Raven Stole the Moon (31 page)

You have to hustle down the hill so if they realize you’re gone, it’ll still take them a minute to get to you and by then it’ll be too late. What would they do anyway? Beat you up? Sheriff Larson wasn’t too happy at having to come and ask you all those questions, so he sure ain’t gonna help them catch you. So what are they gonna do?

So you get down to the docks and, sure enough, there’s the old beauty herself, waiting and ready to go. You look around one last time and see that those dickheads are nowhere, and then you do a quick once-over of the plane. She’s seen better days, to be sure, but as long as she stays in the air, she’ll be okay. You untie her, give her a little push, and climb in. Crank the starter and there she goes.

Up in the air now, you look down on the town. It’s darker than it usually would be this time of day, but that’s because of the clouds. They shouldn’t be a problem, but flying in the dark has been more difficult lately. The doctor told you it was your eyes and what they call loss of night vision. It gets dark to you before it gets dark to anyone else. Well, not to worry, you’ll be back soon enough.

You decide to mess with the dickheads a little, so you take a turn over the town before heading off to Klawock. There they are, in their stupid rental car, sitting in front of your house. You get pretty low—someone might complain—and buzz the little bastards. One of them gets out. The kid. He’s a mean son of a bitch. Made sure you knew he was carrying a pistol. Shit, you have more firepower in your house than he could ever imagine, if it comes down to that. Maybe that kind of intimidation works in the city where nobody exercises his Constitutional rights, but not here, Scruffy. This here’s Alaska. The last frontier. Land of the free and home of the brave.

The kid looks up and sees the plane. He points to you and shakes his fist, so you do a little wing wagging for him, just to put a bug up his ass, and he’s hopping up and down like a little Mexican jumping bean. See you later, suckers.

You turn south by southwest and head out over the water. It feels like more rain is coming, but you figure you’ll be back before it starts. A hop, skip, and a jump, really. When you were a kid, you could make this flight in the middle of a snowy night. But that was then. This is now. Is that a cloud or a mountain up ahead? Some kind of a vague shape. Well, if you gotta go down, you might as well go down swinging. Like your daddy used to say, nobody ever got a prize for living the longest.

J
OEY WAS FURIOUS
when he saw the seaplane wag its wing at him. He got out of the car and cursed the old man as he flew over. How could he have been so lax? Why wouldn’t he have suspected Field would try to get away? The old man wouldn’t roll over for the sheriff like Joey thought he would. Joey was sure to flash him the butt of his gun to put a little fear in him, but Field was either too blind to see it or too stupid to realize Joey would use it if he had to. Flying right over him like that. The old guy had a lot of spunk. Joey just wanted to be alone with him for five minutes and he’d show him about spunk. Didn’t the senior citizen realize that he had to come home one day? Sure, Jenna could run, but the others had homes to take care of. What goes around, comes around. Joey got back into the Crown Vic they had rented from the cab company and slammed the door.

“Was that him?” Robert asked.

Joey nodded. “He’s probably going to take them somewhere else. This time when he gets back we’re not going to the sheriff. We’ll get the information ourselves.”

The two men looked straight ahead, out the windshield. Robert didn’t quite understand, but he thought it would be best to keep his mouth shut. Joey seemed an edgy character, the way he had to hold in his anger after the sheriff asked Field a couple of questions and then just left. Robert was concerned about the potential for violence, but then he couldn’t wimp out now. He suspected violence was the standard MO with these guys.

“Are you the one who got John Wilson’s daughter out of the cult last year?” Robert asked.

Joey turned to Robert. He processed the question slowly and then nodded.

“Was it hard?” Robert asked.

Joey returned his gaze to the front of the car.

“You mean, was it messy?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me put it this way: none of the good guys got hurt.”

Joey threw a sideways glance at Robert and popped open his car door. He glanced around the street as he crossed over to Field’s house, and then, with almost no exertion, he forced open the front door with his shoulder. He looked back at Robert and shrugged before he disappeared into the house.

