19
She drew the black tab of the zipper down. The tent flap furled outward with a slow liquid motion, the thickness of a banana peel opening, but she didn’t want to think about a banana, she didn’t know why. A sick, excited feeling gripped her by the belly and the throat, but she was hung up on the movement of the tent flap to the point that she couldn’t yet see past it. It reminded her of that curious, fleshy broad-bladed leaf form—but she was seeing that in the cave, not now, not here. The inside of the tent was big as a regular room, high enough that Marko could stand erect inside it, a piercingly bright light cupped in his hand.
Here was the will-of-the-wisp light she had seen from outside the tent, diffused and softened by the fabric of the walls, circling and probing toward the center she realized now, though the light was so bright she couldn’t really see past it, only Marko’s heavy dark silhouette surrounding it.
“Julie.” Marko’s voice was reassuring, or trying to be. “We were hoping you’d come.”
White teeth. His hand cupping the camera dropped, so that the bright point of light that had blinded her softened as it pooled across the tent floor, and she could see Karyn moving out from under Sonny’s shadowy weight, raising herself partway up from the rumpled Indian blanket. Pushed down from her shoulders and pushed up from her waist, her top was a wrinkled band around her ribcage, which somehow made her seem more abjectly naked than if she’d been completely bare. Her glazed eyes, a glistening on her cheek—she wiped at it with the back of her free hand.
“Come on in,” Marko said. “We’re just getting started.”
His hand with the camera rose toward Julie again, maybe an unconscious side effect of his welcoming gesture. The image of Karyn disappeared in the glare, and Julie understood that the light that had been used on Karyn was now intended to be used on her.
20
Sometimes she got eye wiggles when she was rolling, but that was different, a lot different from seeing stuff that wasn’t there at all, like those swirling paisley patterns she’d seen on the side of Jamal’s face before she ran away from him on the ledges. Now it was iridescent snakeskin patterns on the tent flap when she pulled the fat tab of the zipper down and the flap peeled from its toothy track. Flipping something, candy flipping. Jamal said. She wanted to go deeper into the rolling feeling, warmth and openness, cuddlesome closeness. The tent flap furling downward was a triangle that inverted the triangle that wanted to pull her forward by the nubs of her breasts and the bottom of her belly—then too the dizzy fascination of watching that happen, the tent flap unfurling itself slowly, looking at it from some other place, like when you were watching something secret, forbidden. Even what Karyn was doing drew her on, and it didn’t even matter that there were more than two. No worse, no different, than joining a rolling kitten pile. It was the light on the camera that pushed her back, its sharpness piercing like a scalpel, making her not see not understand so much as feel, way down in the base of her brain, that Karyn was being done, not doing.
White teeth. “Come on in—we’re just getting started.”
The light stabbed at her, pushed her back. She took two backward steps from the door of the tent before she turned and ran.
21
When she turned from the blaze of white light in the tent door, Jamal was there behind her, spot-lit, his skinny arms outstretched and his face blanched to a featureless pallor by the blast of illumination. Had he herded her, manipulated her into this place?
“You—” she said, “You—” The blur of his face resolved as she came nearer, but she couldn’t think what to put behind that You—accusation, endearment, curse? The light went out suddenly, and for a second or two Julie couldn’t see anything at all, then forms begin to pick themselves out of the darkness, blue-black sky outlining the cliff, the silvery shapes of the bikes where they were parked. And nearer, Jamal’s spidery silhouette, an arm reaching toward her, and she thrust out her hand, to deflect him, or to grasp—she didn’t really know which. Their fingertips barely brushed as she rushed by, and that contact tingled, shimmered like a déjà vu. Go, Jamal hissed—she was already past him now.
