Full Moon City

Innocent by Gene Wolfe

You promise not to throw that stuff on me again, Father? Really promise?

Okay. It burns, but if you promise, you can come on in. What I wanted to tell you last time was that I didn’t do anything they say. None of it is true. One of the cops said I was the kind who hangs around school yards, so that part’s true. I did. Sit down on the other bunk and I’ll explain.

It isn’t that I want to make love with little girls like they say. I never, ever wanted that. I will tell you the truth, and if you want me to swear on that prayer book I’ll do it. I have never wanted sex with anybody I’ve ever seen. Not little girls, or boys either. And not women, or not very much. Not with men. Just thinking about it makes me sick.

I was sick a lot when I was a kid. I had a delicate stomach is what the doctor and everybody said. Everything I ate made me sick. It tasted awful, too. There was this nice girl next door. Her name was Nancy. She felt sorry for me, so she gave me a little piece of her chocolate bar one time. She said how good it was and how much I’d like it.

Well, I wanted to make her happy, so I made myself eat it. It smelled horrible and tasted the same way, and you know what chocolate looks like. But I got it down just the same and told her how good it was. I was still puking that night a long time after Bradley went to bed.

Him? Oh, he was my foster father back then. I grew up in foster homes. There were three or four, maybe five, because nobody really wanted me ever, and I guess I ought to have told you.

No, I never knew my real mom, or my dad either. Some garbage man found me in a trash can-

Sorry my laugh bothers you, Father, but I can’t help laughing every time I think about it. It is just so funny. I’ve seen the old TV news. The library helped me look them up. They are nice like that.

No, not even that old. I was premature, and my mother just threw me away, whoever she was. They never did find her, only a policeman-this was another policeman, an old guy-told me one time that they thought it was this one girl who’d hung herself a couple days before they found me. That’s what they thought because her body looked like she’d just had a kid, only the doctors said I couldn’t have lived that long without being fed and kept warm.

Only I’m never cold. Are you, Father? How does it feel?

I’ve picked up pieces of ice and even put them in my shirt in the winter. It doesn’t bother me. You know what does, Father? Wearing a shirt. Wearing anything. Can I take mine off?

Thanks. Yes, I’m hairy, and I suppose that helps.

Oh, yes. I hate hot weather. You know what I really like? I like winter nights, those cold, clear nights when the stars shine and shine, and there’s frost everywhere.

Or snow. Snow is good. That’s when I pray.

Sure I believe in God, Father. For me, God is the moon.

Wait!

I know all that. He’s not really the moon, and it’s just a sort of island up in the sky. People have been up there. You know that crucifix you’re holding up is just wood and metal, but it means God to you. That’s how the moon is to me. God hung the moon, and since I can’t see Him I pray to Him there.

Sure. Ask me anything you want. What do you want to ask me about?

Here? In jail? Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t eat anything much, which I guess is why they told you I was on a hunger strike.

No way! I am not. Give me something that won’t make me sick and just watch me eat! Only the food in here is like what they had in the cafeteria at school. It’s just garbage. Some of it might have been good meat when they got it, but they ruin it on purpose.

So what I would do back then was go to a little café I knew about where they’d bring me what I asked for. It was pretty bad, sure, but I could eat it and not puke it up. That way I did not starve. When I was older and had more money, I would just buy meat at the butcher’s and eat it. Sometimes I was so hungry I would open the package there in the store. He didn’t like it, but I was a good customer. Later I used to snack on the job. You get a nibble here and a nibble there, and if you keep it up all day it’s enough.

Do you want to hear about this, Father? About what I really like?

Okay, let me tell you how I found out. I was down at this one dump with this guy Paul. We were climbing over the junk looking for something we might like and looking for rats, too. We looked for the rats because they would bite you if you didn’t see them first. We had sticks, and we would whack rats with them any time we could. Mostly we missed. You probably know how that is. They run fast, and they’re always getting under something.