W
ITH THE DARKNESS GROWING
at a steady rate and the feeling of rain in the sky, Jenna was nervous about flying back to Wrangell. She and Eddie stood on the dock at the foot of Klawock waiting for Field to arrive, and to make herself feel better she slipped her arm around Eddie’s waist and leaned into him. He responded by looping his arm around her shoulder.

“He’ll be here soon unless there was some trouble,” Eddie said.

“Trouble?”

“With your husband, Ruben.”

“Robert. Why didn’t he tell him he was coming to get us?”

“I don’t know. Flair for the dramatic? He devised a whole plan for escaping unnoticed.”

Jenna smiled up at Eddie and had an urge to kiss him. She did, but Eddie pulled away playfully.

“Jenna, please, what would Rudolph say?”

“His name’s Robert, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“Said the spider to the fly.”

She kissed him again and this time Eddie kissed back, and the two young lovers were making out on the dock under the tent of clouds.

In the distance they could hear the growling of a plane, and though they were much more comfortable with their mouths pressed together, they separated to greet Field. The plane skidded along the water up to the dock. Jenna, Eddie, and Oscar climbed in without a pause and they were off again, away from the village and up into the air.

The trip was quick. Then they were there. A bit surprised, actually, that they weren’t met at the dock by Magnum, P.I., as Field referred to Joey. Jenna and Eddie went to their truck and offered Field a ride back to his house, but he declined, saying he much preferred to travel incognito, and marveling over the stupidity of Magnum and Robert that they hadn’t noticed his escape, especially since he had made such a stink about flying over them. Amused by his own craftiness, Field wanted to sneak back into the house and see how long the dickheads would take to figure the whole thing out.

Jenna and Eddie drove with Oscar back to Eddie’s house, where they could make some calls and plot out the next step.

J
OEY SENT
R
OBERT BACK OUT
to the car to wait. He wanted to handle the debriefing himself, without any distractions. He grabbed a hand towel from the bathroom and took up a position in the kitchen. He knew Field would try to sneak back into the house by the kitchen door when he returned. Since it had worked once, he would try it again. The typical rookie mistake. Joey, a veteran, knew that if it works once, it will work only once. Fool me once and it’s your fault; fool me twice and it’s my fault.

He heard the footsteps on the grass sooner than he had expected. Field had only been gone for an hour and a half. That’s hardly enough time to pick Jenna up, take her somewhere else, and return to Wrangell. Unless they were a lot closer than he had imagined. The door handle turned and the door squeaked open. He saw Field’s hand come in and flip the light switch, but no light went on. Joey had unscrewed the lightbulb. Forced to enter in darkness, Field stepped into the kitchen and stood quietly, suspiciously, waiting for something to catch his eye, for he could sense a presence in the dark room.

But the presence was too quick for Field. Joey stepped in front of Field and struck. He heard the crunch and saw Field fall to his knees. He hoped he hadn’t hit the old man too hard. A quick blow with the heel of his hand, just as he had planned it, had broken Field’s nose cleanly. Harder, and it would have killed him.

Field, holding his face in his hands, groaning in pain and surprise, looked up and strained to see who was before him. Joey stood over him and smiled.

“That’s for thinking you were smarter than me,” Joey said, handing Field the hand towel. “This is so you don’t get any blood on the floor.”

Joey stood on a chair and screwed the lightbulb back in and the room was suddenly bright. Too bright for Field, who could barely see through his tears. The beige towel Joey had given him to collect the blood pouring from his nose was already saturated. Field looked up at Joey, who had taken on the demeanor of a killer, and felt old and fragile. What would Joey do next? How much pain would he inflict? Field prayed for a cyanide pill hidden in his false tooth so that he could swallow it and die with his secret intact. Joey lifted Field to his feet and helped him to the kitchen chair.

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore, old man, so why don’t you tell me where they are and I’ll be on my way.”

Field pulled the towel away from his face. The blood was still flowing freely and he grinned at Joey.

“Boy, if I’m not any smarter than you, I must be pretty stupid,” he said with a laugh.

“I guess so.”

Joey took the towel from Field and put it on the table. He then took a pair of handcuffs from his hip pocket and cuffed Field’s hands to the chair behind his back. He stood in front of Field and took aim at his ribs.

