Excerpt
Coffin Moon
1Early afternoon, with bruised, ugly clouds hanging above the notched teeth of the buildings across the street, the sleet all coming down sideways, holiday lights blinking red and green in the windows of the bar. The waist-high Christmas tree in the corner done up in silver tinsel. Cold winter light on the floor. Duane Minor, alone in the Last Call twenty minutes before open, puts ashtrays on the tables. Makes sure he’s got his lemon slices and his cherries, that the racks are stocked with clean glasses, there’s enough ice to get him through to early evening at least. A night of shit sleep gives the world a blighted, gritty cast, and he’s got Blue Oyster Cult on the jukebox in the back, turned up high enough to rattle window glass; it’s only the break in the song that lets him hear the phone ringing.
“Last Call Tavern,” he says. “We open in twenty.”
“Hello, Mr. Minor. It’s Patty Garent over at Joseph Middle School.”
Minor’s heart sinks. “Hey, Mrs. Garent. Just a sec, please.” He sets the phone down and trots over to the stereo console at the far end of the bar, lowers the volume on the jukebox. Walks back and closes his eyes for a moment before picking up the handset.
“I’m here, ma’am.” He fishes a cigarette out of the pack on the counter, lights up.
“Well, Mr. Minor, I’m the bearer of unfortunate news.”
“Ah, damn. Another fight?”
“Yes, I’m sorry to say, and the girl was hurt this time. We need you to come pick Julia up and discuss the issue with Principal Reed. You and your wife both, if that’s a possibility.”
Minor looks at the clock. There are odd, mismatched stitches of sorrow and shame and anger all sort of roiling inside him, the most prevalent one being the certainty that he’s failing miserably at this. That guardianship—parenthood, whatever the hell the state of Oregon wants to call it—is a thing simply beyond his means. This child has brought him out of his depth. He runs a hand down his face, and notes the day’s first desire for a drink. “Okay,” he says. “My wife’s in class right now, but I can make it. Give me twenty minutes?”
“Thank you, Mr. Minor. She’ll be in the office when you get here.”
Minor hangs up, calls Joanne, his mother-in-law. Ed picks up on the second ring, spends a moment coughing before he says hello.
“Ed, it’s Duane.”
“Oh, boy,” Ed says, not unkindly. “Let me guess. It’s either something with Julia or someone burned the bar down.”
“Former. Gotta go talk to the principal.”
“Oof. Fighting?”
“Again, yeah.”
“Shitfire,” he says. “I’ll let Joanne know.”
“I appreciate it.”
The thunk of the handset, and then he hears Ed and Joanne talking. Ed comes back on. “She’ll be there in fifteen. She says to just lock the front, she’ll take care of the rest.”
“I appreciate it. How you feeling today?”
“Oh, upright and taking solids, you know. Tell that girl not to be such a hard-ass, would you? She’s got every right to, but still.”
“I hear you.”
Minor hangs up, gets his coat, his keys. Spends maybe a little too long looking at the gleaming tiers of bottles behind the bar. Just a nip wouldn’t be noticeable, he thinks, and it’d maybe sand off the barbs of this anger he’s feeling. But one drink’s a road that twists, he knows it full well, twists and then turns down a darker trail, and it’s been eighteen months since he’s had a drop, a lot of that time spent white-knuckled. It’d be some real sad-sack shit to throw away all that time, so a minute later he’s outside, shoulders hunched against the sleet, still sober. Locking the Last Call’s front door behind him, running toward his truck parked around the corner.
