Moonchasers & Other Stories

by Ed Gorman

  "My sister told you why I came here?"

  "Yes."

  "You came to talk me out of it, that is why you're here?"

  "Something like that. The first thing is, I want to tell you how sorry I am that it happened."

  "Words."

  "Pardon?"

  "Words. In my land there is a saying, 'words only delay the inevitable.' If you do not kill me, Mr. Wilson, I will kill you. No matter how many words you speak."

  "It was an accident."

  "I am a believer in Hoa Hao, Mr. Wilson. We do not believe in accidents. All behavior is willful."

  "I willfully murdered a six-year-old girl?"

  "In war, there are many atrocities."

  Anger came and went in his eyes. When it was gone, he looked old and sad. Rage seemed to give him a kind of fevered youth.

  "You were there, Dang. You saw it happen. I wasn't firing at her. I was firing at a VC. She got in the way."

  He stared at me a long time. "Words, Mr. Wilson, words."

  I wanted to tell him about my years following the killing, how it shaped and in many respects destroyed my life. I even thought of telling him about my cancer and how the disease had taught me so many important lessons. But I would only sound as if I were begging his pity.

  I stood up. "Why don't you leave tomorrow? Your sister is worried about you."

  "I'll leave after I've killed you."

  "What I did, Dang, I know you can't forgive me for. Maybe I'd be the same way you are. But if you kill me, the police will arrest you. And that will kill Mai. You'll have killed her just as I killed your other sister."

  For a time, he kept his head down and said nothing. When he raised his eyes to me, I saw that they were wet with tears. "Before I sleep each night, I play in my head her voice, like a tape. Even at six she had a beautiful voice. I play it over and over again."

  He surprised me by putting his head down on the table and weeping.

  In bed that night, I thought of how long we'd carried our respective burdens, Dang his hatred of me, and my remorse over Hong's death. I fell asleep thinking of what Dang had said about Hong's voice. I wished I could have heard her sing.

  When I got down to the barn in the morning, Lisa was already bottle-feeding the three new calves. I set about the milking operations.

  Half an hour later, the calves, the rabbits and the barn cats taken care of, Lisa joined me.

  "Mom was worried about you."

  "Figured she would be," I said. "You didn't tell her anything, did you?"

  "No, but Nick did."

  "Nick?"

  "Uh-huh. He told her about the Vietnamese woman."

  "Oh."

  "So Mom asked me if I knew anything about it."

  "What'd you say?"

  "Said I didn't know anything at all. But I felt kinda weird, Grandad, lying to Mom, I mean."

  "I'm sorry, sweetheart."

  At lunch, baloney sandwiches and creamed corn and an apple, Emmy said, "Dad, could I talk to you?"

  "Sure."

  "Lisa, why don't you go on ahead with your chores. Grandad'll be down real soon."

  Lisa looked at me. I nodded.

  When the screen door slapped shut, Emmy said, "Nick thinks you're in some kind of trouble, Dad."

  "You know how much I like Nick, honey. I also happen to respect him." I held her hand. "But I'm not in any kind of trouble."

  "Who's the Vietnamese woman?"

  "Nguyn Mai."

  "That doesn't tell me much."

  "I don't mean for it to tell you much."

  "You getting mad?"

  "No. Sad, if anything. Sad that I can't have a life of my own without answering a lot of questions."

  "Dad, if Nick wasn't concerned, I wouldn't be concerned. But Nick has good instincts about things like this."

  "He does indeed."

  "So why not tell us the truth?"

  I got up from the table, picked up my dishes and carried them over to the sink. "Let me think about it a little while, all right?"

  She watched me for a long time, looking both wan and a little bit peeved, and finally said, "Think about it a little while, then."

  She got up and left the room.

  There were two carts that needed filling with silage. Lisa and I opened the trapdoor in the silo and started digging the silage out.

  Then we took the first of the carts over and started feeding the cows.

