The Slow Moon (22 page)

V

The Slow Moon

Forty-seven

T
HE JAIL HELD
heat like steam in a barrel. The boys had been in their cells for almost a week, just five miles away from Pittsburg, but it felt like a different universe, or a bad dream. The jail cells in Jasper County were small and clean, and each one had a high window.

When they were first taken to their cells, each boy was allowed to talk to his family. Jack and Mary Canady entered a large room and sat at a table. One guard walked Tom into the visitors’ room and stood beside the door. He pretended not to listen, but noticed how Jack kept complaining about small matters. The complaints came steady, relentless, and rarely had to do with Tom. He seemed chained to these complaints.

When he complained about the lack of air-conditioning, Tom said, “They have it. It’s just broken.”

“Well, it’s unbearable in here.” The complaints lessened after a while, then started up again. Neither parent wanted to talk about the rape, instead they told Tom about Johnny’s sudden disappearance.

“What do you mean?” said Tom. “He ran away?” Tom did not admit to having called Johnny at camp before turning himself in. He had pretended to be Mr. Davenport so they would be sure to call Johnny to the phone. Johnny had been sent for right in the middle of a swimming competition.

“Dad, what’s wrong?” Johnny’s voice sounded young and worried.

“Relax kid, it’s me. Tom.” He took a deep breath and spilled out his story, telling Johnny what he, Bobby, and Casey had done, and explaining their plan to turn themselves in.

“Why would you do that to Sophie? And my brother.” Johnny’s teeth were chattering.

Tom could just picture him, wrapped in a wet towel and dripping on the floor. “You think you can judge me?” He felt his voice grow harsh against the back of his throat, raggedy. “Like none of this is your fault? Think about what you did to me. One day you can’t wait to kiss me and squeeze my cock, and the next you won’t even take my phone calls. Actions have consequences, Johnny. And the way I was feeling, in that black, crappy hole, half drunk, I just went along with my friends.”

Johnny swallowed. “So you’re saying that this was somehow my fault?”

Tom sighed. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess I just wanted you to hear about this from me, before your brother had a chance to trash me or you saw it on the news. You’re the only person I really care about, Johnny. I wish you cared about me the same way. If you had…I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Now Tom worried that Johnny might hurt himself, or that his own problems could be compounded by what Johnny might tell.

“They haven’t found him,” said Mary. “People are thinking somebody took him.”

“Nobody took him,” said Tom. “Johnny’s just real private. He likes to go off alone sometimes.”

“Well, this seems different,” his father said. “Nobody can find him. He didn’t tell anybody he was going away. That’s why they’re worried.”

Tom felt supremely conscious of his body, its weight and heft. As they talked, something flicked through his head, made him start, as if he tasted something sour.

His mother, stuck in her funnel of doubt, asked, “Are you all right, Tom?” A dry question. Tom nodded. He caught his father perusing his hair and shirt.

“You need some other clothes, son?” Jack Canady sat, still as a carving. He had settled into meek embarrassment. “They let you wear your own clothes in here?”

“I can wear my own stuff until I have to leave,” said Tom. He didn’t say “prison.” Mary made a list of things to bring to Tom, glad to be talking about something she could do. She felt pleased that Jack had asked the question. Tom felt that his parents might be trying to pretend that he was leaving for school.

“We’ll come back every day,” his mother promised.

“Let me know if you hear anything about Johnny,” Tom said.

The boys were in cells near each other. Bobby and Casey on one side, Tom on the opposite side. They would remain there for a couple of more weeks, maybe a month. The D.A. had decided that these boys should be sentenced as adults. Now everyone had to wait for the judge to consider this decision. Many people in town did not agree with the D.A. Letters and editorials were written. The judge could take his time deciding.

Every night for several weeks one of the mothers brought supper for them—an unusual request made by Judge Bailey and accepted by the sheriff. The boys preferred meals cooked by Mary Canady, but tonight Judge Bailey brought them chicken tetrazzini. Casey’s mother could not be counted on to bring anything.