Jamal had turned back toward the tent. “Just let her go, Marko.” And Julie was thinking that he meant her to escape from the situation altogether, but how? She didn’t even know how to start Jamal’s little scooter, the only one of the three bikes she might have been strong enough to manage, and it could never outrun the Harleys anyway, and they were out on the empty desert with nowhere to hide, unless she went up the same way on the ledges around to the other side of the cliff, where the hawk had been that afternoon—
“Too late,” Marko’s voice was reasonably calm, a reasonable tone stretched over strain. “She’s in this far, look it, she’s got to come all the way.”
Julie turned back. Jamal had rooted himself in the sand, knees bent and his feet set apart. Marko crouched in the mouth of the tent, holding a flashlight now, with a softer beam than the spot on the camera, the light stain fading as it spread across the sand behind Jamal’s boots.
“Julie’s not in this.” Jamal said. “She never was.”
“If that’s how you feel,” Marko said, “you dumb-ass sandnigger, all you had to do was keep her away.”
Then Marko’s attention moved to her, though Julie wasn’t sure that he could see her where she hesitated, high on the balls of her feet, a little beyond where the pool of flashlight failed. “Come back, Jule—we’re not gonna hurtcha! It’s all. . . . It feels good, once you get into it, y’know, like Karyn is.”
Something in that scared Julie a lot more than she had been scared before and the run impulse was shooting up her legs, erupting in her spine, and still somehow she was frozen in place, transfixed by Marko’s wolverine eyes, if he could actually even see her, when Jamal was blocking most of the light. Then Marko suddenly charged up out of his crouch, raising the flashlight like a club, and it was one of those six-D-cell maglites like the cops used, too, but Jamal went down on one knee and as Marko rushed him he tossed a palm’s worth of sand into Marko’s face, and that broke the momentum. Marko dropped the light and covered his eye-sockets with both hands, calling out blindly, you stinking camel-fucker, I’ll kill you when I catch you, you—
Julie ran. All she could hear was Karyn screaming, the two-note scream that switched itself on at ball-games or car wrecks or concerts or if Karyn saw a snake—it just kept on going like a siren or a car alarm till something shut it off. She reached the cliff and scrambled up the ledges, tripping and crouching, using her hands. Her eyes had recovered from the spotlight blast, and now she could see well enough in the feathery light of the moon, but she supposed the others could see her too.
22
Once, Julie had been riding up an escalator while Jamal (was it Jamal?) was riding down. She didn’t know him then, not really, but the same impulse struck them both at the same time, so that they reached their hands across the gap between the up stairs and the down. Their fingertips brushed with a feathery tingle, for one light instant before the machinery carried them each away on a separate orbit. As if some other life had swung just close enough to hers for that faint touch, then veered off. She didn’t look back after they had passed. The escalators ran in a well of glass walls, and the afternoon sun came pouring through, bathing everyone in a flood of golden light.
The herd of animal persons swirled into the opening at the end of the great hall, which she was now approaching—she was guided by a force she felt inside her, though that force was not her own. Her bare feet fit securely into heel prints that led her through the portal now. The horned being she’d expected to see was not there. She touched the back of her own head with her fingers, and saw again the image of Julie at the bottom of the shaft, lying in the bluish-white glow of her cell-phone screen. Where had the animal persons gone? She had seen them all streaming through the opening into this small round chamber, but now they were nowhere to be found. Her vision fractured, and the pattern of dots streamed in a
spiral—she thought that the dots must be the eyes of the animal persons, which had lost their bodies but were still regarding her.
Then they were gone, and her vision steadied. On the curving wall before her she did see a series of little horned heads—no, they were handprints, negative images, a black paint surrounding the pallor of the stone, so that the hands seemed to glow a little, like the phosphorescent plastic stars stuck to the ceiling above her bed at home. One print seemed to attract her hand magnetically, the left one, and when she laid it there it fit so perfectly there was no line around it. Her left hand disappeared entirely into darkness as complete as the velvet black of a starless sky; it sank a little way into soft stone.