  When that was done, I told Lisa to take the rest of the afternoon off. She kept talking about all the school supplies she needed. She'd never find time for them if she was always working.

  During the last rain, we'd noticed a few drops plopping down from the area of the living room. The roof was a good ten years old.

  I put the ladder against the back of the house and went up and looked around. There were some real bad spots.

  I called the lumber store and got some prices on roofing materials. I told them what I wanted. They'd have them ready tomorrow afternoon.

  There was still some work so after a cup of coffee, I headed for the barn. I hadn't quite reached it before the phone rang.

  "For you, Dad," Emmy called.

  I picked up.

  "Robert?"

  "I thought maybe you'd be gone by now, Mai. I went out and visited your brother last night. I don't know if he told you about it. I also don't know if it did any good. But at least I got to tell him I was sorry."

  "I need to meet you at the hill above his trailer. Right away, please. Something terrible has happened."

  "What're you talking about, Mai?"

  "Please. The hill. As soon as possible."

  "Can you drive?"

  "Yes. I drove a little this morning."

  "What's happened, Mai?"

  "Your granddaughter. Dang has taken her."

  As I was grabbing my jacket, and remembering that I'd left the .38 in the glove compartment, Emmy came into the room.

  "I need to go out for a little while."

  She touched my arm. "Dad, I don't know what just happened but why don't you get Nick to help you?"

  I'd thought about that, too. "Maybe I will."

  I drove straight and hard to the hill. All the way there I thought of Dang. One granddaughter for one little sister. Even up. I should have thought of that and protected Lisa.

  Mai stood by the dusty rental car.

  "How do you know she's down there?"

  "An hour ago, I snuck down there and peeked in the window.

  She is sitting in a chair in the kitchen."

  "But she's still alive? You're sure?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you see if she's bleeding or anything?"

  "I don't think he has hurt her. Not yet, anyway."

  "I'm going in to get her."

  She nodded to the .38 stuffed into my belt. "I am afraid for all of us, now. For Dang and for your granddaughter and for you. And for me. She fell against me, crying. I was tender as I could be but all I could think of was Lisa.

  "I tried to talk him into giving her up. He says that he is only doing the honorable thing." More tears. "Talking won't help, Robert."

  I went east, in a wide arc, coming down behind the trailer in a stand of windbreak firs. The back side of the Airstream had only one window. I didn't see anybody watching me.

  I belly-crawled from the trees to the front of the trailer. By now, I could hear him shouting in Vietnamese at Lisa. All his anger and all his pain was in those words. The exact meaning made no difference. It was the sounds he made that mattered.

  I went to the door and knocked. His words stopped immediately. For a time there was just the soughing silence of the prairie. "Dang, you let Lisa go and I'll come in and take her place."

  "Don't come in, Grandad. He wants to kill you."

  "Dang, did you hear me? You let Lisa go and I'll come in. I have a gun now but I'll drop it if you agree."

  His first bullet ripped through the glass and screening of the front door.

  I pitche
d left, rolling on the ground to escape the second and third shots.

  Lisa yelled at Dang to stop firing, her words echoing inside the trailer.

  Prairie silence again; a hawk gliding down the sunbeams.

  I scanned the trailer, looking for some way to get closer without getting shot. There wasn't enough room to hide next to the three stairs; nor behind the two silver propane tanks; nor even around the corner. The bedroom window was too high to peek in comfortably. "He's picking up his rifle, Grandad!" Lisa called.

  Two more shots, these more explosive and taking larger chunks of the front door, burst into the afternoon air. I rolled away from them as best I could.

  "Grandad, watch out!"

  And then a cry came, one so shrill and aggrieved I wasn't sure what it was at first, and then the front door was thrown open and there was Dang, rifle fire coming in bursts as he came out on the front steps, shooting directly at me.

  This time I rolled to the right. He was still sobbing out words in Vietnamese and these had the power to mesmerize me. They spoke exactly of how deep his grief ran.

  Another burst of rifle fire, Dang standing on the steps of the trailer and having an easy time finding me with his rifle.

