Under a Silver Moon

CHAPTER 1

“I don't think you could really see it if someone did that.”

The speaker was a woman and she was seated in a folding chair in front of a fire. A man was in a chair next to her.

It was just afternoon and the fire crackled. The two of them had had to move more than once as the smoke from the fire sought them out.

Their wood wasn't dry enough.

Or something.

It was the beginning of summer but there was a chill in the air—a good reason for the fire. (Cooking was another one.) At that altitude in those climes there was always a chill lurking around waiting for something to come along to grab and shake.

The water of the lake to their front lapped at the shore and there was a breeze that blew in from it. The smell of pine was thick in the air from not only the trees across the lake that bracketed the talus that sloped down from the mountain but from the trees behind the two campers.

Behind and all around them.

“Sure you could,” said the man, the woman's husband. “He'd be bounding along that ridge right there.”

He pointed to the mountain across the lake. It was part of a range of mountains that extended in both directions in front of them. They were a rocky, craggy lot with no green or trees to show on them. To get to the top of one of them it looked like it wouldn't be a hike up an inclined trail. It looked like it would be a steep climb up sheer rocks with carabiners, spikes, and ropes.

“He'd be up there skylined on the ridge as he sprinted along.”

He held two fingers down and made a running motion with them.

“You gotta admit it's spooky, right?” he said smiling.

“Not really, hon,” said the woman who was amused but did not smile. “First of all, to even be seen from here the guy would have to be a hundred feet tall. At least.

“And then he'd have to be traveling at a very high rate of speed to do what you want him to do, faster than any human could travel without help. Both of those would be impossible.

“Nope, anyone up there doing that sort of thing would be impossible, my dear.”

She was finished and looked triumphant.

“For anyone normal, Kim,” said her husband giving her a knowing look. “What if it were someone abnormal. I mean, what if it were a—”

He lowered his voice and looked conspiratorial.

“—a monster!”

“Yeah, you know,” said his wife shaking her head, “the problem with this whole thing is that the the sun is still up—it's early afternoon, in case you haven't noticed, my dear. These kinds of stories really go over much better up here when the sun sets. In the dark. With the campfire roaring so you can't see all that well very far away.

“But I've heard them all. So I'm immune to it anyway.”

She smiled triumphantly again.

“You mean to tell me,” said her husband, “that being up here like we are doesn't give you the creeps?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, it gives me the creeps. There's just no noise, no one around. Or if they are around they're making so little noise that it means they're sneaking up on us to do something not very good. If you know what I mean.

“You've heard those stories.”

He made a motion with his thumb across his throat and a sound to go with it.

“Out here with no police, no courts, nothing that is civilization someone could do what he wants without too much trouble.

“That makes it creepy to me.”

“So you're telling me you don't like it up here.”

“Anyplace that I can spend time with you is a good place,” he said with a smile that pressed his lips together and wasn't all that convincing. “But look at it, Kim. There isn't any noise around here at all.”

“But there is noise, Dirk,” said Kim. “You don't you hear it?”

Dirk dutifully listened for a moment but shook his head at the end.

“I don't, no.”

“There's the water lapping at the edge of the lake. There's the creaking of branches in the trees back behind us. There's the sounds of the birds, the cry of a hawk, the rustling of leaves in the wind.

“You can hear the wind can't you?

“These are the sounds of nature, a nature unspoiled by the hand of man.”

“Or the hand of woman,” Dirk added helpfully, nodding. “I'm glad you like it, hon. What you like, I like.

“But those sounds are not the sounds of people. They are sounds of things. In the wild.

“Give me the sound of traffic. You know I'm up in the Montgomery Building and my window's closed but I can still hear the traffic outside. Even up all those floors I can still hear it. It's a background noise that's present all the time.

“It's the hum of civilization. It's the noise of people out doing things. Normal, predictable things. Things that we do in civilization.

“You mean like murder, robbery, assault, fraud, abuse, beatings, maimings, mutilations—those civilized things?” said his wife.

She grinned. It was a victory grin.

“No, not like those, no,” said Dirk ignoring the look. “Those kinds of things happen, yes, but they don't happen all the time to everybody. They happen sometimes to somebodies. The rest of the time, the great majority of the time, the great—greatest—proportion of the time, people are doing normal, civilized things.

