Chasing the Moon

by Bridges DelPonte

Zeff sat quietly while gravel stones pinged off their dented pick-up's metal undercarriage. Their truck's heating was busted so they could both see their breath in a cold November air. Its worn shocks squeaked with every bump and pothole of an isolated logging road. He noticed Lupe tense up as they rolled past a knot of four parked trucks, their gun racks empty. Rumford's town selectmen were offering $1,000 to anybody who'd kill a rabid predator decapitating and shredding local deer, moose and cows. Good money for Maine hunters facing another lean winter.

"That reward's going to bring out more nut jobs, you know."

"Yeah, yeah," Zeff murmured.

His left shoulder and arm began to jerk uncontrollably. The more rapid his physical deterioration, the more savage his attacks had become during his monthly ritual. As his command of his body slipped away, he had to struggle mightily to gain any control over his increasingly intense desire to hunt and feed over these past nine months.

"Try to be extra careful now, baby." She squeezed his forearm.

He reached out and brushed a dark curl dangling across her mocha-colored cheek with his tremulous hand. Lupe turned smiling and kissed his fingertips. Still the prettiest woman in Rumford and he couldn't believe she still stuck by him. He worried that he could no longer fulfill her needs and knew that others would be happy to jump in. Even before this withering illness ambushed him, he hated townies checking out her swishing curvy hips and her firm round butt when they went for Cokes and pizza at Molly's Pitstop. His jealous bent had almost ruined their love before and he tried with varying degrees of success to tame it for Lupe's sake. No good to let his unfounded doubts eat away at him faster than this damn disease laying waste to his once-muscled frame, leaving him only with this twitching, depleted shell.

"I, I, know....woods better than any...any...anybody," he said softly. "Don't worry, worry." Although he knew she would anyway.

She nodded and drove for another two miles before pulling into a slushy turnout at Shadow Point. Their special place sat high on a beautiful cliff that overlooked a deep ravine north of Rainbow Lake. Fifteen years ago they sped out to this remote point for passionate tumbles after high school dances and hiked down its hidden side trail for moonlight skinny-dipping in its shimmering lake. In their senior year, he proposed to her there, slipping Grandma Ulrich's ring on her finger, his only decent inheritance from his mother's family. That same year, he led his varsity Warriors to a state championship with his stinging slap shots. Momentarily, Zeff got lost in an image of his dad beaming with pride when he tacked news clippings about team victories to a break room pegboard at Kencott Paper Mill. Back then, the mill employed nearly all of Rumford and sponsored all of its local teams. It was the best time of his life. But somebody torched Kencott's defunct mill four years ago and Zeff no longer reigned as king of Rumford's hockey rink.

Lupe jumped out of their truck and helped him as he nearly fell out of his passenger side door. He leaned heavily on her as she guided him to a hollowed out log. He sighed as he plopped down on a felled tree. For an instant, he sensed something different about their place, but was too stiff to be able to look around. His doctor had warned him that any prescribed drugs would eventually lose their potency.

"Don't have to, to wait...wait...wait."

"I want to," Lupe replied.

She steadied Zeff's balance on a log and tenderly rolled off his gloves. As she pulled off his winter parka, he began to shudder in his thin long johns.

"Want me to leave it on?"

"No, can't, can't....keep buy...ing new one, one...every, every month."