Iona Moon

by Melanie Rae Thon

  Willy wrapped his arms around Matt’s chest from behind and pulled him off the ties. The skinny boy was heavier than Willy expected. “Help me get him back to the shed,” he said. He looked at Luke, figuring he was the best bet. Luke shook his head.

  “Leave him,” said Kevin. “He’ll crawl back in the morning.”

  Darryl slapped Willy on the back. “Glad to see you, buddy. We could use a ride back to town.”

  All three of them piled in the backseat, and Willy drove slowly, trying not to call attention to his car, just in case his father was still patrolling the back roads. He hated the girl hissing in the grass and the boy passed out by the tracks. He hated the three guys crammed in the back of the Chevy. He hated Jay Tyler for not being there, and he hated himself for driving down to the river tonight where all of this began.

  Iona knew she could walk home in a quarter of the time it would take to get to Sharla’s. But the dogs in the yard would bark, and Frank would meet her at the door. She was afraid he wouldn’t yell, afraid he wouldn’t notice that her shirt was ripped and her feet bare. He’d say, “Where’s the truck?” And that would be the end of it.

  But it was the dogs she kept seeing in her mind, straining at their leashes; they were the ones she cursed, those whining, foolish mutts. Sometimes she wondered how they found the wits to chase a rabbit or flush a pheasant. They were bred for one use, indifferent to love. If her brothers slaughtered a pig, the dogs grew wild with the smell of blood; they’d rip one another’s throats fighting over warm entrails and pig’s balls. At night they piled in a heap, nuzzled together only for warmth, just as her brothers had once huddled together on a hillside, caught by a snow squall in early November. They survived that night of wind and snow, cradling their useless guns in their laps; they kept one another warm and alive, but no more tenderness grew between them for all of that.

  She did find her jacket and one of her shoes. The boys had tossed them down in the ditch by the road. The jacket was dirty but not destroyed. She could mend the sleeve where Darryl had torn it away from the shoulder. Her shirt was another matter. Definitely ruined. Just as well, Iona thought. She didn’t want too many things around to remind her of the celebration for the girl who wasn’t going to graduate. It made sense that the night had turned out the way it did. She carried the shoe for half a mile before she gave up hope of finding the other and heaved it toward the woods.

  It all happened so fast after Willy left. Darryl grabbed her breast, and she twisted away, still laughing. He got hold of her jacket. She heard the low rip of denim as he pulled it off her. Luke snagged an ankle and Kevin gave her a shove. Then Darryl jumped her, pinned her to the ground. Kevin held her feet while Luke untied her shoes and took her socks. She was more afraid of him than she was of the others, afraid of the cigarette in his mouth, what he meant to do to her naked feet. She writhed, got one arm free and clawed Darryl. Fucking bitch. He popped her eye so hard her head banged against the ground. You know you want it. This was little Luke. The words sickened her. She heard herself say the same thing to Willy, summer before last, that night by the river. Kevin wrapped his fingers in her hair. They hated her now, wanted nothing except to hurt her. She felt a fist between her legs, hands under her shirt. She was bucking, kicking wildly. Darryl leaned close and she snapped at him. Luke was the first to back off. The cigarette had fallen out of his mouth. Come on, he said, this isn’t worth it. Darryl squatted on her a moment longer, then stood and kicked her thigh. Kevin cuffed the top of her head.

  Long after their voices faded in the night air, she lay on the ground trying to breathe.

  Iona thought of Sharla locked in her father’s cellar, saw her bruised legs, remembered her on the couch days later, white belly and streaked thighs, knew that because of this Sharla would understand and not judge, would open her door no matter what Jeweldeen had said. She didn’t get to Rosewood Drive until four o’clock that morning, but Sharla was still awake. On her nights off, she kept her usual hours. “Too much bother to switch,” she’d said. “Besides, I like the quiet.” Yes, Iona thought, and silence is more bearable in the dark.