“Up here there are no people doing the normal things.”

“But that's the point, Dirk. No people. We get up here we get away from people and the problems of living among people. At least for awhile.”

“I know you like this and I know its good for you but I don't find living with people, being among people, to be all that much of a problem. I like it actually. Some of them maybe not so much—”

“Like John Henninger.”

He was Dirk's boss and a micro-manager who saw everyone under him as an extension of himself who just needed to get the right set of orders to be able to execute. And he was always drilling down to something or other , never really specified, to come up with them.

“Like John Henninger. And maybe Jill Story, Arthur Malkovich. And your mother.”

Kim hit him on the arm.

“You know that old joke don't you about mothers-in-law,” he said grinning.

“You've told it before. Many times.”

“The one about ambivalence being what you experience when your mother-in-law drives off the cliff in your brand new car?”

“Yes, that one.”

Dirk laughed.

“Just kidding, hon. I love your mother to death. Just not at Christmas.”

Dirk smiled but it was one of those joking comments that had something of a dig wrapped up in it.

Kim ignored it.

“But, you know, all rest of them—most of the rest of them—are alright. The people. Around. You know.

“Looking around here right now, I would find it, uh, you know, less creepy to have more people around. That's all.”

He smiled but it was only half of one.

It was clear Kim didn't really like the implication of what her husband had said. The part that sounded like he didn't like being up there. But she didn't press it.

“You find it creepy up here but you wanted to tell spooky stories about monsters and abnormal people?” she said with a laugh instead.

“Yeah,” said her husband, “but you did notice it was during the day. Makes all the difference when the sun's up.”

He laughed and she laughed and any disagreement they might have had disappeared.

For the moment.

“I have to tell you,” said Kim, “that there is comfort in having people around at times. But up here I don't know that having people around would be all that good an idea.

“Sometimes you can't tell when someone comes up out here who he is and what he might want.

“Some grizzled old guy with stained clothes coming up with a rifle slung over his shoulder would be something I wouldn't find all that comforting.”

“You mean, kinda like Deliverance?”

Dirk smiled and started humming the tune from the movie.

Dueling Banjos.

“Something like that,” said Kim smiling herself. “I can't say with all the camping we did when I was young that we saw anything like that. But you know the people we meet up here and in places like it looked like we did. They looked like normal people hiking and camping. They looked normal for hikers and campers, the way they were dressed, their equipment. That made them nonthreatening.

“But if someone came up dressed like one of the good-old-boy hillbillies from that movie, all bets would be off for me. It'd scare me, middle of the day or not.”

Dirk nodded and looked down into the fire.

Kim looked into the fire, too.

And they both said nothing.

For some seconds anyway.

“So you don't like it up here?” said Kim breaking the silence a little too eagerly.

Not pressing the point could only go on for so long.

“I didn't say that,” said Dirk. “I said that I felt more comfortable with all that civilized noise around. I didn't say I didn't like it—”

“Not exactly, you didn't. But, you know, what you did say sounded like the same thing to me.”

“Look, Kim, you wanted to come up here and I said okay. What you want to do I want to do, that is unless you want to take me to one of those feel good movies you and your girlfriends like. I got to draw the line somewhere, hon, because my card carrying macho self has to have some respect for, uh, himself. But other than that, if you want to leave civilization and go up where there're no people and where bears and wolves and mountain lions roam around looking for things to kill, tear apart and eat and where knuckle dragging, cousin marrying, drooling homicidal maniacs set up shop, then I'm your husband, I love you and we go.

“And that's that.”

“But you don't like it here.”

“What's there not to like?” he said with some exasperation. “Clean air.”

He breathed in and coughed.

“The beauty of nature. The blue waters of the lake in front of us. The sounds of animals living their lives all around us. Living and dying with teeth sunk into their throats, I might add.”

He reached over, patted his wife on the leg and smiled.

“And the sight of a figure running along that ridge line there.”

He pointed and laughed and Kim laughed. And things were right again.

“Or like a man coming out of the trees there across the lake,” Dirk added.

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