Behind the Moon. Madison Smartt Bell
bodies but were still regarding her.
Then they were gone, and her vision steadied. On the curving wall before her she did see a series of little horned heads—no, they were handprints, negative images, a black paint surrounding the pallor of the stone, so that the hands seemed to glow a little, like the phosphorescent plastic stars stuck to the ceiling above her bed at home. One print seemed to attract her hand magnetically, the left one, and when she laid it there it fit so perfectly there was no line around it. Her left hand disappeared entirely into darkness as complete as the velvet black of a starless sky; it sank a little way into soft stone.
23
She ran for the bikes before she realized that she had no way to start one up, and the Harleys were too heavy for her to handle anyway. The big tent had gone dark now, and from its shadow came the shrill two notes of Karyn’s repetitious scream, and the low grumble of Sonny’s voice, trying to shut her up. Marko lunged toward her, a silent bulky shadow, and Julie dodged behind his Harley. Her jacket still lay across the saddle where she had left it in the heat of the afternoon. Black vinyl, torn and cheap; she couldn’t afford leather. As Marko rounded the bike and came at her again, she snatched it up by one sleeve and lashed the chrome studs into his face. She had no strength, and the jacket no weight to make any real impression on Marko, but maybe a stud had caught him in the eye. He fell back against his bike, one hand rising to his cheekbone, and the bike collapsed under him. Marko dropped with it to the sand, air oofing out of him as his tailbone slammed down.
Julie ran for the cliff and scrambled up the ledges, tripping and crouching, using her hands. The jacket encumbered her but for some reason she didn’t want to let it go. She stopped long enough to tie it around her waist by the sleeves. Someone was climbing up after her, though, but not Marko, not yet. He was still struggling to get his bike upright in the loose sand.
Julie stopped, winded, on the ledge below the first rock shelter. The pale moon sailed through the sky like a paper coracle. Karyn’s scream had subsided to a whistling gasp. Sonny stood with her outside the big tent; he had wrapped the Indian blanket around her and draped his arm across her shoulders, almost tenderly.
There was someone climbing toward her—she heard scrabbling on the rocks . . . though still not Marko; she could see that he had just left his bike and was trotting toward the bottom of the cliff. Jamal, then. Was he speaking to her, calling her name in a low voice? Or was it only a sense that his mind was trying to reach hers. . . . It had gotten chilly quickly, now that night had fallen in the desert. Julie shrugged into the vinyl jacket. A couple of the studs had pulled partway loose when she’d whipped the thing into the Marko’s face. It was secondhand, the sleeves too long, and when she wrapped her arms around herself the studded cuffs dangled like ties on a strait-jacket.
Did you know? She was thinking. Did you know this whole sick program all along? She remembered the math problem about the tents, but that seemed foolishly remote now, like some concern she might have had as a little girl. Because if you knew they were planning to dose us, then how could you not know all the rest?
She hugged herself tighter through the vinyl, crumpling slightly over the dizzy swirl in her belly that this thinking gave her, wishing the jacket were armor so she could disappear completely inside of it. And after all it was totally too awful to think that Jamal could have been in on the whole thing from the start, with Marko, with Sonny. And what had Karyn known that Julie didn’t?? —no, she couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that.
There had to be another way to tell herself the story. Jamal would tell it to her another way. Marko was out of sight now, somewhere under the edge of the ledge she was standing on, so he must be climbing, and she could see that Sonny had left Karyn, who stood wrapped in the blanket in front of the tent, perhaps still whimpering; from the angle of her elbow Julie thought she might have covered her mouth with one hand.
Sonny and Marko would both be coming after them now. After her. She thought of following the ledges around to the place where they had watched the hawk feeding, where the stone hills rolled to the horizon. Somewhere back there was the ribbon of road where they’d seen the car pass in the sunset, but it might be miles and miles away.
Jamal’s slender hands appeared on the ledge, and with a long smooth movement he pulled himself up.
Julie . . .
What! She turned from him, toward the distant moon.
Look . . . He floated one hand in her direction, as if he wanted to come nearer, but he didn’t. I didn’t—all I—when I saw that bottle I had a thought. And when I saw the camera—even then I thought well, if—I thought I could just take you a—
And she still couldn’t tell if these scraps of words were spoken, or if it was just the pressure of a thought trying to fumble its way across the rift that had been opened by what had happened. What was happening still. Certainly his voice was much louder, clearer, when now he turned around quick as a cat and shouted down to Marko, “Don’t try to come up here.”
Jamal kicked a couple of loose stones over the ledge, and Marko shouted, not even a curse, and she heard him next in a lower tone, “Listen to me you little shit—she can’t just come in and go out like that. Once you’re in, you’re in.”
When Marko’s hand came over the ledge, Jamal stomped it with his boot-heel and the hand jerked away, but then Marko’s head and shoulders rose over the rim. Jamal kicked him in the face, but Marko snatched his support leg, and Jamal fell over backwards, landing hard. As Marko came up onto the ledge Jamal got up quickly, and he booted the sack of cans he’d collected to tangle Marko’s feet, and Marko did stumble—“You little shit!” he cried. His nose was bleeding where Jamal had kicked him, but he didn’t seem much bothered by it. Jamal put himself in Marko’s way, and Marko batted him aside like a fly, a mosquito—Jamal flew back and fell rolling into a cranny of the rock shelter, and Julie had no time to wonder if he was hurt, hurt bad or not, because now there was nothing between her and Marko.
24
Her hand absorbed into the stone, her whole forearm sinking in, as if into a pool of warm, black oil. She turned her head to press her cheek against the stone. Under her palm was a hot, scratchy something, like a pelt, and she could feel a rough breath lifting and relaxing it. The warmth and surprise of this other breath jolted all the way back to her shoulder, and she wanted to pull away but she couldn’t, and after all she didn’t really want to—she needed to go forward, to go through. The left side of her face lowered into the wall, like sinking into her pillow while she was slowly absorbed into sleep, and she thought that now her left eye must be just where the eye of the bear had been, before. Now she must be eye to eye with the bear. Except instead she was inside him. Beyond the infinite thickness of the stone her forearm suddenly pushed through, so she could move it freely now, turning it from the elbow, feeling the heaviness of the bone and paw-pad where her hand had been. From her fingertips sprouted the black curving claws of the bear.
25
When Marko’s hand came over the ledge Jamal stomped it with his boot-heel, twisting his foot to grind down on it with the metal tap he used to scuff pavement when he put a boot down from his bike. The hand jerked away, but then Marko’s head and shoulders rose up over the rim. Jamal kicked him in the face, but Marko snatched Jamal’s other leg, and Jamal went over backwards, all unstrung and landing so roughly that his head snapped hard against the rock, but maybe the cushion of his thick hair had protected it, and as Marko came over the ledge Jamal got up quickly and with the side of his foot he swiped the sack of cans he’d collected into Marko’s path, and Marko’s feet did tangle on the trash bag—“You little shit!” he cried.
Jamal took one backward step, reaching around to the back of his waistband to pull something out from under the hem of his windbreaker. Julie didn’t get a good look because of the quickness of the movement and the uncertain moonlight, but whatever it was changed Marko’s tone.
“Oh