As Aurelia Bailey entered the visitors’ room, thunder shook the building and lights flickered. A deluge of rain fell on the jailhouse roof. She sat with the boys while they ate. The room had a TV, and sometimes the guard let the boys stay an hour or two to watch TV before going back to their cells.

Bobby took a bite of the casserole. He liked the taste of noodles and chicken and cheese. He ate quickly.

“Bobby,” said Aurelia, “when you’re through I’d like to talk with you.”

“Okay.”

She gathered the plates and her casserole dish, then led Bobby to a different room. Bobby stayed for nearly thirty minutes, and when he returned he looked puzzled but inflated with importance.

The next flash of lightning made the lights flicker again, and the TV went off.

“That’s it,” said the officer, whose name was Seldon. “You’re going back now.” He seized and handcuffed each boy, and they followed him down the dingy hall to their cells. Pearly hard drops of hail hit the roof and the sides of the building. Officer Seldon closed the cells, and just as he was leaving, the lights went out completely. He had a flashlight and flipped it on.

“Don’t you have some kind of emergency lighting in here?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah, but it must’ve got the transformer.”

“At least leave us the flashlight,” said Bobby.

“Can’t do that,” said the officer.

“Aw, man. Don’t leave us like this. What could we do with a flashlight? Leave us something.”

“I have a small penlight in my desk. Guess I could get that.” The officer went to get the smaller light.

“What’d your mother say, Bobby?” Tom asked. He could tell that Bobby’s mood had lifted.

“She said my dad’s coming tomorrow,” Bobby told them. “He’s coming here.”

“You’re shittin’ me,” said Casey.

“She said he’s coming around four o’clock.” Bobby’s voice had a tinge of restoration in it, an oddly happy inflection. (All those nights in bed, imagining a father somewhere in a boat, or camping in the woods, in an office high up in a building in Chicago or New York City. Or he imagined his father walking into his room, or coming home at dinnertime and sitting down with him forever.)

Officer Seldon returned with the penlight and handed it to Bobby.

“Here.” Tom pitched a couple of books outside the bars of Bobby’s cell. “Read something to us. I mean, read it out loud. You got the flashlight.”

“Which book?”

“Anything,” said Casey. “Something funny.”

So Bobby read as they settled on their cots, getting beneath their slim blankets. And the dark air took the words, creating a story above them, a comic scenario that made them laugh out loud. When Bobby grew tired, he stopped reading. “Okay,” he said. “That’s all.”

No one answered, but he heard them turn over on their cots. He flicked off the penlight, its thin ray going back into the small stick canister.

“You know what, guys?” Casey said. “The Battle of the Bands was yesterday. I wonder who won.”

That night Bobby tried to pray. But as he lay there he began instead to laugh. He thought of passages he had just read, and the laughter that rose up in him was real, not nervous, and became contagious as he tried to explain what he was laughing about. Tom remembered something else, then Casey added to it, and their laughter wouldn’t stop. It moved from cell to cell like a feather. And the joy that comes with laughter came in, like a stranger to them. Just before sleep, Bobby wondered if that was prayer. If, for the first time in his life he had prayed, really prayed, and that that was it.

The next morning a robin flew off the roof, its wings skittering in front of the cell window; another one ducked and fluttered toward the ground.

“I wish it would come in here,” Tom said. He was looking out, trying to see it again.

“Tom’s turning into the Birdman of Alcatraz.” Casey laughed.

“Kiss my ass,” said Tom.

“You ever held a bird?” Casey asked.

“Have you?”

“Once,” said Casey. “It had a broken wing and I picked it up. I could feel its heart, you know? Like its heart would beat right out of its chest.”

“Did it die?”

“I guess.”

“You didn’t take it somewhere?”

“No.”

“Shit, Willig,” said Bobby. “Why’d you even pick it up?”

“It wadn’t my fault it got a broken wing,” Casey said. “Don’t blame me.”

Tom thought of the reverend’s dog on the side of the road.

“What’re you thinking about?” asked Casey.

