Dog Run Moon Read online

  A year ago Terry might have cried at the news of his grandfather’s death. But now—holding the phone in the sweat-and-mashed-potato-smelling common area in Saginaw—he did not. He just listened to his father speak, heard his newly discovered God-love dripping from his every word like a self-righteous accent. He hung up and went to his room and lay on his bed and stared at the bunk above him until the box springs swam before his eyes.

  Later, when his bunkmate came in, and, predictably, the mattress started to shift and squeak, Terry rose without a word and grabbed him by his neck and leg, pitched him from the bunk onto the concrete floor, and gave him one silent, sharp, vicious kick to the face. He was a skinny kid, about half Terry’s size. He had an explosion of zits across his scrawny back, and he was lying facedown, whining, one of his hands still jammed down the waistband of his boxer shorts.

  That kick got Terry a new bunkmate and an additional month’s time. Sometimes, he had dreams where he was fishing with his grandpa. He would turn to him in the boat and see half the flesh stripped from his face—leaking, gaping chunks missing from his neck.

  —

  While Terry was away Denise had her thirteenth birthday. He called her and told her he was sorry that he couldn’t get her a present and she said it was okay. Mom and Dad were finally letting her get her ears pierced and she was going to the mall today to get it done.

  “They make you get studs, at first,” she said. “And you have to wait two weeks before you can change them.”

  “Why’s that?” Terry said.

  “It’s so the hole doesn’t close up. After two weeks, though, it’s permanent and the holes will be there forever. Did you know that Grandma never got her ears pierced? She used to wear clip-on earrings. That’s what Mom said.”

  “No, I never knew that.”

  “Mom said that Grandma always wanted to, but that Grandpa didn’t let her. So, she got clip-ons and only wore them when she went to the store and stuff. Anyway, I’m going to get some blue ones with gold studs. I already picked them out. But when the two weeks are up I’m going to get some that have feathers on them.”

  “Feathers?”

  “Yeah, dangly ones. They sell them at the mall. All different types of feathers. From real birds. They come with a little card that tells you what kind of bird the feather is from, and also about the Indian tribe.”

  “Indian tribe?”

  “They’re made by Indian women from somewhere out west. They pick the feathers up off the ground and then they attach them with pretty gold and silver wire to earring hooks. My friend Kristy has some made from heron feathers and they are so pretty. They are so light. They just float around her ears, like, well, feathers. I can’t wait.”

  “That sounds great. I can almost picture them. How’s school?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Do people talk about me?”

  Denise was silent for a moment. Terry could hear the sound of her phone cord hitting the receiver as she twisted and untwisted it absentmindedly.

  “A little. Not too much.”

  “Yeah? Anyone giving you a hard time?”

  “No, not really. But, Kristy says that you’re hot, and that she would totally make out with you, if you weren’t in there. I told her she is a slut.”

  Denise laughed and then Terry’s time was up on the phone.

  “You tell Kristy that in about four years I might take her up on that offer, and you, missy, better not be making out with anyone, you hear me?”

  “Eww. Gross, Terry.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I don’t like any boys. And I’m not going to date or get married until I find one that’s exactly like you, you know that.”

  “Okay. I have to hang up now, Den. Happy Birthday. I miss you.”

  Terry went back to his bunk, laced his fingers behind his head and searched for a long time but couldn’t come up with anything, one single thing or person, idea or possibility, now that his grandpa was dead, that he loved more than his sister.

  —

  While Terry was away his mother, Janelle, let the vegetable garden go to weed and decided instead to cultivate a relationship with a woman she met in a bereavement group at the church. Merriam was forty years old, three years younger than Janelle, with no children or husband. She had lost her twin sister to breast cancer, and she told the group it was like she’d had a limb amputated, or a lobe of her brain removed. She was an operating room nurse and sometimes she laughed and referred to her sister as her phantom limb, and then would cry in tight, dry gasps with her hands over her mouth and her eyes clenched shut. Janelle went to the bereavement meetings initially because of Terry. She felt a little out of place at first because, after all, Terry wasn’t dead. But, he had caused death in another and, to Janelle, this meant that her son had changed in some fundamental way that was not unlike actual death, just more shameful.

  After their group met, Janelle and Merriam often went to a diner close to the church. They sat in a booth, coffee going cold in the cups in front of them while they talked. One day, Janelle told Merriam that she would rather Terry had been killed himself. This was the first time she had admitted this fact aloud and saying it was like letting out her breath after holding it for a very long time.

  “If he were simply gone it would be easier for me to live with,” she said. “And that makes me a horrible person. What kind of mother am I?”

  “Well,” said Merriam, handing Janelle a tissue from her purse, “if it makes you feel any better, I had a doctor friend write me a scrip for ten milligrams of Valium—that’s the highest dose—because I said I was having a hard time sleeping. I sometimes pour the whole month’s supply in my hand and sit there crying, the pills in one hand, a glass of water in the other, and I can’t make myself do it, quite, and that makes me feel worse than before.”