  “I’m not supposed to let you in,” Sharla said, “according to Miss Jeweldeen.” Iona leaned against the wall outside Sharla’s apartment, and Sharla stepped into the hallway to get a better look. She touched the bruise above Iona’s eye. “Does it hurt?”

  “I think I’m still a little drunk.”

  “You’ll feel it tomorrow.”

  “And a lot of other things too,” Iona said, looking at her scratched feet.

  “I’ll make us some tea.”

  “What about Jeweldeen?”

  “It’s my apartment.”

  “Is she here?”

  “Out cold on my bed. You can have the couch.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “You will be.”

  “It’s almost light.”

  “That’s the best time for sleeping.” Sharla put one arm around Iona’s waist. “Come on, baby,” she said. “You need to sit down.” Sharla’s body was soft in the middle. Even her arm was soft.

  Come on, baby. Darryl said: How about that rum, baby? And Iona’s mother said: Sleep, baby, you’ll feel better in the morning. How old was she? Six? Was it chicken pox or just the flu? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember anything. She couldn’t even see her mother’s face. When she thought of Hannah, she saw the wrinkled belly, crisscrossed with tiny lines. She saw her swollen feet, the blue, translucent skin, so fragile Iona was afraid it might tear in her hands. But the face of the mother who stooped over the bed to kiss the feverish child was lost to her.

  Iona huddled on a chair in the kitchen, tucked her hands under her armpits and shivered, though the room was warm. Sharla filled the kettle, moving slowly from sink to stove, a thick woman with big thighs.

  “You want to take a shower?” Sharla said. Iona shook her head. “A blanket?” Iona shook her head again, but Sharla left the room anyway and returned a moment later with a large green shawl. She wrapped it around Iona’s shoulders and sat down to wait for the water to boil.

  When the kettle whistled, Sharla jumped. “Awful noise,” she said. She put two teabags in a fat little pot and filled it with hot water. Iona stared at the empty mugs and the silly red pot as Sharla set them on the table. Everything was ridiculous if you looked at it long enough. Poor Sharla was ridiculous too. She’d painted a mole just to the left side of her mouth, disturbing and dark.

  The tea was nearly black. “You want milk?” Sharla said.

  Milk and honey, that’s how Hannah made it. “No,” Iona said, “this is good.”

  “You want to wash your hands?”

  “I guess.” Iona started toward the bathroom.

  “You can wash them here,” Sharla said, pointing to the sink.

  Iona stood at the kitchen sink and Sharla stood beside her. Her palms were scraped. The soap stung. Sharla kept her hand on Iona’s back, lightly, just enough to steady her. “I know it hurts,” Sharla said.

  She patted Iona’s hands dry with a white dish towel.

  “I’ll ruin it,” said Iona.

  “It’ll wash out.”

  They went back to the table to drink their tea. “You want to tell me what happened?” Sharla said.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Jeweldeen said you took off with a couple of guys.”

  “Four.”

  “Did they?”

  “One of them left.”

  “The other three?”

  “They gave up. I think I scratched one of them good. They did this instead.” Iona pointed to her sore eye. “One of them took a clump of my hair, and another one got a piece of my shirt.”

  “You can borrow one of mine.”

  “They took my shoes too.”

  “You’re lucky you got away.”

  “Yeah,” said Iona, “considering how stupid I am.”

  Sharla peered into her mug. “Sometimes things happen even if you’re not stupi
d.” She covered her face with her hands for a moment but was making herself smile when she looked at Iona again. “Anyway,” she said, “we all survived.”

  Iona thought that if Sharla hadn’t survived, if Sharla had bled to death on her father’s couch, she would have been as much to blame as Jack Wilder. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “It’s no trouble,” said Sharla. “I was awake anyway.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  Sharla waited.

  “I meant you,” Iona said. “I’m sorry about what happened to you.”

  “No reason for you to be sorry.”

  “I should have stayed.”

  “You were just a kid. What did you know?”

  “I knew you were sick.”

  “Yes.”

  “I should have told my mother.”

  “He would have made it worse for me later.”

