The Slow Moon (23 page)

Forty-nine

J
OHNNY HAD HUNG
up the phone, shivering, horrified. Tom’s news turned the world upside down. Could all of this be Johnny’s fault? Even partly? Because he’d let himself go with Tom and spent those afternoons exploring in the abandoned house? Because he’d cut Tom off so completely? Would Tom tell everyone what they did? Johnny pictured his father hearing about it. It would probably kill him. And all the kids at school would look at him differently. Melanie would think he was gay. Would she be wrong?

Johnny felt like he’d swallowed a fireball, and the idea pushed him into motion. Instead of going back to swimming, he’d headed to his cabin, grabbed his backpack and some water, and started walking.

He needed to be alone, to think about who he was, or who he could be now. In the small river town of South Pittsburg, Tennessee, a shock spent itself wave upon wave, where even things in the corners or the backs of closets kept rising.

His memories of sex with Tom confused Johnny, and even though Tom had never forced Johnny further than he wanted to go, he had always urged for more, finally growing frustrated and angry. (“C’mon. Shit! Are you with me or not? What are you so scared of?”)

Maybe Tom was right. Maybe Johnny
was
gay, but then why did he have such strong feelings for Melanie? He had kissed her over and over, not wanting to stop. He wanted to touch her legs and breasts—could barely keep himself from doing so. He felt a stronger pull toward Melanie than he had with Tom. Should he feel guilty? Should he tell Melanie about Tom? If he could get off somewhere, he might be able to figure things out. So he wandered from the camp and didn’t come back.

The smell of leaves and old roses hung in the air. Crab apples, sour and dark on their axis in the deep earth, hung beside thick webs in the limbs. Johnny kept thinking about regret; but these thoughts seemed useless, like a sentimental weakness.

A breeze worked like a courier to bring him new thoughts:
I am not to blame. Tom did what he did. He did it, not me. And I know that I want Melanie more than Tom.
He began to feel a subtle unstringing in his bones.
But I treated Tom badly. I started something in him that turned destructive. I have to go back and face that—the part that was mine.

Sympathy and outrage fought against each other. There would always be the appearance of shadows in the woods, of a sky luminous with gray pearl, and long dark streaks of road.
We carry our own mistakes,
he thought.
Sometimes when you stand on a precipice, it becomes impossible not to slip. Something went terribly wrong. But how, exactly? What did I not see or understand?

Johnny slept all night on the floor of the woods, and the next morning he awoke with a clear plan. He would go to the jail to check on Tom. He would look him straight in the eye.

Feeling touched by a finger bone of hope, Johnny walked all morning until he found himself at the edge of a cemetery near Chattanooga. The cemetery gates were large and rusty. And as he passed them, a chord struck.
Was the chord in his head? Was it a bell in the town, a church bell? It seemed far off. Was it the sound of the gate closing?

When he looked up he saw a white cruiser in the cemetery parking lot, and two flat-eyed men coming toward him, fast.

“Are you Johnny Davenport?”

“Yes, sir, I’m Johnny.” He knew who he was, and it felt good to say it out loud.

“We’ve been looking for you. Where have you been?”

The next day Johnny asked his mother to go with him to the jail.

“I don’t want to see those boys,” Helen said. “Not yet.”

“Just drive me,” he pleaded. “Don’t go in if you don’t want to.”

Helen was so glad to see Johnny she would’ve done anything he asked. “Well, but we won’t stay long,” she said.

The smell of urine in the jail filled even the visitors’ room.

“Canady!” the officer called. “You got vis-ters.” He led Tom into the visitation room, to a large wooden picnic table.

“Is it my mom?” Tom asked.

“No,” said the officer. He opened the door, and Tom was startled to see Johnny and his mother.

“Hello, Mrs. Davenport,” Tom said. He nodded slowly to Johnny and slid onto the bench facing them.

“I wanted to come by,” Johnny said.

“He asked me to bring him,” Helen spoke stiffly. She barely looked at Tom. She couldn’t look at his face.

“I wanted to see how you were.” Johnny kept nodding, could not stop nodding.

“I’m pretty good,” Tom said, trying to sound normal. “I get hungry though.”

Johnny took a sack from his mother. “We brought you these.” He looked embarrassed. “It’s just some comic books and candy.”

“No, that’s good.” Tom took the sack and looked inside. “That’s real good. Thanks.” He had tears in his eyes. “You ran away?” he said to Johnny.

“I don’t know why I did it. It was stupid.”

“Not that stupid,” said Tom, his mouth curling slightly toward a smile. “Not nearly as stupid as the stuff I’ve done.”

“Yeah.”

