Iona Moon (24 page)

On the thirteenth day it poured. At five-thirty Eddie Birdheart put a newspaper over his head and clumped from the gas station to the store. He slid his thermos across the counter. “Can you fill this up?” he said.

“Coffee's old,” Iona told him.

“I can wait.” He lit a cigarette. His eyes were bloodshot and his hand shook as he held the cigarette to his lips. “I haven't been sleeping so well,” he said.

“Me neither.”

“It's raining.”

“Yes.”

“Looks like it'll rain all day,” Eddie said.

“Looks like it'll rain forever.”

“Mama Pearl's been calling me again,” Eddie said, “the usual way—the phone rings, I pick it up. I told Alice I didn't have no Indian girl. I told her I paid white man's money for it right here in town and she shouldn't worry about me going to see my own mother. I told her I was driving up to see Mama Pearl today, make sure she's been to the store and has something in her cupboard besides beans.”

“Bad day to be on the road.”

“I'm not going,” he said.

“Coffee's ready.”

“I don't want it now.”

“You mean I made this for nothing?”

“I'll come back at seven.”

“For the coffee?”

“Yes, for the coffee.”

“I'll keep the thermos,” Iona told him. “I'll have it ready for you.”

She met Eddie outside, but he wouldn't take the coffee. “You hold it,” he said, so she got in the car and held the thermos between her legs.

As they drove toward the marina, they talked about the rain, how cold it was today, how the sky seemed to be falling.

Eddie couldn't run from the parking lot to the boat. He had to hop and skip on his good leg, swing his right leg to catch up, then hop again. “Don't ever get in trouble with me,” he said, “I won't get away.”

Their clothes were wet, so they undressed quickly without touching each other. He sat on the edge of the bed to release the valve on his leg and rock the stump out of the socket. Iona thought of Alice's threat:
You better sleep with your leg. I might steal it anytime
. Leaving it on the floor was the bravest thing she'd ever seen Eddie do.

He was already hard. He had a condom this time and was slowly rolling it over himself. It seemed to take all his concentration, as if his penis were a separate person, a small man in a rubber suit who might try to flee if he let go.

Iona had seen plenty of condoms, flattened in their cases, stuffed in wallets. Boys started carrying them at twelve and hoped to need them before they were fifteen. She had seen used ones lying on the bank of the Snake River, limp and sodden. She thought she should tell him she'd had her period last week. In the days before it came, she remembered Sharla crouching on the cellar floor and wondered if she could do what Sharla had done. She thought he should ask, but he didn't, and she wanted to hit him, thinking how afraid she'd been. She pushed him back on the bed and kissed him hard instead. She bit his lower lip and sucked his tongue into her mouth, kept sucking so he couldn't pull away, and she knew it hurt but didn't care. He pushed himself inside of her, and that hurt too, but not as much as the last time. She thought the rubber would stop him or slow him down at least, but they were moving against each other, struggling to get something. She saw her father's dogs tugging at their chains in the yard, nearly choking themselves to get a scrap of meat or bare bone. They shredded the pig's entrails, devoured its balls. They fought over a bloody piece of cloth, a rag from the truck that Leon had used to wipe his hands after gutting a rabbit. Eddie's face was red, his eyes pinched shut. Iona gasped, but there wasn't enough air for both of them. Her lungs tightened, squeezed small as fists as the rain hammered the window and pounded the deck, as the rain pelted the water, as her body turned hard and black as the waves and the rain pierced her back like icy slivers. Eddie pulled her down, hid his face against her chest and moaned—terrible, that sound, Angel's hopeless cry. Iona saw her father's arms, dripping blood and mucus. She saw him put his whole arm inside the cow, and she felt it too, felt herself opening wider and wider, but there was no hoof to grab, no blind calf to save, only the carved hollow of her empty body and Eddie inside of her. He arched and heaved, cried out to God though she knew he didn't believe. A ripple moved through him, chest to thigh, then he lay still, and she lay on top of him. She felt small as a child, floating on his belly, rising and falling with his breath; she was weightless, insubstantial, a man's dream. She saw her mother holding Angel's head. She felt her mother stroking her own cheek. Her hands were cool, and Iona's face was hot with fever.

