Moonrise Read online

  For Jimmy Fox

  Contents

  THE FIRST CALL

  SLUM LANDLORD

  TEXTS

  BOB’S DINER

  NO SHORE

  THE SECOND CALL

  AUNT KAREN

  HOW MOM HANDLED IT

  AUTO SHOP

  TEAM WRONG

  CHICKEN SHIT

  LETTER FROM ED

  WHAT IT MEANT

  A DECISION

  MUGSHOT

  MORNING RUN

  IN WALMART

  HOME SWEET HOME

  LITTLE MURDERS

  NO REPLY

  STAR WARS

  WHEN THE COP GOT SHOT

  ICE AND FLAME

  MIRACLES

  THE FARM

  THE JUNKER

  INSIDE OUT

  ED NEVER CAME BACK

  WHY HE LEFT …

  NELL

  A PRIZE

  THE CHECKLIST

  POOR JUSTICE

  DISTRACTION

  WHO IS EDWARD MOON?

  PARENT–TEACHER CONFERENCE

  SECTION A

  THE VISITING ROOM

  NOT A HOSPITAL

  IT’S ED

  COCO

  THE PRISONER

  MARINER’S MARSHES

  THE FIRST VISIT

  UP AGAINST A COOKIE JAR

  EVERYONE WALKED

  THE GAS STATION

  SCRATCH CARD

  UNLUCKY FOR SOME

  GOLD

  A DIFFERENCE

  PHILIP MILLER

  THAT’S WHO

  NIGHT RUN

  TAILGATING

  JUST NO

  SUPERHERO

  BEFORE THE SUN RISES

  COUNTDOWN TO CHRISTMAS

  BREAKFAST BAGEL

  FATHER MATTHEW

  PUBLIC RELATIONS

  THE WALL

  A JOKE

  MY LIFE NOW

  THE PROSECUTOR

  THE COST

  WHERE IT ENDS

  MY VERSION

  INNOCENT

  THE TIP JAR

  BAD NEWS

  A SODA

  PEOPLE HERE

  WITHOUT THE CONS

  DAD

  NELL SENDS A MESSAGE

  ASK HIM

  ED CONFESSED TO THE CRIME

  POINTLESS

  DID YOU DO IT?

  WRONG

  AGAIN

  IN ME

  THE WARDEN

  BRAVE NEW WORLD

  A DECENT MAN

  ED WON’T SEE ME

  AND THE NEXT DAY

  NOT DRIVING

  THE THIRD DAY

  HALLOWEEN

  CHARITY

  ANOTHER LETTER

  NO LIES

  RESPONSIBLE

  WITH NELL

  WE DON’T KISS

  THE CEILING FAN

  ROUTINE

  ANGELA CALLS

  USA

  IF

  THIRTY MINUTES

  AUNT KAREN CALLS

  STRICT

  THE WORST THING

  POSSIBLE

  TOM HANKS

  BROKEN

  THE APARTMENT

  LIKE HELLFIRE

  KISSING

  TURN OVER

  GO HOME

  A JOB

  MARRY ME

  MONMOUTH BEACH

  DELIVERY BOY

  BOTCHED

  DAY TRIP

  MONKEY BABIES

  NIGHTMARES

  THE LAKE

  A LITTLE WHILE

  MEANING IT

  AFTERWARDS

  AN EMAIL FROM AL

  THEY’LL HEAR IT

  BE HAPPY

  THE WALKING DEAD

  GRILLED CHEESE

  DUEL

  ANOTHER PICTURE MESSAGE

  A REMINDER

  FIREWORKS

  A MISTAKE

  I DON’T KNOW WHY

  NO REHEARSAL

  POKER

  SID SIPS

  SPECIAL PROVISIONS

  LIGHTENING

  DRAFT

  LUGGAGE

  CLOSER TO HOME

  NOW

  EVA

  A HOLDING BAY

  ANGELA’S FIRST VISIT

  REAL

  THE LAVENDER ROOM

  MAJOR-GENERAL

  OUTSIDE THE PRISON

  HEALING

  PREPARATION

  NOT FAIR

  THE GALLERY

  THE RETURN

  A MISTAKE

  WHAT CAN WE FORGIVE?

  TOO LATE

  LAND OF THE FREE

  HOW DO YOU SAY GOODBYE?

