Envious Moon

by Thomas Christopher Greene

  “Anywhere there are woods, there are mushrooms,” he said.

  He spent his summers in the Northeast and in the winter he generally went down to the Carolinas. He camped the whole time and he worked when he wanted and it sounded like a decent life to me.

  When we had exhausted that conversation we sat for a time in silence and smoked and kept our thoughts to ourselves. I was thinking of Hannah, of where she was, and whether or not tomorrow might be the day I would see her. On my morning drives past the school I kept expecting to just see her in front of one of those buildings, helping her mother unload a station wagon with all her things. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to approach her just yet. I would need to give it some time, to pick my spot. I had no idea how she would react. And that was what was going through my mind when Terrence said, “How long they been looking for you?”

  “Who?”

  “The cops.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Terrence leaned forward in his chair and he brought his cigarette up to his lips and in the dark I sensed his eyes on my face, though I kept looking straight ahead, toward my campsite, to where the brook ran through the trees. “I been around a long time, boy,” Terrence said. “I can tell when a man’s running from something. You don’t even have as much as a tent. Sleeping on the ground in the woods.”

  “Nah,” I said. “I just don’t have a tent.”

  “How long?” Terrence said. “Listen, I got no love for cops.”

  I leaned back and sipped from the can of beer. I didn’t feel like lying. “Four days,” I said.

  “’Cause of what you did to the girl?”

  “I didn’t do anything to the girl.”

  “They know you’re here?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “What they want you for?”

  “An accident.”

  “An accident?” Terrence said. “Cops never want people for accidents.”

  “A man died.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” I said.

  “Just tell me how and I’ll let you alone.”

  “My buddy and I were robbing a house on Cross Island. Not even robbing it really, though it doesn’t matter. We thought it was empty. It wasn’t.”

  Terrence nodded. “Sounds like a bitch.”

  “It was,” I said.

  “Tell me one more thing,” he said.

  “What?”

  “What’s the girl got to do with it?”

  I sighed. “It was her father.”

  “What you going to do to her?”

  I looked over at him. “I’m not going to do a thing to her. I love her.”

  “There’s a lot to this then,” said Terrence.

  I lighted a cigarette. “Tell me about it,” I said.

  We didn’t say much more that night. We sat in the dark for a time and finished our cigarettes. Above us the tall pines shook with the autumnal breeze.

  The next morning I woke to the drizzle of rain and I had a hangover. I stood up and opened the door to the car and for a few minutes I sat in the driver’s seat with the door open and watched the soft rain fall. Terrence’s trailer was there but his truck was gone. He must be in the woods.

  I drove over the rolling hills to Litchfield and at the drive-through picked up a coffee and a sandwich. The day was cloudy and gray and the rain now was just a misting on the windshield. I came back down 75 and as I went I wished Victor’s radio worked. It would be nice to listen to the radio. I passed the white sign that said WELCOME TO LINCOLN and then I was coming on the school when I saw all the cars. My heart flipped in my chest. This was the day.

  I slowed down coming past the school, and everywhere, on both sides of the road, expensive cars were being unloaded by well-dressed men and women with their daughters. Bags and bags, clothes on hangers. I drove as slow as I dared and I scanned the people as I went but to tell you the truth, their faces were all blank to me. I was looking for Hannah and for Hannah only. Where was she? It seemed as if everyone had arrived at once, and I did not see her among them. I was almost past the school, and about to turn around and make another pass, when I saw the cars. Three of them, all state police cars. Most ominously, one of them had the colors of Rhode Island. We were more than two hours from Rhode Island. They were parked in a row in a small parking lot next to a large white house with pillars on the front. One of the Connecticut cars and the Rhode Island car were both facing toward the main road. The other car, in between them, faced back toward the athletic fields. Through the glass I saw the shadows of the men who sat in them. I kept on driving and when I looked in my rearview, they had not pulled out. Either they had not seen me, or they did not know yet what they were looking for. Because one thing was crystal clear: They were here for me. I didn’t know what they knew. Did they just think I might decide to come here? Or did they know from Victor that this was my plan?

  But one other thing was beyond dispute that morning. Hannah was here, or was about to be here.

  It took me a while, but I was able to figure out how to get back to the campsite by doing a great circle through a number of towns, ending up in Litchfield, and then making my way back.

  I parked the car and for a time I sat on the hood and smoked and thought about what to do. The rain was so light that it felt cool and good on my skin. It felt like some kind of cure for my hangover.

  If they thought I was here, it meant that they figured out that I had Victor’s car. I’m sure they didn’t think I walked here. Maybe I could have taken a bus. But I had to assume that the car was made and that they were looking for it. That I got lucky on my last pass. I couldn’t drive the car in the daytime anymore.

  The school was maybe three miles away. I knew the general direction, and it would be an easy walk on the roads to get there, but the same rule applied. If they were out looking for me, a Portuguese kid walking a winding country Connecticut road would be easy to pick out. No, the only move was to go overland. To pick my way through the woods. And hope that I didn’t get lost.