“This may hurt a little.”

“I’ll never talk.”

“Sure you will.”

The punch was short but forceful, and it hit the ribs on Field’s left side just at the proper angle so they both could hear a crack. Field groaned as the air left him and his eyes rolled upward in pain. The blood from his nose was running down his face and onto his shirt.

“Ouch,” Joey said sarcastically and cringed. “I think you broke a couple of ribs.”

Field struggled to regain his breath as Joey lined up on Field’s other side.

“All right, all right, I’ll talk.”

“Good boy,” Joey said, smiling. “Where are they?”

Field laughed and winced at the shooting pain in his side.

“They’re home, you idiot. I brought them home.”

T
HE OLD GUY
wasn’t lying after all. There they were, one big happy family, right in front of everyone, man, woman, and dog. Joey and Robert stood outside for a few minutes, across the street, looking in the front windows at them. Lover boy walking around without his shirt on. What was that all about? Jenna sitting on the couch, staring straight ahead. They watched, the voyeurs did, a scene without sound, the dynamic between a man and a woman. The only voice heard was the voice of the narrator, Joey, who perched on Robert’s shoulder and wove a picture of what had happened in the darkness, between the sheets of the bed in which these two unfaithfuls had consummated their passion. Joey told of their flesh intertwined in nakedness, the secrets they revealed to each other, the language of groans and moans they spoke to each other, a language only they could understand. He created a vivid picture in Robert’s mind, a picture now finally made real by the sight of the other man. No longer a stranger to Robert, the other man had a name and a face, and that face would remain in Robert’s mind forever. And when Joey had stoked the jealous fires inside Robert’s heart until they were raging, he released Robert from his box. He turned Robert loose. He told Robert to confront them, his unfaithful wife and her hateful lover.

Robert’s heart was beating in his throat by the time he reached the door. He was drenched with sweat. He knocked on the glass pane of the door and saw the two lovers look up quickly. They froze and looked without moving until Robert felt like he wanted to bash the door down and fly inside on the wings of rage. Then Eddie moved to the door and opened it. He retreated quickly to the dining room table, seeing the fire in Robert’s eyes and not wanting to be in his path. Robert’s face was flushed, he trembled, he felt he had no control over his motor skills, the blood was pounding in his ears so loud that if he spoke he didn’t think he would be able to hear himself. But he had to speak. They were watching him, waiting for him. They had been waiting for him from the beginning. This was the moment, the moment is now; it is time.

“Why?” was all he said.

Jenna couldn’t believe what Robert looked like. Wrinkled shirt and hair a mess, panting. He looked different than she remembered. Broader, older, his hair lighter. Or maybe it was that she never imagined seeing him in Eddie’s house. Next to Eddie, the thin man with the sunken cheeks, standing in the kitchen, naked from the waist up. Even so, there was something about Robert that made her remember what attracted her to him in the first place. An innocence underneath his officiousness. Why? He burst in ready to kill, but he simply asked why.

“Why didn’t you shoot me first?” Robert asked Jenna. “Why did it have to be a secret? Why did I have to find out from someone else?”

Robert unfolded a piece of fax paper and dropped it on the coffee table. Oh, woe is me. Caught between a rock and a hard place. When the picture was taken, nothing had happened between Jenna and Eddie. In the time it took Robert to arrive, something had happened. Why? Jenna looked at the photo without picking it up. It was she and Eddie in bed together. She had no words, no defense. In the beginning they had pledged to be faithful, and if that were not possible, they would deal with the situation fairly and truthfully. When they were dating, before they got married or even thought of marriage, they told each other that if it were ever over for one of them, if the passion were ever to leave, the other would be the first to know. She had not held up her end.

She looked to Eddie for help. He had slipped his shirt on and looked a little less naked.

Robert saw Jenna look at Eddie and he looked at Eddie, too.

“Why?” he asked Eddie. “Don’t you have any respect? Don’t you have any honor?”

Eddie shrugged. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you fucking my wife!” Robert screamed.

Eddie looked at Robert, full of confusion.