Alabama Moon

by Watt Key

  I ran until it seemed that everything around me was quiet. It might have been two hundred yards or it might have been a mile. I didn’t know where I was anymore. When I lay down and let the chain fall back into the leaves, I didn’t feel tired. All I heard was my breathing and my heart beating. The treetops overhead were still and the sky was overcast. The forest was endless in all directions. It seemed to stretch out forever with no people. It seemed full of animals that turned their heads away from me and spoke about me in whispers. All I thought about was the fact that I was still alive, and it no longer seemed to matter. Everybody I cared about was in trouble because of me.

  40

  The clouds slid over my upturned eyes the rest of the afternoon. Just before sunset, the sky cleared and buzzards circled me.

  “You might just want me this time,” I said.

  As the forest grayed, a coon waddled up to the leash chain and pawed it. When I stood, it scampered away in surprise. I took off the leash and felt my neck where there was a ring of swollen skin. Looking at my wrists, I saw where the handcuffs had worn me raw enough to bleed in places. I rolled over a nearby log and gathered some slugs. By rubbing their slime on my wrists, I made them slippery enough to pull out of the handcuffs.

  Using the stars, I got my bearings and set out through the forest. In forty-five minutes I was staring at the windows of Mr. Wellington’s lodge. I watched until I saw him get up from a chair and walk into the kitchen. He came back shortly with a drink and sat down. I stepped from the forest and approached his door.

  He opened the door before I could knock and stared down at me like he’d been expecting me a long time before. “What do you plan on doing now?” he asked me.

  “I’m ready for the law to come get me and take me back to jail.”

  “The last I saw of the law, he was chasing you through the forest.”

  I stared at Mr. Wellington blankly.

  “Come on,” he said, motioning for me to step inside.

  Mr. Wellington pointed for me to sit on the sofa, and he sat across from me in the chair. The clock ticked over his fireplace and moths thumped against the window screens. “I’ll take you in the morning,” he said.

  I nodded and looked down at my knees.

  “That constable’s got problems. I’ve encountered men like him before. You don’t need to be around him.”

  “He won’t let me alone.”

  Mr. Wellington picked up the drink he’d left on the table and took a sip. He set it back down, and I felt him studying me. “Did you do all the things he said you did?”

  “I didn’t do the part about eatin’ the dogs and shootin’ at him.”

  “Why would he make up things like that?”

  “I whipped up on him a couple of times. Maybe that’s why.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means I licked him.”

  Mr. Wellington scratched his chin. “You licked him, huh?”

  “He wouldn’t let me alone.”

  “But you didn’t shoot at him or eat his dogs?”

  “Nossir.”

  “Where are the dogs?”

  “At my friend’s house. He lives near a place called Union at a clay pit.”

  “Is this the other boy who escaped with you?”

  “Yessir.”

  “How about the gun?”

  “Which one?”

  “Whichever one he thinks you shot at him with?”

  “I left it in the forest.”

  “Out there where he had you today?”

  “No. That’s where I told him it was. I lied.”

  Mr. Wellington sat forward in his chair. “He wanted you to get it for him?”

  I nodded.

  “Why would he want it so bad?”

  “ ’Cause it’s his, I guess. I wish he’d give me back the gun he took from me.”

  Mr. Wellington sat back and chuckled to himself. “First of all, kid, they can’t put you in jail, at least not for long. You’re too young. I don’t know what Sanders has planned for you, but he’s been getting the general public riled up about you for some time now.”

  “I’ve got a feelin’ I know what he’s got planned for me.”

  “Well, I’ve been a lawyer long enough to know that his legal options are limited. However, this is not your typical situation. His father happens to be the judge. That can complicate things. This Sanders fellow is a bully and a bigot. He’s got a chip on his shoulder that’s probably been there since he was a child. He’s unintelligent, and he’s mean, and he’s in a position of power. That’s a bad combination to be facing.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Not to mention that you seem to have caused irreparable damage to his pride.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means you’re going to need some help.”

  “I don’t need help from anybody. He can’t do anything to me that I care about. He’s gonna go after Kit if he doesn’t get his hands on me.”

  Mr. Wellington sighed and stood up. He walked into the kitchen, and I heard him turn on the faucet. When he returned he held out a glass of water to me. I took it and he sat back down in his chair. “You know why I came after you today?”

  “Nossir.”

  “I feel responsible for a lot of what’s gone on with you. I’m not going to stand for that constable and his ways, especially on my property. I never thought it would turn out like this.”

  “How’d you know I was out there?”

  “The chime sounded that lets me know somebody’s coming up my road. When no one showed, I drove out and found Sanders’s car. I figured he was up to no good when I saw your footprints with his.”

  I was quiet for a minute. Finally I said, “You lied to me. Every grown person I know has lied to me except Mr. Mitchell and Obregon and Mr. Carter.”

  “You’re right. Even though it wasn’t a technical lie, I lied to you all the same. I’m sorry about that.”

