Iona Moon (2 page)

But the boy didn't take to his education. Willy heard whispers at home, stories at school. Matt Fry always was the kind who'd throw a kid to the ground for looking at him too hard. He had a reputation and finally lived up to it by biting off a piece of another boy's ear. He got solitary for that. “Lucky for him it was only the hole,” Horton said. “They shoot dogs for less.”

Eighteen days later, when they dragged Matt Fry into the light, he was like this: lame in one foot, skinny as a coyote at the end of winter. He'd forgotten how to talk, forgotten he was supposed to unzip his pants before he took a piss. Willy wondered:
What did the guards do to him when they pulled him off the boy with half an ear? How hard did his head hit the gravel, and how many times?

Matthew returned to White Falls that spring to find the basement windows of his parents' house boarded shut and their doors locked.

Now he lived in the shed by the tracks. The shack was big enough for one man, two sheep and some chickens—if a person could stand the smell. Old man Hardy had lived that way for 40 years. He died in '63, and in the end, it was his smell that drove the animals out.

Willy followed Iona Moon and caught her doing things with Matt Fry. He watched through the window of the shed while they ate cold soup from a can and smoked cigarettes. Matt's head bobbed up and down; spit dribbled from his slack lip. He was more of an idiot than Roy Wilkerson, who was born with those slanty eyes. When Matt tried to eat a cigarette, Iona had to pull it from his mouth.

Another time, Willy saw Iona cover him with a tattered blanket and curl up behind him, belly to butt. She held that filthy boy in her arms and kissed his dirty hair. She pressed herself against his torn jeans, damp with piss and smelling like a body died in them.

Iona didn't mind the smell. Her brothers were always making her pick up dead things. Once she carried a pack rat home by its hairless tail. Mama yelled and Iona cried. Her brothers vanished and she took the licking alone, stood naked in the cold bath water while her mama scrubbed her hands with a brush, soaped her face and wasn't careful of her eyes. But Iona didn't fuss. She was done crying. And she didn't wail when Daddy came home and took his belt to her bare behind. Her brothers watched and she never told on them. She was eight when it happened, and now she was eleven. She still didn't mind the smell of dead things—but she'd learned not to bring them home.

She didn't try to bring Matt Fry home either. She knew what Mama would say if she saw him.
Always was a bad influence, teaching my sons things they didn't need to know
.

But Iona remembered Matthew a different way. He and her three brothers said they had a surprise for her in the gully. They blindfolded her and led her into the trees.
Count to fifty, Iona
. And she did. When she pulled the bandanna down around her neck, they were gone. She sat on a rock, counted to fifty again, but there was no surprise. She sat still as she could, waiting for something to happen.

When Matt circled back, he found her curled on the ground, holding her knees to her chest, her face blotched and salty. “Come on, Iona,” he said, “I'll take you home.”

She said, “I'm not lost.”

“Then why you been cryin'?”

“I wanted—” She choked on her words. “You said you had a surprise.” Matt didn't laugh at her. “I just wanted to
see
something.”

He knelt beside her. She'd been sucking on her hair and he pulled the wet strand from her mouth. “I'll show you something,” he said.

He knew a secret place, a cave he'd dug in the earth at the edge of the woods. He took her there and no one found them. They barely fit down the narrow mouth and had to lie chest to chest, not moving, faces close, legs entwined. The hole was damp with decaying roots and leaves; it smelled like the inside of an animal, her father's bloody hands, a calf just born. She liked being swallowed. She liked this boy with sour breath and skinny arms. He held her tight but didn't rub against her, didn't make her jeans chafe her thighs, didn't bruise her ribs the way her brother Leon did when he paid her a dime to lie down with him.

Days later, she tried to find the cave alone, but a hard rain had made the roof collapse and filled the opening with silt. They could have been buried alive. She thought about that a lot. When Mama swore or Daddy pulled his belt from the loops, she said to herself:
I
could have died
.

Willy knew his mother blamed Horton for the whole thing. “You never should have cuffed him,” she said.

“I wanted him to understand.”

“What if it had been your boy?”

