Iona Moon (6 page)

In August, a girl might cry when she imagines you've risked your life for her delight, but she won't like you half as much when you're parked down by the river, shivering in November. No, in the back seat of the Chrysler, there was no clapping and no ecstasy, no double twists in layout position, no graceful entries. There were only rough hands and stubborn zippers, grunts in the dark and the terrible silence when he was done.

Plenty of girls had hopped in the car with Jay Tyler. They wanted to be seen dragging Main, but only one ever liked Snake River, only one ever unhooked her own bra.
Here, baby, let me help you
. Iona Moon wanted it. Too bad they never got the chance. Jay didn't have his license back then, so Willy was at the wheel, with Belinda Beller in the front seat saying
no
. Belinda's mother was one of those women who thought boys only married virgins.
A virgin takes what you give her and doesn't complain
. Guys said it all the time. They didn't like the idea that a girl might have some basis of comparison. But when you thought about it logically, the best you could hope for was a girl who had the good sense to lie. Most guys said they'd done it and most girls said they hadn't. That meant a couple of girls were getting an awful lot of action. It was possible but not likely.

Iona Moon was all elbow and knee, bony ribs and hardly any breasts at all. Her dark hair held the odors of the barn: sweet, grassy scent of cud and sting of cow piss. Willy was right about one thing: country girls had a dangerous grip, the strength to break a chicken's neck and no qualms. Iona's skin was yellowish, the color of a sick baby. She was nothing to look at, but she knew what to do in the dark, and her nipples felt hard as stones in your mouth.

Muriel Arnoux had a soft belly and clean fingernails. Her hair caught the light; her skin smelled of soap. You could take a girl like Muriel home to meet your parents even though she was only fourteen. Willy would cuss over that.
Shit, Jay, you can go to jail for foolin' with a girl that age
. Sanctimonious bastard.
My father said he'd string me up by my balls if he ever heard I was baby-snatchin
'. Horton Hamilton was a man of his word. Now Willy was talking about following in his father's footsteps, being a policeman, but he was never going to fill his daddy's size twelves. Jay got a kick out of that. Good joke, but Willy didn't laugh when he heard it. Pain in the ass. Jay was glad he didn't have to depend on Willy anymore. He had his own license and his mother's car.

Jay regretted the missed chance with Iona Moon. Her fingernails had left red marks on his back. She sucked up little pieces of flesh on his neck and he had to wear his shirts buttoned to the top for days. But she wasn't the kind of girl you wanted to eat lunch with in the cafeteria; kids still remembered her shaved head in sixth grade, how three boys pushed her down in the street and stole her scarf. Girls shrieked and ran away. All day the boys chased them, saying:
I
touched her, now I'm gonna touch you
. And you couldn't take her home to meet your folks. She had bad teeth for one thing.
Show me a mouth like that and I'll show you a farmer's daughter
. That's what Jay's father would say, and he should know. He'd seen the insides of enough mouths. Jay knew what Andrew Johnson Tyler would say about an abortion too. He was a medical man. After all.
Nothing but a cluster of cells at this stage
. He'd pull on his pointed beard and think so hard that his hairless scalp would wrinkle halfway back his skull.
I
know a doctor in Boise. Owes me a favor too
.

But it was no use thinking about what his father would say, because Muriel Arnoux wasn't going to have any abortion. Jay had waited for her outside the church. She never did get up the nerve to talk to the priest. She said, “I confessed to God and he gave me his answer.” Jay looked at her white ankle socks, her thin, pale calves. “I was praying, Jay; when I opened my eyes, I saw Jesus hanging on the cross behind the altar and he couldn't see me because his eyes were carved. Jesus has wooden eyes and won't ever look at me again if I do this.”

Jesus
. Jay heard his father's words on that topic.
The Catholics drive their girls crazy, all that muttering and confession, fondling beads and crawling into a little black booth with a priest, being forgiven so they can go out and sin again. I never knew a Catholic girl who wasn't touched, half in love with her priest or ready to die at the feet of Jesus
.

