Clea's Moon

by Edward Wright

  Later that night, as he slept, Horn encountered Addie in a dream. It seemed natural to see her there, and natural to find that he wanted her. She stood on the dirt road where he’d seen her before, except now she wore that white two-piece swimsuit she’d worn in his car, with the matching hair band. She glistened all over, as if she’d just stepped out of the surf, and the look she gave him said enough. Guilt rose in him, and he began looking for words to tell her that they shouldn’t be there, that she was Clea’s friend. But immediately he felt foolish over the guilt. It’s only a dream, he told himself. You can do anything in a dream.

  He felt a hand at his shoulder and knew that she had come to him, had left Clea in bed to come out and find him on the couch, and he rolled over and opened his eyes. But it was Miguel the ranch hand.

  “Senora say you come out, please.”

  It was just past midnight. He followed Miguel out to the stables and there, in the mare’s enclosure, was a shiny new colt. It stood wobbling on stilt legs, its oversized head bobbing as it looked around, taking in this new world. The mare, wrung out, sat up weakly, leaned over, and licked her newborn, giving it long, slow, swipes with her gigantic tongue.

  Maggie leaned on the rail, looking as exhausted as the mare. “Hey,” she said. “Old cowboy like you, I knew you wouldn’t mind being woke up for this.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it,” he said, patting her elbow. “Everybody all right?”

  “Fine and dandy, except for Mom and me. But we’ll catch up. I’m going to start right now,” she said, indicating the bedroll she’d laid down on a pile of smoothed-out hay in an empty stall next door. She went over and lay down. “Just going to rest a while,” she said drowsily. “The boys will be around. You can go back to bed anytime.”

  He rested arms and chin on the rail for a while, talking in a low voice to the mare and foal. It was something he did around horses, something most horse people did without embarrassment. He told Bonnie she had done a good job, and he told the colt he was welcome in this world and to be careful with the standing and walking because all that took practice.

  After a while he went over and lay down next to Maggie on the blanket. It was a little cool in the stable, so he pulled over an Indian blanket and put it over them. He gently lifted Maggie’s head and placed it on his arm, and she rolled toward him and rested her arm on his chest. She smelled of soap and hay.

  “The sire’s a champion quarter horse, and the mare’s got good blood too,” she said, her voice slowed by sleepiness. “I think I might breed this one.”

  “That’d be nice. What name you going to give him?”

  “Thought I might call him Sierra. If you don’t mind.”

  “That’d be real nice.”

  “You still talk to horses.”

  “Heard me, huh? Well, I bet you do too.”

  “John Ray, I’m so sorry about Raincloud.” They lay looking up into the rafters, almost whispering in the dark. “I was off someplace when it happened—rodeo in Tucson, I think it was. By the time I got back, you were in jail. I was never sure if I heard the way it really happened. Would you tell me?”

  “I don’t mind,” he said, and began telling her.

  He’d never told the story from beginning to end, but it came naturally because it had been in his head for years, just waiting to be told. It started with Bernard Rome Junior and how his daddy sent him off to one of those private schools in the East, where Junior learned about polo and how to ride English-style. And then he came back and started apprenticing under Bernie Senior, learning how to run a studio, but always trying to impress people with how cultivated he was. One day this rich girl from New York was visiting, and Junior was squiring her around the studio, wearing his polo outfit. She said she’d just love to see him ride, maybe do a little jumping, and he couldn’t say no. The horses he usually rode were in his father’s stable out in Malibu. But he looked around the back lot, checked out the studio horses, and decided Raincloud was his mount.

  So he had his English saddle fetched from his car and had the horse made ready for him. Raincloud had never worn this kind of saddle and was skittish about carrying Junior, who was twitchy at the reins and who reeked of expensive cologne. The stable hands were nervous, but Horn was at home between pictures, and no one had the gumption to say no to Junior.

  He rode out to some fenced-in acreage behind the studio and began taking Raincloud over some low fences. Horse and rider did fine for a while, the young lady clapping at each jump. Then Junior decided to tackle a higher fence. He spurred Raincloud to a gallop, and they raced toward it. The horse had the grit for it, but Junior balked at the last second. He hauled back on the reins, they broadsided the fence, and Raincloud’s right foreleg snapped between two of the rails.

  Horn paused in the telling. All that, he told Maggie, was what he heard from others. He didn’t get involved until someone called him at home, and he smoked up the roads to the studio. He found Raincloud lying out by the fence, surrounded by studio people. The vet was there, and told him there was no hope, the break was too bad. Do you want me to do it? the man asked him. No, Horn said. I’ll do it.

  He went to see Doolin, the studio armorer, a small and stooped man who was rumored to have fought the Black and Tans in the streets of Dublin decades earlier. Doolin tended to the great assortment of weaponry, some real and some bogus, used by the studio in its action movies, set from the streets of New York to the American west to the Khyber Pass. Horn asked for his .45-caliber Army Colt replica, 1873 model, and Doolin pulled it from a shelf and handed it over to him in its holster. You have bullets for this, don’t you? Horn asked.

  You want blanks, right?

