Crimes by Moonlight

I got out, shutting the car door easy, but still the sound boomed off the storefronts like three beats from a marching drum: the grocery, the General Feed, the long building with no name. More paint was gone from each of them, weathered away like skin flaked from a corpse too long in the desert. Above the grocery, yellow strings-remains of curtains-hung limp in the window, like entrails dangling from something dead.

My feet kicked up dirty puffs, dry as brown talcum, as I crossed the street.

The Plymouth ’s windows were down. I leaned in. Arnie’s keys and dog tags hung on a chain from the ignition. The cloth upholstery was shredded off the driver’s seat, the tops of the exposed seat springs shiny. Someone had been sitting on them recent, keeping away the rust.

My old suit jacket lay crumpled on the mildewed mohair in back, still balled up from when I’d used it as a pillow. I reached in, pulled it out. The rotted fabric came apart in my hands.

I let it fall as I went back to the trailer. My duffel was on the bottom of the pile, the stenciled “Olton” faded against the bleached army green. I undid the brass hook and pulled the putrid canvas open. My white shirts with their long, pointy collars rested on top, green-yellow now. I felt down, pulled out a pair of black gabardine slacks, a tie with a garden full of flowers, and my other suit. Everything was thick with black mold. At the bottom was a pint of Jack with two swallows left. Jesus.

I pushed it all back in the duffel, tried to wipe the black from my hands.

Run to the car. Turn the key. Get away from this place.

Once, I had the strength. Not now. Now I needed.

It was a perfect day for browsing.

I went back across the street, each step muffled by the dust, inevitable. I opened the Pontiac ’s trunk, took out the banjo case, dimly heard as the falling lid sent more drumbeats off the storefronts. At the intersection, I turned the corner. Like before, it was cooler under the thick, dark canopy of leaves. Almost cold.

I walked down the half mile.

THERE’S no meat on Arnie, Billy, and Whiffer. Their skin hangs loose and yellow, like rotting shrouds. They look like the people that came out of Auschwitz -haunted, like they’ve seen hell. My skin’s a little tighter. I haven’t had to browse as long.

We come every day about four thirty, drag what’s left of the duffels to the ground, and pull ourselves up on the trailer. We start tuning. Arnie’s only got two rusty strings left on his guitar, but it doesn’t matter. Always, we counted on Billy and Whiffer. Most folks have never seen jug and washboard.

We lead with “Divin’ Duck.” Surefire stuff, used to be. But nobody comes. Across the street, my Pontiac, white on black with red vinyl interior, sits low on rusted wheels. The tires went flat years ago, and the top is tattered from sun rot. I sleep there. I don’t know where the others sleep.

Arnie starts a banjo joke. I shuffle forward, make like I’m drooling. Nobody laughs. There’s nobody there.

We try singing down the gospel: “Swing Low,” “Go Tell It,” “Amazing Grace.” Used to draw them out, but that was in Christian towns. There’s no God in Tadesville.

Arnie sets down his guitar, makes like he’s squinting at the buildings. “We’ll have to browse.”

I start picking “Will the Circle?” but it’s for show, like before. We have to browse.

Arnie eases off the trailer, slow because there’s nothing left in his hip sockets. Clutching at the door handles, he pulls himself to the driver’s door, drops onto the seat coils. He sighs through what’s left of his teeth. He’ll wait for us behind the wheel.

Billy levers himself down with his good leg. His right leg broke years ago and healed crooked. He keeps it strapped with his belt. He hobbles for the grocery.

Whiffer goes toward the General Feed, though what he’s expecting there I don’t begin to wonder.

I latch my case, walk to the intersection, and turn down the side road. It’s always cooler there, under the leaves.

I walk down the half mile. The trees, thick and twisted, caress each other like vipers.

I know the spot. I set down the banjo.

“Are you greedy, banjer man?” The soft Southern voice brushes my skin like cold silk. It smells of mold. I ca

I squeeze between trunks grown so thick they’ll soon touch. One hundred, two hundred yards in, I look everywhere. There is no cottage, no ruins of a foundation. Still, I move through the trees. It is my need.

The specks of yellow sun on the leaves turn orange, then gray, embers snuffing in a dying fire. I push through the bramble as fast as the arthritis and my tea bag lungs allow, screaming as the thorns rip at my scabs to get at the soft, unhealed pink underneath. There is no cottage. There never was, except as a shadow the germ begi

“Greedy, banjer man?” she whispers, through the wind, through the leaves.

“You know I am, you bitch,” I yell, hell’s own supplicant. I push on.

When the last of the gray between the trees goes black, when the wind kicks up and chills the wet of my sweat and the new blood oozing out of my skin, when the shakes come so bad I can’t go on, I start to feel through the darkness for a way out. It’s almost over for another day.

Sometimes I see her then, in that last thin light. Faint, a mist, back in the woods. Laughing and swaying in the trees, mocking the weakness she has claimed at last.

I stand on the road, waiting for my raggedy breathing to regulate. I check my watch. It doesn’t work, but I know it’s been more than an hour. Arnie, Billy, and Whiffer will have gone to wherever they go. Arnie is real firm about not waiting more than forty-five minutes. I bend down, find the rope tied to the banjo case. For dragging. After the woods, I have no strength left for carrying.

I start back to town. There’s no going the other way, no finding a road to Kalamazoo. That part’s over. I’m greedy now, welcomed in Tadesville.

I always stop at the big oak where the shiny box hangs. I put it in plain view, back when I had hope that someone would come along. Back before it hit that this place was for us alone-Arnie and Whiffer and Billy and me.

And her. Especially, her.

I feel inside for the paper-this paper-and know again the little death as my fingers close around it. Nobody will come.

I give the twine a tug to make sure the string is still taut and then head back to the Pontiac, dragging my banjo, taking what comfort I can summon from the spongy, dark places on my skin and the lump the size of a walnut that’s growing on my forehead.

I tell myself it will end soon, when the spongy places and the walnut ripen. That nothing will come after, except peace.

It can’t last forever, I say to the dark.

Sure as hell.