Muriel called and told him to come by at eight. “And bring the money.” Her parents had found a place for her to stay till the baby was born. She wouldn't tell him where it was. “Out of state,” she said, “no one will know me.” He had two thousand from his grandfather in Arizona, but he told her he only had five hundred. “Bring it all.”

“You're getting off cheap,” Muriel's father said. “I'd take it out of your hide if I had my way.” He had a potbelly and pug nose, burly arms from loading freight for thirty years. Muriel's mother sat in a blue armchair, blowing her nose. The chair was covered with plastic that made farting noises when she moved. She looked like Muriel: all the curves turned to rolls of fat, milky skin gone pasty, ankles swollen, but the same clean, small hands. The girl was locked in her room, forbidden to come downstairs while
he
was in the house. Jay imagined her, kneeling, fingering beads, naming the sorrowful mysteries, seeing her Jesus nailed to the cross.
For me, Jay, he died for me, for my sins. And look what I've done
.

“You're never going to see my daughter again. You understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well?”

“Sir?”

“The money, Mr. Tyler.”

Jay pulled the crumpled envelope from his pocket.

“You know how old my daughter is?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“And she's gonna have her first child. She's gonna let that baby go, and she's never gonna be the same again. Five hundred dollars just bought you your freedom, but I'll kill you and go to hell without regret if you ever come near my family again.” Above the mantel hung a painting of Jesus, not yet crucified but already heavy with knowledge, his white robe parted to expose a brilliant heart. This Jesus had beautiful hands, delicate and pale, but the heart was ridiculous, the shape a child would draw and much too large.

Muriel's mother blew her nose so hard she really did fart. Jay held out his hand to Mr. Arnoux. It was a stupid gesture, something his father would do, his way of saying he understood how troublesome women could be. Muriel's father showed him the door.

Jay knew that if he turned and looked up, he would see Muriel at the window, her palms flat on the pane, waiting to mouth the words:
I'm sorry, Jay
. She was sorry about everything. Sorry about being born and sorry about being female. Sorry she let him do it and sorry she didn't like it. Jay thought his father was right about Catholic girls. He didn't bother to turn around.

In the car, Jay stared at the hand Muriel's father wouldn't touch. He thought about swinging by Willy's, saying, “You wanna go for a ride?” They'd park on the bridge and drop rocks in the river, wait for the sound, count the seconds a stone takes to fall. They hadn't talked for months. Willy would know something was up and Jay would spill it. Then he'd have to listen to all that crap about giving a blind man a dollar in change when you owed him five, knocking over gravestones, and tipping cows when they were asleep.
I
told you this would happen
. Willy Hamilton knew Jay's crimes like the fingers of his own hand: crouching in a tree to watch Sharla Wilder take off her bra, telling the Wilkerson boy he could improve his thinking by drinking a cup of his own piss every day for a month, watching him down the first warm gulp, laughing so hard the tears rolled down Jay's cheeks and Roy Wilkerson knew he'd been duped.
See, you're getting smarter already
.

That was the subject of his last conversation with Willy Hamilton, back in December.
Somebody's gonna pin you to the ground someday and piss on your head. Let you Know how it feels
. The lights were on in Willy's room. Horton's cruiser was in the drive. Jay slowed down but didn't stop.
You just bought your freedom with five hundred dollars
.

Jay's father sat in the living room, smoking his pipe in the dark, watching television with no sound. Jay knew what that meant, knew his mother had locked herself in the bathroom upstairs. He stayed with his father, but he turned on the lights because he couldn't bear that deep, disembodied voice. No, better to see the mouth move, lips and teeth, tongue and spit, just a man after all, smoke curling above his head.

“Man is ruled by impulse,” Andrew Johnson Tyler said. “Underneath it all, we're just animals that decided to stand up.”

How did he know?

“An animal is ruled by smell, really—the smell of food or fear, the smell of a female.”

Maybe they told him at the bank:
Your son withdrew five hundred dollars
.

“Instinct is stronger than reason. That's why we have laws. Men understand punishment, or the threat of it.”

