Free Iona Moon by Melanie Rae Thon Page A

at the wooden figures on the dresser, the ones Leon had carved for Hannah before Iona threw his knife in the river. There was a miniature farmer wearing a wide-brimmed hat, a farmer’s wife with a long braid, a stooped bear no bigger than the man, a rooster half the size of the woman.
    â€œLater people told me he’d done a stupid thing. You shoot a bear dead or stay in the house. I was sixteen, just married, and I already knew my husband was a fool in a nightshirt, a man with the legs of a chicken and the brains of a loon.”
    â€œHe’s not a fool, Mama.”
    â€œNo,” Hannah said, “he’s just a man who used to be lucky.”
    Pancreas . Hannah Moon mouthed the three soft syllables. Whoever thought of you? “It started in the pancreas,” the doctor said, “but it’s spread.”
    â€œI thought I had rheumatism.”
    â€œYou do.” The whites of the doctor’s eyes were yellow. He doesn’t look so well himself . “And this too,” he said.
    â€œSo take it out,” said Hannah.
    â€œThat’s what I’m trying to explain to you, Mrs. Moon.” The doctor fingered his stethoscope. His hands were large and pale, freckled with deep brown spots. “It’s spread,” the doctor said again. “Metastasized, we say.” We say? Did you create it? Did you give it a name and call it into being? He wasn’t looking at her. What did he see across the room? Hannah turned her head. The bare wall . “I can’t take it out.”
    There were kidney stones and gallstones. Heartache, heartbreak, heart attack. It all came to the same thing. Blood clotted in the brain, appendixes burst, lungs collapsed, spleens ruptured.
    â€œYou could see a specialist in Spokane.”
    â€œA specialist? And who would pay for that?”
    The doctor stuffed his stethoscope in his bag. Hannah could see he was anxious to leave. “I just want to go home,” she said.
    The young man pursed his lips and nodded. He thought it was a bad decision. “As you wish, Mrs. Moon.”
    Iona stood on the road, looking for the school bus. The wind whipped her hair across her face. Her brothers had been gone eight days, and Hannah was right: everything was quieter. It was seven-thirty, more dark than light; she wore her jeans under her skirt and a denim jacket with flannel lining, the collar turned up. She’d forgotten her gloves, so she blew on her hands then thrust them in her pockets.
    The bus was warm with bodies. Jeweldeen had saved a place on the inside, and Iona climbed over her legs. “You look like shit,” Jeweldeen said. “Your father make you sleep with the cows last night?” Jeweldeen herself wore dark lipstick, ruby red, painted beyond the lines of her lips so her mouth looked full from a distance and smeared if you sat beside her.
    The bus was slow, behind schedule because of the icy roads, but Iona and Jeweldeen still had time to duck into the girls’ room for a smoke.
    Iona peered in the mirror as they passed the cigarette between them, wondering if she did look as if she’d slept in the barn. She saw her hair first, dark and wild, long but not thick, moss hanging from a tree, hair that brushes against your face and scares you when you walk through the woods at night.
    She hiked up her plaid skirt and pulled down her jeans. She was a tough girl in a denim jacket. Jeweldeen handed her the cigarette again, and Iona took a deep hit. They kept the ash on the butt as long as they could, hot-boxing the cigarette so the rush of nicotine was a good high that made Iona flushed and dizzy, a little sick to her stomach. She was skinny and yellow; her knees looked dirty, though she’d bathed last night. Yellow-skinned. A kinder person might have said golden. But she wasn’t kind and neither was Jeweldeen. Blond Jeweldeen. Plump, pretty darling of old men in candy stores and boys in Mustangs. You’ve been