Helen felt the current between the two boys and wanted to shut it off. “Johnny, I told you we couldn’t stay but a minute.”

“Okay then.” Tom rose to go back to his cell.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Johnny said.

“Yeah,” Tom said, and he looked as if he might touch Johnny. “I’m glad you’re all right.” Tom tucked the sack under his arm, but it broke open. Johnny leaned to pick up the items. When he handed them back, Tom’s whole body appeared sad and raw, sick even.

“Listen.” Tom wanted to prolong the moment but didn’t know what to say. “Maybe you can come back again.”

“I don’t know,” said Johnny. “Maybe.”

They both nodded.

As Helen walked with Johnny back to the car, she asked, “What was that about?”

“Nothing.”

Helen took the long way home, not wanting to stop driving but thinking about Johnny with Tom. What exactly had transpired between them? “Is there anything you want to tell me about Tom?” she asked. “Anything I should know? Why did you tell him you were sorry?”

“It was just something I wanted to do,” said Johnny. “Go by the jail. I just feel sorry for him.”

“He’s getting what he deserves,” Helen said. “Don’t you think so? What he did to Sophie, and letting your brother be blamed for it? I’m having a hard time feeling sorry for him.”

“Still,” Johnny said.

As they drove, Helen saw clearly her own rancor hitting against Johnny’s acceptance. Evening came down over them like a large cup.

The next morning Johnny awoke early, spending an hour watching the half-moon and bright starlight work against the sun. As the sun rose, the air filled his room with a bluish tint, the light transitioning night and day—the world was ether. For a moment he wondered:
Are we still human?

Over the next few days the voices of his house returned to normal: his dad and Crow laughing downstairs, private voices rising like smoke, his mother’s voice calling them to supper or saying good night through layers of brick and stone to a point above the roof, above the trees—landing like a light cover on the arms and legs of Johnny in bed, settling like a sweet touch on his head.

Fifty

A
URELIA COULD REMEMBER
when her family seemed normal. They lived in Washington, D.C., she was with one firm in Georgetown, Robert with another. They struggled with money, as many other young couples did, but Robert didn’t complain when Aurelia worked part-time in order to be home with Bobby in the afternoons. She remembered how the house smelled of baby powder and food, and how she slowly became aware of Robert’s dark moods creeping into their days.

But on Christmas Eve, when Bobby was five, Robert rose early with a kind of excitement that Aurelia was pleased to see. His face had a familiar light, though his eyes remained dull.

“You going in to work today?” she asked.

“Yes.” He put his arms around her. “And I might have a surprise for us when I get home.”

Aurelia felt hopeful in ways she hadn’t allowed herself for months; and when he came home with a puppy, she was as surprised as Bobby.

“I thought you didn’t want a dog in the house,” Aurelia teased. “You were so opposed.” She reached down to pet the puppy as it ran in circles around the kitchen. “What happened?”

“Look at this!” Bobby yelled. The puppy followed him and barked. “He likes me!”

“I believe he does,” his father said.

“Can I take him outside?”

“In the backyard,” said Aurelia. “Don’t go near the street.”

Bobby ran out the door, the puppy following. They could hear him calling, “C’mon, buddy! C’mon!”

“You know he’ll want the dog to sleep with him tonight, don’t you?”

“I’d planned on it,” Robert said.

Aurelia looked at this version of her husband, who could change his mind so completely. It would be another week—a few days after the New Year—before she realized what had changed.

When the call came for Robert in the middle of a January night, Robert did not deny his guilt. He was arrested, tried, and convicted. After the conviction, Aurelia said she was leaving him. “I want nothing to do with this,” she told Robert. “I can’t do this.”

Aurelia would not bring Bobby to see his father. She told Robert they were moving away. His only hope of keeping track of his son was to agree to her conditions. He had never seen her so determined. So Robert agreed to a divorce, but he grew furious when he realized that Aurelia wanted to claim that Robert was dead. He refused to sign the divorce papers if she insisted on such an extreme measure.

“I’ll keep you informed about Bobby,” Aurelia said. “I’ll write you, send pictures. I promise to do that. You know this will be best for him.”

“No, I don’t know that.”

“Well, I do.” If Robert didn’t agree, she threatened to take away his son completely. “You won’t know anything,” she said.

Finally he agreed but suggested a clause in the agreement, so that after ten years they could renegotiate. He would be out of jail in ten years. “I can’t do this forever,” he said.

Aurelia did not know what he meant.

He coughed several times. “Send the papers and I’ll sign them.”

When Bobby told his mother about the letter from his dad, Aurelia felt slightly glazed over and oddly appeased. She had been thinking about Robert for weeks and felt sorely in need of his help.

