Iona Moon (34 page)

“You can start paying after you graduate.”

“It's important to me.”

“Yeah, okay. But if your grades go, forget it.”

“You're not my mother.” She spit the words, but she already knew she was going to do this thing—
for my own damn good
, she thought.

“No, I'm your friend, and if you weren't such a pighead you'd just thank me.”

“I s'pose.” Iona thought of her father, how slowly he read, running his finger under the words to keep them in line. She thought of Hannah, who could only read what she'd memorized, who sat in her hot bed on a summer night and said:
Why don't you just stay here and read to me?

“But you don't have to thank me now,” Sharla said. “Just go see your father tomorrow. That's how I'll know.”

The dogs yelped and tugged at their chains.
Nothing changes
. But when Jeweldeen answered the back door, Iona realized that everything had changed.

She remembered all the old insults.
You fall in the slop bucket?
For once Miss Jeweldeen was the one who had to hold her tongue. She was the biggest pregnant lady Iona had ever seen, the kind of woman doctors put to bed for the last month.

“Jesus, Iona.” At least Jeweldeen still sounded exactly like herself. That was something. “Quit that barking,” she yelled over Iona's head. “Goddamn dogs,” she muttered, “don't mind anybody except your dad.”
Don't lie to me, Iona
. She saw the raised hand and knew why the dogs whined and grew still. Jeweldeen looked her up and down.
You sleep in the barn last night?
She didn't say it. “Well get your ass in here and tell me everything.”

“You look like the one with a story to tell.”

Jeweldeen patted her belly; her breasts rested on her hump. “Nothing to say that this don't explain.”

“I didn't even know you liked him.”

“He'll do. You want some tea or something?”

“Not right now.”

Jeweldeen and Iona sat facing each other at the kitchen table. “I'm not due till February,” Jeweldeen said. “Can you believe it? Two more months of carrying this load around. Me and the damn cow, due the same day. Shit, I am a cow. I hope the friggin' thing pops out early. It's big enough, I swear.” She wiped the sweat from her upper lip. “You sure I can't make you tea?”

“I'm fine.”

Jeweldeen reached in her apron pocket for her cigarettes. “The boys are all out,” she said. “Made a run to the dump and promised me a Christmas tree.
Hunting
for a tree, that's the word they used.
Boys
—” She shook her head and smiled to herself.

“Does he treat you all right?” Iona said.

“Who, Leon?” Jeweldeen lit her cigarette. “Yeah. He treats me all right. Feeds me—as you can see. Roof over my head, all that.” She took a long drag. “He's okay. And I like the boys too, and Dad—your dad, I mean.”

How does he touch you?
Iona wanted to say. She couldn't help hearing Leon's breath, a gasp close to her ear.
Did he hold you down in the straw the first time? Does he know your hair smells of apricots?

“If they come back,” Jeweldeen said, “pretend the cigarettes are yours. He thinks it's bad for the baby.”

Iona looked around the kitchen. There were new canisters in a neat line on the counter. The top of the stove gleamed, scrubbed and white. Pretty yellow towels with embroidered leaves hung on the rack. “When do you expect them?”

“Anytime.” Jeweldeen snubbed out her cigarette. “I'll make tea.” Iona didn't try to stop her. Leon's wife waddled to the stove. Her buttocks had swelled as much as her stomach, and Iona wondered if she'd ever be the same again.

“Did you hear about Matt Fry?” Jeweldeen said.

“I know he got out.”

“I never thought they'd take him back.”

“Who?”

“His parents. You don't know?”

Iona shook her head.

“Where'd you think he was?”

“Just gone.”

“Dead?”

“Maybe.”

“Like you?”

“I wasn't dead.”

“We wondered.”

“How'd he get home?”

“Walked, I guess, or hitched. Horton Hamilton found him wandering around in the snow one night, took him to his folks' place, talked them into giving him one more chance. Can you believe it? Old Horton finally did something that turned out right.”

The tea was too strong. “I'm not much of a cook,” Jeweldeen said.

“It's only tea.”

“Sharla did most of the cooking at home. I never learned anything.” She gestured toward a pie at the far end of the counter. Violet juice oozed from the crust. “Huckleberry,” she said. “Leon's favorite.”

