Alabama Moon

by Watt Key

  “Moon, you’ve been here for twelve hours. The nurse says you haven’t slept or eaten.”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “I can get you something to eat.”

  “I just wanna see Kit.”

  “I checked with the doctor and they don’t have anything to tell me yet. He’s still in intensive care.”

  “Why won’t they let me see him? I just wanna give him his hat.”

  “Even if they did let you in, he wouldn’t know you were there. He’s unconscious.”

  “He’d know.”

  Mr. Wellington sighed. “So you want to stay here?”

  I nodded.

  “Very well. I’m leaving money at the nurses’ station in case you want to buy something to eat.”

  I counted the flowers in the picture over and over until my eyes were stinging. More visitors moved in and out of the room and sat on either side of the chair I was in. Eventually, I fell asleep.

  I dreamed of the shelter again, and the stage-two box. This time Bigfoots were not trying to get in, but I could hear them howling like wolves in every direction. It seemed that they had taken over the world, and I was the last human alive, hidden from them in the safest part of our shelter. Then I heard Kit yelling for me from somewhere outside.

  “Moon!” he screamed. “Let me in!”

  The howling of the Bigfoots suddenly quit like they, too, had heard Kit’s cries for help. I imagined them running towards him with their long, silent strides. I began wrestling with the door of the box, trying to open it. Kit screamed for me again.

  A man beside me nudged me awake, and I lunged for him and grabbed his arm. I opened my eyes and he stared at me. “Are you okay?” he asked me.

  I didn’t answer him. I leaped from my chair and ran into the hall. I looked both ways, hearing my breathing and my heartbeat as the only noise in the hospital. The women at the nurses’ station stopped what they were doing and watched me. I began to run down the hall, looking for any sign of where Kit was. “Kit!” I yelled. “Kit, I’m right here!” I heard the nurses calling after me. A set of swinging doors stood in my way, and I shoved them open and kept running.

  “Stop that kid!” a nurse behind me yelled.

  Suddenly I felt someone grab me. A doctor in a white uniform lifted me from the ground and hugged me to his chest. “Kit!” I cried. He began walking with me back towards the nurses’ station, and I relaxed in his arms and didn’t try to escape. “I’m not whippin’ up on anybody,” I mumbled. “I just want my friend back.”

  When I opened my eyes, Mr. Wellington was sitting beside me. I could tell he was tired by the dark circles under his eyes and his messed-up hair. He reached over and picked a cup of water off the table beside him and handed it to me. I took it and drank, the water soothing my dry throat.

  “It’s time to go, Moon.”

  I looked up at him and his eyes were red.

  “I tried to find him,” I said. “He’s alone.”

  Mr. Wellington put his hand on my shoulder. “Kit’s gone. I’m sorry.”

  It was three in the afternoon when I left the hospital with Mr. Wellington. I leaned back against the truck door and watched the countryside pass outside the window.

  “Do you want anything to eat, Moon?”

  I shook my head no.

  “It’s tough to lose a friend, Moon. I’ve lost friends myself. But I promise you things get better again. You just have to try and look to the future. Try not to dwell on it for too long.” Mr. Wellington reached across the seat and started to take the hat from me. “Why don’t you let me take that—”

  “Don’t you touch it!” I yelled.

  48

  When we got back to the lodge, the sun had just set. I told Mr. Wellington that I wanted to sleep outside that night, and he nodded that he understood. I took a yellow pad of paper and a pencil from inside the lodge and walked to the edge of the clearing. I scraped the leaves from the base of a juniper tree and sat against it and began building a small fire from its bark. Once I had the fire going, I took the pad and pencil and began writing to Kit.

  At first I told him how much I missed him and reminded him that we were best friends. Afterwards I began to tell him about when I was little. I started with the first memories of my mother, like a yellow finch, beside me in the bed at night. My first clear memory was of Pap carrying me on his shoulders up the trunk of a leaning gum tree. We sat in its branches and waited for deer in the dawn hours of a cold winter day. He hugged me into the warmth of his lap, and I could see his breath clouding over my head and dissolving in front of us.

  The first time I killed a deer I was six. Pap cut open the doe’s stomach and cupped his hands to bring out the warm and steaming blood. He brought it up to my face and smeared it so that it streaked past my ears and into my hair that became sticky and matted. I was proud of this time, and I told Kit all about it.

  It seemed that I was always watching Pap’s hands. They were careful, powerful hands, and they taught me what I knew of survival in the forest. I told Kit about these hands and then about what they had taught me. I described the process of building a snare, stick by stick. I described a deadfall for him, complete with pictures. I made a list of everything that went into skinning and curing hides. I listed the vegetables that we grew, the best times of year to plant them, and how deep to place their seeds in the soil. I knew that Kit would want to know all of these things.

  Finally I told Kit exactly what had happened to my pap and what I’d felt when he died. I remembered the daylight creeping into the forest that cold morning. Pap was already stiff by the time I could see his face in the light. My hand had rested on his cheek and felt it grow cold. I remembered how cloudy it was and how much wind passed through the trees that day. I told Kit about struggling to get Pap into the wheelbarrow as the fog hung between the giant trunks of the loblolly pines and squirrels fussed at the struggle from above.

