Moonlit Massacre

To Mom, Marion, my students, OKC’s Ward 2, Wes Craven

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Hills stretch into mountains out west. South, too. Prairie to the east gives way to prairie and cloudless sky. Same to the north.

Through this land runs a highway, four paved lanes from rising to setting sun. On this road travels a pickup truck heading east. A lone metal traveler— beat-up, steel, and blue.

Dry air blows against the ‘67 Chevy and through a rolled-down window on the pickup’s passenger side.

Out this window, he stares. Hears nothingness gust across scorched land. Sun upon his pale, freckled face. He feels warm wind move in fits through each lock of his auburn, curly hair. And he searches deep into a southern horizon for a distant, unknowable place where land and sky must surely meet. The boy, barely ten years on this earth.

His gray eyes follow fences of barbed wire at sixty miles per hour, handmade wood signposts with words like ranch and angus and land for sale. He turns to his mom as she drives. Her hands at ten and two on the wheel. She never returns his stare, and he wonders why. But, her eyes remain fixed on the road and the task ahead of them.

The boy scratches his nose. His denim overalls cotton and tailored. His hand moves from the window frame to his hip pocket retrieving perforated paper no bigger than a ten-dollar bill. Milk in pencil above the first red line, each letter the same size, Bread on the next. He looks at a dusty windshield. He takes a handkerchief from a pocket on his overalls, wipes sweat from his forehead, leans back in the pickup’s bench cloth seat. The town, he realizes, is just ahead of them beyond vast flatness, home nestled where prairie rolls into wooded green hills.

Engine stops, and the boy clicks off his seatbelt, drops his grocery list on his lap. He grabs a crank on the passenger door, rolls up his window, his mother doing the same to her driver side.

On a sidewalk, they walk east down a paved hill.

Her favorite summer dress. Breezy and cotton. Lemon and vibrant. Worn. Sleeveless. Round about her neck, front and back. At her thin waist, a canary yellow matching tie belt. Around her wrist, a beige bracelet of beads marking a precise place where her long dark brown hair, straight as a line, finally ends from flowing along her face. Beside them, his mother’s reflection, beautiful in large glass windowpanes that allow him to see through shops and offices.

On each tan or maroon brick building, words like real estate, lumber, and law.

Sidewalk ends at the bottom of the paved hill. On the street’s south side, a blacktop parking lot, mostly empty, in front of a grocery store. The boy walks across asphalt to the smell of hot tar. He stares at a tall signpost, Sooner Foods and Since 1954 in white cursive on crimson.

Hey, mom.

Hey, Ben, she says, playful, direct.

He looks from the signpost to his mother, who is walking slightly ahead of him. May I walk over to The Music Store?

She stops, turns to him. Whatever happened to earlier this morning’s ‘Sure, mom, happy to drive into town, help with groceries?’

Ben’s hands drop into his pockets. He’s thoughtful enough to recognize annoyance in his mother’s tone, but he can’t tell if she’s faking anger to teach a promise-keeping lesson, or if she’s genuinely upset.

He decides to plead his case. If ya let me walk to The Music Store, I’d rent us movies. For when Nathan and Marc stay tonight. Each word falls from his mouth as if he’s many years older, a charming Southern lawyer.

To be fair, you never let me do any actual helping. I just end up reading car magazines or comics for an hour at the checkout while you do all our shopping.

In a brief silence before his mother can respond, Ben recalls what seems an eternity of memories. His reading, standing propped against wooden shelves,

sitting cross-legged on tile floors, musty old books, American muscle cars on colorful covers. She with her encyclopedic knowledge of nutrition, her selectiveness and careful examination of oranges and watermelons, ingredients and expiration dates.

I don’t know, Ben. She sighs. Mr. Hanson won’t want to look after you while he’s running a business. She squints, her hand at her sweaty forehead, blocking afternoon sun from her eyes. On the condition you promise to unload all bags as soon as we get home? I’d like to start dinner before your dad’s off work.

He smiles his father’s sincere salesman smile. I’ll even throw in a round of doing dishes after dinner.

You play a good game, boy. "That’s a yes, isn’t it?"

She folds her arms over her yellow dress. Nowhere else, Benjamin Bullock. She’s stern in this demand.

Nowhere else. Scout’s honor.

Nowhere else. She unfolds her arms, closing the space between them, placing her left hand on his shoulder.

He notices the beige beads hanging around her wrist. Stay on sidewalks, she says, Directly to The Music Store. Tell Mr. Hanson I’ll pick you up as soon as I’m done.

