Copper Moon

  Rachel Caine

  To Vin Richards, Keith McCarty, Mr. Shelton, Mr. Sudduth, and all my musical friends and mentors.

  Most especially, to Marcia McNiel Diehl and P. N. Elrod, for being chandeliers in a world of bug zappers.

  Special heartfelt thanks to my editor, Jennifer Sawyer Fisher. She knows why.

  Prologue and Fugue: August 5, 1957

  Sometime just around sundown, when the whole world turned red, she gave up. It wasn’t any considered thing; she just got tired, and sat down where she was on the rough gravel at the edge of Texas State Highway 115 West, going nowhere or going to hell, depending on where you started from. One thing about going nowhere: you sure didn’t know when you got there.

  She thought about crying but she’d done that until she was sick, and anyway there didn’t seem to be much to cry about anymore. The world was red, and she sat on sharp gritty rocks with sand blowing in her face, wearing a twenty-five-cent dress from a rag bin.

  Her feet were all cut to hell.

  I’m lost, she thought, and pulled up her legs to wrap her arms around them the way she had when she was little, when she’d wanted to make herself small so things would go away. It’s not so bad.

  Behind her, soft padding noises and harsh panting. Without looking away from the flat red horizon she said “C’mere, dog,” and he whined and pressed his skinny body against her. She patted him on the flank, hardly noticing the stink anymore; he’d been roaming longer than she had, that was for sure. Hard to tell what kind of dog he was. Big and old, scarred on one side and one ear missing. He whined again and she scratched at the mass of fleas leaping on his coat. “Poor old boy. How’s that?”

  He slurped on her hand, then her face. She’d been scared to touch him at first, mean-looking beast, and then she’d gotten sick looking at all the ticks and fleas and God-knew-what crawling on him. Then it had all stopped mattering, things like ugliness and ticks and fleas. His stumpy tail beat against her leg and she scratched his patchy neck and stared at the sunset. Waiting.

  Waiting for nothing.

  “I ain’t afraid,” she said to the dog, as the world started going brown instead of red. “Used to be, but ain’t now. Like you.”

  He licked his chops in agreement and settled down next to her, head on her lap.

  They watched the world go black. She thought, right before the sun disappeared, This is the best night of my life, and she was right. On the far eastern horizon, the new moon rose like a fresh penny.

  “See that?” She rubbed his flea-bitten ears. “Copper moon. Good light for traveling.”

  In the distance, like some wild animal growling, she heard a truck coming down the highway. She didn’t bother to move; it was getting dark, and nobody stopped anyway, not for some stray starving mongrel and a skinny girl. She closed her eyes and listened to the truck rumble closer. It was making squeaks, like the springs were old. A song was playing on the radio. Nat King Cole. She’d always liked Nat King Cole. She caught the smell of burning oil on the thin hot breeze.

  Lights splashed over her. The dog woofed and lifted his head; she kept her eyes closed because she didn’t want to see the truck. Seeing it might make it real, and she was tired of real, she just wanted quiet.

  The truck’s rumble sputtered and died, and in the stillness she heard Nat singing, clear and cool. The tires made a smacking sound on the hot pavement as the truck rolled to a stop. The dog scrambled to his feet and let out a deep-chested, wet-sounding bark.

  “Hush,” she said. He didn’t listen, just kept barking and barking, spraying her with hot spit and noise. A truck door creaked open and slammed. Footsteps crunched.

  She opened her eyes and saw a man staring at her. He was big, rawboned, brown as an Indian and leathery from the sun. He wore old faded work pants and a greasy shirt and a straw hat with holes like rats had gotten at it.

  Narrow light-colored eyes.

  “Ya’ll’s on my land,” he said tightly.

  She started rocking back and forth, not so much scared as distressed. She didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want anything but quiet.

  “We got law ’round here, missy. No trespassers. I could shoot you if I was of a mind to.”

  She knew the law enough to know the gravel beside State Highway 115 wasn’t his land, but that didn’t matter much, not out here in the dark. His land was where he said it was. The gravel stabbed sharp, but she didn’t stop rocking, no, sir, the pain was good, it kept her from being scared.

