Mississippi Noir

by Tom Franklin

  “Sure you do, Dr. P.,” she says.

  The edges of my vision start to darken and my legs go weak beneath me, so I sit down on the bed beside Britney and look up at the ceiling, which has little glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the paint in various constellations.

  I stay there for maybe a dozen seconds, not looking at a single one of my students, refusing to be seduced into acquiescence or numbness or acceptance. “Dr. P.?” a couple of them say, but I focus on taking breaths and letting them out. When I think my legs will support me again, I stand up, and then I leave the bedroom, still avoiding their faces, which will hold only disappointment, and I’m out of the apartment and hurrying home to my family, to my life of confident narratives and lucid exposition, my life of the mind and of ten fingers and of the next semester, and the next, and the next.

  PART III

  Bloodlines

  MOONFACE

  by Andrew Paul

  Thief

  When I was young I didn’t know real hurt, but was still somehow capable of inflicting real hurt on those around me. It’s cruel how often that sort of thing happens, but it happens, and I was one of hurt’s propagators, a child thirteen years vicious. And I think it was this viciousness, in part, that killed Yitzhak Cohen.

  It’s important to know that he wasn’t Yitzhak to us then, he was Moonface. Moonface got his name from his scars—great, circular layers of pink and violet tissue covering his entire body. Not so much a disfigurement as it was an extra layer splashed across him.

  After the Six Million, some of the more unfortunate Jews gave up on their European ruins and crossed over to America, trickling down as far south as Thief, Mississippi. Some of them started businesses, worked in the First National Bank of Thief, but many simply made ends meet at the edge of town near the river, quarantined from any sense of the real world. This is where Yitzhak, where Moonface, wound up with a handful of others.

  Moonface worked in the Jefferson Davis District School cafeteria, ladling out gruel to the pubescent. The first day on the job, Moonface wore a greasy T-shirt and slacks under his standard-issue apron, but we didn’t gawk at his scars. Instead, we stood on our toes over the glass buffet barrier to see the tattoo. Most of us had never even seen ink in person yet, thinking it was reserved for gangs and brawlers and other lowlife idols.

  “What’re those numbers for?” my buddy John asked Moonface.

  “Keep track of all women I stuck it in,” Moonface said in broken English, handing John a tray of beef stroganoff. “Now go fuck you.”

  Their interchange spread through lunch before the next bell, and as we left for geometry, we saw Principal James careen out of his office toward the kitchens. Moonface wore sleeves from there on out, and kept mostly quiet, but the number was already etched into our memory as clearly as it was on his forearm.

  “Nobody could fuck that many girls,” John reassured himself later that day on our walk home after school. “Their pecker would fall off.”

  As the fall semester dragged on, our theories on Moonface became more and more elaborate, increasingly grisly in their details. We became obsessed with the camps and their industrial murder. I suggested that he survived the worst Nazi death internments.

  “It was a secret pit that JFK still won’t even talk about because it’s so shocking. The place where only the really threatening Jews were sent. Like Asswitz times one thousand,” I whispered to John over our pizza.

  “They only fed them slimy pizza once a week, but served on those crackers they like so much just to taunt them,” John added.

  “Why would they serve them on something they actually liked, dipshit?” I asked.

  “Psychological warfare,” he replied knowingly. “The worst of tortures.”

  “Do you know why he only works up front here?” I asked, my voice dropping even softer than before.

  “Why?” John said, suppressing his metallic, wiry grin.

  “’Cause of the ovens. How do you think Moonface got those scars? He was too mean for gas chambers, so they decided to throw him in a furnace, but the furnace just spit him right out.”

  We stopped talking, feeling we were approaching a truth we hadn’t meant to near. Behind the serving line, Moonface looked toward us from across the room. Even then I knew it was too loud in the cafeteria for him to hear anything I said, but I worried he felt us encroaching on that same truth. We were quiet the rest of lunch.