“Who?” asked Tom.

“Anybody.”

“I’m thinking about how we got here,” Bobby said.

“My head’s fuzzy,” Tom answered. “I can’t think about anything at all.”

“Willig?”

“I’m thinking about my brother and how he felt when he was in jail. Did I tell you he was in jail? He stayed for four years.”

“I wish I’d done what I planned to do,” Tom told them.

“Which was what?” Bobby thought he might say something funny.

Tom didn’t answer. No one spoke.

“Je-sus, Tom.”

“I was going to San Francisco. I was going to live there.” He had not said what he was thinking, but the words sounded good. “I swear, I don’t think I’d be in all this trouble if I had a different dad.”

“Well, if we’re blaming, then I’m the son of a bitch who has a dad I thought was dead, and a mother-judge. I wouldn’t mind having a few things different too.”

“I’m following after my brother,” Casey said. “Right in his footsteps.”

They stood around blaming whatever they could think to blame.

Tom leaned against the wall, looking out into the other cells. He wanted someone to speak, to talk to him and make him feel normal. He wanted them to find Johnny. Casey sat on his cot, his head in his hands, looking at the floor. He mouthed to himself as if talking in his sleep.

Bobby kept coughing, not as if anything were caught in his throat, but nervously. From time to time he stood on his cot and looked out the window. “I see Coach Post,” Bobby said. “He just got out of his car. He might be coming to see us.”

But Charlie headed toward the 7-Eleven. Bobby said nothing about his pause, his slow turn toward the jail before going into the store.

Casey sat on his cot, cursing, a sluggish sound to his voice. Each boy could hear the other moving in his cell. In a short while they grew still.

“Guess Coach isn’t coming,” said Tom. The day moved slowly toward noon, and they slept to pass the time.

Bobby lay on his cot. He wished he were outside doing something free. And with the wish came an image of wings over the river, a flicker of a hawk or bright robin.

Last year Mr. Hollis had told his classes an old story of slaves who were packed tightly into ships for many months, how the slaves had dreamed of flight back to their homes, their families, back to their sisters and fathers. Each man held his breath, hoping to fly, believing that if only he could swallow his tongue, then flight might be possible. By swallowing his tongue a slave could fly out of the dark hull of a ship, over the water and bright shore, over the hard moon and its edge of shadow, until he reached the hut where he had lived. And when he got there, he could breathe in the smell of home. He could bring his father’s hand to his face.

Bobby experimented with his tongue, but instead of flying he coughed and choked, and the face that came to his mind was Sophie’s—Sophie hovering small on the ground. He could see her—her shoulders and arms, the shape of her eyes and mouth. He could smell her hair. And then he saw her body lift up above the trees and she was gone. But Bobby was not gone. Bobby was still here inside the realm of mistake. He could not swallow his tongue, nor could he fly, but he did feel the crazy thrill of joy. He had seen Sophie leave that place of ground. And by midafternoon he didn’t know if he had slept, but he knew the burst of flight, of Sophie’s freedom, if not his own.

Forty-eight

J
OHNNY HAD BEEN
gone for thirty-six hours. A slow August light settled into the ground, burning at the edge of hills. People wondered now if the Davenport boy was even alive. They suspected something more than just a boy running away. They had found a T-shirt and a sock in the woods outside Chattanooga, and suspicion stirred through the town. Police in other states had been alerted.

Helen barely slept at all. That night she saw Johnny at the end of her bed—she awoke suddenly and saw him there. She knew she was not dreaming because Carl had gotten up and was in the bathroom. The bathroom light was on and water running. She called to see if Carl was all right. “I’m fine,” he said. She could hear him pacing.

Then she saw, at the end of the bed, the form of Johnny, his face and shape, though not his clothes, not even his body—just his shape, his size, his head and features. And he motioned for her the way he motioned every time he wanted her to come, whenever he wanted to show her something. She gasped so loud that Carl turned off the water and called out, “Helen?” So concerned they were about each other. Then again, “Helen?”

