Life on Other Moons Page 2

meant. We were friends, and that is how things would remain. We would die virgins, probably the same day, probably together but still needlessly alone. Now the question was how. Would whatever had taken the women come back for us one day? Was the moon’s split the first step indeed? Suddenly I felt sick. I was about to excuse myself when three frat boys rushed into the bar, knocking a man over at the door.

  "Dudes, check this out," one of them said. "There’s a fucking queen on the avenue!"

  There was a stampede as most of the men in the bar rushed outside, bottlenecking at the door, some trading punches. Matthew and I were the last to move toward the door, and we did so quietly by comparison. Larry Joe stayed behind, cleaning beer off the bar with a dirty white rag, talking to another young man who couldn’t be bothered by a queen.

  The rest of us were curious.

  On the avenue was a woman in a white robe with a crown on her head. She stood in the middle of the road, and as Matthew and I got closer, the students who’d left before us were already surrounding her and staring. Men from the town walked toward the crowd as well, some of them with blank expressions on their faces, stopping to talk to porch lights along the way. It was then that I noticed some of the students, too, were talking to porch lights. I’d never seen so many of these porch light men before in one place.

  "Look," I said. "So many of them. They’re nuts."

  We stopped walking, and one of the porch light men pointed at the queen. "Girl," he said. He rubbed his crotch.

  "Do you think this will happen to all of us?" I said, looking at Matthew.

  "Don’t know," he said.

  "What do you mean you don’t know? You always have an opinion."

  "This time I’m speechless."

  He laughed, and I knew he was nervous.

  "Just as long as you don’t start talking to porch lights," I said. "I can’t have you turning on me. I’d be lost."

  He shook his head. "I’d never turn on you. Not for a woman, if that’s what’s going on."

  We looked at the crowd once more and saw it in the midst of change. Some men walked from house to house, talking to porch lights, perhaps gearing up to go meet the queen. Others just crowded around her and looked. She stood there in her robe of white. She swayed on the spot like the moon dancing with itself.

  "You won’t be able to help it, though," I said. "Look at them, they’re lonely."

  "I think whatever affected them can’t get us. We have each other. We always will."

  "But am I enough?"

  He put his arms out and reeled me in once more, but this time, it was his lips that he pressed against my neck. There was no beard burn. He looked up.

  "Even if you were broken like the moon, you’d be more than enough," he said. "I love every little piece of you, and I mean that."

  I hugged him tighter. "I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was six," I said.

  "I know," he said. "Do it."

  So I did, and suddenly the queen didn’t matter very much. And neither did the moon.

  Paterfamilias

  It was very early on a Sunday, still somewhat dark out, and he was alone on the tiny island of a dirty Alabama river. Already, he had managed to clean up the brush from the storm the night before, freeing a trapped squirrel in the process. It had thanked him with a nudge from its nose. It had called him "master," and he had crowned himself king of the river island and of the constituents of the surrounding forest.

  But he had a gun with him, and on his clothes, he wore the colors and patterns and smells of nature. There was deer pee on his shoes and, though he’d tried to avoid it, even in his hair. This was the hunting protocol he had learned as a young man. He had come here today not out of the kindness of his heart but out of a need to provide for his family.

  Not long after his enthronement, he saw the deer enter the clearing. He lifted his gun, lined up the crosshairs, fired. The animals went wild. Around him, blackbirds cawed in anger; trout flipped their tails at him; other animals began to flee. The squirrel that had been so gracious was now long gone.

  Now the deer lay dead at his feet, ready to be dressed. He held the knife in his hand. He was sedulous and unrelenting. He worked alone, sitting in the deer’s pluck and pondering the nature of life and the question of God and why he had really come to the river island today—and what was in store for him in the wilds of Vietnam.

  He thought of his father, who had taught him not only how to kill and field dress almost anything under the sun but also that it was necessary. Such knowledge had been passed down from father to son for generations. By now, this son was a pro with the equivalent forethought and practice of a hundred other men in the McKee lineage running through his mind, his veins, his entire being. Hunting was what a man was supposed to do in the McKee household. In fact, it seemed everything he did lately was "what a man should do." He was shipping out soon to serve his country, to hunt down the Viet Cong. To protect his family. Although he was proud of his service, he knew there was a chance it could deprive the next generation. Acting as a man, as the paterfamilias of his family, had always felt natural to him. He just had to be alive to do it.