  “You could have died.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wanted to help you.”

  “I remember. You told Jeweldeen to get more towels.”

  “But I left you there.”

  “She told you to get out.”

  “I didn’t have to listen.”

  “And what would you have done?”

  “I don’t know,” Iona said. “I don’t know.” She was crying now at last, crying for Sharla and herself and her mother, for all the things she couldn’t change. “I could have sat down beside you,” she said. “I could have held your hand so you wouldn’t be so scared.” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.

  “Did you believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re the only one.”

  “I always liked you, Sharla.”

  “I know.”

  “Better than I liked Jeweldeen.”

  “Sssh, you don’t need to tell me.”

  “What we did wasn’t right—watching you when you were locked in the cellar.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “I meant to come back some night and let you out.” Iona still cried, softly. Her chest ached. She saw Sharla trapped in the cellar and her mother trapped in her room; she saw herself pinned to the ground. Now Sharla had her arms around Iona, and Iona sobbed, her whole body heaving, her mouth torn open. The cries hurt her bruised ribs and raw throat, but Sharla held on tight. Iona thought she’d break apart if Sharla let go, but Sharla didn’t let go; Sharla wept too, for Iona and herself, for Hannah Moon and her own mother, the woman with the huge blurry eyes, for all the mothers who turned away too soon, who took off their glasses and died, who did not want to see, for all the daughters who spoke the truth too late to be saved, who could only weep and hang on to each other in a bright kitchen on a quiet street.

  8

  Horton Hamilton hadn’t gotten home until two-thirty that morning, so Willy didn’t need excuses. At seven the phone rang; fifteen minutes later, Horton left the house. Willy couldn’t get back to sleep. Pierce was on duty. Saturday mornings were dead. Usually Fred parked somewhere off Main and fell asleep in his cruiser.

  Willy got up at eight. He passed his sisters’ room. They were going to live at home forever. Who’d marry them now? Lorena bagged groceries; Mariette answered the phone and made appointments for Dr. Tyler. They got a little fatter every year. Mariette could have been pretty; she had her mother’s face, rosy mouth and dark hair. But Lorena never had a chance. She took after Horton: from her long jaw to her size-eleven feet, she was her father’s daughter. Just as well, Willy thought. What happened to Iona Moon last night was never going to happen to either one of them. If a girl got big enough, she could keep herself out of trouble.

  Flo was already downstairs. Her glasses hung on a chain from her neck, bouncing against her chest as she bustled around the kitchen. She still wore her pink robe over her nightgown, but she’d taken the time to paint her eyelids blue and her lips red. She was fleshy—not fat like her daughters, but full. She had a nice waist, and Willy wished that he were still young enough to fling his arms around her from behind and feel her soft bottom against his body.

  “You’re up early,” she said.

  “I heard the phone.”

  “Me too.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Just Fred. Fire east of town, thought he might need help.”

  “Whose place?” He was relieved. A fire. It had nothing to do with last night or anyone he knew.

  “No one’s. I don’t know why Fred bothered to call. Just a brush fire along the tracks.”

  Willy stood up so fast his chair toppled and crashed to the floor.

  “What is it, Willy?”

  His mother was moving toward him, his mother was going to touch his cheek or sweep the hair off his forehead. He couldn’t stand it if she did that. “I gotta go,” he said, backing away. He was out of the kitchen and up the stairs before she had the chance to ask another question.

  The shed had burned to the ground and the flames were out by the time Willy got to the tracks. His father and Fred Pierce walked in circles around the place, wider and wider, looking for clues. Officer Pierce was a twitchy little man with a mustache. So far all they’d found was a broken rum bottle and a crumpled cigarette pack. Willy prayed that his friends hadn’t dropped anything else. A wallet would finish them all off. He remembered Darryl saying: We should burn it down. But Willy had taken Darryl home himself, dropped him at his front door. When they left the tracks, Matt Fry was out cold and the shed was still standing. Darryl was too drunk to get back here on his own. That meant the kid did it himself.