  There was a long and curious delay before my brain realized that my chest had been wounded. It was as if all time stopped for a long moment, the universe holding its breath; and then came blood and raging blinding pain. Then I felt a bone in my arm crack as a bullet smashed into it.

  Lisa screamed again. "Grandad!"

  As I lay there, another bullet taking my left leg, I realized I had only moments to do what I needed to. Dang was coming down from the steps, moving in to kill me. I raised the .38 and fired.

  The explosion was instant and could probably be heard for miles. I'd been forced to shoot at him at an angle. The bullet had missed and torn into one of the propane tanks. The entire trailer had vanished inside tumbling gritty black smoke and fire at least three different shades of red and yellow. The air reeked of propane and the burning trailer.

  I called out for Lisa but I knew I could never get to my feet to help her. I was losing consciousness too fast.

  And then Dang was standing over me, rifle pointed directly down at my head.

  I knew I didn't have long. "Save her, Dang. She's innocent just the way your sister was. Save her, please. I'm begging you."

  The darkness was swift and cold and black, and the sounds of Lisa screaming and fire roaring faded, faded.

  The room was small and white and held but one bed and it was mine.

  Lisa and Emmy and Nick stood on the left side of the bed while Mai stood on the right.

  "I guess I'll have to do some of your chores for a while, Grandad."

  "I guess you will, hon."

  "That means driving the tractor."

  I looked at Emmy, who said, "We'll hire a couple of hands, sweetheart. No tractor for you until Grandad gets back."

  Nick looked at his watch. "How about if I take these two beautiful ladies downstairs for some lunch? This is one of the few hospitals that actually serves good food."

  But it wasn't just lunch he was suggesting. He wanted to give Mai a chance to speak with me alone.

  Lisa and Emmy kissed me then went downstairs with Nick.

  I was already developing stiffness from being in bed so long.

  After being operated on, I'd slept through the night and into this morning.

  Mai leaned over and took my hand. "I'm glad you're all right, Mr. Wilson."

  "I'm sorry, Mai. How things turned out."

  "In the end, he was honorable man."

  "He certainly was, Mai. He certainly was."

  After I'd passed out, Dang had rushed back into the trailer and rescued Lisa, who had been remarkably unscathed.

  Then Dang had run back inside, knowing he would die in the smoke and the flames.

  "Tomorrow would have been our little sister's birthday," Mai said, "I do not think he wanted to face that."

  She cried for a long time cradled in my good left arm, my right being in a sling like hers.

  "He was not a bad man."

  "No, he wasn't, Mai. He was a good man."

  "I am sorry for your grief."

  "And I'm sorry for yours."

  She smiled tearily. "Seasons of the heart, Mr. Wilson. Perhaps the season will change now."

  "Perhaps they will," I said, and watched her as she leaned over to kiss me on the forehead.

  As she was leaving, I pointed to my arm sling and then to hers.

  "Twins," I said.

  "Yes," she said. "Perhaps we are, Robert."

  EN FAMILLE

  By the time I was eight years old, I'd fallen disconsolately in love with any number of little girls who had absolutely no interest in me. These were little girls I'd met in all the usual places, school, playground, neighborhood.

  Only the girl I met at the racetrack took any interest in me. Her name was Wendy and, like me, she was brought to the track three or four times a week by her father, after school in the autumn months, during working hours in the summer.

  Ours was one of those impossibly romantic relationships that only a young boy can have (all those nights of kissing pillows while pretending it was her—this accompanied by one of those swelling romantic songs you hear in movies with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant—how vulnerable and true and beautiful she always was in my mind's perfect eye). I first saw her the spring of my tenth year, and not until I was fifteen did we even say hello to each other, even though we saw each other at least three times a week. But she was always with me, this girl I thought about constantly, and dreamed of nightly, the melancholy little blonde with the slow sad blue eyes and the quick sad smile.