  As he pulled the last of the deer’s guts out onto the ground, he thought of his own tiny son, who was next in line to receive the knowledge of men. He washed his hands as best he could in the filthy river. He touched his chest and felt the dog tags beneath his shirt. He prayed that no one would ever have to read them.

  Don’t Mind the Bunny

  On the wall of the hospital gift shop was a stained oak shelf loaded with plush toys, among them a slim yellow bunny with long, ragged ears. Also on the shelf were a lion, a hippo, and a teddy bear. In the course of a day, many men and women passed by the shelf, most looking sad and stressed, some on the verge of tears. One day, a man stood there and quietly spoke of his troubles, to no one in particular.

  "My God," he said. "What to get? So much to choose from. If I pick the lion, it might scare her. Most of these are too big; I don’t want her to suffocate in her sleep. The bunny looks a little cheap. But somehow…"

  He picked up the bunny, ran his fingers up and down its ears. He turned it over and looked at the tail, which was fluffy but small. He must have decided, however, that the bunny was ideal after all, as he walked it to the cash register the next moment.

  "Nice," said the woman at the cash register. She scanned the price tag. "This is our most-loved item. Total’s $8.99."

  "This is your most popular toy?" the man said. "I wouldn’t have known just from looking at it." He handed her the money.

  "I didn’t say it was our most-purchased item," she said. "Has the baby been born yet?"

  "How did you know?"

  She put the bunny in a plastic bag with the receipt and held it out to the man. She smiled. "With the bunny, it’s always a birth."

  "I see," he said, and he took the bag. "She’s with my wife. Thanks for the bunny."

  He left the shop and carried the plastic bag with the bunny inside it to the elevator. He went to room 508 and opened the door. Inside was a tired-looking new mother on a hospital bed, nursing an infant girl who had very little hair. The man’s face lit up when he saw them. He held up the bag as he walked toward the woman and child.

  "Got it," he said.

  He handed the bag to the woman, and she put her hand inside and pulled out the bunny. She turned it over a couple of times, examining it.

  "This is what you got her?" she said.

  "What’s wrong with it?"

  "It’s just a little sad, that’s all. Isn’t it?"

  The man frowned. The woman laughed.

  "I’m sorry," she said. "Don’t look so dejected. If this is what you chose for her, she’s going to love it. It’s already growing on me."

  She sat the bunny on the bed and reached toward him.

  "Come here," she said. She pulled his face into hers and kissed his cheek. "Thank you. For everything."

  "It’s my job, right?"

  He sat in one of t
he chairs next to her bed and watched as she continued nursing. When the baby girl had had her fill, the woman burped her and then held her up and looked into her eyes, which were barely open. The woman picked up the bunny with her free hand and held it in front of the girl, who almost instantly fell asleep.

  Resting on the six-year-old girl’s bed was the yellow bunny, now with only one long, ragged ear. The disheveled bedspread was adorned with blue and purple flowers and had yellow-brown stains in some places. A lamp was turned over on the floor, still lit. In the corner of the blue-carpeted room sat the girl, now with a head full of brown hair, quietly drawing on the wall with her feces, her soiled clothes in a pile on the floor. She was laughing when the man came in.

  "Jesus Christ!" he said.

  He ran to the girl and grabbed hold of both arms. She screamed. She fought to free herself, but the man easily restrained her. She lay down on the floor and repeatedly kicked her feet against the wall, smearing feces on her foot and further soiling the wall and carpet.

  "Stop it!" the man said.

  She kept screaming and kicking, and it was not long before the woman came into the room and her mouth dropped open. The man looked at her.

  "Help me!" he said, trying to hold the girl steady.

  The woman rushed over and, taking care to avoid the feces, took hold of the girl’s legs while the man held her arms. The girl continued to scream and fight until, finally, she was out of breath and coughing. Her limbs went limp as she coughed, and the man and woman let go. The girl sat up and coughed two more times.