  “I was lonely. I’d have gone away if you’d wanted.”

  “I know. The first thing that came to my mind wasn’t the right choice. I could have talked to you, and I could have been your friend.”

  “Yessir.”

  “I’ve got too much money. I thought I could buy my way above the general human condition, but when you get old and retire and live alone, you realize you’re not any different. Sometimes you’re worse off.”

  “I don’t know about any of that.”

  Mr. Wellington nodded to himself. “That’s all right . . . You know, I’ve been following your story on the television and in the papers. I’ve defended enough criminals to know a little about character. I had my doubts all along that you were all they said you were. I’ll give them ‘feisty’ and ‘hard to hold,’ but not the other things Davy Sanders is putting on you.”

  “I already told you he lied.”

  “I’m going to help you, Moon, and it’s not just for your sake, but for my own as well. You might just go along with me, because I don’t see that you’ve got anything to lose.”

  “I don’t care what you do,” I said.

  “Then why don’t you go into the bathroom and clean up while I fix you a sandwich. Then you can get some sleep in the guest bedroom. We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

  41

  Mr. Wellington came into my bedroom just after daylight, dressed in his robe. I had been awake since the birds sounded almost an hour before, enjoying the large, comfortable bed in one of his T-shirts. He had washed my clothes for me and set them at the foot of the bed.

  “Get dressed,” he said. “We’ve got to get an early start.”

  He walked out, and I heard him in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee. I put on the clean clothes and went into the living room to wait. Mr. Wellington came in with his coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He held the paper out to me and nodded towards the pictures in it. They were pictures of the place along the road where I’d left Kit when he was sick. “This where we need to go to
get that gun?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Let me get dressed, and we’ll be on our way.”

  A half hour later we were in Mr. Wellington’s truck and headed for the Talladega National Forest. After a few minutes, he leaned over the seat and rolled down my window. The morning was cool and humid, and the wind felt good on my face. He took a cigar out of the glove box and stuck it in his mouth. As he chewed it, I realized where the pleasant smell of the truck came from.

  “You’ve got a fancy new truck.”

  “I’d rather have an old one.”

  “Why don’t you get one? You’re rich.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  I looked over at him. He continued to stare at the road ahead. “It’s a long way in there to get that gun, you know, ” I said.

  “How old do you think I am?” he asked.

  “Pretty old.”

  Mr. Wellington laughed. “I think we need to teach you some tact before we put you in front of a judge.”

  “All I asked for was to go to jail.”

  “Because you don’t know any better.”

  I studied his face. “Pap never did like the law.”

  “I’ve gathered that.”

  “All you do for a livin’ is the law.”

  “That’s right. However, what I do is a lot different from what policemen and constables do. They enforce the law; I just explain it to people.”

  “How about explainin’ it to me? How come Pap hated it?”

  “Well, the law is just the rules that most of the people in the country decide that everyone has to obey. There are people like your father who don’t like being told what to do. They don’t like to obey the rules.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. People have got different reasons.”

  “How do you learn what the rules are? I haven’t meant to do anything wrong ever since Pap died, and people are chasin’ me all over.”

  Mr. Wellington chuckled. “I guess that’s why you’re so famous, Moon. Everybody wants to hear about how a child can be raised out there in that forest with no sense of the rules.”

  We pulled over and got six sausage biscuits at a drive-through restaurant. I ate two of them before I spoke another word.

  “Save some for lunch,” Mr. Wellington said.

  He reached over and took the biscuit wrappers from me and stuffed them into a bag. He pulled a black box from under the seat and pressed a button on it and set it on the dashboard. “I need you to tell me everything about what happened to you out there, Moon. I need you to start from the night you broke out of Pinson.”

  “You wanna know how Kit got over the fence and how we got the bus?”

  “Everything. This is not going to be an easy case to make.”

  “What’s that thing?”

  “It’s a tape recorder. You can talk to it and it remembers what you say.”

  “Talk to it?”

  “That’s right.”

  I started telling the tape recorder everything I could remember. Mr. Wellington kept his eyes on the highway and sometimes he’d nod and sometimes he’d smile, but he never interrupted me. One time he pulled over to the side of the road to look at a map.

  “You lost?”

  “No. Keep talking.”

  When I finally got to the part where he found me on the leash with Sanders, I stopped. Mr. Wellington reached in front of me and pressed another button. “That’s quite a story,” he said.

  “It gonna remember all that?”

  “It’ll remember it.”

  We pulled over next to where the tram road met the blacktop, and Mr. Wellington looked past me and out the window. “This it?”

  “Yessir. About five miles or so up into those hills.”

  Mr. Wellington got a small backpack out of the truck and put a camera, the rest of the biscuits, and two water bottles into it.

  “We’ve got a good drinkin’ creek at the shelter,” I said.

  He zipped the pack and put it on. “Just in case,” he replied.

