Shattered

Shattered

By Robert Aquino Dollesin

The night the moon shattered into a million pieces, most of the people who lived on Calabas Road rushed out of their homes and into the street.

I tried to get my mom to wake up, but she was out cold. She'd been like that – sleeping a lot -- since dad got killed in Vietnam.

Outdoors there was frantic panic; hands flailing, lots of wailing, people on their knees praying. Stuff like that. Even fat Mr. Nichols, who this past spring had announced himself as block captain, rolled back and forth across his damp lawn wearing nothing but a white bathrobe and squealing like a dying hog.

I kept my butt high up off the banana seat of my purple Huffy five-speed and pedaled down the street like madman Manson. All around me glowing flakes of golden moon fell from the sky. The entire neighborhood looked like a scene trapped inside a snow globe.

I cruised past Mrs. Davis, who, with tears in her eyes, hugged Mrs. Bordell. Mrs. Davis apologized for throwing a pot of boiling water on the Bordell's Collie when the dog jumped the fence and terrorized the neighborhood.

Mrs. Bordell, crying as well, patted Mrs. Davis's back and accepted the apology.

I jammed back the pedals of my Huffy, locking the brakes and skidding to a stop in front of where the Tortella twins, Janet and Janey, were sitting on the curb munching Jiffy Pop. I asked them both if they could raise their blouses and show me their boobs before the world came to an end.

Janet agreed. She wiped her butter-glistened hands on the knees of her bell-bottoms and yanked down the neckline of her blouse, exposing one pale breast. Janey on the other hand, told me to go screw myself.

Just then, Roland the retard ran over carrying a shoe box. He flipped the lid off the box and took out a Mickey Mantle and a Willie Mays baseball card. I told Roland to run around back and snatch a couple clothespins from the line. While he was gone, I asked Janet Tortella if I could touch her boobs. This time, like her sister, she told me to go screw myself. When Roland returned with the wooden clothespins, I clipped the cards onto my bicycle spokes and started pumping the pedals again.

With my Huffy sounding motorized now, I glanced back over my shoulder and caught Roland the retard standing on his toe tips, laughing while grabbing at the flaming fragments of falling moon.

My dad said in a letter once that sometimes the Vietnam nights glowed so bright with stars it looked as though the sky had shattered. I used to try and picture that. And with flecks of moonlight now dappling the darkness, I kind of got what my dad was trying to describe.

In front of the Horbuckle house, nobody was out. But behind the thin front-room curtains I could see Mr. and Mrs. Horbuckle's dancing silhouettes gliding across the living room floor, their faces nearly touching. I sat staring through the curtain a while, remembering how I sometimes stood in the doorway watching my parents dance in the darkness.

I got going again, shot past little clusters of anxious neighbors, Tanya Morton shouted out to me from across the street. I swung my Huffy around and rolled to a stop in front of where Tanya sat cross legged on the hood of her dad's red Mustang. She had a cootie-catcher going in her hands.

“P-p-pick a c-color,” she stuttered.

“Red.”

“R – E – D. Now p-p-pick a number.”

“Six.”

“S – I – X.”

Tanya peeled the flap back and said, “Yes, the w-w-world's ending t-t-tonight.” When some tears moistened her eyes, I sighed, propped myself up on the Huffy's banana seat, and took off down the street.

Carlton and Elvis had set up a lemonade stand next to the stop sign on the corner. A long line of people stood waiting. While he counted money, Elvis had to keep adjusting his thick black-rimmed glasses. Carlton, whose glistening steel braces kept reflecting the moon fragments that littered the air, kept pouring lemonade from the glass pitcher into paper cups.

Somebody said, “Anyone know if Nixon's doing anything about this?”

Somebody else barked out a reply, saying, “I doubt the bastards in DC care.”

My dad said he often wondered if people cared back home whether or not the war in Vietnam would ever end or not. He said in his letters that when he got back home, he'd march in his muddy boots to the White House and do everything he could to put an end to this crazy war.

I brought my Huffy around and headed back toward my house.

I didn't pedal very fast, knowing my mom was probably still passed out on the sofa. I'm sure the needle on her record player was still riding the grooves of her Troggs album. And on the floor at the foot of the sofa, her empty bottle of Cutty Sark would be laying on its side, caught in the shifting glow of the lava lamp that bubbled on the end table next to the sofa.

I thought of emptying the instant coffee out the Nescafe jar in the cupboard and filling it with little glimmering pieces of the moon, so that I could give them to my mom in case the world didn't end tonight.

But my mom wouldn't care. Not really.

She'd just stare a long time at the glowing pieces of moon floating inside the Nescafe jar. Then, like always, she'd start to cry.