Moon Cut

Moon Cut

He wiped the bloody blade on his shirttail. She watched from the keyhole, afraid to breathe for fear of being found out. She felt her heart beating through her night shirt, droplets of fear seeping from beneath her head band, and closed her eyes. She had watched him drag the body, or what she imagined a body, wrapped in the curtain he’d taken from the window. He opened the rear doorway to the exterior staircase and disappeared. She listened to the plodding steps grow faint.

 She opened her eyes once again and peered into the now empty room. She slipped from her kneeling position and rested her back against the closet wall and escaped in sleep.

“Molly, you in there?”

Molly awoke. She could hear someone in the room. The floor boards creaked, that annoying sound that alerted her to a presence. The dog, the usual culprit, but sometimes she’d be awakened by creaking sounds and sit up in fright, only to find no one there. She watched her mother through the key hole as she looked behind the door and stooped to look under the bed. She then turned and headed for the steps to the kitchen, pulling the door closed behind her.

Molly slipped from the closet, being careful to remain next to the wall where the boards wouldn’t tattle on her. The noise, she knew from experience traveled through the floor to the kitchen ceiling, and it was evident when something or someone was in her room. She moved across the hall to the landing and listened. The house was quiet, except for the periodic wafts of music that rose from the radio above the refrigerator and made its way up the stairwell. She could hear the pans being banged about the stove top, and the smell of bacon following the music, finding its way to her.

She wondered if Ralph was home. She didn’t think so, but she could never be sure with Ralph. He had a habit of moving about like a shadow, quietly, and appearing from out of nowhere. She listened but could not hear the usual noises that occurred when he was at the table. His voice, a mumbled mash of words. His habit of irritatingly coughing, dropping silver ware.

She made her way down the stairs to the hall leading to the kitchen. She could see her mother, her back turned towards her, working at the stove. She moved slowly expecting Ralph to appear at any moment. She seated herself at the table and waited for her mother to turn from the stove.

“Molly, what you doing slinking around like that. I told you I don’t like it when you do that.”

“Sorry, Ma. Where’s Ralph.”

“Could you find it in you, to call him dad, or father. I think if you did, you and him would get to know each other a little better. Get to be more like a father and daughter. Ralph sounds so, so... well not natural.”

“But he ain’t my father. My father is gone, remember. And Ralph makes me nervous. It’s like he’s here and he’s not. Where is he anyway?”

Molly sat waiting in silence for her mother to put whatever she was making for breakfast on the table. She knew she saw Ralph last night in her room. He was putting something in the old curtain she’d asked her mother to get rid of, but all she ever said about replacing it, was, “I ain’t made of money. All it does is keep the sun out and you ain’t up there when it’s shinin, so what difference would it make.”

“Here, eat something. Ralph had to take Olivia to the train station. She said she’d stayed long enough. You know how she gets, nervous. She told me, “Guests are like fish, after four days they start to stink.” I thought it was funny, but she just looked at me like I should know that. You know, that look she has. Anyway, he said she wanted to go, so he’d take her. they left sometime last night. I don’t know what time, I was asleep. You didn’t get to say goodbye, I guess.”

Molly began to question what she saw the previous evening. She guessed it could have been a dream. She’d had dreams like that before. But she’d talked with Olivia, Ralph’s sister, just before she went up to bed, and she had said nothing about leaving. She remembered hearing her and Ralph later, arguing in the room across the hall about something. Something about money, and was he ever going to pay her back. She needed the money. Her car was getting old, “Older than I am,” she’d said, which Molly took to be another one of her sayings, not what she really meant.

She liked Olivia. Molly had few friends, and Olivia was like a friend, even though she was older. She enjoyed talking to someone from anyplace, anywhere but there. Living outside of a small town left her only the isolation, and the dreams of a future, that didn’t consist of her remaining where she was.

The library was her escape. Her mother had said they could not afford internet or even cable TV. The books took her away from her life, and the internet, even though she could only use it for half n’ hour at a time, let her see foreign places and how other people lived. Olivia brought a new picture of escape to her album. 

The radio stations her mother listened to, consisted of what Molly thought of as, Jesus shows, hate radio, and country music. Everyone else was always the problem, and only they had the solutions, if only they could just get others to listen to them. The never-ending drone of how unfair life was, had made her more dedicated to finding a new world, where possibility was what you did with it, not what you were left with.

She liked Olivia for that reason. She lived in the city, and although she’d mentioned being surrounded by similar, “Woe is me,” attitudes, as she put it, she said the excitement that was, “All about,” more than made up for it. She had said she didn’t quite know where Ralph came down on the matter but was sure it wasn’t on her side. She’d said it was a much happier place for her after he’d, “left to come out here.” She claimed to enjoy the lack of scrutiny now that she was on her own. “Nothing like being your own person,” she’d said.

I don’t really know why Ralph is here, how he came to be here. One day he was just here and never left. Mom says he is a good man, works hard, and will care for us. She wants me to accept that he’s not like a lot of people. I think she’s talking about his being missing, to the point of being invisible at times. Looks to me more like he’s simmering, a pressure cooker waiting to blow.

