Moonchasers & Other Stories

by Ed Gorman

The guy just looked at Barney and said, "You got any candy bars or anything like that on you?"

  "No, sir."

  "How about you?"

  I shook my head.

  The guy grimaced again. The pain must have been pretty bad. The smell sure was.

  "Sir," Barney said. "I don't mean to be nosey or anything, but you look like you should see a doctor."

  For the first time the guy smiled. And when he did, and just in the way he did, I realized who he looked like. "You know any doctors who'd be willing to come out here?"

  "No, but we could help you into town to see Doctor Anderson. He's real nice."

  Barney was just jabbering, terrified.

  "You boys know who I am?"

  "I don't think so," I said.

  "Danton's my name. Roy Danton. Yesterday in Des Moines there was a bank robbery. That was me and my brother. He set the whole thing up. We were careful not to hurt anybody but one of the guards there thought he saw a chance to stop us so he opened fire as we were leaving. He killed my brother and wounded me." The grimace again. "The whole state's looking for me by now." He let his eyes drift over to the money satchel. "Hell, I don't even know how much we got. And now I don't even care. With Mike dead, I mean."

  There was this real long dusty silence in the closet with the guy just staring off and all and you could feel how sad he was about his brother.

  "I'm sorry," Barney said. "About Mike, I mean. I've got a kid brother named Glenn and I'd sure feel bad if somebody shot him."

  I didn't think it was the right time to point out that a lot of people in Somerton wanted the pleasure of shooting his obnoxious little brother, Glenn.

  Danton looked us over again. You had the sense his mind was always working hard, always trying to figure things out. "You boys have probably never met anybody like me, have you?"

  "No, sir," Barney said.

  "Your folks are probably real respectable, aren't they?"

  "Yessir," Barney said.

  "And nobody in the family's ever been in any serious trouble, have they?"

  "Except for my older brother Kenny," Barney said. "He got arrested for shooting off firecrackers the night before it was legal." Danton laughed softly. "They give him the electric chair?"

  "No, sir."

  "I envy the hell out of you boys."

  "Us?"

  "That's right, Barney. You. It's summer and you don't have anything to think about except how you're going to spend all these long, lazy days, and what movie you're going to see downtown, and maybe what girl you hope you run into out at the swimming pool." His gaze was faraway now, as if what he was describing was more real than him being in this closet with a bullet in his side and a satchel of cash near his hand and two small-town hayseeds standing in front of him.

  "I never had that," he said. "But nobody's to blame for how I turned out except me. I don't hold with all the blame people put on each other. When you do something wrong, there's only one person to blame and that's yourself."

  "Your folks still alive?" Barney said.

  But Danton didn't say any more. He just grimaced once from the pain and then sat there and took a few deep shuddering breaths.

  I could see how weak he was. The flashlight was shaking a little and the gun looked as if it was about to fall from his hand.

  "How far from town are we?" Danton said.

  "Mile and a half or so," I said.

  "You boys interested in making a few dollars?"

  Barney said, "Huh?"

  "Getting me some things. A little food and a little medicine."

  Barney looked over at me and I looked over at him right back. Him being my best friend and all it was easy to tell that he was thinking the same thing I was. This guy had to be really crazy, letting us walk right out of here with the understanding that we'd get him some stuff and bring it back.

  What we'd do, of course, was race back to town and run up the four wide steps of the one-story redbrick police station and tell McCorkindale, the night-duty desk cop, just where he could find himself a bank robber.

  "Sure, we'd be glad to do that," I said. "And you wouldn't even have to pay us."

  Danton laughed. "You must really think I'm dumb."

  We didn't say anything.

  "I let you boys walk out of here and you go right to the cops. And then the cops come back here with shotguns and surround this place and then tomorrow morning, I find myself in jail. Where I'll be for the rest of my life probably."

  Danton raised his eyes. "How old are you boys?"

