Short Stories

Richardo Keens-Douglas: Moonface

   IT WAS A BEASTLY HOT JULY a long time ago and the sound of laughter came drifting across the cornfield on the little bit of breeze that was in the air. It was coming from Moonface Wellington and his friends. It was Moonface's thirteenth birthday and his parents had thrown him a party. And everyone was having the time of their lives, as they usually do whenever Moonface was around.

   They were playing hopscotch, rounders, hide-and-seek, Jacks. Some children were even playing doctor under the watchful eye of the older folk from a distance.

   Everybody loved this little boy named Moonface. His real name was Maurice, but he had the roundest face and the biggest and brightest eyes this side of the mountain. Just like a full moon. So affectionately they called him Moonface.

   Now the following year just before his fourteenth birthday Moonface started to get sick. But no one really took it on, because he was a strong boy and he always bounced back in a couple of days. But this sickness didn't seem to want to leave him this time. They tried every remedy in the book, but nothing appeared to work. They took him to the local doctor, even that seemed futile.

   Then one morning like magic he got up and was as well as well can be. The sickness had disappeared just like that, and he was back with his friends doing all the things he loved to do.

   But about a month later, bam, the sickness returned. This time it came back with a vengeance. He got weak, he started to lose weight, his eyes dimmed. Some days he couldn't even move. He just wasn't the old Moonface everybody knew.

   Eventually they brought in a specialist who discovered he had a fatal disease that there was no cure for. It was a disease that was spreading throughout the world at a rapid pace, and somehow Moonface contracted it. Well, when people heard Moonface had this illness, everybody immediately became magicians and slowly started to disappear. His best friends stopped coming out to his farm to play because their parents wouldn't allow them.

   Then curiosity got the cat. They all wanted to know how he got the disease. His parents said, "It's not important how he got it. The fact remains he has it and we have to deal with it." His parents told them over and over it's not an easy disease to catch. You cannot get it from touching, or from a glass, or from caring and showing some love.

   His mother told them all the ways the illness is spread. Gave them all the material necessary for educating. But that wasn't enough.

   The people of the town wanted Moonface out of the school, out of the playground, out of the gym, out of the pool. They picketed. They stopped buying corn from Moonface's father. Their faces changed. Moonface couldn't understand it. People that he loved and played with all his life, all of a sudden, didn't want to be around him.

   Then strange little things began to happen. One day the family went into town to do some shopping and when they came out of the store the tires from their car were slashed.

   One night they were coming home from a little night drive and as they were approaching their farm they saw a red sky. It was the toolshed. Someone had set it alight. Thank God it wasn't close to the house and the wind wasn't high that night.

   The three of them just stood there and watched. They didn't even make an effort to put out the fire. They just sat on the porch and watched the shed go up in smoke.

"The human race is a strange race," the mother said.

   And they calmly went inside and had a cup of cocoa. Moonface became weaker and lonelier as the months went by. His parents didn't know what to do. It was the saddest farmhouse this side of the mountain.