FICTION
STEPHEN DIXON
Moon
One last one. To the moon. Goes outside, first leaves his wife in bed. She
was reading while he was reading, fell asleep with her glasses on and
holding the book to her chest. He took the glasses off, book away, held
her head while he took out the pillows it had been against and laid them
flat and rested her head on them. Two she likes to sleep with; he, one.
Then shut the light and went outside. Has no clothes on. None needed.
Kids sound asleep - he knows for he told them a story and then sang to
them till they fell asleep and sat ten more minutes in their room drinking
his drink. House in a remote area, not even lights from other houses can
be seen and they almost have a three hundred-sixty-degree view of the
hills around them, valleys, and so on. Way off, maybe five miles, a light–
house light in the bay below. So: naked, nice out, cool but not so cool
where he's cold, more than a week before they have to leave this rented
house, little breeze, sound of insects - crickets, cicadas, one of those,
maybe another - sound of breezes through trees, every now and then
loons in the lake about a mile away which he can now see only because
it's moonlit. So he's outside and looks up at the moon. Full face, no hair,
nice face, cloud suddenly on top of it like a cheap toupee, toupee blown
away. Then face way he best likes to see it: open and clear. Moon, he
thinks. I've never really spoken to you. I still haven't. "Moon, I was just
now thinking," he says, "I've never really spoken to you before, never
have at all that I can remember, and my memory's pretty good, very
good, nobody I know has a better one, so I haven't spoken to you, pe–
riod, far as I can remember, at least not aloud. So what do I want to say
to you? What was I leading up to with that long intro? Something, that I
know - way you light up the night and how good it looks and makes me
feel? Maybe that but much more. But it's so bright tonight I can almost
read out here from your light. If I had a book with me, which I left on
my bed. Not that I would read; I'd just look and at anything but the book
if
I'd brought it along. Anyway, what do you say to what I just said? Any
