Low Red Moon

by Kiernan, Caitlin R.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Unload on me. Tell me what an asshole I am for queering the deal.”

  “Deke, if you don’t want to do this, why the fuck don’t you just say so and then we can stop wasting our time?”

  Deacon turned off the radio and leaned forward, resting his forehead against the steering wheel.

  “All right. I don’t want to do this.”

  “Shit,” she hissed, and he shut his eyes, trying not to think about how much easier all of this would be if he were only a little bit drunk. “Why the hell didn’t you say so before?”

  “I didn’t want to piss you off.”

  Chance laughed, a hard, sour sort of laugh, and kicked the car door hard enough that Deacon jumped.

  “I don’t want to live in that house anymore, Deke. There are way too many bad memories there. I need to start over. I need to start clean.”

  “I just wish you’d slow down, that’s all. I feel like we’re rushing into this.”

  “Well, after the way you behaved up there, I expect you’ll be getting your wish.”

  And Deacon didn’t say anything else, slid over to the passenger’s side, and neither of them said another word while Chance drove them back to the house, and, as it turned out, he didn’t get his wish. Their application was approved three days later, and Chance put the house that her great-grandfather had built up for sale. A month later the house sold, the house and its acre and a half of land, and the week after that they found out she was pregnant.

  Through the library doors and past the winding marble stairs that lead up to the mezzanine, past the marble statue balanced on its marble column, headless angel, armless angel, and Deacon follows the short hallway back to the pay phones. A quarter just to get a dial tone, and then he punches 411 and tells the operator he needs to place a collect call to Detective Vincent Hammond, Atlanta PD, Homicide Division, so she transfers him to an Atlanta operator. A long moment of clicks and static across the line, and Deacon waits and watches the towering, gold-framed portrait of George Washington hung on the wall opposite the hallway’s entrance. Washington stares back with his ancient oil-paint eyes that are neither kind nor cruel, the unflinching face of authority and history, and after just a few seconds of that Deacon looks down at the scuffed toes of his shoes, instead.

  “Is anyone there?” Deacon asks the phone, and “Just one moment, please, sir,” the Atlanta operator says impatiently, and then a phone begins to ring at the other end.

  “This is Hammond,” the man who answers the phone says in a smoky, tired voice, gravel voice, and just hearing him again, Deacon can smell the menthol Kools that dangle perpetually from Vince Hammond’s thin lips.

  “You did this,” Deacon says. “You’re the one that told them where to find me.”

  A pause and “Deke?” the cop asks, trying to sound confused or surprised, but Deacon knows it’s just an act. “Hey, bubba, is that really you? Goddamn. I haven’t heard from you in a coon’s age.”

  “Don’t ‘hey, bubba’ me, you sonofabitch. You did it, didn’t you? You fucking knew I didn’t want any more of this crazy shit in my life, and you did it anyway.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s just say I owed someone a favor.”

  Deacon wipes at his face, at flop sweat and the pain piling up higher and higher behind his eyes. Really no point in any of this, the call to Hammond, the accusations and anger, because the damage is done now, and there’s no undoing it.

  “Just calm down, bubba. You guys have a bad one over there. They needed some help.”

  Deacon takes a deep breath, holds it, and glances back at George Washington; serene, certain George in his just-aucorps and white wig, and Deacon exhales very slowly.

  “I’m married, man,” he says. “I have a pregnant wife. I’m doing everything I can to stay sober. I can’t have this sort of shit in my life anymore.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. Congratula—”

  “You could have fucking asked. You could have called me first and asked.”

  “And you would’a told me to fuck off, right? Look, I just thought maybe you could help those boys out down there, that’s all. This one’s something special, Deke, something bad.”

  “Yeah, and that’s exactly why it’s not my goddamn problem.”

  “Good to know you’re still the same philanthropic soul I remember from the old days.”

  “Fuck you, Hammond,” Deke growls into the receiver, raising his voice, and a passing librarian scowls at him.

