Bad Moon Rising

by John Galligan

  Fanta unbuckled his seat belt with a sigh and slung out into the ass-scorching air. He shambled several steps and peered around the end of the semitrailer to find that the woman had also left her vehicle… and stood behind it, between the truck and the low brick American Legion building. Up to what?

  Fanta checked the picture window of the prefab for curtain movement, for hellhounds, then set sail across the trucker’s yard for a better angle. He wallowed up behind an LP gas tank racked crookedly on cinder blocks. From here he could see her. And she was…

  Hallelujah!

  Making Calls of Duty

  This had been his real headline a few years ago when he had done a story about the Mastodon American Legion Post, where there was still a working pay phone, one of the last of its kind anywhere.

  The woman stepped close to the phone, the helmet-shaped, faded blue fiberglass pod fastened to the bricks, with its coin slot, its graffiti-altered dialing and payment instructions, and its hard-plastic receiver on an armored cord.

  Gene Oostertag had since passed away, but at the time of the story, this phone was used by the region’s last surviving World War II vet to call his sixty-five-year-old grandson to pick him up after his Friday-night old-fashioned at the bar.

  The woman was making a call. Or at least the receiver was off the hook and in her hand. It took Fanta a few moments to understand what she balanced on her other hand, black and rectangular, the size of a large book, held level beneath the receiver.

  Then he got it.

  Of course. What else could it be?

  He celebrated his discovery by not stepping in dog shit as he hustled back to the Tercel.

  She had been holding the phone receiver over a portable cassette tape recorder.

  Liar! I sent you a letter. You didn’t print it.

  FROM HELL HOLLOW at this moment ranted in recorded form at someone, somewhere—possibly another media outlet, or possibly Fanta again.

  Over the next hour, while Fanta sweated inside the Tercel, eyeing the prefab window, eager to go, she made several more calls, answering his question. FROM HELL HOLLOW spread his rants around.

  At last the woman finished. She drove out the other end of Mastodon and he gave her a long lead. Then he followed the white truck away.

  CHAPTER 12

  “What happened at the pool, Mom?”

  Belle Kick unplugged a Marlboro Gold and gushed accusing smoke.

  “Your little boy pushed a lady in.”

  “Which little boy?”

  “Which little boy do you think?”

  The sheriff’s pulse rose beneath her sticky skin. The van’s AC roared and dripped beneath the hood. The heat had peaked at a brutal 106 degrees. The temperature had since dropped a bit as the sun lowered, but the humidity had risen a dozen percent, and from now through dawn were the hours when the elderly had breathing problems. She looked at Belle, seventy-four years old. The heat wave had forced her into loose cutoff jeans shorts and a baggy white bikini top, both from a time when apparently she had the goods to fill them. She had tied up her long gray hair into an angry-looking knot. Her fringed leather cigarette purse hung like shredded meat about her hollow waist. A pair of old blue flip-flops exposed her hammertoes. Her red face gleamed with sweat.

  “Mom—”

  “First of all, he would not change into his swimsuit. Then this kid started talking to him and he pushed the kid into the water. I said, ‘Taylor, no pushing.’ He took a lap around the pool and did it again. Then the kid’s mom called him a blankety-blank-blank little monster.”

  “What kid’s mom?”

  While Belle rolled her eyes, the sheriff felt the blankety-blanks like gunshots, her anger rising. What kind of mother calls someone else’s kid names?

  “Which mom?”

  “Oh, just take a guess,” Taylor’s grandmother said. “Becky Rilke-Rickreiner, that’s who. Big as a house. Sitting on the edge dangling her fat feet in the water. She screeches bloody murder at your son, and I’m thinking, good, now the bitch feels better, your son learned his lesson, and it’s over.”

  “Mom—”

  “But, no,” Belle rasped. Sweat dripped off her nose. She almost had to bite the weighty air to get enough inside her lungs. “Your son waits awhile. He bides his time. Pulls his hat down. And keeps walking circles around the pool in his little cowboy jacket.”