  I shrugged and the two of us started up the tram road. Mr. Wellington didn’t walk fast, but he didn’t need to stop and rest much, either. Sometimes I’d get too far ahead of him and have to sit down and wait. Only once did he catch up to me and lean against a tree and take a sip of water.

  He screwed the top of the water bottle back on and wiped his eye with one finger and said, “I can’t believe you dragged your friend Kit all this way.”

  “I was scared. You get stronger and quicker when you’re scared.”

  “Adrenaline,” he said.

  “That’s what Pap called it. Said if I had enough adrenaline I could whip anybody.”

  He put the water bottle back in the pack and walked past me. “I wish you’d stop relying on that advice so much,” he said. “Come on.”

  It was noon by the time we made it to the shelter. I looked around and saw our fire pit, cold and rain-spattered in the center. Several strips of jerky were still hanging on my meat racks. A breeze licked at the treetops and made the place seem quiet and strange. Once again, I felt that the forest had forgotten about me. It seemed distant and untouchable.

  Mr. Wellington stood for a moment, his hands at his sides and his eyes looking over what Kit and I had lived in. “Not much room in that thing,” he said.

  “Stays warm that way.”

  He shook his head. “How many ticks and redbugs did you bring out with you?”

  “Everybody sure does hate ticks and redbugs.”

  “I’m no exception.”

  “They don’t bother me much.”

  I climbed into the shelter and found the pistol in its hiding place under the marsh grass. I also saw the two deerskin hats we’d made, and I got those as well. When I crawled back out, I gave Mr. Wellington the pistol and put one of the hats on my head. He stared at me as I adjusted it. “They’re going to convict you for sure with that thing on.”

  “I made ’em.”

  “I assumed you did.” He looked at the pistol. “And this is what you took from Sanders?”

  “Yessir.”

  He took off the backpack and unzipped it. Then he put the pistol inside and removed one of the water bottles. He straightened up and took two large gulps before handing the water over to me. “Let’s eat those biscuits,” he said.

  After lunch, Mr. Wellington stood and stuffed the trash into his pockets.

  “Okay,” he said. “Where is the log you shot?”

  We walked to where I had shot the pistol at the rotten log, and Mr. Wellington took pictures of it. After he was done, he picked it up and broke off the ends so that he was left with only the middle section that I’d shot. He put this under his arm and tucked the camera away. “Now,” he said, “take me to where you met with Sanders.”

  I nodded and set out for the place on Deer Creek where Kit and I had trapped him. I had to keep stopping and waiting for Mr. Wellington to catch up as I ducked my way through the forest. Eventually, we came to the spot. The ground had aged and showed no sign of a struggle, but Mr. Wellington took pictures anyway.

  “So this is where you trapped him?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And you hooked a log up to his feet, and it dragged him into the water down there?”

  “That’s right. He held on for a while, and that’s when I took his pistol. Then he got pulled into the creek and floated away.”

  “You’re sure that’s what happened?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I just find it hard to believe that you could pull off such a stunt. Someone as big as Sanders, and all.”

  “It doesn’t matter how big they are, as long as you get the right trap rigged.”

  “Very well,” he said. “We’ll go with what you told me.”

  Mr. Wellington took more pictures and studied the surrounding forest. Finally, he put up his camera, and asked me if there was anything else I’d forgotten to tell him.

  “Nossir. I told you everything.”
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  “Okay, then, I’ll see what I can do with this.”

  It was late afternoon when we made it back to the highway. Mr. Wellington said he would turn me in at the Tuscaloosa County courthouse so that we wouldn’t have Sanders’s father for a judge.

  “You think Sanders’s pap is like Sanders?”

  “I don’t know, and we won’t take any chances. I’ll drop you off and get these pictures developed and start working on the case. I imagine it won’t be long before Sanders finds out where you are and all hell breaks loose.”

  “What are you gonna do with those pictures?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to see how they come out, and I’ll need some time to study them. But I’ll think of something.”

  “What are you gonna try and do for me?”

  Mr. Wellington looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “I’m going to try to clear you of attempted murder.”

  I shrugged. “All right. It doesn’t make a difference to me. Law’s gonna be after me no matter what. One place is as good as another if you’ve gotta be locked away.”

  “Well, maybe we can keep you from getting locked away.”

  “Nowhere else for me to go.”

  Mr. Wellington put the cigar back into his mouth and chewed it. “We’ll just have to see about that,” he said.

  We got to the courthouse right before it closed. The clerk took me from Mr. Wellington and sent me with a policeman to jail. The policeman put me on the backseat of his car without handcuffs. After we pulled out of the parking lot, he looked at me in the rearview mirror. “You been hidin’ out in the forest?”

  “Little bit. I’ve been all over.”

  He looked back at the road. “What’s that on your head?”

  “Deerskin hat.”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Made it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got another one right here with the tail still on it,” and I held it up for him to see. “It’s all I’ve got left.”