Shoot the Moon

by Billie Letts

  “Sorry about calling so late,” he said.

  “Come on in.”

  She ushered him inside, then through the living room to a den at the back of the house, a room both cluttered and comfortable.

  “You look like hell,” she said, motioning him to a chair across from the one where she sat.

  Though he had showered and changed, he couldn’t hide his bruised cheek or his puffy eyes or the weakness that showed in the way he moved.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Would you rather sit on the couch?”

  “Look, I owe you an apology for this afternoon, the way I ran out.”

  “I threw a lot at you. Too much, I suppose.”

  Mark propped his elbows on the arms of his chair, knit his fingers together and lowered his chin onto his hands.

  “Can I get you something?” Teeve asked. “I could make some coffee.”

  He shook his head. “Tell me about the man who killed Gaylene Harjo.”

  Unable to hide her surprise, Teeve shot him a questioning look.

  “I spent some time in the newspaper office today,” he explained.

  She let out a sigh. “Joe Dawson was arrested on suspicion. That doesn’t mean he was guilty.”

  “You don’t think he was?”

  “Anyone needed help, black or white, could count on Joe. He worked with kids who got in trouble, took some of them in. When there was a fire . . . a flood, he was the first one there with food, clothes, money. Whatever he had, he shared. No, Joe didn’t have a damn thing to do with what happened to you and Gaylene. I’ll go to my grave believing that.”

  “Then why did he kill himself?”

  “Some figured he wanted to save his family the grief and humiliation of a trial.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “Joe wasn’t a quitter, never gave up on anything. He had lung cancer. Inoperable. But he’d just started another round of chemo even though his doctor said his chances weren’t good.”

  “So what happened in that jail?”

  “One of the deputies said he found Joe dead three hours or so after he was locked up. Wrists slashed with his own pocket knife. Supposedly the same knife that had killed Gaylene.”

  Mark went to his empty shirt pocket for a cigarette, vestige of the habit he’d given up four years earlier. “Is that deputy still around?” he asked.

  “Yeah. He’s the sheriff now. O Boy Daniels.”

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Well, if you’re still hoping nobody will find out who you are, I wouldn’t go down to his office. He has a bait shop out on highway forty. Near the Post Oak Bridge. If you do talk to him, don’t call him O Boy. That sets him off. His name’s Oliver Boyd Daniels.”

  Mark pushed out of his chair, went to sliding glass doors that opened onto a patio and stared into the night.

  “What was she like?”

  Teeve hesitated because of something she heard in his voice. The whisper soft sound of sadness.

  “Gaylene Harjo,” he said. “What was she like?”

  “Sweet, pretty. Smart. Real smart. She had two or three scholarships to go to college, but she got pregnant and . . .”

  He turned, shoved his hands into his pants pockets and fixed Teeve with his eyes.

  “Who was it?”

  “She wouldn’t say. Some thought it was Kyle Leander, a guy works at the radio station, but she denied it.”

  “Do you know who her friends were? How she spent her time?”

  “Well, her best friend was Rowena Whitekiller.”

  Mark shot Teeve a quizzical look. “Did you say ‘Whitekiller’?”

  “Oh, we’re so used to Cherokee names around here; to us, they’re as common as Jones or Smith. Anyway, Gaylene and Rowena ran together from grade school to high school.

  “They were good kids, not wild, but they had some good times, I guess. ’Course, most teenagers go through a phase, party too much, drink too much.

  “But after Gaylene found out she was pregnant, she pretty much stayed to herself. Learned to cook, checked out a bunch of books from the library on child care. Even had me teach her to crochet. Made you a pair of blue booties about this long”—Teeve held her thumb and forefinger about two inches apart—“and made you a cap to match. She was so proud because she made them herself.”

  Teeve’s eyes teared up.

  “Was she still living at home?” Mark asked.