  “Just don’t do it again, okay? Don’t ever do it again, do you understand me?”

  “You have a gift, Deke—”

  “I have a wife,” and he hangs up and stands glaring at the phone, waiting for his heart to stop racing, for the fury to drain away and leave him with nothing worse than the headache and his thirst.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Deep Time

  Alice Sprinkle’s old Toyota pickup bounces over a rut in the interstate pavement, and Chance moans and opens her eyes. She’s been trying to doze since they left Birmingham, catch some shut-eye while Alice drives, but it’s impossible to get comfortable in the cramped cab of the truck, and she’s tired of trying. Tired of staring at the insides of her eyelids, the bright sunlight shining through her flesh, and, besides, she has to piss again.

  “Better stop at the next exit,” she says, and Alice sighs and nods her head.

  “Wouldn’t you rather wait until the rest stop? We’re almost to the state line.”

  “I can try,” Chance grumbles, shifting in her tiny bucket seat, trying to find any position that’ll make her back ache just a little bit less. “But I’m not making any promises.”

  “I’m thinking the rest stop would sure be a hell of a lot cleaner, that’s all,” and Chance glances over at Alice behind the wheel, the woman more than twenty years her senior, and all the lines in her face right there to show every moment of her life. All the long days of scorching sun and freezing wind, her weathered, rugged face sculpted like the rock walls of the quarries and strip mines that she’s lived half her life in. My face someday, Chance thinks.

  “I feel like a beached whale,” she says. “A goddamned pregnant beached whale with hemorrhoids.”

  “Only a very small whale.” Alice smirks. “Maybe only a manatee.”

  “Thanks a lot,” and Chance adjusts the pillow behind her back again, but it doesn’t help.

  “Them’s the hazards of living that damn heterosexual lifestyle, dear. You should’ve listened to me and found yourself a good woman. She wouldn’t have gotten you into this sad predicament.”

  “I swear to god, Alice. I’m gonna pee on your floorboard if we don’t stop soon.”

  “Not much farther, I promise,” and there’s the reflective blue interstate sign to back her up, WELCOME—WE’RE GLAD GEORGIA’S ON YOUR MIND, and underneath that the big peach that Chance has always thought looked more like someone’s naked butt. She leans forward and braces one hand flat against the dash, wanting to unbuckle the seat belt, but she knows Alice would have a fit. It was hard enough just convincing her that she was up to the drive to Atlanta, lucky she’s not sitting in her office grading freshman papers instead while Alice makes the trip alone.

  “You should’ve stayed in town,” Alice Sprinkle says, like the woman can read her mind. “You should have listened to Deacon and let me handle this.”

  “Christ, I think the urine must have backed up into my brain. I could have sworn you just agreed with Deke.”

  “Hey, even he can’t be wrong all the time.”

  “Can I quote you?”

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately? You’re about to pop, kiddo,” and Alice makes a sound with her lips like pulling the cork from a bottle of wine.

  “Yeah, well, they’re my fossils,” Chance says glumly, and she looks out the window at the green pine trees and the autumn-wide sky. “And I’ve been trying to put this exhibit together for six months. Now I’m gonna see it through.”

 
; “Chance, you’re almost as stubborn as your grandpa was, you know that?”

  “I consider that the highest of compliments.”

  “I’m sure you do,” and Alice slows down and takes the exit for the Georgia Welcome Center, wrestling with the Toyota’s temperamental stick shift. A loud, grinding noise from beneath the hood, and “One day this old bitch is just gonna roll over and give up the ghost,” she says; Chance nods, too busy trying not to wet herself for words.

  “Here you go, Puddles,” Alice says and pulls in between a battered minivan and a yellow Corvette with California license plates. The truck’s engine sputters and dies as soon as she shifts into first. “Sit still, and I’ll give you a hand.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can still get out of a truck on my own,” but Alice is already on her way around the front of the Toyota to get Chance’s door. “I’m not a cripple,” she whispers, talking to no one but herself. “I’m eight months pregnant, but I’m not a goddamn cripple.”

