Moonchasers & Other Stories

by Ed Gorman

  A minute later, Linnette was sitting in the middle of the bus, next to a window seat. Her eyes barely reached the window ledge.

  Behind Aimee, the door burst open and the two five-year-olds came running out of the depot, carrying cups of Pepsi.

  They looked up and saw Linnette in the window. They started pointing and giggling immediately.

  Aimee grabbed the closest one by the ear, giving it enough of a twist to inflict some real pain.

  "That's one fine lady aboard that bus there, you hear me? And you treat her like a fine lady, too, or you're going to get your butts spanked! Do you understand me?" Aimee said.

  Then she let go of the boy's ear.

  "You understand me?" she repeated.

  The boys looked at each other and then back to Aimee. They seemed scared of her, which was what she wanted them to be. "Yes, ma'am," both boys said in unison. "We understand."

  "Good. Now you get up there on that bus and behave yourselves."

  "Yes, ma'am," the boys said again, and climbed aboard the bus, not looking back at her even once.

  Aimee waited till the Greyhound pulled out with a roar of engine and a poof of sooty smoke.

  She waved at Linnette and Linnette waved back. "Good-bye," Aimee said, and was afraid she was going to start crying.

  When the bus was gone, Aimee walked over to the taxi stand. A young man who looked like a child was driving.

  Aimee told him to take her to the carnival and then she settled back in the seat and looked out the window.

  After a time, it began to rain, a hot summer rain, and the rest of the day and all the next long night, Aimee tried to keep herself from thinking about certain things. She tried so very hard.

  PRISONERS

  For Gail Cross

  I am in my sister's small room with its posters of Madonna and Tiffany. Sis is fourteen. Already tall, already pretty. Dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt. Boys call and come over constantly. She wants nothing to do with boys.

  Her back is to me. She will not turn around. I sit on the edge of her bed, touching my hand to her shoulder. She smells warm, of sleep. I say, "Sis listen to me."

  She says nothing. She almost always says nothing.

  "He wants to see you Sis."

  Nothing.

  "When he called last weekend—you were all he talked about. He even started crying when you wouldn't come to the phone Sis. He really did."

  Nothing.

  "Please, Sis. Please put on some good clothes and get ready 'cause we've got to leave in ten minutes. We've got to get there on time and you know it." I lean over so I can see her face.

  She tucks her face into her pillow.

  She doesn't want me to see that she is crying.

  "Now you go and get ready Sis. You go and get ready, all right?"

  "I don't know who she thinks she is," Ma says when I go downstairs. "Too good to go and see her own father."

  As she talks Ma is packing a big brown grocery sack. Into it go a cornucopia of goodies—three cartons of Lucky Strike filters, three packages of Hershey bars, two bottles of Ban roll-on deodorant, three Louis L'Amour paperbacks as well as all the stuff that's there already.

  Ma looks up at me. I've seen pictures of her when she was a young woman. She was a beauty. But that was before she started putting on weight and her hair started thinning and she stopped caring about how she dressed and all. "She going to go with us?"

  "She says not."

  "Just who does she think she is?"

  "Calm down Ma. If she doesn't want to go, we'll just go ahead without her."

  "What do we tell your dad?"

  "Tell him she's got the flu?"

  "The way she had the flu the last six times?"

  "She's gone a few times."

  "Yeah twice out of the whole year he's been there."

  "Well."

  "How do you think he feels? He gets all excited thinking he's going to see her and then she doesn't show up. How do you think he feels? She's his own flesh and blood."

  I sigh. Ma's none too healthy and getting worked up this way doesn't do her any good. "I better go and call Riley."

  "That's it. Go call Riley. Leave me here alone to worry about what we're going to tell your dad."

  "You know how Riley is. He appreciates a call."

  "You don't care about me no more than your selfish sister does."

  I go out to the living room where the phone sits on the end table I picked up at Goodwill last Christmastime. A lot of people don't like to shop at Goodwill, embarrassed about going in there and all.

