcat—glassy, staring into nowhere. He was remarkably filthy. His hands and thin arms were mapped with grime, and a black crescent sat under each yellow fingernail. There was dirt on his face and in his woolly, graying beard, actual grains of dark soil dropping from it when he turned. His hollow cheeks and brow appeared to be stained by dirt-colored sweat, giving his flesh the finish of a church pew. Little streams of dirt trickled from the creases in his clothing. There was a tiny
mound on his right shoulder, as if it had been gently troweled there. He smelled like freshly exposed earth and moved stiffly, as though maybe he too was stuffed, only with soil instead of sawdust.

Jordan mouthed, What the fuck?

They watched him attempt to open a bottle of Irish whiskey. His fingers smeared the neck of the bottle. Before he could manage the task, a woman rushed behind the bar and took the bottle from his hands. Chase had noted her earlier—a waitress, probably in her early thirties. Kind eyes, long black hair, maybe Indian. Beautiful, yes. Like Felicia ten years from now, maybe even prettier.

“Come on, Wells,” she said softly, pulling at the man’s arm. “Come have some food. Before it gets cold.”

She turned and yelled with surprising force across the room, “Rollins!”

Rollins was the biker bartender apparently, because the man emerged from the side door, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. He skulked back to his post behind the bar as she led Wells past him. “Just stepped out for a smoke,” he said.

“He can’t be behind the bar,” she told him.

“I know. I know.” He looked at the older man sorrowfully. “Go eat something, buddy. Got to keep wood in the stove.”

Chase and Jordan watched Wells being led away through the swinging door to the kitchen area. When Rollins approached to take their order, Jordan said, “What’s wrong with that guy?”

Rollins looked the two of them over. “Well,” he said, “I don’t see how it’s any of your goddamn business what’s wrong with him.”

“Hey, just asking,” Jordan said.

“Ask for a drink or move along.”

The bartender gave Jordan a long hard stare. Chase felt the
danger of it, even though he was once removed from its focal point. Rollins was a large man with a shaved head and a red goatee. He wore a denim shirt with the sleeves cut off, weathered jeans, and dusty biker boots. His arms looked like what most people would call legs. They were blotchy with bad jailhouse tattoos.

“Maybe we should—” Chase began, but Jordan cut him off.

“Didn’t mean to be nosy,” Jordan said. “How about two more?”

Rollins scooped up two cold steins from under the bar and put them under the tap, eyeing them as the mugs filled. “Those are on me,” he said, setting them on the bar. “Drink them and go.”

They did as Rollins suggested, moving to another saloon only two doors down after chugging the beers. “Not the friendliest of dudes,” Jordan said of Rollins.

“No, it was a perfectly normal question,” Chase said. “I mean, that guy was fucking caked.”

“Looked like he’d been buried alive but fought his way out.”

“Maybe he has a garden and he’s way into it,” Chase suggested.

“Maybe he can’t sleep.”

“Here we go,” Chase said. He wanted to know what that had to do with a guy being covered with dirt.

Jordan thought about this.

“Fuck if I know,” he finally conceded with a shrug.

When the bars all closed and the town was shuttered for the night, they stumbled back to the car. They had some work to do. Their plan was to bury all the stolen pharmaceuticals in the old Coleman cooler under cover of night. But on the drive back to the campground, they missed the dark turnoff from the highway twice. They finally found the exit at the end of their
headlights and started the bumpy journey down the rutted access road. They were passing through pastureland under a half moon when Jordan slammed on the brakes. Dust clouded the headlights and obscured the shapes of beasts in the road. Horses, eyes glowing in the headlights and looming in an illuminated aura of dust, stood with indifference in their path. They stared back at them in wonder. After a few minutes it became clear the horses had no intention of moving on and letting them pass.

“Maybe honk,” Chase suggested.

“I don’t want to start a stampede. Let’s just give them a minute.”

They sat looking at the horses. This was not something either of them had encountered before, but the scene, at least for Chase, read like a memory. The horses, sentinels along the road into the wild dark, their animal wisdom and ancient life force, humbling the two suburban boys. The bestial presence seemed to accelerate their return to sobriety as they waited. To Chase, they appeared larger than normal horses, but he wasn’t sure of horse sizes. Maybe they are a type of extra large horse? he wondered.

