The Phoebe Effect

Alonzo Skelton
18 February 2011
1150 words

Author's Note

          This short story fist appeared as a 600-word piece in Parallax magazine under the title 'Ruby's End,' and under my birth name, not my pseudonym. The bone-crunching deadline allowed only a rushed, shortened submission. Since then, I have had the time to write the story I wanted to write, 'The Phoebe Effect.'

The Phoebe Effect

          I see cars, jammed side by side as far as my restricted view permits me to see through a narrow slatted window in the rest home rec room. A perfect light, light from a photographer's dream world, contrasts the cars in gleam and shadow. In such light I see how the Middle Eastern worshippers of Mithras view light as the manifestation of God. I see why the city draws young men and young women to its shimmer and the moth to the flame. In light like this I know why the Egyptians worshipped the sun and the Greeks made of it Apollo, their most noble god.
          Like the moth, the Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, and the young, light drew Ruby to it with an irresistible force, tied her to it with invisible strings. But the sun and city lights did not bring the end of her. The moon brought Ruby's end. When the sun went down, she would sit out on the porch and gaze at the moon. I told her to stop. "Staring at the moon will make you crazy," I told her. "You'll be a lunatic."
          I had read that in a magazine. That's where I learned about the Greeks, and Apollo, and all about people who worship light. Ruby said that someday we'd have to sell the farm to pay for all my magazines, and I told her I'd stop reading magazines when she stopped staring at the moon. She didn't stop, and neither did I.
          She stayed out in the sun all day, cleaning the sheds and fetchin' me water and lunch while I worked the fields; in the summer she was baked as brown as a burnt biscuit, and in the winter I'd yell at her, "Get inside woman, It's freezing out there."
          "Gotta get these hogs fed," she'd say. Or, "Gotta clean the chicken coop." It was always something. She couldn't stand being indoors. Then, at night, she would stare at the moon. If it was too cold, she'd sit at a window 'til past bedtime. She'd fade into a blue funk if there was no moon out.
          One night I walked out onto the back porch, and she said, "Look, Harlan, the moon is caught in that ol' elm tree up there." The full moon shined through the bare branches of a tree at the top of the rise. Another time, she held her hand up like she was holding the moon between her finger and thumb. Sometimes I'd catch her trying to grab it in her hand.
          Another night, I was reading in one of my magazines about how it was spacemen that taught the Egyptians how to build the Pyramids. Through the window drapes, the moonlight shifted, and then dimmed, as if a passing cloud had blotted out the light. I looked up at the subtle shift in lighting seen at the periphery of vision. A murky blue light shined through the open kitchen door. Shadows shifted and the light dimmed, brightened, and dimmed again. I set the magazine down and lifted my creaking body out of my chair.
          In the kitchen, Ruby stood behind a shining bluish-white globe that bulged out of a cracked cereal bowl. I saw on it the face of the man in the moon. I rushed to the back door, out to the porch, and looked up. A serene, star-filled, and moonless dome arched over the earth. I went back inside.
          "Ruby, what have you gone and done?" I asked. A spectral light bathed her.
          "I got it," she said with a ghoulish grin. "It's heavy, though, and I thought I was going to break a branch on that ol' elm tree when I took it."
          "Well, take it right back. Don't you know that the county sheriff will come looking for it? A fine mess we'll be in then."
          She ignored my concern. "Look," she said as she turned the globe in its bowl. The back side did not glow. As she turned it, the moon rolled through its phases: new, full, half crescent, and sliver. At its crescent, she rotated it down to dry moon, up to wet moon. "Let's keep it, it's so beautiful," she said as she turned it back to full moon.
          "It's not beautiful, it's spooky," I answered. "Now, bring it with you. We've got to put it back. I don't want any trouble with the county."
          Ruby laid a hand on the moon, ready to scoop it into her arms. I suppose that was more weight than the old cereal bowl could handle. The crack in its side broke loose. The moon rolled out of the bowl, across the table, and crashed to the floor. I stuck a leg out to stop it from rolling clean through the door. It darned near broke by foot. I picked it up and examined it. A new crater had formed, near the bottom, at the edge of the lit side, where the moon impacted with the floor.
          "Hold this," I said, handing it to Ruby. "I'll go get something to carry it in."
          I ran out to the barn for the mule's feedbag, hustled back inside, and stuffed the moon in it. The strange, bluish light shined through the open top.
          "Come on," I said, and led her back to the ol' elm tree at the top of the knoll.
          I hung the feedbag on her shoulder and heaved Ruby up to the lowest branch. It's a good thing she is not a big woman. She pulled herself up, hand over hand, to the highest big branch. She crawled out 'til the bough bent under her weight, hung the moon in the spreading tree, and clamored back down. I inspected her work: the new crater, down on the left, was barely visible. No one will ever notice it, I thought.
          We walked back to the house in silence, each lost in thought. Our shadows stretched out before us in the light of the full moon. We spoke not a word until we came up near the water pump.
          Ruby said, "We've got to go into town tomorrow to get a new cereal bowl."
          Ruby died in this same rest home a few years later. I'm too old to work the farm anymore, and it sure gets lonely around here without her. I spend my time sitting in the rec room, thinking and reading my magazines and staring out the window. I sure do miss her. She'd have a grand ol' time here with me now; I'll watch a full moon rise up over the parking lot tonight.