Winter Moon

Potter said, "You have a telephone out there?"

"Of course. Who doesn't have a phone these days?"

The question seemed to confirm that he had an image as a hermit and an

eccentric. Which maybe he deserved. Because now that he thought about

it, he hadn't used the phone to receive or place a call in at least

five or six months. He doubted if it'd rung more than three times in

the past year, and one of those was a wrong number.

Potter went to his desk, picked up a pen, pulled a notepad in front of

him, and wrote the number down as Eduardo recited it. He tore off

another sheet of notepaper and gave it to Eduardo because it was

imprinted with his office address and his own phone numbers.

Eduardo folded the paper into his wallet. "What do I owe you?"

"Nothing," Potter said. "These weren't your pet raccoons, so why

should you pay? Rabies is a community problem."

Potter accompanied him out to the Cherokee.

The larches rustled in the warm breeze, crickets chirruped, and a frog

croaked like a dead man trying to talk.

As he opened the driver's door, Eduardo turned to the vet and said,

"When you do that autopsy ..."

"Yes?"

"Will you look just for signs of known diseases?"

"Disease pathologies, trauma."

"That's all?"

"What else would I look for?"

Eduardo hesitated, shrugged, and said, "Anything . . . strange."

That stare again. "Well, sir," Potter said, "I will now."

All the way home through that dark and forlorn land, Eduardo wondered

if he had done the right thing. As far as he could see, there were

only two alternatives to the course of action he'd taken, and both were

problematic.

He could have disposed of the raccoons on the ranch and waited to see

what would happen next. But he might have been destroying important

evidence that something not of this earth was hiding in the Montana

woods.

Or he could have explained to Travis Potter about the luminous trees,

throbbing sounds, waves of pressure, and black doorway. He could have

told him about the raccoons keeping him under surveillance--and the

sense he'd had that they were serving as surrogate eyes for the unknown

watcher in the woods. If he was generally regarded as the old hermit

of Quartermass Ranch, however, he wouldn't be taken seriously.

Worse, once the veterinarian had spread the story, some busybody public

official might get it in his head that poor old Ed Fernandez was senile

or even flat-out deranged, a danger to himself and others. With all

the compassion in the world, sorrowful-eyed and softvoiced, shaking

their heads sadly and telling themselves they were doing it for his own

good, they might commit him against his will for medical examinations

and a psychiatric review.

He was loath to be carted away to a hospital, poked and prodded and

spoken to as if he had reverted to infancy. He wouldn't react well.

He knew himself. He would respond to them with stubbornness and

contempt, irritating the do-gooders to such an extent that they might

induce a court to take charge of his affairs and order him transferred

to a nursing home or some other facility for the rest of his days.

He had lived a long time and had seen how many lives were ntined by

people operating with the best intentions and a smug assurance of their

own superiority and wisdom. The destruction of one more old man

wouldn't be noticed, and he had no wife or children, no friend or

relative, to stand with him against the killing kindness of the

state.

Giving the dead animals to Potter to be tested and autopsied was,

therefore, as far as Eduardo had dared to go. He only worried that,

considering the inhuman nature of the entity that controlled the coons,

he might have put Travis Potter at risk in some way he couldn't

foresee.

Eduardo had hinted at a strangeness, however, and Potter had seemed to

have his share of common sense. The vet knew the risks associated with

disease. He would take every precaution against contamination, which

would probably also be effective against whatever unguessable and

unearthly peril the carcasses might pose in addition to microbiotic

infection.

Beyond the Cherokee, the home lights of unmet families shone far out on

the sea of night. For the first time in his life, Eduardo wished that

he knew them, their names and faces, their histories and hopes.

He wondered if some child might be sitting on a distant porch or at a

window, staring across the rising plains at the headlights of the

Cherokee progressing westward through the June darkness. A young boy

or girl, full of plans and dreams, might wonder who was in the vehicle

behind those lights, where he was bound, and what his life was like.

The thought of such a child out there in the night gave Eduardo the

strangest sense of community, an utterly unexpected feeling that he was

part of a family whether he wanted to be or not, the family of

humanity, more often than not a frustrating and contentious clan,

flawed and often deeply confused, but also periodically noble and

admirable, with a common destiny that every member shared.

For him, that was an unusually optimistic and philosophically generous