A More than Half Full Moon

Billy knew that when the curtains were pulled across the windows of the trailer that he shouldn’t come in. He looked up at a moon that was more than half-full that hung above the pine tree on the land as though stabbed there on the pinnacle branch, and the moon and tree were framed in a deepening sky with the moon growing against the growing darkness, and he knew that he shouldn’t come in. He thought that everything to make a cliche was around him; dogs baying and echoing from down in the valley, a fire in a stone lined firepit, crickets, mosquitoes. A splitting axe and a kindling axe beside a poplar chopping block.

Billy looked at the small pile of wood that was for burning beside the fire and he thought about the day, and he thought that the day’s best bits were here now at the fire with the crickets sounding around him, with the more than half full moon shining above him, and of course with the baying dogs down in the valley sounding off around him.

He looked up at the moon that had moved from the top of the pine tree and he pulled his jacket tighter against his body. The air had become cold.