  “Shut that dog up,” the farmer said. The dog barked louder, like he knew he was being talked about, and charged like a bull. The farmer backed up toward his truck.

  “Hush, boy,” she whispered. It didn’t matter. She wished she could make the dog understand that, but for dogs it always mattered. Little things, like skinny girls in ragged dresses. Big things, like the farmer and his cold blue eyes.

  The dog snarled and crouched, ready to spring. The farmer reached in the bed of his truck and pulled out a long rusted piece of iron pipe. He smacked his palm with it and grinned down at the dog.

  “Well, you just come on,” he said. She stopped rocking.

  “Boy. C’mere, boy. Boy!” She slapped the gravel next to her. The dog’s legs trembled with strain. He looked around at her and his snarling stopped. “That’s it, boy. Good boy.”

  The farmer stepped up and swung the pipe like a bat, slamming it into the dog’s side with a wet, thick crunch. She lunged forward, slipped on gravel, skinned her knees, tried to grab the farmer’s arm. He shook her off and took aim again.

  The dog whined and tried to crawl away.

  It did matter, it did. The dog was right; it mattered.

  She saw the farmer’s eyes when he brought the pipe down again, and again, and again, until the dog wasn’t moving any more and the night was quiet except for Nat King Cole, singing on the wind.

  “Law says I can kill me trespassers,” the farmer said. She knew she should get off her knees but the sticky warm tar of the road held her down. He grabbed her hair and raised her head until their faces were inches apart. Close up his eyes looked like blue marbles, cracked with white. “Guess that means I can do pretty much anything I want with ’em.”

  There wasn’t any point in fighting him but she didn’t want to leave the dog, not right there on the road where somebody’d run him over, he didn’t deserve that, he was a good dog. The farmer hit her with the pipe until she couldn’t breathe for the blood in her mouth and threw her in the back of the truck on top of old rusty pieces of metal and barbed wire. Blood dripped off her face like tears and above her the sky turned black, black as the tarry road, and all she could see was the fierce bright copper moon.

  She just wished it was quiet, that was all.

  And she wished he hadn’t killed the dog.

  Opening Movement: December 3, 1994

  Huntsville, Texas

  He knew prison tradition, and he damn well knew it was custom for guards to stand at the gate and shake his hand as he left. Nearly thirty years in this place, hardly a breath of air or a look at the clean blue sky, and the only men waiting were the ones who had to be there. The two mangy bastards couldn’t even crack a smile for him. They were wearing silvery sunglasses today, and he saw himself twisted like a hunchback in reflection, his hair gone thin and gray. The damn Salvation Army suit hung on him like a secondhand sack.

  “Well, boys, any last words of advice?” He pulled in a deep breath of the morning. Pure free air, scented with pine and grass; he caught the stale smell of prison and knew he carried the reek of despair in his clothes. The guards’ mirrored glasses shifted away from him and reflected the rising sun, the cool green tree line, the dull gray gun towers.

  And they said nothing at all.

  The outer gate squealed as it ran back on its tracks, like the jaws of hell pried open. He took a firmer grip on the secondhand duffel bag and took a step forward, coming even with the guards. They shifted away like he was tubercular.

  “You want some advice, pops? Stay out,” one of them said, he didn’t know which. He backed up and grinned at the both of them.

  “Surely do intend to.” He tipped an imaginary hat to them with callused hands. “Ya’ll have a nice day, boys.”

  They stood rock-still as he strolled out the gate, out into the cold Texas morning. Out into freedom.

  Custer Grady was a free man again.

  He walked to the road, where the bus would presently wind its way around the curve and squeal to a stop for him, where the bus driver would look at him like a rotten worm in a fresh apple but would take him on into town anyway. He had the bus fare in his pocket, jingling like Christmas bells. After that—

  After that, he had things to see to.

  He sat down on the rough concrete bench and scuffed his shoes in the winter-blasted grass. In the distance, at the foot the gentle hill, a freeway sliced through the trees, and cars moved along in a shimmering blur. Freeway, now there was a word. He was a free man on the freeway.

