A Single Shot

At the south end of town, he turns left and heads through Shantytown, a single dirt street of unpainted clapboard shacks and grassless, junk-marred yards, where yapping dogs and half-naked kids run in the street. From behind a gutted jalopy something flies out and lands loudly in the back of the truck. The kids start laughing and hooting. A few of them yell at John to stop. He keeps driving, not slowing down until after he comes to the top of the gradual, mile-long hill where sits the Oaks.

He’s above the fog. The unimpeded sun illuminates the two-story, paint-chipped motel, L-shaped and most recently yellow. Half a dozen cars sit in the lot. None of them is the black Chevy Blazer, though at the far end of the longest row of rooms sits a rusted-out blue-white Cadillac that at a glance John thinks might be Simon Breedlove’s.

He pulls the truck around behind the building where it can’t be seen from the front, shuts off the engine, shoves the .45 down his pants, covers it with his shirt, and steps out. Immediately he hears something moving about in the truck’s bed. He looks inside. Scurrying around in there is a large black Shantytown rat. John reaches in, grabs the squirming rodent by its tail, whips it in a fast circle over his head, and hurls it at the bushes bordering the motel. The rat lands on the pavement just short of the bushes, shakes itself, then runs off squealing. John walks to the building’s rear entrance and enters the office, where on a crippled recliner behind the desk sits Skinny Leak, watching television. Leak waves at the set. “You b’lieve them titties is real?”

John doesn’t say.

“Well, they ain’t. It’s a man got plastic tits and a pussy made from the skin off’n his own leg!”

“Obadiah Cornish staying here?”

“Doctor cut off his dick and sewed them things on.”

John reaches down and turns around the register so that he can read it. Skinny nods at him.

“A Moon, ain’t ya?”

“The on’y one.”

“What ta hell happened your brothers?”

“Never had none.”

“Who ta hell am I thinkin’ you is, then?”

“Somebody I ain’t.”

“Fer Christ sake! Your old man worked to the mill sure as I sit here.”

“He was a farmer,” says John, running his finger down the names on the register, but seeing no Cornish.

“Let me get this straight now—you’re a Moon”—Skinny pushes his bird-like body out of the chair and hobbles over to the desk—“but there ain’t but one of ya and your old man was a farmer and never worked to the mill?”

John nods.

“Mickey Moon, right?”

“John.”

“Shit.”

“I know he’s in room two-twenty-somethin’,” says John.

“Know what that makes you?”

John wordlessly glances at the old man, running his pink tongue over black, toothless gums.

“Makes you the man in the moon!” He slaps his knee and hisses. “Got to be, don’t it? You the on’y fucking one?” He reaches out and turns the book back around. “Who you looking for there, man in the moon?”

John tells him.

“No hens in this house. What’s he look like?”

“Tall, gangly son of a bitch.”

“Got him an alias.”

“Okay.”

“That’s why he ain’t in the book.”

“Where is he?”

“Guess he’s expectin’ ya, is he?”

“I aim to find out.”

“Want me to call ahead?”

“I’ll just go on down and knock.” John pulls out his wallet, withdraws from it a ten-dollar bill, and lays the bill on the desk, with his hand still on it. “Who b’longs that Cadillac yonder?”

“Which one?”

“Ain’t but one.” John nods his head at the wall beyond which, obscured from his view, lies the long side of the L. “Down the end. All beat to hell.”

Leak cranes his head back and peeks out through a little porthole-shaped window behind the desk. He hisses again. “Musta beamed up, man in the moon.”

“Gone?”

Leak throws his bony little fingers into the air.

“Was here how long?”

“On’y you says it e’er was.”

John lifts his hand from the bill. Leak reaches for it. John slams his other hand down on Leak’s. “Let me guess. Cornish’s down there all the way the end.”

Leak tugs free his hand gripping the bill, folds the bill, and slips it into his shirt pocket. “Twenty-two-niner, man in the moon. Coulda saved yerself a sawbuck.”

At the building’s front, John walks down the long cement corridor facing the rooms, each one fronted by a dead or dying spruce bush planted in gravel, to a set of metal stairs adjacent to where the Cadillac had been parked. He climbs to the second floor, again turns left, quietly tiptoes up to room 229 and puts his ear to the scratched wood door. Inside, a television loudly plays the same talk show Leak was watching. What sounds like a fan or air conditioner blows. Intermingling with the din is a gurgling noise, like running water or percolating coffee. John starts to knock, then, changing his mind, reaches down and with one hand pulls the .45 from his belt. He raises his foot to kick in the door, when, two rooms down, another door suddenly opens. He jumps back, holding the pistol out in front of him.

“Jesus God! Don’t shoot!” Dangling a Tiparillo from her mouth, a breast-sagging, middle-aged blond woman freezes in midstride.

John puts a finger to his lips.

“Huh?”