Joseph Middle School hasn’t changed a bit since Minor was a kid. A one-story, L-shaped building with bike racks out front, chipped cement steps. An American flag rattles on its chain, and through the school’s long banks of windows, the bent heads of children can be seen. Minor walks inside, makes his way to the front office, where Mrs. Garent peers at him over her bifocals. She’d worked here when he was a kid, and had seemed old to him then. Since Julia’s moved in with Minor and his wife, Heidi, he’s become intimately familiar with the place again, the staff. Mrs. Garent promptly directs him to Principal Reed’s office, and he sees Julia slouched in a chair next to the man’s open door; she won’t look at him, so Minor steps inside. Reed, bald and mustached, wearing a mustard-colored shirt and brown tie, looks up from his desk with hound dog eyes. The air of the perpetual administrator about him.
“Hey, Duane,” he says unhappily. “Why don’t you shut the door.”
Minor does, then settles himself into a chair that faces Reed’s desk.
“So,” Reed says, sighing heavily, “sounds like it was a fight in the lunch line.”
“Alright. Damn.”
“Far as I understand it, someone took cuts in front of someone else, and Julia objected. Something was said in response, probably an unkind thing, and she hit the other student in the mouth. Twice.”
“What unkind thing was that?”
“I don’t know,” Reed admits. “We’re going off stories from multiple kids here. But hopefully you’ll agree with me, Duane, when I say it doesn’t really matter that much. Even if someone said something, it doesn’t justify what happened.”
Minor doesn’t know if that’s necessarily true, but also knows Julia’s on thin ice here. “No, yeah, I hear you.”
“Can’t have people getting punched over a disagreement, you know?”
“Absolutely.”
“The other student’s currently at the hospital waiting to see if stitches are necessary.”
Another moment of drowning, wishing like hell Heidi was here. “Yeah, you’re right. She crossed the line.”
Tony Reed’s not a bad guy. Not really. They’ve filled him in on Julia’s story: Mom doing a life sentence in upstate New York, stepfather dead, Julia separated from her stepbrother. The whole heartbreaking thing. At first, it was all harrowing enough to afford her some disciplinary leeway, but looking at the principal right now, it’s clear that ship has sailed. Stitches?
“So, the other student’s parents are requesting expulsion,” Reed says, and Minor looks at him in alarm.
“Tony, I—”
Reed holds up a hand. “I’m not going to do it, Duane, but I want you to know that that’s the point we’re getting to.”
“I understand. It won’t happen again.”
Tight-lipped, Minor nods. His gratitude from moments before has evaporated like smoke, and he feels that familiar fury in him, that sliver of heat that makes his hands flex against his thighs. This little speech feels practiced, and it sets off in Minor the same bells as any rear-echelon motherf***er that ever gave his platoon an ass-chewing over something beyond their control. People just feel the need to jaw at you sometimes, feel big. Reed’s likely behind the pocket himself a hundred times a day, getting his own ass-chewings from parents and superintendents and all the rest; sometimes you just need to pass the misery around. And really, he’s not far off on his assessment of Julia—this isn’t the first time Minor’s sat in this chair, after all.
“I understand,” he says again, the anger gone as quickly as it arrived. Just tired now. “I want to thank you for giving her another chance, Tony. She’s had a hard road.”
“I know it,” Reed says. “And I’m sorry for it. We all want her to succeed.”
He and Julia are getting in the truck across the street from school when the bell rings and kids begin spilling out the doors. Laughing, running, jumping off benches. The sleet’s stopped and kids unlock their bikes and begin gleefully slaloming through puddles, trying to splash each other. Julia sits in the passenger seat with her arms crossed, chin dipped to her chest, watching it all from the corners of her eyes. Newly thirteen, wire-thin, ink-black hair that falls to her shoulders and a scowl like a minotaur. Minor cracks a window, lights a cigarette. He’s trying to stay calm, trying to feel like a parent, like an adult. Julia’s been with them for a little over a year now and he can count those instances of feeling like he’s got his shit together on one hand, maybe. He threads the truck out into the street, waits for kids to pass in the crosswalk.
“So you’re not going to say anything?”
A mumble.
“What’s that?”
She turns and looks at him; she has a scratch laddering one cheek and her mouth is a small bow of resentment. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