  REMOVAL

  PLANNING

  A CHANCE

  HOPE

  THE WRIT

  GET OUT

  MORNING RUN

  HUDDLE

  NOSY PEPPERS

  JOKES

  THE VIGIL

  WHEN YOU KNOW BETTER

  I DREAM

  LAST DAY

  NEED

  READY

  AMAZING GRACE

  THE LAST SUPPER

  LIBERTY STATE PARK

  SIX O’CLOCK

  IRREGULAR

  TEN O’CLOCK

  WITNESS

  BELIEF

  IN THE DARKNESS

  A MINUTE BEFORE MIDNIGHT

  MIDNIGHT

  IT IS DONE

  TIME TRAVEL ME

  DRIVING HOME

  BODY CURLED UP

  ANOTHER NEXT MONTH

  THE NEWS REPORTS

  BELONGINGS

  WHAT IS LEFT BEHIND

  THE LAST LETTER

  THE PAIN

  REMEMBERING

  RELEASED

  TO HOUSTON

  BACK IN ARLINGTON

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THE FIRST CALL

  The green phone

  on the wall in the hall

  hardly ever rang.

  Anyone who wanted to speak to Mom called her cell.

  Same with Angela.

  I listened to the jangle for a few seconds

  before picking it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Joe?’ It was Ed.

  He hadn’t been in touch for weeks.

  I’d started to worry,

  wondered if he was ever coming home.

  ‘Is Angela there?’ he asked.

  He was breathing fast

  as though someone were chasing him.

  In the background

  hard voices,

  a door slamming.

  ‘Angela’s at soccer practice,’ I said.

  ‘And Mom?’

  ‘No idea.

  Hey, Ed,

  I found a baseball glove at the park.

  Will you be back soon to play?’

  Ed sighed heavily. ‘I dunno, Joe.’

  ‘Oh.’ I picked at some peeling paint on the wall.

  Another sigh from my big brother.

  ‘I got arrested, Joe.

  They think I done something real bad.’

  I pressed the receiver tight

  against my ear.

  ‘What do they think you done?’

  ‘They think I hurt someone.

  But I didn’t. You hear?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I mean it. You hear me?

  Cos people are gonna be telling you

  all kinds of lies.

  I need you to know the truth.’

  The front door opened and Mom stormed in

  carrying a bag of groceries

  for my sister to conjure into dinner.

  ‘The police got Ed!’ I shouted.

  I held out the phone.

  She snatched it from me,

/>   dropping the bag.

  A tangerine rolled across the rug.

  I picked it up,

  the skin cold and rough.

  ‘Ed? What’s going on? …

  But how can they make that sort of mistake? …

  Don’t shout at me, I’m just …

  No, I know, but …

  I don’t have the money for …

  Ed, stay calm …

  I’ll call Karen. I said I’ll call Karen …

  Stop shouting at me …

  Ed, for Christ’s sake …

  I’m just not able to … Ed? Ed?’

  She held the phone away

  from her ear and scowled

  like it had bitten her.

  ‘The cops are charging him with murder,’ she said.

  I was seven.

  I didn’t know what that meant.

  Did he owe someone money?

  We hadn’t any cash to pay the electricity bill.

  My sneakers were so small

  they made the tips of my toes white.

  ‘Can I call him back?’ I asked.

  The tangerine was still in my hand.

  I wanted to throw it in Mom’s face and hurt her.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘And don’t expect to speak to him for a long time.’

  I didn’t believe her.

  I thought Ed would call.

  I thought he’d come home.

  But he never did.

  SLUM LANDLORD

  Aunt Karen told me not to come here.

  She said Ed didn’t deserve an entourage

  after the pain he’d caused our family.

  Even after ten long years

  she blames him for everything.

  She points to Ed and says,

  ‘See what he did to us.’

  And maybe she’s right.

  Everything turned to shit

  when Ed got put away;

  nothing worked any more.

  So maybe this is a stupid idea.

  I’m already pining for home, Staten Island,

  anything that isn’t Wakeling, Texas,

  in the broiling heat.

  It’s not as if I want to be here,

  checking out some slummy apartment.

  But I can’t afford to keep staying at

  the Wakeling Motorstop Motel,

  not for the whole time I’m in Texas anyway.

  ‘Six hundred for the month,’ the landlord croaks,

  coughing up something wet and

  spitting it into a Kleenex.

  Judging by the dishes in the sink,

  the apartment hasn’t been lived in for months and

  he’d be lucky to get a dime for this hole –

  roaches in the closets,

  rodents in the kitchen.

  ‘I need it until mid-August.

  I’ll give you four hundred,’ I say.

  He snorts. ‘Five hundred. Cash.’

  And I can tell by the way he’s

  backing out of the apartment

  that it’s as low as he’ll go.

  Well, I guess he’s the one with the keys;

  he can afford to play hardball.

  ‘If I find out you been selling weed,

  I’ll send my men round.

  You don’t wanna meet my men.’

  But his men don’t bother me.

  I got bigger worries

  than getting bashed in with a baseball bat

  by his hired goons.

  I got Ed to worry about.

  Ed.

  So here I am.

  Stuck.

  And it’s going to be the worst time of my life.

  The worst time of everyone’s lives.

  For those who get to live.

  TEXTS

  In the parking lot of my motel

  a gang of bikers are slugging booze from paper bags,

  hellfire rock music filling up the lot.

