The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (eBook)

Tom Spanbauer (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
235 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-103489-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Set against the harsh reality of an unforgiving landscape and culture, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon provides a vision of the Old West unlike anything seen before. The narrator, Shed, is one of the most memorable characters in contemporary fiction: a half-Indian bisexual boy who lives and works at the Indian Head Hotel in the tiny town of Excellent, Idaho. It's the turn of the century, and the hotel carries on a prosperous business as the town's brothel. The eccentric characters working in the hotel provide Shed with a surrogate family, yet he finds in himself a growing need to learn the meaning of his Indian name, Duivichi-un-Dua, given to him by his mother, who was murdered when he was twelve. Setting off alone across the haunting plains, Shed goes in search of an identity among his true people, encountering a rich pageant of extraordinary characters along the way. Although he learns a great deal about the mysteries and traditions of his Indian heritage, it is not until Shed returns to Excellent and witnesses a series of brutal tragedies that he attains the wisdom that infuses this exceptional and captivating book.

Textauszug

 

 

My mother’s Billy Blizzard story, I wasn’t supposed to hear. I was under the bed when she told Ellen Finton. Heard it all.

“Billy Blizzard is how the devil is,” my mother said. “What you’re seeing when you see him, and what you’re feeling when you see him are two different things.

“That’s how the devil is: how he is looking to you isn’t how he is. Your eyes see one thing while your heart is seeing another.

“That first time I saw him,” my mother said, “a cold wind blew through me. He was only a boy of twelve years or so. He came out to bathe before going in to Ida. A cold wind. I damned near jumped right out the window when I saw him. But I couldn’t move.

“Billy was a tall, broad, strong young man, with dark hair and skin like my own. Eyes that were two burning coals in his head—looking at everything. Those eyes not missing a thing.

“While I was washing him was when I saw the ring on his right hand middle finger. Looked like the devil’s ring—stars and a moon setting on top of a set of horns. I wanted to look closer, but he wouldn’t let me.

“Then I saw them bruises. The boy was covered with bruises. Especially on his backside, along his crack there.

“That boy wasn’t here more than two or three days that first time and he had Ida spanking him—spanking him, and more. Then, the second time Billy Blizzard came to town—after he killed his horse and sang to her, after he was opiumed up—he had her doing more than just spanking him. Wanted her to hurt him—tie his balls up and shove things up his ass.

“Started right back up that night after eight whole years,” my mother said, “him begging Ida to hurt him. Ida really didn’t like it, but she did it. Pretty soon he’d be spouting all sorts of Bible—evil Bible, you know, the kind Bible folks like him talk: flesh and sin and body parts and desire and eternal damnation in hell, him all tied up, Ida switching away at him with that willow, or sticking carrots or whatever up his bunghole—the whole time Ida scolding him like he was a naughty boy. But he was a grown man by then. Wasn’t long and he’d be ejaculating and squirming and crying too. Telling Ida and the Lord that he was sorry.

“Went on for almost a year. He just kept coming back for more. And more. Said it was love.

“After a while, you could tell that Ida’d started liking it as much as him. Ida’d never say that out loud, but it’s the God’s truth.

“And that’s also how the devil is,” my mother said, “makes you like things and want things you wouldn’t usually. Gets you so that you like them a lot.”

 

The third time Billy Blizzard came to town it was 1894. Me—I’m the best one to tell the story. Nobody knows the story of the third time like I do.

Ida Richilieu wouldn’t have Billy Blizzard back. Told him she was done with him and his ways for good. Wasn’t going to have another thing to do with him.

Billy Blizzard hung around town for a couple of weeks, staying where he could, but he wasn’t welcome. That was the time when Billy Blizzard got Damn Dave drunk on purpose. Story goes, Ida wouldn’t sell Billy a bottle of whiskey, so Billy found a bottle of his own. Billy Blizzard took his bottle over to Damn Dave’s, got Damn Dave so drunk that he could barely walk or stand, then took Damn Dave to Pine Street in front of Ida’s Place at two in the morning on a Saturday night. Damn Dave was laughing because he had a hard-on and Billy Blizzard got Damn Dave to take his dick out and that really made Damn Dave start laughing and Damn Dog howling. Everybody in Ida’s Place came out onto the street.

I was sitting in the window of room 11 that night. I was laughing too, at first, looking down at Damn Dave with his dick out laughing under the ponderosa pine and the American flag, Damn Dog howling away. After a while, though, you couldn’t tell if Damn Dave was laughing or crying, him holding onto his dick as if his dick was something sore. Billy Blizzard kept egging him on—kept pouring whiskey into him.

Damn Dave started humping the air, the way dogs do sometimes when they’re glad to see you, when they’re pink and hard and sticking out of their skin and can’t get back in. Humping and humping, tears rolling down Damn Dave’s cheeks, Billy Blizzard pointing at Damn Dave’s dick, laughing.