“I thought you’d be mad,” Bobby had said, as he held the letter with both hands.

“I’m not mad.” She wondered what he was feeling. “Does your father want to see you?” she asked.

Bobby brought out the letter, opening the pages that had been handled so many times they appeared to be cloth. “I’ll read it to you,” he said.

She sat in a straight-backed chair as Bobby read, seeing how every word singed him, like neurons firing. She could see the words breaking him open. She blamed herself. In that moment she began to blame herself for everything.

She had wanted to keep order, the kind of order she imagined would protect Bobby—like a fence. But it had been an electric fence. A fence that, when touched, shocked his limbs into a rigid, bony shape.

And now it was the beginning of October and Bobby waited in jail. Tomorrow he would be transferred to the Marion County facility. This was the paradox that was her life: the practice of justice that she valued so highly hit first against her husband, now her son. She had become like a straight line, hard beside them. She shuddered to think what might become of Bobby now. The judge had sentenced the boys as juveniles, but each boy had received fifteen years. In the far corner of a neighbor’s yard, a dog barked, and though Dog was sleeping again under the table, for a moment Aurelia thought the bark was his.

She had not turned in Bobby’s gun, as she had threatened. Instead, she had placed it on the top shelf of her closet. If she had turned it in to the police, she might have drawn questions or even consequences for Bobby; so she kept it and half hoped the gun might disappear, might dissolve into the wood grain of the closet shelf. She felt it there, a small bag of bullets beside it.

Now she took it down and loaded it carefully. She sat in the rocking chair and laid the gun across her lap, putting both hands on it as she would a baby. She tried to decode all she had done, and why. She tried to decode what she might do now.

She had the feeling for a moment that she could make everything the way it used to be—that if she did something, she didn’t know what, she could bring herself into another time, and then whatever was heaving inside her might stop. Stop. She heard a small sigh escape her chest. Inside us is something that has no name, and that something is what we are.

She sat for hours holding the gun, waiting, trying to decide whether to stay or leave. Her mind changed a thousand times. But finally she could not find in herself the decision to end anything. The bus would come for the boys tomorrow morning. Ending enough. She judged herself, then reentered her life with all its mistakes, and the hope that she could turn the next day into a bright, if brindled, thing.

So Aurelia Bailey held the gun on her lap all night, rocking it like somebody’s life.

Fifty-one

T
HE PRISON BUS
came for the boys on Friday, the first day of the town’s October Carnival. The guards had told the boys they would leave by late morning, and their families had been notified. The townspeople were glad to have the Carnival as a distraction. They wanted to get on with their lives, to get this calamity behind them.

The Carnival arrived each year in early October, and roustabouts set up tents and carnival rides, transforming Joe Locker’s field. The smell of animals and sawdust pervaded the far pasture, which was bordered by river on two sides.

The Carnival always lasted two days. Last year a cold snap had brought frost. Pumpkins rose ripe in the fields, and when people looked out their windows and saw frost they pretended it was snow. This year, though, the weather beamed sharp with sunlight, free of the summer’s humid oppression.

Horses gave rides around one section of the field; on the other side, carnival barkers in bright plaid coats and straw hats used their voices like megaphones, urging people to enter this tent or that. They called out seductive descriptions of each sideshow; a few shows were limited to those eighteen and older.

People came from as far away as Chattanooga or Dalton, Georgia. They ate casseroles made by church ladies, or visited tents selling fried chicken, fried turkey, fried okra, fried tomatoes, fried Mars bars and Twinkies—or, for the more adventurous spirit, fried pickles. They came to ride the rides, to see the freak shows, and to try their hands at landing a nickel in a bottle or popping a balloon with weighted darts.

Cars lined the whole length of road, and all day people walked toward the pasture. Many did not know that the prison bus would pick up the three boys today, though some people came to the Jasper County jail and waited to see the boys come out. No one knew what to say when they saw them.

E. G. Hollis and Charlie Post stood at the door of the bus, taking the arm of each boy before he boarded. They promised to visit, and the boys knew that those two men, at least, would keep their promise.

The Canadys and Judge Bailey formed a group beside the bus. Casey’s mother and father stood separate from the others. Crow waited too, several feet behind them, coming no closer. He saw Bobby flinch before allowing Hollis to take hold of his shoulder. All night Crow had awakened himself, afraid of oversleeping.
Is it time? Is it time?

Coach Post stepped back to stand with Crow, but Hollis stayed near the bus. “Stand back, please,” the sheriff said. Hollis requested a last word with the boys. Bobby, Tom, and Casey listened, their heads leaning forward, as though they were studying something on the ground. A moment later they boarded the bus.

