Black Moon

9

THEY CRAWLED UP THE SWITCHBACKS until they could park and stand on the edge of the mountaintop plateau. Below they saw the jagged range extending toward the horizon, the Beartooth biting at the sky, and the curve of the earth. Glaciers hung like blue-white banners in the sunless crags. Lakes, down in the pockets of hanging valleys, shining back at them. A storm seemed to crab-walk over the plateau, rushing toward them on crooked stilts of light, and wind filled their mouths with thin, cold air.

Then the descent.

Jordan rode the brakes all the way down the treeless heights, careening past the towering banks of talus. Chase told him three times that he was drifting over the line. What if a truck was coming around the curve? Soon they passed through shadow and forest, then found themselves between foothills, where the land flattened out enough for cattle ranches and, only miles away, the town imposed a feeble grid on the landscape. The campground was where Jordan remembered it being—the numbered campsites cut into the brush and pines along a loop of a narrow rushing creek. Each site came with a carved-up picnic table and a blackened fire ring. There were no rangers, only a drop box and some envelopes for the fees. It was the honor system and Chase insisted they pay.

Biting deerflies attacked them as they set up the tent. They worked quickly. Jordan knew the drill and directed Chase with terse commands. The clang of tent poles and the hammer ringing against the spikes announced their presence to the scrub jays, who responded by screeching in the trees, and to one other group of campers: a pale family with faded Jesus stickers plastered on the back of their trailer. They did not come over and offer a neighborly welcome as Jordan predicted they would.

The tent was from another era—canvas, not nylon. It smelled musty and was stained with rain. It was shaped like a pyramid. They threw clothes and the sleeping bags inside it and, after stepping out of their shoes at the entry flap, flopped down on the bed of clutter. The nearby creek sounded like wind in the trees or the wind in the trees sounded like the creek. Chase couldn’t decide. He was already thinking about how he would get back home in time for Felicia’s birthday, now that he had what he wanted.

Jordan was lying on his back, forearm over his face to block out the light. “Let’s go into town around dinnertime,” he said.

“How far is it?”

“Like ten minutes, tops.”

“Cool.”

Chase wondered when Jordan would tell him how things had gone with the cleaning girl in Idaho Falls. He had not volunteered a report, so Chase assumed it went badly. However it went, it took all night to get there. Jordan had returned from their ice cream run in the morning, ready to resume the drive north.

Chase tried to nap, since it seemed that’s what they were doing, but the sitting in the car for nine hours had made him restless. He rose and announced that he was going to check out the creek. “Don’t fall in,” Jordan said from under his arm.

THE water rushed past his feet, causing reeds to bow and tremble. The rumbling hiss and the churn of bubbles suggested surprising force. It was a narrow creek and the opposite bank, ornamented with smooth stones and high grass, looked landscaped to Chase. He crouched and reached out to the water, sinking his fingers into the effervescent wash. It was icy cold. Actually, it seemed colder than ice. Was that possible? The notion to drink the water passed through his fingers and up his arm into his head.

Yeah, but not just a drink.

He reached into his pocket and drew out one of the pills. Shaped like a dull diamond, colored a dull blue. He placed it on his tongue and reached down to scoop up a gulp of creek. He had taken a pill the night before and nothing had happened. Maybe he just needed more. Maybe the stuff just needed to work its way into his system. He drank from his hand and tipped his head back. The chill ran through him as the pill tumbled down. He chased it with another icy swallow.

“I wouldn’t drink this water.”

It was Jordan, behind him. He looked up from his crouch, squinting. Jordan stood between him and the sun. How long had he been there?

“I thought you said you drank right out of the streams? You and your dad.”

“Yeah, from those lakes in the mountains, where no one goes. But down here you have cows shitting and pissing in this water. Or worse, lying dead in it.”

“Oh,” Chase said. He looked into the water, as if trying to spot foul microbes rushing by. He didn’t know much about how this place worked. Was he already feeling ill? He focused on his stomach, his hand resting on it, trying to sense if any trouble was already brewing.