  “What are you doing here?” Horton’s voice was soft, but Willy could tell his father wasn’t glad to see him.

  “Mom told me.”

  “That wasn’t my question, son.”

  “Matt F-fry …” Willy stuttered. “Matt Fry’s been living up here.” He was too scared to ask if the boy was in the shed, burned to his bones. Maybe he crawled back up here, lay down on his plank bed and lit a cigarette, passed out again and woke in flames.

  “Did your mother say that?”

  “No.” Just a brush fire.

  “You get on home. Tell her it’s nothing.”

  “Is he?”

  Horton shook his head. “No sign.”

  “Over here,” Fred called. He’d found something in the grass: empty beer bottles and the yellow lighter. Willy followed his father to look at the evidence.

  Horton Hamilton held the lighter. “Cheap,” he said, “a hundred of these in town.”

  “Kid probably stole it,” Pierce said.

  Willy almost said it was Iona Moon’s. It would have felt good to put the blame on her.

  “Must have set it himself,” said Horton.

  “Why would he do that if he was living here?” Pierce said.

  “Crazy boy. Who knows what went through his head in the middle of the night?”

  “Looks like he got himself good and drunk,” Pierce said.

  Horton shaded his eyes and looked down the tracks.

  “You don’t have any ideas about looking for him, do you Horton?”

  “Have to.”

  “Long gone by now.”

  “Maybe not so far.”

  “You’re on your own with this one.”

  “I know.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, this case is closed,” Pierce said. “An abandoned shed burned down last night. No surprise. It’s caught fire before. No one’s been living here since old man Hardy lay down to rot. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Let it go, Horton. Even his parents wouldn’t want you looking for that boy.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I’m getting in my car, Horton, and I’m driving back to town. I’m gonna tell the guys they did a good job dousing the fire, but it was too late: every scrap of evidence—burned. I’m gonna write a report that says, ‘no suspects, no injuries.’ Go home, buddy. Get yourself something to eat.”

  Willy wished his fathe
r would do what Pierce said. But Horton Hamilton meant to stay all day. At five, he’d go on duty. He might catch a few hours sleep after one, but by daylight he’d be climbing these hills again. He’d use hounds if it came to that. He meant to bring the boy home: dead or alive, skinny and wild or zipped in a body bag.

  Horton Hamilton felt all his failures slip down around him like the weight of his own belly. He remembered how he’d put his hand on Flo’s hip in the kitchen one night after dinner, an old signal. How long ago? But she ignored him, as if she had forgotten. Years now, this absence. He heard himself scolding Willy for the C minus in math and realized his voice had become the voice of his own father, the shamed boy himself. Apples were stolen again after the raccoon was dead, so he knew the animal he’d killed was innocent. And Willy saw this too but never spoke of it.

  Horton believed that what had happened to Matt Fry was his fault, just as Flo said, because all those years ago he’d cuffed a child like a man and told his parents: If your son were eighteen, he’d be on his way to prison for grand larceny. He told himself that some boys longed to be punished. And he believed it until he saw what they’d done to Matt Fry up in Cross City.

  Willy stayed with his father. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he kept his eyes on the ground. He found a ragged piece of blue cloth that he thought might have come from Iona’s shirt. His father got a plastic bag from the trunk to hold the evidence: yellow lighter, blue material, broken bottle.

  They searched in wider and wider circles. Willy felt lightheaded. He should have had breakfast before he left the house. He thought of his mother in her pink robe, the warm kitchen. If only he had put his arms around her the way he’d wanted, just for a few seconds—now there was no chance of it. He saw her in the hours to come, hovering over the stove with her back to him and his father, holding her tongue but hiding none of her scorn.

  Willy hoped that his father would see that Matt Fry didn’t want to be found. As he climbed through the woods, Willy was certain Matt watched him. The forest was noisy with birds—chattering jays and chickadees. But Matt Fry was an owl, silent, invisible by day though he perched right above your head. In the dark he swooped to the ground, and you still didn’t see him until you felt the air move.