  "Fifteen and a half," Barney said. "I am, anyway. Tom is fifteen and a quarter."

  "You two ever known anybody who killed himself?"

  Barney gulped. "No, sir."

  "How about you, Tom?"

  "I guess not."

  Danton stared at me with those sad eyes of his and all I could think of was Uncle Pete and how he came over late one night to tell Dad, who is his brother, about Aunt Clarice, and how he just sat in the recliner in the living room and cried like a baby.

  "Well, I'm going to leave it up to you boys. How I'm going to handle things, I mean." He nodded to the bank satchel. "Barney, you come over here and dig out some money."

  "Yessir."

  Barney went over and knelt down. Being out of flashlight range, he worked mostly in the dark but a minute or so later he shoved his hand into the range of the flashlight. His tight fist was crammed full of green cash, bills sticking out every which way there were so many.

  "That should do it," Danton said.

  Barney stood up, real unsteady on his feet, and came back over next to me.

  "You have a good memory, Tom?"

  "Pretty good."

  "See if you can remember this, then." And he sailed right into this long list of stuff like gauze and boric acid and bandages, things to take care of his wound, and food, a lot of stuff with sugar in it and then hot dogs because, he said, he could eat them cold. And at the end, he added, "And get me some kind of writing tablets and some envelopes." Pain tightened his face again. "I want to write my brother's, wife, Peg, a letter. They've got a six-month-old kid and I figure Peg could use some money." He nodded to the satchel.

  "We'll take this money and get what you want and then come right back."

  And then Danton laughed again and it was spooky, crazy laughter really, like the kind madmen always laugh in science fiction movies after they've created a monster or something, except in Danton's case it was real.

  "Kid, I wish you could see how obvious you are. You just can't wait to get your ass out of here and go to the cops, can you?" Barney gulped but didn't say anything.

  "And you know what? I'd probably do the same thing if I was you. In fact, I'm sure I would." Then he quit smiling. "But you're going to have to make a real adult decision, both of you boys. I don't want to go to prison. I really don't. I'd never survive in there and I know it. I want to get up to Alaska where I've got a cousin and try living the way regular people do, the way I've never been able to before. That's why I need those medical supplies and that food. It'll at least get me going again."

  He stopped talking. He just stared at us a long dusty sad time and then he raised the gun and put the barrel of it right to his temple and said, "If you bring the cops back, I'll end it right here. And that isn't a bluff. And I'm sorry to put it on you like this but I don't have any choices left in my life. I'm leaving it up to you to decide."

  Then there was just the dust and shadow and quiet of the closet and the sad (and I saw now) sort of crazy blue eyes of Roy Danton.

  "You mean we can go?" Barney said.

  "You can go."

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that."

  "Just walk right out of here?"

  "Just walk right out of here."

  "And you won't shoot us in the back?"

  "And I won't shoot you in the back."

  "Jeez," Barney said.

  We turned around and left the closet and walked the moonlit length of
the warehouse floor, rat droppings crunching beneath our feet, without saying a word.

  And then we started running like hell.

  Five minutes later we were on the railroad ties and smoking Lucky Strikes and hurrying back to town. There was an owl on the night, and phantom clouds across the quarter moon, and a far rumbling train we could feel trembling in the tracks themselves.

  "You think we'll get a reward?" Barney said.

  "Probably."

  "What'll you do with yours?"

  "Save up for a car."

  "You think Clarence will let you have your own car when you're sixteen?"

  We always referred to our fathers by their first names. Clarence and George.

  "Sure. Wouldn't George let you have one?"

  "Not since Kenny knocked up his girlfriend in the backseat of that old Plymouth George bought him for his birthday."

  "But Kenny and Donna are married."

  "Now they're married. But they weren't then. And that's what George got so pissed about. Kenny was supposed to go on to college. But now he's working at the factory and he's got two kids and he isn't even twenty-one yet."

  "Well, I'm pretty sure Clarence'll let me have a car."