“I would've whupped his ass.”

“You should have taken him home instead of locking him up.”

“How was I supposed to know his folks would leave him there all night?”

“You shouldn't have told them the lights cost so damn much. The boy was just pulling a prank.”

“I don't make the laws, Flo. I just follow them.”

“Why not chop off his hand?”

“Huh?”

“Eye for an eye, Mr. High and Mighty.”

“I wasn't the judge. I didn't send him to that school.”

“You cuffed him like a man. Took him to jail. You called it a felony.”

“I do my job. I do what I think is right.”

“And if some boy loses his head because you're doing what you think is right, well that's just the price of justice.”

“I can't see the future, Flo.”

“You can't see your own hand in the dark.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

But there was no explanation. Willy's mother put on her coat and said she was going for a drive. Horton sat down at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. Willy wanted to go to him, wanted to sit beside him in the dark and say:
Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands
. He knew the words from Sunday school, knew that all men were sinners, all were dirty. Only by God's grace would the chosen few be spared. He wished he could tell his father what he'd seen Iona Moon do with Matt Fry.
If anyone touches an unclean thing, he shall be guilty
. Why should decent folks feel any pity for people like that?

Willy's sisters sneaked up behind him while he stood watching his father. Lorena grabbed his legs and Mariette knocked him over. They pinned him to the floor and started tickling. They weren't strong, but they were both fat. Once they were on top of him, he couldn't move. Willy heard the back door snap. Horton wasn't going to have any of their nonsense tonight. But his father's presence was still in the house.
Don't hurt your sisters
,
Willy
. Lorena was crushing his bladder.
Never hit a lady
. Mariette shoved her fingers into his ribs, not tickling but jabbing, making him writhe.
A man is stronger than any woman. Stronger in his body, stronger in his mind
. He had to pee. Lorena had her big butt right on his pelvis. His arm was twisted behind his back. He felt tears sting his eyes, the hot shame, his bed wet again.
Jesus, Willy
. His mother so tired, stripping the bed, stripping him, buying the rubber sheets that squeaked when he turned in bed, that made him sweat even though the cotton sheets covered them. How old was he then?
Too old to wet the bed
. And now Lorena was bouncing and laughing, loose flesh of her legs jiggling, pink dimpled skin, small eyes squinting shut in delight, and Willy's tears were rolling into his ears and the wet spot was spreading on his jeans and Mariette was squealing, “Willy peed his pants,” and his sisters were both standing, covering their mouths, shaking with laughter, and Willy was on the floor, burning, seeing Iona Moon pressed up tight to Matt Fry, knowing exactly how he smelled. Exactly.

Around midnight, Willy heard two shots and hung his head out the window. Flo's car still wasn't in the drive. The moon was low and almost full, flattened on top like a smashed pumpkin. His father stood in the yard with his pistol drawn. He seemed to waver in the yellow light, and at first Willy thought he'd shot himself in the foot.

By the time Willy got downstairs, his father was underneath an elm at the edge of the lawn, staring at the raccoon he'd shot out of the tree.

“Damn vermin,” he said without looking at the boy. “That coon made a mess of our garage last winter. Stole half a bushel of apples before I got wise to him.”

“How do you know this is the one?” Willy said.

Horton whirled to face Willy. “How do I know?” He cleared his throat and spit on the ground. “What the hell else could it have been?”

Willy backed away from his father. He saw the big man's legs tremble, saw the glint of the gun against his hard thigh. The boy looked at the limp body of the animal, the masked bandit eyes, the pointed nose, the clean paws, delicate as the hands of a tiny woman. He turned and sprinted toward the house, the crushed head of the moon so bright he had to close his eyes.

2

Jeweldeen Wilder pedaled her bike two miles across the Kila Flats to tell Iona what her daddy had done.

“Locked Sharla in the cellar. Says she's not coming out till she tells him who got her in this mess. And she keeps saying the same thing: Everett Fry.”

“Everett's been dead a year and a half.”

“Every time she says it, Daddy just gets madder.”

