Dark of the Moon

tired of my act.”
    “That’s a relief,” she said. “At least I’m safe.”
    He laughed. “Yeah. Listen, about that short penis thing…”
    “It’s not your fault.”
    “It’s not that; I just wish you’d use some word other than penis, you know? Sounds too much like peanut.” He finished loading the shotgun and pumped a shell into the chamber and put it between the front truck seats. “Why don’t you say…dick. That’d be good.”
    “Seems crude.”
    “Whatever.” He stepped away from the truck and looked up at the overhead light. “Does that light come on when the barn door goes up?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’ll silhouette us. I’ll get it.” He took off his shoes and climbed up on the hood of the truck, and then on the roof, reached up and unscrewed the lightbulb, left it hanging by a thread. “Punch the door lift, just enough to turn on the light.”
    She punched the lift button, and the lightbulb remained dark.
    “When I say to lift the door, lift it; then climb in the backseat, get down low, and hang on. I’m getting out of here.”
    He climbed into the truck, started the engine, and braced the shotgun, muzzle down, between the passenger-side floor and seat. “Punch the button; get in.”
    She did, and he watched the door going up, seeming to take an eternity; then he hit the gas and the truck blew through the opening, backward, and he kept it moving, backward, in a circle, around the parking circle, jabbed the brake, jammed the shift into Drive, and tore down the short driveway to the county road, skidded onto the road with a quick brake and another pulse of acceleration, and they were gone.
    “We okay?” Joan asked.
    “Yeah. He’s long gone; but we’re so far away from help that we didn’t dare take the chance…”
    He drove past the hill, away from town. “Where’re we going?” Joan asked.
    “Got some people to talk to.” He slowed, pulled over, and said, “Let me get rid of the shotgun, and you can ride up front.”
     
    T HEY STOPPED at five farms along Highway 7, and spoke to one guy mowing a ditch: Who had they seen on the highway?
    Shrugs and shaken heads: nobody in particular.
    On the way back to town, Virgil said, “I thought everybody knew everybody else’s car.”
    “Not out here. In town. If it’d been something unusual, like a Toyota or a Mercedes, somebody might have noticed. But a Ford or a Chevy, unless there’s a sign on it…”
     
    V IRGIL DIDN ’ T WRITE much that night: he was stuck on story development.
    Homer was pissed off and scared. The killer was coming after him: time to let somebody know about that, file a report.
    But: the man in the moon. He spent some time considering it—thought about Jesse Laymon’s moon earrings. Those had a man in the moon, but Homer didn’t think Betsy would be talking about a symbol. She was talking about a man.
    And Homer thought about the new moon coming up as he was driving into the thunderstorm, on the way to Bluestem, the crescent moon in his rearview mirror. Could the moon be triggering this guy? A new moon? Huh. The moon came up in the east, just like the sun did. Were Gleason and Schmidt propped up facing to the east, because that was where the moon came from? Facing the moon, but not allowed to see it?
    Crazy talk.
    Before going to sleep, Homer thought about the shooting that afternoon. Scary, but the guy had missed. Could have gotten a lot closer…
    Did the shooter intend to kill, or only to frighten? If only to frighten, why?
    Virgil went to sleep hoping that Homer would come up with an idea; because at this point, Virgil himself had none at all.
    Went to sleep dreaming of Joanie Stryker on the rock at the dell…

12
    V IRGIL OPENED his eyes: daylight.
    He felt good, but a little stiff from sleeping on the floor.
    Worried about the gunman, he’d taken the cushions off the couch, and had thrown them on the floor behind the bed, and put the pistol under the bed next to his hand. He didn’t like the idea of sleeping through the night next to a sliding glass door. Joan was at her mother’s. No point in taking a chance.
    But he did feel good. Things were happening, and he was still alive.
    Part of it was the absence of sex after the long naked interval in the pool. He’d tried to talk Joan into sneaking through the glass door into the Holiday Inn, but she turned him down: “Everybody in town would know before you got the curtain pulled. It’s all right to sneak around and have sex, but it has