  We walked a little more, both of us tossing rocks still warm from sunlight down the silver beams of tracks.

  "You know who he looks like?" Barney said.

  "Who who looks like?"

  "Roy Danton. Who he looks like?"

  And then we stopped. We were just at the junction where the tracks swung eastward and went around Somerton.

  By now my clothes were stuck to me because it was not only a hot summer, it was a humid summer.

  "Yeah," I said. "I know."

  "Robert Mitchum."

  I nodded.

  "That's the only thing that sort of bothers me about turning him in," Barney said. "It's kind of like turning in Mitch."

  We just stared at each other for awhile, just a couple of small-town teenagers, neither one of us wanting to say what we felt, and consequently not saying anything at all.

  We left the tracks and walked into town. The houses started right away, neat little blocks of them, living rooms all aglow with black-and-white picture tubes, an occasional Elvis record on the air from an upstairs bedroom window, a few front porch swings squeaking in the darkness.

  "You see the way he made those faces when the pain got him?" Barney said.

  "Yeah."

  "We're doing him a favor, turning him in."

  By now we reached the town square. The shops and stores that surrounded it stayed open till nine because it was Friday night and night was about the only time farmers in the nearby towns could get in here.

  The Dairy Queen was open, and so was Hamblin's Pharmacy, and Henry's Hawkeye Supermarket, and the big Shell station where they had four bays and where most of the drag-strip guys took their cars, and Seldon's International TV (he took a lot of kidding about that "International" bit believe me) and the Western Auto store and the Earle's Cigars and Billiards and four taverns so noisy they sounded like they were having jukebox wars inside or something.

  People sat everywhere, on park benches and car hoods and curbsides, fanning themselves with paper fans of the sort that the funeral home gives you at wakes, with Jesus on one side and a message (plus the address and phone number) from the funeral parlor on the other.

  The night smelled of cigar smoke and beer and heat and summer lightning and perfume. And there were old people and young people and pretty people and ugly people and rich people and poor people and people who loved each other and people who hated each other all caught up in those smells.

  And Barney and I just stood on the corner across from the red brick building with the big Police sign over the double-wide front door . . . just stood and stared in through the front windows at the uniformed men on night duty.

  "You really think he looks like Mitch?" Barney said.

  "A little. Not a lot. But a little."

  "We'd really get our butts kicked if we didn't turn him in."

  "I know."

  "You really think he'll kill himself if the cops come?"

  "What am I, a swami? How would I know?"

  But right away Barney got that patented hangdog look in his eyes, the one that makes you feel bad even when Barney's at fault, and I said, in a lot more friendly way, "I guess I'm afraid he would. Kill himself, I mean."

  "Mitch would kill himself."

  "You think so?"

  "I know so. No prison bars for him. I think he said that in one of his movies."

  "In several of his movies, actually."

  "Mitch would definitely do it. Definitely."

  I sighed. "I wish he'd killed somebody."

  "Huh?"

  "Roy Danton. I wish he'd killed somebody."

  "Why?"

  "'Cause then it'd be easier to turn him in."

  "Yeah?"

  "Sure. Robbery's pretty bad but it's not like killing anybody."

  "I never thought of it that way, I guess."

  "So even though he's a bad guy he isn't a real bad guy. You know?" Barney shook his head. "I don't want to turn him in either, Tom, but we gotta. We just gotta."

  "I know."

  "So let's get it over with."

  The police station was real bright inside. And noisy. Phones were ringing and there was some kind of Teletype deal in the corner and it was clacking away and three uniformed men were rushing around, their rubber heels squeaking on the tile floors the way nurse's shoes do in hospitals.

  It was so cold from the air-conditioning that I nearly froze on the spot.

  We walked up to the front desk where Sergeant McCorkindale normally sits only it wasn't Sergeant McCorkindale, it was the new recruit named Meeks who wore glasses and was pudgy and was already getting bald.