I don’t rightly know what he does, or why he does it, but he comes and goes at odd hours and always seems to be about to explode under that stone exterior. I can’t remember ever seeing him smile, laugh; I’d even settle for a look that didn’t remind me of Halloween.

We hardly ever go anywhere, but not long after he moved in, if that is what he did, he took us to see an old movie, Ghost Busters. I’d seen it before a couple of times, but Ma wanted me to go, “family,” she’d said.  So I went, to make her happy. Everyone in the theater, mostly kids, were laughing and throwing stuff at each other and pretending to be scared.  He just sat there like he was in a trance, waiting to be brought out of it by a snap of someone’s fingers. His face is like he’s wearing a mask, except for his eyes. They kind of roam around in this milky sea, like two rafts going different places. It’s funny how he takes his glasses off to read. It’s usually some car magazine, or something about guns. Maybe he’s a salesman or something, the reason he’s gone so much. If he is, he sure don’t dress like it. He’s always in these hideous bib overalls that look like they are two sizes too big. I think he only has two shirts, and they match. Someone should tell him it’s OK to wear short sleeves in summer.

I was pretty sure it was him I saw through the key hole though. My dreams, I usually don’t remember. I heard someone coming up the stairs and figured it was mother. She has this thing about coming into my room after I’m asleep, or she thinks I am, to see, she says, that I’m safe. I don’t know what she means by that. I didn’t really feel like sleeping, it’s hard some nights. Too much to think about. I can only hope it will change when I can get out of here.

It wasn’t mother though. I’d gotten into the closet, like I like to do. It’s dark and quiet and I can think, plan. I heard the door open; it squeaks a little from the hinges, and then I see him. He is carrying something. I get only light from the outside yard light, unless the moon is up, close to full that night, then it is bright. He must think I’m asleep. I’m not very big so when I put all the blankets on and ruff up the bed spread, you can’t tell I’m not in there.

I watch as he goes to the window and takes down the curtain. I began to wonder then what he was up to. He puts it on the floor by the bed and puts whatever he was carrying in it, picks it up, throws it over his shoulder, and walks out. He didn’t even bother to close the door.

I don’t know if he scared me to sleep or I was just tired, but I woke up later and all was quiet. I slipped back into bed and just lay there thinking if what I saw, happened, or did my imagination run away with me again. I am sure it was him, and the curtain is gone, so something happened.

“Did you take the curtain from my room?”

“No… why, is it missing? Maybe, Ralph decided to wash it. He’s like that you know. He gets on these cleaning jags and I can’t get him to stop. I think he has a thing about germs, cleanliness anyways.”

I think mother lives in a different universe than I do. Cleanliness? He looks like he just got done mud wrestling a pig, most days. I never seen him wash anything. His old truck is covered in mud, the porch has a broom by the back door and it ain’t moved ever. Something is going on.

Only time I ever see him clean anything, now that I think of it, is when he comes back from hunting, or that’s what he says he's been doing. He washes out the back with the hose. He don’t bother with the rest though. The mud is an inch thick in places.

“I saw something last night. If I tell you, do you promise not to get mad like you do. It has to do with Ralph, and I know how you react whenever I say anything about him, but here goes.”

“You know that if you ain’t got something good to say about someone you should just keep it to yourself. He’s here helping me, us, so just keep that in mind. Remember what it was like when it was just the two of us. Much better now, don’t you think?”

“I saw him last night in my room with a knife. It was all bloody looking, like when he came back with that deer. He took the curtain from my window and put whatever he was carrying into my room into it and hauled it off. I know what I saw, and now you tell me he took Olivia to the train. Doesn’t that sound a little strange to you? I heard them arguing last night, now she’s gone. Just like that!”

“I told you what she’d said about company and staying too long.  You know Olivia is different from us. She’s got city ideas and well, they are different than what we got here. She tries, I know she tries, but you can’t change butter back to milk, ain’t possible. And that’s just the way she is. You are taking a bunch of her ideas and trying to make them your own, and you ain’t like that. Now hurry, eat your breakfast. I told Milly from down the road we’d help out preparing for the church pancake supper. They are raising money to get the roof fixed. Last storm tore off some of the roofing and some pews got wet and turned black.  can’t have that.”

“We don’t even go to church anymore. Why’d you tell her we’d help? That old building and the people in there make me mad. I tried goin, like you wanted back then, but the Sunday School didn’t make no sense. They was always talking about God killing people cause they weren’t good enough, and that’s why we’re supposed to be good?”

“Eat up. I hear Ralph’s truck comin. Olivia must be off on the train. The way she was acting, I don’t think we’re goin to see much of her anymore. She look a little off color to you? She sure did to me. And don’t say anything to Ralph, your father, about your wild stories. You know he’s real sensitive about what people think of him. I need you two to get along. It’ll be fine, you’ll see. Now hurry up. I’ll see if Ralph can take us up to the church.”