  “No. She and Ben, her daddy, had a falling-out. A real bad one, so she rented a trailer from Arthur McFadden. He runs the radio station, owns some land way back of the river. I asked her once if she was scared to be so isolated—not many folks lived out there then—but Gaylene didn’t seem to be afraid of much of anything. Besides, she’d grown up way out in the country, so—”

  Teeve froze when an orange tomcat curled around her ankles. Bernie. That could only mean that Ivy wasn’t far away.

  She was standing in the kitchen doorway, eating mayonnaise from a jar, unconcerned that her SIERRA CLUB T-shirt, taut across her bulging belly, didn’t quite cover her baggy cotton underpants.

  “Ivy!” Teeve jumped out of her chair, looked like she wanted to run. “What are you doing up?”

  “I had to pee.”

  “Honey, this is . . . uh, he was in the pool hall today. I think you saw him, and, well, he’s trying to sell me an insurance policy.”

  “Isn’t it kind of late to be making house calls?” Ivy asked as Bernie bounded onto Mark’s lap, unusual behavior for a cat that had no use for strangers.

  “Yes. I mean no. I asked him to come by tonight. Late tonight. So we could go over a few things.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. Time to face the fact that I’m not going to live forever. Right?”

  The only sound in the room was the clinking of Ivy’s spoon as she dipped up another bite of mayonnaise.

  “I mean, fifty-six isn’t old, but I’ve reached the age of . . . insurance.”

  Teeve looked to Mark for help but got none.

  “This young man has made me realize that I don’t have anything much to leave you except for the pool hall, which isn’t worth more than a few thousand dollars. Of course, there’s this house, but you wouldn’t live in it. And if you sold it . . . well.”

  Teeve turned her palms up to indicate that the outcome was obvious.

  “Oh, I didn’t introduce you two, did I?” Teeve tapped the side of her head to underscore her forgetfulness. “Don’t know what I was thinking. Honey, this is Mark Albright. And this is my daughter, Ivy.”

  “How do you do,” Mark said.

  “Hi, Nicky Jack.” Ivy licked mayonnaise from her upper lip, then smiled. “Welcome home.”

  January 9, 1967

  Dear Diary,

  I’m the best basketball player in my gym class. Coach Dougless said if I keep practicing she might let me play on the varsity team next year. I’d like that because Danny Pittman, the cutest boy in school is always at the games. His girlfriend Becky Allan plays forward.

  I don’t know what is worse, watching her lead cheers at the football games when she flips up her skirt to show off her legs or when she runs down the basketball court and her breasts jiggle. I’ve watched Danny watching her and he can’t take his eyes off her boobs.

  I’m still wearing a double A bra. I saw an add in a magazine at the bank for bust cream. I’d like to send off for it but Daddy would probably find out because he picks up our mail in town at the post office and he’d kill me if he knew I even thought about my breasts.

  Spider Woman

  Chapter Seven

  After a few fitful hours of bizarre dreams, Mark got up early, skipped breakfast and left the motel before eight the next morning.

  Following the directions Teeve had given him last night, he got on highway 40 and headed north. He
was nine or ten miles out of town, an eighteen-wheeler riding his bumper when he rounded a sharp curve and saw the bait shop on the left-hand side of the highway. Too late to turn in, he drove on, slowing as the road straightened. When the truck passed, he made a U-turn and went back.

  “Hook ’Em,” read a hand-lettered sign hung over the door of a cinder-block building. Fifty yards back of that was an undistinguished house with gray siding. Off to the side, a thin woman wearing a loose denim dress was hanging sheets on a clothesline.

  As Mark got out of his car, he saw a thick-bodied boy dipping dead minnows from a tank in front of the shop.

  “My name’s Kippy,” he said, smiling. “I’m working.”

  He wasn’t a boy, as Mark had supposed, but a man of indeterminate age with the broad, flat facial features and slow, awkward movements of Down syndrome.

  “You want some dead minnows?” he asked.

  “Not today.”

