Iona Moon (16 page)

He scrubbed himself, dressed quickly. He still felt hot and unclean; his clothes stuck to his skin. When he glanced at the mirror, he saw a blue shirt and striped tie but did not see his own face floating above them.

Horton locked himself in the bathroom. Six-thirty: there was time enough, but Willy didn't hear shoes dropping to the floor, didn't hear water running. Minutes later, Flo stood with her ear to the door, listening to the little gasping noises from inside. “Let me in, Horton.” Glass shattered, and Willy knew his father had looked himself in the eye. Did he break the mirror with his fist or his gun? “Horton—please.” Flo sat down beside the door. “I'm here,” she said. “I'm right here.”

Willy flung himself across the bed. Lorena and Mariette came to his room, both in peach-colored dresses with peach ribbons in their hair. They looked like overgrown twins in those outfits, and Willy was glad no one was going to see him with them tonight.

“Aren't we going?” Mariette said to Willy.

“No.”

“You shouldn't miss your own graduation,” Lorena said.

“Leave me alone,” Willy said, and the girls in peach both huffed, crossing their arms over their chests.

“It's
your
graduation,” Lorena said. “Do what you want.”

Willy pulled his pillow over his head but still heard his sisters' heels clicking down the hall.

Later, the bathroom door opened. Willy looked from his dark room to the bright hallway and saw his mother slip inside. The door closed again. He knew his mother held his father, rocked him, said:
It's not your fault
. Now that Horton blamed himself, she could forgive him.
Who will forgive me
, Willy thought.
Who will rock me and make me small again
. A car passed on the street. His sisters giggled in their room. He rolled to his back and stared at the black ceiling.

Iona heard about the yellow lighter and knew it was the one she'd tossed to Darryl McQueen down by the river. So she was the one who set the fire. She brought the boys to the tracks. She teased them. She fought them off. If they'd gotten what they'd wanted from her, they never would have gone after Matthew.

Before Horton Hamilton found him, she'd told herself he was free and flying. She thought she'd fly too, and find him again, in some other place—a place where Matt wore clean clothes and combed his hair, learned to talk and got a job. Maybe they'd rent an apartment. And if none of that could happen, they could just dig a cave in the ground, burrow into the hole, lie down together where no one would ever find them.

He was calm now, Iona was sure of that. Two men in a van had come for him, wrapped him in a white shirt, tied the sleeves behind his back. He was safe in South Bend. But a nuthouse was worse than jail because there was no sentence to serve. This time he was gone for good. They'd clean him up and strap him in a chair. In the afternoon, when the sun was warm, someone might scoot him to the window where he could watch the river swirl and splash against the dam.

“What is wrong with you?” Leon said. Iona had already burned her hand on the casserole and spilled her milk. It was Wednesday, and they were only halfway through dinner.

“She's had a feather up her ass ever since her old sweetheart got busted,” Rafe said. “She's afraid she's never gonna see him again.”

“Unless she goes crazy too,” Dale said.

“She's got a good start,” said Leon.

Frank Moon tapped his empty glass on the table. “Looks like rain tomorrow,” he said. That's as close as he could come to telling the boys to leave her alone. Right then Iona saw exactly how her life was going to be as long as she stayed in this house. She was going to burn her fingers and spill her milk. Her father would talk about the rain or the lack of it. One way or another, her brothers would torment her.
I've got a quarter. What'll you do for a dollar?
Every boy she'd ever known ended up sounding just the same.

As she washed the dishes that night, Iona thought how easy it would be to let the plates slip from her hands. She thought how much sense it made to smash the glasses instead of washing them, to start all over again with one new plate and one new glass: her own.

She smiled as she set the dishes in the drainer, unbroken and dripping, some still slick with soap. What did she care? She was never going to eat off this plate again, or this one. No sense in breaking them when you can just walk away. Hannah would have thrown them to the floor. Hannah would have needed the sound of splintering china because she had nowhere to go.