Jordan came forward, stood next to him in silence. He was quiet for too long.

“Once,” he finally said, “when we were up there, I jumped over a stream like this and my foot hit something hard in the grass. I looked and it was a huge bone, half sunk in the mud. I pulled it out. It was like holding a dumbbell. I thought it was something prehistoric. It was mossy and stained brown and yellow. My dad was still on the other side of the creek, talking to our guide, so I held it up. I thought he would be interested in it because that’s exactly the kind of shit he loves, but he just kind of squinted and went back to talking. I was like, Okay, fucking whatever, and I tossed it in the water. Then, he finally finishes his conversation and jumps across and he’s all, Where is it? Where’s what? The bone? He goes, Was that a bone? When I said I threw it in the water, I could tell he was disappointed. I mean, he’s looking for it down in the water. So, I just jump right in thinking I would find it. Right into the freezing water! As soon as I hit it, I can’t breathe. It literally takes my breath away. Next thing I know the guide has pulled me out and he’s telling me to get out of the wet clothes. He starts building a fire on the spot while my dad is just yelling, Where’s your goddamn head?”

Chase didn’t know what to say. He sensed that this was a meaningful disclosure, but he didn’t know what it meant, other than the fact that Jordan’s dad sounded like a real asshole. It was hard to imagine Jordan being so interested in pleasing his father, or anyone. He hated his mother especially. “How old were you?” Chase asked.

“I must have been about eleven.”

Chase did the math. That would be two years before he lost his eye, maybe a year before his dad was killed. Hit by a car while biking to work. “Fuck” was all he could think to say. He tried to put some feeling into it, but the word offered a short runway for empathy.

“Yeah,” Jordan said.

“I wonder if it’s still there.”

“The bone?”

“Yeah.”

They both looked down at the water rushing by, as if this was the very stream from Jordan’s story. Or maybe as if the bone could have traveled through the network of snowmelt rivulets, urged along by the insistent current and gravity, to this very spot.

“I doubt it,” Jordan said. “I’m not even sure if all that happened. I mean, I remember it, but what am I remembering?”

THE town’s main drag looked like the set for a classic Western, with its raised boardwalk and hitching posts, windows framed by shutters that would surely be swung shut during gunfights in the narrow street. Chase even speculated that maybe the over-familiar structures were just flat movie set façades, supported from behind with long diagonal posts of local lumber. They ventured into many saloons to test their authenticity. Sure enough, there was floor space, tables ringed with diners, bars lined with locals.

Chase was shy about pushing through and ordering. They were both underage in California and they had no idea what the drinking age was here. Apparently they exceeded it, at least in appearance, because they were never carded. The beer was unbelievably cheap, too. And people were friendly, asking them what brought them to town and looking very impressed when they said they were from California. There were many offers to point out the best places to fish, or buy bait, or hike and camp. Chase’s initial feelings of unease quickly dissipated. He had expected they would be eyed with suspicion and shunned as outsiders. He had expected cowboy hostility. But these people were just people, like the people at home.

Still, Jordan was watching them closely, for reasons different from Chase’s wariness. “Some of these people aren’t sleeping,” he said, eyes scanning the room as he drained a mug.

“Just about all of them look like they’re awake to me,” Chase said.

“You know what I mean.”

Chase studied the scene with insomnia in mind. There were indeed tired locals nursing drinks at the bar. The workday had exacted a visible toll. They slumped over their beers, glancing at the small TV in the corner. Brighter-eyed tourists were clustered around tables, flaunting their vacation energy with bursts of laughter and fevered backslapping. Chase’s eyes settled on a stuffed bobcat that was mounted over the bar. The fur looked weathered, bordering on mangy, and there was something unnatural about the pose. Shoulders too stiff. Legs too woodenly arranged. Only the eyes, which gleamed with a convincing wetness, seemed to hint at a life once lived. They stared out over the scene, unblinking. What sights had they witnessed?