Paul got a rat, a big one. He knocked it over toward me, knocked it off its feet, you know, and I whacked it with my stick, too. After that, Paul killed it, or thought he had. He whacked it two or three times and it lay there like it was dead. Then he picked it up, and it bit him…

I should not be telling you all this, Father. Bending your ear like this is what I mean. I know you don’t care about all this. The thing is, I’m just so lonesome. Hungry and lonesome, like a lost dog. I know it seems pretty funny for me to be lonesome in a place as noisy as this, with doors slamming and people yelling all the time, but I’ve got nobody to talk to. No visitors, either.

No, I’m not in solitary, Father. Or I’m not supposed to be. Who told you that?

Well, I’m not. It’s all a big lie. They would have told me, wouldn’t they? Besides, I haven’t done anything, really. I mean since I have been in here. If you get put in solitary, it is just about always because you hit one of the screws. I have never done that, or bit one either.

You want to know the worst thing I’ve ever done in here? They won’t let me go out to where the others eat, they just pass my tray in with their stinking garbage on it. So a couple of times I have thrown all their garbage on the floor and walked on it.

Why? I just wanted to show them what I thought of it. That’s all. Besides, I wanted them to have to talk to me. Which they did, and brought me a bucket and a mop and made me clean it up. It gave me something to do. Two of them tried to twist my arms the first time, and it scared them. That was the most fun I’ve had since I got stuck in here.

Oh, I’m strong, real strong. Take my hand, Father, and I’ll show you.

All right, but I would not have hurt you bad. I had this cellmate. His name was Paul, only I do not remember his last name. Really I have had eight or maybe ten. Can I tell you what they do here? How they use me?

Well, suppose they want to put somebody in solitary, but they know he has this good lawyer. He’s got money, right? So if they do, that lawyer will go to a judge and try to get him out. Well, what they do is put him in here with me. In a couple of days he will be begging them for solitary.

Oh. Yeah. I guess I think of all these guys as Paul because Paul was the first, the kid the rat bit. He was bleeding pretty good and naturally it made me hungry, so I said don’t you know rats are poison? I got to suck out the poison or you’ll die.

He let me. I got it in my mouth, and it was the best thing I had ever tasted. Man, it was so good! So I kept drinking and drinking until Paul said you never spit the poison out. I said yes I did. That was a mistake, because he knew I hadn’t. He got mad and jerked his hand away, and I bit his neck.

That was where I started learning about meat, right there in the dump. Meat doesn’t really go bad as fast as people think. It depends on a lot of things, like can the sun hit it. I didn’t know about that then, but I knew that if I left my meat there in the dump, the rats would get at it and it would be no use coming back for some the next time I got hungry.

Well, Father, there was this old factory near there where nobody worked anymore. It was supposed to be locked up, only Paul and me had found a way to get inside. We thought there would be a lot of rats in there, but there wasn’t because there was nothing in there for them to eat.

So I went in there and the basement seemed like the best place. It was dark down there, and nobody would see my meat unless he went poking around down in that basement with a flashlight. So I left it down there and went home.

The next day I came back and there were rats, so I got some rope and hung it up where they couldn’t get to it. It was dark and cool down there, so I felt like that would be a friendly place for me. It was, too. My meat lasted down there until I had eaten just about everything. I’d come back every day or maybe every two days. Or twice a day, sometimes.

No, they thought he’d run away. The police do that a lot, say he has run away, because then they don’t have to look.

What you really need is a good freezer, but if you don’t have one, there is still a lot you can do. You can rent a locker, too. That is what I did for a while. I knew how a butcher would wrap meat. The paper they use and the tape. I got a guy at work to tell me.

So I got some. And when I had meat I would cut it up and wrap it neat and everything. Then I would take it to my locker and people would think that I had paid for a side or killed a deer or something.

But like I said, I still had a lot to learn about meat. Old people are not good, did you know that? They are not. Younger is better until you get down to about ten, Father. After that, younger is just smaller.