  No. I want lead bullets.

  Doolin reached to the back of another shelf and handed him a box of .45 shells adorned with a sticker that read Caution: Live Ammunition. Not for Use on Set.

  I know you’ve got a bottle here somewhere, Horn said. I want that too. I’ll pay you back. Doolin hesitated, then was gone for a moment and returned with a half-full bottle of Old Crow.

  Horn swigged what was left, loaded the cylinder’s six chambers, went back out to the field and told everyone to leave. He pulled out his pocketknife, sliced through the latigo, and wrestled the ridiculous saddle off the horse, then he gently slid off the bridle. He sat for long minutes, crosslegged, with Raincloud’s great head cradled in his lap. The animal’s eyes were full of pain and fear as Horn talked to him. Others watched from a distance, but no one could hear the words.

  Finally, he stroked the horse’s muzzle one last time, cocked the weapon, placed the gun barrel dead center between the eyes, closed his own eyes, and pulled the trigger.

  Then he went looking for Junior.

  He found him in the commissary with the New York girl, sitting at a table with Bernie Senior and Bing Crosby, who was under contract over the hill at Paramount but who was an old golfing buddy of the studio chief. The four were having a late afternoon cup of tea. “Excuse me,” Horn said, hauling Junior out of his chair. “We’ve got some business about a horse.”

  Although on the short side, Junior was solidly built and athletic. He took one swing at Horn, and that was it. Horn slapped him twice across the face, then dragged him out of the door of the commissary and flung him down the flight of steps onto the pavement. As Junior tried to crawl awkwardly off the pavement onto the grass, Horn descended the stairs and began to work on him. People gathered around, yelling, but no one stopped him because he was wearing the gun. He didn’t know how long he worked, but at one point he became aware that his knuckles were starting to ache, Junior’s screams were hurting his ears, and the grass was speckled with red. Finally, Mad Crow pulled him off—someone had had the good sense to call him. And not long afterward the police arrived.

  “I guess you know the rest,” he said. “Felony assault, they called it. When Bing Crosb
y showed up for the prosecution and started signing autographs outside the courthouse, I sort of knew how it would go. And when Mr. Rome told me he was going to make sure I never worked for any studio, well. . . .”

  Her hand patted his chest. “You should put it away,” she said. “I hope some day you can do that.” She was silent for a long time after that, and he thought she might be asleep. But then she yawned mightily. “You were a son of a bitch, John Ray,” she said in a barely audible voice. “Leaving like that.” He knew what she meant; the leaving had nothing to do with prison.

  “I know.”

  “Too late to do anything about it now.”

  “I know. Go to sleep, Maggie.”

  She said one last thing—he thought it sounded like I would have waited for you, but the words could have come from inside his own head—then turned away from him.

  He lay there but couldn’t sleep. After a while, when her breathing became regular, he worked his arm free and, after a quick look into the maternity stall, left the stables. He walked across the dirt road to the pasture, clambered up onto the fence and sat there with his heels hooked over the second rail. The pasture smelled of trampled grass and horse dung. He rolled a handmade and lit it, enjoying the first puff as always, the slow pull of the smoke into his lungs. He looked up at the night sky. It was the time of the new moon, and here in the country the dark was almost total. He looked around and located the moon high up, just about midpoint in its loop through the dark. Its image was barely there, just a crescent swipe of pale light, the color of bone, against the darkness. It was Clea’s moon, her favorite. He hadn’t seen it for a long time.

  Inside, he made his way to the bedroom to check on the girls. Approaching the bed quietly, he saw that Clea was alone in it. A rustling sound told him she was awake.

  “It’s me, honey.”

  “Oh. Hi.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed. “I’ve got some news for you. The mare had her baby.”

  “Really? That’s wonderful.” She stirred, half-sat up. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “It’s a boy. They’re both doing fine. He’s up on his legs already. You should see him, he’s all gangly.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “You can see him tomorrow. Where’s Addie?”

  “She went outside. I think she’s in the hammock.”

  “Well, it’s probably cooler out there,” he said.

  More rustling. “I. . . I told her about Tommy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought when you called her, you told her about him. That he was dead. But she didn’t know. I told her, and she. . . she got very. . . .”

  “Why would she care? She told me she hated his guts.”

  “She loved Tommy.”

  What the hell? He sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for more. After a while, she began talking, her voice sleepy but controlled. “When we first met Tommy, he dated both of us. I liked him a lot, even though I was a little scared of him too, because he was so much older. But Addie was crazy about him. She chased after him, and they saw a lot of each other. She’s so pretty, I never really understood why he seemed to like me better. He just did. And when I left home, I went straight to him, and he took me in. And he never saw her after that.”

  “Maybe she was too old for him,” he said, the sarcasm heavy in his voice.

  “What? Why would you say that?”

  “Never mind, honey. So you told her Tommy was dead. Did you tell her how he died?”

  “Yeah.” She drew a ragged breath and sounded on the edge of tears. “I think. . . she thinks you killed him.”

  “Didn’t you tell her—?”