Jordan gave Chase a nudge. He nodded toward an elderly man who had appeared behind the bar, relieving the burly biker who had served them. His eyes were not unlike those glued in the head of the stuffed wildcat—glassy, staring into nowhere. He was remarkably filthy. His hands and thin arms were mapped with grime, and a black crescent sat under each yellow fingernail. There was dirt on his face and in his woolly, graying beard, actual grains of dark soil dropping from it when he turned. His hollow cheeks and brow appeared to be stained by dirt-colored sweat, giving his flesh the finish of a church pew. Little streams of dirt trickled from the creases in his clothing. There was a tiny mound on his right shoulder, as if it had been gently troweled there. He smelled like freshly exposed earth and moved stiffly, as though maybe he too was stuffed, only with soil instead of sawdust.

Jordan mouthed, What the fuck?

They watched him attempt to open a bottle of Irish whiskey. His fingers smeared the neck of the bottle. Before he could manage the task, a woman rushed behind the bar and took the bottle from his hands. Chase had noted her earlier—a waitress, probably in her early thirties. Kind eyes, long black hair, maybe Indian. Beautiful, yes. Like Felicia ten years from now, maybe even prettier.

“Come on, Wells,” she said softly, pulling at the man’s arm. “Come have some food. Before it gets cold.”

She turned and yelled with surprising force across the room, “Rollins!”

Rollins was the biker bartender apparently, because the man emerged from the side door, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. He skulked back to his post behind the bar as she led Wells past him. “Just stepped out for a smoke,” he said.

“He can’t be behind the bar,” she told him.

“I know. I know.” He looked at the older man sorrowfully. “Go eat something, buddy. Got to keep wood in the stove.”

Chase and Jordan watched Wells being led away through the swinging door to the kitchen area. When Rollins approached to take their order, Jordan said, “What’s wrong with that guy?”

Rollins looked the two of them over. “Well,” he said, “I don’t see how it’s any of your goddamn business what’s wrong with him.”

“Hey, just asking,” Jordan said.

“Ask for a drink or move along.”

The bartender gave Jordan a long hard stare. Chase felt the danger of it, even though he was once removed from its focal point. Rollins was a large man with a shaved head and a red goatee. He wore a denim shirt with the sleeves cut off, weathered jeans, and dusty biker boots. His arms looked like what most people would call legs. They were blotchy with bad jailhouse tattoos.

“Maybe we should—” Chase began, but Jordan cut him off.

“Didn’t mean to be nosy,” Jordan said. “How about two more?”

Rollins scooped up two cold steins from under the bar and put them under the tap, eyeing them as the mugs filled. “Those are on me,” he said, setting them on the bar. “Drink them and go.”

They did as Rollins suggested, moving to another saloon only two doors down after chugging the beers. “Not the friendliest of dudes,” Jordan said of Rollins.

“No, it was a perfectly normal question,” Chase said. “I mean, that guy was fucking caked.”

“Looked like he’d been buried alive but fought his way out.”

“Maybe he has a garden and he’s way into it,” Chase suggested.

“Maybe he can’t sleep.”

“Here we go,” Chase said. He wanted to know what that had to do with a guy being covered with dirt.

Jordan thought about this.

“Fuck if I know,” he finally conceded with a shrug.

When the bars all closed and the town was shuttered for the night, they stumbled back to the car. They had some work to do. Their plan was to bury all the stolen pharmaceuticals in the old Coleman cooler under cover of night. But on the drive back to the campground, they missed the dark turnoff from the highway twice. They finally found the exit at the end of their headlights and started the bumpy journey down the rutted access road. They were passing through pastureland under a half moon when Jordan slammed on the brakes. Dust clouded the headlights and obscured the shapes of beasts in the road. Horses, eyes glowing in the headlights and looming in an illuminated aura of dust, stood with indifference in their path. They stared back at them in wonder. After a few minutes it became clear the horses had no intention of moving on and letting them pass.

“Maybe honk,” Chase suggested.

“I don’t want to start a stampede. Let’s just give them a minute.”

