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“There's a bad moon outside.”
Is there? Dale could not tell. The night is lapping at the window, as cold and dense as the rows of firs beyond. This much he knows, with the chill of the day still clinging to his bones under two blankets and the comfort of Harry's weight. Far over the mountains, in a starless sky, he sees the same spectacle, so familiar it's almost nostalgic, that has been following him from Philadelphia to San Francisco to the Caribbean: a trick of the fog, so many particles of water refracting the moon into the ghost of a double.
Dale nods, absently brushing his fingers against the nape of Harry's neck. If the man says it's bad, he won't be the one to question beliefs rooted in these old valleys.
“I better go get Rachel,” Harry adds. “Spells like this, she gets antsy.”
“You are a prince among poultry, Harry. Give old Jemma my regards.”
(And there he goes into the night. It is cold alone under these blankets, Diane, but Sheriff Truman's mission is an ethical one and I shall not complain. While the Bureau would be hard-pressed to find a mission urgent enough to get me out of these slippers and into the robust, mud-soaked work boots Harry uses to tend to his vegetable garden and - as it were - coop, I admire a man's devotion to his fowls. Through this window, I can follow his movements all the way to the henhouse if I just crane my neck like this and I will tell you, Diane, that every step I see him take, weighed down by the weariness of today's work, fills me with a love that is as simple as it is, dare I say, unbridled. Much could be said, and indeed is often overlooked, about the virtues of steadiness and devotion, and I am lucky to be the recipient of the affections of such a remarkable human being.)
Coop turns a cooling cup of mulled wine in his hands, lost in the glass's reflections of the abundant and colorful furnishings of the wooden house around him. At a certain angle, the deer head mounted on the wall lines up with the carving of a motorcycle that's visible through the glass, like a figurehead on its prow, or, with some more help from the infinite powers of human imagination, a deer on a Harley. With one thoughtful sip, he clinks his cup against Harry's, resting on the old plow that got repurposed as a coffee table, and closes his eyes, letting the night slide over him. The woods are just outside, quivering, charged with sparks of all the life that thrives under their branches. An owl circles an empty clearing, assured, in wait; in an identical patch of grass cleansed by a forest fire seven months ago, a fox follows a set of footprints that are impossibly large.
Harry elbows the door open. In his triumphant return, he is carrying a round, dark chicken, all puffed up as if to hide her sickly pale combs.
“Rachel's got it bad. The poor thing won't be catching any sleep without our help. Or will you, sweetheart?”
“You can do that?”
“You can do it yourself!” Harry's laughter comes in short bursts, it tickles the ear, raspy like unsanded bark. “It's no hard science, here, take her.”
The bundle that gets thrust in his arms is light and frail. Dale is eager to follow instructions, asks about every detail on how to put the hen's head under her wing, to mimic a chicken's natural sleeping position, how fast and how wide he should swing his arms in rocking her afterwards, and for how long. Chickens can't fly; therefore, they cannot be part of the dream that has hovered on the horizon of his consciousness since childhood, birds’ flight dark and dire like a distant tornado and his mother dying in the heart of the storm. Chickens do not belong there. Regardless, Dale Cooper has long learned that even the birds he likes do not necessarily like him back and, like most animals, won't be conceding him their trust anytime soon. But a chicken who has been hypnotized into a lull, it seems, cannot take objection to her company, and with their feathers unruffled, they doze off on the couch under Harry's watch.
The rustling of curtains bothers him. A cold draft prickles his neck, so, with his hand stretched out, he reaches to close them, but something's gone through. The velvet caresses his fingers, icy like the night beyond.
A jolt of consciousness jerks him awake.
“Harry, something is wrong with her.”
“She's sleeping, Coop.”
“She is cold.”
“Rachel's a hen, not a roasted chicken.”
“Harry, please.”
“You didn't do anything wrong.”
“You don't know that.”
“Fine, I'll hold her. Your loss, pal.”
“Not if I hold you,” says the brilliant strategist, the man of the Bureau, the impeccably dressed professional with a voice so soft it could be carded and spun, glad to put it all to the service of this country Sheriff and his high-strung hen. “You keep and pet her, I keep and pet you and so, in a way, Rachel too. Do we have a deal?”
If Harry finds this agreement unnecessary, founded on baseless fears for the lady's well-being, the perks of going back to resting against Dale's chest, tickled and caressed by soft, curious hands, soon exceed any other consideration.
His breath soon shifts to a sleepy rhythm, punctuated by snoring; Rachel, too, long past the duration of their home-made hypnosis, is resting as soundly as Dale’s limited chicken expertise can tell. (And Diane, if I could frame the fleeting sight before my eyes, in thirty years I would still know what peace looks like on Earth.)
He joins them before even finishing his wine: the exhaustion of a lifetime wears off with Harry by his side. If there's a bad moon outside, it can wait.
*
The curtains open to reveal the bluest of nights. Beyond the sky, the forest. Beyond the forest, an empty room painted in black and white. Beyond the room, an identical room with a single marble table in a corner, round and concave atop a ribbed pillar. On the table, an egg.