There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (123 page)

“Stop it, Tits,”
she hissed out loud, terminating the tortuous introspection for the umpteenth time.

Every night it was the same fucking fight.

She kneeled down and tucked her sleeping friend in, ignoring the erection Rustoleum was sporting in his tattered Fruit of the Looms. At some point in the past two weeks, puberty had finally kicked in for ol’ Gnat. Josie, who was responsible for the laundry, still couldn’t get over the nocturnal emissions those two boys managed to squirt into their skivvies. She felt a surge of love for her old pal, and smiled down at Rusty’s snoring face. She missed talking to him. Missed sharing her thoughts, finding out his. She wondered if he could ever forgive her.

She decided right there on the spot that she would find out tomorrow. By begging his forgiveness, if necessary. She kissed Rusty’s forehead, and left him, closing the heavy dark curtain behind her, separating the bunk and storage area from the rest of the shelter.

              Tubby was awake, reading by the hissing light of the propane lantern. She decided she might as well give him his sponge bath and keep him company. Anything to occupy her mind, to keep from falling asleep.

She went to the kitchenette and retrieved the plastic bucket and sponge from the tiny sink. She filled the bucket with water and a little of her shampoo to make it soapy.

              Tubby was sitting up, perusing Josie’s manuscript, making notes for her in the margins. This was his third time reading it. The pages were resting atop the leather attaché case Bud had left behind for Josie. For her eighteenth birthday, just last week. As if Fate was taking another cheap shot at her, Josie found it underneath her mattress, the day before her actual birthday. The discovery brought no joy, just more heartache. A birthday card was tucked into one of the attaché’s pockets.

To Josie,
it read,
Happy 18
th
birthday! I saw this attaché in Beaufort and I thought of your book, how it needed a proper home befitting its status. Seriously, Red, I’m so proud of you. Your book is wonderful! I read it one night when I was staying over and you were asleep. I knew you wouldn’t let me otherwise. I didn’t know how to tell you I’d invaded your privacy, but I hope this case helps you to forgive me. I can’t wait to see you slip those typed pages inside it! I have something to tell you, Joe, something that’s been on my heart and mind for years. I think I…

             
Just like Bud’s abbreviated life, the birthday card was left unfinished, as if something had interrupted Buddy boy while in the midst of writing it. He’d tucked the fine leather bag under the mattress, unwrapped, where Josie discovered it while changing the linen one day.

After reading the card, Josie had crawled back into bed, where she’d remained for the next two days, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, weeping the hours away. Awake the whole time, awash in her misery and grief.

      
The attaché case had somehow found its way to Tubby, who had honored Bud’s wishes and delivered Joe’s manuscript to it, forthwith. Since then, Tubby had taken it upon himself to get Josie’s book ready for submission. As if such a thing was even possible anymore. As far as Josie was concerned, Tubby could’ve used the typed pages to wipe his ass, and the feckin’ attaché to store it in.

Ralph’s broken leg sat propped up on several pillows, strapped further in place by half a roll of Duct Tape and three planks taken from the back room to serve as splints. She didn’t remember doing so, but Tubby assured her that she and Rusty had relocated the bone in his leg, trimmed away the ragged and dirty tissue, and sutured the flesh together in what looked like a jigsaw puzzle on his shin. According to Rusty, the ends of the bone had come together perfectly, clicking into place with an ease that gave all of them hope that in the end it would mend.

Remarkably, maybe even miraculously, Tubby had recovered from the terrible injury and infection that followed. He had suffered a high fever, off and on, for three days, but thanks to Bud’s well-stocked First Aid kit, the antibiotics and aspirin had eventually whittled it down to size. The broken bone was something they would have to wait and see about; they could only pray that they hadn’t made a cripple out of Ralphie. Like everything else, time would tell. That is, if Fate had more in store for them, outside these cold, cinder block walls.