They sat looking at the horses. This was not something either of them had encountered before, but the scene, at least for Chase, read like a memory. The horses, sentinels along the road into the wild dark, their animal wisdom and ancient life force, humbling the two suburban boys. The bestial presence seemed to accelerate their return to sobriety as they waited. To Chase, they appeared larger than normal horses, but he wasn’t sure of horse sizes. Maybe they are a type of extra large horse? he wondered.

“They’re giant,” he said. “Aren’t they?”

Jordan said nothing. He settled back into the car seat as if he was prepared to wait out the vast span of night behind the wheel.

Maybe, Chase thought, they should go another way.

After a stretch of silence, Jordan said, “I’m thinking I should go back and get her. Just take her for her own good.”

Chase knew he was talking about the girl in Idaho Falls. Not his mother.

“Did you ask her to come with us?”

“She shouldn’t have to suffer.”

“You mean from insomnia.”

Jordan was silent. After a few minutes he got out of the car and staggered toward the horses. He stood among the animals, patting their flanks and urging them off the road. To Chase’s astonishment, the horses obliged. They shambled off, away from the headlight beams and joined the roadside shadows.

Later that night, Chase woke up to find Jordan standing in the tent. “I should never have touched them,” he said.

IN the morning, Chase found that the pills had finally worked. He had taken more throughout the night, in various restrooms of the many saloons they had visited. The tightness of the effect was actually somewhat painful. He squeezed himself and marveled at the hardness. Wow. He could rape a boulder with this thing. Maybe the thing would burst. It was like putting too much air in a tire. Would there be an explosion of blood?

Jordan was fully clothed, sprawled on top of the blankets that served as his bedroll. He was out cold after what was apparently a long night. Chase stood and carefully pulled on his pants, pinning the swelling under his waistband and pulling down his shirt. It was not very noticeable, but not at all comfortable. He left the tent and decided to check on their handiwork from last night. They had loaded the meds into a cooler and buried it in brush. They had covered it with dirt and loose branches. They had done this in the dark while drunk and, seeing it now, Chase had to shake his head at how conspicuous it looked. Couple of retards did this. He worked for a while at making it look more natural.

It occurred to him that he should take advantage of Jordan’s unconscious state, given his body’s reaction to the pills. He did not feel at all aroused, despite what his groin was telling him. Still, now that he knew it worked, no reason to lug this thing around all day. There was no way he was going to jack off with Jordan in the same tent, so he sat in the front seat of the car. There he unbuckled his pants and conjured up some memories of Felicia, using them as fodder for a fantasy that involved his triumphant return and her surprise at what he had brought for her. He imagined himself fucking her mercilessly. Yet he had trouble seeing Felicia’s face. This was not new. When he first fell in love with her, she became increasingly elusive in his waking fantasies, but more vivid in his dreams. His desperation to see her features somehow muddled the access and garbled the pictures. Even now, he was seeing the waitress—Macy, claimed her nametag—just as clearly as glimpses of Felicia. He focused on the older woman and quickly climaxed.

This did nothing to undo his engorgement.

CHASE decided to go into town. There was nothing to do at the campground. Besides, it might be nice to run into that Macy. He couldn’t find the car keys and figured they were in Jordan’s pockets. In the tent, he gave Jordan a nudge with his foot, but this failed to rouse him. Instead, he snorted and turned his face away. “Dude,” Chase called. “Where are the car keys?”

Jordan didn’t stir. Chase reached out with his foot and gave him a light kick. Still nothing. It was clear that he had taken some of the sleep meds. The guy can’t get to sleep one night and he thinks he’s an insomniac, Chase thought. Fuck it. I’ll walk to town.

He figured it would take him no more than an hour to reach the town if they were able to drive it in ten minutes. There was no sign of the horses from the night before. He tried to identify the exact spot where they had their “equine encounter,” as Jordan had later called it, but it could have been just about anywhere along the road. There were hoofprints in the dirt, some mounds of droppings as well, alive with beetles. Were they left by cattle or horses? Chase couldn’t tell.