  “I did. But she said you hate Tommy because Tommy beat you up one night, and she was there. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

  “Honey, I already told you I didn’t. You can believe that.” He leaned forward and straightened out the top sheet, the way he had done when she was small. Sometimes dreams would disturb her, and he would come in and find the bedding all in a knot.

  As he fussed over the sheet, he tried to think. If Addie Webb had been in love with this piece of trash Del Vitti, then her night out with Horn had most likely been an act. The Dixie Belle was a setup, and Del Vitti and Falco were waiting for him. Might have killed him, at least sliced him up good and proper. He had a new respect for Addie’s intelligence and cunning. He hoped that he would eventually find a way to convince her of the truth about Del Vitti’s death.

  Sitting back up, he thought about turning on a light but decided against it. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” he said.

  “Do you think she’ll be all right?”

  “Oh, she’ll be just fine. Like I keep telling you, Addie can take care of herself. Listen, can I ask you a few questions about Tommy?”

  “I guess.” She yawned.

  “How did you meet him?”

  “I just ran into him. At the malt shop across the street from the high school. He was really nice and polite, and you should have seen the way the other girls looked at him. You know, it’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I got the feeling that it wasn’t just an accident. I mean, that maybe he had wanted to meet me, you know?”

  “Uh-huh. Do you know what kind of work he did?”

  “He told me he worked for a man named Vincent, and Vincent was very rich and liked pretty girls, and one of Tommy’s jobs was to find girls to go out with Vincent.”

  “Did you think there was anything wrong with that?”

  “No. Not if they wanted to date him. Tommy said Vincent would take them out to nice places like the Brown Derby.”

  Well, not exactly. “Did you ever meet Vincent?”

  “No.” Another yawn.

  “Ever know any of the girls?”

  “Oh, no. Tommy said they all came from other parts of town.” She was quiet for a long time. Then: “Addie helped him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Helped him find girls. And once I got the idea that she went to see Vincent.”

  Dear God. So that’s what little Adele was up to.

  As if sensing his surprise, she went on: “I know Addie better than anybody. She acts crazy, but she’s really sweet. The only thing is, the place she comes from. . . . She told me once that her father—he’s gone now—used to come to her room at night, starting when she was. . . .” She stopped.

  “You don’t have to tell me any more, Honey. So Addie does some wild things.”

  “She likes to be sexy. She wants men to like her.”

  “I’ve seen that.”

  “She’s my best friend.”

  “Good.” He reached over and rearranged her pillow. “You want to go back to sleep?”

  “Maybe in a little bit. Can you stay for a while?”

  “Sure I can.” Her words warmed him. He couldn’t recall when she had last asked for his company. He was sure it had been years. Probably the night he had left for Cold Creek and she had screamed and cried behind her locked bedroom door. He adjusted a pillow behind his back. “You just close your eyes. I’ll be right here.”

  He began talking to her quietly, the way he had done years earlier. When she was little, he would make up bedtime stories about silver ponies and magic carousels and little girls who discover herds of wild horses up in the mountains and lead them down to the sweet-grass valleys before the snow begins blowing. Sometimes the stories were about a little girl named Clea, sometimes about others. She didn’t seem to mind either way, as long as he told them.

  So, this night, he talked to her. But this time the stories weren’t made up. There was too much he needed to say. He told her about how he had missed her every day since that night he had left. About how he missed having her for a daughter, but he k
new that her new father was a good man and that she had a good home to go back to when she was ready.

  If there was anything she ever wanted to talk to him about, he said, he would listen—even if it was something that happened years ago and she could barely remember it. He would listen, because some things shouldn’t be kept to yourself. Sometimes what you needed most in the world was just somebody to listen.

  He paused, wondering if she had dropped off to sleep. “Your moon’s up tonight,” he said in a quiet voice. “I saw it out there a while ago and thought about you. It’s brand new, so thin it’s almost not there. Remember what you said, a long time ago? It’s special because it’s like a new baby, just born. ‘Last night,’ you said, ‘the sky was all black, and now we have this new, funny-shaped moon, just hung up there to start brightening things. It’ll grow, even faster than me,’ you said, ‘and pretty soon it’ll be fat and yellow and we can read storybooks from the light it gives

  off.’ ”

  He thought he heard a sound from her, but when he looked over at her rounded shoulder in the dark, there was nothing.

  “You probably didn’t notice this big ugly belt buckle of mine,” he went on softly. “I meant to show it to you. It’s something I made in the. . . something I made while I was away. I took this hunk of steel and faced it with silver plate. And then I got some copper wire and inlaid a design on the silver. I’m not much of an artist, but if you look close, you’ll see a couple of horses, one big, one little, with riders on them. And way up in the right-hand corner, with the last piece of wire, I made a little squiggle. That’s a crescent moon. And the two riders. . . well, I guess that’s supposed to be me and you, headed off to—”

  Another sound, more distinct this time. He turned toward her. Her shoulder was shuddering, and he could hear strangled sobs, as if she was trying to choke off the sounds with her hand. He grabbed her and drew her to him, and she flung an arm across him, gripping his arm as if it were a life preserver.