23
She ran for the bikes before she realized that she had no way to start one up, and the Harleys were too heavy for her to handle anyway. The big tent had gone dark now, and from its shadow came the shrill two notes of Karyn’s repetitious scream, and the low grumble of Sonny’s voice, trying to shut her up. Marko lunged toward her, a silent bulky shadow, and Julie dodged behind his Harley. Her jacket still lay across the saddle where she had left it in the heat of the afternoon. Black vinyl, torn and cheap; she couldn’t afford leather. As Marko rounded the bike and came at her again, she snatched it up by one sleeve and lashed the chrome studs into his face. She had no strength, and the jacket no weight to make any real impression on Marko, but maybe a stud had caught him in the eye. He fell back against his bike, one hand rising to his cheekbone, and the bike collapsed under him. Marko dropped with it to the sand, air oofing out of him as his tailbone slammed down.
Julie ran for the cliff and scrambled up the ledges, tripping and crouching, using her hands. The jacket encumbered her but for some reason she didn’t want to let it go. She stopped long enough to tie it around her waist by the sleeves. Someone was climbing up after her, though, but not Marko, not yet. He was still struggling to get his bike upright in the loose sand.
Julie stopped, winded, on the ledge below the first rock shelter. The pale moon sailed through the sky like a paper coracle. Karyn’s scream had subsided to a whistling gasp. Sonny stood with her outside the big tent; he had wrapped the Indian blanket around her and draped his arm across her shoulders, almost tenderly.
There was someone climbing toward her—she heard scrabbling on the rocks . . . though still not Marko; she could see that he had just left his bike and was trotting toward the bottom of the cliff. Jamal, then. Was he speaking to her, calling her name in a low voice? Or was it only a sense that his mind was trying to reach hers. . . . It had gotten chilly quickly, now that night had fallen in the desert. Julie shrugged into the vinyl jacket. A couple of the studs had pulled partway loose when she’d whipped the thing into the Marko’s face. It was secondhand, the sleeves too long, and when she wrapped her arms around herself the studded cuffs dangled like ties on a strait-jacket.
Did you know? She was thinking. Did you know this whole sick program all along? She remembered the math problem about the tents, but that seemed foolishly remote now, like some concern she might have had as a little girl. Because if you knew they were planning to dose us, then how could you not know all the rest?
She hugged herself tighter through the vinyl, crumpling slightly over the dizzy swirl in her belly that this thinking gave her, wishing the jacket were armor so she could disappear completely inside of it. And after all it was totally too awful to think that Jamal could have been in on the whole thing from the start, with Marko, with Sonny. And what had Karyn known that Julie didn’t?? —no, she couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that.
There had to be another way to tell herself the story. Jamal would tell it to her another way. Marko was out of sight now, somewhere under the edge of the ledge she was standing on, so he must be climbing, and she could see that Sonny had left Karyn, who stood wrapped in the blanket in front of the tent, perhaps still whimpering; from the angle of her elbow Julie thought she might have covered her mouth with one hand.
Sonny and Marko would both be coming after them now. After her. She thought of following the ledges around to the place where they had watched the hawk feeding, where the stone hills rolled to the horizon. Somewhere back there was the ribbon of road where they’d seen the car pass in the sunset, but it might be miles and miles away.
Jamal’s slender hands appeared on the ledge, and with a long smooth movement he pulled himself up.
Julie . . .
What! She turned from him, toward the distant moon.
Look . . . He floated one hand in her direction, as if he wanted to come nearer, but he didn’t. I didn’t—all I—when I saw that bottle I had a thought. And when I saw the camera—even then I thought well, if—I thought I could just take you a—
And she still couldn’t tell if these scraps of words were spoken, or if it was just the pressure of a thought trying to fumble its way across the rift that had been opened by what had happened. What was happening still. Certainly his voice was much louder, clearer, when now he turned around quick as a cat and shouted down to Marko, “Don’t try to come up here.”
Jamal kicked a couple of loose stones over the ledge, and Marko shouted, not even a curse, and she heard him next in a lower tone, “Listen to me you little shit—she can’t just come in and go out like that. Once you’re in, you’re in.”
