Jacker's Moon

                                                    Jacker’s Moon
                                                (about 750 words)

                                                  a short story by
                                                      K.L. Stover

       
          One seasonal tradition that I looked forward to was the annual night of Christmas caroling sponsored by the local 4-H club. 4-H  was a mainstay in rural America, and the dozens of meetings I attended helped shape my social life as much as Sunday School or Little League or Summer Camp. The night of caroling was one of the few functions that was not for members only. In fact, we were all encouraged to invite as many friends as possible.
                             
          "That's because there are more singers in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir than there are people in the whole of Waldo County," said Marty, who was my "guest" for the evening, "they just need more voices."

         Though she and her family didn't really observe Christian holidays, Lillian Webster encouraged her son to accompany me.

         "What a wonderful educational opportunity," she said to Marty.

         "But mother," he said, "I couldn't carry a tune in a bag."

         "I'm sure there'll be many other rank amateurs present," she said, ending any further discussion. Whenever the disagreement involved Marty's enlightenment, Marty always lost.

         At seven P.M., the flatbed hay truck lurched forward down the driveway at the Ward place, and a dozen kids landed laughing on their backsides. The rusty old farm truck creaked and groaned and backfired as it crested the hill on the Birches road, and we clung tightly to the wooden slats, wisps of dirt and hay chaff swirling madly, stinging our eyes. As the night flew by on each side of the truck, a Jacker's Moon came full and high, a spotlight that moved, at forty miles per hour, over the frozen snowfields. The winter sky was hard and cold and clear, the stars sparkling gems in a blackened sea.

         "When I was a girl," said Alma Ward, our Club leader, "they still had horse-drawn sleighs, with bells on the runners."

         "When she was a girl," whispered Marty, "they still had stagecoaches." He had declined my previous 4-H invitations because he didn't like Alma Ward.

         Each year Les Ward would choose a different route on the backroads of Brooks, making sure that as many isolated folks as possible received the free Christmas cheer. When the hay truck jounced into Melvin Shorey's yard, Lester cut the motor. A sudden stillness replaced the accompaniment of the tired old engine, and the power of our voices became huge against the stillness. As our confidence as singers grew, our harmonies swelled, and melodies that were a hundred years old escaped with the steam of our breath.

         "O come all ye faithful...joyful and triumphant..."          
                             
         I knew that Marty was only pretending to sing, but I felt his warm breath in my right ear. "O come ye...o come ye to Bethlehem..."

          Yellow light spilled onto the moonlit yard as Louis Shorey spread the curtains in his two-room cabin and peered out at us. The front door opened and closed quickly as Melvin let himself out, careful not to release the heat from the woodstove. The smell of woodsmoke filled the air as he zipped his worn jacket. He didn't look up at us, but stood, clenching and unclenching his poor fingers, his sad gaze fixed on the ice in his driveway. He had no mittens. Eventually he was joined by his father, who scrutinized each and every one of us with his good eye. He nodded almost imperceptibly, a chaw of tobacco bulging one leathery cheek.

         "O come let us adore Him...Christ the Lord..."          
                             
         When we finished our song, Melvin waved a frozen hand at us and slipped quickly back inside his home. Mr. Shorey bowed deeply to us and folded his arms across his chest. He waited until we were out of the driveway before spitting a stream of tobacco juice on the silver snow.

         As the flatbed lumbered down the hill past Gurney's gravel pit and got back up to full speed, we resumed our songfest. The words that we sang belonged only to us, and did not penetrate the arctic air that rushed behind the truck's cab and caused our eyes to water. "Hark the herald angels sing..." Marty joined in now, tentative and off-key, and I suddenly realized how glad I was that he had come along.

        I didn't know that he was crying. Nor did I know that Lillian Webster would spend the week before Christmas knitting a pair of mittens for Melvin Shorey.