The Killing Moon: A Novel

The virgin ride of pure intensity, which Ibbits said you never quite get back to again, but which many people devote the rest of their lives to chasing. Ibbits told him about the effects of the drug on people out west, where he was from: men walking away from their jobs, women from their children, losing houses and cars and selling off everything, including themselves. Religion promises you something glorious just around the corner? Meth actually lets you glimpse it. Lets you hear the angels sing.

Bucky still felt tempted all the time. Especially working these long hours cooking up the stuff. But he saw now another thing the meth had showed him: this was what life is. Chasing your virginities. Chasing your infant satisfactions. That pure bliss of first love (mother). The bewildering, earth-shuddering majesty of your first orgasm. You want it all back. You want to be born again. Life as pure nostalgia.

Everybody everywhere is looking for transcendence, for deliverance, something to devote themselves to. And meth gives you that. At first. Then it starts to reduce you. Bucky had already seen it here in Black Falls. Meth turning men into monkeys. Part of the drug's joy is that it peels you back to your animal instincts; it strips out higher, more complex emotions such as regret and anxiety. Your needs become meth and sex, in that order. And then eventually just meth. You want nothing else. You know no future, you feel no past. Shame loses its drag on you. Your body doesn't matter anymore. Only what you put in it. You are a zombie.

Bucky pulled out his toasted bologna and laid it sizzling on a paper towel. He squirted mustard on it, and while it cooled, he wiped his greasy hands on his shorts and changed up the record, laying in his old Kiss Alive II album. Track two: "King of the Night Time World."

After the revelation, Bucky had gone back to the station lockup to see Ibbits, held there over the long weekend, waiting for a trip out to the county judge on Tuesday. Bucky was all fired up on the confiscated meth, and Ibbits saw this. Bucky let him out and brought him back to his home to pick the man's brain. He offered him freedom in exchange for information, and, after a liberal hit off his own stash, Ibbits was only too willing. He wrote out recipes and supply lists. Everyday stuff—hydrogen peroxide, acetone, Heet, Pyrex bowls, coffee filters, denatured alcohol, hot plates, cold medicine—much of which Bucky already had around the house and garage, except for the iodine. Against the cost of this, he priced out the product at $100 per gram to start, $1,200 per ounce, $15,000 per pound. He even drew up a business model, a pyramid design, declaring the New England states to be virgin territory, and growing more and more animated at the prospect of the two men going into business together.

At some point around the fourth or fifth time Ibbits was repeating himself, Bucky unwound the AM antenna from his stereo receiver and strangled him with it. He lay Ibbits out on the floor by the fireplace, then returned to poring over the lists, refining the plans in his own mind. Bucky never listened to AM radio anyway. Later he had Eddie drive him back to the station, where he picked up Ibbits's Escort. The crash, he arranged himself, as he did the fire.

Another big reason for Bucky not to dabble. His taking meth was like pouring napalm on a grease fire. Of all the things the drug had shown him that weekend, the most revealing was Bucky Pail himself. He found out that he had been living behind a secret identity all these years: that of Bucky Pail, Black Falls police sergeant, son of Cecil and Verna, brother of Eddie. But what he was inside, the real deal within the hollow shell he wore, was something beyond extraordinary.

The proof of this was that he had never lost focus since that long weekend. Not once. Every step since then, every move he had made, only brought him closer to his goal. Buying fuel, tubing, and glassware to outfit the old curing shack in back, then later the camper. He started off buying up Sudafed for the pseudoephedrine, and he still had Wanda clear out the Gulp whenever they got in a new shipment. But his search for a reliable, local source of iodine had led him to the fruity vet Dr. Bolt and a genius solution. He ordered road flares by the case for the red phosphorous they contained, and then it was on to the cook.

Cold medicine and household poisons cooked to a powder. That's all it was. Easy to bake as chocolate chip cookies, Ibbits told him. Problem was, Bucky had never baked chocolate chip cookies in his life.

But he learned. How to vent the shed so that the fumes didn't get to him. How to dip the flares in acetone, loosening up the phosphorous for scraping. How to tube out the dope. How gourmet coffee filters worked better than the cheaper, no-name brand.