Jack Wilder was a fat man with no hair who sweated when he thought too hard. Even his fingers were fat. Iona imagined his red face and damp shirt as he stood nose to nose with Sharla, making her say the name one more time.

“Come on,” Jeweldeen said, “we can look at her.”

They raced their bikes down the rutted road, even though Sharla wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

“Where's your daddy?” Iona said when they got to the Wilder place.

“Spreading manure.”

“Hot day for that.”

“He don't mind the smell.”

“Isn't he afraid you'll let Sharla out?”

“Said he'd break my arm if I did.”

“So you won't?”

“She never did much for me.”

They crept around the back of the house to peer down into the cellar. Iona remembered hearing about a man overcome by gas while shoveling fertilizer on a warm day. He fell face down in the stuff and smothered in two inches of shit. She thought this might be a fitting end for a father who locked his own daughter in a hole.

“There she is,” Jeweldeen said.

The tiny window was speckled with dirt. “I don't see her.”

“On that sack of potatoes in the corner.”

Iona could barely make out the lumpy shape of the girl in the shadows.

“She's a mess,” said Jeweldeen. “Thank God my mama isn't here to see this. Daddy says Sharla would put her in her grave for sure if she weren't already there.”

Maywood Wilder had died of pneumonia before Jeweldeen could walk. Now her picture hung on the wall above the television. Jack Wilder liked to remind his daughters that their mother was watching over them, just like God. Such talk could bring Sharla to tears but had no effect on Jeweldeen.

“Mama would have died at least a hundred times if we put her in her grave every time Daddy says.” Jeweldeen puffed out her cheeks and lowered her voice to mimic her father. “Your mama would fall down and die if she saw how filthy you are, Jeweldeen. It'd burst your mama's heart to hear you take the Lord's name in vain, Miss Sharla.” Jeweldeen crossed her arms over her chest and became herself again. “
Geezus
,” she hissed, “my mother has turned over in her grave so many times she's halfway down the hill by now.”

Iona smashed her nose against the mud-spattered glass. Maybe Sharla was fatter, but she always looked soft because she was so fair, skin pale as uncooked dough, hair wispy, almost white. When Sharla was hot, she blotched from her neck to her forehead. Nothing so fine or flattering as a blush ever rose on her cheeks. Jeweldeen was much prettier and knew it. Her hair was thick and wavy, gold as hay.
For my blue-eyed sweetheart
, the man at the candy store always said, touching Jeweldeen's shoulder as he gave her a free bag of sour balls or a long rope of licorice. Even Leon liked Jeweldeen, said she was
dangerous
, and Iona wondered how a thirteen-year-old girl could be a threat to a grown man.

Sharla clutched her knees to her chest and rocked. “She could go crazy down there all by herself,” Iona said.

Jeweldeen clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Go crazy? She
is
crazy. Says she got knocked up by a guy who's been dead since November before last.”

“You think she believes it?”

“Came to her in a dream. Everett weighed nothing at all, but she felt him all the same, like the air just got thicker in that one place.”

Iona tried to imagine this. When Leon climbed on top of her, he'd felt heavy as a cow.

“She says he didn't talk but she heard his voice in her own skull. He told her he was tired of being dead and he was sorry he shot himself.”

Leon didn't talk much either, as Iona recalled, but she'd never known her brother to be sorry about anything.

“That's why he wants Sharla to have his baby. He means to be reborn.”

Leon unzipped his pants but kept them on. Having babies wasn't the point of the whole thing.

“No wonder Daddy locked her in the cellar. Imagine Sharla telling people Everett bumped her.”

Iona remembered Sharla's other dream, the way Everett touched her, the way she exploded. Jack Wilder thought she was cracked long before she expected a dead man's baby.
Like a sick animal
, he said,
but it only happens to females
.

Iona wondered if female animals went crazy from having kids or not having them. After the five-legged calf died, Angel rolled on her back, rubbed the hair off her hide till she bled. Later, she charged the fence, and Iona's father had to hold her while Leon pulled the barbs out of her flesh. Free at last, she tried to jump Leon, the unexpected object of her strange desires.