  The sheriff glanced at her watch and felt her stomach twist. She was needed as a mother now. But nearly the whole day had slid by and she had so much left to do. A dead man’s name to be discovered, his family to be notified. Another man in critical care who needed questioning. A suspect at large, Patience Goodgolly, who needed to be found. On top of this, she needed to get together with Denise and Rhino on a better strategy for deploying deputies to visit the vulnerable, many of whom didn’t know to ask for help. And she still hadn’t made her daily visit to the high school gym, open as a public cooling center, to thank the on-site volunteers and the drivers who brought people in. She still hadn’t managed to get herself a pregnancy test. And Harley’s all-star game hadn’t ended yet. A hundred miles away, he would be home by nine at the earliest.

  “Around and around the pool your son goes,” Belle continued, “walking faster and faster.”

  She sucked a hot-on-hot breath through her cigarette.

  “Then he runs up behind Becky Rilke-Rickreiner and, boom, he shoves her into the water. Two hundred pounds easy, grease and all, freaking tidal wave. It’s only three feet deep, but she thrashes around screaming like either she’s going to melt or she’s going to drown. She gets out, and guess what? She calls 911.”

  Sheriff Kick glanced toward the building. Poor Denise, she thought, taking that call. BARRY HER’s bride had a five-hundred-dollar fine coming, at least by law. You don’t call 911 just because you got wet—unless your husband is running for sheriff and you want to start something. The sheriff hoped Denise had let it slide. She made a mental note to Oppo: YES. She would reply right away. YES, I WANT YOUR HELP.

  She looked back at Belle.

  “And?”

  “And nothing. We came here to turn ourselves in.”

  Harley’s mom said this bitterly. Her bikini top tied in the middle, and she lifted a string from it, bent her neck, and mopped above her eyebrows.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  “Now we’re going home to run through the sprinkler.”

  “Good idea. But is something else wrong? Are you mad at me for something?”

  “Assuming you even have a sprinkler,” Belle accused.

  “We do have a sprinkler. It’s hanging on the wall with the tools in the barn. Mom—”

  “If he was one of mine, I’da whupped him good right there.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “Folks talk.”

  “I know.”

  “You couldn’t have written a better campaign ad for Prickreiner. And you don’t even have your own ads. Seems you won’t do a damn thing to save yourself.”

  “I’m busy, Mom, actually doing the job. I didn’t plan to campaign until September. But I know. I see what’s happening. I know I need to do something.”

  She turned away from Belle and rolled open the van’s sliding door, getting a double good deal: her beloved boys, and a blast of cool air. Taylor glowered over a Sprite can, half-crushed while he still drank from it. Dylan, his twin, observed cautiously.

  “Hi, guys.”

  She kissed Taylor on the forehead. She kissed Dylan, then she kissed Taylor once more. His temper was one thing, his struggle with impulse control. That seemed normal enough for his age. It was his premeditation that troubled her and Harley. Last Saturday, to “accidentally” injure his brother, he had chosen the weed hoe, the one with the sharp triangular point. Dylan must have said something, she and Harley agreed. But neither boy had wanted to explain.

  “We love you,” she whispered into Taylor’s small ear.

  He twisted his head away.

  “When
you go home,” she whispered, “you need to go upstairs to your room and close the door and not come out until you write a note that says you’re sorry to the boy and his mom. You can ask Grammy Belle or Dylan to help you with the spelling.”

  She paused, feeling clueless. How could you have “identical” twins, yet one could spell perfectly, and the other wasn’t even close? And yet Taylor, in all kinds of intangible ways, seemed to be the more perceptive one, more aware of hard truths. How did this happen? She felt panicky, without knowing precisely why. She needed Harley, his ability to calm his excitable mom, his steady and good-humored hand with the boys, his strong arms around her—she needed him now.

  “And then,” she continued into her little boy’s ear, “you need to write a note to Dylan and your grandmother that says you’re sorry that they had to leave the pool before they wanted to leave the pool. You may not come out of your room to run in the sprinkler until you’ve finished this. Two notes that say, I’m sorry. Do you understand?”

  Taylor crinkled his Sprite can and took a sip, scowling hard.

  “Do you? Say, I understand.”

  “I understand.”

  Her heart hurt. This didn’t feel right.

