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She tried to decide what to say, but no lie would come to mind, and she wasn’t sure it would change a damn thing if he knew. “Yeah. I crossed the bridge, and it took me here.”

“So,” Manx said. “You’ve got yourself a mean set of wheels. You’ve got a bike with an extra gear, is that it? But it didn’t take you to me. It took you to the House of Sleep. Now, I think there is a reason for that. I’ve got a ride with a few extra gears in it myself, and I know something about how they work. These things do have their quirks.” He paused, then said, “You told me to pull over and leave your son by the side of the road. You said you would be there before he knows it. The bridge can only take you to a fixed point, is that it? That would make sense. It’s a bridge, after all. The two ends have to rest on something, even if it is just resting on two fixed ideas.”

“My son,” she said. “My son. I want to hear his voice. You promised.”

“Fair is fair,” Charlie Manx said. “Here he is, Vic. Here is the little man himself.”





Shoot the Moon Fireworks, Illinois


IN THE DUSTY BRIGHT OF EARLY AFTERNOON, MR. MANX SWUNG THE Wraith off the road and into the dooryard of a fireworks warehouse. The place advertised itself with a sign that showed an engorged and furious moon with a rocket jammed in one eye, bleeding fire. Wayne laughed just to see it, laughed and squeezed his moon ornament.

The shop was a single long building with a wooden hitching post out front for horses. It came to Wayne then that they were back out west, where he had lived most of his life. Places up north had hitching posts out front sometimes, if they wanted to look rustic, but when you got out west, you sometimes saw piles of dry horseshit not far from posts like that; that was how you knew you were back in cowboy country. Although a lot of cowboys rode ATVs and listened to Eminem these days.

“Are there horses in Christmasland?” Wayne asked.

“Reindeer,” Manx said. “Tame white reindeer.”

“You can ride them?”

“You can feed them right out of your hand!”

“What do they eat?”

“Whatever you offer them. Hay. Sugar. Apples. They are not fussy eaters.”

“And they’re all white?”

“Yes. You do not see them very often, because they are so hard to pick out against the snow. There is always snow in Christmasland.”

“We could paint them!” Wayne exclaimed, excited by the thought. “Then they would be easier to see.” He had been having a lot of exciting thoughts lately.

“Yes,” Manx said. “That sounds like fun.”

“Paint them red. Red reindeer. As red as fire trucks.”

“That would be festive.”

Wayne smiled at the thought of it, of a tame reindeer patiently standing in place while he ran a paint roller over it, coloring him a bright candy-apple red. He ran his tongue over his prickly new teeth, mulling the possibilities. He thought when he got to Christmasland, he would drill a hole in his old teeth, put a string through them, and wear them as a necklace.

Manx leaned to the glove compartment and opened it and removed Wayne’s phone. He had been using it off and on all morning. He was, Wayne knew, calling Bing Partridge and not getting an answer. Mr. Manx never left a message.

Wayne looked out the window. A man was coming out of the fireworks place with a bag in one arm. He held the hand of a blond-haired little girl skipping along beside him. It would be funny to paint a little girl bright red. To take her clothes off and hold her down and paint her wriggling, tight little body. To paint all of her. To paint her right, you would want to shave off all that hair of hers. Wayne wondered what a person could do with a bag full of blond hair. There had to be something fun you could do with it.

“My Lord, Bing,” Mr. Manx said. “Where have you been?” Opening his door and climbing out of the car to stand in the lot.

The girl and her father climbed into his pickup, and the truck backed out across the gravel. Wayne waved. The little girl saw him and waved back. Wow, she had great hair. You could make a rope four feet long out of all that smooth, golden hair. You could make a silky golden noose and hang her with it. That was a wild idea! Wayne wondered if anyone had ever been hanged with their own hair.

Manx was on the phone for a while in the parking lot. He paced, and his boots raised chalk clouds in the white dust.

The lock popped up on the door behind the driver’s seat. Manx opened it and leaned in.

“Wayne? Do you remember yesterday I said if you were good, you could talk to your mother? I would hate for you to think Charlie Manx doesn’t know how to keep his word! Here she is. She would like to hear how you are doing.”

Wayne took the phone.

“Mom?” he said. “Mom, it’s me. How are you?”

There was hiss and crackle, and then he heard his mother’s voice, choked with emotion. “Wayne.”

“I’m here. Can you hear me?”

“Wayne,” she said again. “Wayne. Are you okay?”

“Yeah!” he said. “We stopped for fireworks. Mr. Manx is buying me some sparklers and maybe a bottle rocket. Are you all right? You sound like you’re crying.”

“I miss you. Mama needs you back, Wayne. I need you back, and I’m coming to get you.”