  * * *

  There was a girl in all this, of course. Nicole. Four years our senior, and pretty much what you’d expect. Cheerleader. Straight-A student. Gold irises, I swear. Beautiful and sad and tired of all the rest of us, and with good reason. Her suitors were a series of rotten, pawing Goliaths, the last of whom roughed her up enough to get himself sent to a cellblock for a few months. Her mother was gone. Her father, Richmond, was a leering mess of a patriarch for the remaining household. I never heard stories about beatings or late-night sessions, but I was as much out of the loop then as I am now, so who knows.

  I only saw Nicole and her father interact once, and that was enough for me. Enough for a predetermined image of her in my mind, anyway. The county bus dropped us off too early for school every day, so John and I spent about half an hour each morning shooting the shit near the steps until they opened the doors for state-issued breakfast biscuits and prayer.

  One particularly swamp-fogged morning, Richmond pulled up in his rattling slag-heap car with Nicole in the passenger seat. The pair shrieked at each other from inside the cab, but were drowned out by the sputtering of the exhaust, as though their volumes were turned all the way down. I nudged John, and the two of us watched their muted shouting match from the safety of the yard. After about ten minutes of this, they were both maroon from bellowing, and Richmond raised his hand to slap her. She looked at him without flinching, waiting for the blow, as he froze in place, then lowered his arm and said something quietly.

  The wind changed direction briefly, causing the burnt-oil smoke to billow around the car instead of rising behind it. Nicole opened her door as the plume surrounded her, and I heard Richmond say, “You don’t burn quite as bright as you think.” By the time she made it out of the exhaust, Nicole composed herself anew, like nothing happened.

  In my ignorance, I found it arousing how she bottled her distaste so well, how she let it twist into something which fueled her successes, and I somehow hoped it could one day propel her out of the groping pull of her life and into mine.

  I thought I was made for Nicole, given these adolescent rationalizations of her pain. The one time I tried to slap her ass in the hallway she spun around, as if with some sexual harassment sixth sense, and just fried me with her eyes.

  “Go ahead,” she said in front of John and me, turning back around while arching her butt toward us. “Do it.”

  I had never been so terrifyingly hard in my life, and I dropped my open palm to cover my crotch.

  “Yep,” she said, and walked to class.

  I was late to Mississippi history for whacking off in a bathroom stall, and never spoke to her again.

  Moonface talked to her, which infuriated us. Nicole talked back, which infuriated us even further. What was more, they seemed to enjoy talking to each other, like it was something they looked forward to every day. The lunch line halted whenever she caught up with Moonface.

  “How goes your day?” he would ask.

  “My day goes fine,” she would answer, then make some joke about the food, or try to convince him to see her cheer at the next home game. This continued for a number of weeks until I couldn’t stand the injustice any longer.

  “Get ze move on, Juden,” I finally shouted one day in my best German accent. Everyone around me giggled.

  “Ah, sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Moonface said to me over Nicole’s shoulder.

  “What?” I said, sensing my classmates stepping aside, separating me from the pack.

  “Deutsch. Sprechen Sie es?”

  I backed against the wall behind me.<
br />
  “You speak German like natural. Like some of men I knew back there,” Moonface explained, leaning forward while reaching up to rest his arm over the heated buffet lamp.

  Part of his right sleeve caught on his forearm so that the last few digits on his tattoo showed. Since the state consistently denied budgetary increase requests, we were annually warned to take our trays from under the scalding metal, not over it. Now, Moonface rested his scars on top of the heater, not taking his eyes off me.

  “I didn’t say anything German,” I muttered.

  “Did you not say Juden? Jew?” he asked.

  Nicole glanced back at me before walking toward the tables. Only then did Moonface momentarily break his gaze.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “You don’t think so?” Moonface said, returning to me, his eyes widening in mock surprise. “Could have fool me.”

