Shoot The Moon (and more) Read online

  We climbed cautiously out of the Volks. Wheat’s skin was pale in the moonlight, and if that sounds romantic to you, guess again. Wheat was skinny in a bony way and while he didn’t exactly look undernourished, he didn’t look healthy either. He was also pretty much without body hair, and looked like a big overgrown baby, except for one thing.

  We stood there by the Volks for a few hesitant seconds, in the darkness, the pavement cool against our feet. Wheat opened his mouth to say something, but I stopped him with, “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what, Kitch?”

  “Don’t say anything about your mom.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything about my mom, Kitch.”

  “No?”

  “I was going to say something about my car.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was going to say I hoped nobody steals it while we’re streaking. I mean, we’re leaving the keys in it and the engine’s running and all.”

  “We won’t be in there that long. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay, but I hope nobody steals it, because if they do, my mom’ll kill me.”

  And we were off and running.

  We burst through the lobby doors and immediately ran into a wall of people, which was not a good beginning. Streaking is supposed to be fast, as I think I mentioned before, and running into a wall of people, all of whom were wearing clothes which of course tended to make Wheat and me feel out of place, didn’t improve our speed a whole lot.

  As a matter of fact, Wheat fell down.

  I lifted him up by the elbows and we pushed through the people and light flashed brightly in our eyes. We were in the midst of what was apparently some sort of wedding picture being taken, the family of the bride or groom I supposed. Anyway there was a whole bunch of them, lined up across the lobby, blocking the entrance. At least that’s what they were doing until we entered the picture and plowed our way through.

  Then we were weaving and shoving our way through a mob of formally dressed wedding guests, who’d been crowded around watching the picture taking, including the old people and the five-year-olds, too, and boy, were they a noisy lot: hoots of laughter and outbursts of indignation and everything in between filled the room in one combined, overwhelming blast of bad, boozy breath.

  But we managed to keep moving, clearing the mob of people and cutting off to the left, down a short hall with coin machines on one side and rest rooms on the other. Wheat was out front, bony limbs and cold-air-reddened rear flailing in front of me. Wheat ran with all the precision and grace of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. I was the Cowardly Lion bringing up the literal rear, covering myself. (I guess I was the world’s first and only shy streaker. Not that anybody seemed to notice.)

  The cold air was a relief, after the boozy, stale air of the lobby. It splashed us and felt like diving into a swimming pool. Soon we were across the court (which was fairly empty of people, as hardly anybody was swimming on this unseasonably cold summer night) and then we were both jumping in the pool, and the sensation was somehow reminiscent of running outside into cold air.

  If I hadn’t had “somethin’ to hide” before, as Shaker had put it, I certainly didn’t have now. Between the chilly air and the chillier water I was shriveled up like Count Dracula the morning after. I climbed out of the pool, covered myself again, with one hand (which was no trick) and ran.

  I was now in the lead.

  I was running fast as humanly possible, but at the same time listening for the sound of something falling behind me, namely Wheat. As slippery wet as he was, and being awkward as a paraplegic penguin to begin with, Wheaty seemed doomed to hit the deck before reaching the Volks.

  And then Wheat streaked by me, like a track star getting his second wind, and with the gas torch lighting of the pool area reflecting on our bare backs, we were like a two-man nude Olympics, cutting a naked swath through the dark blue cloth of the night.

  Up by Wheat’s car some dark blue cloth was cutting its own swath.

  Cops.

  I didn’t know where they’d come from, or how they could’ve gotten here so fast, nor did I feel now was the proper time to ask.

  Wheat didn’t see them.

  He was running with his eyes closed.

  “Wheat!” I yelled, as I turned and headed back toward the pool.

  And then finally, Wheat opened his eyes and saw them.

  Too late.

  He said, “Ooooooooooh shhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!” and ran over one of the cops, knocking the cop down, and both of them lay on the pavement, spreadeagled. And of course Wheat had somehow managed to land on his back, so he lay there with arms outstretched with his baby-skin turning baby-blue in the cold air.

  I was still running, watching over my shoulder as Wheat did his naked pratfall, and when I looked where I was going I saw the pool dead ahead. I swerved and almost slipped on the wet paving around the pool’s edge, but kept my footing somehow and headed for the juncture of two buildings, buildings that housed motel rooms, figuring there would be some sort of exit there. I scrambled through a door and found myself inside one of those buildings, with an endless hall of motel room doorways stretching out before me.

  I paused, just a moment.

  And kept running.

  Now, it’s very smug of you to sit there and say, “Wasn’t it foolish of him to run through that building!” All I can say in my defense is, it seemed like the thing to do at the time, and when the endless hall came to an end, I took a right and bumped into something.

  I pushed up from the floor and looked into a very pretty, young face. Blond hair, dark blue eyes. She was wearing a bikini the same color blue as her eyes. She had very nice eyes. She had very nice everything.

  I covered myself.

  “Oh,” she smiled. She was younger than me, eighteen maybe. “You must be going swimming, too.”

  “Er,” I said.

