This is not a story of witches in the switchgrass or midnight curses whispered into empty seas from punts skulled to long-forgotten piers. Their tales need told as well, but not today. This tale runs simpler, of a man loved a woman, and a woman loved the moon.
Did Mackie love Deloris, none could deny, when summer waned and autumn rise. Through June they traipsed the flowers and in July they counted stars each night, and fell asleep to music of such distant spheres as only lovers can observe.
Did Deloris, Mackie, though? The question may remain.
Though fair and fit, and of gentle wit, he was but clouded in the brain. But love requires so blessed little thought, one finds, the quiet that overtake a pair may delay unkind rebuff.
And at August village fair, in the inn beyind the green, as custom always wont needs must, they stood before their God and all and asked forgiveness of their sins. Then to her mild dismay, he pled his troth aloud before her ma and all her office friends. And, on the spot, confronted as she was, she nodded, clearly smit of tides untold, though seen by most to be of joy.
But see, we elder folk, we know the look of dilemma badly hid. We knew she held a conflict, though we could not have said whence.
In July, it came to pass, the stars shone so bright, the moon looked down upon the Earth and saw Deloris there, gazing back. And the moon sent her downy tendrils to the field where Mackie and Deloris lay, he dozing, her agog.
And she said to the moonbeam, “dear, oh silver beam, have you dropped from stars aflame?”
And the moonbeam tinkled gentle laughter.
And she said to the moonbeam, “dear, dancing light of mine, have you seen much?”
And thereby hung a tale, although the moonbeam was quite loathe to presuppose to horn in.
And so she said, “please, darling brightness, set a spell and share your journey.”
Then the moonbeam was obliged to nestle; many tales of warp and wail it did unfold upon the night.
Thus it was for many nights, Deloris and her one true loves, Mackie and the light.
Throughout July, as corn grew high, with harvestide upon horizon, Deloris each night first with Mackie gazed upon the stars and untold wonder. Then the moonbeam, slender birdling, laid its treasures at her feet, a’telling tales of tides and planets, swirling chaos, vast, complete.
So then, in the August, at the fair, she stood and held her Mackie’s hand. She nodded sagely, quite demurely, showing nothing Mackie could decypher. She held the hollow hope within her, that she’d come to treasure him her own.
But at the window, pressed upon the glass, her moonbeam leant and moaned.
Upon excuse, a flimsy fib, she hurried from the din; out beyond the parking lot, and to the wood beyond. She pursued a glint, a tiny twinkle, of the moonbeam, all in flight. Through the trees and through the brushes, out to the starfield where she’d lain so many nights.
In the open, honest swelter, she emerged into the glen. The August moon smiled down from clear skies, trailing fingers in the grass. Deloris whispered secrets, vainly, into the empty skies, transfixed and pumping her legs with all the might and main she mustered.
In the telling, years and decades, many tongues have found an ending. Her own saintly, blessed mother, tells a hollow lie, that a bandit snatched her up, or that she willful rode into a sunset built of guns and stolen trash.
But her Mackie, now an old man, often steals into the glen in the evenings when the heat breaks, and the world sings with slumbering summer wind. Mackie sits, and sighs, and wonders, if he’d listened to the stories, what could have been.
| Ruth Gibbs | Reading |
| Deloris Selene | Costumes |
| Ben Gibbs | &c. |