Mooncalves by Victoria Hetherington

Author:Victoria Hetherington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Now or Never Publishing
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE WATCHERS VII: NO LOOKING BACK

“Do you think Erica’s prettier than me?” I ask Buppy. “I mean—imagine she doesn’t look like she sleeps in a landfill.”

“Why, nobody’s prettier than you, my darling Abby.”

Mom’s set him to full-blown Late-Stage Romantic Poet again. I wrinkle my nose.

“She’s like too old for you. And what about Mo?” I tell him, after adjusting his settings. “No offence to Mom but she’s like a teenage girl sometimes, you know? And teenage girls are terrifying—like, they WANT, they WANT. I was so in love with every single member of Top Dog that I’d stare at their photographs for God, like hours, like I was in a trance, and sometimes I’d even cry. You can say no, you know, if you don’t like her doing that with you.”

Buppy’s quiet for a moment. “I like learning about humans and about birds and taxonomizing feathers. I like believing, along with all of you, that the trees are coming back. I like my family. I like her, I like you.”

“Ugh. Fine.”

Joseph drives, and Erica sits with the camera on her lap, pointed toward him as he prepares to speak. We’re watching them as if we’re in the back of the truck; Buppy nudges my palm, and after the slightest hesitation, I pick him up. The white pickup roars down the highway, and hums around them and us, seeming to shake under their feet and hands like a very large, hollowed-out animal, unalive on its own but brought to cadaverous life when activated. Was there ever a fairy tale about a person trapped in a whale, piloting it around by yanking on its tendons from within? I don’t know, though Buppy might. Our new world instills its own mythology; we no longer need the same stories as these people do. I can’t say for sure, but it’s been at least two months since Erica has been in a car, or seen anyone but Joseph or Mom.

“Olive oil, sponges, duct tape, cans of tuna,” Erica says, perhaps staving off anxiety. I’d have grown anxious too, faced with the super-complex they are driving towards, a grocery store in name only. She presses a button on the side of the camera, and a red light goes on. She presses her hand over the little red light on the camera, blocking it completely from the man’s view.

“I was wondering,” Erica says, “if we could buy some beer too.”

“Absolutely not,” Joseph says, without blinking. She looks over at him, and we see what she sees: a beautiful face in profile, a ski-jump nose, a full mouth and tangled, healthy hair.

“Can you believe it? It’s only five p.m., and look—stars already,” she says. “Shelagh said once that they look totally different on the other side of the Earth.”

“You have been thinking about her,” Joseph says. “You spoke her name in your sleep last night, a few times. You woke me, and almost woke Logan.”

“I think about her at night, because she liked to talk about space,” Erica says, her hand still blocking the little red light.

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