“They’re giant,” he said. “Aren’t they?”

Jordan said nothing. He settled back into the car seat as if he was prepared to wait out the vast span of night behind the wheel.

Maybe, Chase thought, they should go another way.

After a stretch of silence, Jordan said, “I’m thinking I should go back and get her. Just take her for her own good.”

Chase knew he was talking about the girl in Idaho Falls. Not his mother.

“Did you ask her to come with us?”

“She shouldn’t have to suffer.”

“You mean from insomnia.”

Jordan was silent. After a few minutes he got out of the car
and staggered toward the horses. He stood among the animals, patting their flanks and urging them off the road. To Chase’s astonishment, the horses obliged. They shambled off, away from the headlight beams and joined the roadside shadows.

Later that night, Chase woke up to find Jordan standing in the tent. “I should never have touched them,” he said.

IN
the morning, Chase found that the pills had finally worked. He had taken more throughout the night, in various restrooms of the many saloons they had visited. The tightness of the effect was actually somewhat painful. He squeezed himself and marveled at the hardness. Wow. He could rape a boulder with this thing. Maybe the thing would burst. It was like putting too much air in a tire. Would there be an explosion of blood?

Jordan was fully clothed, sprawled on top of the blankets that served as his bedroll. He was out cold after what was apparently a long night. Chase stood and carefully pulled on his pants, pinning the swelling under his waistband and pulling down his shirt. It was not very noticeable, but not at all comfortable. He left the tent and decided to check on their handiwork from last night. They had loaded the meds into a cooler and buried it in brush. They had covered it with dirt and loose branches. They had done this in the dark while drunk and, seeing it now, Chase had to shake his head at how conspicuous it looked. Couple of retards did this. He worked for a while at making it look more natural.

It occurred to him that he should take advantage of Jordan’s unconscious state, given his body’s reaction to the pills. He did not feel at all aroused, despite what his groin was telling him. Still, now that he knew it worked, no reason to lug this thing
around all day. There was no way he was going to jack off with Jordan in the same tent, so he sat in the front seat of the car. There he unbuckled his pants and conjured up some memories of Felicia, using them as fodder for a fantasy that involved his triumphant return and her surprise at what he had brought for her. He imagined himself fucking her mercilessly. Yet he had trouble seeing Felicia’s face. This was not new. When he first fell in love with her, she became increasingly elusive in his waking fantasies, but more vivid in his dreams. His desperation to see her features somehow muddled the access and garbled the pictures. Even now, he was seeing the waitress—Macy, claimed her nametag—just as clearly as glimpses of Felicia. He focused on the older woman and quickly climaxed.

This did nothing to undo his engorgement.

CHASE
decided to go into town. There was nothing to do at the campground. Besides, it might be nice to run into that Macy. He couldn’t find the car keys and figured they were in Jordan’s pockets. In the tent, he gave Jordan a nudge with his foot, but this failed to rouse him. Instead, he snorted and turned his face away. “Dude,” Chase called. “Where are the car keys?”

Jordan didn’t stir. Chase reached out with his foot and gave him a light kick. Still nothing. It was clear that he had taken some of the sleep meds. The guy can’t get to sleep one night and he thinks he’s an insomniac, Chase thought. Fuck it. I’ll walk to town.

He figured it would take him no more than an hour to reach the town if they were able to drive it in ten minutes. There was no sign of the horses from the night before. He tried to identify the exact spot where they had their “equine encounter,” as Jordan
had later called it, but it could have been just about anywhere along the road. There were hoofprints in the dirt, some mounds of droppings as well, alive with beetles. Were they left by cattle or horses? Chase couldn’t tell.

Soon he came upon a barbed wire fence that marked the edge of the property. It ran along the highway forever in both directions. He watched a shrike impale a grasshopper on one of the barbs, then crossed over the cattle grid where the paved road began. It was hot and he was tempted to take off his shirt, but remembered that a private part of him was jutting out from under his waistband. Don’t want to frighten the locals, he thought. Besides, there were swarms of small insects hovering over the roadside, and Chase assumed they were mosquitoes.