I Should Have Listened to the Moose by Louella Turner You can’t miss Bernie’s place, it’s the one with the stuffed moose on the front porch. Not just a head attached to the wall. Bernie does things up right—the whole moose is anchored there like a neighborhood sentry. It’s got those kind of eyes, that when you walk past, they follow you. I swear I saw it move once, but that might have been the beer. Anyway, that’s where my Jennie went when she left me. She moved into the house with moose on the porch and a guy inside who used to be my best friend. I can’t blame Jennie for leaving. I never stayed home, and when I did I was pretty well drunk, or on my way to it. Couldn’t have been much fun for her—living with me—especially feeling the way she did about things. You see, everything was a sin to Jennie. “What about all those priests who lean pretty heavy on the wine,” I asked her one time when she ragged on me for coming home drunk. “That’s different,” she says. “Besides, those are Catholics. They get away with a lot ‘cause they got confession.” For a while, I thought I’d join up to be a Catholic myself—maybe then Jennie would let my drinking slide, knowing that I confessed and all. But when I found out you couldn’t just show up on an occasional Sunday and expect to be a Catholic, you actually had to take some kind of cataclysmic classes, I decided a fallen Holy Roller was good enough for me. They don’t mind the drinking so much--it’s the stuff you do after they’re not so keen on. And believe me, I did plenty. Bernie was usually right there with me—that’s what best friends are for—so Jen ending up with him just didn’t seem right. I know when it was that Jen finally decided she’d had enough. It was the night I thought I saw the moose move. We’d been playing cards with Bernie and the latest of his female companions. Bernie couldn’t keep a wife neither. The last one ran off with a tractor salesman from Raleigh. I started out not drinking so much that night, hoping maybe Jen would let me sleep in my own bed for a change. But, things kind of turned around ten o’clock or so. Lee Anne, that was Bernie’s lady friend, went into the front room to watch the news. She really went in to catch the lottery numbers, but none of us could remember if they picked the numbers at the first of the news or at the end, so she decided to watch the whole thing just in case. They aired a story about a couple up near the state line that started a club where people sit around and play a game called truth or dare. Lee Anne thought it sounded like fun, and said we should try a game of our own. “I’ll start,” she says. “I’ll tell a truth, and if you don’t all follow with one of your own, then you have to take a dare.” We didn’t know if that was how you played the game, and even though it didn’t sound right, we all went along. “I was married to a tattoo artist,” she says. “He couldn’t afford advertising so he used me as a billboard. It says ‘get your tattoos at Fred’s’ right across my ass.” We all laughed, all except Jen, that is, and we wanted to see it cause we didn’t believe her. She pulled the back of her shorts down to just about where she could without showing us too much—there it was, like she said, in pink curlicue letters that looked to be done with some first hand knowledge of tattooing. We figured it was true that she’d been married to a man with talents in that particular art. I kept wondering what kind of woman Lee Anne was if he thought advertising on her butt would get him any business, but pushed that one right out of my head when I saw Jen’s face take on that you’re-gonna-sleep-on-the-couch look. Then Lee Anne says, “Okay, now it’s my turn to ask one of you a question. And you’ve got to be honest or you have to take a dare.” I wondered how she got off so easy. I didn’t remember anyone asking her anything, but couldn’t figure any other way to start this game, so I let it go. “Okay, Randall,” she says. “I imagine you’ve got a tattoo. Where is it and what does it say?” I didn’t have to think about that one long. “It’s right down the side of my wanker, and it says, Eat at Shortie’s Bar and Grill, Chattanooga, Tennessee.” They just about fell out of their chairs laughing at that one, all except Jennie, that is. She gave me a look that took the possibility of sleeping on anything other than the couch right down to zero. I didn’t mind—it was worth it. I could see Bernie telling everyone in town about my tattoo, which would produce an endless supply of free long-necks for the both of us. “You’re off the hook,” Lee Ann said. “We certainly don’t want you to show us, so there’s no dare for you this time. Now you gotta ask someone else a question.” I looked at Jennie and thought of a dozen things I could ask her, but not one of them would get a laugh, and I knew she’d answer truthful no matter how embarrassing it was. I didn’t see the possibility of getting a dare in either, so I decided to ask Bernie a question instead. “Bernie? Did your last wife leave ‘cause you were seeing Florence from down at the truck stop on the side?” Bernie closed the gap on those pearly whites of his, and a hard swallow moved up and down his throat. Everyone in town knew about him and Florence, the waitress at Gary’s Gas and Go, who had to be sixty, but looked a little younger when she turned the lights down low. Customers complained about not being able to read the menu, but Gary let it slide because he knew Flo was just touchy about her age. We’d all seen Bernie in the lot waiting for her to get off the late shift. He sat out there and smoked Lucky’s one after the other, leaving a pile of butts in the gravel next to his pick-up. He wouldn’t wait inside where he’d be seen, and he thought by driving that beat up Ford instead of his Camero, no one would notice, but we did. As far as I knew, this was the first time anyone had mentioned it to his face, but a game like Truth or Dare seems to go a long way in loosening a man’s tongue. He sputtered a little. Turned a sprightly shade of pink. And said no. Lee Anne’s the one who piped up. “No, ya don’t, Bernie. Everyone knows about you and Flo. Hell, Flo told me you guys were meetin’ two or three times a week. How do you think your wife found out? Flo told her one day at the check-out counter down at the Piggly Wiggly.” “She did not,” Bernie said. “My wife left me ‘cause she didn’t like living in this little no account town no more, that’s why.” “Bernie, that’s a lie,” I piped up. “Your missus told Jen here that she was tired of you messin’ around behind her back. Ain’t that right, Jen?” You could tell Jennie wasn’t having a good time, but I didn’t know then that she was feeling sorry for Bernie. I just thought