Soon he came upon a barbed wire fence that marked the edge of the property. It ran along the highway forever in both directions. He watched a shrike impale a grasshopper on one of the barbs, then crossed over the cattle grid where the paved road began. It was hot and he was tempted to take off his shirt, but remembered that a private part of him was jutting out from under his waistband. Don’t want to frighten the locals, he thought. Besides, there were swarms of small insects hovering over the roadside, and Chase assumed they were mosquitoes.

Chase wandered the town and found himself staring up at the stuffed bobcat. Yes, this was the place where they had seen the dirt-covered man, where the bartender had essentially kicked them out. Where that waitress, Macy, worked. He scanned around for the bartender, realizing he could have drifted back into the biker’s sights. He was tempted to turn around and walk out, but the thought of seeing Macy again drew him forward. He sat in a booth. There was another waitress serving sandwiches and beers to the diners. The bartender Rollins appeared and, though he took in the room with a sweeping glance, he didn’t seem to recognize Chase, or to have an issue with his being there. After all, it was Jordan who had offended him. That’s who he probably imprinted in his mind—Jordan, the kid with the fucked-up eye. The kid with the boner was okay.

Chase nursed along a plate of onion rings and some Diet Coke. The server, a heavy-set girl with tattoo sleeves, was diligent with the refills. She asked him where he was from. When he said California, she smiled. She had a sister out there, in Fresno. Chase said he had never been to Fresno and the woman found this hard to believe. “I suppose it’s a big state,” she said. “Not as big as Texas,” she added.

“No,” Chase had to agree. He shifted uncomfortably and adjusted himself under the table, where his erection was lancing at his belly.

He waited another hour, putting off ordering dinner. Then he saw Macy appear, tying on her waist apron. She was stony and serious as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She could definitely be Felicia’s older sister, he observed. It wasn’t just a beer-goggle impression. Thankfully, it seemed Macy was relieving the other waitress. They were conferring about the transition, looking over at each table as the tattooed girl explained the status of service. Chase looked away as their gaze arrived at his table. Then he watched the chunky woman go behind the bar, draw herself a beer, and press against Rollins. Rollins gave her a firm spank on the ass.

Macy eventually made her way to him. “How we doing here?” she asked, distractedly, he couldn’t help but note.

“I think I’m ready to order dinner,” he said. “What’s good?”

“I’ll bring a menu,” she said, then walked away. He watched her go.

Damn. How was he going to get past this strictly business bullshit? He thought about telling her how much she looked like his girlfriend—his former girlfriend. He could even show her a picture on his phone. But wasn’t that probably the lamest way ever to start a conversation? Maybe the California thing would work. Maybe she has a relative there. Or maybe she’s been there and loves it. Probably not where he’s from—what was there to love?—but the beach maybe, like San Diego or Malibu.

She came by and handed off the menu without a word.

He looked through it and settled on a cheeseburger, then closed it as a way of summoning her back. He was repositioning himself under the table when she suddenly appeared, pad at the ready for his order.

“I think I’ll have that cheeseburger,” he said.

“Fries?”

“I just had a bunch.”

“So no fries?”

“Hey, what was with the guy last night?” he suddenly blurted.

“Guy?”

“There was a dirty old guy behind the bar. I mean, he was covered with dirt.”

Her wince turned into a vague, wistful smile that quickly faded. He thought this was an unbelievably pretty thing to do. There was feeling behind his extruded physiology all of a sudden. “Yeah,” she said, “that was Wells. He owns this place and he hasn’t been feeling too good.”

“It was cool how you were taking care of him,” Chase said.

“Someone has to,” she said flatly. “So, no fries?”

Back to business. Fuck.

“Sure, bring fries,” Chase said, feeling defeated.

When she came back with his food, he was ready. “Any chance Wells is an insomniac?”

She looked at him and frowned before turning and walking off.

Two minutes later she was sitting across from him. “How did you know that?” she asked.