Affirmative, he says, his entire body stiffening, his right hand to his fore- head with a solemn soldier’s salute.

At an intersection in front of the store, the boy stands, stares at heat rising from pavement. A gravelly, older man’s voice behind him to his mother, Afternoon, Stella.

Afternoon, Sheriff.

How’s this ninety-seven-degree weather treating ya? Ben hears the sheriff ask. Ah, you know. About three degrees from Hell. Stella’s voice is pleasant,

but biting.

Ben smirks. He crosses the street at the intersection, walks east on a sidewalk, the sheriff and his mother’s voices fading into the humming wind. Sweat on his

forehead, his town’s public school beside him. He looks across the street to the grocery store, can barely see his mother, a distant blurred haze of yellow cloth and dark brown hair, her hand again at her forehead to shield her eyes from the summer sun as she talks with the sheriff.

Concrete sidewalk becomes rust red brick. Each brick the same size as his tattered black Converses. A darker row with 1910 etched into the center brick. On surrounding bricks, names of students who graduated that year. A few steps more, 1911, another row 1912, and more names and more years. His father’s name, John, beside his mom’s, 1968.

Ben imagines climbing oak trees in his parents’ backyard. An evening sun setting, a cool breeze. Plucking single strings on Teddy Bunn’s acoustic guitar. Sidney Bechet’s soprano saxophone, Summertime playing from a turntable in an A-frame tool shed Ben’s father is busy building. Ben’s dad comfortable in a lawn chair, explaining to Nathan and Marc how Hank, Sr. is the best country musician, why the sax is the world’s most soulful instrument, and how without Hank Sr., there’s no JJ Cale in Tulsa.

Ben’s no longer on the brick path. He’s at the top of a steep paved hill, stares at a church’s stained-glass windows. He walks up stone steps to an arched wooden door, studies two gold lanterns on either side of the church entrance. He grabs the door’s handle, locked.

He walks east on the town’s Main Street, Muskogee. On a sidewalk, he strolls past vacant brick buildings and shuttered storefronts. He sees in glass window- panes his reflection and deserted boxes, plastic paint buckets and damaged drywall.

A white brick building advertises haircuts for five dollars, one of the few businesses left on this lonely, paved two-lane street. Another is a store selling saddles and harnesses.

On the north side of the street, next-door to a two-story brick bakery, a shut- tered movie theater, a pink building made of brick and stone, a sign spelling Carousel in capitalized circus letters.

Ben walks up to the movie theater’s abandoned ticket booth, his black shoes crunching broken glass, and he tastes red dirt in the air. All that remains of the theater are chunks of discolored concrete, brick, and stone abandoned after the previous owners ripped the last movie poster from the building.

Beside the pink movie theater, a chestnut red brick building once upon a time home to an auto repair store. Groovy, hand-painted letters spell The Music Store on an aluminum glass garage door next to a neon Open sign. Another sign, We Sell Guitars, a different sign, Hi-Fi, Antiques. Next to it, a single hand strumming a guitar on a black-and-white poster of Eric Clapton’s Slowhand.

Ben’s walking past a poster on the glass garage door of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album cover, and he mimics into the air Davis blowing his trumpet. Beside the garage, on a glass door entrance, a Jaws film poster, nearly as wide as the boy is tall, an image of a great white shark moving through deep blue sea toward a woman swimming at water’s surface.

Metal wind chimes clank, and the glass door pushes open from inside, an attractive young woman with tawny brown skin in front of him. Blaring onto the street, Van Halen’s Running with the Devil with its relentless opening bass guitar and drums.

She looks at him, smiles, a shopping bag in her hands. With her back, she holds open the glass door, and a tall man rushes in, nearly knocks Ben to the sidewalk.

Her smile’s gone, and she looks into the store for the tall man. But, he’s gone. Her brown eyes meet Ben’s. She tucks a dangling strand of her wavy black hair behind her ear, leans down, kisses the boy on his pale, freckled forehead.

Thank you, he says with his earnest southern twang, looks up, returns her smile.

Be good, she tells him, holds the door as he enters the store.

At the doorway, Ben watches through the closing glass door as the girl hops into the driver side of her red Jeep, talks with an older teenage boy sitting beside her, shows him the album she’s bought. Then, her red Jeep drives west on Muskogee. A turntable spinning Van Halen catches his attention. Running with the Devil playing its second verse.

Paul Hanson at the back of the store behind a wood paneled checkout counter, thumbing through receipt paper while also rubbing a red apple on his baseball shirt’s navy-blue sleeve, his messy black hair across his forehead.