Iona added cream and sugar to her tea so it was sweet and bitter at the same time, cooled from the cream.

“First pie I made I used salt instead of sugar.” Jeweldeen giggled, covering her mouth with her hand, a delicate gesture, girlish and shy, but her fingers were thick, stained blue from the berries. “Well how was I supposed to know?” She lit another cigarette. “He's just the same,” she said.

“Leon?”

“Matt Fry.”

“What d'you mean?” said Iona. She had a crazy hope.

“You know—he doesn't talk. Stays in the basement when he isn't walking from one end of town to the other. They made him a room down there. Leon went to see him, but he wouldn't come out.”

Iona wondered if the truth was always this simple and this disappointing.

Jeweldeen heard the truck first. She nudged the pack of cigarettes toward Iona and crushed the one she'd been smoking. “Remember,” she said.

Leon was the first one through the door; Rafe and Dale were right behind. All three had bushy winter beards and plaid hunters' jackets.
A matched set
. Hannah was still laughing. Iona wanted to fling herself in her brothers' arms—just because she hated them didn't mean she wasn't glad to see them. But she sat too long, and they stood at the door without moving toward her. She remembered how her brothers had ignored her the long year after she stopped taking their money in the barn. What good was she to them if she wouldn't twirl or let them touch her? She was just a nine-year-old kid again, pest, baby sister.

Frank came in last, stomping his boots and rubbing his bare hands together. His face was clean-shaven. Snow had melted and frozen again in his thick eyebrows.

“Look who's here,” Leon said.

Frank stepped toward Iona, her name forming in his mouth. She almost stood, but something moved between them, cold and quick. He saw the dirty puddles of melted snow tracking Jeweldeen's clean floor and stooped to untie his boots. “Where've you been?” he said.

“Seattle.” She sank back in her chair and gulped the cold tea. The sugar had settled at the bottom and the last swallow was the worst.

“I figured,” Frank said. “That's where I'd go.”

Dale was the least shy. At dinner he asked Iona where she'd lived and what she'd done. It came out easy: a convenience store, night shift, rooming house on Fir Street.

Jeweldeen sat in Hannah's place and popped up every time one of the boys grunted. She got more potatoes for Dale, the ground pepper for Rafe. She stood behind Frank's chair for a moment with her hand on his shoulder. “Can I get you anything, Dad?”

“I'm fine,” he said.

“Leon?” she said.

“I could use more gravy.”

“You'll get fat.”

“Like you?” Leon said.

“No, like Dale,” said Rafe, poking his brother's belly. Dale swatted Rafe's hand, and Rafe jabbed Dale in the ribs.

“Boys,” Jeweldeen said, “please.”

Everyone started eating again. Nothing had changed, Iona thought. The boys still had their petty fights.
Boys
. Jeweldeen's boys. Not her worry now, thank God.

Later, Jeweldeen washed the dishes while Iona dried. “I hate being pregnant,” Jeweldeen said. “I'm so fat.”

“You'll lose it when the baby comes.”

“I've gained fifty pounds. The baby's gonna weigh less than eight. I'm fat, Iona. I'm gonna be fat forever.”

“Leon doesn't seem to mind.”

“You don't know.” The steam from the hot water made Jeweldeen's face sweat. “It's not my fault, you know. I'm hungry all the time. Leon took me fishing last month, out on the lake, just before it froze. He was casting from the shore, no luck. I built a fire on the beach. I ate the bait. He was using scraps of beef, hoping to snag a pike, and I kept spearing pieces on a stick, jabbing them in the fire till they sizzled and curled, crunchy, more gristle than meat, almost black. I thought I'd just eat one or two pieces; Leon wasn't watching me. But I ate one after another. I ate every goddamn scrap there was. Lucky for me the fish weren't biting anyway. He was mad though. Hasn't taken me fishing since—or anywhere for that matter, not even to town.”

“I've got a car,” Iona said. “I'll pick you up some afternoon, bring you back to Sharla's or take you shopping. Whatever you want.”