Then, there she was, Ida Richilieu, walking down the seven steps and onto Pine Street. Things got quiet. Ida Richilieu walked up to Billy Blizzard and doubled up her fist and hit Billy Blizzard the way tybo men hit other men. She hit him again, then kicked him in the balls. Billy Blizzard doubled up but kept standing. Didn’t try to fight back. Ida spit in Billy’s face.

Ida Richilieu took hold of Damn Dave then and drew him near her. He still had the humps going through him. Ida took him and Damn Dog inside up to her room and closed the door. Heard Damn Dave in there crying all night, Damn Dog whining.

Was a week before anybody saw Billy Blizzard again. When they saw him, they only heard him. Heard him singing the man-in-the-moon song:

Come take a trip in my airship and we'll visit the man in the moon.

I was in room 11 when I heard him singing. Then I heard the shotgun blast. When I got to Ida’s room, she was still pointing the gun out the window. I looked out but couldn’t see a soul.

He was out there though, somewhere.

It went on that way for a couple weeks. I’d wake up and hear him singing and then Ida blasting at him out the window with her shot' gun. Still, nobody saw him.

Story started going around that Billy Blizzard was dead and it was his ghost come to haunt Ida.

Ida said she didn’t have time for such stories. What she did have time for, and what she was worried about, though, was the flesh and blood of him, of Billy Blizzard.

As usual, Ida was right.

About two weeks later, my mother had an all-night customer in room 11, and I was out in the shed. It was late and the moon was bright the way it scares you.

Billy Blizzard called me by name but I didn’t answer. Said it was not me.

He was inside the shed. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and brought me to the window in the moonlight. Showed me his devil’s ring. Said he’d give it to me, if I’d come with him. I jumped for the door, but he caught me. Put his hand on my mouth and dragged me out the door. Stood me in front of him and started singing. Cocked his six-shooter and put the gun aside my head and started singing. We were right under Ida’s window.

Come take a trip in my airship and we’ll visit the man in the moon.

Wasn’t long and I saw Ida’s shotgun slide out her window. She didn’t shoot though, not this time, thank God, or else I’d be dead and buried.

Instead of shooting, Ida started talking to Billy Blizzard, him talking back, over my head, all the while Billy Blizzard holding his gun to my head with his one hand while with the other he was raising my nightshirt and looking for the place in me to put himself in. Then him spouting Bible—sin, fire, eternal damnation, and hell. I was looking down at Billy Blizzard’s red boots. I was thinking about that dead horse in the street when he spread me open. I was thinking about that day that Ida and my mother were fighting in the mud and the sheets were bright with sun. Was thinking about Not-Really-A-Mountain looking down at me and those red boots. Was thinking about the devil. How I hadn’t told him my name. How he had found me anyway. Had found me and was splitting me up the middle—two parts from that time on always trying to get back together again, forever trying, me and not me. The devil had found me and was pounding my ass down, my breath coming fast in me and the sound of my heart beating in my ears.

Then Billy Blizzard started crying and asking the Lord for forgiveness and I was upside down, face against red boots, bent over, broken inside deep.

What I remember next, was Ida slapping Billy hard across the face, and the shotgun going off. Then I heard him hit her back. I saw Ida fall. He kicked her hard in the stomach. The awful sound of breath leaving her body.

Then, I heard a scream that didn’t come from Ida or from me—the likes of which you could hear only once in your life—or so I thought—until I heard the scream again, years later, out of my own mouth, the night I found out the whole truth and nothing but. I was laying on the ground and so was Ida. Then I wasn’t here anymore. Don’t know where I was, but wasn’t here.

Later on, Ellen Finton told me that after I fell, Billy Blizzard ran to Pine Street and stole a horse that was tethered to the horse trough. My mother ran out the back door, and my mother, when she saw Ida and me laying on the ground, let out a scream—a war whoop—and took off on foot, running down Pine Street after Billy Blizzard. My mother couldn’t keep up with him, so she ran back, and jumped into Ida’s wagon that was setting out front. Ellen said she looked up, out of the window of the shed, where she had carried me, and saw the Princess, hair all flying back, Ida’s shotgun in the crook of her arm, heading out of town in Ida’s wagon, hot on the trail of Billy Blizzard.

Wasn’t anybody ever saw my mother alive again after that night.

I spent most of that winter in a fever. By spring, I was back to being me and walking around and thinking things. Least I thought I was me. What I was, was not me, though.

The posse they’d got together that went after Billy Blizzard never found him. Or my mother. They spent all that fall season looking. Winter came and they had to stop. Thord Hurdlika...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 27.8.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-103489-8 / 0001034898
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-103489-1 / 9780001034891