  “Yes, sir,” he continued. The blunt silver nose of the bus edged around the curve and blundered toward him. “It’ll all be over soon.”

  Midland, Texas, same day

  Abby’s first thought of the day was I’m going to be sick, and then she was, violently, into the trash can she’d put next to her bed. It was a wide-mouthed trash can with two plastic liners, just to be sure.

  Preparation paid off.

  When the spasms were over she lay back and folded her hands over her rolling stomach and tried
calming exercises. Start with your toes. Her toes had nothing to do with it, it was her hands, it was her goddamn hands. Are your toes relaxed?

  Of course they weren’t. She went on to her feet. By the time she’d reached her thighs she was tired of the whole thing and sat up. Sitting up was bad. Her stomach lurched, and she had to think about emptying the trash can. Better to do it now, while her stomach was still in shock.

  The bed had been warm—not comforting, exactly, but warm. The floor was another story, chill sliding across the wood like invisible snakes to writhe around her ankles. She hip-hopped to the many-times-painted-over closet door and banged it back. Piles of shoes, none of them new. She dug until she’d located one frazzled gray slipper, shoved her toes in, and kept digging. The other slipper lurked under a discarded box of last Christmas’s chocolate-covered cherries.

  “Gross,” she said gloomily. She rattled it. Full. It was probably a roach farm. She shuffled back to the trash can and dropped the box in from an arm’s length away, got down eye level with the rim to pull the liners up and twist them shut. It was the ambush approach to cleaning.

  The plastic bags gurgled like her stomach as she quick-shuffled down the dark hallway toward the kitchen, holding the bags as far as possible.

  “Maria?” she yelled. No answer. Her roommate knew her too well to be around for these little waste disposal problems. Abby fumbled one-handed in the junk drawer and found a plastic twistee to secure the bags, then shoved the whole thing in a bigger green trash can with peeling biohazard stickers and smiley faces. She slammed the pantry door on it.

  Mission accomplished.

  Maria had taped a big note to the refrigerator door that said GOOD LUCK PUKEY, which almost made her smile. She opened the box and found a half-empty carton of chocolate milk. One glass left semi-clean beside the sink; she rinsed it out and poured sweet relief until the carton went dry. The first mouthful went down hard, but the second was easier. She drank until the glass was empty and rinsed it clean with a few halfhearted swipes of lemony detergent.

  Carlton’s doggie bowl in the corner was full, which was a blessing; opening a can of dog food would have been the end of the world. And where the hell was Carlton, anyway? He usually would have been whining at her door by seven, and it must be later than that.

  Abby squinted out at the world through a slit in the blinds and saw a blank concrete walkway along with some sprigs of half-dead grass that winter hadn’t managed yet to kill. Midland, Texas’s ideas of landscaping. Maybe Maria had taken the dog out for a run.

  As she turned she saw the clock hanging crookedly on the kitchen wall. 9:30 A.M. Five hours! the beast in the back of her brain screamed. Five hours! Five hours!

  “Shut up,” she sighed. She negotiated through the maze of rickety tables and secondhand furniture—plaid earth tones and one enormous pastel chair Maria had found at some garage sale—and found an uncluttered spot on the couch. She curled up in a comforting ball and searched for the TV remote one handed. She found it stuffed in the couch cushions and clicked it three times before the TV came awake, as sluggish as she was.

  Maria had left her another note, this one in big black letters sitting on top of the littered coffee table. It said, GO GET YOUR MUSIC NOW!!! and the NOW!!! was underlined three times. Abby groaned and hugged a pillow close and tried to go back to sleep, but Maria’s NOW!!! and the beast’s Five hours! Five hours! ruined it. She shuffled back down the dim wooden hallway to her bedroom, gathered up her black concert folder—the expensive leather one Benny had given her last Christmas—and her instrument cases. She dumped them by the front door, right where she’d trip over them if she tried to leave without them.

  Damn, it was cold on the floor. She frowned as she thought about the delicate wood of the clarinets, and set the cases on top of a table where the central heating could reach them. Then she flopped on the couch again and curled up to let the chocolate milk work its magic.