  Alice opens the passenger-side door; “Six of one,” she says, “half dozen of the other.”

  “How did you possibly hear that?”

  “We lesbian paleontologists got ears of steel, didn’t you know that? Comes from not squandering all our precious bodily fluids having babies.” Alice laughs and puts one arm around Chance’s waist, holds her right hand, strong arms to keep her steady until she has both feet planted firmly on the parking lot asphalt.

  “You think anyone would care if I squatted down and peed right here?”

  “Now, we ain’t in Alabama no more, Mrs. Silvey. They got laws against that sort of thing in Georgia.”

  “I can make it the rest of the way on my own,” Chance says, and Alice frowns and looks doubtful. “Hey, if I’m not back in ten minutes, you can send the cavalry in after me, okay?”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Just check on the crates while I’m gone,” and before Alice can object, Chance is already halfway up the sidewalk to the door, moving as quickly as she dares. Her legs and feet, her back, hurt so badly that she might as well have walked all the way from Birmingham. A fat little boy sitting alone on a concrete bench stares at her like maybe she’s grown an extra head, like he’s never seen a pregnant woman before and babies come from cabbages. Then a bearded man in a red, white, and blue Budweiser cap holds the door open, and she thanks him.

  Alice Sprinkle waits until Chance is safe inside, waits another minute to be sure, and then she begins inspecting each of the nylon ropes securing the wooden crates of fossils packed into the back of the pickup.

  Cold water from the tap, and the restroom stinks of cleansers and disinfectants, the fainter smell of human waste, and Chance splashes her face again. Her reflection in the long mirror above the row of sinks, her wet face, the whites of her green eyes bloodshot because she hasn’t been sleeping so well lately. Tall and pregnant woman looking back at her, the silly maternity overalls because she’s always hated dresses; water dripping from her coffee-colored hair, trickling down her face, falling back into the porcelain bowl. Her face so puffy that she hardly recognizes it sometimes, always so thin before this, and Chance reaches for a paper towel from the metal dispenser on the wall.

  I should hurry, she thinks, imagining Alice waiting impatiently in the truck, long since finished checking the crates and now she’s probably sitting out there behind the wheel, restlessly tapping her foot, mumbling to herself. A few more minutes and Alice will most likely come looking for her.

  “Yeah,” Chance says aloud. “I should have stayed home,” and then she feels the baby kick again. That strange and gentle pain from inside, and she knows she’ll never get used to it, that the kid will be born long before she could ever hope to take it for granted. The precarious life held inside her belly, the half-Deacon, half-Chance person growing in there, and it makes her dizzy, just the thought of such an extraordinary, unlikely thing. She splashes her face again, the cold to clear her head, wash away the fog, and glances once more at the mirror.

  I should hurry. Alice is waiting for me.

  A large drop of water as red as a ripe cherry gathers on a strand of her wet hair, swells there for a moment, and then pulls free and lands in the sink with an audible plop. Chance stands staring at it, speechless; not water, blood, a crimson spatter of her blood in the sink, and when she touches her forehead, her fingertips come away smeared red.

  “Oh Jesus,” she whispers, her heart racing, fear and confusion and the sick-sharp punch of adrenaline. “Oh fuck,” and there’s no one else but her in the restroom, no one to help, though she could have sworn there was someone only a moment before. An elderly Hispanic woman with a child, only a moment before. Chance’s face in the mirror, stark and pale in the restroom light, and now the blood is running in a thin stream down the right side of her face.

  And the baby kicks again, harder than before.

  Chance looks from her frightened, reflected face to the blood staining her fingers, her blood, and she touches her scalp again. No pain there at all, no sign whatsoever of a cut or a lesion, and she leans closer, parting her hair for a better view.

  But her scalp isn’t bleeding.

  Another drop of blood falls from her face and spatters the white sink.