Helen couldn’t answer, for fear her voice would send Johnny away. His shape moved to the side of the bed, and she reached quickly to touch him, but he moved back.

“Oh, Johnny, honey, is it you? It is you, isn’t it?” And then she heard a sound—but not a voice—come from the charge of light that he was.

When Carl came back to bed, Helen pretended to be asleep. She hoped the shape would come back. She felt greedy with hope. She lay with her eyes closed, and for moments she wanted to leave the world, to allow holy sleep to pronounce its own loneliness.

Helen felt her throat collapse, a small cry coming out. Carl reached his arms around her. He held her close.

The next morning, in the half-light of dawn, Carl could hear Helen’s light footsteps, barefooted going through the house. He could hear her walking from room to room, passing Crow sleeping, then down to the carpeted hallway to their own bedroom.

Worry surrounded Helen like smoke, like clothes she could not take off; and she became aroused. Her groin and breasts ached with a fever, her belly and arms, her legs, trembled with want.

Carl saw Helen pull her gown over her head, her body gleaming white with shadows. He had forgotten how slim her hips and legs were, how full her breasts. She climbed into bed beside him and lay on her back before she said his name. He didn’t answer immediately. He wasn’t sure he could do what she wanted. How long had it been since they were close?

But as she began to touch him, knead him with her hands, he caught some of her hunger and turned toward her. He said her name, then said it again, kissing her. Her mouth became young, and remembering, his tongue took hold.

He entered her and they rocked, investigating the whiteness of legs and belly. “Carl, love me, Carl.” Then she said, “Fuck me,” as if she were mad at the world. Carl grew strong with desire. Helen had never come to him with such abandon, and he imagined Ava instead of Helen, though the nights with Ava were over. Those last nights with Ava had even become humdrum, expectable; and now this desire from Helen had brought him back to what he thought was an irretrievable domain. He had missed her.

How did this happen? Had the presence of children in the house over the years taken away their spirit of lust, and now had it come back? She rode him, rolling until they were half off the bed. Helen’s head hung down like someone drowned. Still she wanted more, so they moved to the floor. A long final sigh and tiny tremblings convinced Carl of her satisfaction.

“Helen.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t say anything. Anything.” Helen’s pleadings came out in a rhythm, rather than specific words.

They heard the sound of birds, many birds in a field behind the house. The noisy calls came in so suddenly that Carl got up to see what it was.

“What is it?” Helen asked.

“Blackbirds,” Carl told her. “So many. Come here and look.”

“I can’t move,” she said. “I don’t think I can move.” When Carl didn’t return to the bed but kept standing at the window, Helen got up to see.

Hundreds of starlings were rising up, then landing in a nearby meadow. Helen stood beside Carl, their bodies shiny with sweat, their arms around each other. They watched the birds’ trembly pecking, moving together, from one side of the field to the other.

“They’re starlings,” said Helen. “I’ve always been fascinated at the way they move in droves like that.” They swerved up again. She and Carl remained at the window thinking about how their world had shrunk down to this ledge: the rise and fall of so many black wings against the morning air, and harsh calls cutting the air like a knife. They clutched each other as if they were about to fall.

The telephone rang and Helen hurried to answer. Carl heard her talking in the hall and could tell by the tone of her voice that it was news about Johnny.

“What?” Carl yelled, hearing her run toward the room.

She rushed to the closet to get dressed. “They found him.”

Carl leapt up. “Where?”

“I don’t want to believe anything until I see him,” Helen said.

“Where did they find him? Tell me.” Carl was pulling on his pants.

Helen laughed, almost laughed. “Wake Crow up,” she said.

“Helen?”

“State troopers found him on the road to Chattanooga. They’re dropping him off at the police station.”

She put on jeans and a sweatshirt, and touched Carl’s cheek as she left the room. “Crow!” she called loudly. “They found Johnny!”

Carl rushed to Crow’s room. He was already in the bathroom and had not heard his mother. They all dressed without washing, without doing anything but going to the car and rushing to where Johnny was.