The highway, the river, the tracks, three ways out of town, but people only leave here by dying
. That's what Hannah said. Iona thought about her mother's life on the Flats, sixteen years in a trailer, a tin box that expanded in summer and contracted in winter until the roof cracked and the rain seeped in, until the walls heaved and the wind blew. In the winter, they nailed plywood over the windows and lived in the dark for five months. Sometimes Hannah's father worked and sometimes he didn't. In the summer the children gathered dandelion greens and berries. The boys fished for trout: rainbow, steelhead, cutthroat. They ate well. In the winter they made squirrel stew, and no one asked if the carrots and potatoes had been bought or stolen. No one mentioned that the skinned squirrel looked big and had long legs, like a cat.

Hannah's drunken father drove off the road one cold night, hit a pole and banged his head, just a little bruise the doctor said, he would have been fine, but he froze to death instead, two miles from home. The light outside the trailer burned and burned.

Thinking about her mother's life made Iona ashamed to feel sorry for herself. And this was only the beginning. Hannah lived on the Flats for twenty-five more years, in a big house with a solid roof, with a husband who stayed home when he drank, safe and warm. But the windowpanes still rattled in winter, and sons were not so different from brothers. Hannah's brother Quinte mangled three fingers in a thrashing machine, and Raymond blasted two with a firecracker.
A man and a half
. They laughed and laughed. But their sister Margaret said:
Less than
that, not one full life between them
. Though her sons stayed whole, Hannah saw them in dreams: hands bloodied, toes shot off, ears nipped by the spray of BB pellets. She waited for this so long it might as well have happened.

No wonder, Iona thought, no wonder she found a way to leave.

Iona rinsed the silverware and sponged the inside of the glass she was never going to drink from again. She kissed her father's forehead as she passed him in the living room. He patted her arm but didn't look up. Didn't he think it strange? When was the last time she'd kissed him—when was the last time he'd looked at her. “Off to bed so early?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “I'm beat.”

At three-thirty the next morning, Iona Moon packed three pairs of jeans and two sweatshirts, four tops and all the underwear she owned. When she passed her mother's room, she closed the door. Her father was right. The rain had just started. She took her denim jacket and a rubber poncho, all the grocery money from the sugar tin in the kitchen, sixty-two dollars: she figured she'd earned it. She carried her suitcase out to the barn and milked the cows. She'd worry all day if she left them full and miserable. How many hours would it take for her father and brothers to understand that she was really gone. How many more hours to decide who would milk the cows tomorrow. They'd fight over women's work. Sooner or later, Dale would lose.
Don't be afraid of her, Iona. A cow likes a girl with a good grip
. She imagined her father standing at the window. Rain streaked the glass. At first she thought he was looking for her, but then she realized he was still looking for her mother.
Breathe when she does
. Her brothers were hungry. Which one of them would open the first can?
Don't take your hands away too fast
.

But she'd already let go.

9

Iona drove the truck to town and parked it in the lot at the Roadstop Bar. Drizzle turned to downpour. She sat on her suitcase for almost an hour before a lady on her way to Coeur d'Alene pulled over. The woman had been on the road all night, she said, and hoped Iona knew how to drive. Coeur d'Alene wasn't exactly on Iona's route, but it brought her closer.

“My kid got busted,” the woman said as Iona slid behind the wheel. “Stole a car and headed north. I said, ‘Just ship him home.' But they wouldn't do it. Said I had to come get him. Little sonuvabitch. I said, ‘Why don't you call his father?' Of course they didn't get the joke. Interstate transportion of stolen property—lucky for his ass he's only sixteen.” She bunched up a sweater and rested her head against the window. “Mind if I catch a few winks?”

“I don't mind.” Iona thought about her father finding his truck later today. He'd be pissed. But the car wasn't stolen, just misplaced. No one would come after her.

“You sure you know this road?” the woman said.

Fog rolled over the highway. Iona nodded.
Every inch
, she thought.

The woman opened one eye. “I've got half a mind to just leave him in jail.”

Iona always wondered about people who admitted they had half a mind.

“Teach the little bugger a lesson.”