  I set off sometime after noon. I just plunged right in behind my campsite, forded the small brook by leaping from rock to rock, and then I was off among the trees. It was a young forest, a mix of birch and poplars growing close together, and the land rose up and down in small hills. It was beautifully green in here, though, and the cover was great enough that what rain there was did not reach me. It was hard work, this walk, as I had to make my way over brush and fallen logs, and now and again I took a break and sat down on a mossy stump and rested. Soon the woods grew more piney, and the trees were farther apart. The forest floor was covered with a soft blanket of pine needles and I moved more quickly.

  Then coming down this long hill, I saw breaks in the trees in front of me and as I got closer I heard shouts, playful shouts, and I walked to the edge of the trees. In front of me I saw girls playing soccer. I was behind the school and these were the athletic fields. The field was maybe twenty yards away and I was in the dark trees and there was no way they could have seen me.

  There were all kinds of girls. Blond girls and dark-haired girls. White girls and black girls. Girls with short hair and girls with ponytails that bounced on the back of their necks as they ran. I sat down against the base of a large tree and I watched them. I scanned their faces for Hannah but she was not among them. I would have seen her right away. My eyes would have gone to her. I couldn’t picture her playing soccer anyway. There was something nice about the game, though. The misty rain had stopped and a splintered sun appeared from behind the clouds. The green grass shone with moisture. And there were all those girls in motion, their shouts and their cries, the thudding of their feet, the calling of each other’s names, a blur of girls, moving as one.

  Those woods became my friend. They wrapped that small campus like a blanket and for days I wandered through them like they were mine. I stood in their shadows and watched girls playing sports, walking to class, standing in
small groups talking. I circled the whole place and there were only a few buildings out of the reach of my sight. I didn’t see any cops. I also didn’t see Hannah.

  A few times I saw a girl at a distance that I thought was her, only to have the girl move close enough for me to realize I had been mistaken.

  Emboldened by the darkness of night, I roamed the empty campus like I owned the place. There was one security guard, from what I could tell, and you could hear him coming from a mile away because he whistled when he did his rounds. I’d duck behind a building and wait until he had passed. I learned all the names of the buildings, especially the low brick ones near the soccer field that I took to be the dormitories. Spencer Hall. Fuller Hall. Salisbury Hall. Bradford Hall. They were two-floor square institutional buildings and I walked their lengths in the dark, hoping to see through one of the windows, to get a glimpse of my girl.

  But these girls were scrupulous about keeping their shades drawn, and I never saw more than a passing glimpse of a figure between the edge of shade and the window. I was losing hope.

  Coming back to the campsite after one of these missions, I emerged out of the dark woods to discover that Terrence had returned, and was on his lawn chair in front of his trailer. I didn’t want anything to do with him, but he was drinking beer and I wanted one. If he thought it odd that I appeared seemingly out of nowhere, he didn’t say anything. He motioned for me to sit down, and I did and he reached for his cooler and handed me a beer.

  “How’s your girl?” Terrence asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  “Haven’t found her?”

  I looked toward where I had come from, the dark woods behind the campsite. “No,” I said.

  “Why don’t you just call?”

  “I don’t know that she’ll talk to me.”

  Terrence seemed to be considering this. “How ’bout this?” he said.

  I looked over at him. “What?”

  “Pretend you’re delivering something.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious, boy. It’ll work.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have a uniform or anything.”

  “It don’t matter. You don’t actually have to deliver anything. You just need to find out where she lives, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “So just go to the school there, pull up, find a couple of girls and ask them. Say ‘I have a package for Miss-whatever-her-name-is and can you tell me where I can find her?’ Bet they give it right up.”

  “That’s not bad,” I said, thinking it over.

  “Hell no,” said Terrence. “It’s good, what it is. That shit’ll work.”

  I was actually grateful and showed it. I raised my beer to him and we clinked bottles. “Thanks, Terrence,” I said.

  “Then you can do whatever it is you going to do to her,” he said.

  “I told you I’m not going to do anything to her.”

  Terrence drew on his cigarette and he looked away. “What you say, boy.”

  I braced at this. I felt an anger come over me and when I looked at him, he had turned back toward me and his old face framed by his gray hair had a smug look on it. I could have smashed it with the beer bottle in my fist, that’s how I felt about it. I said, “I’m not going to tell you again about that.”

  “Whoa, boy, relax,” said Terrence.

  I lighted a cigarette, breathed in. “I’m okay.”

  “Good,” Terrence said. “Have another beer.”

  I swallowed the last of what I had and took the new beer from him. I drank it quickly. I was thankful for the idea and for the beer but I wanted to be away from him. I wanted to hit my bedroll and shut my eyes against the day.

  The next morning I drove to Litchfield under steely skies and at the pharmacy I bought cigarettes, a big padded envelope, and a pen. Back at the campsite I saw that Terrence had once again left and I sat on the hood of my car and I wrote Hannah’s name on the envelope and below it I wrote, Miss Watson’s School. The day was cool and breezy but I didn’t mind. I was filled with anticipation for what I was about to do.