She thought Eddie was falling toward sleep, already slipping out from under her, but his pelvis began to move again, slowly; “I'm still hard,” he whispered. He kissed her palms, her wrists, the tender underside of her forearms. He kissed her neck and bony shoulders, licked behind her ears and at the corners of her eyes. He held her tight to his chest and barely moved, only rocked, as the boat rocked on the water, as the earth wafted on the sea. Iona felt her body growing big again. She clung to Eddie but seemed to hold all of him inside of her, as if they had become the same thing, parts of the same body. Her skin was cool as rain but there was a warm place spreading from her thighs to her belly, a pool, hotter than blood, flowing into her chest and down her legs. Someone was crying. Someone was saying,
Don't, baby, please don't cry
. But the sobbing didn't stop, and the body that was theirs moved faster and faster, against itself. She closed her eyes and saw the square light of the window flashing in her mind with each thrust, bright though the day was dark, brighter each time she moved until the glass exploded, bursting behind her eyelids. The hot pool flooded her brain, and she knew what Everett felt when the gun went off; she knew what Hannah was trying to say.

She couldn't stop sobbing, and Eddie was afraid. Her hands were cramped like claws and her face was numb. Her scalp burned, as if her hair had caught fire, and she saw herself standing at the trash barrel after Hannah had shaved her head. She threw fistfuls of her own hair into the can and struck a match. Eddie kept asking a question she couldn't answer or understand. Her hair sizzled and stank. She wished he'd leave her alone. Hannah stood, watching, beyond the smoke, beyond the mesh of the screen door. Iona wanted to fall into the dark. The ground would be hard when she hit bottom, a well gone dry, too deep, too black to see anyone. She'd lie alone, curled into herself, beyond all voices.

“Sonuvabitch.” Iona thought the word came out of a dream, her mother cussing at her father, blaming him. She opened her eyes and felt the boat rolling on the water. She was in the wrong place to hear her mother's voice. “I can't fuckin' believe this.” The voice was male, not a dream at all. “A gimp and a piece of jailbait.” Eddie pushed Iona away from him and leaned over the bed, reaching for his leg. “Don't even think about it, asshole.”

Iona saw the outline of two men, one tall and thick, the other wiry, half a foot shorter than the big man. The heavy one used his flashlight like a weapon, following the lines of their bodies, slowing to inspect the stump of Eddie's leg, blasting between his thighs to be sure nothing was missing there. The beam hit Iona's breasts and neck before it slammed against her face and blinded her.

Eddie tried to pull the blanket over them, but the little man yanked it from his hands and ripped it from the bed. “You're in deep, asshole.” He spat the words.

“Breaking and entering. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” The heavy man had a soft voice, matter-of-fact.

“Statutory rape.” The way the nasty little one said it made the words seem true, and the light in the other one's hand cut a bright line from Iona's chin to her crotch.

Eddie leaned over the bed again, grabbing for his pink leg. “Don't do it,” the hefty one said.

“I'm just getting my leg,” Eddie told him. “Can I put on my leg?”

He sounded like a child awakened from a bad dream. The light on his stump made the skin look violet; the old scar flared. Everyone on the boat was having the same dream.

“Yeah, cover up that damn thing.” The big man was sensible at least. “We're taking you downtown,” he said.

“You too, sweetheart.” The scrawny one lurched toward Iona and she jerked. “Look at that,” he said. “She'll fuck a one-legged Indian, but she's scared of me.”

Iona had never dressed so slowly. Her fingers seemed twisted, joints swollen. Eddie put the two-holed stocking over his stump and eased himself into the socket of the leg. He stood, threading the stocking out the valve hole. His pink leg was more naked than he was, stark and frightening in the glare of the flashlight. The men watched him instead of Iona, and she wondered if Eddie's missing limb made them afraid for themselves, sorry and angry at the same time.

They were in uniform but didn't look like real policemen. Just security guards, Iona thought, the worst kind, men who had to act tough to make up for all the things they couldn't do, for the guns they didn't carry.

She couldn't tell what time it was. The square of sky in the tiny window had been dark all day, as if the sun never rose but only moved along the edge of the horizon.