You take this old guy Paul, or Bradley or whatever his name was. He was my foster father for a while, and I never did like him because he was generally mad about something, and I swear, Father, I could taste his pipe tobacco. I got some ketchup from the supermarket-just taking it you know because I didn’t have much money then. I put that on the meat because it was a pretty color and I thought it would cover up the taste. It didn’t, and he was the only one I ever put anything like that on.

Sure. All of it because I didn’t want to waste him.

Well, they put me in a different foster home after that, because with him gone the lady had to go to work. Only I remembered the old place and came back for this one girl. She was really, really sweet. It started me wising up. Younger was better, and girls were better than boys. They are not so tough, they don’t have that boy taste, and the fat runs all through everything. That’s the good way.

No, I have never felt sorry about it the way you mean, but I kind of missed a few of the people afterward. Then, too, when it was somebody that I knew the police would come around sometimes and say when did you see her? Was there any reason for her to run away? All that stuff. It always made me kind of nervous, because I knew they would never understand. So it was better if it was somebody I did not know at all.

Of course, that was the trouble with Paul, the guy who used to sleep in that bunk. He was locked in with me, so they’d know right off. Besides, I’d only get one meal off him before they took the meat away.

Yeah. Sometimes I would get up when the moon was coming in through the window. I would stand beside his bunk and just look at him. How would this part taste and how would that part taste? Would it be better to boil the hands and feet? I knew I couldn’t do it, but it was fun to think about just the same. Some nights I would think yes, and some nights no. Just eat the fingers, chewing up the bones.

Only some nights he’d wake up and get mad about me being there, and then I’d have to shut his mouth for him.

No, it’s not so bad being alone. I walk up and down the cell, three steps this way and three steps that way. It drives them crazy. Then at night I yell out the window and listen. Nobody has ever yelled back, but if somebody ever does, I’ll get out. I don’t know how, but I will. You watch.

Oh, sure. I know all about those psychologists. They bring one in because they want to get rid of me, only I do not want to get sent where I will be with crazy people all the time. So I smile and answer all their questions right; what day is it and why am I in here and all that. It’s all the same, and by now I know it better than they do. No, I don’t ever hear voices, doc-only sometimes I wish I did. Well, doc, I’m me. I give them my name and tell them about foster homes and going to vocational school and all that. Only not about Paul, or Nancy, neither. After that I explain how I am innocent and it is all a big mistake anyway. By the time I’ve finished with them I know they will say, “Dull normal” when they get out.

Well, I am not a child molester no matter what the screws say. All right I guess I am a murderer, maybe. That part is probably right. Only not a child molester. No way!

Sure, I went to school. My middle school grades were not so good, so I went to Braciola Vocational. They had meat-cutting. It was really big there, and it was what I took. The teacher said I was a natural, and I’ll tell you, Father, if my old teachers at the middle school had seen my grades, they would not have believed them. I got out pretty close to the top of my class. Only I used to see this one little girl.

You know where Braciola is, Father?

Well, it’s right next to Glazier Elementary School. So when we went out to play softball or anything I would see the little kids playing there on the other side of the fence. If my team was at bat, I’d have plenty of time to look at them. There was this one girl, pretty and filled out nice without being too fat. You know what I mean? She looked tender, but she looked solid, too. I kept thinking how nice it would be to follow her home. Not close, you know, but just keeping an eye on her. See where she lived and all that. She’d be heavy, but not so heavy that I’d have trouble moving her around. I could even pack her in this one duffel bag I had. That’s how I thought while I was still at Braciola.

Only I never did get to follow her because she got out of school before I did. So I thought probably she rides the school bus anyhow, and what good is that?

She was so pretty! You should’ve seen her, Father. Those wide eyes and that beautiful, innocent little face. You would have wanted her just like I did.

How old? Oh, I don’t know for sure. Eight, maybe. Or she could have been seven. But so beautiful. And not big, but solid.