  The only thing I don't like is the smell. All those old clothes hanging. Sometimes I wonder if you opened up a grave if it wouldn't smell like Goodwill.

  I call Kmart, which is where I work as a manager trainee while I'm finishing off my retail degree at the junior college. My girlfriend Karen works at Kmart too. "Riley?"

  "Hey, Tom."

  "How're things going in my department?" A couple months ago Riley, who is the assistant manager over the whole store, put me in charge of the automotive department.

  "Good great."

  "Good. I was worried." Karen always says she's proud 'cause I worry so much about my job. Karen says it proves I'm responsible. Karen says one of the reasons she loves me so much is 'cause I'm responsible. I guess I'd rather have her love me for my blue eyes or something but of course I don't say anything because Karen can get crabby about strange things sometimes.

  "You go and see your old man today, huh?" Riley says.

  "Yeah."

  "Hell of a way to spend your day off."

  "It's not so bad. You get used to it."

  "Any word on when he gets out?"

  "Be a year or so yet. Being his second time in and all."

  "You're a hell of a kid Tom, I ever tell you that before?"

  "Yeah you did Riley and I appreciate it." Riley is a year older than me but sometimes he likes to pretend he's my uncle or something. But he means well and, like I told him, I appreciate it. Like when Dad's name was in the paper for the burglary and everything. The people at Kmart all saw it and started treating me funny. But not Riley. He'd walk up and down the aisles with me and even put his arm on my shoulder like we were the best buddies in the whole world or something. In the coffee room this fat woman made a crack about it and Riley got mad and said, "Why don't you shut your fucking mouth, Shirley?" Nobody said anything more about my dad after that. Of course poor Sis had it a lot worse than me at Catholic school. She had it real bad. Some of those kids really got vicious. A lot of nights I'd lay awake thinking of all the things I wanted to do to those kids. I'd do it with my hands, too, wouldn't even use weapons. "Well say hi to your mom."

  "Thanks Riley. I'll be sure to."

  "She's a hell of a nice lady." Riley and his girl came over one night when Ma'd had about three beers and was in a really good mood. They got along really well. He had her laughing at his jokes all night. Riley knows a lot of jokes. A lot of them.

  "I sure hope we make our goal today."

  "You just relax Tom and forget about the store. Okay?"

  "I'll try."

  "Don't try Tom. Do it." He laughs, being my uncle again. "That's an order."

  In the kitchen, done with packing her paper bag, Ma says, "I shouldn't have said that."

  "Said what?" I say.

  "About you being like your sister."

  "Aw Ma. I didn't take that seriously."

  "We couldn't have afforded to stay in this house if you hadn't been promoted to assistant manager. Not many boys would turn over their whole paychecks to their mas." She doesn't mention her sister who is married to a banker who is what bankers aren't supposed to be, generous. I help but he helps a lot.

  She starts crying.

  I take her to me, hold her. Ma needs to cry a lot. Like she fills up with tears and will drown if she can't get rid of them. When I hold her I always think of the pictures of her as a young woman, of all the terrible things that have cost he
r her beauty.

  When she's settled down some I say, "I'll go talk to Sis."

  But just as I say that I hear the old boards of the house creak and there in the doorway, dressed in a white blouse and a blue skirt and blue hose and the blue flats I bought her for her last birthday, is Sis.

  Ma sees her, too, and starts crying all over again. "Oh God hon thanks so much for changing your mind."

  Then Ma puts her arms out wide and she goes over to Sis and throws her arms around her and gets her locked inside this big hug. I can see Sis's blue eyes staring at me over Ma's shoulder.

  In the soft fog of the April morning I see watercolor brown cows on the curve of the green hills and red barns faint in the rain. I used to want to be a farmer till I took a two-week job summer of junior year where I cleaned out dairy barns and it took me weeks to get the odor of wet hay and cow shit and hot pissy milk from my nostrils and then I didn't want to be a farmer ever again.

  "You all right hon?" Ma asks Sis.