  “We all love you,” she said out loud and heard Belle snort. “Even when we don’t like something that you do, we all always love you, Taylor. Always. No matter what.”

  Her eyes stung as she rolled the van door shut.

  She turned to face Belle.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “What are you not telling me?”

  “Kumbaya and all,” the boys’ grandmother answered testily, stepping on her cigarette. “But none of this nonsense is what I really came to say to you.”

  The sheriff tensed. It seemed a week ago that Belle had seen her peeing on the dandelion leaves, then tossing out the jar’s contents and rushing to put on her uniform to go investigate some other mother’s dead child in a ditch.

  “OK, Mom. I’m listening.”

  “I gotta tell you, mother-to-mother,” Belle rasped, “that I always felt two kids was more than plenty. Let alone three already.”

  Belle fixed her with a challenging glare.

  “But four kids? Or five?”

  “Mom, I’m not sure I’m actually—”

  She felt her insides twist harder. She couldn’t even say the word. She couldn’t be. She had no room for another. The family had no room. The world had no room.

  “Well, you shouldn’t be unsure at all, should you?”

  “What does that mean? I shouldn’t be unsure?”

  “You shouldn’t even be wondering if you’re knocked up, should you?” Belle challenged her.

  “What are you talking about? How is this even your business?”

  Belle held her glare. “Should you?” she challenged. “Should you even be wondering if you’re knocked up or not? After your husband had his tubes snipped?”

  The sheriff’s mouth fell open. She commanded herself to pause, to breathe, to evaluate—but instead she blurted, “What the hell! Mom! Harley hasn’t had a vasectomy!”

  Belle huffed and stared toward the highway. She did that thing with her bikini string again.

  “Not one that you know about.”

  “What? What?”

  “Don’t play dumb.”

  “Mom!”

  “Don’t ‘Mom’ me. Your husband is my child. My little boy. And I heard from a good source about your fun and games with that Spanish deputy, that Speedy Morales fella. That’s why he left. That’s what I heard.”

  The sheriff turned a hissing circle, actually stamping her feet. Morales left because they had an affair? That’s what people were saying? Supposedly Harley was snipped—some barfly’s bullshit fantasy. The boys watched with stricken faces.

  “Who is your ‘good source’? One of your alcoholic friends? And you believed it? Who?” Her temples pounded. In a matter of seconds, her entire uniform, cuffs to collar, had become sweat-pasted to her skin. “Tell me who!” The boys stared from the van, Taylor in a deep scowl. “Who would start that? Why?”

  “Call me old-fashioned,” Belle answered her grimly, “but I also always felt that one man was enough.”

  “Mom, no!”

  Belle put her wrinkled hand up in a stop sign, something she must have seen on TV.

  “I can’t imagine where you even find the time.”

  “Mom!”

  “We all love our boys.”

  Harley’s mother started toward the van, working the keys from the pocket of her cutoffs. She looked back.

  “We all love our boys,” she rasped again, “so trust me on this, Miss Piss-in-a-Jar. I’ve got only one left. You hurt my last boy with your tramping around, then I guarantee that around here ‘Ex-Sheriff’ is the nicest name anyone will ever call you.”

  Thurs, Aug 8, 5:33 PM

  To: Dairy Queen (dairyqueen@blackbox.com)

  From: Oppo (oppo@blackbox.com)

  Subject: Suicide vs. Pesticide

  Problems with the Story:

  1) Politics. At the time of Kim Maybee’s “suicide” our elected coroner was a pharmacist, McKee; following year, McKee lost his license for over-prescribing opiates;

  2) Investigators. Generous term for Sheriff Gibbs and Chief Deputy Elvin Lund, aka “two monkeys f^cking a football”;

  3) Irregularity. EMS response was compromised when an EMT trainee showed up and talked his way into riding transport with KM, his “old friend.” This EMT was your opposition, Barry Rickreiner, just re-married and in the final semester of his Criminal Justice degree;

  4) Prickreiner. Nothing “old friend” about KM and BR. KM was f^cking BR in exchange for oxy (see 1 above, McKee) during BR’s engagement, after his marriage, and up until KM died. Repeat: KM was pregnant at time of death.