  She’d left the nasty plastic sack full of stomach contents in the pantry. The thought brought her bolt upright and scrambling; she dug a robe out from under a pile of pillows, found her boots and coat, and retrieved the bag. She hurried outside, across the parking lot to the rusted gap-topped Dumpster, and tossed the bag in, retreating even before she heard it plop wetly inside.

  The joys of housekeeping.

  Back in the warmth of the apartment, she drifted off on the couch to the buzz of the TV and the beast screaming Four and a half hours! Four and a half hours! and came awake in a panicked fog, flailing, pillows flying like frightened chickens.

  Somebody knocked on the door. She stumbled over Maria’s cherished throw rug and cursed. Her music folder slid under her foot like a skate and escaped into the gloom. She had the door halfway open before she remembered that she was wearing thin pajamas with a button missing at the top.

  Then she staggered back, arms full of struggling dog.

  “Carlton?” She blinked away confusion and pushed the dog far enough away to see Carlton’s grinning long-nosed face. “Damn, boy, where did you come—”

  Words failed as she saw the man standing in her doorway. He was wearing blue jeans and a plaid work shirt and a straw cowboy hat. A narrow, intense, guarded face. Large dark eyes.

  “Hi,” she said lamely, and tried to get Carlton to lay off the slurping. “Uh, hi.”

  “Ma’am,” he said, giving her a nod as he took his hat off. She realized that wrestling with Carlton had popped another button on her top, which gave him an unobstructed view all the way to her navel. She clutched at the fabric one-handed and got Carlton under control. “I guess that’d be your dog, then.”

  “I didn’t know he was gone,” she blurted. Responsible pet ownership strikes again. “I thought, uh, my roommate had him. She takes him out for runs, sometimes.”

  The stranger was staring at the floor to avoid looking at her cleavage—no, he was looking at Carlton’s feet. She glanced down and saw that there were bandages on the dog’s paws, too clumsy to have been vet-done.

  “Found him at my mom’s door before sunrise this morning. Looked at his tag and figured I’d bring him back, since I was coming to town anyway.”

  “What the hell happened to his feet?” She hung halfway between scared and mad, appalled that she hadn’t been worried about the mutt, hadn’t even thought much about him in the press of her own selfishness.

  “He was at my mom’s house,” the man explained again, slowly. “In Fall Creek.”

  Carlton thumped his fluffy tail against Abby’s leg hard enough to bruise. She scratched his head and he licked her fingers enthusiastically.

  “Where?”

  “Fall Creek. Thirty miles that way.” He pointed vaguely toward the southwest. “Kind of a long way for a dog to run. He been missing all night?”

  Thirty miles? She looked at Carlton for confirmation, but he thumped his tail on her and walked away, sniffing the furniture to make sure she’d taken no other dog before him. “Uh, no, I thought he was here last night—I was sick—look, would you like to come in?”

  He nodded. She backed up to let him in and watched Carlton rub against his leg. It looked okay. Bad guys couldn’t make friends with dogs, could they? Not big dogs. Not big stupid dogs like Carlton.

  Now that he was standing in her home and blocking the door, she had no idea what to say to him. He wasn’t much bigger than she was, compact and wiry. He looked strong.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  He took his hat off, turned it in his hands, and nodded.

  “Coffee. Uh—I’ll just be a second.” She flip-flopped at high speed to her room, pawed through an untidy pile of clean clothes, and found Maria’s thick blue fleece robe. Perfect. She tied it tight on her way back down to the kitchen.

  “No trouble. Least I can do when you bring me back the mutt.” Maria kept instant coffee somewhere. Sugar canister? No, that was full of baking soda. She hit the jackpot in the tea canister and spooned black crystals into chipped blue mugs. “I’m out of milk. Black okay?”

  “Fine.” He’d stepped around the stucco divider to watch her. Didn’t his face do any expressions? “Your name’s Abby, right? Abby Rhodes?”

  “Mom loved the Beatles.” The explanation was reflex, but he smiled. “Know what makes me feel really old? People ten years younger than you don’t think my name’s funny at all. So you’re—”