  But Sis doesn't answer. Just stares out the window at the watercolor brown cows.

  "Ungrateful little brat," Ma says under her breath.

  If Sis hears this she doesn't let on. She just stares out the window.

  "Hon slow down," Ma says to me. "This road's got a lot of curves in it."

  And so it does.

  Twenty-three curves—I've counted them many times—and you're on top of a hill looking down into a valley where the prison lies.

  Curious, I once went to the library and read up on the prison. According to the historical society it's the oldest prison still standing in the Midwest, built of limestone dragged by prisoners from a nearby quarry. In 1948 the west wing had a fire that killed eighteen blacks (they were segregated in those days) and in 1957 there was a riot that got a guard castrated with a busted pop bottle and two inmates shot dead in the back by other guards who were never brought to trial.

  From the two-lane asphalt road that winds into the prison you see the steep limestone walls and the towers where uniformed guards toting riot guns look down at you as you sweep west to park in the visitors' parking lot.

  As we walk through the rain to the prison, hurrying as the fat drops splatter on our heads, Ma says, "I forgot. Don't say anything about your cousin Bessie."

  "Oh. Right."

  "Stuff about cancer always makes your dad depressed. You know it runs in his family a lot."

  She glances over her shoulder at Sis shambling along. Sis had not worn a coat. The rain doesn't seem to bother her. She is staring out at something still as if her face was nothing more than a mask which hides her real self. "You hear me?" Ma asks Sis.

  If Sis hears she doesn't say anything.

  "How're you doing this morning Jimmy?" Ma asks the fat guard who lets us into the waiting room.

  His stomach wriggles beneath his threadbare uniform shirt like something troubled struggling to be born.

  He grunts something none of us can understand. He obviously doesn't believe in being nice to Ma no matter how nice Ma is to him. Would break prison decorum apparently, the sonofabitch. But if you think he is cold to us—and most people in the prison are—you should see how they are to the families of queers or with men who did things to children.

  The cold is in my bones already. Except for July and August prison is always cold to me. The bars are cold. The walls are cold. When you go into the bathroom and run the water your fingers tingle. The prisoners are always sneezing and coughing. Ma always brings Dad lots of Contac and Listerine even though I told her about this article that said Listerine isn't anything except a mouthwash.

  In the waiting room—which is nothing more than the yellow-painted room with battered old wooden chairs—a turnkey named Stan comes in and leads you right up to the visiting room, the only problem being that separating you from the visiting room is a set of bars. Stan turns the key that raises these bars and then you get inside and he lowers the bars behind you. For a minute or so you're locked in between two walls and two sets of bars. You get a sense of what it's like to be in a cell. The first couple times this happened I got scared. My chest started heaving and I couldn't catch my breath, sort of like the nightmares I have sometimes.

  Stan then raises the second set of bars and you're one room away from the visiting room or VR as the prisoners call it. In prison you always lower the first set of bars before you raise the next one. That way nobody escapes.

  In this second room, not much bigger than a closet with a standup clumsy metal detector near the door leading to the VR, Stan asks Ma and Sis for their purses and me for my wallet. He asks if any of us have got any open packs of cigarettes and if so to hand them over. Prisoners and visitors alike can carry only full packs of cigarettes into the VR. Open packs are easy to hide stuff in.

  You pass through the metal detector and straight into the VR room.