  Surprisingly, this admission did make Janelle feel better—or, maybe, it was Merriam reaching over the table to grasp her hand and the way their hands locked on the table between them. Merriam’s strong, capable fingers and blunt-cut nails interlocked with her own, skinny and pale, her nails long and freshly painted before their meeting.

  It was a month before they talked about anything other than Merriam’s sister or Terry. And then, gradually, Janelle started telling Merriam about how she had decided to put new wallpaper up in Terry’s bedroom and how Denise was refusing to help. They agreed that thirteen was a difficult age and that muted beige with a plaid-pattern trim would be a good choice in wallpaper.

  “And then when he moves out,” Merriam said, “you can still use the room as a guest bedroom and it won’t be overwhelmingly masculine.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Janelle said. “I’d never thought about it like that.”

  —

  Janelle and the kids used to attend church every Sunday. It was a Lutheran church, stolid and small, whose pastor had a lisp that always sent Denise and Terry into convulsions of suppressed laughter, especially when he said certain words like salvation or Christ-crucified. Terry’s father, Todd, never went to church. Sundays, for him, were a day spent on the lawnmower with a beer in an insulated cozy and a radio with headphones tuned to the classic rock station. When Terry was ten he asked Janelle why his dad never went to church, and she replied that mowing the lawn was how daddy prayed. The next Sunday, Terry informed her that he thought going fishing with his grandpa was the way he prayed best—and then didn’t talk to her for a whole week when Janelle made him go anyway. During the week he didn’t talk to his mother, Terry thought long and hard about God and the possibilities of hell. One night, lying in bed in the silent house, his family asleep, he clenched and unclenched his fists, raised his arms above him to fend off the lightning bolt that was sure to strike him down, and then he turned over and pressed his face into the pillow and said it so quietly that no one could possibly have heard it except for a God who could hear everything.

  “Fuck you, Jesus,” he said.

  With the release o
f words, and the firebolt that didn’t come, Terry felt himself relax, felt a lightness come over his body. He turned over and sat up in bed, shadow bars from his window blinds cast across his body. He said it louder.

  “Fuck you, Jesus.”

  He laughed and said it the way Pastor Lundt at church might say it, with feeling, “Jethuth, you cockthucker. Fuck you!”

  When Terry informed Janelle that Jesus was make-believe and that he didn’t want to go to church anymore, she told him that until he was confirmed, he didn’t have any choice in the matter. So, until he was fourteen, Terry went to church. He sat in the pew with his mother and sister and—to Janelle’s great embarrassment—refused to stand up and sing hymns with the rest of the congregation. Pastor Lundt would say, “Pleath thtand and join in thong,” and everyone would rise and hold their hymnals, except for Terry, who sat staring straight ahead with his arms crossed over his chest. He had always enjoyed the singing before, but now it felt wrong, like singing happy birthday for someone who wasn’t even having a birthday.

  During this time, Janelle came to the conclusion that Terry’s behavior was a direct result of his relationship with his grandfather, and forbade Terry from seeing him. No more fishing. No more weekend sleepovers. No more after-school bus drop-offs. Todd tried to convince Janelle that keeping the boy away from his grandfather was not going to help matters, but she was adamant.

  For a month, if Janelle entered a room, Terry left it. If she asked him to do something, he did it without acknowledging that he’d heard her voice. Toward the end of the month Janelle was going out of her way to do things for him, making ribs for dinner twice a week, even letting up on harassing him about his schoolwork. Terry accepted these new developments in stride, and still refused to interact with her in any meaningful way.

  The day Terry won was, fittingly, a Sunday. As usual, Terry took in the service immobile in the pew, clad in a too-small polo shirt (he was forever outgrowing his clothes) and wrinkled khaki pants, with his arms crossed over his chest. In the van on the way home, Janelle suggested they go for ice cream. Terry shrugged noncommittally. Behind the wheel of the van, in the church parking lot, Janelle broke down. At first she tried to restrain herself.

  “I know you idolize him, and that’s only natural. But your grandfather was—is—not a nice man. Okay? You don’t know him, not what he’s really like. Maybe it’s time you learned some things. I have bit my tongue and bit my tongue, but I won’t any longer.”

  Janelle’s voice started to rise, and when Terry turned briefly from looking out the window, he saw her knuckles go white at the wheel.

  “Your father grew up in fear of your grandpa. Did you know that? When I first met your father, he wouldn’t take me to meet his family until we were engaged to be married. It was because your grandfather is a tyrant. Do you know what that means? It means a very bad man who makes other people do what he wants them to do without thinking about what they might want to do themselves. Do you understand? Your grandfather, who you idolize, wouldn’t let your grandmother leave the house without his permission. For twenty years! How would that make you feel?”

