The Boys Who Danced With the Moon

by Mark Paul Oleksiw

  “I was watching the news, and they said the Soviets and U.S. have nuclear missiles that could arrive here in minutes.”

  “Yes. It’s called the Cold War.” From my earliest memories, the news my parents watched on TV talked about the race for nuclear supremacy and how if war came, it would mean the end of everything. The sword of Damocles of my generation was this threat. Only this sword was unseen, this fear of something we could not touch or see. Everyone at Pauley High grew up knowing that it could all end suddenly, not with any whimper, instead a true bang. We would likely never even know it was coming until it was too late. Moony appeared to just discover this terrifying new world with its dark secret.

  I looked at Moony as Marius walked off, shaking his head in disbelief. He sat himself down and opened a beer as he looked back at me, wanting no part of the discussion. He stayed within earshot, so he truly was interested in his way.

  I knelt down in front of Moony and looked at him. “You know, Moony, those missiles can arrive here in minutes. It’s true. It just won’t happen.”

  “Really, it won’t happen? How can you be sure?”

  “Moony, I promise you. I won’t let it happen.”

  “Wow. You certainly seem sure.”

  “Look, Moony, if I weren’t sure, I wouldn’t be here at school learning. Who would be learning if there was no future? That would make no sense.”

  Moony smiled at my logic, satisfying himself with my explanation. “I don’t watch much television. I only read books. My aunt had it on and didn’t know I was there.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Moony. We’ve been facing this fear for years.” I laughed and walked over to Marius and ruffled his hair. “Does Marius look worried?”

  “Marius never looks worried,” Moony declared as he stood straight and upright.

  “See.” I winked at Marius as he pulled back his head to gulp from the can. Finally, Marius let out a mighty burp and looked at Moony.

  “Kiran’s right. Listen to him. He’s always right.” He nodded over to me, the side of his mouth tipped up in a smile. He turned back to Moony. “So, what were you trying to do jumping around like that?”

  “I wanted to see how high I could jump and thought maybe if I jumped high enough, well, maybe, I could one day push the moon out of the way in case those missiles were in the sky. I know it makes no sense. It wouldn’t hurt trying. Someone has to try to save the moon.”

  “Makes perfect sense. Now I completely understand.” Marius smiled wide, probably entertained by the child in Moony bubbling to the surface. He reached into his bag for another beer and tossed one to me.

  “I can’t drink. Thanks for offering.” Moony protested even before he was offered anything.

  “Moony, I would never corrupt you,” Marius declared. “I would lose my sanity trying. He, on the other hand, is a different story,” he said, gesturing to me.

  I took the beer in my hand and sat next to Marius. I gently opened the can and slowly moved my lips toward it. “For God’s sake, Wells, it’s not like your first kiss. Or is it?” The astuteness of Marius’s question injured me.

  I ignored the truth behind his question. I wouldn’t know the difference since I hadn’t had my first kiss yet. Reminded how pathetic that sounded, I quickly took a long sip as my eyes closed at the bitter taste. When I opened them, Moony was smiling at me with his head tilted at an angle.

  “If it makes your face go like that, why are you drinking more?”

  Marius pulled Moony down next to him and whispered in his ear. “I hope you never find out. I mean that, Moony.” He was by now on his second beer and extended his arm around Moony, giving him a squeeze before realizing his indiscretion and withdrawing his arm.

  I finished off my first beer and could feel the gas carving its way around my insides, taking up every inch of available space. I knew I would be in trouble if I went for a second beer. The taste in my mouth was foul, and I could imagine my parents smelling it on my breath. I knew I needed to go home soon or else. I thought back up to the top of the hill and how beautiful the view was. Sharing it would be nice. I wondered about it and how nice my first kiss would be up on Shep’s Hill.

  Finally, I looked up and said, “I probably should head home.”

  Marius looked across at me with his grin. “You think too much, you know. Fuck it. So it gets dark. Big deal. Won’t stop me. I do not get why we cannot do at night what we want to do during the day. Hell. I sleep in most days now that the summer is here.”