Gimme a sec, Paul says, bites into his apple. He walks from behind the counter. Above him, exposed metal piping runs alongside steel beams strung

with white Christmas lights. Paul walks between two rows of wooden shelves stretching parallel to the front of the store, each wood structure five feet tall, shelves stocked with new and used vinyl records.

The turntable sits on a shelf attached to a strip of red brick wall between Ben and the glass garage door.

Thought that was you out there, Paul says. Hey, man, how’s it going?’

Oh, you know. Paul sighs. He adjusts a volume knob on a stereo receiver. Watching over the store for Pops, waiting for Annie to return with lunch. Music in the store lowers, and Paul glances out the glass garage door, white sunlight through windows across Paul’s plump, bearded face. He bites into his apple. Whatcha got going?

Nothing much. Looking to rent movies.

Ah, lucky day, little dude. Paul nods his apple in approval toward Ben, then points to a red brick wall lining the store’s west side. He walks a few steps to a doorless entrance leading into an adjoining room. New videos arrived yesterday. Pops had me put ‘em on the shelves this morning. Paul stops at the doorway, glares at Ben. Knowing you, though, you likely already have a movie in mind? But, Ben is no longer looking at Paul.

Whoa! Ben laughs, points behind Paul. Where’d that come from? Eddie Van Halen’s first guitar solo intensifying, Ben runs past Paul. Oh, you mean Justus D. Barnes? Paul calls out over the music.

Ben’s mouth is open, his eyes wide. He stares at a life-size cardboard poster on the red brick wall, an image from the chest up, on what looks like grainy black-and-white and sepia film stock, of a mustached man with a tuft of hair sticking out from his cowboy hat, the man’s brows furrowed, eyes squinting, leering at Ben, a bandana around his neck, his revolver pointed at Ben as if firing into the store.

Dude!

I know.

Ben shakes his head. Leader of the Outlaw Band, Justus D. Barnes. "The Great Train Robbery."

1903. Ben’s astonished. Where’d you find this thing? Shoulda known you’d lose your fucking mind when you saw it.

Swear words, Ben says, his accent growing thicker, will not distract from my question.

The city. Paul stands at Ben’s side, the two staring at the cardboard cowboy cutout as if at an altar in worship. One of the old movie theaters downtown had it and, on account of them closing ... Paul bites again into his apple, then tilts the half-eaten fruit to the front of the store. "Also where I got that sweet Jaws poster I put up on the door this morning. What kind of player you need, by the way? Betamax or VHS?"

Ben grins at Paul, Beta.

Ah, a Beta Man. Paul, impressed, has a closed-mouth smile on his face. Nice choice, little dude. That’s officially three weekends in a row renting a Beta player. Pretty badass, huh?

You have any in?

Sure do. Paul takes a final bite from his apple, now at its core.

He walks behind the checkout counter, a guitar solo at the start of Van Halen’s Eruption playing across the store. "Oh, and I know you’re a horror fan so try not to shit yourself when you see the Night of the Living Dead Beta that came in the mail yesterday."

Paul tosses the apple core, thuds into a metal trashcan. Other than that, man, it’s still mostly Twentieth Century-Fox. Only big studio putting anything on home video. He looks to Ben, the boy kneeling, tying his shoelaces under the Justus D. Barnes cutout.

Paul’s hands in his brown corduroy’s back pockets. He hears David Lee Roth swooning, Girl ... you really got me now. Paul calls out to Ben, I’ll have Annie grab you one of our Beta players when she gets back. He stares at the countertop, confused, says quietly to no one, Think Annie’s got my storage keys.

The metal wind chimes jangle above the door, catching Paul’s attention. Speak of the devil. Ben bolts up from the floor, remembers the cute girl with pretty brown skin who kissed his forehead earlier, then the bullish tall man who nearly knocked him to the ground, realizes he has not seen him

in the store.

A young woman in a light blue tank top and long white bell-bottoms stands on the outside sidewalk, holds open the door for Annie.

Found a pretty person loitering at the diner, Annie proclaims, mockingly, as if announcing royalty, wearing big, round, dark sunglasses, nods back to Darla.

Ben watches Annie stride down the center of the store carrying two grease-stained paper sacks. Barely visible behind the bags is her white t-shirt, Rolling Stones beside a lone image of a giant red tongue sticking out through large, luscious red lips. A plaid flannel shirt wrapped around her waist and over cut-off black denim shorts. Her thick curly black hair bouncing up and down as she makes her way to the back of the store.

Ah ... Paul walks from behind the counter. She arrives. He kisses Annie with a light peck on her soft, rosy cheek. Thank you, thank you. His eyes follow Annie’s porcelain white hands as she places the bags on the countertop. "Not a moment too soon. Just telling Ben here I was this close to eating my own arm."