Father, I thought she could never be mine unless I could figure out some way to find out where she lived. Only I didn’t want to ask any of the other kids about her. You understand what I mean? They would have remembered later. So I just watched her and thought someday I’ll get one just like that.

You never know, Father. God arranges this stuff. It’s not us, and it sure wasn’t me. I got out of school like I said, and I got a job at the packing plant. I joined the International Brotherhood of Meatworkers and everything. This teacher I had recommended me, and anytime he recommended a guy, the Human Resources guy at the plant jumped at him. Everybody told me that, and when I applied and gave him my letter, I found out it was true. It said I was good-natured, hardworking, and reliable. On the next page it said I had a natural aptitude few students possess. That was the big finish, you know? I still remember it, and I’ll bless Mr. Johnson to the end of my days.

I was walking back home from work one day and there she was. I guess she’d been kept after school for being naughty, or maybe there had been some kind of special thing at her school after classes. Practice for a school show, maybe. Something like that.

Anyway, there she was, and I followed her. It was broad daylight, so I wasn’t planning to do anything at all. That day I just wanted to find out where she lived. I had this little apartment by then, and a nice new freezer.

So I followed her, and this car came along. The guy stopped and said her momma had sent him to get her and take her home.

Sure I could hear him, Father. You would be surprised how good my ears are. It’s funny because I have a lot of color blindness. I know because they tested me at Braciola Vocational. So you would think my ears might be bad, too. Only they are a lot better than most people’s.

Well, I heard him, like I said, and I knew right off that he was lying. He was going to steal her and he was real scared somebody would know it. I could hear it in his voice, but she could not. She got into the car with him, but I had the smell of him by then and I had seen the car and the license number. I wrote it down as soon as they had gone so I would not forget it.

No, Father. I have never owned a car. I never got that much money together before they put me in here. If I had owned a car I would have driven it to work, probably, and I would never have seen him stealing her.

So I borrowed somebody else’s-just pulled him out when he was getting in and took his keys. Only I never meant to keep his car, which would be stealing. I was going to leave it someplace where he would find it.

I looked for an hour, maybe, before I found them. They were in a trailer park where one of the guys I worked with lived. So I got out and knocked on the door of the trailer. He opened it, and when he saw how mad I was, he just ran away out the back door and I let him go.

Well, Father, maybe most of them don’t have back doors, but this one did.

She was in there on the floor crying. He had tied her hands and there was a rope around her neck that was tied to the bed so she couldn’t get away. Besides, he had torn off all her clothes and she was bleeding from down here.

Sure I did. You would have, too, Father. It tasted great.

So I said, don’t cry, please don’t cry, he’s gone now and you don’t have to worry about him anymore. Now you listen to me. I am going to leave you here until dark. It won’t be long. When it is dark, nobody will see that you are naked, so then I can get you into my car and it will be all right.

No, Father. I wasn’t going to hurt her at all.

So then I drove out to that factory where I had kept Paul. I had my paper and tape there, and a cleaver and some knives. You know. After that I went back home and put some in my freezer.

By then it was dark so I came back for her just like I had said. She was so sweet! She had finished crying by then, and the way she looked up at me… If you had seen her little face then, Father, you would know I would never hurt her. I untied her and got her into my car, only the police stopped us and here I am.

So I am not a child molester like they said. Not at all. He was the one that did her like they were married, only nobody could marry a girl as little as she was then.

Maybe ten. Not much older.

She’ll be older now. I know that. But if you’ll find her and talk to her, she’ll tell you I never did. It was him. I just licked her where she was bleeding. You know. That was all I did.

Well, tell her to tell the truth, please. She won’t lie to you, I know. And tell her I will get out someday and when I do I am going to look her up and make sure she’s all right.

I didn’t mean to scare you, Father. Really I didn’t. I just laid my hand on your shoulder-you shouldn’t be so touchy. Just tell the screw you want out.