I looked in her desk for moon rocks too, but I never found any, so that is why I do not think Junie had been up there on the White Cow Moon yet.
Well, for three days in a row it was just about 125 on the mileage. It was 123 one time, and 124 and then 126. So that was how I knew 63 miles from Tulsa. That day after work I went out and bought the biggest bike at the big Ridin’ th’ Wild Wind store. It is a Harley and better for me than a car because my head does not scrape. It is nearly big enough.
Only that night Junie did not come home. I thought she had gone up on the White Cow Moon, so I quit my job at the gym and went looking for her for about a month.
A lot of things happened while I was looking for her on my bike. Like I went into this one beer joint and started asking people if they had seen Junie or her car either. This one man that had a bike too started yelling at me and would not let me talk to anybody else. I had been very polite and he never would say why he was mad. He kept saying, “I guess you think you are tough.” So finally I picked him up. I think he must have weighed about three hundred pounds because he felt about like my bell when I threw him up and banged him on the ceiling. When I let him down he hit me a couple of times with a chain he had and I decided probably he was a fed and that made me mad. I put my foot on him while I broke his chain into five or six pieces, and every time I broke off a new piece I would drop it on his face. Then I picked him up again and threw him through the window.
Then I went outside and let him pick himself up and threw him up onto the roof. That was fifteen feet easy and I felt pretty proud for it even if it did take three tries. I still do.
After that, two men that had come out to watch told me how they had seen a brown Ford like Junie’s out on this one ranch and how to get there. I went and it was more than sixty-three miles to go and Junie’s brown Ford was not there. But when I went back to our house in Tulsa it was sixty-eight. A lot else happened for about two weeks, and then I went back to that ranch and lifted my bike over their fence real careful and rode out to where those men had said and sat there thinking about Junie and things that she had said to me, and how she had felt that time I threw her higher than the wires back in England. And it got late and you could see the moon, and I remembered how she had said the feds were building a place for missiles on the other side where nobody could reach it or even see it and that was why they were mad at us. It is supposed to be to shoot at other countries like England, but it is really to shoot at us in case we do anything the feds do not like.
About then a man on a horse came by and said did I want anything. I told him about the car, and he said there used to be a brown car like that parked out there, only a tow truck cut the fence and took it away. I wanted to know whose truck it had been, but he did not know.
So that is about all I have got to say. Sometimes I dream about how while I was talking to the man on the horse a little white moon sort of like a cloud came by, only when I turned my head to look it was already gone. I do not think that really happened or the little woman with the baby and the old man with the stick in the cave either. I think it is all just dreams, but maybe it did.
What I really think is that the feds have got Junie. If they do, all they have got to do is let her go and I will not be mad anymore after that. I promise. But if they will not do it and I find out for sure they have got her, there is going to be a fight. So if you see her or even talk to anybody that has, it would be good if you told me. Please.
I am not the only one that does not like the feds. A lot of other people do not like them either. I know that they are a whole lot smarter than I am, and how good at telling lies and fooling people they are. I am not like that. I am more like Roy T. Laffer, because sometimes I cannot even get people to believe the truth.
But you can believe this, because it is true. I have never in my whole life had a fight with a smart person or even seen anybody else have one either. That is because when the fight starts the smart people are not there anymore. They have gone off someplace else, and when it is over they come back and tell you how much they did in the fight, only it is all lies. Now they have big important gangs with suits and guns. They are a lot bigger than just me, but they are not bigger than everybody and if all of us get mad at once maybe we will bring the whole thing crashing down.
After that I would look through the pieces and find Junie, or if I did not find her I would go up on the White Cow Moon myself like Roy T. Laffer did and find her up there.
One of life’s principal lessons is that intelligence is a minor virtue. The cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. Sam is not bright; no doubt you are, and if you are you could probably swindle him without much difficulty. But would it be prudent?
You will probably not need to be told that Roy T. Laffer is a thinly fictionalized Raphael Aloysius Lafferty. His byline was R. A. Lafferty, and we called him Ray in consequence. I didn’t know him well, and I know of no one who did. He was enormously learned and terribly shy, and drank too much when he had to appear in public. Other than that, I suggest you consult Faces of Science Fiction, if you can find a copy. There is a fine photograph of him there, with a few paragraphs of autobiography. He is a great writer who remains undiscovered.
A Cabin on the Coast
It might have been a child’s drawing of a ship. He blinked, and blinked again. There were masts and sails, surely. One stack, perhaps another. If the ship were really there at all. He went back to his father’s beach cottage, climbed the five wooden steps, wiped his feet on the coco mat.
Lissy was still in bed, but awake, sitting up now. It must have been the squeaking of the steps, he thought. Aloud he said, “Sleep good?”
He crossed the room and kissed her. She caressed him and said, “You shouldn’t go swimming without a suit, dear wonderful swimmer. How was the Pacific?”
“Peaceful. Cold. It’s too early for people to be up, and there’s nobody within a mile of here anyway.”
“Get into bed then. How about the fish?”
“Salt water makes the sheets sticky. The fish have seen them before.” He went to the corner, where a showerhead poked from the wall. The beach cottage—Lissy called it a cabin—had running water of the sometimes and rusty variety.
“They might bite ’em off. Sharks, you know. Little ones.”
“Castrating woman.” The shower coughed, doused him with icy spray, coughed again.
“You look worried.”
“No.”
“Is it your dad?”
He shook his head, then thrust it under the spray, fingers combing his dark, curly hair.
“You think he’ll come out here? Today?”
He withdrew, considering. “If he’s back from Washington, and he knows we’re here.”
“But he couldn’t know, could he?”
He turned off the shower and grabbed a towel, already damp and a trifle sandy. “I don’t see how.”
“Only he might guess.” Lissy was no longer smiling. “Where else could we go? Hey, what did we do with my underwear?”
“Your place. Your folks’. Any motel.”
She swung long, golden legs out of bed, still holding the sheet across her lap. Her breasts were nearly perfect hemispheres, except for the tender protrusions of their pink nipples. He decided he had never seen breasts like that. He sat down on the bed beside her. “I love you very much,” he said. “You know that?”
It made her smile again. “Does that mean you’re coming back to bed?”