  Moony shifted slowly in his spot, raised his hand to his face, and rubbed his nose slightly. “I never really know what time it is. I mean if the sun didn’t go down, I would probably never know when to sleep. Whatever you may think, that’s how I see it. I kind of like the dark. Have my best dreams during the night.”

  Marius stared intently at Moony. “While you are dreaming, some of us are having a grand old time. You know that, don’t you, and I’m sure you’re not always dreaming.” He reached over to empty the last drops of the third can he was on as if to make a point.

  Moony reclined back, his head hitting the grass with a light thud. “The dreams I have get me through the next time I dream again.” He closed his eyes as if in a deep sleep and then suddenly sprang up. His head shifted around with a puzzled look in his eyes. I could almost see his eyes rolling from side to side. He shook his head quickly as if moving an idea from one side of his brain to the other.

  He suddenly glowered at Marius. “Who’s to say that I’m not dreaming, right now? Huh? Wouldn’t that be something? I guess you would be messed up, right?” Before Marius could react, he lay back onto the grass and closed his eyes with a look of delirious delight on his face. His smile was wider than a canyon.

  Marius sat up and looked at him and me and shook his head, laughing. “Damn right, Moony. I am a figment of your imagination. How messed up is your world then if that is the best you can do?”

  Marius and I started laughing and looked up to the sky. A cool breeze swept in from the river, crossing the hill. We all felt it together. Marius looked up at me and said half-jokingly, “What if he is fricken right, and I’m trapped by his imagination?”

  I didn’t say a word. By then Moony was sound asleep with not a fear in the world.

  CHAPTER 15

  There is one clear star-filled night I will always remember. We sat at the highest point of Shep’s Hill. Although it was not a nightly ritual to bring alcohol up to the shed during the summer, tonight was different. It was the last Friday before summer was officially over for us teens. School would start again on Monday. For some, it would be their final academic year as jobs and the allure of making money would draw them away from academic pursuits. For others, like Marius and myself, it would just be a starting point for a new world: college. No matter, it was our last year as big fish in a small pond. We were arrogant and young as we strode up the hill that night. We actually believed we had mastered the high school world and were ready to ride the waves of our last year in high school.

  “Where’s Moony?” Marius pondered. “The sun’s going down. I don’t want to waste our time looking for him in the dark.”

  “Typical Moony. No watch. No time. Just whatever beat he was synched with. Are the others coming?”

  “Argh!” He swept his arm out dismissively as if slapping away three-hundred-pound flies. “After last time, I don’t expect them to show. I mean, especially since I told them we would have libations.”

  The last time was a month ago. Dale had brought beer, or so he called it, that he and the crew had been “manufacturing” in their parents’ basement. Dale’s dad supposedly helped. The beer tasted like, as Marius politely described it, “foul-tasting urine.” Enough of us got sick that many were in parental lockdown for a time after and presumably still were. No one dared ask Marius what “good-tasting urine” tasted like, as just the thought of it would
conjure up bad memories. I noticed no difference between the first and the last time I had a beer.

  “Did you bring some drink?” Marius asked with a worried look.

  “Yes, yes. I got this from my dad’s stash. He’ll never know it’s missing. Someone gave it to him a couple of years ago. I remember how excited he pretended to be and then he hid it, saying he would never touch the stuff.”

  “Absinthe.” Marius stared at the ovular-shaped green bottle. “Will this stuff kill us?”

  “I doubt it, but I think you can trip out if you have too much.”

  Marius held the bottle in his hands and tossed it gently from one hand to another. He seemed bemused yet perplexed.

  “One shot each, right?”

  Marius continued to inspect the bottle. Flipping it up and down and even mildly shaking it.

  “Right?” I repeated.

  “Yeah, sure,” he gingerly stated as though catching himself.

  We could hear footsteps crunching behind us on the moist grass. We didn’t have to look behind us to know who it was. We could even hear the slithering of heavy material along the ground.

  “Good lord! He’s wearing the cape again. All summer, he ditched that bloody thing, and he has to bring it tonight.”

