Iona Moon (3 page)

Iona's father said a cow had a big head, but no brains, nothing but tongue filling up all that space.

Iona peeled potatoes while her mother fried hamburger for a shepherd's pie. They were last year's potatoes, the skins wrinkled and dusty, the flesh a bit too soft, already sprouting tough violet shoots. She meant to tell Hannah now, while they were alone, but something stopped her: the line of her mother's mouth, or the way she held her hands under the warm water long after they were clean.

At dinner, Iona told the story. She knew what her brothers would think.

“Could be anyone's,” Leon said. He was nineteen but looked thirty. The skin under his eyes was pouched; he'd already lost a patch of hair over both temples.

“She's done half the senior class,” said Rafe.

“You hush,” Hannah said.

“It's no secret.” Dale's mouth was full of pie.

“She's blaming it on a dead man 'cause she forgot to keep a list of the possibilities,” Leon said. “Poor Everett can't even deny it, and he's probably one of the few guys in town who didn't pop Sharla.”

Iona stared at Leon, trying to decide if his nastiness came from being one of the few or one of many.

“You hear me?” said Hannah. “I won't have you talking that way.”

“I heard you, Mama. I just don't see the point.”

Iona's father said, “You sit at this table, you mind your mother. That's the point.”

Leon stood, let his napkin fall. “I'm done anyway,” he said.

Iona lay in bed wondering how Everett looked when he came to Sharla in her dream. His picture in the paper after he died showed a proud young man in uniform. The flag waved behind him, out of focus. Everett's mouth was firm.
I
do what I'm told to do
.

The picture didn't look a bit like the Everett Fry Iona knew. That Everett Fry parked on Main for half a day at a time, staring at women, making them jittery for weeks afterward. That Everett Fry wore a red and black plaid hunting cap with the ear flaps pulled down and the visor shading his eyes. His hunter's vest bulged; he had something hidden in every pocket: knives and grenades, leather straps and dried beans, a half-dozen boxes of shells. He smoked filterless cigarettes down to a nub so small he could barely pinch the hot butt between his yellow fingers.

Then there was the third Everett Fry, the clean-shaven one wearing his uniform again. His eyes were startled, opened wide. His mouth was open too, revealing jagged chips of bone: his teeth shattered by the blast. If Sharla put her hands on his head she'd discover the back of his skull was gone. Iona wondered if men bled in dreams or if the wound would be nothing worse than a hole, surprising and strange but not too terrible to touch.

Iona rode her bike along the dirt road to Jeweldeen's. She stopped pedaling near the Zimmerman place, coasting to look at Al's bulls. Muscles rippled over their buttocks. They had thick necks, twitching tails. She knew the scent of a cow wafting across the field could turn them mean. Sometimes even her smell made them paw the ground under the fence. But this day was still, and the bulls chewed their cud, gazes blank as her father's when he looked at her without seeing. He had more important things on his mind: potatoes and corn, beets and beans. He worried:
Too much rain or too little?
Even in June he had to figure what he'd do if they got frost in September.

Iona wondered if Sharla had given up and told her daddy the truth, or at least something halfway believable. The afternoon was hot; dust flumed under her tires. Iona's father would fret about the heat, remembering the year the topsoil dried up and blew away. He was sixteen years old. The potatoes shriveled in the sun.
Like horrible little heads
, he said.

Like her own head when she got lice last fall and Mama had to shave off all her hair. Hannah grabbed soap and scissors and hauled Iona out to the back steps. She yanked a clump and cut, then another and another, wasting no time on tenderness. Soon Iona's long hair lay around her in limp, dark swirls. Her head felt light and sore. Hannah rubbed Iona's scalp with kerosene. The oil burned, and the pain spread to her neck, a fire radiating through her shoulders to her arms to the tingling tips of her fingers. The heat shot down her spine and her legs prickled—just as they had when she fell in the briars and her daddy had to twist the spiky thorns out one by one with his pointed pliers.

But her parents hadn't done these things to hurt her, so she was lucky in a way, not like Sharla Wilder, who'd been locked in the cellar for a solid week.

“No end in sight,” Jeweldeen said when Iona got off her bike. “Every morning he goes down there and asks her who done it, and every morning she gives him the same answer. Yesterday he took a stick to her legs, said he'd beat the truth out of her. She said ‘Everett Fry' about a hundred times before he stopped.”

