Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford

Author:Jean Stafford [Stafford, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Pulitzer Prize, Classics, Short Stories, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780374126322
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Published: 1969-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Darkening Moon

There was not a star in the sky, scarcely a sound in the air except for the soft gabbling of the creek. The little girl, when she had shut the kitchen door behind her and so shut in the yellow light, stood for a moment in the yard, taking her breath in sharply as though to suck in the mysterious element that had abruptly transformed day into dark. She was alone beneath the black firmament and between the blacker mountains that loomed up to the right and to the left of her like the blurred figures of fantastic beasts. She stepped forward, round the corner of the house where her brother’s horse was tied. Before her lay the town with its long, glittering serpentine line of lights leading down from the mine, the double line marking the main street, and the helter-skelter porch lights of the miners’ cabins. She heard the children tumbling out screen doors, calling, “One, two, three, four, five, six, Red Light!” before they had swallowed the last mouthful of their suppers. And the jukeboxes at The Silver Slipper and Uncle Joe’s commenced to play conflicting tunes. Ella was glad that tonight she was going to take a ride on Squaw, who, impatiently stamping one foot, gave voice to a muted whinny as if to show that she, too, was ready for adventure. Ella slipped the loose knot of the reins and turned the mare to mount. As she threw her leg over the saddle, her brother Fred opened the front door and called, “Wait a shake, sister.” Without turning, he reached back to the table in the center of the room. His bare arm, against the glare of the lamp, was enormously magnified and knotted like the branch of a tree. He came out, leaving the door open, hesitated on the porch, and closed it just as their mother’s voice came from the back of the house, “Fred, You see that stuff is tied on good and tell her not to waste no time.”

Ella was taking ten pounds of elk steak, tied on behind her saddle under a tarp, Fred’s payment to Mr. Temple for the use of his gun sight and hackamore on the hunting trip he had just made. Her mother, who never knew a moment’s peace when game was in the house, was afraid that the warden, Mr. Flint, would come by before Ella was out of the yard.

As Fred slipped the hackamore over the pommel, his sister laughed, “Golly, she’s a big crybaby.”

“Well! If it ain’t Grandma!” he replied, and although she could not see his face for the shadows, she knew by the tone of his voice that there was a long grin on his face under the scanty blond mustache and a spiteful glint in his narrow blue eyes. Suddenly, she was spoiling for a fight. Instead of riding through the gate which he had opened for her, she lingered in the yard, waiting for an excuse to start a quarrel.

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