  His arm still lay across the heater, and my eyes began to water from imagining the sensation. Kids started to snicker again.

  “Well. Double serving for you who fool me,” he announced, doling out with his left hand extra portions of oily spaghetti onto a tray.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “I’ll keep tray warm for you in case you change mind,” Moonface offered, and I heard his skin unglue sickeningly from the lamp covering as I rushed to my usual seat next to John.

  “We’re getting rid of Moonface,” I declared.

  * * *

  My weekends were dull since I wasn’t allowed to see my father anymore. The previous summer, my mother convinced a court to keep me to herself. I only saw him a handful of times after that, and would continue to do so until he died two winters later on his own birthday. Mostly, I entertained myself from then on with solitary things—comic books and masturbation and walks near the Thief River.

  On a Friday in October, after I finished both my comics and myself, I followed the riverbank south, tossing stones toward birds and water bugs, until I reached the tiny Jewish settlement outside of town, comprising mostly single-wides and leaky houseboats. It was strangely quiet to me, so I crept behind the treeline until I arrived at the lean-to homes, as if expecting some Maccabean ambush. I knew one of those places belonged to Moonface.

  I stayed crouched behind a line of bushes, waiting while the sun set in pastel brushstrokes behind a small grove to my right. Even in my coat, I shivered, felt my breath leave my body with each exhale, and I sat back on my hands to keep them warm. One by one, pairs of candles began to glow through the windows of the homes, every residence except one.

  I made my way to the lightless, sagging trailer and peeked through its rear window, only making out vague silhouettes of furniture through the curtains. A nine-stemmed candleholder balanced on the inside windowsill directly in front of me. I heard movement, and ducked down to peek around the corner.

  There was a creak as the porch door opened, then Moonface walked outside, staring at his overly polished shoes while heading for his truck. He paused, noticing the candles glinting from his neighbors’ homes, then spat on the ground and got in his ride. I watched him turn the ignition, straighten his shirt collar in the rearview mirror, and head down the gravel road toward town.

  The window above me was cracked slightly to let in the slight breeze, and I edged it further open to part the curtains and peek into the vacant room. Without thinking, I hopped one leg over the sill, slowly easing myself into the quiet house, careful not to knock over the candleholder.

  One glance around Moonface’s living room was enough to take everything in—there was a fold-out sofa bed, a couple of box-crate nightstands, and a small bookshelf near me at the back window. A large radio stood by a hallway which led into both his kitchenette and bathroom, and that was it. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I went to use the toilet.

  After pissing, I turned on the light and opened the mirrored medicine cabinet, finding only a couple bottles of Darvon, a toothbrush, and some toothpaste. The kitchenette proved equally anticlimactic, revealing nothing except a few bits of clutter on the sink’s countertop near the gas stove and a TV tray littered with sealed mason jars full of clear liquid. I walked—really, only a couple steps—across the room, kneeling down eye level with the collection. A thin layer of sediment rested at the bottom of each, and I picked one up, shaking the mixture into an opaque potion while heading back toward the living room.

  I kicked my feet up on the couch, and looked out the window into the bruised dusk, then worked at unscrewing the mason jar’s seal. After a brief struggle, grunting alone in the living room, I managed to open the lid, and instantly recoiled at what smelled like a combination of black licorice and turpentine and my father. The first sip nearly ruined me, and I winced to keep from retching onto Moonface’s carpet. As I cleared the water from my eyes, I noticed a small picture frame sitting on top of the radio set across the room. I set the drink on one of the crate tables, then went over to examine the photograph.

  It was almost too dark to see by that point, but by angling the frame toward the remaining trace of sunlight, I realized it was a picture of a large family posing for the camera. An attractive couple stood behind their two sons and three daughters, all wearing what I assumed were their best clothes, at least what looked to be much better than the thin, itchy threads I wore for class portraits. The three daughters had the same crooked grin of their father while the sons’ eyes pinched at the corners as they smiled, like their mother. None of the children could have been older than me.