  Janelle was yelling now. She was crying and wiping at her eyes. In the backseat, Denise started to whimper. Terry didn’t say anything. He just kept looking out the window. He thought about the way his grandpa could cast a Jitterbug farther, and with more accuracy, than anyone in the world. The way, with just a flick of his wrist, he could send the lure sailing in a flat arc to land precisely where he wanted—the shadow under a dock, a small gap in the lily pads, right up underneath an overhanging bush. Terry himself couldn’t do that, not even close, but if he tried his whole life maybe he could. And that’s what he wanted more than anything.

  When Janelle finally wound herself down, they sat there for a while in silence and then Terry said he’d rather not get ice cream. And, that if Janelle could just drop him off at his grandpa’s house, he could ride his bike home later.

  At this, Janelle exhaled through her clenched teeth and rubbed her temples.

  “If you’re not careful, mister, you are going to end up just like him. I can see it in you, and I don’t like it.”

  —

  While Terry was away, Denise informed Janelle that she would no longer be accompanying her to church, and—although Denise was only thirteen at the time and hadn’t been confirmed—Janelle didn’t argue. In fact, Janelle herself stopped going to church for a whole month. She gradually quit going to the bereavement group. And, although they continued for a while, she allowed herself to fall out of touch with Merriam. Janelle knew she had hurt her feelings, but their conversations had begun to falter. She wasn’t sure why, but it seemed that they’d run out of ways to talk about their grief and sorrow—and, as a result, had found out they had nothing in common. During their last few meetings, neither of them had said much. Merriam would occasionally grasp Janelle’s hand and squeeze and look like she was about to speak, and then wouldn’t. Both of them drank their coffee and got refills. They spent long silent moments looking out the windows into the dark street.

  Eventually, Janelle resumed attending church services, at New Directions Non-denominational Church of Christ. New Directions was a congregation of over a thousand, and instead of a choir, it had a band that played Christian rock music, the lyrics of which flashed across a Jumbotron. There were no hymnals. The pastor was tan and a beautiful sermonizer. He reminded Janelle of a Kennedy. Janelle found herself looking forward to Sundays in a way she never had before. She tried to get Denise to join her. Denise refused. But, surprisingly, one Sunday, Todd neglected the lawn and accompanied her.

  —

  While Terry was away his father accepted Christ into his life at New Directions Church, and it was like he had discovered some necessary bodily function that he had somehow been living without. He accepted Christ like eating, like drinking water, like sucking down great draughts of cold, clean air. When Pastor Clint got up on the stage and gave his sermons, Todd felt his words as if they were meant for him and him alone. Todd liked the way that New Directions did away with all the old religious claptrap. There were no robes or candles or ridiculous ceremonies involving dunking people in water. At New Directions, it was just the words of Pastor Clint, a thousand brothers and sisters in Christ pressed around you in support, and some music that really glorified God, with drums and amplifiers, the way music was meant to be played.

  Eventually, it was Todd who forced Denise to attend New Directions with them on Sundays. He told her she would come to church and receive the Word of God if he had to drag her there and tie her to a pew.

  “Maybe I failed your brother,” he said. “Maybe I didn’t fulfill my duties as a father in the eyes of the Lord. But I will not make that mistake with you. You will be a Godly young woman and a sister of Christ.”

  And, on a Sunday when Denise refused to get out of bed and locked the door against him, Todd, sure in the knowledge of the Lord, kicked her bedroom door open and pulled her, sobbing, from her bed. Denise lay sprawled on the floor while he ripped clothing from hangers in her closet and threw them at her. She screamed for her mother. Janelle didn’t come. Denise eventually got dressed and slumped in the backseat of the van. For the whole church service, and most after that, she watched her father, his eyes closed while he absorbed Pastor Clint’s sermon, and she imagined, she wished, that Terry had killed him instead of that guy at the bar. With Todd gone, two years with Janelle would be bearable until Terry came back and then they could go somewhere else to live. Where didn’t matter. What they would do when they got there didn’t matter. As long as she and Terry could be together they would be okay.

  —

  At first, Terry thought about it constantly. The events of that night on an endless loop reeling through all his waking thoughts, polluting his dreams. And then, halfway through the first year, he didn’t think about it much at all. It became something about him, an alteration that was somehow more physical than emotional. Some people have their wi
sdom teeth out, some people don’t. Some people have diabetes, some people don’t. Some people live with the knowledge that they caused the death of another human being, some people don’t. Whenever certain thoughts reared their heads, Terry breathed deeply while staring at a fixed object and they passed, like car sickness.

  For some reason, he was less successful in his attempt to forget the day of his sentencing. The thinly veiled look of revulsion on the judge’s face when she addressed him. The way she moved her glasses down low on her nose, and told him she hoped two years was enough to get him back on track. He regularly carried out imaginary conversations with this woman, debates where he pled his case eloquently, expressed his sorrow in a completely honest and believable manner, where he presented, unequivocally, the truth that two years in Saginaw would not, could not, get him—or anyone else—back on track.