Hearing Everett's name out loud made Iona touch the back of her own head.

“I broke the cellar window with a rock,” said Jeweldeen. “You can look at her if you want.”

Sharla sat crushed in the corner, exactly where she'd been the last time Iona had looked. “Does she ever move?”

“You should see her jump when she hears Daddy on the stairs. And she was sure dancing yesterday when he whacked her with the stick. You never saw a fat girl move so fast.”

“Why doesn't she bolt the lock from her side?”

“He'd bust down the door and whup her good if she tried that.” Jeweldeen peered through the jagged hole in the glass. “Hey, Sharla,” she said, “somebody's here to see you.”

Sharla shuffled over to the window, old already, dress torn at the shoulder, legs blue with bruises.

She climbed on an empty crate. “More cake,” she said.

“It's all she'll eat,” said Jeweldeen. “I made her one yesterday and one the day before, and they're both gone. Daddy would thump me if he knew. He means to starve the truth out of her.”

“I'm hungry,” Sharla said, raising her hands toward the window.

“Honestly,” said Jeweldeen, “you're gonna drive me straight up this wall with your begging.” She banged her fist on the side of the house. “I already told you, cake's gone. You ate it, Sharla, the whole damn thing.”

Sharla stared at her sister. “You talk to her,” Jeweldeen told Iona. “I'll go see if I can find her something sweet.” She wagged her finger at Sharla. “But I am not making you another cake. You're too fat anyway.”

Jeweldeen was right about Sharla being too fat. Her breasts and belly were already bloated, twice their usual size. “You can tell me,” Iona said. “I won't breathe a word to your daddy; I won't even tell Jeweldeen.”

Sharla cocked her head and her brow wrinkled. She put her hand over her mouth and Iona saw the chipped red polish on her nails. Living in the dark, eating nothing but cake, waiting for her father to come down the stairs—no wonder Sharla was starting to go off. “I know why you're acting this way,” Iona whispered. She remembered the day her father put Angel down. Hannah wanted him to wait.
Dry a year
, he said,
and now she's worrying the others
. But he was sorry to do it, and Iona saw him in the field, stroking Angel's head.

Jeweldeen returned, carrying two slabs of bread with butter and sugar. Sharla snatched them from her sister, stuffed a whole piece in her mouth and scuttled to the corner. No amount of coaxing could lure her back to the window.

“I'll bring you another slice,” Jeweldeen said. “With honey this time. Or strawberry jam. You'd like that, wouldn't you?” Sharla squatted and chewed. “Forget it, then,” said Jeweldeen. She grabbed Iona's arm. “Honestly,” she said, “I don't know what you find so interesting.”

Iona found everything about Sharla Wilder interesting. Maybe she did make love to Everett Fry before he shot himself. Maybe it felt like being with the ghost of a man and now she couldn't get it out of her head. No matter how many times her daddy smacked her legs she was going to keep on telling him the same name. Everett Fry. What good was the truth? No one in his right mind was going to marry Sharla in her condition—even if Jack Wilder did hold a shotgun to his head. Maybe that was the real reason Sharla lay the blame on Everett. He'd turned the gun on himself and was safe from her daddy.

Iona stayed clear of the Wilder place for the rest of the week. She wanted to see Sharla alone and planned to sneak over there some night. She'd ask Sharla what it was like to make love with Everett Fry, to feel the scar on his shoulder with her fingers, the place where the flesh was puckered and hard.

Did a dead lover whisper your name, or was silence the most important thing? Did you hear the wind in the grass? Did the branches beat against your window? Did he smell like a man, like your own father, or was his breath sweet as cinnamon and almonds?

Iona never got the chance to ask these questions. On Sunday, Jeweldeen appeared. She still wore her church clothes, though it was late afternoon. Her little white anklets and patent leather shoes were speckled with mud. It had rained during the night, and Jeweldeen had ridden straight through the puddles.