  I choked down a couple more gulps, and tried to figure out which was Moonface, but nightfall soon made it impossible to examine the photo any longer. I took another swig, sputtered, then closed the jar to place it in my jacket pocket. My brain began to congeal, and I leaned back into the couch, staring out the window at the faint candlelight across the road from the other families’ homes.

  * * *

  The sound of tires crushing dirt and stone jolted me awake, and I saw a pair of headlights coming down the way. I jumped up and nearly fell to one side, then remembered the concoction in my pocket. I staggered toward the radio and placed the photograph back in its place as I heard Moonface’s truck creakily decelerate toward his home. When his high beams crept into the room, I fell to my hands and knees and slithered toward the back window, quickly leaping out the way I came, and eased the sill near shut like I found it.

  The front door opened and slammed, and I found myself unable to leave just yet. Despite my lightweight drunkenness, I wobbled up enough to peer through the window once more. Moonface turned on the overhead light, and I saw his right eye was swollen closed. Small flecks of blood dotted his clothing. He ripped off his dress shirt while making his way to the kitchen, and I bent a little lower. I looked toward the ground and noticed the candelabra laying in the dirt—I must have knocked it out during the escape. I heard footsteps again, and knew it was too late to try to put it back.

  Moonface sat on his couch with a small sandwich bag of ice held to his brow and a full mason jar in his other hand. It wasn’t long before I heard another vehicle approach from the road. It parked, and its driver hurried up the steps and threw open the front door.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Nicole said.

  “I was try to help,” Moonface explained, taking a sip from his glass.

  “That wasn’t help. What do you suppose is going to happen now?” she said. She wore her cheerleading outfit.

  “It was good game, though. You perform well. And we won,” he said, smiling.

  I staggered slightly as the drink worked its way through me, and I bumped against the wall. Moonface and Nicole looked toward the window, and I turned my back toward them, sliding down and pressing as close against the house as I could while staring into the woods ahead of me. For some reason beyond me now, I thought if I couldn’t see them, maybe they wouldn’t be able to see me. I’ve lived most the rest of my life that way.

  Even so, I waited for the window to open, for M
oonface to grab me by my hair and pull me into his home as it transformed into some dark, Shylockian lair lined with weights and scales and knives for pounds of flesh, but nothing happened. I turned around and peeked in once more, and saw Nicole straddling Moonface on the sofa, kissing him as he let his drink fall to the ground.

  * * *

  “Moonface is fucking Nicole,” I told John between heaving breaths, cold sweat dripping from my arms and neck.

  He looked behind him into his house, saw that his stepfather was passed out on the couch, and closed the door as he stepped outside to meet me.

  “Bullshit,” he whispered.

  I tried to say, It’s true, but only got the first word out before vomiting near his front steps.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” John nearly shouted, leaping aside from my spew.

  I finished as quietly as I could, then withdrew the mason jar from my inner coat pocket and wiped my hand on my sleeve. John snatched the glass from my hand, opened the lid, and winced in gleeful disgust.

  “So you found some of your old man’s brew stashed away in a closet. That explains it,” he said.

  I reached into my pockets once more, taking out the small menorah and handing it to John. His eyes opened wider, then he took a sip of the liquor and struggled to maintain a straight face.

  “So, Moonface makes moonshine,” he rasped. “I guess we know how Nicole pays him for the stuff.”

  I led John back toward the village as we passed the mason jar back and forth, drinking the bare minimum to appear like men. It was a clear night, the kind that feels like the stars are spotlights trained on you and everything you do. Now I realize it’s always like that, even when you can’t see them, but back then I thought I could lose their sights, so I made John follow me into the trees until we reached Moonface’s home.

  A few minutes later John said, “I guess you didn’t hear what happened at the game tonight, now that I think about it.”

  “No,” I replied too quickly, somewhat sore at my ignorance.