  I knew all about the sadness I saw in her. It was my sadness, too. Our fathers brought us to the track in order to make their gambling more palatable to our mothers. How much of a vice could it be if you took the little one along? The money lost at the track meant rent going unpaid, grocery store credit cut off, the telephone frequently disconnected. It also meant arguing. No matter how deeply I hid in the closet, no matter how many pillows I put over my head, I could still hear them shrieking at each other. Sometimes he hit her. Once he even pushed her down the stairs and she broke her leg. Despite all this, I wanted them to stay together. I was terrified they would split up. I loved them both beyond imagining. Don't ask me why I loved him so much. I have no idea.

  The day we first spoke, the little girl and I, that warm May afternoon in my fifteenth year, a black eye spoiled her very pretty, very pale little face. So he'd finally gotten around to hitting her. My father had gotten around to hitting me years ago. They got so frustrated over their gambling, their inability to stop their gambling, that they grabbed the first person they found and visited all their despair on him.

  She was coming up from the seats in the bottom tier where she and her father always sat. I saw her and stepped out into the aisle.

  "Hi," I said after more than six years of us watching each other from afar.

  "Hi."

  "I'm sorry about your eye."

  "He was pretty drunk. He doesn't usually get violent. But it seems to be getting worse lately." She looked back at her seats. Her father was glaring at us. "I'd better hurry. He wants me to get him a hot dog."

  "I'd like to see you sometime."

  She smiled, sad and sweet with her black eye. "Yeah, me, too."

  I saw her the rest of the summer but we never again got the chance to speak. Nor did we make the opportunity. She was my narcotic. I thought of no one else, wanted no one else. The girls at school had no idea what my home life was like, how old and worn my father's gambling had made my mother, how anxious and angry it had made me. Only Wendy understood.

  Wendy Wendy Wendy. By now, my needs having evolved, she was no longer just the pure dream of a forlorn boy. I wanted her carnally, too. She'd become a beautiful young woman.

  Near the end of that summer an unseasonable rainy grayness fi
lled the skies. People at the track took to wearing winter coats. A few races had to be called off. Wendy and her father suddenly vanished.

  I looked for them every day, and every night trudged home feeling betrayed and bereft. "Can't find your little girlfriend?" my father said. He thought it was funny.

  Then one night, while I was in my bedroom reading a science fiction magazine, he shouted: "Hey! Get out here! Your girlfriend's on TV!"

  And so she was.

  "Police announce an arrest in the murder of Myles Larkin, who was found stabbed to death in his car last night. They have taken Larkin's only child, sixteen-year-old Wendy, into custody and formally charged her with the murder of her father."

  I went twice to see her but they wouldn't let me in. Finally, I learned the name of her lawyer, lied that I was a shirttail cousin, and he took me up to the cold concrete visitors' room on the top floor of city jail.

  Even in the drab uniform the prisoners wore, she looked lovely in her bruised and wan way.

  "Did he start beating you up again?" I asked.

  "No."

  "Did he start beating up your mother?"

  "No."

  "Did he lose his job or get you evicted?"

  She shook her head. "No. It was just that I couldn't take it anymore. I mean, he wasn't losing any more or any less money at the track, it was just I—I snapped. I don't know how else to explain it. It was like I saw what he'd done to our lives and I—I snapped. That's all—I just snapped."

  She served seven years in a minimum-security women's prison upstate during which time my parents were killed in an automobile accident, I finished college, got married, had a child and took up the glamorous and adventurous life of a tax consultant. My wife, Donna, knew about my mental and spiritual ups and downs. Her father had been an abusive alcoholic.

  I didn't see Wendy until twelve years later, when I was sitting at the track with my seven-year-old son. He didn't always like going to the track with me—my wife didn't like me going to the track at all—so I'd had to fortify him with the usual comic books, candy and a pair of "genuine" Dodgers sunglasses.

  Between races, I happened to look down at the seats Wendy and her father usually took, and there she was. Something about the cock of her head told me it was her.