K. D. Wentworth - Outhouse Moon

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2024-11-24 0 0 19.78KB 8 页 5.9玖币

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Outhouse Moon

K.D. Wentworth

"Ain't nothin' good ever happens under an Outhouse Moon, boy."

Willy watched in disgust as Grandpa's weak whiskery chin worked on the

mouthful of shredded tobacco for a moment. He dodged out of the way as the old

man leaned over and aimed for the spittoon.

"Mind you keep this here young'un home tonight, Alline." Closing his

eyes, Grandpa tipped his chair back against the faded cherries and bananas on

the kitchen wallpaper. "Dark things'll be afoot on a night like this."

"Ma!" Panic welled up inside Willy as he paused with his hand on the

doorknob. "You know I'm going over to Rick Peterson's. You promised!" Outside,

the fall wind skittered dry leaves across the windowpane like dead folks'

fingernails.

Grandpa's brownish-gray eyes slid sideways to look knowingly at him.

"There'll be things out there tonight what could eat a young'un up afore he

knowed what happened to him. You might never come home to your ma and me, boy.

How would you like that, caught out there in the dark forever?"

Willy felt ridiculously close to tears for a man of eleven years. "Ma,

you promised!"

"Don't you raise your voice to me, young man." Up to the elbows in soap

suds, his mother looked up from the cracked porcelain sink and groped for a

dish towel. "Besides, it's getting late. I thought you were going over to the

Petersons' before it got dark."

Willy's fingers tightened around the coolness of the worn brass

doorknob. "We're—we're going coon hunting. Rick got a new hound for his

birthday."

She wiped her hands on the threadbare towel. "Don't be ridiculous. You

wouldn't so much as touch a dog if your life depended on it."

"We're just going to run some of his hounds for an hour or two and see

how the new one goes." Willy did hate dogs with their sloppy wet noses and

great bone-white teeth, but he hated Rick teasing him about it even more.

After tonight, no one would be able to say that he was afraid of dogs ever

again. "There's no harm in it. Pa used to—"

The unfinished sentence hung there in the air between them like a blow

waiting to fall. Willy swallowed hard, trying not to say anymore than he

already had. He didn't want to make his mother cry again.

"I see." Her weary face, drained of color now, tightened until her

cheekbones stood out stark white against her skin. "You were just going

traipsing off all over the countryside without telling me, is that it?"

He hung his head. "I was gonna tell you."

"When? After you broke your neck and laid out there all night in the

cold and wet?"

_ —like your Pa did._

Willy heard the words as plainly as if she'd actually said them.

Suddenly, he could almost see his pa again, sitting here in the kitchen,

letting Willy help him off with his heavy boots after a long day's work.

"You better think on this, boy. Look what happened to your pa and he

weren't out under no Outhouse Moon neither." The front legs of Grandpa's chair

thumped back onto the floor. "I knowed how it was gonna be when I saw that

brazen sickle moon ahangin' up there like that, all cozied up to that

Jezebel-lookin' star. No decent star fools around with the moon like that." He

aimed another sideways shot of dark liquid into the spittoon. "Course you

never listen to your poor old Grandpa."

"That's just Venus!" Willy twisted the doorknob with both hands and

hauled back on the door, letting the cold anger of the late autumn wind blast

past him into the kitchen. "We learned about it in school! Miss Robinson said

we could see Venus near the moon tonight!"

"William Bennett Harrison, you come back—"

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