Moondogs (42 page)

“Water, please,” Howard says. “Can I please have that water?”

“This is gross. I’ll bring you some fresh,” she says.

“Give it to me, please,” he says, sitting up on his haunches. He’ll tackle her if he has to.

The woman shrugs a bit. “Suit yourself.” She squats and puts the bowl to Howard’s lips. She tips it up and he tries not to wince as the rancid, salty water slides into his mouth like dead jelly. His tongue probes the liquid, searching out the texture of his soft lens. He pins it against the inside of his cheek and swallows. He nods thanks, worried that if he says anything he might gulp down this last sliver of eyesight.

The moment she leaves he jams fingers in his mouth to scoop out the lens. He puts it delicately in his eye. It feels awful—at once a sting and an unbearable tickle—but for the moment his relief at being able to see again is the stronger feeling. Everything around him is sharp. Things have edges that begin and end. And he can see Benny on the TV, shifting his weight, staring at the floor. The policeman has finished his remarks and now a foxy, not-so-young blonde is behind the podium. She speaks into a cluster of microphones huddling beneath her chin, giving one-word answers to rambling questions. The policeman stares at her and, from time to time, so does Benny.

“This is better,” Ignacio’s wife says, returning with a bowl of clear, fresh water. She sets it down beside Howard’s food, and then sets herself down beside Howard. That’s strange. Other than the day when she
taped a newspaper to his chest and snapped a photo of him, they’ve hardly exchanged more than a peep. He wonders if Ignacio knows she’s going easier on him. He wonders where Ignacio even is.

“Which one is your son?” she asks.

He looks from her, to the door, which is still open. Out in the living room Kelog the rooster walks to and fro, dragging his spur across the tile, looking strung out. It strikes him odd that he knows the rooster’s name and not hers. He’s never heard anyone use her name.

“That one …” he scooches forward and touches his son’s face on the screen, leaving a smudge.

“He’s good-looking,” she says.

Howard nods, looking at his good-looking kid. He blinks rapidly, trying to focus on Benny’s face. There’s something else going on there. Something he got a hint of when he heard Benny speaking. His son looks … off. Not torn up. But weirded-out. Like he thinks he shouldn’t be there. Like he’s doing a favor for a not-so-close friend—a favor that leaves him reluctant and chilly. And there is no doubt in Howard’s mind, now. Benny knows about Solita, knows—
he’s sure
—about her kid. She has found him and told him. Just when Benny was getting over the story of
Howard the scumbag cheat
, just when he was moving past Costa Rica, just when it looked like the two of them could become close again, Solita has fucked it up. Not that Howard blames her. Fucking things up is what she
should
do—no one is going to stick up for her otherwise. Never mind that June probably isn’t even his. The timing works, sure, but come on—the kid’s darker than even his mother. It’s no skin off Howard’s back to give them some cash every few weeks. As far as he’s concerned he’s doing her a favor by letting that shoddy claim of paternity go unchallenged. But Benny, he’s sure, will
not
see it that way. Without Howard there to say his piece, Benny will become permanently committed to the weirded-out, distant bullshit they call a relationship. And that won’t do at all. They’ve already wasted too much time on this stupidity.

Howard pushes up off the floor and stands. His knee is still stiff, but he hobbles out to the living room with little trouble. Ignacio’s wife rushes after.

“Hey!” she yells. “Hey! If he sees you doing that he’ll break your fingers. He’ll cut your nose off.”

“Ignacio’s not here,” Howard says. “Is he?”

“He’s here.” Her voice is wobbly. “Get back inside or I’ll call him.”

“No … he would have come in as soon as I turned the TV down,” Howard says. He feels like such an idiot. He’s already squandered ten minutes—enough time to have saved his life a few times over. He goes for the nearest door and pulls it open. Closet.

“Which way is out?”

She doesn’t answer. She runs into the kitchen and comes back with a wok in her hand, lifted like a clumsy mace. He takes the wok out of her hand. She slaps him on the wound that used to be his ear and he howls, pushing her, roughly, onto the loveseat. He rushes out of the living room, down a short hallway with unfinished walls. There’s a door at the end that looks to have natural light leaking under the crack. Just as he’s about to reach for it Kelog appears, placing himself with a flapping jump between Howard and the door. Howard looks down at the rooster. It leaps up at him, wings beating his face, beak pecking at his bruises. He tries to push it away but feels a shocking, intense, unreasonable pain. He backs up, trips over his heels and falls ass over head to the floor.