  The footsteps grew closer and closer while the slither got louder and clumsier.

  “Play along, Marius, please. He sincerely believes he’s a shaman, you know, and who is to say he’s not…” I winked. Moony had come a long way, or so I thought. I never ventured to guess it was the other way around.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Moony said. “I waited for the sun to go down. I didn’t want to be up here with it glaring in my eyes. I would be pretty blinded.”

  Marius broke out in laughter. “Ah, Moony, the sun will never defeat you. You have magical powers. Only you do not know what they are yet.” He laughed himself into a seating position on the hill and looked up at the stars. We looked at each other and joined him with our legs folded across and for the next few minutes, we enjoyed the silence.

  Marius broke the silence finally. “All right, get out the hooch. I’m going to be an old man before we drink.”

  Moony piped up. “If it’s alcohol, I can’t drink it. If you poison my mind, I won’t be able to lead.”

  Marius winked at me. “No problem, Moony. I think it’s just green apple cider from Europe. It is heavy shit, but that’s because the apples were bitter when squeezed.”

  I whipped out three small Styrofoam cups and gave Marius a hefty frown over the lie he just told.

  With a small gesture of his fingers made it clear that a little wouldn’t hurt.

  I poured as little as I could into Moony’s cup. If he spontaneously combusted, at least the trace would be small. I poured much more for Marius and myself. As I handed Marius’s cup to him, he looked at me defiantly.

  “When did you become my mom?” he bellowed, reaching for the bottle.

  I pulled the bottle back and preempted his coming tirade.

  “A toast, boys! To us and our upcoming last year of high school. We pledge to work hard sometimes, and play hard all the time. To all our friends, Romans, and countrymen who could not be here, to all those about to graduate . . . Cheers!”

  I stood up at full military attention and saluted the town and our school below.

  Moony and Marius followed, standing up. Marius hailed but Moony had the distant look he sometimes got. Instead of saluting, he looked over at me and smiled and, with a cup in hand, greeted the stars.

  Within seconds, the reaction to the drink hit us like an earthquake shaking a feather hut.

  “Holy shit, you trying to kill us? Wow. This stuff is wicked.” Marius staggered back and forth lurching his chest and shoulders forward. He turned his feet sideways and wobbled deliberately. He was enjoying his act. “I definitely need more.”

  The taste was intoxicating. I could feel the fumes chisel their way straight to my head. As Marius reached for the bottle, I quickly threw it at a protruding rock a few feet away. The bottle shattered like a cymbal hit by twelve drummers at once.

  Marius looked at me with his eyes lowered, his lips tight together, and shaking his head.

  “Marius, if we drank the whole thing, we wouldn’t be going back down this hill. Sorry. I didn’t realize how potent it was.”

  We hadn’t noticed Moony during this. He slowly backed away and sat under a tree, his eyes glazed and now fixed upon the sky. It probably was the first time his lips had touched alcohol. I was scared as I watched him.

  “You alive?”

  “I’m fine, but I hear voices. I think the stars are talking to me,” he said, obviously not wanting to converse as he averted making eye contact. Totally preoccupied in his trance.

  “What are you seeing, I mean, hearing? Do you need help?”

  “No. Everything is clear. The stars are dancing in front of me. It’s quite beautiful the way they’re calling my name, like in a chant. Quite relaxing and peaceful.”

  Moony slowly started shuffling his feet and dancing to his tune. Moony demonstrated a rhythm I would never have believed he had. I could see Marius’s look of horror as I joined in with Moony doing a punk type of dance. Our arms and feet stomped. Our bodies gyrated violently led by our heads bobbing from side to side. All this without any music.

  “Freaksters. Damn freaksters,” Marius declared. He put down his cup and began his own dance. Grooving his hips back and front. The moonlight was blinding as it shone on us.

  I could almost feel a soft vibration of the light as it settled on my face during my dance.

  Moony started swaying side to side and had made himself dizzy. Marius began to laugh as he swung his cross over his neck and ignored Moony’s condition.