Yeah
, Iona thought,
teach him a lesson. Burn down his shack. Put him in a white shirt. Wrap the sleeves around his body and tie them in a foot. Little bugger
.

“But I've got a soft spot for the kid. Know what I mean?”

Why shouldn't you?
Iona thought.
He's your kid
.

The woman stared at Iona, waiting for an answer. Iona said she knew. “Hey,” the woman said, “you're not running away, are you?”

“Visiting my sister.”

“That's good. That's very good.”

She couldn't run away. To run away you had to think that someone might try to find you and bring you home.

The lady fell asleep fast. She snored. No wonder the kid took off. She farted in her sleep. Iona cracked the window and lit a cigarette. The rain had almost stopped and it was growing light.

Getting out of Idaho wasn't easy. No roads cut the forests, only rivers, so Iona had to drive south before heading north, or east before west. She took the eastern route, toward Montana.

A dead skunk got revenge. His scent hung in the fog, filled the car and stayed with them for half an hour. Iona saw a porcupine, two rabbits, five ground squirrels. Some had been stunned but not crushed; they seemed to sleep on the pavement. She remembered a dog with a broken spine. It had dragged itself to the side of the road, and she sat with his head in her lap while he looked at her with his huge wet eyes, big and dark as a doe's eyes. She felt the dog's weight against her, felt the wild hammering of his heart—as if he had become all heart. Then she realized: this wasn't her memory at all, but something Hannah had told her.

Still the woman snored, oblivious to all this death on the quiet road. When they passed the smoking pulp mills of Missoula, Iona thought it would have been as good a place to stay as any if she hadn't had to worry about her brothers showing up next winter, finding her by mistake, feeling obligated to haul her home.

It was almost two when they crossed into Idaho again.
Nine hours
, Iona thought,
and here I am
.

She was glad to leave the woman in Coeur d'Alene, but she felt sorry for the boy.

A trucker took her to Spokane. Twenty-five minutes and she was across the border, in a different state, free at last. He dropped her at the first exit, and it was almost five before she hitched a ride with two long-haired college boys headed for Seattle. One was blond and tanned, thick as a football player. The other was thin and wore wire-rims. They said their name was Larry, both of them. This made them laugh, and the skinny one rolled a joint.

The road was dry and dusty. It hadn't rained in Washington. Iona drifted toward sleep, then woke, startled. Every time she opened her eyes she saw the same thing: a farmhouse on a hill, a clump of trees, a red truck. The white houses made her heart pound. She kept thinking the boys had turned around and brought her home. She stuck her head out the window to let the wind whip her face.

“You got a place to stay?”

Iona opened her eyes in the dark car. One of the Larrys was talking to her. Now she saw a black lake, a long bridge, buildings in every direction, the yellow lights of winding streets, the glow of living rooms. The bridge wavered. She could be lost here, and safe.

“We're gonna crash with some friends,” said little Larry. “Sleep on the floor. They won't mind one more body.”

The concrete bridge floated on the water for more than a mile, a mystery, its lights delicate and blue, and Iona wondered why the years of waves hadn't torn it from the shore.

The Larrys took her to a two-bedroom apartment on Olive Street where five other people expected to spend the night. They ate chocolate cupcakes and potato chips, drank wine, smoked pot. Skinny Larry put his arm around her, and no one asked how they'd met. Later he got up to go to the bathroom. When he came back, Iona was lying on the floor behind the couch. She felt him staring. He stooped and jabbed her shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “wake up.” She played dead. If he was anything like her brothers, he'd give her a kick, just to be sure. But he didn't. Iona heard blond Larry say, “I told you she was a waste of time, and not much to look at so what's the point?”

She woke before it was light; early enough to milk the cows, she thought. She climbed over the bodies in the living room. Larry still wore his wire-rims. The other Larry sprawled on the couch. Three girls huddled on a piece of foam, spooned together—little rabbits, Iona thought. No one had a blanket. She found her suitcase near the door. Someone had opened it and pawed through her clothes.