WHEN he told her it was an epidemic, that the story was about to break, she put a hand over her mouth, but he still caught the wobble of her chin. And above this mask, her eyes, stricken with an emerging awareness as pieces fell into place. It wasn’t that she was scared, or even that she fully believed him. But the possibility of it all was enough to send her inward. She said, “I thought I caused this. By pulling my hand away that time… it started happening around then.”

She wasn’t really talking to him, and when she realized the volume was on, she hit the mute button in her head. Her shift had ended and she had led him to a table in the kitchen area. Wells would be up soon, she explained, for food.

“Up? I thought you said he wasn’t sleeping.”

“Up from under,” she said.

When she offered no further explanation, Chase went on, parroting Jordan’s warnings, citing his obscure Internet evidence. He claimed he didn’t believe any of it at first. Sure, lots of people couldn’t sleep, but that was always the case. His own mother had trouble, sometimes waking at four in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep. That’s how she got so much reading done. Insomnia was a common topic all along. But stuff he had seen added up to something strange: his boss prancing around with a cello in the music store, his ass and balls exposed to the world. The weird behavior of the cop in Utah. His ex-girlfriend, she worked with sleep researchers at the university, and all communication had been cut off. What was that about?

“It’s like they discovered something, and someone, the government probably, quarantined them,” he said, sounding more convincing than he expected. Really, this thought hadn’t occurred to him until now, but maybe there was something to it. Would Felicia really just shut him out like that? Not on her own.

“Okay, you think that’s weird, come on,” she said. She led him to the venue’s small banquet room and showed him the excavation Wells had dug into the floor. The hole was like a grave, cut right into the middle of the plank wood floor. Macy explained that Wells used an old outhouse door on a pulley to winch up the mounds of dirt. He carted it outside and spread it under the pines at the far edge of the parking lot. “He claims he sees a light down there,” Macy said. “He won’t stop tunneling toward it.”

Chase could hear him in there now, beyond their view in the tunnel, grunting as his shovel, or maybe a pickax, hacked at the wall of dirt in the darkness.

“What’s that?” he said, pointing to a dark stack of something, maybe firewood, against the wall. Macy had not turned on the lights, so the room was dim. Wells had ordered her to keep it off at all times, she told him, since it made the light in the earth harder to see.

“Bones,” she said. “He keeps bringing them up. Rollins says they are buffalo bones, that he must have hit an old Indian dump site.”

Chase went in for a closer look. Yes, they were like dumbbells.

“Wells thinks it’s an extinct animal, a deformed beast that no one has ever seen,” Macy said. “He probably hasn’t slept in almost three weeks.”

Wells could not confirm this when he finally appeared and Macy led him to the table. He was too far gone, holding his spoon in his fist like a caveman. His knuckles were scraped and the soup Macy gave him was soaking his beard. He stared just beyond Chase’s shoulder as Chase talked, telling them both how he and Jordan had come up from California, how they had enough serious meds to get them through this, and they were willing to share, for a price. Wells didn’t seem to grasp any of this.

Macy tried to explain. “He’s saying it’s an epidemic, Wells. That other people have it and it’s going to get worse for all of us.”

Wells said, “A long time before I stopped then too. I came up on the ridge with rainbows slapping on a string at my leg and lightning had killed a bear like a grave mound with smoke in its fur and the eyes like hard-boiled eggs. There was another eye in the hole staring up at me and I couldn’t sleep for weeks and weeks after I saw it down there big as a softball I thought oh a puddle until it blinked.”

Macy grabbed Wells’s hand. She said, “I thought you couldn’t sleep because you were thinking about me. But it turns out it’s something else. So much for romance.”

Wells looked at her as if she had just spoken in some alien tongue.

It was difficult for Chase to get up from the table without putting his anatomy on display. He was sure Macy caught sight of it, but he almost didn’t care. He told her where she could find him. “We’re willing to share,” he said again. “But not for money. It has to be something that has value after all of this is gone.”

He hoped that wasn’t too direct, yet just direct enough.