Crimes by Moonlight

That year, black raincoats was the fashion. And in the downpour, the folks scuttling into the station looked like morticians racing to a train wreck. Except for one woman, hugging at the collar of a white coat that stood out bright against all the black ones. Dark hair, lush red mouth, she set my spine to tingling like I was leaning against needles. Brushing past, she whispered, “Greedy now, banjer man?”

It wasn’t just her mouth talking. It was the red of her lips and the white of her coat. It had been a long time since I’d remembered anything for sure, but that rainy afternoon, one memory came back sharp as the Devil’s own pitchfork.

Tadesville, 1954.

“I believe I almost am,” I thought to yell at the back of her, as she disappeared into the terminal. “I believe I almost am,” I said again, this time to myself.

People was looking at me. I hustled down to the viaduct to get away from the crowd and think.

A hallucination, I told myself. From the mash.

A vision, my other self said.

It’s been ten years, my first self said.

She could have been only twenty then, or thirty, my other self said. She’s still there, living in the woods, in a cottage full of diamonds.

That ring was the only one, my first self said. For sure, she didn’t know it was valuable, else she wouldn’t have tossed it to me for playing a few tunes. It was a fluke.

I shut down the voices. When you’re dead broke, stealing for half-pints to quell tremors, flukes take on new importance. They become likelihoods.

I came out of the viaduct into bright sunshine. The darkness and the rain were gone. I took that to be an omen, a portent, of a better day coming.

Tadesville.

THE drugstore map for Michigan showed no Tadesville, not west of Detroit or anywhere else. That made sense, being as there’d been no people there, save the woman. I pocketed the map for future use and went outside to ponder.

Problem was, I’d never known the route, because I’d been cradling my head in the backseat, caring only about the bumps Arnie wasn’t dodging.

Arnie. Arnie Norris, of Randall’s Corners, Illinois.

Approached like he was being called just for old times’ sake, he might remember the route to Tadesville.

There was a phone booth at the corner. The operator said there was a Norris listed in Randall’s Corners. I pulled my hand off the phone, having a better thought. Nudging his mind in person might be better, especially if he’d enjoyed enough good fortune since our jug band days to spot his old banjo man a twenty-money I could use for traveling. I went back to the drugstore to consult an Illinois map. Randall’s Corners was in the middle of the state, right on the way to Michigan. I made a show of putting the map back and left.

I hocked what I could, excepting the banjo, sold the spi

And cottages full of diamonds.

RANDALL’S Corners looked to be suffering no prosperity. Two live souls stood jawing in front of a gas station.

“I’m looking for Arnie Norris,” I said to the one who shuffled over to the pump.

He gave me a careful look-over. “You a friend of his?”

“ Korea.”

“Arnie never came back here.”

The warmth of the gin in my gullet faded away. “How about the Norris in the phone book?”

“His brother’s son.”

I bought eighty cents worth of gas and followed his directions to Arnie’s nephew’s house. The nephew didn’t warm much to the idea that I’d served in the army with his uncle.

“You have no idea where he might be?” I asked through the screen door, clutching my hands together behind my back so as to not betray any agitation.

“He never came back here after Korea.”

I drove back to the pay phone at the gas station, trying not to panic. I’d been counting on that tap for a twenty.

I couldn’t recall where Whiffer was from, but Billy Dabbert hailed from Cedar Rapids. The operator had a number.

“Billy?” I almost shouted, much relieved, when someone answered.

“Is that you, Billy?” an ancient voice croaked back.

“I’m looking for Billy.”

“Where the hell you been all these years, Billy?” the confused voice asked.

The old gentleman was out of gray cells. I was out of dimes. I hung up. I’d have to detect the route myself.

I continued north, straining to remember what I could. We’d played a four-tuner outside of Detroit, then headed west. Low on gas, spooked by not encountering any towns, we’d stopped at sunset, drank, slept in the car. Next day, suffering the effects of the mash, I’d kept my head shrouded the whole way to Tadesville. Afterward, I’d hitched a ride from a guy driving a truck to Kalamazoo. Tadesville had to be in a line between Detroit and Kalamazoo.

It took four days to get to A

It could damned well have been that last four-tuner we’d played.

The sun climbed higher as I continued west through spindly, second-growth woods and long-abandoned farms. Then the trees got taller and thicker, until at last they twined together so thick I lost sight of the sun and the fields beyond the road.

I drove on, mindful of the drooping gas gauge and the growing thought that I could have made up the whole business about Tadesville and the lady in the woods. I’d been stupored that day, and in that condition, my mind had never been a stranger to inventing things. Maybe Tadesville was one such episode; maybe I’d browsed the ring someplace else, and my shredded brain had invented the woman so as to not remember the actual thieving.

I began to shiver. It had been hours since I’d swallowed the last of my provisions. I put the top up and turned up the heater full blast. Still I shook. Best to get out of this forsaken country, quit chasing a remembrance that never happened. I sped up, squinting ahead for a road I could take south to the interstate and, if fortune smiled, potentially a poorly tended package liquor store.

Suddenly, the cracked blacktop fell away, and I was driving on dirt, kicking back brown dust like I was fogging crops. There was a curve. The thick trees ended. And it was there, fifty yards up, baking under a full sun.

Tadesville.

And more.

I straight-armed the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes, crunching the tires deep into the dirt.

Arnie’s ’37 Plymouth was still parked at the side of the road.

The chalky blue paint was almost all weathered off, exposing huge blotches of gray primer and brown rust, and the tires had shriveled to thin black circles, but there was no doubt. It was Arnie’s car. And behind, still hitched to the bumper, was our stage trailer, piled with the tattered, rotted remains of our army-drab duffel bags.

Long needles prickle-danced up my back. I shut my eyes and squeezed the steering wheel hard. Crazy; I’d gone crazy from the mash, crazy from the gin. I wanted to giggle, but I didn’t have the courage. I begged God, to whom I had not spoken in decades: let it be a hallucination.

I opened my eyes, slow.

Arnie’s car. The trailer. Both the same.

I killed the motor.

Nothing moved in the hot, sudden silence. No cars, no people, no damned, droning flies. The air was dead, like when we’d first pulled into Tadesville.