she found the subject matter offensive. “Nope, Bernie, you ain’t gettin’ by,” Lee Anne humphed. “Now you gotta take a dare.” I wondered what exactly happened if you refused to act on a dare, and guessed the game was sometimes not a long one. “What kinda things do I tell him to do?” I asked Lee Anne. “Anything you want,” she said with an evil twinkle. “You can make him strip down to his birthday suit. You can make him chug a bottle of whiskey. Or you can make him go outside and get friendly with that moose of his.” Seeing my best friend in the all-together didn’t sound like a good idea. Him chugging a bottle of hooch wasn’t nothing new or daring. And I’d seen Bernie talking to that moose plenty of times. I sat there thinking for a minute. Then all of a sudden, the dumbest thing came to me. I don’t know why I said it, it just popped out, I guess. “Give Jen a big wet kiss,” I said. “Not a peck on the cheek. A real sizzler on the lips.” Lee Anne got quiet. I think she was trying to decide if this was going to be a problem—her fella kissing my wife. She tilted her head and looked at me, and you could see the wheels turning. Her dime-store lashes fluttered like a passel of crows circling a cornfield. I think she figured I was trying to get Bernie and my wife together, so me and her could be alone. She puckered her scarlet lips and blew me a kiss. I started to withdraw my dare--women like Lee Anne scared the hell out of me--but figured I’d gone this far, I might as well see it through. After all, Bernie was my best friend—I was pretty sure we would be back to our cards in just a few minutes. Reckon Bernie didn’t feel the same way about being best friends. He up and laid a big one on Jen that would have gotten him an R rating if he’d done it in one of them Hollywood picture shows. He held her shoulders and aimed down on her for a second, then got her in his cross hairs and moved on in for the kill. She had her hands dangling against her sides at first. I expected her to push him away. I didn’t expect her to get into it like she did. She slowly ran her fingers up his arms until she hung around his neck like a crucifix. Lee Anne sidled up next to me in black, furry spider fashion. She took those pointy red nails of hers and ran them across my cheek trying to be sexy. I brushed her hand away and kept my eye on Bernie. Finally, he pulled back, but him and Jen stood there locked into each other’s sights with more concentration that a big-time game hunter. I could see the corners of Jen’s mouth rise like they did when she heard something funny. Like earlier when I’d gone outside to get some air, and told her I saw the moose move. Only this time it wasn’t the moose that moved. This time it was something deep inside Jennie. She recognized it right off. Bernie finally came to his senses and said, “Well, I guess that’ll teach you to go giving me a dare like that.” “Jeez, Bernie,” I said. “That was my wife you had a lip-lock on.” “You’re the one who told me to do it,” Bernie whined. “I figured you’d say no and then Lee Anne here would tell us what comes next in this stupid game.” I fluttered my hands Lee Anne’s way. “I’ll tell ya what comes next,” she swooned. * * * I should have stayed there and apologized to Jen for being such a jerk. Things would have been a lot different if I had. But instead, I busted out the front door, pushed that damn moose over on its side and drove off down the road leaving her there looking at Bernie like he was the second coming. When she finally came home that night, I was already on the couch and pretended to be asleep. I could hear Bernie’s Camero when he dropped her off. We didn’t say much to each other the next morning, and I spent the day in the shed outback thinking of ways to get even with them both. Things were never the same after our night of Truth or Dare. Jen stayed with me another few months, but I started hearing the rumors about Bernie sitting outside her church in his beat-up Ford when she went to choir practice on Monday and Wednesday night. Finally, Lee Ann came right out and told me that she’d seen Bernie waiting for Jen. She said he probably took her up to the old fire road near Gutterman’s Orchard after church. I didn’t want to believe it, but I drove out there one night anyway. Sure enough, Bernie’s pick-up was parked at the edge of the trees. I could see the glow from his Lucky. I sat there watching the truck in the dark for almost an hour trying to get a grip on exactly what it was I ought to do. I didn’t do anything. Just drove on home and took my place on the couch. When Jen came in I asked how choir practice went and she said okay. It was maybe a month from that night I saw them at Gutterman’s, that Jennie told me she wanted a divorce. I tried to act surprised and confused and mad, but I knew it was coming. I think when you wait for something like that to happen, and it finally does, you never act the way you think you’re going to. We didn’t have much to argue over. All Jen wanted was the clothes in her closet and the cat. She moved into Bernie’s the day we signed the divorce papers. Like I said, I can’t blame Jen for leaving me. I rambled around the empty house for a few weeks. Finally, I decided I needed some help figuring things out so I went to Jennie’s church. She tried for years to get me to do that, but I always had one excuse or another. Jen didn’t see me at first, but when she did, she sat down next to me. We didn’t say a word, but I could see the tears puddle in the corners of her eyes. I went to church for ten straight Sundays before Jen said that maybe we should talk. We’re together again now. I know I wasn’t much back then—when Jen left me. I drive by Bernie’s at least twice a day, and every time I do I look at the moose on the porch and wonder if the night I dared Bernie to kiss my wife, it wasn’t trying to tell me something. Maybe when I thought I saw it move, it was playing its own little game of Truth or Dare—daring me to sober up and take my wife home. I miss Bernie, best friends are few-and-far-between, but I think I’d be missing Jennie a whole lot more. Louella Turner, of St. Charles, is the recipient of numerous writing awards, including a Pushcart nomination. She has served as President of Ozarks Writers League, Secretary for Saturday Writers and Secretary for St. Louis Writers Guild over the past few years. She's on the boards of both OWL and Saturday Writers today, as well as the Writers Hall of Fame of America. She maintains the OWL website and periodically judges a contest or two, including two categories for this past year's Missouri Writers Guild competition. Copyright © 2006. Do not reproduce without permission. Home Contents