Josie checked the leg, bending over to sniff the stitches like the First Aid book had suggested. She sighed satisfactorily. No further sign of infection. The swelling had also gone down a bit. Tubby’s leg still looked like an overripe banana, though. Black and yellow and a little mushy looking. Josie sat on the edge of the sofa and snatched the sheet of paper from his hand. Of course, the biggest surprise was that Tubby hadn’t come down with the rabies virus. One answered prayer out of many that weren’t. If Ralph had come down with RS13, it would have been up to Rusty to put him down. She was done with dealing out death—unless it was her own, that is. She never would have admitted it, but suicide was never far from Josie’s thoughts these days. It hovered over her head like a malignant rain cloud, growing a little larger with each passing day. Impatient to unleash its black bounty.

Tubby looked up, perturbed. The burn mark on his forehead, left from the barrel of Rusty’s shotgun, hadn’t healed as well as his leg. It was a scar he would carry to the end of his days. Rusty teased Tubby that it made him look like Harry Potter; a comparison that Tubby secretly enjoyed to no end. It looked like the number eight laid sideways; or the age-old sign for eternity, depending on your outlook. “Hey, I was reading that!” he said, trying to snatch it back.

             
Josie set the page on top of the rest of her manuscript on the table, right beside the dimpled shotgun shell Tubby never let out of his sight. It was his new talisman. “You can give me your notes after your sponge bath,” she told him, bending over to turn off the Coleman.

Right before the light went out, Tubby caught a glimpse of Josie’s glorious bosoms, dangling delightfully in that ratty old concert T-shirt she always wore. His Petey automatically stiffened in his gym shorts. Just as automatically, he put a pillow over his lap.

It wasn’t the first time he’d had to do so.

             
It had been an embarrassing two weeks for Tubby Tolson. Because his friends were unable to fully immobilize his broken leg in a cast, he was obliged to lie as still as possible. Otherwise, as Josie was wont to remind him, whenever he squirmed about, his leg would take forever to mend—or worse, mend incorrectly. Rusty and Josie had had to wait on Tubby hand and foot. Especially those first awful, fever-filled days. Rusty took care of most of his personal needs, but he couldn't expect Gnat to wait on him all the time. Besides, Tubby realized that Josie didn’t mind nearly as much as he did. In fact, he could tell taking care of him was helping her deal with her own grief. Still, when she slipped the saucepan they were using as a bedpan under his bare bottom…

Well, jeepers! That was downright mortifying!

As bad as that indignity was, though, the daily sponge bath might have been even worse.

              “‘Damnit, Ralphie! You’ve got to stay still!’” Josie had scolded him countless times.

             
“‘But why
every
day?’” he’d once asked her.

             
Rusty had answered from the other room, where he’d been reading as usual. “‘Because you stink, man! I can smell you through the damn curtain! Smell like corn chips and toe cheese!’” Tubby had looked up at Josie, who had shrugged and nodded sympathetically.

At least they bathed him with the lights off; something he had insisted on right from the start. That and wiping his own butt, no matter how difficult that operation proved to be. Despite their combined efforts in close quarters, however, Josie and Rusty hadn’t spoken to one another since their showdown at the door. Rusty had filled in the blank spots in Tubby’s memory—including that awful scene at the end.

As far as Tubby could tell, Rusty had done the right thing. The
brave
thing. Sometimes people needed to be protected from themselves. Even if it meant losing them. Rusty sure was torn up about it, though, and he didn’t have a clue as to how to make things right again with Joe.

Tubby had insisted the only way was for the two of them to hash it out. So far, though, neither of his friends had had the guts to face each other.
To just talk!

             
“Rusty already gave me a sponge bath,” he lied, hearing the sound of the hateful sponge in the soapy water. There was no hiding your body issues from the person bathing you, even if it was in the dark. It was the ultimate invasion of privacy. He smelled the strawberry shampoo, and his penis twitched in his shorts.
It not only has a mind of its own, but a dadgum memory as well!