  “Catfish like dead minnows. I caught a catfish this big.” He held up his arms, hands three feet apart. “You want to see it?” he said with enthusiasm.

  “Sure.”

  The shop, rank with the smell of fish and stink bait, was neat and well organized—rods in racks along one wall; cane poles leaning in the corners; tables lined with boxes of jigs, sinkers, spinners; shelves crowded with lanterns, fuel, cookstoves; rafters hung with hats, caps, waders; glass cases filled with expensive lures and knives.

  Smiling proudly, Kippy pointed to a catfish mounted above a window, then repeated—verbatim—the words printed on the mounting board.

  “‘Twenty-two pound flathead caught by Kippy Daniels, June 2, 1988.’”

  “That’s a fine catch,” Mark said.

  “I caught him all by myself. But my mama took the hook out ’cause catfish have real sharp teeth.”

  “Is your daddy here?”

  “Huh-uh.” Kippy went to a refrigerated case, took out a small plastic container and removed the lid. “You know what these are?” He dug his fingers into peat moss and pulled out a tangle of worms. “Night crawlers. They can’t bite you ’cause they don’t have any teeth.”

  The woman Mark had seen outside came in the back door carrying a laundry basket and a bag of clothespins.

  “Kippy, put the worms back.”

  Carrie Daniels spoke with a slow Oklahoma drawl. Mark could tell she’d once been a beauty, but time had coarsened her skin, years of disappointment had dulled her eyes and someone had left welts on her upper arm and a yellowing bruise on her jaw.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for Oliver Daniels.”

  “Mama, can I have a bottle of root beer?” Kippy asked. “Can I? Please.”

  “I guess so.” Then to Mark she said, “Oliver went over to Muskogee to pick up a generator.”

  “You know when he’ll be back?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, if he’s not going to be gone too long, I think I’ll wait.”

  “Be best if you come back later. He’s liable to be—”

  When a bottle crashed on the concrete floor, Kippy said, “Uh-oh,” then watched his root beer river its way toward the door.

  “It broke, Mama.”

  “It’s okay, honey,” she said with practiced patience. “Just an accident.” But when she heard a vehicle pulling onto the graveled drive out front, a look of alarm crossed her face.

  “I’ll pick it up,” Kippy said.

  “No! You’ll cut yourself.”

  “Let me get that for you,” Mark said, moving toward Kippy.

  Carrie, pushing her way past him, said, “I’ll take care of it. Kippy, I want you to go—”

  Stopped in midsentence when the front door swung open, she involuntarily threw up one hand as if to shield her eyes from a harsh light.

  O Boy Daniels, in razor-creased jeans, a stiff western shirt and snakeskin boots, looked like he’d never backed away from a fight. An old scar zigzagged across his chin, another cut a path through a tangle of eyebrow and a lump of puckered flesh sat on the side of his head where the missing part of his left ear should have been.

  Though he was a few years past sixty, his body was still hard, his hands powerful, his eyes wary and dangerous . . . a man who could break a horse or a woman without caring about the difference.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, scowling at the dark liquid puddling around his boots.

  “We . . . uh, had a little accident,” Carrie said, her voice pinched with tension.

  “Daddy, a bottle—”

  “Just slipped through my fingers,” Mark cut in.

  O Boy studied the three faces turned toward him, then said, “Carrie, clean up this mess.”

  After he stomped out, Mark watched him from the doorway as he wrestled a heavy generator from the bed of his pickup.

  “Kippy, go on up to the house and change your jeans. You’ve got root beer splattered all over the legs. And hurry.”

  “Okay, Mama.”

  Mark pulled a Coke from the cooler, then dug in his pocket for change.

  “It’s on the house,” Carrie said. She gave him a tired smile, then grabbed a roll of paper towels and began sopping up the spill.

  Mark found O Boy at a workbench at the side of the building, where he was bent over the generator.

  “Mr. Daniels, I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time?”

  “For what?”

  “Some information about Gaylene Harjo’s son.”