Howard’s forearms are covered in a hot mess of deep cuts. Kelog approaches him, talons clicking horribly on the tile floor, cockfighting spur bright with blood. Howard tries to kick the bird as it approaches but it sidesteps, gazing at him with patient evil. Howard feels as though he’s losing his mind. “I’m going to kill you,” he says to the rooster. “I’m going to break you open with my hands.”

He swings out and catches the rooster with an open-palmed slap that sends it tumbling across the hall and hangs a constellation of green feathers in the air. He stands and stumbles after the dazed bird, momentarily more determined to kill it than he is to get out of this apartment. He lifts the wok over his head and is just about to finish it off when he feels another, incredible, unfair, at this point even redundant, pain. Ignacio’s wife has stabbed him in the back. Not with a knife, but with
something multi-pronged and kitcheny. Like one of those roasting forks. Leaning into the fork, she kicks the side of his bum knee and he knows that’s it. Game over. His knee gives out, and he goes down.

IGNACIO AND LITTLEBOY
come for him early the next morning. They tie him at the wrists and stand him up. Ignacio switches off the television, and it looms silently in a way that feels very final.

Sweating, fidgeting, grinning, they lead him out of the apartment, into the pre-dawn dark. The residential street is empty save a truck idling by the curb, cab light on and driver’s seat empty. Through Howard’s crusty lens he sees a big advertisement for chicken feed painted across the truck. A cartoon rooster with boxing gloves on his wingtips poses beside an enormous sack of grain, while all around delirious hens with lipstick on their beaks bustle to get his autograph. Bubble letters below the rooster’s feet read:
Feed Your Champion Like a Champion!

Ignacio and Littleboy open the back of the truck and heave Howard inside. It’s no bigger than a small moving van, about ten feet deep by six wide in the rear box, and empty save a layer of dry grain spread evenly over the bed. Howard sits up and looks out the open back. He sees Ignacio’s wife standing in the doorway to the apartment. She waves at him, and he waves back, because why not?

Then he sees Kelog. The green bird hops fatly down the steps, its metal spur scraping on the concrete. Ignacio picks it up, coos to it and places it gingerly beside Howard like some kind of fucked-up prison guard. Howard tenses and pulls away, expecting some immediate confrontation. But Kelog ignores him and pecks at the feed spread evenly across the metal bed. It’s just a chicken, after all.

Ignacio pulls the rear door down, sealing Howard and Kelog inside. Moments later the engine starts and the truck bed vibrates, making the grain hop like popcorn. The truck lurches forward. Howard knows they can only be going one of two places. Either Ignacio and Littleboy have given up on their plan—who would blame them?—and are taking him to the countryside to cut his throat and bury him, or they’ve actually
found someone to sell him to. Either way, if he’s going to save himself, it’s got to be now.

“I know what you’re doing, and it’s a stupid move,” he says when the rear door opens again, about a half hour later. The sun still isn’t up. He briefly registers the sound of waves, but keeps his eyes fixed on Ignacio.

“Stupid for who?” Ignacio asks, a nervous half-grin still smeared above his chin. He produces a pack of cigarettes and lights one. He offers one to Howard.

“It’s stupid for everybody. Listen,” Howard sits up, his bound wrists before him in a gesture resembling prayer, and accepts the cigarette. “I get how you’re looking at this. You want to sell me. That’s simple. That’s fine. That happens all the time.
I’ve
done stuff like that. But listen. From a rational perspective, from a purely financial outlook, it’s stone dumb. It’s dangerous for everybody. Like I said, I’ve got money. I’ve got cash. You really want to sell me? That’s fine. But leave the bidding open. Let me buy me.”

“Nope,” Ignacio says.

“Nope?” Howard shakes a little. The simple ridiculousness of it is maddening. “I’m offering you a guaranteed payday, more than any fucking fisherman can give you, and all you say to me is
nope
?”

“Yup.” Ignacio lowers his cigarette so Kelog can puff. He strokes the rooster’s green feathers with his free hand and says nothing more. Howard briefly indulges in a fantasy wherein he’s rescued and arranges to have Ignacio killed in prison. Tortured, and killed.

“Easy, boy,” Ignacio says. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you look angry.”

“I’ve been hiding it,” Howard says.