Sophie and Rita stood farther away. Sophie saw Bobby walk toward the bus, recognizing his gait more than his face, his step that leaned slightly, then righted itself. Rita kept saying how relieved she was that they were leaving, but Sophie, who had expected to feel happy, or at least relieved, felt nothing.

When Sophie was a young girl, every time she left her house she would turn to look back, seeing the house as a place where strangers lived. So she would climb a nearby hill, thinking the house might look familiar again from that vantage point. She had left it only moments before, left the room she loved, her mother’s powder lingering in the air. From the hill she focused on one high room in the attic where she liked to hide, struck by the feeling that the house would remain mysterious and uncollected until she went back and entered it again—the house not being changed at all.

Today Sophie herself was different, transfigured in ways both good and bad. And if she went back to that high room, went back right now, she might look out the window and see how the flesh of things that had lately been so clothed in ice was learning how to breathe again. Her bones trembled. She hoped she might see Crow today but did not know if he wanted to see her.

The early sky above the horizon glowed. As Rita turned to leave, she put her arm around Sophie, guiding her to the car. Neither of them wanted to see the bus pull away. Neither wanted to see the boys’ faces in the windows.

As they drove back home, Rita suggested that they go to the Carnival later. “We’ll spend the whole afternoon. How does that sound?” For the first time in months her mother’s smile had returned to normal; but Sophie, still hearing the bus pull out—the thin sound of brakes lifting and gears shifting—was startled by her mother’s suggestion.

That afternoon, when Sophie and Rita went to the Carnival, they paused at the entrance, drinking in the colorful scene. A Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, Tilt-A-Whirl, and small roller coaster kept children and mothers standing in long lines waiting for a chance to ride. Music came from every ride, as well as from the Dixieland Band playing around the picnic tables. As Sophie entered the gates, going to all that music and the strange sights, she became suddenly giddy.

She had felt burdened, for some time, her mouth full of dust, her head full of rain. Now the sound of melodies, all different, and people milling around calling to each other brought her back to life, and she surprised her mother when she said, “I wonder if Crow will be here today.”

“He might,” Rita said. “He probably will.”

Sophie saw him first beside the ice cream stand. She waved and he came over to her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I was hoping you’d come.”

“I was looking for you too.”

Crow felt a dull, tinny jolt of hope. “Want some ice cream?” He spoke nonchalantly.

“Sure.”

They walked around the Carnival grounds, from the ice cream stand to the house of mirrors to the World’s Longest Alligator to the small and childish roller coaster.

“Have you seen the freaks?” Crow asked.

“No, but the man with the tattoos is funny. He really made me laugh.”

Crow licked the ice cream dripping down his hand. “Or the animals. We could see those.”

“Okay.”

“And we’ve got to ride the Ferris wheel. If you want to, I mean.”

As they walked they smelled the river, the rich leafy scent of fall, and Crow imagined the shoes thrown in as far as the boys could throw, sinking into the soft silky bottom. Those shoes, never found, moving now in slow motion, their laces floating upward, a tiny phosphorescence glimmering on the soles and edges of heels. Shoes, without feet, in a light puppet dance.

“I saw you this morning,” Crow said. “You were watching the bus leave.”

“Oh.” Sophie nodded. “I knew you’d be there.”

“I didn’t expect you to come though,” Crow said.

“I probably wasn’t there for the same reason as you.” Sophie flinched slightly, a small jerk. “I came with my mother.”

Crow could not look at her. They passed by one of the barkers, who tried to get them to come in and see the dog with four legs but six feet.

“Well,” Sophie stopped walking and turned toward Crow. “Are you going to visit Bobby in prison?”

“I don’t know.”

A barker called out: “See the Fat Lady married to the Tattooed Man! Only three dollars!”

“He came to my house,” Crow said. “Did you know that he talked to me before he went to the police? God, I hated him. I’ve known Bobby, and Tom too, since we were six, seven years old. Not Casey though. I never knew him very good. Nobody did.” Crow looked in the direction where the bus had left earlier. “Bobby’s always had this thing…” But Crow didn’t finish. “You know his dad’s moving down here with his family, so they can visit him.”

“I don’t think I care.”

“I don’t know, Sophie.” Crow spoke uneasily.

“They have a long time to think about what they did,” Sophie said.

“I guess so.”

Sophie stopped again, and Crow stopped with her, standing with his arms awkward at his sides. She waited a long moment. “Something’s over,” she said quietly. “But not my life, and not yours either. You know,” she said, her voice changing, “Crow, I still dream about you.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Sophie, things get so ragged up.” Crow spoke quickly. He cared about her so much. He ached to touch her. “Nothing’s like I thought it was, not really.”

