Envious Moon(47)

“I want to know how many there are,” I said.

“I hate them,” she said. “Quit it.”

I kept counting. “They’re beautiful,” I said.

She pushed my hand away from her face. “Quit it,” she said.

“But they’re beautiful.”

“They’re ugly, I hate them.”

I grabbed her ribs then, above her waist, with both my hands and I tickled her. She squirmed and tried to escape but I had her good. “Say they’re beautiful,” I said.

She shrieked. “No,” she said, “I won’t.”

I tickled her more, running my fingers across her sides. “Say they’re beautiful,” I said.

“Okay, okay, stop it and I will,” she said.

“Say it,” I said, not letting go.

“They’re beautiful,” she finally said. “Okay?”

I let her go. “Can I count them again?”

“No,” she said, and she pretended to pout and it was about the most adorable thing I had ever seen.





Our fourth day in Stratton we got back in the truck and drove down the big hill to the general store where I had bought the supplies. Hannah sat close to me on the bench seat and there was no lingering residue from our fight. We had showered together and our hair was still wet. The day was warm and sun-splashed and you could not help but be happy because of it. I held her hand. Other drivers waved to us as we passed, which seemed to be a Vermont thing. We waved back. It was now September but it still felt like summer.

At the general store, Hannah stayed in the truck while I went inside. There were a few people inside, a couple talking down one aisle, an old man perusing the beer. I went to the back and got Hannah the chocolate milk she wanted, and myself a coffee, and I also picked up a couple of ready-made sandwiches they had in a case. Then I went to the counter and the man behind it, the same guy who had been there the other day, asked me if there was anything else I needed. He was very tall, with several days of growth on his chin, longish hair tucked under a baseball cap. I asked for cigarettes, and when he turned around to get them I looked down at the Boston Globe in front of him and what I saw on its front page made my stomach seize with fear. For there, on the left of the page, above the fold, were two photos side by side. The one on the left was of me, a picture I had taken for the fishing co-op, a head shot. My hair was a little longer then but it was a good likeness. Next to my photo was one of Hannah, a studio-type shot, taken for her yearbook, I guessed. It was a wonderful picture of her, even though it was in black-and-white. The lighting emphasized the cut and height of her cheekbones. Her full lips.

I must have been in such shock seeing those pictures that I almost forgot to peel my eyes away from the paper on the counter. The man was back and he put my cigarettes down and then he looked down at the paper to see what I was looking at. He looked back up at my face and then he peeked down again. I swear he recognized me. I almost wanted to run out of there but I knew enough to hold my ground.

“That’s fifteen seventy-six,” he said.

I took a twenty out of my pocket and handed it to him. My hands shook a little bit. “You want a bag?” he said, handing me my change.

“That’d be great,” I said.

He reached below the counter and came up with a brown bag and snapped it open and quickly filled it.

“You have a good day now,” he said.

It was all I could do not to run out of there. I climbed into the truck and placed the bag between Hannah and me and started the engine. As we drove out, I looked up toward the door of the general store, and I saw the clerk in the doorway staring at us going by. For all I knew he was writing down the license number. Maybe there would be a cop around the next corner.

I drove us back to the new development and I didn’t say anything to Hannah about what I had seen. I don’t know what I expected but I guess it never occurred to me that we would be big enough news to make the front page of the Globe. I pulled the truck all the way behind back so that it could not be seen at all from the road.

Inside I made sure all the drapes were drawn and the windows were closed. I turned off any of the lights we had left lit. Hannah sensed my tension, and she said, “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to have to leave,” I said.

“When?”

“When it gets dark,” I said.

I spent that entire day crouched in the front of the upstairs window while Hannah lay on the bed and played with her hair. Any minute I expected to see them come up the dirt road and by the new houses. In my mind I imagined a phalanx of cars and vans, state troopers and SWAT teams. The type of teams that descended on Tony Montana’s house in Scarface.

In the end, though, it was one state trooper. I saw the black-and-green boxy car coming up the road, driving slowly past each house, looking at each one. It was crawling, maybe five or ten miles an hour. I closed the drapes until there was only a slit for me to see through. I turned to Hannah, and said, “Be really quiet.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

The trooper came to a halt in front of the nearest house to us, the only other one that I guessed had already been occupied. The door to the car opened and out stepped a tall dark-haired man with that square state trooper hat, the uniform with the jackboots, gun prominently on his hip. He walked slowly up to the door of the house and as I watched he knocked on it and he waited for a moment. He lowered his head and peered through the glass on the sides of the door. He shielded his eyes with his hands. Then he stood back up and started to walk back toward his car. Only he did not get in. He kept coming across the dirt road toward the house we were in.