             
“Uh huh,” Josie said, listlessly. She slipped the sponge under Tubby’s shirt and began scrubbing him, focusing on those areas Tubby couldn’t reach, his feet, legs, and back. Tubby had a fit if she tried cleaning anything personal. Rusty had been right about Tubby getting ripe after awhile, and in these tight quarters odors tended to stick around. Despite the overhead vents, the stench of smoke and dead bodies still permeated the air. “Stop squirming,” Josie fussed. “You don’t stay still, Ralph Tolson, you’re going to end up with a limp like that old geezer on
The Real McCoys’
.”

             
Tubby did a passable imitation of Walter Brennan that made Josie smile.
“Carn sarn it, woman! Don’t you go telling me what to do!”
He waited for a laugh but didn’t get one. “It’s good, you know. Real good.”

             
“Your imitation? If you say so, love. Personally, I think it sounded more like Grandpa Simpson.”

             
“I meant your story, wiseguy.
There’s Blood on the Moon Tonight….
It’s very good, Josie. Better than anything I’ve written, I’m sorry to say.”

             
“Mmm-hmm,” Josie mumbled, having heard this before. She didn’t say so, because Tubby had spent much of his time in bed writing. She saw it was still important to him. It didn’t mean a damn thing to her anymore. As far as she was concerned
,
Th
e
Cree
p
s, and everything they’d once loved, had died right along with Bud Brown, on the other side of that door.
That includes me feckin’ book.
“Thank you, Ralphie,” she replied indifferently.

             
Tubby tried thinking of something else to say. Anything to take his mind off those swaying breasts practically batting him in the face. The thin material from Josie’s T-shirt brushed gently across his cheek, occasionally augmented by soft, pliant flesh, pressing into his face or arm.  

The last two weeks had not only been humiliating, they’d been tortuous. Having to lie as still as a brittle old man on the sofa. The sponge baths. The befouled chamber pot. The nightmares. The sometimes cruel recollections of his mom and dad running through his brain, one after another, like some pitiless parade down Memory Lane. Then there was the boredom, the mind-numbing tedium that their days consisted of now. Wake up, eat, read, eat lunch, read and read some more, eat dinner, read, and finally, almost mercifully, lights out. Josie wasn’t making things any easier on him, either. Oh, she was an absolute angel, the way she doted on his every need.
But the
way
Josie dressed!
Holy Moly Mackinoly!

Tubby knew she didn’t realize what she was doing, depressed as she was, clad in her threadbare T-shirt and high-cut panties. Seldom anything more. On a few occasions, like tonight, she’d even given Tubby an inadvertent peep show. He felt guilty every time his body responded to the sights, smells, and sensations that were Josie Lee O’Hara. Punishing himself for these lapses by refusing to entertain his desires—as he once had in Josie’s bathroom. And yet no matter how hard he tried to repress his libido, it repulsed his denials with an ease that made Tubby feel weak and immoral. It was when he fell asleep that his subconscious commandeered the projectionist booth in his mind. Playing films the Motion Picture Association of America would
never
have approved! One reelers starring Josie O’Hara in her most provocative. Dreams that always ended in the same salty wash.

Josie did the laundry herself in the small kitchen sink. Not once, though, had she mentioned the stiff and copious cum stains in his jockey shorts. Maybe she didn’t know what they were. He could only hope. On some level, Tubby knew his thoughts and his body’s reactions were probably normal, but he couldn’t help feeling that he was somehow sullying the memory of Bud Brown. Already, Big Bad Bud Brown seemed more like a dream he’d once had, than the flesh and blood person Tubby knew him to have been. A mythical figure every loser conjures up in his daydreams at school, while the resident malcontent behind him kicked the back of his seat and threw spit-wads at his bowed head. A capeless hero who would vanquish the bullies and the loneliness they felt in their empty, pathetic lives.
But Bud Brown had been real!
A
real
hero who had saved Tubby’s life,
over and over again
! Not just from the red-eyed demons, either. Bud had saved Tubby from a life of enforced solitude. For if it hadn’t been for Buddy boy extending his hand in friendship, Josie and Rusty never would’ve done likewise on their own.