“Well, we’re all pretty ragged up, all of us.” Sophie and Crow looked at the people around them. They liked examining the frailty of others.

“Where are the monkeys?” Sophie asked. “Lester told me this Carnival has a monkey tent.”

Crow pointed in the direction of a small tent where children and parents waited in line for the next show.

“Let’s go.” Sophie took Crow’s hand. They ran and were the last ones to buy tickets, entering and squeezing into a bleacher seat just as the trainer began to speak. The sign over the tent read
MACKEY’S MONKEYS
. Whether this was the trainer’s first or last name was anybody’s guess.

Mackey stood almost six feet tall and had brown hair that fell over his forehead. His ears stuck out slightly, and he resembled, in modest ways, the monkeys that he trained. Mackey introduced the monkeys by name, and each one came forward and took a bow or curtsied, depending on its gender. Everyone clapped. After the introductions, Blondie, the smallest monkey, made a high screeching sound, like a strange laugh. The trainer touched her back in a gesture of comfort. Mackey spoke to the animals with gentleness, and they seemed to trust him.

While Mackey stroked Blondie, she jumped into his arms and kissed him. Everyone laughed and clapped. He explained to the audience how he had brought three of these monkeys, recently orphaned, back from Africa. “Their mother,” he said, “was killed, and hunters brought these babies to the hut where I lived.” Mackey explained that he went to Africa to find animals to train for a circus that once employed him. He had trained bears, and even tigers, for ten years. But when the monkeys were given to him, his whole business changed. He loved these creatures. He found two more and started this show. “They are my children,” he said.

The audience clapped again.

The monkeys waited patiently while Mackey talked, and as he placed Blondie back onto her stool, he turned and raised his arms and the monkeys gave him their devoted attention. They performed amazing tricks involving acrobatics, teamwork, the timing of somersaults that would be difficult for any human.

“No wonder everyone wants to see this show,” Sophie said, her face lit from within. Crow fell in love all over again, watching Sophie’s pleasure.

Children laughed at the comic interplay between monkey and trainer, and a settled satisfaction filled the tent. Suddenly, one monkey jumped on top of Mackey’s head and began to bite his face, scratch at his cheek. The audience saw this as playfulness, but then another monkey jumped on Mackey’s shoulders, a dark thatch of hair making a high-pitched shriek. One more came close, spat, baring its teeth in a mock smile. The trainer tried to cover his head with his arms, tried to shield himself. The monkeys began to run around the tent.

A little boy in the front row, maybe about five years old, was approached by the largest monkey, Sam. Sam reached for the boy’s bag of peanuts, but the boy pulled it back. Sam bit him, and the boy’s father hit the animal, a cracking sound.

Mackey frantically motioned to his assistant for help. “Call animal security!” he said. “And get some food. Get them back to their cages.”

The monkeys moved to the edges of the tent, harassing and hissing. They pushed further into the crowd, and a shuffling occurred, women pulling their children close.

“Let’s get out of here!” a man yelled.

“Oh, God. Hurry!”

“Mama!”

Mothers rushed their children toward the exit, clogging the door of the tent with the static of bodies pushing against each other. The boy who had been bitten was crying. Someone with a first-aid kit rushed past Sophie and Crow.

Crow held on to Sophie, steering her out of the frantic center of the crowd bearing down on the tent’s main exit.

“They’re everywhere, Crow. Look.” She pointed. A monkey hid in the rafters, just overhead, jerking the frame as if his intention was to collapse the tent. A hulking shape scuttled across the ground and jumped on the first-aid man. The man let out a roar, and the monkey, frightened, shifted direction. Now he was heading straight for Sophie.

Crow planted himself between Sophie’s body and the frenzied monkey. The animal leapt on Crow, tearing his shirt. Crow braced his feet and hurled the monkey into the stools that had created order for the earlier act. The stools scattered and fell on top of each other; and the monkey, its eyes baleful, leapt out of reach.

“Stay with me. C’mon.” Crow put his arm around Sophie’s waist and guided her outside, into the twilight coolness. A siren sounded from the middle of the pasture as they hurried away from the mayhem, through the scattering crowd. A raft of policemen moved in quickly, spreading around the tent.

And then Sophie dug in her heels. “Wait,” she said, transfixed by a pair of animal security officers heading into the tent with their guns drawn. “Are they really going to shoot them?”

“I don’t know,” said Crow, squeezing her hand.

They could hear Mackey inside the tent. “Wait, don’t do that! I can get them back in their cages,” he cried. “Let me try.”