  I hiked back through the woods and when I reached the clearing that was the soccer fields, I stopped and I waited. My heart was somewhere between my chest and my throat, to tell you the truth. There were no girls around and I figured they were in class. I waited until I heard the shrill of a bell and then I left the woods and boldly walked across the soccer field. I reached a pathway that cut between buildings and stood there, thinking that any minute the state police were going to come bounding toward me, telling me to put my arms in the air, to stay where I was. Instead I heard voices, girls’ voices, and from between the buildings came a knot of girls, four of them, and when they approached me, I did my best to look lost. I saw them taking me in, my jeans and my workboots, my flannel shirt, and I pretended to study the empty package in my hands. When they reached me, I said, “Excuse me.”

  They stopped. Stared at me. I looked down at the envelope again. I gave it my best voice. “Can you tell me where I can find,” and I paused and looked down once more. “Ms. Hannah Forbes. Where her room is?”

  Behind them I saw more girls coming. No sign of any teachers, though. Or security. I did worry that any moment Hannah would come around one of the buildings and see me there. I had no idea how she would react.

  The tall girl in front said, “Hannah’s in Fuller.”

  Next to her, a small blond girl said, “All packages go to the mail room.” She pointed to a low building to our left. “In there.”

  I ignored her. “Do you know her room number?”

  The tall girl said, “I think she’s in 104.”

  “No, it’s 105,” a girl in the back said.

  “Yeah, 105,” said a third girl.

  “Great, thanks,” I said. A few more girls passed us and I turned and started to walk away. I stopped and studied the envelope until the girls I had talked to had moved on and I could see their backs. Then I took a right over the soccer field. I kept walking and when I was over a rise, I broke into a run and didn’t stop until I reached the safety of the woods.

  That night was dark and without moon. The nights were darker here in the woods than they were at home, where the ocean, even on cloudy starless nights, seemed to hold some of the light of day. I ate a fast-food dinner and sat around the campsite wishing I had some beer. I was real jumpy and I chain-smoked and watched the night come on. The evening seemed to stretch on forever and when I took off through the woods, it was all I could do to keep myself from running.

  I came onto the campus the way I always did now, across the soccer field and I ran in a half crouch crossing it, heading for the cluster of brick dormitories on the other side. I stopped behind a tree when I reached the pathways lined with streetlamps and I looked around. The place was deserted, as it always was at this time, the girls safely ensconced in their dorm rooms. No sign of the security guard. No sign of teachers. No cops. I ran across the small quadrangle and in between two of the dorms, stopping to rest with the brick of Fuller Hall, where Hannah was, behind my back.

  Two floors of windows were next to me, most of them still lit. Behind one of them was Hannah. My challenge was to discover which one.

  I could eliminate the second floor. Room 105. That had to be on the first floor. If odd numbers were on the right, and even on the left, it should be the third one in, I figured, a mere thirty feet or so from where I stood.

  I went to this window and stood in front of it. The shade was drawn but on the left side there was a sliver of open space. I put my eyeball right to it and tried to look in. I saw a lamp on a desk and behind it I saw what looked like the metal headboard of a bed. But that was all I could see. I stepped away from the window. I thought about what I should do now. I couldn’t just knock on it, since there was no way of knowing for certain that it was Hannah’s room. I had only one bite of the apple, I figured. Behind me I heard a footfall, like someone stepping on a branch, and I froze wher
e I was. I looked to my right and I saw the light of a flashlight. I went quickly to the side of the window and leaned my body as far as it would go into the brick. A beam of light danced across the space I occupied between the two dormitories. It flitted over my head and caught my boots in its light. Then it was gone and I heard whistling. The security guard doing his rounds.

  I stayed put until I was comfortable he was long gone. Then I went back to the window and when I looked through this time, what I saw seized my heart. She was only inches from me, separated by glass. I could only see the tiniest piece of her where she leaned over the desk, her bangs hanging over her forehead, a swipe of her face. There was only one thing to do. I didn’t care what happened.

  I rapped softly on the glass with my knuckles. Once and then again. A hand appeared at the bottom and the shade went up. Instinctively, I stepped back.

  Standing there in the glass, staring out into the dark at me, stood Hannah. She wore a white tank top and pajama bottoms. Hannah slid the window up and when she did, I started to cry. I hadn’t planned to but it just happened. Big, choking tears too. For a moment she just looked at me. She seemed too stunned to say anything and I was crying too hard to talk. It was like something opened inside me and I had no idea how to stuff it back in.

  Hannah said, “I’m going to get the cops.”

  Suddenly I managed to talk. I said, “Don’t do that, Hannah. Don’t. Please. Don’t. I just need to talk to you. Please. And then if you want, I’ll go away. You can call the cops. Never see me again.”

  “You killed him,” she said. “They said you killed him.”

  “No,” I said, “you have to listen to me. Can we just talk, please? Please,” I said. “Come with me. Ten minutes. Hear me and then you can go.”

  I wiped tears away from my face with the back of my sleeve and for a moment she didn’t do anything. She just looked at me. Behind her the door opened and another girl came in the room. She was tall and blond and wore pajamas too. She looked frightened when she saw me standing there. But of course she wouldn’t understand.