  “What happened to your suit?”

  “Uh,” I said.

  “You don’t have any suit on.” She just seemed puzzled about it, nothing more. I wondered when her fresh, innocent look would dissolve into a bloodcurdling scream.

  “Hide me,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Police are chasing me. I’m a streaker.”

  “Oh! A streaker! Do people still do that?”

  “Can I hide in your room?”

  “I wouldn’t mind it, but what would my mom say?”

  “Are you sure you aren’t Wheat in drag?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” I said, and glanced at her barely covered breasts and thought, No, that isn’t Wheat, and suddenly it was getting hard to cover myself.

  So I said, “Goodbye,” and started running again.

  “Goodbye!” she said. “Hey! What’s your name?”

  “Fred!”

  “Maybe we’ll run into each other again sometime!”

  “I hope so!” I said, smiling back at her, and kept running.

  I didn’t run into anyone else, and down one other hall I found an exit.

  And a cop.

  And then, pretty soon, I was riding in the back seat of a police car, sitting next to Wheaty. Both of us were still naked. Our clothes were stacked in the front seat, between the two cops. Neither of them was very old, the cops I mean. One was about thirty, the other in his mid-twenties. The guy in his mid-twenties turned around and grinned at us and said, “I got to hand it to you dudes. You got guts.”

  And the guy driving said, “Not brains... just guts.” He was the cop Wheat had knocked over. He seemed a little gruff and slightly humiliated, where his younger partner seemed only to be mildly amused.

  “Does he mean anything special by that, Wheat?” I whispered.

  “What’s going to happen to us,” Wheat said. “What’s going to happen to us.”

  “Wheat... is something going on I don’t know about?” And all of a sudden Wheat’s hands were moving. “You know what wedding that was? You know what wedding that was?”


  “Wheat, please don’t say everything twice.”

  “You know what wedding that was?”

  That made three times, but forget it. “No,” I said. “What wedding was that?”

  “Nobody’s. Nobody’s. Just the police chief’s daughter’s, that’s all.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Suddenly I felt naked.

  Chapter 3

  The cop behind the desk looked up at us, noted what we weren’t wearing, then looked at the two cops who’d brought us in and raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

  The cop Wheaty had knocked over (whose identifying name badge read BURDEN) said, “Streakers.”

  “No kidding,” the desk man said. His face was as rumpled as the seat of a bus driver’s pants.

  Our clothes were under Burden’s arm. He didn’t seem to want to let go of them. He said, “Shouldn’t we take a picture of these guys?”

  The desk man shrugged. “I got the Playmate of the Month hangin’ in my locker, Burden, but if you’re into that, be my guest. To each his own.”

  Burden’s face reddened and he said, “I’m going down and have a smoke, do what the hell you want with ’em,” handed our clothes to the younger, friendly cop (whose name badge read FRIENDLY, coincidentally—I wouldn’t lie to you) and stalked out.

  The desk man said, “Touchy, ain’t he?”

  Friendly said, “He’s just in a bad mood ’cause this big guy here knocked him down.”

  “You don’t mean these girls resisted arrest, do you?”

  “Not exactly. Anyway we’re not gonna charge ’em with that.”

  “Pictures,” the desk man said, shaking his head, returning to his paper work. “Give ’em their clothes and get ’em out of here.”

  “Hey, now, Sergeant, Burden may just be right about that. Taking pictures, I mean. The Chief’s gonna want this handled right.”

  “Why,” the desk man asked, looking up from his paper work with the strain on his patience obvious, “would the Chief give a damn about these two particular streakers?” He said the word “streakers” with the expression of a man holding up an especially smelly sock by two fingers.

  And Friendly explained why the Chief would give a damn about these two particular streakers.

  And the desk man got a Polaroid out of his desk and took our picture.

  Then Friendly took us in the captain’s office, which was empty (empty of the captain, that is: there was some furniture, of course, desk and chair, plaques on the wall) and gave us our clothes.

  It felt good to be dressed again.

  I said, “What’s going to happen to us?”

  “Tonight? Probably nothing. Not unless you don’t have enough cash to post bond.”

  “I got my check book.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “Then what?”

  “Court tomorrow morning. A fine of some sort.”

  “What sort?”

  “Maybe a hundred bucks.”

  “Each?”

  “Each.”

  “What happens if we don’t pay?”

  “Don’t as in won’t, or don’t as in can’t?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Listen, I’m no lawyer. You should talk to a lawyer.”

  Wheaty shouted suddenly. “Nobody gave me my rights!” He was waving his hands around. He looked like Hamilton Burger in the process of getting the legalistic crap kicked out of him by Perry Mason. “What about my rights,” he was saying, “what about my rights.”

  But they didn’t need to give us our rights for what they wanted to know. Out in the other room again, they asked for our name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, did we have $10 each to post the necessary percentage of bond?

  I gave them a check for both of us, and wondered if I’d be going through all this again tomorrow, when the check bounced.

  Wheat was over at the drinking fountain when Friendly came up to me and said, “Listen, do you know any lawyers?”