The nasty one jabbed Eddie with his nightstick. “Let's go,” he said. Outside, Iona saw their sedan—brown, like their uniforms—it said:
Waterfront Security, Inc
. The fat man was old, sixty at least, big but not strong, his bulk a burden. Iona believed he was sorry and wanted to let them go.

The skinny one was a kid, barely older than Iona but almost bald. He wanted to cuff Eddie, and the weary one said, “Relax, Dave, he ain't going anywhere.”

“We've been waiting for you,” Dave said. “We knew someone was using this boat.”

When they got to the car, Eddie said, “Let her go. I told her it was my friend's boat.”

“The boys downtown can decide about that,” Dave said.

Iona leaned against Eddie in the backseat but couldn't look at him. He hid his face in her hair, whispering words she didn't understand. She thought she had lost something precious, these last tender phrases, apologies or regrets, promises he could not keep.

At the station, they emptied their pockets on the concrete counter, and Iona was surprised to see the knife.
My sweet
, she muttered. It looked small to her now, useless and rusted, too stiff to open fast, too dulled to do any harm. Still, it was the one thing she didn't want to give up.

She was taken one way and Eddie the other. She looked over her shoulder and saw his straight back, his long, dark hair. She wished it was pulled back, tightly braided, safe.

Fingers in ink, photos against a wall, the guard who took Iona was small and efficient, a girl scout grown up. They walked an endless hall of beige tile. A steel door rumbled along its tracks, closing behind them with a clap that echoed, fainter and fainter but never ceasing. Somewhere a phone kept ringing. Seven rings, and then eleven—
pick it up
, she thought, and someone did, but in a moment it was ringing again.

She landed in a cell with three women. Two hung together, like sisters. They wore high heels and short skirts. One had a black leather jacket and bright red hair. The other was a fake blonde with a fake fur. The third woman looked like the Scavenger Lady but much older, a hundred years older, her face crinkled as brown muslin. She lay stiff on the concrete bench, pretending to sleep, clutching her shoes to her chest, priceless shoes, cracked and muddy, but real leather, the only thing she owned that was worth stealing.

The redhead and the blonde looked Iona up and down, trying to figure out why she was here. They smoked. Iona wanted a cigarette too, but she'd lost her pack.

Finally the blonde said, “What'd you do, baby face, steal some candy?”

“Breaking and entering,” Iona said. It sounded important.

“Bullshit.” The blonde had crooked teeth and hard red lips. “So what'd you get?” she said.

“Nothing. We were just using the place.”

“We? We? Listen to that,” the blonde said, nudging her friend. “The scrawny babe has a sweetheart.”

“Leave her alone, Rita.”

“Don't call me that.”

“It's your name.”

“I don't like it when you call me that.”

Iona crouched against the wall. The toilet was clogged, full of piss and paper. The phone wailed again in the distance. She heard voices in other cells, cusses and cries, one refrain:
You fuckin' bitch
, said over and over at different pitches.

A guard waddled down the hall. This one moved like a man; her hair was clipped short, almost a crew cut, but the hard cones of her breasts defied her. She unlocked the door and pointed to Iona. “You're out o' here,” she said. Iona expected the big woman to take her to a room with a table and no windows. She thought she'd have to answer questions:
How many times did you break into the boat
—
what did he tell you
—
how long have you known him?

But they were letting her out. The man at the desk gave her the change she'd emptied from her pockets, her keys and lighter, the knife, the comb. She knew Eddie had taken the rap, told them it was his idea and his fault. She knew they didn't believe him but pretended they did: he was saving them a lot of paperwork. And he was an Indian. That made it simple. Iona wished one of the policeman were as bad-tempered as the little security guard. He'd make her take her share of the blame. She hated Eddie for getting her off. She wanted to be locked up, safe in the same way he was. She had nowhere to go except the bare room on Fir Street.

The rain on her face was sharp, a thin drizzle cutting her cheeks. Buildings made a deep canyon down Fifth Avenue. Streetlights hummed. She thrust her hands in her pockets. She'd find a store, buy some cigarettes, get to work on time, make Stanley happy.