“Sharla's not pregnant anymore,” Jeweldeen said, puffing as she tried to catch her breath. “She's sick though. Too hot to touch. Daddy found her on the floor of the cellar when we got home from church, bleeding like a stuck pig. ‘Well that's that,' he says, and we carried her upstairs. My hands were burning. Fever a hundred and four, I'd say, but he won't call the doctor. ‘Leave well enough alone,' he told me. We put her in a tub of cold water. The bleeding slowed down but she's still hot.” Jeweldeen climbed on her bike. “I better get back there before Daddy sees I'm gone.”

“I'm coming with you.”

“He won't like it.”

“Since when do you care?”

Jeweldeen shrugged and Iona ran to get her bike.

They rode fast without talking. The day was already dark, the air heavy with low clouds. Al Zimmerman's bulls rammed their heads into the electric fence as the girls passed. The shock made them rear back but didn't stop them from charging again, digging at the dirt with their sharp hooves.

Jeweldeen peeked down the cellar window as they propped their bikes against the side of the house. “Look at this,” she said. Iona was afraid Sharla's father had already forced her back down the stairs. But it was nothing like that. It was Jack Wilder himself, on his hands and knees, scouring the place where Sharla had curled into herself hours earlier.

They found Sharla in the living room. All the shades had been pulled down, and the place smelled musty. She lay on the couch, wrapped in a white sheet, wide awake. The cold bath had brought her temperature down. Her face was bloodless, pale as always. In fact, she seemed a lot more like herself than the last time Iona had seen her.

Sharla's eyes looked red and sore, but she didn't blink. “Don't you stare at me,” Jeweldeen said. “I didn't do nothing.”

Sharla breathed hard. Iona thought she had something to say, but all of a sudden she was wailing instead, punching and kicking at the sheet from inside till she'd beaten it away from her. She clawed at her white breasts and her white belly as if she wanted to tear off her skin too. Iona tried to grab her wrists, but Sharla was quick. She slapped at the air and kicked Iona in the stomach. The sheet was stained underneath Sharla's rump, and her thighs were streaked with dried blood. “You better get some towels,” Iona said to Jeweldeen. The sight of her naked sister startled Jeweldeen enough to do what Iona asked.

“Look at her,” Sharla said. She pointed to the picture of Maywood Wilder above the television. Iona did look. The head floated, bigger than life, cut off at the shoulders. She wore glasses that magnified her eyes but left them out of focus. Someone had erased all the wrinkles, leaving her face unnaturally smooth, unmotherly in a way Iona couldn't define. The picture had no color, and the woman's lips looked almost black; Maywood Wilder smiled without enjoying herself.

“She's watching me,” Sharla said. “Daddy told me—just like God.” She laughed. Her cheeks didn't seem swollen anymore; she was shrinking back to her normal size, and her voice was tight and clear. “He's glad I took care of it.” She swallowed hard. “He was afraid it might look too much like him.” Her throat was dry but she didn't whisper. “He kept tryin' to make me say somebody else did it. Ain't nobody gonna know now. 'Cept my mama. She knows what he did. I told him so too. She knows.”

Jeweldeen had come back in the room in time to hear the last three sentences. “Get out o' here,” she said to Iona. She dropped the pile of towels on the floor. Iona wanted to push Sharla's damp hair off her face. She wanted to promise that everything would be all right. She wanted to hold Sharla's hand or at least help Jeweldeen get those towels underneath her. But there wasn't time for any of that, before Jeweldeen said, “I mean it, Iona—now.”

Sharla's eyes opened wide, but she didn't move, didn't make a sound. Iona walked out into the yard and Jeweldeen followed. It was drizzling again. Rust-colored rivulets cut the muddy drive. Jack Wilder knelt by the cellar window, nailing a board over the broken glass. He glanced at Iona and Jeweldeen but didn't stop pounding. Iona thought of his short, fat fingers.

“My sister's crazy,” Jeweldeen said. “She's just trying to get back at Daddy, telling you those lies.”

Iona nodded.

“You don't believe her, do you?”

Iona shook her head.

“My daddy's not like that.”

Jack Wilder stood and wiped his bald head with a handkerchief. He was too far away to hear them. He dumped the bucket of water he'd used to wash the cellar floor. It trickled down the drive, the same color as the red brown mud.

“Don't you dare tell anybody what she said or I'll swear you got lice again. Nobody'll touch you. Nobody'll even talk to you.” Jeweldeen took a deep breath and waited. “Well?”