  As I pass them, my cell phone pings in my

  back pocket.

  I don’t bother checking the message.

  I know it’s Angela pestering me:

  Where r u?

  Did u go 2 the prison?

  U seen Ed??

  Hows Ed???

  Karens still srsly pissed off.

  Eds new lawyer emailed. He seems smart.

  Where R U???

  I have to call my sister.

  And I will.

  Later.

  Right now, I’m starving.

  And I have to get away from this music.

  BOB’S DINER

  The diner is all beat up outside,

  paint crumbling, half the neon sign unlit,

  and inside it’s the same:

  broken floor tiles,

  posters pale and torn.

  A middle-aged waitress in a

  pink bowling shirt smiles.

  Her name – Sue – is embroidered into

  her front pocket,

  the black thread unravelling itself,

  snaking down the shirt like a

  little vine.

  ‘You OK, hun?’ she asks,

  raising her hand to her mouth,

  dragging on a cigarette right there

  behind the counter

  like it’s totally normal –

  a waitress smoking in a restaurant.

  And it might be. Around here.

  I pull out my remaining cash and wave it at her.

  ‘What would four bucks buy me?’ I say.

  ‘I guess you could get a bacon roll

  and a coffee.

  Would that work, hun?’

  ‘Great,’ I say, inhaling the

  tail of her cigarette smoke.

  She shouts my order through a swing door,

  turns back to slosh coffee into a stained mug

  and pushes it across the counter.

  It’s thick and bitter, nothing like you get in

  New York,

  but I don’t complain.

  I tear open a Splenda,

  tip it in to disguise the taste.

  ‘Any jobs going?’ I ask.

  ‘Wait there, hun.’

  Sue vanishes

  through the

  swing doors.

  I grab a muffin in plastic wrap from a basket

  on the counter, stuff it into my bag before

  a man appears,

  a thick moustache hiding his mouth,

  a belly that bulges over his waistband.

  He reaches across the counter, shakes my hand.

  ‘I’m Bob. I believe you’re lookin’ for work.’

  His accent is drawn out and totally Texan.

  ‘Joe Moon,’ I say.

  He nods.

  ‘I need a delivery guy.

  Someone with a car, cos the junker

  out back won’t run.

  Or someone real fast on a bike.

  The fast person would also need a bike.’

  ‘I fix cars,’ I say quickly.

  ‘If I get it to go, could I have the job?’

  Sue has reappeared, a fresh cigarette limp

  between her twiggy fingers.

  She spits bits of tobacco on to the floor.

  ‘Just so’s you know, hun, my boyfriend Lenny’s

  good with motors. Even he couldn’t get that

  crap heap to turn over.’

  She uses a sour rag

  to wipe coffee stains from the countertop.

  ‘I could try,’ I say,

  not wanting to sound too desperate.

  ‘OK. You can try,’ Bob says.

  He reaches into the basket and

  hands me a blueberry muffin.

  ‘Dessert’s on me, son,’ he says.

  NO SHORE

  All last week

  Reed tried to cheer me up.

  Sitting in his car drinking warm beer,

  he tried to make me believe Ed would get off,

  that I’d be back in Arli
ngton before

  the track and field holiday programme

  began.

  ‘I’ll win bronze for steeple chase,

  you’ll get a gold for five thousand metres.

  Then we’ll go to the shore

  and show off our medals.

  We can stay at my cousin’s beach house

  as long as we want.

  We’ll get tans,

  smoke dope,

  hit on hot girls.

  So many hot girls at the shore.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ I said,

  knowing it was never gonna happen,

  knowing I’d miss out on my entire

  summer,

  including the New York City

  track and field programme.

  It was the one thing that had kept me going

  in school –

  knowing that at the end of the year,

  no matter how low my grades were,

  I’d have the programme to prove

  I wasn’t some layabout loser.

  But instead of running,

  I was coming to Texas

  to count down the days until

  my brother’s execution;

  trying to make me feel better about that

  was pointless.

  THE SECOND CALL

  I liked cheese sandwiches with a truckload of ketchup

  and had a plate of them in my lap.

  I was watching Spiderman on TV,

  cross-legged on the carpet

  wearing scuffed-up sneakers –

  laces undone, feet sticky inside them.

  I was eight by then,

  a year after that first call which had turned

  everything

  inside out.

  Mom shouted at me, as she always did.

  ‘Turn the goddamn TV down!’

  She had her cell to her ear,

  was squinting like she was trying to see

  whatever it was she was being told.

  And then,

  like a rock into a river,

  she fell

  and began to howl.

  It wasn’t like you see in movies,

  someone collapsing but so beautiful

  and

  tragic.

  She was a person possessed,

  smashing into pieces,

  and I was afraid to get too close.

  ‘No!’ she screamed.

  I knew right away the words she was hearing.