  I wrote and burned my pages of memories well into the night. It was late when Mr. Wellington came to check on me.

  “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t planning on settling into your old ways again.”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you have enough paper to keep that fire going?”

  “It’s not to keep the fire goin’. I can keep a fire goin’ without paper.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Wellington said and held out a blanket. “I’m going to leave this in case you need it.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’ve got just about everything worked out with your uncle. He’ll be here the day after tomorrow.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll be in the house if you need me.”

  I lay on my side in the leaves and watched the last of the smoke curl away over the juniper fire. I listened to the wind in the trees and the needling of the insects and the settling of birds in the brush. I trained my ears to filter all of these for some sign that Kit had gotten my message. I searched the dark shapes and patterns of the forest, hoping that they would turn into Kit’s ghost. I was so tired that my eyes stung, and the last thing I remember of that night was trying to keep them open.

  I saw Mr. Wellington leave in his truck the next morning. He returned in an hour and he had Hal with him. The two of them walked over to me and stood looking down at my head.

  “He’s just been burning paper in this fire,” Mr. Wellington said.

  “He thinks he can talk to dead people that way,” Hal said. “Moon, we’re gettin’ worried about you. You gotta get straight again.”

  “Nobody else liked him,” I said.

  “I liked him,” Hal said. “Sometimes I gave him a hard time, and I shouldn’t have. I liked him, though.”

  “I don’t think it works, Hal.”

  “What?”

  “This smoke stuff.”

  “I told you that.”

  I felt my throat swelling and tears sliding down my cheeks. “He’s by himself, Hal.”

  “Moon, he had the best
time of his life out in the forest with you. He knew he was sick. He wasn’t alone because of you.”

  I looked up at Hal. “Did he tell you that?”

  “That mornin’ I left y’all in the forest, I tried to get him to come with me. I told him you might be crazy. I said you might get us all killed. You know what he told me?”

  I shook my head and wiped my face.

  “He said he’d never been happier in his life. He said he wanted to stay out there in the forest with you no matter what happened. He knew he was takin’ a big chance.”

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand again. “But I miss him, Hal.”

  “I know you do. Nothin’ wrong with that.”

  Around noon Mr. Wellington took Hal home again. When he returned to the lodge, I got up and went back inside. He made a sandwich for me, and I forced it down. I still didn’t feel like talking and Mr. Wellington said he understood. I lay on the sofa and watched the television and everything it showed me of a world I knew so little about.

  Gradually I began to think of my new uncle. I began to picture him climbing trees and trimming their branches. I thought of my new aunt and pictured her like Mrs. Crutcher, the teacher back at Pinson. I tried to imagine what my cousins would look like, but images of Kit kept appearing, and I had to draw up my knees and roll over and blank my thoughts.

  49

  The morning my uncle was to come get me, I rose from the guest bed before daylight and left Mr. Wellington’s lodge with Pap’s rifle and the deerskin hats. I walked into the forest and made my way down a trail that was familiar only to my feet. It had long since grown over with honeysuckle vines and cane stems, holly branches, and gallberry. I could tell where I was by looking up into the trees. The outlines that the branches made against the sky were burned into my memory like thousands of lightning strikes. The forest was alive with the sounds of crickets and katydids. The creeks I crossed gurgled in their dark cuts through the bottom.

  I stopped just beyond the shelter clearing. I closed my eyes and listened to the forest, waiting for something. There was nothing. I opened my eyes and continued. Daylight was starting to leak into the sky, and what was left of the shelter was a dark mound before me. I looked around and listened, but still there was nothing. I approached the shelter and stepped down into its hollows, which were not so dark anymore with parts of the roof missing. I shoved Pap’s rifle into its old hiding place and hung the two deerskin hats on the wall. Finding a couple of the scattered animal hides, I stacked them in their old spot and lay down on them. I listened and stared at the roots over my head. Still there was nothing. The forest told me nothing. It gave me nothing.

  After the sun rose and the ugliness of the old shelter appeared around me, I stood and left the dead thing. I put my back to it and set out again.

  The Noxubee River seemed unchanged when I looked down at it from the cedar grove. I thought of Pap telling me that catfish the size of beavers swam the bottom of it. I wanted to dive into its muddy water once and spear one until he told me that dead animals also floated along the bottom.

  Pap’s and Momma’s graves were undisturbed. Pap’s was already rain-smoothed, with pokeweed and a pine sapling beginning to take hold. I didn’t have anything to say to either one of them. I just stood there and felt like all my insides had been scraped out. I knew that I would never come there again.

  I didn’t go inside once I reached the lodge. I sat beneath a magnolia tree where I watched the driveway. Eventually Mr. Wellington came out and stood over me.

  “It might be a little while,” he said.

  “I wanna stay right here by this tree.”

  He sat down beside me. “Are you worried?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m just ready to get on to wherever I’m goin’.”