Jeweldeen scrubbed at the greasy frying pan. “I'm fine. It won't be long now.”

Driving back to White Falls, Iona thought she understood her brothers. She remembered her father whipping Leon, their old fights: Rafe and Dale could be fools, but the oldest son had to be a man.
I'll beat it into you if I have to
. So Leon rode Rafe, and Rafe rode Dale—they all harassed her. There was always someone smaller. She cut the head from a snake because Leon said it would grow two heads. She knew this was a lie but did it anyway.

So she knew, what of it? She swore she forgave Leon for everything when he saved her in the blizzard. But she saw now she had not. Marriage had not softened him, merely given him someone else to ride, pretty Jeweldeen, no longer pretty.

She wanted to leave forever. But more than that, she wanted to love them all. This was the wound in her chest that never healed, this simple longing to love, not just anyone, but them: Rafe, Dale, Leon, Frank. She wished they would do something small and kind so that she could believe, at least, in the possibility of love. She wished Hannah had protected her so she wouldn't have to hate them now.

She thought of her father, sitting in his chair while her brothers struggled to get the tree in the stand. He'd said, “You can stay if you want.”

And she told him, “I've got a place in town.”

“There's room here.” He didn't look at her.

There was a crib in her bedroom, a double bed in Hannah's room. So the only place left for her in this house was the drafty corner room with its small, high windows and its cold northern light.

The face of the half-moon disintegrated behind a wisp of cloud. Her headlights seemed weak. Beams bounced off snow, the drifts of the fields, the ice of the road. She was afraid of animals in the woods, afraid they'd leap in front of the car and there'd be no time to stop. She saw herself spinning out of control, plunging down a ditch or into a pole. But she wasn't afraid for herself, only for the animals, the living creatures she might kill.

23

Iona looked for Matthew. She couldn't just go to the house, knock on the door. Even if he agreed to come upstairs, she didn't want to sit in the living room with Matt and his mother, watching Mrs. Fry's mouth twitch and tighten while her only son hunched on the couch, hands tucked under his thighs. She knew she'd see him walking. “One end of town to the other,” Jeweldeen had said, “two, three times a day. Never takes a ride from anyone.”

But he did get into Iona's car. That was something. She'd been in White Falls less than a week when she spotted him, not roaming the streets but just over the bridge, heading up the embankment toward the tracks. She called to him from the road, and he stopped and turned, then stared down at the car without moving. She thought he recognized her voice but not the Valiant, so she climbed out to let him see her. The look on his face didn't change. She said, “It's me, Matt—Iona, Iona Moon.” He waited, so she said, “Where're you going?” He tilted his head to the left, the slightest gesture, less than an inch.
Down the tracks. Who needs words?
Iona thought. “You wanna ride?” she said. “I'll take you there.” She meant the place where the shed had been.

He slid down the bank. She moved away from her door so he could get in first, but he went to the back instead, opened his own door. She figured that's how he rode with his parents if he rode at all; that's how he'd ridden with Horton the night he came home.

He was different. His whole body was bigger—wrists and thighs, jaw and shoulder—as if every bone had thickened. He was a man now, like Leon or Frank, like his own brother, and Iona thought it must be terrifying for a boy like Matthew to live in a man's body. His clothes were old. She remembered the plaid wool jacket, was sure it was Everett's, the trousers too—thin at the knees and frayed at the cuffs.

It seemed dangerous to give him his brother's clothes, a curse—that lingering smell—an itch, a burn. Why not just hand him the gun?

She watched him in the rearview mirror but didn't torment him with questions. His broad white hands rested in his lap, unfamiliar to her. Were they strange to him too? He had a scar on his left cheek that she didn't remember, and the skin of his face was rough, red from the cold. His eyes looked smaller, as if he were still squinting, but she realized it only seemed that way because his face had more flesh.

She pulled to the shoulder near the place where the shed had been. “There's nothing left, Matt, you know that?” He sat for a moment, and she thought he might answer, might nod at least, that the memory of one particular night might break him at last. But she was dreaming. This was not the boy she loved, not the one who'd led her to a cave dug in the earth, not the one whose body curved around hers as they lay in the musk of damp ground.