  O Boy picked up a grease cloth and wiped his hands, but he never took his eyes off Mark.

  “Since you investigated her murder, I thought you might be able to help me out.”

  “You a cop . . . or a reporter?” he asked, then spit in the dirt. “I got no use for either one.”

  “Then I guess I’m in luck. I’m an attorney.”

  O Boy snorted. “I wouldn’t call that luck.”

  “Name’s Albright. Mark Albright.”

  “So what’s your business with me?”

  “I’m trying to locate Nick Harjo.”

  “That right?”

  “I’m handling an estate, he’s the heir.”

  “Don’t see as how it’s gonna do him much good.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Mark could feel his pulse quicken. “I was told his body was never found.”

  “It don’t take a genius to hide a body, Albright. But sometimes you have to be damn lucky to find one. We musta dug up an acre of land on Joe Dawson’s place. Come up empty, but that don’t mean—”

  “You’re convinced Dawson was responsible?”

  “Gaylene was killed with his knife. Same knife he used to slice hisself up. I can put two and two together.”

  “And he was your only suspect?”

  “Oh, I looked at a few others. Some of the punks Gaylene partied with. But I had my eye on Dawson from the beginning. When the medical examiner matched Dawson’s knife to her wounds, that was that.”

  Mark leaned his hips against the workbench, crossed his arms, then gazed out over the river. “Well,” he said, “I’ve got a piece of property in Arkansas appraised at twenty-five thousand dollars that was left to Gaylene Harjo. Since she’s deceased, and from what you say, her only child’s dead, too, I need to find out who fathered him.”

  “Who the hell would leave her some property in Arkansas?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that whoever knocked her up . . .”

  “Will inherit. Yes.” Mark tried not to sound overly anxious when he asked, “Do you have any idea who it was?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you try to find out?”

  O Boy’s eyes flashed with anger. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m just wondering if—”

  “I did my goddamn job, Albright.”

  “Wh
at about Kyle Leander?”

  “What about him?”

  “I’ve heard he spent time with her.”

  “Hell, who didn’t? Let me tell you what you don’t know about Gaylene. She couldn’t keep her pants on. Slept with half the men in this county. Anyone who wanted her. And there was a lot of hard-dick old boys around here wanted her.”

  “Did that include Joe Dawson?”

  “Gaylene Harjo was a slut. Pure and simple. And I’ve never known a slut who culled.”

  Mark couldn’t control the tightening of the muscles in his jaw or the heat of anger coloring his skin, but the changes were too subtle for O Boy to notice.

  “Not much of a surprise she ended up the way she did,” O Boy said. “But that kid of hers . . . he deserved better.”

  The front office of KSET, small and spare, was deserted when Mark arrived. A metal desk in the corner of the room looked unused, its surface covered with a fine layer of dust. Between two plastic patio chairs, a chrome table held a stack of Radio Journals, the most recent three years old. The walls were bare except for a framed certificate dated 1972 that named Arthur McFadden “Oklahoma Broadcaster of the Year.”

  When a phone rang somewhere in the back of the building, Mark followed the sound down a hallway to an opened door. The call went unanswered even though the bearded man sitting beside it could have picked up the receiver without doing more than bending his elbow.

  He wore faded jeans and a GRATEFUL DEAD T-shirt. His feet, shod in ratty sandals, rested on a littered desk. His ears were covered with headphones, his eyes closed, his head nodding to a percussion beat Mark could hear from across the room.

  This office, unlike the one at the front, was anything but bare. The walls, painted black, were covered with posters—Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker. A bedraggled American flag was tacked above one window, a lava lamp stood atop a stack of old LPs, and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase held a jumble of memorabilia, most of it from an earlier era.

  Mark studied a framed photograph of a teenage boy—barefoot and shirtless, dark hair haloed in an Afro, one hand holding a water pipe, the other flashing a peace sign at the camera—a younger version of the bearded man across the room.