  “Alice,” she says, never mind that Alice is outside with the truck, with the fossils, and can’t possibly hear her. “Oh god, Alice, something’s wrong with me.”

  There’s a noise behind her, then, a dry and crackling sound like October leaves crunching loud underfoot, and she turns quickly around, slinging blood onto the dingy beige tiles that cover the restroom floor. No one and nothing back there, nothing at all but sterile walls and fluorescent lights, and suddenly her legs feel so weak that Chance thinks she might fall. She’s never fainted in her life, but she thinks maybe this is how it feels before you do, and she leans against the countertop. Chance looks at the restroom door, and surely it’ll open any second now and Alice will come barging in, bitching about having to wait in the truck. Or someone else, a stranger, anyone she can send to get Alice.

  The crackling sound again, and this time it seems to be coming from directly overhead, probably nothing more than squirrels on the roof of the building, the roof covered with fallen leaves, and squirrels rooting about up there for acorns or pecans or something.

  She wipes the blood off her hand onto the denim bib of her overalls and takes a deep breath. She’s always been so strong, always self-sufficient, and nothing worse than this helplessness; overhead, the crunching, scritching sound grows more frenzied, but now she’s pretty sure it’s only squirrels digging for fallen acorns. Only squirrels, squirrels or maybe birds, and she looks back at the sink.

  And it’s completely spotless—a few fat, lingering drops of water that haven’t drained away, and nothing else. She looks at her face in the mirror, and there’s no blood there, either, only her wet bangs plastered flat against her forehead, only her wide, tired eyes. A fleeting moment of relief that isn’t really relief because she knows what she saw.

  “Shit,” Chance says and stands very still, waiting for her racing pulse to return to normal again, for the strength to return to her legs, still wishing that Alice would come walking through the door. At least ten minutes since Chance left her alone in the parking lot, ten or even fifteen, she thinks, and Where the hell are you, Alice?

  No blood in the sink. No blood on her face. No blood smeared across the front of her overalls. Just clean porcelain and busy squirrels scampering about on the roof. She takes another deep breath and shuts her eyes for a moment, opens them again and slowly exhales.

  I’m tired, that’s all. I’m not sleeping enough, and I’m just really fucking tired. Worrying about Deacon all the time and the situation at the university, most of her work neglected for months now. Terrified of the pain, the delivery, and too proud to confess that part to anyone. It’s a miracle it’s taken this long for me to start seeing things, she thinks.

  The baby shifts slig
htly and kicks her again. But this time there’s only comfort in the sensation, and she places a hand on her swollen belly.

  Chance hears the restroom door swing open, hears heavy footsteps, and “Hey, kiddo,” Alice says. “You okay in here? I was starting to get worried.”

  “I’m fine,” Chance tells her, turning away from the mirror. “I was just coming. I didn’t mean to take so long.”

  Alice stares at her uncertainly for a second, and Chance forces a small smile to prove she isn’t lying. “My back’s killing me, that’s all. I’m not looking forward to getting back into that damn truck.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but we’re going to be late if you don’t get a move on. I told you to stay home.”

  “Yes,” Chance says. “Yes, you did.”

  And then Alice takes her hand and leads her out of the restroom and back to the truck.

  When Chance was only six years old, her grandfather asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. Not a second’s hesitation before her reply, “A paleontologist,” and Joe Matthews smiled and hugged her.

  “Well, that would be nice,” he said. “But you just do what you want to do. We’ll be proud of you no matter what.” Joe Matthews was a geologist, and Chance’s grandmother, Esther, an invertebrate paleontologist. Joe had spent his life teaching and studying the sedimentology and stratigraphy of the Late Cretaceous rocks in the west-central part of the state, the Black Belt prairies that had been covered by a shallow seaway at the end of the Age of Reptiles. Esther studied trilobites closer to home, collected her strange little bugs from the Paleozoic shales and limestones exposed across most of the northern part of the state. In her lifetime, she named two new trilobite species—Tricrepicephalus conasaugaensis and Cryptolithus gigas.