  “Do you hear the same thing?” Moony said. “The voice calling to me. It’s my voice coming from the stars and speaking to me.”

  “Really?” Marius said, puzzled as I took a step back to observe.

  “What’s the voice saying, Moony? What’s the voice saying to you?” My voice cracked—I was both anxious and fearful of his response.

  “That I’m on the right path and should continue to follow the path I shall choose. It is my voice. My voice!” Moony kept repeating that mantra until he slowly drifted off to sleep on his own feet. Marius and I supported him so he wouldn’t fall.

  “I guess we need to take him home.”

  “What, ring the doorbell and run? Fuck. Imagine what his aunt will do if he’s like this. She might kill us for damaging him!”

  “Let’s wait it out until he wakes up. I gave him barely a teaspoon.”

  Marius started laughing. “Our last night of freedom and here we are with a guy who hears voices, gets—wasted on a tiny sip from some strange drink, while wearing a dress! Man, that is enough crap to get me through this year.”

  I looked at Moony as Marius snorted loudly, as if a memory popped into his head like a red flag in front of an angry bull.

  “Remember how in religion class, we were talking about the second coming and how would we ever know the Messiah arrived?”

  “Yeah and I remember Moony raising his hand to give Father Satler his two cents.”

  “Moony said we should spend less time waiting for the second coming and more time searching for him here.”

  “Right . . . on earth.”

  “Moony never said on earth. He said here in class.”

  “Who cares? Here, there, everywhere, today, tomorrow. Moony always says things to stir things up. Like all this voice stuff. Of course, he heard a voice. How could it not be his own? He is non-stop talking and cannot hear anyone else!”

  Eventually, Moony awoke, not remembering a thing and went on his way back home.

  “What a wonderful night this was. I cannot wait to start the school year,” he said as he strolled down the hill
.

  Marius walked over to me. “Thanks for not telling him he heard voices. We would have never gotten him home.”

  “It’s getting late. We should call it a night.”

  Marius raised his empty cup. “To us and the havoc we will wreak!”

  I picked up my cup and raised it slowly. “To the future.” I lowered my cup and it slipped out of my hand as a severe gust of wind blew across the hill.

  I walked down the hill with Marius, desperately wanting to tell him, but each time held back, second-guessing what I heard or not.

  Moony was not the only one who heard a voice. The voice I heard spoke to me and it was not a voice I recognized. The voice was ageless and echoed through the hollowness of my mind. Before I went to sleep, I wrote what I heard so I wouldn’t forget it and put the paper in my pillowcase. A perfect place and complementary to what had been going on within my subconscious for a time preceding it.

  The voice told me that true love would burn me from the inside out. If I dare not open my lips to let the smoke from this fire escape, I would suffocate.

  CHAPTER 16

  That same night, I dreamt of a voice that calmed my soul and I kept dreaming of it until school started in September. The face and body behind the voice were never clear. What exactly happened in the dream was a pleasant mystery. There was the sound and the feeling of complete contentment of my soul that followed. There was no time nor space. I could sense the presence of two of us holding hands, one being mine and one feminine, although I couldn’t see her. There was no doubt that it was a girl.

  Who was I dreaming of? There was someone there. It was a voice I hadn’t heard and one that reached out only to me. Moony would take it to the nth degree, setting him off on a twenty-day monologue. I couldn’t let that happen. Marius would certainly laugh and only stop to take a break to laugh some more. He would tell me it was just a stupid dream.

  It would have been easy to dismiss it in some ways, and much more comfortable if I did dismiss it. However, there was more to it—much more. How many more times I dreamt a similar dream over the next few nights, I lost track. Some mornings I would wake up trying to recall and could not. Then a moment would come and go. A sequence would play within my mind that could only come from a dream. The voice was always the same. It was feminine and young. My age, or pretty close. I couldn’t make out any physical form to go with it. When it played back in the mind, there was something about it that was special—that I could not describe at that time. I did know when I dreamt I felt more awake than when the alarm sounded. It was pure contentment with the world.