Biting the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

sundaes instead of sodas.” She set one dish in front of Andi.
    Andi smoothed the fudge sauce over the ice cream. “I haven’t had a hot fudge sundae since—I can’t remember.”
    Mary wondered why Andi’s skin, light to the point of luminescence anyway, went so much paler when she said this. It couldn’t be the hot fudge sundae that upset her. Mary said nothing, and they ate in silence.
    Then Mary asked, “Where’d you start your camping trip? Where’re you going after here? I mean, I guess you’re going different places. Who’s with you?”
    Andi appeared to be thinking. “I’m mostly on my own, you could say. It’s just sort of something I wanted to do. Every once in a while I find an empty cabin. You wouldn’t believe how many empty cabins there are!” As if this were the most surprising thing about her appearance here. “Or”—she shrugged—“caves.”
    Mary didn’t say it, but such a trip sounded like sheer heaven to her. Imagine being allowed to do it on your own. But the flush that spread over her neck and face made Mary think that Andi seemed ashamedof it—that it was her fault she had to sleep in caves or empty cabins. Mary knew the feeling. It was that if you didn’t have what most people took for granted—the material things—there was something wrong with you: you were lazy, a bum or a tramp. You weren’t even an object of sympathy, but of scorn. There had to be something shameful about a person who lacked even the most rudimentary necessities. A home. Parents.
    â€œDid you get them out, these coyotes?”
    Andi nodded. “The first one I nearly didn’t, and I was afraid I’d have to shoot it.”
    Mary’s spoon stopped, suspended in air. “Shoot it? Are you saying you’ve got a gun ?”
    Andi flushed again, nodded. “I . . . uh . . . found it.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œIt was left behind by somebody. Left in an empty cabin.”
    She said it too smoothly, so it had to be a lie. She wondered if Andi told more lies than she herself did. Hard to believe. But she would not intrude upon the lie—lies were too close to the bone—as much as she’d like to know the real source of the gun. Instead, she asked, “Did you really come into town to get this medicine?”
    Andi licked fudge from the back of her spoon and nodded. Then she turned to look anxiously at Mary. “Do I have to put it back? I’ll pay you for it—pay the drugstore, I mean. The pharmacist.”
    Quickly, Mary reassured her. “No. You can have it. If he says anything I’ll make up some story.”
    â€œBut I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
    â€œYou won’t. What I’d like to know is, how do you get the medicine into the coyote?”
    â€œWith a hypodermic.”
    â€œYou poke one with a needle ? But . . . don’t they go for you? I mean snarl and lunge and so forth?”
    Andi was silent for some moments. Then she let her spoon clatter into her empty dish and said, “No.”
    Again, she got that queer look on her face, as if she were ashamed of something. After some careful thought, Mary said, “Listen, if you don’t have to go back right away tonight, maybe you could come homewith me. Sleep over. Rosella wouldn’t mind. She’s the housekeeper. There’s only the two of us.”
    Andi turned to look at her; it was as if she was searching Mary’s face for the joke in all this. “Really?”
    â€œSure. I live outside of Tesuque, it’s maybe eight miles, and Rosella’s going to pick me up as soon as I call her.”
    Andi looked incredibly relieved, as if Mary had just lifted a weight from her shoulders. She said she would, she certainly would like to stay in a real house for the night.
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    Rosella was Rosella