  The first thing you notice is how all of the furniture is in color-coded sets—loungers and vinyl molded chairs makes up a set—orange green blue or red. Like that. This is so Mona the guard in here can tell you where to sit just by saying a color such as "Blue" which means you go sit in the blue seat. Mona makes Stan look like a really friendly guy. She's fat with hair cut man short and a voice man deep. She wears her holster and gun with real obvious pleasure. One time Ma didn't understand what color she said and Mona's hand dropped to her service revolver like she was going to whip it out or something. Mona doesn't like to repeat herself. Mona is the one the black prisoner knocked unconscious a year ago. The black guy is married to this white girl which right away you can imagine Mona not liking at all so she's looking for any excuse to hassle him so the black guy one time gets down on his hands and knees to play with his little baby and Mona comes over and says you can only play with the kids in the Toy Room (TR) and he says can't you make an exception and Mona sly-like bumps him hard on the shoulder and he just flashes the way prisoners sometimes do and jumps up from the floor and not caring that she's a woman or not just drops her with a right hand and the way the story is told now anyway by prisoners and their families, everybody in VR instead of rushing to help her break out into applause just like it's a movie or something. Standing ovation. The black guy was in the hole for six months but was quoted afterward as saying it was worth it.

  Most of the time it's not like that at all. Nothing exciting I mean. Most of the time it's just depressing.

  Mostly it's women here to see husbands. They usually bring their kids so there's a lot of noise. Crying laughing chasing around. You can tell if there's trouble with a parole—the guy not getting out when he's supposed to—because that's when the arguments always start, the wife having built her hopes up and then the husband saying there's nothing he can do I'm sorry honey nothing I can do and sometimes the woman will really start crying or arguing. I even saw a woman slap her husband once, the worst being of course when some little kid starts crying and says, "Daddy I want you to come home!" That's usually when the prisoner himself starts crying.

  As for touching or fondling, there's none of it. You can kiss your husband for thirty seconds and most guards will hassle you even before your time's up if you try it open mouth or anything. Mona in particular is a real bitch about something like this. Apparently Mona doesn't like the idea of men and women kissing.

  Another story you hear a lot up here is how this one prisoner cut a hole in his pocket so he could stand by the Coke machine and have his wife put her hand down his pocket and jack him off while they just appeared to be innocently standing there, though that may be one of those stories the prisoners just like to tell.

  The people who really have it worst are those who are in the hole or some other kind of solitary. On the west wall there's this long screen for them. They have to sit behind the screen the whole time. They can't touch their kids or anything. All they can do is look.

  I can hear Ma's breath take up sharp when they bring Dad in.

  He's still a handsome man—thin, dark curly hair with no gray, and more solid th
an ever since he works out in the prison weight room all the time. He always walks jaunty as if to say that wearing a gray uniform and living in an interlocking set of cages has not yet broken him. But you can see in his blue eyes that they broke him a long time ago.

  "Hiya everybody," he says trying to sound real happy.

  Ma throws her arms around him and they hold each other. Sis and I sit down on the two chairs. I look at Sis. She stares at the floor. Dad comes over then and says, "You two sure look great."

  "So do you," I say. "You must be still lifting those weights."

  "Bench pressed two-twenty-five this week."

  "Man," I say and look at Sis again. I nudge her with my elbow. She won't look up.

  Dad stares at her. You can see how sad he is about her not looking up. Soft he says, "It's all right."

  Ma and Dad sit down then and we go through the usual stuff, how things are going at home and at my job and in junior college, and how things are going in prison. When he first got there, they put Dad in with this colored guy—he was Jamaican—but then they found out he had AIDS so they moved Dad out right away. Now he's with this guy who was in Vietnam and got one side of his face burned. Dad says once you get used to looking at him he's a nice guy with two kids of his own and not queer in any way or into drugs at all. In prison the drugs get pretty bad.

  We talk a half hour before Dad looks at Sis again. "So how's my little girl?"

  She still won't look up.

  "Ellen," Ma says, "you talk to your dad and right now."

  Sis raises her head. She looks right at Dad but doesn't seem to see him at all. Ellen can do that. It's really spooky.

  Dad puts his hand out and touches her.

  Sis jerks her hand away. It's the most animated I've seen her in weeks.

  "You give your dad a hug and you give him a hug right now," Ma says to Sis.

  Sis, still staring at Dad, shakes her head.

  "It's all right," Dad says. "It's all right. She just doesn't like to come up here and I don't blame her at all. This isn't a nice place to visit at all." He smiles. "Believe me I wouldn't be here if they didn't make me."