  “Sure. We rent from a guy who’s a lawyer. Real nice guy. What’s all this talk about lawyers, anyway? What do we need a lawyer for, in a deal like this?”

  “Because the Supreme Court ruled that a judge can’t give a jail sentence to anybody not represented by counsel.”

  “Jail sentence?” This time I was the one waving his hands around. “Who said anything about a jail sentence?”

  “The judge might,” Friendly said. “It’s not likely, unless he wants to be a real S.O.B. and really make an example of you.”

  “You mean we could actually go to jail?”

  “Probably not...”

  Chapter 4

  We went to jail. We did not pass go. We did not collect $200.

  We owed $200. (The $100 fine each was the part of Friendly’s prediction that did come true.)

  The jail was a big double-story brick building built around the turn of the century. I had driven by that building dozens, perhaps hundreds of times since moving to Sycamore. Sycamore is only five miles or so from DeKalb, and is a quiet, little town, a restful retreat from DeKalb’s busy university campus. Wheat and I sought Sycamore out after a bad first three years of college, divided between dorms and a frat house; actually it wasn’t that the three years were bad, but that they were so good: so much fun, with both Wheat and me giving our all to playing cards and other social activities, and lip service to studies.

  So we’d moved to more secluded digs at the beginning of the school year, in an attempt to keep our four years of college from stretching into five or even six. We had a nice basement apartment that we rented from a terrific couple named Nizer, whose door was always open to us. They were always willing to help out, and Mr. Nizer was more than willing to go to court with us. Unfortunately, Mr. Nizer, while a bona fide lawyer (of the corporate type), is not named Louis, which brings us back to the jail.

  While I had driven by the jail countless times, I had never really looked at it before. It didn’t look like a jail unless you looked at it close. It didn’t look that much different from the nearby city hall, or an old school house, or any old double-story brick building.

  But when you look close you can see bars on the windows. And when you see bars on the windows of a building, that’s a real good sign the building’s probably a jail.

  Wheaty and I were going to jail.

  But I’ll tell you something funny: Wheaty did not get irrational, did not wave his hands or talk about what his mom might think if she knew he was going to be incarcerated for a month. No. Wheaty only starts waving his hands and talking about his mom and all when he gets flustered. There is no telling what will fluster Wheaty: it can be just about anything, anything that’s at all confusing, or disorienting. But everything today was happening in a smooth, orderly fashion, go to court, be released into the custody of a correctional officer from the DeKalb County Jail (the jail located in Sycamore because Sycamore is the county seat) and go with the officer to the jail. So Wheaty was not flustered.

  He was, in fact, fascinated by the whole experience.

  And as we were walking up the sidewalk toward that ominously looming structure, Wheat said, cheerfully, “Gee, I never been to jail before, Kitch.”

  Like, “I never been to Boy Scout Camp before.”

  Then, once we got inside the front door, the place really got to looking like a jail. There was an electric lock door made completely out of tall, thick iron bars, and we were buzzed through and taken upstairs by the correctional officer and we were booked.

  Yes, booked.

  Isn’t there a show on TV that always ends with some self-righteous cop glaring at the shifty-eyed crooks and saying, “Book ’em!” Dramatic phrase, right? Ever wonder what booking actually was? Maybe they take the crooks in back and beat ’em silly with a bound book of statutes; or put ’em on the lineup or other exciting things.

  We got booked, and it was a bore.

  Or anyway I thought it was a bore: Wheaty was enjoying himself. He especially liked getting f
ingerprinted and having his picture taken. That much was like TV: they really did put us against the wall and took front and profile shots while we held up something with our numbers on it.

  Everything else was paperwork.

  We filled out white cards with red lettering on them.

  We filled out white cards with green lettering on them.

  We filled out white cards with black lettering on them, too.

  It was a lot like the information we’d had to give out at the police station, but a little more elaborate, and at the police station we’d only had to give it once, verbally, not write it down ourselves endlessly.

  Somewhere along the line we were searched for dangerous weapons. Between us, the closest thing to a dangerous weapon was Wheat’s Volkswagen key.

  And then we were taken into a locker room and told to strip. “But isn’t that why we’re in here?” asked Wheat.

  “Ummm,” the correctional officer said.

  All along we’d had the same correctional officer with us, a guy in his thirties with five o’clock shadow (and it was only mid-morning, remember) and eyes as blue as Paul Newman’s (or Robert Redford’s). He was very remote. Not nasty, just distant. Every now and then Wheaty would ask him a question and the correctional officer would say, “Ummm.” No matter what the question. What time is it? Ummm. What year was this jail built? Ummm. How long you been at this job? Ummm.

  Wheaty, naturally, did not notice that the correctional officer wasn’t really answering. Wheat assumed he and the correctional officer were having a conversation.

  And now Wheat looked at the correctional officer’s uniform, which consisted of pale blue shirt with shiny badge, dark blue tie, dark blue trousers, no gun. And Wheat said, “Do we get uniforms?”