When Marko’s hand came over the ledge, Jamal stomped it with his boot-heel and the hand jerked away, but then Marko’s head and shoulders rose over the rim. Jamal kicked him in the face, but Marko snatched his support leg, and Jamal fell over backwards, landing hard. As Marko came up onto the ledge Jamal got up quickly, and he booted the sack of cans he’d collected to tangle Marko’s feet, and Marko did stumble—“You little shit!” he cried. His nose was bleeding where Jamal had kicked him, but he didn’t seem much bothered by it. Jamal put himself in Marko’s way, and Marko batted him aside like a fly, a mosquito—Jamal flew back and fell rolling into a cranny of the rock shelter, and Julie had no time to wonder if he was hurt, hurt bad or not, because now there was nothing between her and Marko.
24
Her hand absorbed into the stone, her whole forearm sinking in, as if into a pool of warm, black oil. She turned her head to press her cheek against the stone. Under her palm was a hot, scratchy something, like a pelt, and she could feel a rough breath lifting and relaxing it. The warmth and surprise of this other breath jolted all the way back to her shoulder, and she wanted to pull away but she couldn’t, and after all she didn’t really want to—she needed to go forward, to go through. The left side of her face lowered into the wall, like sinking into her pillow while she was slowly absorbed into sleep, and she thought that now her left eye must be just where the eye of the bear had been, before. Now she must be eye to eye with the bear. Except instead she was inside him. Beyond the infinite thickness of the stone her forearm suddenly pushed through, so she could move it freely now, turning it from the elbow, feeling the heaviness of the bone and paw-pad where her hand had been. From her fingertips sprouted the black curving claws of the bear.
25
When Marko’s hand came over the ledge Jamal stomped it with his boot-heel, twisting his foot to grind down on it with the metal tap he used to scuff pavement when he put a boot down from his bike. The hand jerked away, but then Marko’s head and shoulders rose up over the rim. Jamal kicked him in the face, but Marko snatched Jamal’s other leg, and Jamal went over backwards, all unstrung and landing so roughly that his head snapped hard against the rock, but maybe the cushion of his thick hair had protected it, and as Marko came over the ledge Jamal got up quickly and with the side of his foot he swiped the sack of cans he’d collected into Marko’s path, and Marko’s feet did tangle on the trash bag—“You little shit!” he cried.
Jamal took one backward step, reaching around to the back of his waistband to pull something out from under the hem of his windbreaker. Julie didn’t get a good look because of the quickness of the movement and the uncertain moonlight, but whatever it was cha
nged Marko’s tone.
“Oh no,” Marko said. “You’re not gonna shoot me.”
Julie was looking at Jamal’s back, since he had put himself directly between her and Marko, and over his shoulder she could see Marko holding both of his hands palm-out, leaning a little into his palms; he seemed to lean into an invisible wall. She was aware of the narrow, dark slit at the back of the rock shelter just behind her, as if it had already opened to enclose her, as if she had already moved into the close, tight mouth of the cave.
“Are you sure?” Jamal asked. Was his voice slightly trembling? It was steady when he spoke again. “How bad do you really want to find out?”
“Jamal,” Marko said, staying just where he was. “It gets so much worse.”
26
—no, they were handprints, negative images, a black gum surrounding the pallor of the stone, so that the hands seemed to glow a little, like the shining of the stars. A certain print seemed to attract her hand magnetically, the left one, and when she laid it there it fit so perfectly there was no edge around it. Her left hand disappeared entirely into darkness, complete as the velvet black of a starless sky; it sank a little way into soft stone.
She lay . . . no, she was standing, but gravity had changed direction, so she felt as if she were lying at her ease and comfortably supported by the wall, and against her cheek she felt a soft rise and fall, as if she’d laid her head upon a living, breathing breast . . .
Behind the Moon Page 4