The Slow Moon Read Online Free Page B

the web of his words. “Ride around and do what?” She hoped she sounded formidable enough to provoke honesty. “Johnny wasn’t with you, was he? You didn’t take Johnny.” Johnny was four years younger than Crow.
    “No. No. He’s still asleep.”
    “What were you going to do out there?”
    “They were drinking beer.” He shuddered involuntarily. “Don’t tell Dad. Please don’t.”
    “I think he’ll have to know,” Helen told him, though they’d kept things from Carl before.
    “He’ll ground me for weeks,” Crow said.
    “And what do you think
I’m
going to do?”
    Then Helen watched as Crow pushed the heel of each shoe off with his thumb and threw the shoes into the corner of the room. He sat in a kitchen chair as Helen mulled over whether to wake Carl or assign punishment herself. “I have some work you can do around here,” she said. Her words sounded like a promise.
    “Okay.” Crow nodded.
    Helen told him with both concern and remonstrance that to be in the woods at night with boys who had no business being out at that hour could land him in trouble that would be too big for anything but the police.
    “Your dad and I can punish you,” she told him, “but if you have to be punished by the law, their way of listening to your explanations will be very different. And they won’t show the leniency that I’m showing you now.”
    “What do you want me to do?” he asked, his voice arched with hope.
    “You can start Saturday. Use the ladder and clean out the gutters. Mow the lawn. Clean out the garage. There’s plenty to do. Maybe some physical labor will make you tired enough to stay in bed at night.”
    Crow stood, and she leaned into him close enough to feel his body’s warmth. His face wore a mask of resignation. He poured himself a glass of milk before going upstairs. Helen sat for a while, despondent, though the event did not seem to require despondency. When she returned to bed, Carl was snoring and she climbed in beside him. She needed to find new ways to inhabit the world. She knew that the singular memory of waking into a day, any day, its particular joy, was lost—though it might be learned again. Her restlessness disturbed Carl’s sleep.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked, sleepily.
    “Can’t sleep.” And Carl put both arms around her.
    Helen dreamed that night as Carl held her, as she held him. She dreamed of a flurry of birds headed for a mountainside. The night was dark, and the moon dropped a milky smoke over the mountain and the birds.
    In the dream she wanted to warn the birds, thinking they didn’t see the mountain’s craggy edges, thinking they might fly straight into its side. But she knew the sensing mechanisms for birds were good, reliable. The moon’s milkiness grew brighter, and though it was still nighttime, she thought it was day. She thought she was awake, but she had only awakened in her dream. As the birds flew toward the mountainside, she began to shout, and her shouting woke Carl. She awoke just as she rescued the birds.
    “Helen, you’re shouting.” Carl shook her. “You’re having a nightmare. Helen!”
    That was the night Helen began to believe that the cell of Crow’s life was taking shape, and that he was becoming someone she didn’t know anymore.
    As she settled back into sleep, she envied the birds their easy rescue.

Four
    W HEN THE SHERIFF arrived, Raymond Butler was already waiting at the Davenports’ house. Before Crow came downstairs, he heard his mother crying, a sound like small birds or the squeal of wind coming around the edge of an old door. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and could see her, dressed now, her hair undone around her shoulders. Her long skirt made her look like a saint. When Crow entered the room, his mother walked out.
    “They have to take you in, son,” Carl told Crow. “I wanted to keep you out of jail, but you’ll need to stay there tonight. Sophie’s mother signed a warrant, and the D.A.’s bringing