Annie holds two of her fingers close to Paul’s face. This close, huh? she echoes, taking off her sunglasses. My boyfriend, the Walking Hyperbole. Good to see you, Ben.

Paul looks to Ben, motions the boy toward the front of the store. "Go get you some movies, man. I think Night of the Living Dead ’s on one of the bottom shelves."

"Night of the Living Dead, Paul? Darla scoffs, glares at Paul half-seriously. You’re going to frighten the poor kid half to death."

That little horror fiend? Paul laughs dismissively, reaches into the greasy bags. Yeah, right. He leans against the countertop, eats a french-fry. "Go on, ask our little junior film and music critic his favorite death scene in Black Christmas."

Annie nods to a rectangular, tan thirteen-inch television on the counter next to Paul. "I see Van Halen officially replaced Gilligan’s Island."

Nothing lasts forever, Annie. Not even this album. Paul tosses a fry into the air, and it falls in his mouth. It’s all a rerun anyway.

And, he says the sweetest things, too. Annie smiles playfully at Paul, re-wraps her flannel shirt around her waist. She reaches past him, turns on the

television, mutes the volume as Gillian’s Island appears in black-and-white across the glass screen.

Ben walks toward the front of the store, glances back at Annie and Paul emptying paper bags of their remaining contents. The room smells now of grease, grilled onions, and salty french-fries. In the aisle between the two rows of wooden shelves, Darla stands at a distance from Annie and Paul, twirls her long blonde hair without a care in the world as she flips through vinyl records.

Then, Ben sees him. The tall man stands transfixed a few feet from Darla, mesmerized and still, staring at three guitars hanging on the east brick wall. From the doorless entrance, Ben can see only the tall man’s back over the top of the wooden shelf. He hears Paul call out from the counter to the tall man, Hey, man. Let me know if you need me to take down one of those guitars for ya. And, with a shake of his head, the tall man declines.

Ben steps through the doorway into the adjoining room. He glances over his shoulder to see if the tall man has taken his eyes off the three guitars, and the man has not.

White cinderblock walls line the adjoining room north and west. Along these walls, antique clocks, children’s games, lamps, radios, tools, tables, chairs. Warm sunlight shines on these antiques and across Ben from the room’s south side through three large square steel casement windows overlooking his town’s Main Street. Alongside the square windows, a long, white wooden fixture from the doorway to the west wall, shelves stocked with rows of Betamax and VHS movies. He feels the sun burn hotter on his denim overalls’ chest pockets.

Wanna drive into the city later tonight, see a movie? Ben hears Paul ask Annie in the other room, his voice just audible enough over Van Halen’s Ain’t Talking ‘Bout Love.

I don’t know if I can go back outside today, Paul. That heat is oppressive. Annie lifts her thick curls off the back of her neck and into the air. With a handful of napkins, she wipes gathering sweat from the back of her pale, slender neck. How many more hours til sundown? Annie says, looks over at a clock near the cash register. Oh, god. She sighs. It’s barely three o’clock.

Oppressive. Paul nods his Styrofoam cup of ice water to Annie as if giving a toast at a wedding. Good word. Paul gulps from the half-empty cup

and wipes his mouth. Hey, Ben, Paul says. Any good movies at the theater this weekend?

Ben’s walking along the row of wooden shelves, shouts to Paul, "Jaws 2 could’ve been worse!"

Carefully, Ben stares at movies, each with its own rectangular box resting vertically against a white wooden shelf, each shelf with different movies, each movie box with its own distinct artwork capturing Ben’s attention.

Wait a second ... Ben hears Annie respond finally, "The shark’s dead. The sheriff saved his town and blew up said shark at the end of Jaws, like, in a giant explosion. Impossibly but spectacularly and certainly. What in the world could a Jaws 2 possibly even be about?"

It’s a different shark! Ben responds.

Paul nearly spits his water, chuckles. He shrugs at Annie, lowers his voice to her, It’s a different shark, Annie.

Ben takes from the shelf a video box with an absurd image of a single hand on a white backdrop, the hand walking on two female legs wearing high heels, a U.S. military helmet atop one of two fingers flashing a peace sign. M*A*S*H under the high heels. Holding the movie, Ben calls into the other room, "If you still haven’t seen it, though, The Omen II! The score’s awesome!"

Ben hears Darla’s startled voice. The horror movie where the little boy is the Antichrist? she gasps. You actually saw that?

Yup, Ben responds, his voice carrying over music