  “Well, I’ve got the paperwork done. Your uncle is now your legal guardian.”

  “He’s my new pap?”

  “That’s right.”

  I nodded and stared at the ground. I began plucking blades of grass and folding them between my fingers.

  “Moon?”

  I didn’t look up. “Yessir?”

  “I think you’ll be happy where you’re going.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come inside?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll just stay out here.”

  His truck looked dusty and used. It came slowly up the drive, and I saw only one person in it. Before long, the face in the picture rolled to a stop beside me where I sat against the magnolia tree. He stared at me out of the rolled-down window for a moment, then stepped out and stared at me some more like I should say something.

  “How come I’ve never seen you?” I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t know where you were.”

  I stood up. “You’re not mad about all this, are you?”

  He smiled at me. “Shoot, no! I’m not mad about it. Moon, you’ve got all kinds of people down in Mobile ready to see you.”

  I walked over to him and looked up at him. “How many?”

  “You’ve got two cousins, or maybe I should say a brother and a sister. You’ve got my wife and your grandparents and some more aunts and uncles and cousins. There’s a bunch of people that you’re hooked into in Mobile.”

  I smiled and felt myself beginning to choke up. I started to cough but ended up crying. I hadn’t meant to do it, but I didn’t seem to have any control over myself. I could tell he was a nice man.

  “I just wanna leave here,” I said.

  He pulled me to his stomach and pressed my head into him and rubbed my hair. I tried to talk, but I couldn’t. We stood there for what seemed like a long time, and I cried on his shirt, which smelled of pine sap.

  50

  After loading my things and saying goodbye to Mr. Wellington, we followed the rivers south on a two-lane highway, leaving behind the limestone hills and cedar groves of Sumter County. We moved through a land of hard, dusty clay and broomsedge and pines that I had never seen. Uncle Mike’s truck was worn and comfortable, and he sat back and drove with his wrist flopped over the top of the steering wheel like nothing worried him. The cool spring air swept across our faces, and I sensed I was being drawn to a place I had been stolen from long ago.

  “I guess you’re my pap now?”

  He smiled. “I’d like for you to think of me that way.”

  “Then I’d like to ask you some things.”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “What about Mr. Wellington and Hal? Will I get to see them again?”

  “Sure. I’ll drive you up sometime if you want. It only takes about four hours. And you can always write letters.”

  “I’m good at writin’ letters.”

  “Mr. Wellington said he was gonna come check on you in a couple of weeks. He said he’d try to bring your rifle when he came.”

  It made me feel better to think that I’d see Mr. Wellington again in so short a time. I watched out the window and saw a school and students standing out front waiting to be picked up. Station wagons and parents and buses clustered and moved about. A boy was taking a flag down from the flagpole.

  I turned to Uncle Mike. “Do you remember me?”

  “We all remember you when you were little. Your daddy and momma didn’t disappear until about a year after you were born.”

  “Why didn’t you come lookin’ for us?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. At first we were worried that somethin’ had happened to you all. It didn’t take long to find out that Oliver had shut down his bank accounts in Birmingham and sold his house and car. He didn’t leave a note or anything. I drove up several times after that and asked around about you. You never had grandparents on your mother’s side, so there wasn’t anyone to talk to there.”

  “Why didn’t he want you to find us?”

  Uncle Mike was quiet for a few seconds. Finally, he looked over at me. “No one really knows why he did what he did. I can tell you that I remem
ber him as a boy no different from any other boy. He was my best friend growin’ up. Some people change when they get older. Sometimes things happen that make them change a lot. In your father’s case, he saw somethin’ in Vietnam that caused him to lose trust in everybody around him.”

  “But you were his best friend.”

  “He saw a lot of his friends die over there. Maybe he didn’t want any more friends.”

  “My friend died, too,” I said.

  “Mr. Wellington told me about Kit. I’m sorry that happened.”

  I looked out the window again.

  “Moon?”

  “Yessir?”

  “The important thing is that you don’t have to feel the way your father did. Most people don’t.”

  I leaned my head against the door and slept with the wind licking through my bangs. I woke when Uncle Mike pulled the truck over at a Spur station for gas. He smiled at me in the rearview mirror as the pump numbers clicked over. Afterwards he strolled inside, and I watched him pay through the store glass. He came out with two bags of potato chips and threw one into my window as he passed.

  Back on the road, Uncle Mike dialed the radio to a country station and played it low. I sat with my back against the door frame and ate my potato chips and watched his face while he chewed. He looked at me once and smiled and then stared ahead at the blacktop. “You like ’em?”

  “Yessir.”

  After a second, I turned and sank in the seat and watched the countryside. We were passing fields of rich, black dirt, plowed up nearly to the road. The pine trees were taller and greener and stood in the yards of white farmhouses. The land was mostly flat and the air was thick and humid like nothing I’d ever felt.

  “Uncle Mike?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks again for comin’ to get me. I’m glad I’ve got a place to go. I don’t wanna be locked up anymore. I’m done bein’ alone.”

  He put his hand on my head and brushed my hair back and a warm feeling passed through me.