Moondogs - Alexander Yates [136]
And it wasn’t just the ocean—the sky was up to some strangeness, too. The moon looked different than it should have. A bright, clear and unbroken ring glowed all around it, two thumb-to-forefinger lengths on either side as measured by his outstretched arm. There was also something like a cloud, but thicker and blacker than a cloud, rolling in from the east. It swallowed the peaks of ocean-facing towers as it marched past the city and out over the bay. It filled up the sky and blotted out the ringed moon. Benicio watched it for a long time. A single downy flake materialized above and landed on his knee. More followed.
“Ash,” Solita said. She’d joined him at the edge of the empty promenade, the beam of her flashlight illuminating a column of falling flakes. “This is like when I was younger,” she said. “When we had Pinatubo.”
Benicio turned so his legs dangled on the city side of the wall and his back was to the water. She set the light beside him, cupped his cheek in her palms and kissed him. He kissed her back. She brushed welling tears from under his eyes, because he was crying now. Because this ash looked just like snow. And because his mother had been right—he was kissing a skinny muñeca at the ocean while Alice slept. He pulled Solita closer and let his arms settle around her hips. He felt those hips swing. He heard concrete scrape beneath her sandals as she put some weight into the strike. The flashlight went dead as it hit him on the temple. He tried to stop the second strike but by the third he was helpless. Solita turned his khaki pockets inside out. She pulled his shoes off, and his socks, and with a shove sent him tumbling backward like a diver into Manila Bay.
Chapter 26
KILLING KELOG
The television is unbearably loud. Louder than it needs to be to muffle Howard’s calls for help. Newscasters’ voices ricochet around the room and glance roughly off his skull. He tries to turn the volume down, but Ignacio comes inside and hurts him. He tries to cover his ears, but that hurts too, because one of his ears is a bloody, bandaged hole. Days pass like this. News, and commercials, and news.
On Monday—he thinks it’s a Monday—the television begins talking to him. No … that’s not right. Talking about him. He listens to his story break live. He’s thrilled, at first. At least people will finally know what’s happened to him, because the police, those fuckups, have dropped the ball. But then the coverage becomes exceedingly morbid. Turns out that Ignacio and Littleboy are trying to sell him to the Abu Sayyaf group. The news anchors spell out what this means, exactly, and what it means is horrible. They even bring in this expert who knows all about the particular cultural significance of beheadings.
For the rest of the day Howard cringes as he is invoked in various grand contexts: the War on Terror, southern separatism and potential damage to the tourism sector. The afternoon anchor interviews a Palawan resort owner who is very concerned that his business will be devastated if Howard’s kidnapping causes wary vacationers to stay home. The resort owner lists many other local businesses that will also be devastated if his business is devastated. The boatmen’s union, the ferry operators, the various markets where his cook buys produce and fish. To say nothing of his seasonal staff, who he’ll have to lay off, and who all support family in other provinces and whose families all use their remittances in turn to support other, faraway businesses. It’s a whole interconnected system, the resort owner explains. In his delirium, Howard feels very sorry for this man, and for his seasonal staff, and their relatives, and he hopes that things work out for them. Then he yells for a while and elbows the walls and cries.
HE THINKS ABOUT HIS SON A LOT. Then, on Friday—again, it mostly feels like a Friday—he actually hears his voice.