Now his mother was at the top of the stairs, wearing her pearls and black stockings.

“I hope your mother's life is a lesson to you, son.”

He didn't know about Muriel. He didn't know anything.

Delores Tyler clutched her beaded purse and fur stole. Jay breathed hard. He already caught a whiff of her perfume, Southern Rose spilled between her breasts, dabbed behind her ears and knees. His father packed his pipe with fresh tobacco, gave the match and those first sweet puffs his full attention. Only five more steps. She wobbled on her spike heels. Her smell filled the room.

“I'm going into town,” she announced as she stood at the door. The seams of her stockings made crooked lines up the back of her legs.

“They've done experiments with rats,” Jay's father said to him. “A rat will take certain drugs until it kills itself. It will starve by choice. A male and female in the same cage will fight instead of fornicate.”

“Don't expect me home tonight.” His mother's voice was husky from cigarettes.

Jay and his father knew there was nowhere for her to go in White Falls, no place to dance till dawn, no place to hold your shoes in one hand while you shuffled in your stocking feet, too tired to stop. There was no place with piped-in piano music where a woman could meet a stranger, a man who whispered tender obscenities. No, there was only the Roadstop Bar with the jukebox blaring, all the familiar faces, wolf whistles, and propositions shouted above the din.

In an hour, Jay saw himself walking half a mile down the road, finding his mother slumped at the wheel. He'd bring her home and help her climb the stairs, tuck the dancing shoes under her bed. An hour after that, he'd cruise down the River Road, hands tight on the wheel.

“I think I'll retire,” Jay's father said, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. “You should get some rest too, son.” Jay nodded but didn't follow.

He waited until he heard the toilet flush to crack the door and slip outside. The night was cold, moonless; he needed his jacket but didn't dare go back. He found his mother just where he thought she'd be.

“I lost the keys, baby.”

“I'll look for them later, Mom.”

She draped her arm over his shoulders. Her body was soft, her skin warm. His father said she was fat, but she felt nice, a good flesh hold, hot breath on his neck, and the sweet burp of brandy. The cold had weakened her perfume, and she smelled as she used to smell years before. Late at night, after parties or bridge, she'd come to Jay's room, lift him to the dizzy height of a dream with the scent of bruised flowers, wake him with her cool kiss and say:
Don't worry, baby, I'm home
.

They stumbled together. Black trees lined the drive, trunks long and straight, leaves numb as praying hands. The Milky Way swirled, a storm of stars, but the earth was unbearably still, strange and soundless, without wind or the rush of water, without the comfort of a car passing, that temporary light throwing elongated shadows, willowly human shapes. “I should've put the porch light on,” Jay said. His mother clung to his arm. “I like the dark,” she murmured.

She giggled at the bottom of the stairs and took off her shoes. “Don't want to wake your father.”

Jay put his arm around her, his hand just below her breast.

At her door he said, “Three more steps.” She fell onto the bed, her body limp and heavy.

“Do you think I'm pretty, Jay?”

Your mother dresses like a whore
.

“You look nice, Mom.”

“Not too fat?”

Puffed up like Marilyn Monroe
.

“No, Mom, you look fine.”

She was an alcoholic too, you know
.

She patted the soft bulge of her belly. “I used to have a flat stomach, but having you took care of that. That doctor your father knows in Boise wrecked my muscles cutting you out. Stitched me up like the Bride of Frankenstein too. I should have sued, but your father said he couldn't do that to a friend, another
man of medicine.
”

“I know, Mom, you told me.”

“He was a butcher.”

“Yes, you should have sued.”

“My father said I was the prettiest girl in White Falls.” She lay very still, eyes closed. “Any boy I wanted and I end up with a man who hates me.”

“He doesn't hate you, Mom.”

“Lie down next to me, Jay. I caught a chill out there in the car.” He stretched out beside her on the bed. She wasn't cold at all, but he stayed. “You know what they did to me when your father sent me to that clinic in Wharton, that
spa
for worrisome wives?”

“You told me, Mom.”

“Did I tell you I thought I was blind?”

“Yes.”