  But Ask Yourself: With oxy in plentiful supply, and more firearms than people in the Bad Axe, would you drink Killex?

  Stand by for the fairy tale.

  CHAPTER 13

  It felt as if Harley’s mother had kicked her in the heart, the guts, and the womb, all at once, and she couldn’t breathe.

  “I’m OK,” she lied to Denise.

  The cold indoor air had given her goose bumps. Across her desk, Denise showed her the mug shot of a twenty-seven-year-old man named Daniel Allen Greevey, one of the CrimeNet preliminary fingerprint matches, who closely resembled the dead man they had found in the ditch.

  “Yes, that looks like him,” she agreed. “Go ahead. I’m fine.”

  Denise wasn’t buying her lie, but she continued reading the profile she had put together.

  “U.S. Navy veteran, last known address two years ago in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he did six months for assaulting a woman on a sidewalk. Since then—”

  The sheriff forced a shaky exhale and Denise stopped.

  “Heidi, how do you know when a woman is having a bad day?”

  “I’m overheated. I’m fine.”

  “She has a tampon behind her ear, and she can’t find her cigarette.”

  “Thanks, Denise. I just need to cool off.”

  To avoid her dispatcher’s disbelieving eyes, the sheriff stared out the window—seventeen days overdue—and saw that since this morning two signs had appeared in the soybean field: BARRY HER and the new one: WHY ARE YOU KICKING YOURSELF?

  No, she agreed with Oppo, drinking Killex is the last way I would choose to end my life.

  She glanced at Blackbox on her phone to see if Oppo had replied. Yes. She was eager to read the message, but turned her phone face down on the desk.

  “OK, I’m with you,” she told her dispatcher. “Daniel Greevey. Assaulted a woman in Massachusetts. Since then?”

  “Since then, he’s shown up on charge sheets all over the country: vagrancy, panhandling, public intoxication, public urination…”

  For sure homeless, as she and Dr. Kleekamp had thought. She tried to focus on Greevey’s mug shot. He appeared both ancient and young, tough and vulnerable. His nose had j
ust been broken, perhaps in the arrest. His eyes burned with intense and angry bewilderment. What on earth was he doing in the Bad Axe, falling out of Gabriel Goodgolly’s buggy?

  “In March of this year,” Denise resumed from her notes, “Daniel Greevey underwent a psychological assessment at a VA hospital in Fresno, California, results inconclusive. As of this June, he was cited for trespassing in St. Paul, Minnesota. After that, he turned up at Our Lady of the River, a Catholic mission in La Crosse.”

  Her dispatcher raised her eyes to the sheriff’s.

  “So. Yeah. An hour ago, Heidi, we got another call from Paul McCartney.”

  The name made her think Denise was setting up another joke. What did the other Beatles say when John got married again? Oh no!

  “I’m not kidding,” Denise clarified. “The priest from La Crosse, his name is Father Paul McCartney. He wanted information about our homicide that I wouldn’t release without your OK first. He got salty with me. Our Lady of the River is a homeless shelter. He runs it.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He thinks he can ID the body.”

  “Send him Dr. Kleekamp’s photograph. Let’s start there.”

  “I knew you’d say that. So I offered. But he insisted on seeing you in person.”

  Denise made the sign of the cross.

  “He’s here, Sheriff. When he called, he was already on his way. Father Paul McCartney is out there with his hair on fire.”

  CHAPTER 14

  After delivering her recorded message from the pay phone in Mastodon, the woman navigated her old white pickup widely around the municipality of Farmstead and into the northeastern corner of the Bad Axe, turning eventually onto Liberty Hill Road and passing the ditch where hours ago at dawn Fanta had observed the dead man.

  Nipping his Walker steadily, with Blind Faith taking over as his melancholy soundtrack, Fanta followed her through fading light along Liberty Hill Road to Skull Rock Road to Leavings Road to Muchlander Road, circumscribing a wide half circle around Liberty Hill itself and entering what to Fanta’s way of thinking represented the beyond-here-be-dragons wilderness of the Bad Axe. With no traffic anywhere, he had been stealing glances at FROM HELL HOLLOW’s letter.