  "Hi, boys."

  "Hi," I said.

  "Help you with something?"

  "We need to talk to Sergeant McCorkindale."

  "You don't look like fishes to me."

  "Huh?" Barney said.

  "Onliest people talking to Sergeant McCorkindale right about now would be the carp or the blue gill. He's up to Kahler's Lake fishing for two days."

  And right then I saw Cushing coming out of his office down the hall.

  "Well," he said, "look who's here. My two favorite little girls."

  I suppose every town has a cop like Cushing, a real slick operator that all the ladies think is cute, and the kind of cruel and cunning man that other men are always sucking up to out of plain undignified fear.

  Clarence always said that he used to feel sorry for Cushing, the way Cushing's parents were both killed in that automobile accident when Cushing was just ten. But Clarence had long ago forgotten all about the accident and concentrated on what a jerk Cushing had grown up into.

  Cushing was a decorated marine in Korea. He got home late from the war because of an injury to his leg and they had a parade just for him because not only was he a wounded war hero he'd also been the best high school quarterback this valley has ever seen.

  He went six foot easy and if his gut was a little loose now and there was a little fleshy pad beneath the line of chin and jaw, he was still an impressive man, always dressed nattily in one of the many suits Bruce Harcourt over at Harcourt's Men Shop gave him a discount on, and always cracking his chewing gum with a certain malicious delight. He had black black eyes that shone with a very strange light.

  The summer previous Barney and I had broken into the deserted high school out near the highway. Assistant Police Chief (which generally meant the man who was in charge at night) Stephen B. Cushing happened to be cruising by at the very same time we were crawling in one of the windows.

  And parked his car. And came in after us.

  There are a lot of stories going around about what happened that night, some of them pretty juicy of course, but our version, and after all we were there, is pretty simple: he came in after us and we ran away. He called for us to stop bu
t, given what we knew about Cushing we were afraid to stop, and so we climbed out of the building again and took off running.

  Cushing hadn't been so lucky. He'd crawled out the window after us but instead of hitting the ground running, he'd simply hit the ground, falling one story to hard hard pavement and breaking his arm in the process.

  I don't need to tell you how bad it looks for a cop to chase two punk teenagers and have those punk teenagers get away. But for a tough marine and former football hero to break his arm in the process—

  My father, the respectable haberdasher, was not happy that his son had gotten into trouble with the law. I was grounded for two weeks, shorn of allowance, and ordered to leave the living room every time something good came on TV (I even had to miss the Maverick show where they made fun of Gunsmoke).

  But even given his embarrassment about his son having to appear in juvenile court, my father at dinner one night broke into a grin and said, "You should see Cushing these days, dear. He won't look any of us merchants in the eye, and he's cut out his swaggering entirely. I'm not saying I think what Tom here did was right but maybe this was the only way to cut Cushing down a peg or two." Cushing used to come in all the stores and let it be known in various ways that as assistant police chief, he expected favors and discounts from the men he was sworn to protect. The merchants didn't like it but you didn't say anything against Cushing in this town. Not without Cushing getting even, anyway.

  So now here we stood one year later and Cushing was still referring to us as "girls," which he did loudly whenever he saw us on the street. He couldn't get real mean with us, the way he got mean with that Negro who ended up in the hospital a few years back—I mean, haberdasher may not sound like much to you but in a town the size of Somerton, a haberdasher has some influence and Cushing had to be careful—but he could and did harass us whenever he got the chance.

  Cushing watched us with his strange black eyes as Meeks said, "These boys were asking for Sergeant McCorkindale."

  "They were?" Cushing grinned. "You girls come in to confess to something?"

  Meeks looked uncomfortable when Cushing called us girls. He kind of wriggled and waggled around in his desk chair.

  "They were real polite," he said. "I mean, they weren't causing any trouble or anything."

  "That's the nice thing about little girls," Cushing said. "They're usually well-behaved."