“Can’t see why.” Ignaco stubs his cigarette out on the grain and Kelog pecks at the ash. A moment later Littleboy joins them, holding a length of folded burlap. “Now listen,” Ignacio continues. “We’re going to put this on you. While you’re in here you’re going to be nothing but a fat, heavy sack of rice. You do anything that rice doesn’t do, like move or talk or fart, then it’s just going to scare the shit out of us. I don’t know what we’ll do. We’ll panic. Get me?”

“Yes.”

Ignacio puts a finger to his lips. “Hush,” he says.
“Rice.”
Then he nods at Littleboy and they roll Howard in the coarse fabric. They lower him off the truck and onto a broad dolly. Howard listens hard as they wheel him down a ramp, ready to shout if he hears the slightest wisp of human noise. Their feet make crunching gravel noises, and then hollow wooden noises. Waves crash like falling bricks. A few moments later Howard is upended and rolls into the bobbing bottom of a boat. The boat dips as Ignacio and Littleboy get in after. They’re at a pier—it’s got to be Manila Bay considering the length of the drive. There’s always someone awake at Manila Bay.

Then, in the distance, he hears it. Unmistakable. A voice speaking Tagalog.

“Help!” Howard screams. “Help! Help me!” He punches through the sack, but catches only air. “Help!”

Ignacio and Littleboy laugh. “It’s the radio, genius,” Ignacio says. Then he revs the outboard, and with a splash of cold, oily water, they’re off.

THE BOAT ROCKS TERRIBLY
. Howard lies under burlap in the stern, getting sprayed whenever they hit a wave, which is often. The outboard alternates between a drowning gurgle and rip-roaring in the air whenever they crest a swell. It isn’t long before Howard has to hold his head up just to keep it above the collected water. He’s so angry he imagines he might have a heart attack or aneurism or something, and the thought of dying on the way is a morbid thrill. He curses. He bangs his feet against the benches and gunwales.

Ignacio pulls the burlap away from Howard’s face and glares down at him. “Be nice,” he says.

“Let me sit up, I’m going to drown down here.”

“Sit up then, what am I, your mother?”

The color drains from Ignacio’s face as the boat dips into a trough between waves. Then, as it rises up to the top of the next crest, he turns a shade of green. He sends a mouthful of spit over the side.

Howard sits up, untangling himself from the sack. The boat is
small, bangka style, with bamboo outriggers that shudder as they slap the waves. The city still looks nearby behind them, but the horizon ahead is indistinct. Dawn light shines pink on the whitecaps. Ignacio squats by the engine block, white-knuckling the tiller. Littleboy looks ill up at the bow, his knees pressed together, his eyes glued to the bottom of the boat. Only Kelog is relaxed, perched on the stem of the bow like an obscene maidenhead.

Ignacio takes out his cigarettes again and tries to light one. With the boat rocking as it is, it takes a while for him to connect with the lick of flame from his lighter. His hand holding the tiller drifts and they begin to turn, parallel to the oncoming swells. The boat sways, and tips. Ignacio’s face goes puffy, and he overcorrects, sending them too far in the other direction. The boat does one complete circle.

“That won’t help your belly,” Howard says, gesturing at Ignacio’s cigarette. “That will make it worse.”

Ignacio ignores him.

“Can you swim?” Howard asks. “This boat … I don’t know.”

Ignacio says something in Tagalog and Littleboy reaches across the bench and strikes Howard on the back of his head. He pitches forward into the dirty water sloshing between Ignacio’s feet. He stays down there for a moment, trying to rid his expression of satisfaction. Then, as he’s about to struggle back into a seated position, he notices something beneath Ignacio’s seat. It’s a clear plastic container, about five gallons or so, filled to the brim with extra fuel. There’s not much space under the aft seat, so the container lies on its side. The nozzle that should be on top is just beneath the surface of the water they’ve taken on. Howard reaches out quickly with his bound hands and cracks the nozzle open. He sits up and watches gasoline flow out into the saltwater splashing about their ankles. Then he watches Ignacio smoke.

THE MORNING SMOG
begins to lift. Birds circle in the haze above. A shoreline becomes distinct ahead. It’s a long swim, but Howard’s an optimist. Anyhow, he’s better in the water than on land.

Ignacio savors his cigarette and Howard prays he takes his time, keeping one eye on the slowly emptying container. Everybody notices
the smell and Ignacio peeks back at the engine with a worried look. He says something to his brother in Tagalog—something calming. The cherry burns down, almost to the filter. Ignacio makes to chuck it overboard but Howard grabs his wrist. He pinches the cigarette, fingers burning a little, and drops it into the bottom of the boat. Then he tosses himself overboard.